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6
Racial Contributions to the United States

to deprive the Jews[1] of the right to educational equality. In short, while there have been spasmodic manifestations of movements based on intolerance in many countries, the United States has the unenviable record for continuous effort to keep alive a bogey based on an increasing fear of something which never existed, and cannot ever exist in this country.

For a hundred years the potent cause which has poured millions of human beings into the United States has been its marvellous opportunities, and unprecedented economic urge. Ever since 1830 a graphic chart of the variations in immigration from year to year will reflect the industrial situation in the United States for the same period. In 1837, the total immigration was 79,430[2] After the panic of that year it decreased in 1838 to 38,914.[3] In 1842, it increased to 104,565[4] but a business depression in 1844 caused it to shrink to 78,615.[5] Thus the influx of aliens increased or decreased according to the industrial conditions prevalent here. The business prosperity of the United States was not only the urge to entice immigrants hither, but it made their coming possible as they were helped by the savings of relatives and friends already here.

The English were not immigrants, but colonists, merely going from one part of national territory to another. With few exceptions, the majority of the early colonists came from England. The first English settlement was made in Virginia under the London Company

  1. “Americans only” in a real estate advertisement to-day usually means “No Jews need apply.” It sometimes means Irish (i. e., Catholic) also.
  2. Wm. J. Bromwell, History of Immigration to United States, p. 96.
  3. Ibid., p. 100.
  4. Ibid., p. 116.
  5. Ibid., p. 124.