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THE ATLANTIC MIGRATION
THE ATLANTIC MIGRATION 1607-1860, A History of the Continuing Settlement of the United States
by MARCUS LEE HANSEN published by HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK
Chapter XIII, Pages 280, 284-306
Describes the rush of people into the United States in the century following the close of the Napoleonic wars. In an even more restricted period - the years from 1850 to 1860 when something like 2,600,000 aliens poured into the country and the foreign-born inhabitants increased from 2,244,600 to well over 4,000,000. The number of Irish grew from 962,000 to 1,611,000, of Germans from 584,000 to 1,276,000, of English from 279,000 to 433,500, of French from 54,000 to 110,000, of Swiss from 13,000 to 53,000, and of Scandinavians from 18,000 to 72,500 or probably more. This migration was great in comparison with the native American population, great in the trails of settlement it broke, great in the cultural foundations it laid. Subsequent decades were to see a larger volume of arrivals, but no later migration paid richer dividends to American civilization.
In Germany conditions were less favorable for the farming population. In 1850 emigration temporarily declined, a fact which the American consuls in the country ascribed to the continuing difficulty of peasants in disposing of their property. The disturbed state of domestic politics, the uncertainty of the grain market, the unsettled questions of foreign policy with their constant threat of war, rendered impossible the sale of real estate at what had hitherto been considered a fair valuation. Only those left who were willing to sell their lands at a sacrifice.
The next few years, however, brought such discouragement that increasing numbers of peasants were willing to dispose of their holdings at any price. Germany had escaped the catastrophe that ravaged Ireland only because its economic structure did not rest so exclusively upon a single crop. But like the Irish cottier, the peasant along the upper Rhine clung tenaciously to his field of potatoes; and in the seasons following 1848 his hope and despair varied with the success of his carefully cultivated patch. The excellent harvest of 1849 brightened his hopes; the widely extended planting of 1850, yielding little more than the seed, returned him to despair. As a result, only a third of the normal acreage was planted the next year in many places with an outcome no more encouraging. The crop in 1852, however, restored confidence in the potato; and when the season of 1853 again proved satisfactory, the people generally considered their troubles over. Other crops also had fared poorly. In 1850 the yield of rye proved discouraging and the wine of poor quality; and in 1852 the results were no better. During the next two years disease and pests, hailstorms and floods ruined whatever prospects the early months of summer had offered. Only with the autumn of 1854 did the agricultural crisis end.
Artisans and mechanics also suffered acutely from the uncertainty of the times. Revolution had disturbed internal trade; rumors of wars limited exports; the rural poverty cut down the home market. The brightest hope of industry lay in the future of the Zollverein; but that future depended largely upon the course of foreign affairs, and Austria’s growing jealousy of the increasing commercial strength of her neighbor boded ill. Though accurate statistics of the occupations of the emigrant are lacking, the opinions of those concerned with their transportation and some fragmentary figures kept by agencies and bureaus indicate that a greater proportion of skilled laborers than hitherto turned to America as a haven.
In the meantime the problems of scarcity and poverty had burdened every administrative officer and every charitable organization. Crowds of beggars traveled the highways, reminding observers of the grim scenes of 1846-1847. The winter that followed the harvest of 1851 was notably harsh in its effects because of the shortage of both grain and potatoes. Only the most vigorous efforts of relief kept famine away from industrial cities and rural villages. That Germany should go the way of Ireland and the agricultural population perish of starvation seemed a not impossible outcome. The fortunate recovery of the potato from 1852 on removed this specter.
Nevertheless the credit of the small farmers cracked under the strain, and the financial ruin harried them out of Germany as ruthlessly as though actual starvation confronted them. The indebtedness which in the early fifties rested upon this class is traceable to three sources. In the first place, many of them were involved in mortgages from the years before 1845 when an abundance of capital and low rates of interest had encouraged extensive and often reckless improvements. In the second place, many farmers in the hard times between 1845 and 1847 had saved themselves only by piling up debts which they found impossible to shake off before greater disaster overcame them in 1851-1852. Finally, the annual payments they had assumed after 1848 in order to free themselves from feudal obligations were no less a threat because due to the government.
Just as necessity forced the Irish tenant to default in the payment of his rent, the German peasant could not meet his notes; and just as eviction “cleared” the Irish countryside, foreclosure put German lands up to forced sale and sent the owners across the sea? In many cases, perhaps in the majority, the father did not await this last disgrace. Realizing his impending fate, he saved both self-respect and a remnant of his possessions by selling his land at any price he could get, effecting an honorable agreement with his creditors, and then taking his family of stalwart sons to the American West. That he set out upon the journey not entirely devoid of capital illustrates another parallel between the German and Irish migration.
Despair in Europe, hope in America: these two attitudes, the one complementary to the other, overcame any lingering doubts the German emigrant may have felt as to the wisdom of his course. The events of the day intensified the distrust which had been born during the political reaction. Never did the commune’s regulation of personal and business affairs seem so heavy as when times were hard and individual ingenuity was not allowed to find a
way out. The kaleidoscopic changes in France that turned a Napoleon into a president and the president into an emperor raised grave apprehensions as to the future peace of Europe. Would Germany fall victim to that upsurge of chauvinism?
Such considerations, however, exerted less influence than the increasing volume of personal letters which arrived each year as the number of German settlers in America enlarged. A passenger who mingled with the travelers in the steerage asked one after the other why he had left the fatherland. Without exception each took from his pocket a letter from a brother, cousin, son, daughter, friend or acquaintance, and handing it to him said, “Read this.”
Such letters painted shadows as well as lights, disappointments as well as successes, but universally the writers declared they had no desire to give up the new for the sake of returning to the old.
The peak of the German emigration was attained in the years 1853 and 1854. Although peasant farmers predominated, other ranks of society, high and low, figured in the movement. Among them were the poor, sent out at the expense of the communes to which they belonged, or perhaps subsidized by the government when the local organization could not meet the charge. Most of the states along the upper Rhine made appropriations for this purpose, though the size of the amounts indicates that only in unusual cases was this source available. Baden developed a system of state, local and individual cooperation which assisted the annual departure of a few hundreds. American objections, however, limited the scope of such efforts. Of the horde of Germans who emigrated during the decade only a few thousands can be described as paupers.
At the other extreme were families not merely in comfortable circumstances but unquestionably wealthy. Neither hunger, financial ruin, nor political disaffection impelled them to leave. Rather, they represented one aspect of that migration of capital that always accompanies a migration of labor. They saw in America the possibility of multiplying a fortune measured in thousands to one of millions. In part also they reflected the intensity of the distrust with which many people judged the social and political future of Europe. Many of them, however, were merely responding to the current craze, being intent on getting off because everyone else was going.
Of the prevalence of that craze there can be no question. Emigration represented the cure for all ills, private and public. The decision to depart was entered upon with a lightheartedness that little comported with the traditional stolidity of the German householder. According to a newspaper correspondent, one night the thought entered the peasant’s mind that emigration might be a desirable step; the next day he talked it over with his friends and each strengthened the resolution of the other; on the morning of the third day they all engaged passage. A thirteen-year-old boy shouldered his pack and set out
on foot for Le Havre, determined to avail himself of the opportunities of the new land even if his parents remained at home., Old people, however, were not ‘immune to the fever and, despite the manifest difficulties of adjustment, undertook the adventure in the hope that they might enjoy a few years of unsullied happiness.
The governments reversed their attitude of a decade before when they had looked upon every emigrant as a national loss and had hindered departure by a multitude of regulations. A strong motive was doubtless the belief that a “bloodletting” would preclude a revival of social disorders. Among the concessions made in 1848-1849 was a simplification of all the legal formalities which preceded emigration. In the interests of military defense, however, the authorities kept an eye on the young men whose services might soon be needed; and as the horizon clouded with the first threats that were to culminate in the Crimean War, the efforts became more active. But it was easy for the person who wanted to avoid this obligation to slip over the Rhine into France where passport formalities were more or less perfunctory; and the long newspaper lists of those who failed to respond to the call for military registration indicate the popularity of this way of escape. Only via Hamburg and Bremen were the difficulties serious. These cities, anxious to keep on good terms with the officials of the interior states, instituted a strict police supervision over prospective passengers and reported the suspects to the respective consuls.
On the other hand, the German governments took protective measures on behalf of emigrants through supervising the activities of the agents. Though the business of these men was lucrative, it involved many risks and might entail much suffering for those with whom they dealt. The secret of success consisted in keeping a proper balance between the number of ships that the agent hired and the number of passengers with whom he made contracts. When this balance was disturbed, as often happened, he usually sought the quickest way out by hastily turning emigrant himself. In order to counteract such abuses, most states now licensed agents, demanding a heavy bond as a guarantee against default, and they prohibited certain practices such as the sale of “through tickets” into the interior of the United States on the ground that they lacked means of punishing breaches of contract on the American side. So strong was the competition among the several agencies that they also improved their methods by adopting a system of couriers for guiding the emigrants from the villages to the ports and thus seeing them through the first and often most difficult stage of the journey. Large numbers continued to travel by way of Le Havre, thanks to the enterprise of the businessmen there. When the Hanseatic cities, with their efficient agencies and their arguments of better service, began to attract the south German traffic which Le Havre had always considered its own, the shippers at the French port demanded aid from the government. Their case was strengthened by the fact that the continued development of cotton manufacturing required the cheapest possible transportation of the raw fiber to the factories, an object which could be accomplished only through the retention of the passenger trade. Therefore the state railways granted reduced fares to emigrants, ranging from a third to a half of the customary charge, and ran special trains during the spring season . As a result of these concessions, Le Havre retained a large share of the German trade and an almost complete monopoly of the Swiss. It also fell heir to much of the emigration down the Rhine, which, unable to find accommodations at Antwerp, continued by coast steamer to the French port. Efforts made by the Belgian government to develop its merchant marine by stimulating the passenger traffic failed because of the nature of its transatlantic connections.
It was, however, at Hamburg and Bremen that the trade in human beings, which many moralists of the time reprobated as a shameful business, really centered. The completion of several important links in the rail connections of these ports with the interior occurred just as the great movement began, and in the contest to secure passengers special trains and reduced rates played a part. One circumstance rendered this achievement more difficult than in the case of the French. The railroads were Prussian and Saxon, and the good will of these governments was essential. On the whole, cooperation was achieved, although in 1853 the Saxon authorities declined to grant a desired reduction on the ground that far too many encouragements to emigration already existed.
On the days preceding the regular sailings on the first and fifteenth of every month the streets of Bremen and the banks of the Weser bustled with confusion. The town was not large and its inns were neither commodious nor many. To expect hotels to be constructed for the sake of two months’ patronage was out of the question; and therefore the merchants erected a special lodging house at Bremerhaven. For a generation it was a model of its kind and the last roof that sheltered many of the emigrants on Europe’s soil. As a further assistance to the travelers, the municipal authorities sponsored a society which maintained booths at the railroad station, the river dock and the market place, where lists of rooming houses were posted and bewildered peasants were given advice. Often five thousand passengers arrived and disappeared in forty-eight hours. Their coming and going were handled with a dispatch that illustrates how businesslike the arrangements had become.
The chief difficulties at Hamburg sprang from the inability of the shippers to provide space for the incoming throngs who, having no contract, acted on the belief that in a harbor crowded with ships there was always room for one more. Only a small part of Hamburg’s merchant ships, however, were bound for the United States, and the packets catered to cabin passengers. The situation gave an impetus to the construction of vessels, but this was too tardy a solution to take care of the immediate need. As a result, the merchants forwarded the surplus passengers by way of England, a route already well established and one capable of indefinite expansion.
For this trade the merchants of Liverpool were more than eager. The prosperity of that city was so closely bound up with the carriage of emigrants that the shippers viewed with growing apprehension the inevitable decline of the Irish exodus. In the Hamburg connection they saw a means of tapping new reservoirs of humanity. In the winter of 1851-1852 the campaign got under way. Hundreds of agents were appointed throughout the German hinterland with the promise of a liberal commission for every contract made. Public houses were flooded with broadsides, and newspapers were enlisted in the cause. This propaganda focused on a vigorous attack upon Bremen, stressing the length of the journey as compared with the passage by steam over the North Sea, by rail through England and the shorter ocean crossing from Liverpool. The counterattack, which quickly appeared, emphasized the many chances for
deception that transshipment made possible and painted the dangers inherent in a trip across the Atlantic in the company of Irishmen. Though every succeeding year provided an abundance of personal incidents in confirmation of these warnings, the English companies, for the time being, had the advantage. The increasing emigration via Hamburg yielded a rich toll to Liverpool.
But the growing patronage of this route stemmed only in part from propaganda. A new emigration was getting started while the old was yet at its height, and for these people from the plains of northern Germany Hamburg was the obvious port. Great numbers came from the provinces of Schleswig and Holstein where the defeated soldiers in the Three Years’ War, though granted a general pardon, could expect no promising future at home. Groups of officers and men formed natural traveling companions; and their compact settlement in eastern Iowa was long known as New Holstein. With them went farmers worried by the war’s aftermath of taxes, and agricultural laborers rendered desperate by a deepening depression. These latter held no land, enjoyed but few rights in the common and derived a scanty income from working on the lord’s estate. When the hard times blanketed these old grain-exporting regions of the north, there was no commune to help the people, and the lord had no legal obligations in the matter. In Mecklenburg conditions were particularly bad: the percentage of the unemployed was great and their resources were small. Medieval laws of settlement and the fact that all trades were controlled by local monopolies prevented a natural redistribution of the population. Unfortunately the repeal of the English corn laws had had little beneficial effect because of the war and the general European scarcity; and by the beginning of the fifties competition with more fertile acres was being felt.
A “landlords’ panic” not unlike that which struck England and Ireland seized the rural nobility. Seeking to reduce expenses, they exacted every possible service from their economic vassals, and encouraged those to leave of whom they had no need. Since neighboring estates and villages would not receive them, there was only one place for them to go - America. Thus began a movement which increased in intensity during the decade and continued with almost unabated force even when other parts of Germany showed a decline. How they obtained the means is obscure. Unlike the peasants of the southwest, they had no land to sell and their personal possessions were few. In many cases, especially at first, the lords paid the fare; and as these emigrants began to earn money, they extended help to those behind. Such family assistance must have been generous because in many places the emigration comprehended almost as large a proportion of the inhabitants as in Ireland, causing the landlords to change their complaint from overpopulation to excessive wages. In the neighbor ing Prussian province of Pomerania a few districts witnessed a similar outpouring; and to the south, in Hanover and Oldenburg, the condition of the grain farmers accelerated a current already running strong.
Of the Continental emigration during the 135o’s fully ninety per cent originated in those states and principalities that later comprised the German Empire. The other ten per cent derived from the countries bordering on Germany. The movement from these latter regions resulted in part from conditions that mirrored on a smaller scale the agrarian situation in the fatherland, and in part it was the outgrowth of local developments. Switzerland offered the closest parallel to the German situation. In the valleys and mountains that sloped down toward the Rhine the people had experienced similar conditions: a growing rural population and agricultural indebtedness, hasty agrarian reform and political disturbances, crop shortages and financial distress.
In two respects, however, the Swiss emigration was distinctive. One was the systematic resort to subsidization. Legislative councils discussed ways and means, and the newspapers reported the departure of the groups. The American consul at Basel insisted that the practice was employed as a means of getting rid of paupers, but the Swiss authorities denied the charge. Almost every commune possessed a mountain pasture or a plot of woodland jointly
owned by the inhabitants, and impoverished persons who desired to depart were given a sum which was supposed to represent the purchase price of the rights they relinquished. Though doubtless only a subterfuge, the device gave the transaction an air of respectability, and was not without a psychological effect upon the individuals. The second characteristic, though less important, involved action by the federal union itself. Plans of colonization had continued to be agitated in Switzerland despite the discouraging outcome of the attempts made at New Freiburg in Brazil and New Glarus in Wisconsin. Though the general government still refused to aid such schemes either with money or through diplomatic channels, it did understand the desirability of official guidance and protection and therefore stationed an agent at Le Havre to whom persons in distress might appeal.
Despite the fact that geographically the peninsula and islands of Denmark are a continuation of the north German plain, the rural evolution of the preceding century had been different there. The agricultural laborers enjoyed a more secure position, and for only a little more than a decade had the farmers taken an interest in the possibilities of the English grain market. The repeal of the corn laws therefore meant opportunity rather than deflation; and when the war ended in 1851, they turned with energy to exploiting the new trade openings. Improvement was the order of the day - better agriculture and better roads. The city of Copenhagen, sharing the spirit of enterprise that swept all the Baltic coasts, entered upon a period of brisk development. Not only did work exist for every Dane in town and country, but newcomers from Sweden and Germany found ready employment.
That emigration nevertheless occurred was hence not due to bad economic conditions. It resulted from the advent of Mormon missionaries. Fifteen years before, when Mormon emissaries first reached England, many of the converts had chosen to join their coreligionists in Missouri and Illinois. Now that the Church was permanently established in the Valley of the Salt Lake where every acre demanded labor, the Mormon authorities adopted the colonization of converts as a systematic policy. Special attention was directed to northern Europe where workers in iron and stone as well as hardy farmers could be obtained. To this end two missionaries were sent in 1850 to Copenhagen, which was intended to serve as a base of operations for the three Scandinavian countries. Though Denmark was at the time the only one of these states to permit Mormon preaching unmolested, legal freedom did not insure popular freedom. The missionaries were pelted with stones on the street, and converts were likely to find the windows of their homes broken.
But the religion had an appeal, as did also the descriptions of the paradise in the far-off mountains. In 1852 the first small band set out, and in the succeeding years conversion and emigration were almost synonymous. By the spring of 186o twelve organized parties numbering more than three thousand had started from Copenhagen, traveling via Hamburg and Liverpool. The majority paid their own expenses, but a few were aided by the Church’s emigration fund. All profited from the special lodging accommodations in Hamburg and Liverpool, the chartered ships across the Atlantic, and the assistance of agents who welcomed them at New York and New Orleans. Though the Mormons encountered much greater difficulty in starting their work in Sweden, among the groups leaving Copenhagen were also occasional bands of Swedes.
For the most part, however, the emigration from that kingdom was of a more traditional nature. Internal religious dissension continued to be an important factor, so important and obvious that many commentators deemed it the only significant motive. As earlier, the bulk of the Swedish emigrants came from the north-central provinces, where the state Church vigorously combated nonconformity, and where the less fertile soil produced a recurrent scarcity and want that strengthened, and in some cases overshadowed, the complaints of ecclesiastical tyranny. But when the movement made its appearance, as it did with increasing force, upon the fecund plains to the south, other explanations proved necessary; and contemporaries cited heavy taxation, the antiquated laws that governed land and labor, and the enthusiastic letters from settlers in the Mississippi Valley. Among these, the last carried special weight, as the prosperity of the Swedish pioneers contrasted brightly with the bitter hardships they had first endured. During 1853 and 1854 the shippers of Goteborg were overwhelmed with people clamoring for passage. Since direct sailing vessels could not convey the throng, the overflow made their way via Hamburg or Hull to Liverpool. As yet, however, the outpouring from Sweden, though great in the opinion of the startled officials, did not approach the proportions of a folk migration. That was to come twenty years later.
In the Norwegian part of the king’s domains, however, such a migration was already under way. As a result of the repeal of the English navigation acts, the new facilities offered by the Quebec route put the passenger trade on such a sure commercial footing that the captains engaged energetically in stirring up interest. They repeated encouraging reports of earlier Norwegian migrants and adduced confirmatory evidence in the many hopeful letters they brought
back with them, while the newspapers also spread the tidings far and wide. The rapid institutional development of the American settlements - the springing up of Norwegian churches, schools and newspapers - signified a social maturity which appealed to many who had hesitated to take their families into an
unbroken wilderness. Now that a “secondary migration” was taking place and Norwegian settlers were shifting from northern Illinois and Wisconsin into Iowa and Minnesota, opportunities existed to buy cultivated farms within sight of the steeple of a Lutheran church. The presence of ten vessels with outbound passengers at Kristiania Fjord in April, 1853, provided sufficient evidence that emigration no longer consisted of the sporadic departure of religious or political malcontents.
As in other countries where the outgoing tide bore a high ratio to the population, the movement was given impetus by changes in the conditions of the most humble tillers of the soil. Recent times had not been easy for the husmaend, or cottiers. Their mountain-side clearings, stony and unfertile, had never produced more than a bare living. Now, three years of hunger left debts and dissatisfaction; no legislation had improved their lot; and their cottages thronged with sons who asked, “Where are we to find a few acres for our household? The answer came from across the Atlantic in the form of money and encouragement. The owners of Norwegian ships no longer needed to seek freights on every quay in Europe; they loaded their living cargoes in the home ports and landed them under the bluffs of Quebec, where commissioners of the state of Wisconsin saw them safely through the swarms of land agents
and labor contractors.
To the southeast of Germany, in Austria-Hungary, emigration during the fifties came predominantly from the province of Bohemia. Gold seekers formed the van of the movement, yet it was not their path-breaking activities as much as the newly granted right of unrestricted departure that was responsible. The many bonds, commercial and intellectual, connecting Bohemia with Germany helped to disseminate the idea that emigration provided a cure for the
troubles of agriculture and industry. But not many were affected, for the ten thousand Bohemians who sought the New World formed but a small proportion of the total population. They were, however, the pioneers of the countless thousands who were to follow; and the location of their communities strongly influenced the future distribution of the stock in the United States.
All nationalities benefited from the improved conditions of ocean travel. Although perils remained, they were not such as might earlier have deterred the faint-hearted. Immediately after the repeal of the British navigation acts, the sailboat passenger trade reached its highest development. The westbound carriage of emigrants and the eastbound transportation of American staples were tied together in an international network of communication. The
mechanical perfection of the ships and the expert seamanship of the crews made possible the establishment of schedules that reduced congestion in the European ports and facilitated distribution of the emigrants through the United States. Some imaginative souls suggested that steam would replace sails and even the steerage traveler would spend only two weeks on the water. In less than two decades this revolution was to occur. For the time, however, the increasing number of transatlantic steamers exerted an influence only by turning the packets from their more select service to the emigrant trade and thereby providing better accommodations as well as stiffer competition.
Further improvement came from legislation. The British and American laws of 1848-1849 had banished absolute hunger and greatly reduced the danger of pestilence. But many discomforts and unsanitary conditions remained, a state of affairs which one did not need to be a Victorian to stigmatize as indecent. Two long parliamentary reports exposed the details of the shady side of life on board emigrant vessels; and the resulting act of 1855, with its specific regulations as to space, food and arrangements, long remained the controlling statute.
The United States tightened its restrictions the same year. The abuses that had arisen were not due to lax enforcement of the older regulations. At Baltimore on one occasion eight vessels, and in New York eighteen, had been libeled and their captains fined. In other instances ships had been seized and sold. It was the inadequacy of the legislation that was at fault. Marine architecture had made rapid strides; “three deckers,” unheard-of in 1848, had been introduced, and there was perpetual controversy between shippers and customhouse officials regarding the interpretation of the provisions. Congress accordingly appointed a committee whose inquiries added to the catalogue of horrors; and a public meeting of the merchants of New York urged that the confusion be ended by law. In 1855 Congress passed a comprehensive statute regulating the tonnage and space requirements in accordance with the number of decks and the intervening height. To the aid of the British and American laws came the great commercial decline of 1855, which caused shippers out of self-interest to make conditions more attractive to passengers.
The thriving city at the mouth of the Hudson drew an enlarging number of immigrant vessels to its spacious harbor. Increasingly, those embarking in Europe had no idea in mind but to get to New York, which they knew bore some sort of relationship to the rest of America. Many ships destined to load cotton in New Orleans or timber at Quebec were obliged to heed the popular desire and first land their passengers in New York. There were, however, two
exceptions. The main body of the Norwegians reached the West by way of the St. Lawrence and the Great Lakes; and as a result the American figures for the decade give an inadequate notion of the size of the Norwegian immigration. Also, many Germans landed at New Orleans where the German Society, eager to get them out of the unhealthy quarters of the city, speeded their departure north.
Some Americans - and not only land agents - urged that the South offered many opportunities which the Germans should seize. They had flourished in the Carolinas and Georgia in colonial days, why not in Texas and Tennessee now? The twenty-five thousand who settled during the decade in Texas achieved a success comparable to that of their compatriots in the old Northwest; but Tennessee was another story. The speculations of a land company known as the
Wartburg Colony disillusioned many who had invested their capital in it; and its failure discouraged other attempts at group settlement in the region. In the South the immigrant who tried to make his own way encountered many hindrances: a roundabout line of communications, difficulty in buying the small amount of land that alone he could afford, and the presence of slavery - an objection the weight of which it is impossible to judge.
In the face of these discouragements the main stream of German migration continued to flow along the channels already established. Its direction was due chiefly to geography and mass attraction, but conscious direction played a part. After the failure of the colonization schemes of the forties German thought adjusted itself to the inevitable. Lovers of the fatherland adopted a new policy: facilitate the concentration of Germans in. those parts of the United States where they are already numerous; keep sentiment alive by fostering churches, schools and intellectual bonds; then let the home country draw whatever profit it can from these commercial and cultural ties. As a means to this end, the National Society for German Emigration was organized in 1847. It printed a guidebook for general distribution, published a weekly journal for three years, and established local branches in Frankfurt, Leipzig and elsewhere. It also carried on activities in America, forming connections with existing German societies and prompting the establishment of new ones. By such means it kept up-to-date its information regarding routes, land and economic opportunities. After his arrival the immigrant could proceed from city to city, receiving advice at each stage.
Irish societies also existed in many places, but they were local in organization and used their meager funds in the alleviation of distress. Had they desired to concentrate their fellow countrymen geographically, it is unlikely they could have accomplished much, for the distribution of the Irish depended upon the opportunities for work. On landing in Boston or New York the immigrant had nothing but his hands, and a visit to the labor contractor’s office preceded his hunt for shelter or a meal. Obtaining a job, he left his family in a tenement room and went to Illinois or Maine, wherever his “gang” was sent. Sometimes he
found the village or the countryside to his liking and, settling down as an odd-jobs man or occasionally as a farmer’s helper, he sent for his family. More often he returned to the city where church and companions reproduced the pleasant social life of the old country and where he might find factory employment.
Unfortunately, the boisterous urban life of the 1850’s placed few restraints upon convivial drinking, and Irish intemperance shocked staid Americans who made no allowance for the laborious and frugal existence which most of these immigrants led. The Irish also competed with native workers for jobs, and offended further because of their attachment to a religion which was traditionally distrusted and feared in America. These factors are usually accounted the reasons for the growing antiforeign feeling that culminated in the Know-Nothing agitation of 1852-1856. But to them must be added American resentment at the attempts made by refugees to embroil the country in the various European political quarrels and the religious reaction against the atheism which many German liberals flaunted in the sight of churchgoers. Legislators went to the state assemblies with bills to protect American labor; Congressmen took to Washington proposals for drastic changes in the naturalization laws; and workmen evidenced their displeasure by rioting and violence whenever elections, picnics, funerals or fires brought them into contact with the immigrants.
This intolerance contributed to halving the incoming tide in 1855, but other factors were more fundamental. In 1854 immigration had reached a volume not to be equaled again until 1873. Nearly four hundred and twenty-eight thousand foreigners entered the United States. The labor market was well-stocked before the first spring ships arrived; and despite the effect of the Crimean War in reducing Atlantic shipping and thus raising the price of transportation, vast numbers landed in the succeeding months. Having paid a higher fare than they had planned, many were unable to move farther and added to the congestion in the coast cities. To make matters worse, a sharp contraction took place in business as news from the West reported a drought and then a general shortage in the wheat and corn crops. If agriculture were to fail, railroad construction and other improvements must cease. Hence back to the cities poured the discharged laborers to crowd into the already overflowing slums and to increase the wrath of the Know Nothings.
Little wonder that the hopeful arrivals of the year longed for the security of the old home; and many of those who could afford it actually returned. No record of these departures was kept, but by February an unofficial estimate placed the total at six per cent of the immigration of the preceding season. The first-hand accounts they took back with them and the information culled from letters were seized upon by governments that had been alarmed by the magnitude of the 1854 emigration. Prussia distributed thousands of handbills publicizing the distress of its misguided subjects, and Saxony plastered the street corners with placards that reported the Know-Nothing riots in which Germans fell as victims.
In any case, the war situation in Europe would have discouraged emigration in 1855. Every ship not engaged in importing necessities from America was needed for carrying troops and provisions through the Mediterranean to the Crimean battle-fields. The transatlantic fares rose to unheard-of heights, far beyond the purses of those classes that had always supplied the largest contingent to the exodus. Moreover, recruiting parties in every Irish village
offered more adventures in the British army than even the American West promised. Although the German states were still clear of war entanglements, nervousness about the future made them keep an unusually watchful eye upon every able-bodied man of military age. To slip away was no longer possible. Norway and Sweden experienced the prosperity that always falls to neutrals; and with Russian wheat off the market, the English farmers and their tenants
enjoyed good prices. Every economic motive for departing had been suspended. Though peace returned in the spring of 1856, the armies had to be brought back home, and the high prices continued throughout the summer. Emigration to America remained at the level of 1855.
But with the opening of the season of 1857 the emigrant ships were back on the usual routes; agents were again at work. Innkeepers and land promoters were happy, and ports on both sides of the Atlantic resumed their usual bustle. Large groups departed in the spring, and over two hundred and fifty thousand landed in America before the year closed. The increase in numbers would have been far greater except for the fact that the summer brought discouraging news from the United States. The war in Europe had halted the business recession in America only to prepare the way for a greater collapse. The overexpansion and overfinancing of the years before 1854 inflicted the customary penalty of a commercial and agricultural depression. The year 1857 beheld a repetition of the scenes of 1819 and 1837: wage cuts, unemployment, hunger demonstrations. European governments did not need to warn their people against leaving, for every letter and every newspaper dispatch told of the disaster.
The great mid-century movement slowed to a halt. In 1858 the number of arrivals fell off a half and continued at that level the next year with a slight pick-up in 1860. Those who came consisted largely of separated families reuniting in a new home and of persons joining their former neighbors in the Western prairies. On both sides of the Atlantic the Great Migration had done its work. In Ireland and Germany prosperity had replaced rural poverty, and cheerfulness reigned where gloom and dread had once held sway. Two million new Americans, in the factory and on the farm, built their hopes into the future of their adopted country. Hardships were many and disappointments not few; but they confidently peered into the future, little dreaming of the The four years of bloody strife destroyed not only the old South but also, in a less obvious way, the varied immigrant America of the North. The Civil War
changed the ideals of the foreign group and substituted a new leadership. Immigrant homes were filled to overflowing with young people when the war began. Sons joined the regiments and went to the front, if not because of patriotism, then because it was good business: bounties and promises of land. When that happened, parents spent less time thinking about the far-off land of their fathers, more in thinking about the land of their children. Dreams
of the past gave way to the realities of the present. Immigrant newspapers subordinated news of the Old World to dispatches from the battle lines, while clergymen neglected ancient theological differences in order to minister religion to persons stricken with sorrow. Editors and clergymen who failed to conform lost prestige and following. When the war ended, foreign languages and foreign customs had not disappeared, but ideals had changed. All who lived in America, alien-born and native-born, were resolved to become one people.