and their sturdy
independence in partisan politics was no small factor in bringing
about civil service reform. They established German newspapers by the
hundreds and maintained many German schools and German colleges. They
freely indulged their love for German customs. But while their
sentimentalism was German, their realism was American. They considered
it an honor to become American citizens. Their leaders became American
leaders. Carl Schurz was not an isolated example. He was associated
with a host of able, careful, constructive Germans.

The greatest quarrels of these German immigrants with American ways
were over the so-called "Continental Sabbath" and the right to drink
beer when and where they pleased. "Only when his beer is in danger,"
wrote one of the leading Forty-eighters, "does the German-American
rouse himself and become a berserker." The great numbers of these men
in many cities and in some of the Western States enabled them to have
German taught in the public schools, though it is only fair to say
that the underlying motive was liberalism rather than Prussian
provincialism. Frederick Kapp, a distinguished interpreter of the
spirit of these Forty-eighters, expressed their conviction when he
said that those who cared to remain German should remain in Germany
and that those who came to America were under solemn obligations to
become Americans.

The descendants of these immigrants, the second and the third and
fourth generations, are now thoroughly absorbed into every phase of
American life. Their national idiosyncrasies have been modified and
subdued by the gentle but relentless persistence of the English
language and the robust vigor of American law and American political
institutions.

After 1870 a great change came over the German immigration. More and
more industrial workers, but fewer and fewer peasants, and very rarely
an intellectual or a man of substance, now appeared at Ellis Island
for admission to the United States.[28] The facilities for migrating
were vastly increased by the great transatlantic steamship companies.
The new Germans came in hordes even outnumbering the migrations of the
fifties. From 1870 to 1910 over three and a quarter millions arrived.
The highest point of the wave, however, was reached in 1882, when
250,630 German immigrants entered the United States. Thereafter the
number rapidly subsided; the lowest ebb, in 1898, brought only 17,111,
but from that time until the Great W