EUROPEANS IN UNITED STATES—RIPLEY. 595 
Jewish merchant who has “made good,” being denied a wife among 
his own people, there being too few to go around, then woos and 
wins an Hibernian bride. Religion in this instance is no bar, both 
being Catholics. In a similar fashion, in New England, where Ger- 
mans are scarce and Irish abound, it is the German man who usually 
marries up into an Irish family. The same thing seems to be true 
even in New York, where the German colony is very large. When 
intermarriage between the two people occurs, six times out of seven 
it is the Irish woman who bears the children. In this connection the 
important role in ethnic intermixture by the Irish women deserves 
mention. One reason is surely her relative abundance. Thus, in our 
Boston foreign colony, with every other nationality largely repre- 
sented by men, there is a surplus of 1,500 Irish females. But a 
second reason also is the superior adaptability and comradeship of 
the Irish woman, together with her democratic ways and lack of 
spirit of caste. Irish, or Irish-American, womanhood bids fair to 
be a potent physical mediator between the other peoples of the earth. 
One may picture this process going further, especially in those parts 
of the country where the more ambitious native-born males have 
emigrated to the West or to the large cities. The incoming foreign- 
ers, steadily working upward in the economic and social scale, and 
the stranded, downward trending American families, perhaps them- 
selves of Irish or Scotch-Irish descent, may in time meet on an 
even plane. 
The subtle effects of change of environment—religious, linguistic, 
political, and social—is another powerful influence in breaking down 
ethnic barriers. The spirit of the new surroundings, in fact, is so 
different as to prove too powerfully disintegrating an influence. In 
the moral and religious fields this is plainly noticeable and often 
pathetic in its results. The religious bonds are often entirely 
snapped. This is discernible among the Jews everywhere. As one 
observer put it to me, “ Religion is supplanted by socialism and the 
yellow journal.” Large numbers, notably of the young men, break 
loose entirely and become agnostics or freethinkers. The Bohemians 
are notorious in this regard. This is accompanied by a breakdown 
of patriarchal authority in the family, and with it, in the close con- 
tacts of city life, the barriers of religion against intermarriage 
visibly weaken. Differences of language are also less powerful 
dividing influences than one would think, especially in the great 
cities. One not infrequently hears of bride and groom not being on 
speaking terms with one another. And one of my friends tells me 
of a pathetic instance of a Czech-German marriage in which the 
man painfully acquired some knowledge of German, but in later life 
forgot it almost entirely, so that in the end the two old people were 
_ driven to the use of signs for daily intercourse. 
