Our Foreigners

Our Foreigners, by Samuel P.
Orth

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Title: Our Foreigners A Chronicle of Americans in the Making
Author: Samuel P. Orth
Release Date: January 28, 2005 [EBook #14825]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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TEXTBOOK EDITION
THE CHRONICLES OF AMERICA SERIES

ALLEN JOHNSON EDITOR
GERHARD R. LOMER CHARLES W. JEFFERYS ASSISTANT
EDITORS

OUR FOREIGNERS
A CHRONICLE OF AMERICANS IN THE MAKING
BY SAMUEL P. ORTH
[Illustration]
NEW HAVEN: YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS TORONTO:
GLASGOW, BROOK & CO. LONDON: HUMPHREY MILFORD
OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

1920, by Yale University Press
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS
Page
I. OPENING THE DOOR 1
II. THE AMERICAN STOCK 21
III. THE NEGRO 45
IV. UTOPIAS IN AMERICA 66
V. THE IRISH INVASION 103

VI. THE TEUTONIC TIDE 124
VII. THE CALL OF THE LAND 147
VIII. THE CITY BUILDERS 162
IX. THE ORIENTAL 188
X. RACIAL INFILTRATION 208
XI. THE GUARDED DOOR 221
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE 235
INDEX 241

OUR FOREIGNERS
CHAPTER I
OPENING THE DOOR
Long before men awoke to the vision of America, the Old World was
the scene of many stupendous migrations. One after another, the Goths,
the Huns, the Saracens, the Turks, and the Tatars, by the sheer tidal
force of their numbers threatened to engulf the ancient and medieval
civilization of Europe. But neither in the motives prompting them nor
in the effect they produced, nor yet in the magnitude of their numbers,
will such migrations bear comparison with the great exodus of
European peoples which in the course of three centuries has made the
United States of America. That movement of races--first across the sea
and then across the land to yet another sea, which set in with the
English occupation of Virginia in 1607 and which has continued from
that day to this an almost ceaseless stream of millions of human beings
seeking in the New World what was denied them in the Old--has no
parallel in history.

It was not until the seventeenth century that the door of the wilderness
of North America was opened by Englishmen; but, if we are interested
in the circumstances and ideas which turned Englishmen thither, we
must look back into the wonderful sixteenth century--and even into the
fifteenth, for; it was only five or six years after the great Christopher's
discovery, that the Cabots, John and Sebastian, raised the Cross of St.
George on the North American coast. Two generations later, when the
New World was pouring its treasure into the lap of Spain and when all
England was pulsating with the new and noble life of the Elizabethan
Age, the sea captains of the Great Queen challenged the Spanish
monarch, defeated his Great Armada, and unfurled the English flag,
symbol of a changing era, in every sea.
The political and economic thought of the sixteenth century was
conducive to imperial expansion. The feudal fragments of kingdoms
were being fused into a true nationalism. It was the day of the
mercantilists, when gold and silver were given a grotesquely
exaggerated place in the national economy and self-sufficiency was
deemed to be the goal of every great nation. Freed from the restraint of
rivals, the nation sought to produce its own raw material, control its
own trade, and carry its own goods in its own ships to its own markets.
This economic doctrine appealed with peculiar force to the people of
England. England was very far from being self-sustaining. She was
obliged to import salt, sugar, dried fruits, wines, silks, cotton, potash,
naval stores, and many other necessary commodities. Even of the fish
which formed a staple food on the English workman's table, two-thirds
of the supply was purchased from the Dutch. Moreover, wherever
English traders sought to take the products of English industry, mostly
woolen goods, they were met by handicaps--tariffs, Sound dues,
monopolies, exclusions, retaliations, and even persecutions.
So England was eager to expand under her own flag. With the fresh
courage and buoyancy of youth she fitted out ships and sent forth
expeditions. And while she shared with the rest of the Europeans the
vision of India and the Orient, her "gentlemen adventurers" were not
long in seeing the possibilities that lay concealed beyond the inviting
harbors, the navigable rivers, and the forest-covered valleys of North

America. With a willing heart they believed their quaint chronicler,
Richard