Against all this there stand the convictions of certain rather broader circles of people who point with pride at that great American grist-mill, the public school, which is supposed to take the foreign youth into its hopper, grind him up quickly and surely, and turn him out into good American material. It is, in fact, astonishing to look at the classes in the New York schools down on the East Side, where there is not a child of American parentage, and yet not one who will admit that he is Italian, Russian, or Armenian. All these small people declare themselves passionately to be “American,” with American patriotism and American pride; and day by day shows that in its whole system of public institutions the nation possesses a similar school for the foreign-born adult. Grey-haired men and adolescent youths, who in their native countries would never have emerged from their dull and cringing existence, hardly touch the pavement of Broadway before they find themselves readers of the newspaper, frequenters of the political meetings, and in a small way independent business men; and they may, a few years later, be conducting enterprises on a large scale. They wake up suddenly, and although in this transformation every race lends its own colour to the spirit of self-determination, nevertheless the universal trait, the typical American trait, can appear in every race of man, if only the conditions are favourable.
In the same direction it is urged once more that America needs the labour of these people. If Southern and Eastern Europe had not given us their cheaper grades of workmen, we should not have been able to build our roads or our railroads, nor many other things which we have needed. In former decades this humble rôle fell to the Germans, the Scandinavians, and the Irish, and the opposition against their admission was as lively as it now is against the immigrants from the south and east of Europe; while the development of the country has shown that they have been an economic blessing; and the same thing, it is said, will be true of the Russians and Poles. There are still huge territories at our disposal which are virtually unpopulated, untold millions can still employ their strength to the profit of the whole nation, and it would be madness to keep out the willing and peaceable workers. Moreover, has it not been the proud boast of America that her holy mission was to be a land of freedom for every oppressed individual, an asylum for every one who was persecuted? In the times then of her most brilliant prosperity is she to be untrue to her noble role of protectress, and leave no hope to those who have been deprived of their human rights by Russian or Turkish despots, by Italian or Hungarian extortionists, to disappoint their belief that at least in the New World even the most humble man has his rights and will be received at his true value? Thus the opinions differ, and public opinion at large has come as yet to no decision.