the principal movement from that country was prior to 1860, and is perhaps attributable largely to the political unrest there prevailing in the early years of the century. The total immigration has amounted to 18,476,726,[1] the greater proportion of which have been males between the ages of fifteen and fifty years.
Previous to 1828, few children under the age of fifteen years arrived, but after this year there was a distinctive increase in the family as distinguished from the individual movement. The family movement has been much greater among the British than among the Irish—which people present the anomaly of the female emigration being generally equal to and in some years in excess of the male—but is most marked among the Germans and Austrians;[2] while, on the other hand, from Scandinavia, Switzerland, and the Mediterranean countries of Europe it is an unimportant factor. In the case of Russia, however, a family movement of some magnitude seems to have prevailed.
Great Britain, as might be expected, has furnished more skilled craftsmen, clerks, etc., than any other country. The greatest number of farmers[3] has come from Germany, but Scandinavia has also furnished an appreciable proportion. From Ireland have come more unskilled laborers and servants than from any other country, although Germany is a close competitor. Since the middle of the century, and even more markedly since 1880, the status of the arriving body of immigrants has, altogether, vastly deteriorated. The swarms of aliens who are generally classified as "without occupation," arriving from Italy, Poland, and Hungary, have enormously swelled this total. While it is true that the immigration statistics show a considerable number of farmers[4] from Russia and Italy, yet these rarely continue their original occupation upon arriving in this country; in fact, a large number of them ultimately come to constitute the refuse population of our great cities.
That the foreign element has exercised an effect observable in visible and tangible results can not be doubted; it was primarily the effect of training by foreign craftsmen that the native workers have arrived at the degree of proficiency in arts, manufactures, and all industries which now distinguish them. Many aliens have fought by land and by sea in the wars in which this country has been engaged; aliens have had command of its fleets and its armies; sev-
- ↑ See note (2) on page 393.
- ↑ Not including the Hungarians, among whom the proportion is very small.
- ↑ The word farmer is used synonymously with "agricultural laborer," as employed in the reports of the Commissioner of Immigration, although as a matter of fact many of those so classed have scarcely a knowledge of the rudimentary principles of farming, and would be incapable of conducting the most ordinary agricultural operations.
- ↑ See above note.
