MIGRATIONS AND THEIR SIGNIFICANCE 205 



2. Early Immigration to America 

 For us in America the phenomena of migration should 

 have a special interest. Excepting for the few scores of 

 thousands of Indians, there was a continent devoid of a 

 population — a clean slate upon which history was to be 

 written and where the effect of "blood" in determining that 

 history might be traced. Fortunately, almost from the be- 

 ginning, records were made and many have been preserved, 

 despite fire, energetic housecleaners and rats, so that many 

 materials for such a study are still available. It would be a 

 grand contribution to scientific, biological history to show 

 how traits of the individual immigrants, no less than condi- 

 tions, poHtical and other, determined the deeds of commu- 

 nities. For a community is the sum of its constituent in- 

 dividuals, and what each individual does depends on his 

 innate sensitiveness and the vigor and kind of his reactions 

 to the stimuli of conditions. With a given set of conditions 

 the idiosyncrasies of response of the constituent individuals 

 determine the details of history; and these idiosyncrasies 

 depend quite as much on inheritable traits as on training 

 and experience; for just what effect training and experience! 

 shall have on the individual depend upon the nature of his 

 protoplasm. Into this grand but unworked historical field 

 we cannot hope to enter here, but a hasty survey of the sub- 

 ject will be attempted. 



It would be very difficult now to construct the wave of im- 

 migration to the territory of the present United States from 

 1607 to 1776. The census of 1790 gave a population of nearly 

 4,000,000; and making every allowance for the high net 

 fecundity of the early immigrants, it is clear that at least 

 a hundred thousand persons must have come in ships from 

 Europe to North America during those 170 years. A con- 

 crete idea of the numbers may be gained by the statement 

 (Fiske, 1905, pp. 77, 155, 197) that starting about 1615 Vir- 



