... "1 York along the Hudson and Mohawk an almost pure Dutch cast. Their worst defect, as a people, was their grasping spirit in trade; to illustrate which it was said that not even a Jew could hope to get a living among them; and there is no doubt that travelers complained vehemently of their extortionate prices and love of money.' In 1752 a majority of the 100,000 population of the New York Province were Dutch and even at the time of the Revolution the Dutch were a majority of the 150,000 whites. And today, notwithstanding the millions of newcomers, the old Dutch families retain their aristocracy, wealth, and social supremacy in New York City. Van Buren was of Dutch stock, but his velvety, flexible adroitness hardly ran true to Dutch form. Roosevelt, of Dutch descent, represented more truly their characteristics - decent, heady, quick tempered, obstinate, bossy, fair, aggressive, not profound nor of the broadest culture but intelligent and pugnacious to a high degree. Stephenson says, "In 1900 Michigan had the largest Dutch-born [immigrant] population (30,406); Illinois ranked next (21,916); New Jersey, New York, Iowa, and Wisconsin, with numbers ranging from 10,000 to 6000, follow in order." 2 Preposterous claims are made that America derived from Holland free institutions, local government, public school, Declaration of Independence, essential elements of our Constitution, and recording of deeds. But it is to be borne in mind that though a modest individual the Dutchman has never hid his light under a bushel, from the time when Van Tromp in 1652 in his warship swept the English Channel with a broom at the masthead, down to the present day. English political institutions (the chief source of our Constitution) run far back of those of Holland. As to deeds they were recorded in England in the shire-book prior to the Norman conquest of 1066, after which date publicity gradually gave way to secrecy of transfer. In fact, deeds are said to have been recorded in Egypt before the Christian era. The declaration of independence in the United Netherlands was merely the substitution of the Duke of Anjou in ten provinces and William of Orange in the remaining two (Holland and Zeeland) in place of Philip II. Again, the so-called constitution of the Netherlands was but a treaty and in fact was called the "Treaty or Union of Utrecht" of 1579. Questions of war, peace, and taxes could not be decided by the Union but required the unanimous vote of the provinces. That Union has been said to have had the first written constitution, but it lacked the first elements of a constitution. Motley says, and there is no higher authority, "They intended to form neither an independent state nor an independent federal system. . . . The simple act of union was not regarded as the constitution of a commonwealth...; it was to be merely a confederacy of sovereignties, not a representative republic. Its foundation was a compact, not a constitution." The free school system has already been discussed.* On the other hand, Professor Thorold Rogers of Oxford writes: "There is no nation in Europe which owes more to Holland than Great Britain does. The English, I regret to say, were for a long time, in the industrial history of modern civilization, the stupidest and most backward nation in Europe. There was, to be sure, a great age in England during the reign of Elizabeth, and that of the first Stuart King. But it was brief indeed. In every other department, of art, of agriculture, of trade, we learnt our lesson from the Hollanders." 2 Taine wrote that in 1609, “In culture and instruction, as well as in the arts of organization and government, the Dutch are two centuries ahead of the rest of Europe." 3 The Dutch are simple yet aristocratic and exclusive in their tastes. In their trade they are cosmopolitan. They are not scramblers for public office. They are not grafters in public or private life, but tenacious of their own. They are disputatious and loquacious and then calmly reflect on the merits. They have always been industrious and saving, a good check on the See pp. 32, 33, supra. extravagance and flippancy of New York. Draper, an intellectual writer who was intimately associated with the New York Dutch, said: "In New York they stood, and, indeed, still stand in the attitude of a local aristocracy, in the noblest acceptation of that term; for these families of Dutch descent, and still retaining their Dutch names, have formed a nucleus round which whatever is socially respectable has spontaneously gathered. They have ever been upholders of religion, order, learning, devoting themselves to affairs of patriotism, charitable undertakings, and the patronage of good works." 1 America could ill spare this Dutch strain of blood. The doors of immigration should be opened wide for them. Fiske says, "In the cosmopolitanism which showed itself so early in New Amsterdam and has ever since been fully maintained, there was added to American national life the variety, the flexibility, the generous breadth of view, the spirit of compromise and conciliation needful to save the nation from rigid provincialism. Among the circumstances which prepared the way for a rich and varied American nation, the preliminary settlement of the geographical center by Dutchmen was certainly one of the most fortunate." 2 The Dutch are a good people. They do not and with brilliant exceptions never have produced great statesmen, but they are steady and can be relied on to a man to support good government and American institutions. Hail to the Dutch! CHAPTER X THE FRENCH JUST as the Irish in America have been clearly divisible into two distinct classes, namely, Protestant Scotch-Irish and Catholic Irish (each coming at different times as though a separate nationality), so the Catholic French came to America separately from the Protestant French. The latter were the Huguenots. The Catholic French overran and owned Canada and by a chain of posts and forts controlled the Great Lakes, the Mississippi River, and at times Louisiana. At first in 1603 the French Government allowed the Huguenots to colonize Canada, but in 1633 no Protestant, French or otherwise, was allowed to reside there permanently. When England conquered all of this French territory except Louisiana in the war of 1763, the French Catholics in Eastern Canada were undisturbed. They remain there to this day. They have overflowed in large numbers in recent years into New England. Whelpley writes, "It is estimated that nearly 2,000,000 French Canadians have gone to the country to the south to make their homes, and the Canadian Government has discussed ways and means of keeping this element of the population from wandering away. These French Canadians are mostly lumbermen and farm labourers, and there has been a shortage of such labour in the United States, whereas in Eastern Canada opportunity has naturally been more limited." President Falconer of the Toronto University writes: "There are now said to be, on good authority, not less than 1,750,000 people of French-Canadian origin in the United States, and according to the United States census 307,800 of them Canadian born. Nearly 75 per cent. are to be found in New England 1 settled in solid blocks in the industrial towns such as Fall River, Lawrence, Lowell, New Bedford, Haverhill, Worcester, where they are employed especially in cotton and shoe factories. True to type, they have large families and they now constitute oneseventh of the population of New England; they have acquired great influence in some localities as they are naturally hardworking, thrifty, peaceful, and opposed to labour strikes. Though they are law-abiding citizens and all but a small percentage have become naturalized, the French-Canadians have been so far like an unassimilable deposit upon the soil of New England. They are the most conservative of all newcomers. Race, language, the mystical bonds of religion and tradition attach them to one another and to their kinsfolk on the banks of the St. Lawrence, where lies their homeland spiritualized by the song, legend, and labours of their fathers, consecrated by their piety and tradition. Even in New England the French-Canadian desires to keep not only his church, but his school and if possible his language. Will he be able to wrest these concessions from the politicians?" Along the Great Lakes and the Mississippi the French of Revolutionary times have been absorbed and their separate identity has practically disappeared. There were six or seven thousand of them scattered throughout the Mississippi Valley. In New Orleans they are still the aristocrats, the Creoles being French-speaking white natives of French or Spanish origin. They do not, however, cut much figure in American life. As to Louisiana, acquired by the United States in 1803, Basil Thompson says: "The Nova Scotia Acadian or 'Cajan' is worth a word. In the Teche country — southern Louisiana-he preponderates, speaking a peculiar dialect or patois quite at variance with that of the Creole. In the towns of St. Martinsville and New Iberia this emasculated lingo is almost the common tongue, certainly la langue de famille. It is estimated that some fifteen hundred Cajans of those expelled from Nova Scotia settled in Louisiana. They now number one |