"The American of the Future": Fictional Immigrant Children and National Ethnic Identity in the Progressive Era

Abstract

"THE AMERICAN OF THE FUTURE": FICTIONAL IMMIGRANT CHILDREN AND NATIONAL ETHNIC IDENTITY IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA Tim Prchal Oklahoma State University As the nineteenth century became the twentieth, the United States experienced an unprecedented surge in immigration. Some 3.8 million Italians, 3.4 million Slavs, and 1.8 million Russian and Eastern European Jews—along with still more from other ethnic groups—entered the country between 1899 and 1924.1 These numbers worried many native-born Americans, but the ethnic makeup ofthese newcomers was an even greater source ofanxiety. Unlikethe so-called "old immigrants," who had come from the northern and western regions ofEurope (and continuedto do so in declining percentages), the majority ofthese "new immigrants" were arriving from southern and eastern Europe. Descendants ofthe earlier immigrant groups often perceivedthe Italians, Slavs, Jews, and others entering the country as belonging to races that were different from and inferior to their own. Fervent debates over how the nation might deal with the perceived threat of cultural deterioration split Americans into four camps: one advocating immigration restriction ; one pressing for all immigrants to put aside their ethnic distinctiveness and assimilate into the dominant culture; one seeing the best traits ofthe world's peoples merging to create an ever-evolving, cosmopolitan American race in the national melting pot; and one introducing the radical notion ofwhat came to be called "cultural pluralism," avision ofa heterogeneous countrywhere ethnic difference is respected rather than erased. Each of these four camps was concerned with the nation's future as well as its present, and so immigrant children took on a special significance . This is especially evident in an essay titled "Whose Country Is This?" published in Good Housekeeping in 1921. Here, Calvin Coolidge, who was Vice President at the time, advocates carefully adding restrictions to immigration policies. After explaining the threats that immigration poses to national labor and market practices, he concludes by saying, "We must rememberthat we have not onlythe present but the future to safeguard; our obligations extend even to generations 1 90Timothy Prchal yet unborn. The unassimilated alien child menaces our children, as the alien industrial worker . . . menaces our industry."2 A much warmer welcome came from Jane Addams, who founded Hull House in Chicago to help newcomers adjust to their new environment. Adjustment, though, for Addams, involved assimilation into the dominant culture.3 Seeing interaction between immigrant and native-born populations as an efficient route to such assimilation, she depicted children as among the best mediators. In 1905, Addams asked about the urban isolation of ethnic groups, "What agency exists to acquaint them with each other, to span the gulfof language, religion and all that keeps them apart? It is the little children who play in the streets. They are doing the work which cultivated people ought to be undertaking consciously and doing better."4 Many restrictionists and assimilationists agreed that the nation's greatness was verymuch the product ofits old-immigrantheritage and that the inherited culture was well worth preserving. However , the assimilationists felt that new immigrants could conform to the culture developed by this stock while the restrictionists felt that barriers such as the new immigrants' innate inferiority, their vast numbers, or their ethnic pride were too overwhelming for assimilation to occur. These campaigns to preserve the dominant culture were challenged by those in the melting pot and cultural pluralism camps, who saw the new immigration as an opportunity to enhance the nation. Again, immigrant children play a role in the discourse of these camps. Representing the melting pot perspective is an essay titled "The American of the Future," first published in a 1907 issue of The Century. Here, ColumbiaUniversityprofessor and social commentatorBrander Matthews allays concerns about U.S. census records revealing a glut of unassimilated immigrants by saying, "The boys and girls ofLittle Italy speak English as fluently as they speak Italian, and while they salute the flag in school, in the street they amuse themselves . . . with the traditional games ofAnglo-Saxon youth." The children ofimmigrants, he continues, are attaining college degrees and forgetting theirparents' native languages. Rather than endorsing assimilation, however, Matthews is assuring readers that cultural change is alive in immigrant communities—just as it is in...