‎Steiner Edward Alfred ‎
‎On the trail of the immigrant‎

‎On the Trail of the Immigrant.‎

‎ New York, Fleming H. Revell Company, 1906, in-8°, 375 pp, 16 pl. de photos hors texte, index, reliure toile verte éditeur, titres dorés au 1er plat et au dos, coiffes arasées, bon état. Texte en anglais‎

‎"Around 1907, just as 1.5 million newcomers arrived, the greatest one-year total ever, Edward Steiner, a Jewish immigrant from western Russia, began to publish a series of books: On the Trail of the Immigrant (1906), The Immigrant Tide (1909), The Broken Wall (1911), From Alien to Citizen (1914), and Nationalizing America (1916), all evocative of this young immigrant’s tramping through eastern and southern Europe, wandering into the great cities of the northeast, following immigrants into Pittsburgh’s great steel mills, watching the building of churches and synagogues, observing the birth of new nationalisms among immigrant peoples, seeing immigrants’ powerful push into politics; and envisioning the amalgamation of diverse people..." (Josef Barton, Becoming American: Immigration and Assimilation in Late 19th Century America) — "This volume is easily one of the most interesting, accurate and important discussions of the immigrant yet produced in this country. The author is unusually well qualified. Born in southeastern Europe, educated in the German universities, with ancestors of Jewish faith, he is himself a Christian minister and professor in Iowa College. Coming to this country as an immigrant, he has repeatedly crossed and recrossed the ocean to see and observe other immigrants. He is a man who has found in this country not the "land of the mighty dollars but the land of great ideals." He is the master of many languages, with wide observation of the peoples in Europe and of the immigrant in America, and possessed withal of no mean literary ability. Who could be better prepared to interpret to the rest of us the essential facts in the lives and characters of our immigrants ? The author begins by discussing the home conditions in southeastern Europe, and in later chapters telling of the Slavs, the Jews, the Bohemians, the Italians and the Greeks, describing their journey to this country and the opportunities the various groups have found here. The volume contains many excellent illustrations which lend force to the arguments of the writer. Throughout all the study the difficulties, the dangers of immigration, the poverty and the crime of the immigrant are frankly recognized and freely stated. Through all runs a powerful undercurrent of optimism – an optimism based on knowledge. Professor Steiner finds a greater menace to the ideals of America in the attitude of the froth of American society than in the physical and moral weaknesses of the immigrants. To our immigration department, particularly to Mr. Robert Watchorn, himself, be it remembered, an immigrant, many compliments are paid. Professor Steiner has given us a very sympathetic and intelligent interpretation of the immigrant, and to all students of the problems of immigration his production will be invaluable." (The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 29, Jan. 1907) ‎