Verhovayak Lapja, 1940. január-június (23. évfolyam, 1-26. szám)
1940-01-25 / 4. szám
January 25, 1940. Page 5 Verhovayak PLYMOUTH ROCK and ELLIS ISLAND Lapja Summary of a Lecture by Louis Adamic (Editor’s Note: The following is the gist of a lecture which Louis Adamic, author of “My America”, “The Native’s Return”, “Grandsons”, and other books, has been delivering during the past few months under various titles all over the United States — before public forums, teachei's’ and social workers’ conventions, university and college audiences, women’s clubs, and special groups. It is printed here with Mr. Adamic’s consent. Copyright 1940 Louis Adamic.) Eighty-five years ago, Walt Whitman said of the U. S.: “This is not a nation but a teeming nation of nations.” The U. S. has been that from the start. It was recognized as such by the Founding Fathers’ John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson, who were a committee created for the purpose, recommended to Congress that the new national emblem of the U. S. should contain, besides the emblems of the Original Thirteen States, also the national emblems of England, Scotland Ireland, France, Germany, and Holland, as representing “the countries from which these States have been peopled.” ... This always has been a country of many strains. There is no doubt, however, that once upon a time, early in its career, the U. S. was a much simpler place in its human makeup than it is today. Even, say, 100 years ago the people of this country were preponderantly derived from Britain: Anglo-Saxons, who were mostly Protestants. There were few Catholics and few Jews. There were, to be sure, gi-eat numbers of Negroes, but they were nearly ail in the South, and slavery created the illusion that they were outside the processes of American culture. Upon a different basis, the same was true of the Indians. As the dominant element, the Anglo- Saxons began to create a cultural pattern for the country. The threads being woven into this pattern were the English heritage, the English language, the Colonial experience, the Revolution and its ideas, the sense of the frontier, and, to no slight extent, the attitude to life called Puritanism. In connection with these cultural beginnings, there appeared a system of national hopes or aspirations that came to be called the American Dream — a matter mostly of faith in the human individual and the concepts of liberty, fraternity and equality, of general welfare and democracy which were stated or embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. This Dream was a sort of flowering of the idealistic, socially creative urges of the Anglo- Saxon people here, whom I now like to call the old-stock Americans. At the beginning of their story as a group in this New World were Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. After the Revolution, which had occurred in part because England did not permit free immigration into the Colonies, new people were coming over right along; but for a good while they were chiefly Anglo-Saxons with some Germans and Hollanders — Protestants nearly all of them. We have no immigration figures prior to 1860. In that year about 8,000 immigrants entered; in 1830 the number was 23,000; in 1840 approximately 84,000 came in. There were many Catholic Irish among the immigrants during these decades, but most of them still were Anglo-Saxons and Protestants of the German and Dutch strains. Then the Machine roared its way onto the national scene, bringing on the Industrial Revolution and the passion to develop the country in a hurry and to get rich quick; and came, too, the Civil War; and there began the New Immigration. In the last 100 years 38,000,000 immigrants came over; 24,000,000 in the last 50 years. And the majority of them were non-Anglo-Saxons and non-Protestants, and were not very closely attached to the attitude to life called Puritanism. Some of these new people came, of course, in a spirit of adventure or with chiefly materialistic motives, or because they werq lured over by American industrialists. Most of them, however, were escaping from oppression, terrorism, even massacres; from army service and militarism generally; from life in ghettos and from economic or personal frustration or fear of frustration. It was as if they came in response to the lines struck — in 1886 — on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty: Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send those, the homeless, tempest-tost to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door. To most of them, as it had been to the earliest immigrants, the Pilgrims, America was a refuge, a chance for a better life... They came and spilled themselves over America, 38,000,000 of them, all of a sudden, in what was a mere moment in history; representing over 50 different national backgrounds, speaking as many languages and several hundred dialects, owing allegiance to over twoscore rulers and governments, and adhering to about a dozen different religions. Most of those new people went into the cities, to work in factories and mills, in small shops and stockyards, on the new bridges, roads, and skyscrapers; or into the small mining towns and camps. But many, too, went on the land as pioneers. Or they went into fishing along the various coasts of America and on the Great Lakes; or to the woods as timber workers ... And everybody worked and built and dug and grubbed and carried burdens, and as America stands today, there is hardly a building here, hardly a bridge or mile of railway or highway, hardly a vehicle, hardly anything that is not, in part, a result of immigrant labor. This is one of the greatest stories under the sun, the story of the coming and the meeting of all these peoples, in so brief a period, on this vast and beautiful continent. It is, as yet, a story little known and perhaps never to be written fully... Personally, I am trying to get at it, just now, in a project which I began early in 1939. It is a study of the various and complex developments in our American life which revolve around, or issue from, this fact of the 38,000,000 immigrants coming here in the last 100 years. It will eventually result in a book, or a series of books. I undertook this job because the New Immigration seems to me one of the most important of the more neglected facts in American history; important from the viewpoint of our future in the U. S.... So far I have sent out about 150,000 copies of what I call my broadside (some of you may have seen it) — a questionnaire in which I ask for infoi'mation on the subject: and I have received thousands of replies, letter's of from a few lines to more than a hundred pages, and masses of other material, clippings and scrapbooks, manuscripts and obscure books and pamphlets. This material came to me, and is still coming, from all manner of people, oldstock Americans and immigrants and their children, from men and women in all walks of life, from about 1,500 cities and towns all over the country. Also, during 1930 I have traveled thousands of miles, talking with people individually, in twos and threes and in small groups. And through this work now in process I am getting a sort of closeup of America. The variety of the place! And the possibilities here good, and bad, because of this variety! Most of us, old-stock and new, — are not aware of the human resources we have here, and of the opportunity before us to create a great cultui'e on this continent; a culture which could approach being universal or panhuman and more satisfying to the human makeup than any culture that has yet appeared under the sun. Nor are we aware of the dangers ahead of us if we fail to take advantage of this opportunity. ... Most of us need to become conscious of this situation, of this new America; need to become naturalized to it. As a country, we need to look into the resources of genius and talent, character and cultural values in the new groups; if for no other reason, because it is almost sure that, with the rest of the world, we are facing difficult times ahead, and the probability is that we will need everything we’ve got to keep on even keel during the next few decades. We have something over 300,000 Indians, who are mostly in reservations, a problem some what special and apart; and about 13,000,000 Negroes, also a rather special and uniquely acute problem, possibly destined to be the ultimate and most severe test of our forming culture, of our pretensions to democracy — a test which the country will be able to meet, I feel, only if the white elements soon begin to solve the problems among themselves. The whites number about 115,000,000. Slightly over half of them are Anglo-Saxons, or think they are, or pass as such, partly, largely, or wholly. They are Protestants or of Protestant background. There are about 20,000,000 other people here who are not Anglo-Saxons but are Protestants, or of Protestant background. About 10,000,000 are Irish Catholic, or of that background; between 15 and 20 millions of the German, about 5,000,- 000 Italian, about 4,000,000 of the Scandinavian, about 2,000,000 of the French, and between 8 and 10 millions of the various Slavic backgrounds. One million each will cover those of the Finnish, Lithuanian, and Greek backgrounds. Also, we have several hundred thousand Orientals, and there are not inconsiderable Mexican and Filipino elements. And we have over 4,000,000 Jews, about 22,000,000 Catholics, and 5 or 6 million people of the Eastern Orthodox faiths ... These are estimates, but I believe fairly close. We have hei'e now 12,000,000 immigrants and between 30 and 35 million American-born children of immigrants who are designated in the Census as “native of foreign white stock. ’ And we have, perhaps, 10 or 15 million grandchildren of immigrants who are not distinguished in the Census. This constitutes about half of the white population. Most of this half is non-Aglo-Saxon; over half of it, non-Protestant. Most of the new people are in cities. In 1930, at the last Census, New York City had a population of 7,000,000, of which 73%
