Here, too, temperament
and bias play their part. One person learns that of every five persons
you meet in New York four are of foreign birth or parentage, notes the
change in personality, customs, and manners, and wonders how long our
free institutions can stand this test of unrestricted immigration.
Another answers that the foreigners are not so bad as they are often
painted, and that the immorality in the most foreign parts of New York
is less than in other parts.
[Sidenote: Different Opinions]
A third says it is not fair to count the children of foreign-born
parents as foreign; that they are in fact much stronger Americans in
general than the native children of native parentage; and instances the
flag-drills in the schools, in which the foreign children take the
keenest delight, as they do in the study of American history. But a
fourth says, with Professor Boyesen, that it takes generations of
intelligent, self-restrained, and self-respecting persons to make a man
fit to govern himself, and that if the ordinary tests of intelligence
and morality amount to anything, it certainly would take three or four
generations to educate these newcomers up to the level of American
citizenship.
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