On the Trail of the Immigrant

New York: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1906. First Edition (presumed; no prior editions or printings cited). 375 pages: illustrations, plates; 22 cm. About near fine with minor wear and blemishes to exterior and prelims. Tight and clean overall. . Hardcover.

Survey of the “new immigration” by a man who had made the passage himself. Steiner (1866–1956), born in the Hungarian half of the Austro-Hungarian Empire six weeks after his father’s death in the Austro-Prussian War, emigrated as a young man, became a Congregational minister and spent thirty-eight years as Rand Professor of Applied Christianity at Grinnell, where he wrote more than twenty books. He crossed in steerage again and again for his research, followed emigrants back to their home villages and forward to their American destinations, and wrote as one of them. Framed as an extended answer to a first-cabin passenger who, on a crossing from Hamburg, asked how he came to know the steerage people so well and challenged him to write it down. The chapters follow the stream from embarkation and the fellowship of the steerage through the ordeal at Ellis Island, then turn group by group to Germans, Scandinavians, Jews in their Old World homes and in New York’s ghettos, Slavs at home and in America, Bohemians, Hungarians, Italians and Montenegrins. Written to explain the new arrivals to a skeptical and nervous public, it contests the alarm of the period with firsthand sympathy. Parts appeared first in The Outlook. Illustrated with photographs, among them Underwood & Underwood stereographs of immigrants passing the gate with tickets pinned to their clothes. Followed by his autobiography and further immigration studies, among them From Alien to Citizen and The Immigrant Tide.Contents: The beginning of the trail -- The fellowship of the steerage -- Land, ho! -- At the gateway -- "The man at the gate" -- The German in America -- The Scandinavian immigrant -- The Jew in his old world home -- The new exodus -- In the ghettos of New York -- The Slavs at home -- The Slavic invasion -- Drifting with the "hunkies" -- The Bohemian immigrant -- Little Hungary -- The Italian at home -- The Italian in America -- Where Greek meets Greek -- The new American and the new problem -- The new American and old problems -- Religion and politics -- Birds of passage -- In the second cabin -- Au revoir.;Brain drain. Emigration and Immigration Immigrants clandestins -- États-Unis. Exode des cerveaux. Noncitizens Emigration and immigration Social conditions Einwanderer Immigrants -- United States Noncitizens. Einwanderer. Time: 1865-1918 Geographic: United States -- Emigration and immigration. United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918. États-Unis -- Conditions sociales -- 1865-1918. États-Unis -- Émigration et immigration. United States USA United States -- Emigration and immigration United States -- Social conditions -- 1865-1918 USA.