February 9, 2006
The View From 1911 Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 02:35 PM EST The 1911 edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, of which the ever-shrinking American Heritage library has tenaciously retained a set, is often, and justly, praised for the high quality of its scholarship. (A rather spartan but still useful online version, with no illustrations and frequent typos due to imperfect optical character recognition, can be found at www.1911encyclopedia.org.) The comprehensive entries are authoritative and well researched, and they often contain information that most other sources omit, making them invaluable for researchers. Equally praiseworthy is the writing style, which came near the end of an era when grandiloquence was considered a virtue. One of my favorite examples is a brief entry on backscratchers (the mere existence of such an item is part of the encyclopedia’s charm), which notes that they were often crafted in the shape of a human hand, and “the hand was indifferently dexter or sinister.” Still, the 1911 Britannica does reflect the prejudices of its age. In the entry on New York City, in the wake of statistics showing the city’s great increases in population, we are told: “This rapid growth, the large part which immigration plays in the growth, the marked falling-off in the character of the immigrants, and the fact that it is usually the weaker and less enterprising immigrant who stays in New York while the more capable go West—all these circumstances combine to make a serious social problem.” When those words were written, the turn-of-the-century flood of immigration from Eastern and Southern Europe was at its peak. One can imagine a writer with nativist inclinations walking down Orchard or Mulberry Street, recoiling in shock at the unfamiliar languages and outfits, and thinking, “It can’t be like this everywhere.” In fact, enterprise had nothing to do with it; newcomers went where they had a relative or friend from the old country. And overwhelming as the influx may have seemed, it wouldn’t be long before the immigrants of New York City, like those everywhere else, would show the world what they could accomplish when given a chance and an education.
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