Large numbers
of them engage in the garment industries and the manufacture of
tobacco. They graduate also into junk-dealers, pawnbrokers, and
peddlers, and are soon on their way "up town." Among them socialism
thrives, and the second generation displays an unseemly haste to break
with the faith of its fathers.
The Jews are the intellectuals of the new immigration. They invest
their political ideas with vague generalizations of human
amelioration. They cannot forget that Karl Marx was a Jew: and one
wonders how many Trotzkys and Lenines are being bred in the stagnant
air of their reeking ghettos. It remains to be seen whether they will
be willing to devote their undoubted mental capacities to other than
revolutionary vagaries or to gainful pursuits, for they have a
tendency to commercialize everything they touch. They have shown no
reluctance to enter politics; they learn English with amazing
rapidity, throng the public schools and colleges, and push with
characteristic zeal and persistence into every open door of this
liberal land.
From Italy there have come to America well over three million
immigrants. For two decades before 1870 they filtered in at the
average rate of about one thousand a year; then the current increased
to several thousand a year; and after 1880 it rose to a flood.
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