MANY WERE CALLED, BUT FEW RESPONDED
With enthusiasm entirely commendable, the Naturalization Bureau describes its efforts to arouse in the foreign-born seekers after citizenship an interest in the opportunity before them, by notifying each candidate, declarant, or final petitioner, of the school privileges available for him. In the report of the Bureau for 1916, the Commissioner says:[156]
During the year, for the purpose of including the wife in this citizenship-betterment campaign by the public schools, the bureau wrote a special letter personally addressed to the wives of 49,094 petitioners and declarants, telling them of the advantages which would result from their attendance upon the public schools. The name of each wife was also sent, upon an individual card, to the public school in the community where the candidate lived. This inclusion of the wife in the scope of this activity was to enable her to get some conception of the meaning of an American home and aid her in establishing it for her family.... Intense interest is manifested upon the part of these wives and mothers, as in many instances they bring their babies to the schoolroom and while they sleep the mothers devote their time to learning to read, speak, and write our tongue in addition to receiving instruction in the more domestic subjects. In order to insure extending this influence to the wife of every declarant the bureau, with the approval of the department of labor, changed the form of the declaration of intention so as to require the inclusion of the name of the wife therein, no provision having been made for her name in the form as originally prepared. Approximately a quarter of a million women of foreign allegiance will be thus brought within the province of the Bureau of Naturalization through the filing of declarations of intention and petitions for naturalization by their husbands.
Well, this is all very fine as rhetoric and the expression of pious wishes. But what comes of it in reality? An elaborate table in the report for 1919[157] shows that in the fiscal year ended June 30th the names of 108,395 wives of candidates were furnished to the school authorities in cities and towns showing a total population of nearly 35,000,000 people with a “foreign-born white male of voting age” population of more than 4,400,000. And on the next page are tabulated reports of 166 school superintendents as to classes for foreign-born persons in English and citizenship, showing:
TABLE XXXVI
Maximum Enrollment in Citizenship and English Classes in the United States in 1919
| Men | 11,854 |
| Women | 2,733 |
| Unclassified | 1,287 |
| Total | 15,874 |
Every bit of it valuable, no doubt. Presumably, also, the complete figures would present a much larger total, but, as an exhibit of goods, it is hardly up to the promises of the show window!