Imported Americans
The Story of the Experiences of a Disguised American and His Wife Studying the Immigration Question
9781465621504
301 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
That there was a tremendous increase in immigration in prospect was announced by the agents of the great immigrant-carrying lines of steamships as early as January of 1903. All Europe seemed stirred with that tide of unrest. It was to be a great year for the departure from the Continental hives of the new swarms, and an authoritative foreign journal prophesied that the sum total would be 1,500,000 for the twelve months. In America the cry was redoubled that the doors of the United States should be altogether closed or rendered still more difficult to pass. The Shattuc bill was about to find favor in the House of Representatives, the Lodge bill was cooking in Boston, and in every newspaper or periodical of the land articles and editorials were appearing that attacked or defended various phases, conditions or proposed remedies of immigration. Even in the German and Italian papers, which speak for Germany, Austria and Italy, the most fertile immigrant-producing grounds, there was but the barest trifle printed that was from the point of view of the immigrant himself. In the American papers there was absolutely nothing. One day I was in the Grand Central station in New York, ready to take a train for New Haven, and as I came up to the gate I saw, passing through before me, a group of more than twenty newly arrived Italians, following the leadership of one short, black, thick-set prosperous-seeming man who spoke Italian to the left and broken English to the right. They were tagged for Boston and other New England towns, and, bearing their heavy burdens of luggage and bundles, with faces drawn with weariness, eyes dull with too much gazing at the wonders of a new land, with scarce a smile among them except on the faces of the unreasoning children, they were herded together, counted off as they passed through the gate and taken aboard the train, much as if they had been some sort of animals worth more than ordinary care, instead of rational human beings. Here they were in charge of the conductor, who grouped them in seats according to the towns to which they were destined.
