No. 138.
Mr. Bancroft to Mr. Fish.
Berlin, May 14, 1872. (Received June 6.)
Sir: The exceedingly large emigration this spring to the United States is exciting much comment, and among the agriculturists not a little dissatisfaction. The German papers have been for some weeks filled with letters and articles complaining of it as an evil, and suggesting all sorts of remedies. The discussion has now reached Parliament.
Here are a few extracts:
The Pommeranian Agricultural Society at its recent general meeting passed resolutions—
1. To request the chancellor of the empire to enjoin upon consuls in America to ascertain how many able-bodied laborers there are in the ports of America who would be disposed, upon condition of a free passage, to return to Europe.
2. To recommend a greater stringency in the police laws regulating emigration.
A late number of the Official Gazette at Coslin contains a summons to two hundred and forty young men liable to military duty out of one district alone, (that of Stolp,) to appear for enlistment. Besides these, “Landwehr “men in great numbers are cited, but always in vain.
The district of Lauenburg, with a population of 41,000, has sent to America this spring already 1,500 souls. Nor is this all, for every fortnight there are now going some 300 to 400 more.—Speech in the Diet of Herr Von Denzin.
Some of the journalists and of their correspondents affect to regard this excessive emigration as the result only of the enticements of interested agents, and profess much sympathy for the deluded victims, who are represented as longing only to get away again from the promised land, if they had but the means. But the more intelligent, or the more candid, see in it only the natural result of evident causes.
Upon a petition being recently presented to the Diet by emigrant agents at Bremen to regulate by legislation the business of emigrant-forwarding as a trade, the committee to whom the matter was referred reported in favor of such legislation. The same committee recommended to Parliament not to entertain the proposition of some landholders of Pommerania to abolish emigrant-agencies, and declared— “That the emigration fever which at present appears in a remarkable degree to prevail throughout Germany, has its source in far deeper reasons than the reductions of emigrant-agents. It is not agents so much as their fellow-countrymen who are already over there, and who, justly or not, laud their condition.”
To give an idea of the extent of the emigration which is exciting so much attention, I subjoin the figures furnished me from the three principal ports, Bremen, Hamburg, and Stettin, of the emigration in the first four months of this year. The numbers in this and the following months will be, from all appearances, as large.
The three steamship-lines which run from the above ports are exerting [Page 190] themselves to meet the great demands made upon them. Eight steamers in this month are advertised to sail from Hamburg alone to New York, from Bremen seven; so that, without reckoning those from Stettin, a steamer will leave Germany for New York every other day in the month.
In this connection I have to report to you that communities of the sect called Mennoniten, now settled in West Prussia, and numbering some 25,000 souls, are seriously contemplating emigration to America. Their principal motive is the avoidance of military service, which their creed forbids. They are reputed to be a thrifty, temperate, and industrious people, and I am assured that they are among the best agriculturists in Germany.
The elder of one of these communities recently wrote to me to ascertain what guarantee our Government could give to his brethren, in case of their emigration, of immunity from military service in the event of war. I acquainted him with the provisions of our enrollment law in the late war in favor of similar sects, as indicating a degree of immunity of which they might feel assured in case of war.
I beg you to instruct me to what extent you can authorize me to satisfy them of their exemption from military service in the United States.
I remain, &c,