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Page 16
John Woolman writes in his _Journal_ (1741-2): "In a few months after I
came here my master bought several Scotchmen as servants, from on board a
vessel, and brought them to Mount Holly to sell." Isaac Weld, traveling in
the United States in the last decade of the eighteenth century, noted
methods of securing aliens in the town of York, Pennsylvania: "The
inhabitants of this town as well as those of Lancaster and the adjoining
country consist principally of Dutch and German immigrants and their
descendants. Great numbers of these people emigrate to America every year
and the importation of them forms a very considerable branch of commerce.
They are for the most part brought from the Hanse towns and Rotterdam. The
vessels sail thither from America laden with different kinds of produce
and the masters of them on arriving there entice as many of these people
on board as they can persuade to leave their native country, without
demanding any money for their passages. When the vessel arrives in America
an advertisement is put into the paper mentioning the different kinds of
people on board whether smiths, tailors, carpenters, laborers, or the like
and the people that are in want of such men flock down to the vessel.
These poor Germans are then sold to the highest bidder and the captain of
the vessel or the ship holder puts the money into his pocket."
These may be, it is true, extreme cases of the economic motive for
immigration. But they are quite in line with eighteenth century
Mercantilist economic philosophy. Josiah Tucker, for example, in his
_Essay on Trade_, 1753, urges the encouragement of immigration from
France, and cites the value of Huguenot refugees. "Great was the outcry
against them at their first coming. Poor England would be ruined!
Foreigners encouraged! And our own people starving! This was the popular
cry of the times. But the looms in Spittle-Fields, and the shops on
Ludgate-Hill have at last sufficiently taught us another lesson ... these
_Hugonots_ have ... partly got, and partly saved, in the space of fifty
years, a balance in our favour of, at least, fifty millions sterling....
And as England and France are rivals to each other, and competitors in
almost all branches of commerce, every single manufacturer so coming over,
would be our gain, and a double loss to France."
The obverse side of the case appears in British hindrances to the free
emigration of artisans during the eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries. Laws forbade any British subject who had been employed in the
manufacture of wool, cotton, iron, brass, steel, or any other metal, of
clocks, watches, etc., or who might come under the general denomination of
artificer or manufacturer, to leave his own country for the purpose of
residing in a foreign country out of the dominion of His Britannic
Majesty. Recall the difficulty early American manufacturers encountered in
introducing new English improvements in cotton manufacture; a virtual
embargo was laid upon the migration of either men or machinery. Recall,
too, an expression of American resentment in our Declaration of
Independence at this English attitude: "He has endeavored to prevent the
population of these states; for that purpose, obstructing the laws for
naturalization of foreigners, refusing to pass others to encourage
migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of
lands."
On the whole, the economic motive seems to have been uppermost in the
minds of both those who fostered and those who opposed foreign immigration
into the United States, up to, say, 1870. Likewise in perhaps more than
ninety-nine of every hundred cases the economic motive holds in the mind
of the present day immigrant, or his protagonist. Escape from political
tyranny or religious persecution, at least since the revolutionary period
of 1848, has operated only as a secondary motive. The industrial impulse
is all the more striking in the so-called "new immigration" from the
Mediterranean and South-Eastern Europe. The temporary migrant laborer, the
"bird of passage," roams about seeking his fortunes in much the same
spirit that certain Middle Age Knights or Crusades camp followers sought
theirs. This is in no way to his discredit. It is simply a fact that we
are to reckon with when called upon to work out a satisfactory immigration
policy. At least its recognition would eliminate a good deal of wordy
sentimentality from discussions of the immigration problem.
Professor Fairchild discovered that three things attract the Greek
immigrant. First and foremost, financial opportunities. Second, corollary
to the first, citizenship papers which will enable him to return to
Turkey, there to carry on business under the greater protection which such
citizenship confers. There is a hint here to the effect that mere
naturalization does not mean assimilation and permanent acceptance of the
status and responsibilities of American citizenship. Third, enjoyment of
certain more or less factitious "comforts of civilization."
But the Greeks are by no means untypical. The conclusion of the
Immigration Commission as to the causes of the new immigration is that
while "social conditions affect the situation in some countries, the
present immigration from Europe to the United States is in the largest
measure due to economic causes. It should be stated, however, that
emigration from Europe is not now an absolute economic necessity, and as a
rule those who emigrate to the United States are impelled by a desire for
betterment rather than by the necessity of escaping intolerable
conditions. This fact should largely modify the natural incentive to treat
the immigration movement from the standpoint of sentiment, and permit its
consideration primarily as an economic problem. In other words, the
economic and social welfare of the United States should now ordinarily be
the determining factor in the immigration policy of the Government."
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