By JULIAN S. HUXLEY.
ONE of the most surprising things which the European finds in the American picture is the existence of large blocks of some foreign-speaking people maintaining their solidarity in spite of the heat of the melting-pot. We are accustomed to such things in Europe—the Welsh, the Basques, the Ladines, the Provencals, and the rest. But these have reasonable and antique roots ; they are immemorial. In America, on the other hand, we have a new country, a place of the most rapid changes and the most speedy communications, where news is syndicated over a greater area than in any other land ; we are accustomed to think of a restless population, frequent migrations, and yet we meet with these solid chunks of other civilizations embedded in the pudding.
Half of the United States citizens in New Mexico speak only Spanish. Cape Cod has areas where Portu- guese is the chief language, and half-caste Portuguese almost the only cultivators ; the particular brand of German known as Pennsylvania Dutch is still the real language of many counties in that State ; the middle reaches of the Connecticut Valley are given over to onions, exclusively cultivated by Poles ; in Louisiana I found Acadians whose ancestors were expelled from Canada in the eighteenth century—many of them spoke no English, and they knew nothing of their own history near San Antonio there are towns so Teutonic that in -pre-War days even the negroes spoke German, and took their solace in a Biergarten. And then there are the Scandinavian sections of Minnesota, the Italian quarters of New Haven, the German quarters of Wisconsin, the Dutch market-garden regions of Illinois, the Japanese districts of California, and so on and so forth, without even mentioning the Black Belt of the Old South, or the inevitable foreign quarters and Ghettos of the big cities.
Many of these reservoirs of foreign Kultur are of respectable antiquity (as antiquity goes in America), and had, in pre-War days, been peaceably tolerated. But then came America's entry into the War, and all toleration ceased. The air grew thick with denunciations of the hyphenated German-Americans, and of hyphenation in general (always excepting Anglo-hyphenation). People asked themselves if the melting-pot was functioning properly (or, perhaps, if it was functionating—I have seen the word in American scientific literature !) : and they opened the ball in 1917 with a new immigration law. This, however, was not very drastic, and not until the quota system was introduced in 1921 did a real change in policy take place. Even this was not drastic enough, however, so a new law, was passed in the present year. The increasing post-War severity of the restriction has also its reasons. The war-fever in the United States had only just time to be fanned to full pitch when the Armistice deprived it of its proper object. Baulked, it looked round for other prey ; and found it in what it was pleased to call Radicalism and Bolshevism (to a large section of the American public even to-day anything which is radical is also Bolshevik, and anything which does not uphold the existing order of things as divine, or at least the best of all possible orders is Radicalism), and in the Foreigner.
As a matter of fact, they did have considerable ground for their restrictive action towards the foreigner : but I do not think the action would have been so rigorous or so rapid if the war-psychosis of Fear and Hate had not been transferred to the domestic field.
What are the grounds for action ? You may find them in the official statistics. Over 35 million immigrants have entered the United States in the past century —probably the largest movement of peoples in the world's history. More than half this vast total have entered since 1900. That is the first fact. The second is that America is filling up, physically and economically. The third is that the character of the immigrant stream had enormously changed with the years. If we divide Europe into a Northern-plus-Western against a Southern- plus-Eastern section, we find the following facts. Before the 'seventies the proportion from the Southern-Eastern section was negligible ; during the 'nineties it rose to 50 per cent, of the whole immigration ; since 1900 it has constituted some 80 per cent. Add to this the fact • that immigration, until the War, was growing (in spite of great fluctuations) progressively heavier—the 100,000 mark was first reached in 1842, the half-million in the early 'seventies, the million in 1906—and the large proportion of the Southern-Eastern group in the later years looms still larger in relation to the whole total.
The real problem which confronted America was, therefore, two-fold. Was she going to allow entrance to blocks of foreign elements so large that the melting-pot wouldn't melt ; and was she going to allow the character of her population to suffer radical change ? With regard to the first point Raymond Pearl, in an elaborate biometric study, has given good grounds for believing that even in the last few years the melting-pot, as mea- sured by the proportion of marriages between different racial stocks, was working rather better than might have been expected ; and further, doubtless unrestricted immigration would have brought its own remedy in the glutting of the labour market. None the less, the difficulty was a very real one. The second point, however, was more fundamental. The population of the United States still shows a marked predominance of the racial stocks of Northern and Western Europe. To permit the unlimited entry of Italians, Greeks, Serbians, Russians, Poles, and Rumanians would be, in the present state of Europe, to encourage it ; and would, in the course of years, have very materially altered the American stock.
A lot of bunkum has been talked in post-War America (and, I regret to add, elsewhere !) about the Nordic Race. Pure Nordics are, of course, very rare anywhere save in Scandinavia and some other parts of the Baltic coasts ; r and even where they exist, are prone to mysticism, moodiness, and suicide, as well as to outbursts of energy.
It is in harness with other bloods that Nordicity seems to be most productive. In any case pure Nordics are quite rare in the United States. I do not know if there are any statistics on the matter, but it seems to my Personal observation as if there were even less than one might reasonably expect—as if the low latitude (pre- sumably by means of the higher intensity of short wave- length light) were having an anti-Nordic selective effect, in the same way as we must suppose it to have had in Northern India and in Greece.
The bunkum, however, is only the rationalization of the very natural desire not to turn into something other than you are. When high-minded American publicists speak of their own Nordicity as against the low quality of the dregs of Europe as pouring in on them, they are being crude and unmannerly, in spite of the fact that the new type of immigrant population is probably inferior to the average American type. But if America would simply confess with W. S. Gilbert that she does not want to change her type of nationality, the world would sympathize. The 1924 Immigration Law takes the quota idea as its basis. Starting with the numbers of the foreign-born of any European country who at the time of the 1890 census were resident in the United States, it fixes 2 per cent, of these as the annual immigration (instead of 3 per cent, of the numbers at the 1910 census, as in the 1921 Act). Immigrants can come in outside of the quota if they are under 18 and accompanying their parents, if over 55 and accompanying their children, or if they are wives or husbands of citizens, &c.
Then it must be further remembered that the quota restrictions do not apply to Canadians, Mexicans, or indeed to the inhabitants of almost the whole of the American hemisphere ; to such persons only literacy and economic restrictions apply. Finally, as is inevitable when both to the South and to the North such large, unfortified frontiers exist, the smuggling of ineligible immigrants both from quota and non-quota nations reaches very large proportions. Thus, the quota itself by no means approximates to the total immigration, although, doubtless, a real measure of it. However, the system must be having a very marked effect on total immigration. The quota is now 164,000; 55,000 non- quota immigrants from quota countries were admitted in 1923-4—a total of under a quarter of a million. Even if we add as much again for smuggled immigrants and those from non-quota nations, we are down to well below half a million for our total. Then, as to racial stock, the system will have an even greater effect. Comparing the quotas under the new Act with those under the old, we find that that of Great Britain and Ireland is only cut 19 per cent., Germany's only 24 per cent., while Italy's and Russia's suffer over 90 per cent. diminution, and Poland's over 80 per cent. Northern-Western Europe, as a whole, is cut 29 per cent. ; Southern-Eastern Europe 87 per cent.—the one from about 197,000 to 141,000; the other from about 159,000 to 21,000.
If we put it in another way, and ask what percentage the present quota constitutes of the maximum past inunig:ation for any country, we find as follows : United Kingdom and France (maxima in '51), Germany, Denmark, Norway (maxima in '82)—round about 20 per cent., with Sweden and Switzerland not far off. For Italy, Portugal, Spain, Russia, the old Austria-Hungary, and the Balkans (all with maxima between 1907 and 1921) the percentage is only 2 per cent. As will be seen, this cannot but check the transformatory type of flow.
It only remains to inquire how far nature may see fit to counteract the aim behind the immigration law, and herself effect changes in the American population. There do exist now in the country representatives of every nation in Europe, together with a big body of negroes, and a fair sprinkling of Japanese and Chinese. In the welter of genetic factors which here are thrown into interplay, some arc bound to have the advantage over others, and if they have the advantage, they will survive and the others will not, and the population-type will change. Personally, I do not think that this effect will be of great magnitude, especially in a country where medicine and public health work is moving so fast as in the United States of America. There may be a slight average darkening of complexion, and possibly some minor changes in proportion ; but it is difficult to anticipate any radical change in average type.
The South-European nations, and especially the Italians and their friends, are complaining bitterly of the new law and the prejudice that is behind it.
do not think those complaints are justified. The best Italians belong to a splendid type, of great force and brilliance ; but even if America were getting mainly the best Italian type (which she definitely is not) it is a different type from the American, and the Americans have as much right to prevent its altering their civilization as would Italy to prevent a wholesale settling of English or French workmen and peasants in Italy. "To your own self be true "—et cetera ; the application is as good to nations as to persons.
So long as nationalism is the chief basis of human organization—which it happens now to be, however much anyone may deplore the fact—so long as this is so, such a policy as that of the United States is clearly reasonable. In addition, by cutting down quantity, she is at last giving herself a little time to sit down and take stock of herself without changing too much during the operation ; such self-consciousness and self-examina- tion is already beginning, and is bound to be salutary,
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