The Lutheran Pioneer St. Louis — 1926, Page 178

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178

THE LUTHERAN PIONEER.

All Noise was Hushed in Bethlehem.

All noise was hushed in Bethlehem,
The world in slumber lay,

When Christ, the Rod of Jesse’s stem,

The Woman’s Seed, the Father's Gem,
Was born and laid on hay.

But o’er green fields that holy night,
Our sorrows to allay,

Appeared an angel wondrous bright,

Who uttered words of rare delight
While darkness turned to day.

His message unto lowly men,
Important, glad, and new,

Was, that high heav’n is ours again.

Oh, let us trust the Gospel, then,
For it is sure and true!

Break forth, ye heav’ns, in song!
Thou earth,
Rejoice at Christmastide!
Let all unite that know His worth
To spread our blessed Savior’s birth
O’er land and ocean wide! 4H. OsTernus.

Reclaiming Christ’s Heritage.

XXII.

Foreign-Speaking Peoples in Our Country.

Ever since 1492, in ever-growing numbers, al-
most every nation of the world has been sending
its sons and daughters to our shores to increase our
population and make America rich. All the races
of the earth are represented: Caucasian, Mongolian,
Malay, African, and Indian. They have come from
Christian and non-Christian countries. Here are
representatives of Buddhism, Hinduism, Moham-
medanism, and Animism; Armenians from Syria,
Greek Catholics from Russia and Greece, and Ro-
man Catholics from various countries of Europe
and South America. And millions of Protestants
have come to us from the northern countries of
Europe.

In former years the majority of immigrants
were from North-European countries, — English,
Scandinavian, and German,—of the same race
as were the founders of our country and for this
reason easily assimilated and more easily taken
care of by the churches already existing. ‘The
question of language caused little or no difficulty,
and customs and habits presented no problems
worth mentioning.

But recently the stream of immigrants has been
_ composed, in ever-increasing volume, of the peoples
native to Eastern and Southern Europe — Italians,
Greeks, Hungarians, Bohemians, Russians, Poles,
Roumanians, and Finns. It would be a great

mistake were we to regard these all as ignorant,
Vicious, and immoral people; and yet it remains
true that upon the whole these nationalities have
not had the educational and social advantages that
the people from Northwestern Europe have had and
that the difference in language increases the diffi-
culty of approach and proves one more barrier to
assimilation.

Scarcely one-fifth of those who come to our
shores to-day come from the Protestant and fully
modernized countries of Europe, where customs are
nearest like ours in this country. ‘Two-thirds of
the later immigrants that have set foot on our
shores in the past two decades have come from
lands bordering on the Mediterranean Sea or on
Asia. These later immigrants come from lands of
almost innumerable local variation, of many dia-
lects, of extreme clannishness; from countries in
which Socialism and Bolshevism prevails. ‘Then,
too, most of these later immigrants, though in most
cases nominally Greek or Roman Catholic, are in
reality estranged from their Church. An increas-
ing infidelity is noticeable in the immigrants that
have entered our borders during the last twenty
years. The grossest kind of materialism, irrelig-
ious Socialism, and atheistic Bolshevism has deeply
struck root in the hearts of thousands of these
later arrivals upon our hospitable shores.

Another problem that confronts us in con-
nection with the later immigrants is that, unlike
the older immigrants, they congregate almost ex-
clusively in the cities and great industrial centers.
These “New Americans” have largely helped to
make our larger cities the hotbeds of crime and
the plague-spots of our country. They have crowded
into the cities and have there created their “Little
Italy,” their “Ghetto,” their “Bohemian Hills,”
and the like. In New York, where the problem
stands out especially large, the increase in popu-
lation of Russians, Italians, and Hungarians,
during the period of practically unrestricted im-
migration, was greater in each case than the native
population. Such an unbalanced growth has its
sad influence on the church- and political life of our
metropolis. Huddled together in foreign quarters,
out of touch with the larger life of America, they
become an easy prey to unscrupulous agitators and
a menace to the well-being of our country.

The Misunderstood Immigrant.

There are, however, certain things charged
against the immigrant, and particularly against the
later immigrant, that in justice to the accused