Every mining and manufacturing community is thus an ethnic pool,
whence little streams of foreigners trickle over the land. These
isolated miners and tillers of the soil are more immune to American
ideals than are their city dwelling brethren. They are not jostled and
shaken by other races; no mental contagion of democracy reaches them.
But within the towns and cities another process of replacement is
going on. Its index is written large in the signs over shops and
stores and clearly in the lists of professional men in the city
directories and in the pay roll of the public school teachers. The
unpronounceable Slavic combinations of consonants and polysyllabic
Jewish patronymics are plentiful, while here and there an Italian name
makes its appearance. The second generation is arriving. The sons and
daughters are leaving the factory and the construction gang for the
counter, the office, and the schoolroom.
American ideals and institutions have borne and can bear a great deal
of foreign infiltration. But can they withstand saturation?
CHAPTER XI
THE GUARDED DOOR
"Whosoever will may come" was the generous welcome which America
extended to all the world for over a century. Many alarms, indeed,
there were and several well-defined movements to save America from the
foreigner.
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