They Who Knock at Our Gates

A Complete Gospel of Immigration

by Mary Antin

Pages: 55

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Read by Zachary Katz-Stein · 2 h 39 min · 5 parts

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Introduction
3:20
The Law of the Fathers
33:36
Judges in the Gates, Part 1
31:51
Judges in the Gates, Part 2
41:39
The Fiery Furnace
49:16

They Who Knock at Our Gates (1914) is a public domain work.

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About this book

The rights of newcomers become a test of American principles in Mary Antin’s 1914 essay on immigration. She begins with the Declaration of Independence, arguing that its promises of liberty and equality must guide the treatment of people arriving from other countries. Her discussion moves between ethical claims and the limits of expert reports, asking how statistics can inform public policy without deciding a person’s human worth.

Antin also brings the debate down to household life. A Russian immigrant who drives an ice wagon describes trading earlier comforts for secure possessions and schooling for his children. Such testimony challenges the view that newcomers seek only higher earnings: education, equal treatment and freedom matter as well. Readers interested in the history of immigration will find a forceful argument about national ideals, supported by ordinary people’s accounts of work and opportunity.

About the author

Mary Antin

Mary Antin transformed migration from Polotsk in the Russian Empire to Boston into two influential accounts of immigration and Americanization. From Plotzk to Boston began as Yiddish letters to an uncle and appeared in English in 1899; Israel Zangwill contributed the foreword.