THE FINAL HEARING IN COURT
Petitions may be heard only upon stated days, fixed by rule of the court, so that the government and the public may attend the open hearings which are required by the law. This works smoothly and well enough in the great cities, where most naturalizations take place; but there are districts, in sparsely settled regions, where there is but one term of the court in a year; which, in practice, means that the judge cannot be sure of being at any given point on any days determinable in advance, except the opening day. In such cases a great many courts will have but one hearing period in a year—usually on the first, and perhaps the second, day of the term. Two hardships may arise from such a situation; the alien and his witnesses may be uncertain as to the length of time they must wait after a long journey to the county seat, and if the clerk is careless and fails to notify the petitioners that their cases are to be heard (a thing which happens all too often) the judge and examiner are on hand, but no one appears to be naturalized, and another year is lost before the cases can be disposed of. That this can be a matter of very serious import to the alien may be illustrated by the fact that a group of Poles were classed as “nonresident aliens,” and subjected to the very heavy income tax collected of such, simply because the clerk of the court in which their petitions for naturalization were pending failed to notify them of the hearing day.