Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making — Reading Notes

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In Category - Social Conditions

Authors: Orth, Samuel Peter, 1873-1922 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2005 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Immigrants -- United States; United States -- Emigration and immigration Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 52,306

Reading time 228 min

Text sections 8

Our Foreigners: A Chronicle of Americans in the Making — Reading Notes can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 52,306 words, 3 hr 48 min estimated reading time, and 8 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 21.5 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Immigrants -- United States,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #14825

Samuel P. Orth's 1920 chronicle examines U.S. immigration from colonial times to the early 20th century, tracing how successive groups—English, Irish, Germans, and others—were shaped by and reshaped American society, with a focus on the tension between assimilation and ethnic identity.

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg14825

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She was obliged to import salt, sugar, dried fruits, wines, silks, cotton, potash, naval stores, and many other necessary commodities. Even of the fish which formed a staple food on the English workman's table, two-thirds of the supply was purchased from the Dutch. Moreover, wherever English traders sought to take the products of English industry, mostly woolen goods, they were met by handicaps--tariffs, Sound dues, monopolies, exclusions, retaliations, and even persecutions.

So England was eager to expand under her own flag. With the fresh courage and buoyancy of youth she fitted out ships and sent forth expeditions. And while she shared with the rest of the Europeans the vision of India and the Orient, her "gentlemen adventurers" were not long in seeing the possibilities that lay concealed beyond the inviting harbors, the navigable rivers, and the forest-covered valleys of North America. With a willing heart they believed their quaint chronicler, Richard Hakluyt, when he declared that America could bring "_as great a profit to the Realme of England as the Indes to the King of Spain_," that "_golde, silver, copper, leade and perales in aboundaunce_" had been found there: also "_precious stones, as turquoises and emauraldes; spices and drugges; silke worms fairer than ours in Europe; white and red cotton; infinite multitude of all kind of fowles; excellent vines in many places for wines; the soyle apte to beare olyves for oyle; all kinds of fruites; all kindes of odoriferous trees and date trees, cypresses, and cedars; and in New-founde-lande aboundaunce of pines and firr trees to make mastes and deale boards, pitch, tar, rosen; hempe for cables and cordage; and upp within the Graunde Baye excedinge quantitie of all kinde of precious furres_." Such a catalogue of resources led him to conclude that "_all the commodities of our olde decayed and daungerous trades in all Europe, Africa and Asia haunted by us, may in short space and for little or nothinge, in a manner be had in that part of America which lieth between 30 and 60 degrees of northerly latitude_."

Even after repeated expeditions had discounted the exuberant optimism of this description, the Englishmen's faith did not wane. While for many years there lurked in the mind of the Londoner, the hope that some of the products of the Levant might be raised in the fertile valleys of Virginia, the practical English temperament none the less began promptly to appease itself with the products of the vast forests, the masts, the tar and pitch, the furs; with the fish from the coast waters, the abundant cod, herring, and mackerel; nor was it many years before tobacco, indigo, sugar, cotton, maize, and other commodities brought to the merchants of England a great American commerce.

The first attempts to found colonies in the country by Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh were pitiable failures. But the settlement on the James in 1607 marked the beginning of a nation. What sort of nation? What race of people? Sir Walter Raleigh, with true English tenacity, had said after learning of the collapse of his own colony, "I shall yet live to see it an English nation." The new nation certainly was English in its foundation, whatever may be said of its superstructure. Virginia, New England, Maryland, the Carolinas, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Georgia were begun by Englishmen; and New England, Virginia, and Maryland remained almost entirely English throughout the seventeenth century and well into the eighteenth. These colonies reproduced, in so far as their strange and wild surroundings permitted, the towns, the estates, and the homes of Englishmen of that day. They were organized and governed by Englishmen under English customs and laws; and the Englishman's constitutional liberties were their boast until the colonists wrote these rights and privileges into a constitution of their own. "Foreigners" began early to straggle into the colonies. But not until the eighteenth century was well under way did they come in appreciable numbers, and even then the great bulk of these non-English newcomers were from the British Isles--of Welsh, Scotch, Irish, and Scotch-Irish extraction.

These colonies took root at a time when profound social and religious changes were occurring in England. Churchmen and dissenters were at war with each other; autocracy was struggling to survive the representative system; and agrarianism was contending with a newly created capitalism for economic supremacy. The old order was changing. In vain were attempts made to stay progress by labor laws and poor laws and corn laws. The laws rather served to fill the highways with vagrants, vagabonds, mendicants, beggars, and worse. There was a general belief that the country was overpopulated. For the restive, the discontented, the ambitious, as well as for the undesirable surplus, the new colonies across the Atlantic provided a welcome outlet.

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Orth opens not with a single ethnic group but with a sweeping comparison: the European migration to America, he argues, has 'no parallel in history' when set against earlier migrations like those of the Goths or Huns. This framing immediately establishes his central theme—that American immigration is a unique, continuous process of 'Americans in the making.' The catalog subjects list 'Immigrants' and 'Emigration and immigration' as broad topics, but Orth’s treatment is more specific: he devotes entire chapters to the Irish, Germans, Negroes, and Orientals, and he frequently judges the 'spirit' of each wave. For instance, he contrasts the 'thoroughly American' tone of German-American periodicals in 1883 with the 'contemptuous hauteur' of later Prussian-influenced arrivals. His evidence is often anecdotal or drawn from contemporary observers, such as a Lutheran pastor’s remark that few post-1870 German immigrants left for political reasons.

The Mercantilist Lens and the 'Door' Metaphor

Orth’s first chapter, 'Opening the Door,' reveals a governing metaphor that shapes the entire narrative. He describes the 'door of the wilderness' opened by Englishmen in the seventeenth century, and later chapters track its gradual closing. This is not a neutral image: it implies that immigration is something to be controlled, a gate that can be opened or shut. Orth roots this in sixteenth-century mercantilist thought, where nations sought 'self-sufficiency' and gold. The catalog subject 'Emigration and immigration' might suggest a balanced survey, but Orth’s language is often evaluative. He writes of the 'sheer tidal force' of earlier migrations and later of 'racial infiltration' (chapter title). The door metaphor allows him to frame immigration policy as a matter of national interest rather than individual opportunity—a perspective that aligns with the book’s publication in 1920, just after World War I and the restrictive Immigration Act of 1917.

German Immigration: From 'Forty-Eighters' to Factory Workers

Orth’s treatment of German immigration is the most detailed in the excerpts, and it shows his method of distinguishing between 'good' and 'bad' immigrants. He praises the 'Forty-eighters'—political refugees of 1848—as leaders who 'considered it an honor to become American citizens.' Carl Schurz is cited as an example, and Orth notes that these Germans established newspapers, schools, and colleges while maintaining 'German customs.' Yet he also records a telling quote: 'Only when his beer is in danger does the German-American rouse himself.' After 1870, Orth claims, the character of German immigration changed: fewer peasants and intellectuals, more industrial workers. He cites a Lutheran pastor to argue that 'not one in a thousand' emigrated for political reasons after 1870. The later arrivals are described as arrogant, criticizing their new home, and displaying 'provincial egotism.' This shift allows Orth to argue that the 'spirit' of immigration matters more than numbers—a claim that relies on his own periodization and selective evidence.

Assimilation as a One-Way Process

Throughout the excerpts, Orth assumes that assimilation means adopting American language, law, and political institutions. He writes that German 'national idiosyncrasies have been modified and subdued by the gentle but relentless persistence of the English language and the robust vigor of American law.' The phrase 'gentle but relentless' suggests a natural, inevitable process, but Orth also notes conflicts—over the 'Continental Sabbath' and beer-drinking. He quotes Frederick Kapp, who said that those who 'cared to remain German should remain in Germany.' This binary—become American or stay home—leaves little room for hyphenated identities. The catalog subject 'Immigrants' might imply a focus on the immigrants themselves, but Orth’s narrative is more about the nation’s response to them. His chapter titles—'The Irish Invasion,' 'The Teutonic Tide,' 'The Oriental'—use collective nouns that reduce diverse groups to single, often threatening, forces. The book’s subtitle, 'A Chronicle of Americans in the Making,' suggests a process of creation, but Orth’s chronicle is as much about the makers as the made.

Orth’s book is best read as a primary source on early twentieth-century attitudes toward immigration, not as a neutral history. His metaphors, periodization, and selective use of contemporary testimony reveal a writer deeply engaged in the debates of his time. Readers interested in the construction of American identity will find rich material in his contrasts between 'desirable' and 'undesirable' immigrants, and in his assumption that English language and American law are the ultimate arbiters of belonging. The excerpts offer a window into how one chronicler framed the story of 'Americans in the making' at a moment when the door was closing.

There’s a quiet ache in Orth’s book, watching old loyalties soften into memory. It reminded me of those street children, their own fierce independence so fragile. I found myself holding both stories at once, the way you hold a photograph you’re not quite ready to put down. Child Labor in City Streets — Context and Discussion lingered beside it, a different kind of making.