1. Feeding her flock. 2. The Homestead.

telephone, electric lights, free mail delivery

3. Chums. 4. A Rural Home. all the conveniences of city life.

5. The seat of government. 6. The bustle and strife of busy city life. Which do you prefer? Why? Write about each.

CHAPTER VII

THE MAKING OF AMERICANS

NEXT to the ties of family relationship, those of common nationality and language are perhaps the strongest in bindThe bond of ing people together in groups. Americans in

nationality foreign cities usually drift together and take lodgings in the same locality. When foreigners come to this country, they tend to group themselves together according to their nationality or language. This kind of grouping may assume great importance in a country like ours, where many thousands of foreigners are pouring in upon us every year.

element in the United States

America has always been a land of opportunity, and millions of people have come here from foreign lands for the The foreign purpose of bettering their condition. Some have come, like the Pilgrims of Plymouth, for religious freedom. Others have come, like the founders of Massachusetts Bay Colony, for political freedom. Many more have come merely to better their material welfare. Thousands are coming every year because here work is plentiful, and the opportunity is great to earn, not merely a living, but land and a home with comforts that were impossible in their native lands. In the ten years from 1896 to 1905, 5,396,761 foreigners settled in the United States, and in each of the years 1905 and 1906 more than 1,000,000 arrived. Among them are representatives of every country of Europe and many from other lands.

The tendency of these incoming foreigners is to drift to sections of the country where there is already a large number of their countrymen. There are sections of Distributhe states of the Northwest where almost the tion of entire population is Swedish. In other states we frequently find large farming communities of Scotch or of

foreigners

NEW YORK HARBOR.

Germans. In some of the coal-mining regions the population is largely Slavic. Manufacturing towns often have

large populations of some one nationality, like the Belgian glass-workers in some parts of Indiana. In cities, where many foreigners settle, they usually arrange themselves by nationality in different sections of the city. Thus we find in New York a section occupied almost exclusively by Italians, another by Chinese, another by Greeks, another by Jews, and so on.

within the

to act as

units

These different nationalities not only tend to live in groups, but they also think and act in groups. It is very Foreign common to hear at election time of the "German groups vote" and the "Irish vote." There are also difnation tend ferences in ideas of thrift and industry, in forms of architecture, in home life, and in many other ways. One section of a city may be thrifty and law-abiding because of the habits of the nationality occupying it, while another section will be unsightly and disorderly. Some observers are much concerned at the present time because of the increasing immigration into the United States from the southern and eastern countries of Europe, where the social and political ideas of the people are very different from those of the United States.

States a

nation of

There might be great danger to the peace and unity of the United States through the immigration of so many The United foreigners, if they actually remained for any length of time as distinct national groups within foreigners our country. But this is not usually the case. Most of these immigrants begin a process of transformation from Germans, Irish, Poles, or whatever their nationality, into Americans, almost as soon as they have landed. We are a nation of foreigners. Many Americans do not have to go back very far until they find some ancestor just immigrating into this country from a foreign land. The hundreds of thousands who are coming to our

shores this year will, in the course of a few years, be proud of the name of American; and their children, born here, will not be distinguishable from the great mass of Americans.

This breaking down of the differences between the nationalities within our country is due to the growth of common interests among all who live here. All came here for greater freedom of religion, of political belief, of The growth labor. Our government allows to all equal op- interests portunities and equal rights. Only in the case of the Chin

of common

U. S. IMMIGRANT STATION, ELLIS ISLAND.

ese has the government prohibited the immigration of a nationality; and in this case it is because the Chinese remain foreigners, no matter how long they live here. They fail to become Americanized, fail to adopt as their own the interests and the customs of this country.

The Constitution of the United States says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the NaturaliUnited States and of the state wherein they zation reside" (Amendment XIV). In order to become legal citizens of the United States, therefore, persons born in foreign countries must go through the process of naturalization. They must have lived in the United States at