A Literacy Test
Kate Holladay Claghorn, of the New York School of Philanthropy, who has given special study to the problem, believes that one of the first aids to the proper assimilation of the alien would be a literacy test designed to exclude many non-assimilable elements. Her reasons are thus set forth in an article in The Survey:
Any substantial advance in the solution of the immigration problem must be looked for through legislation, since private activity, no matter how devoted or extended it is, can be expected to make but little impression upon a social group constantly augmented at the rate of from half a million to a million a year.
What new legislation is most needed? From the federal government the establishment of a literacy test, not for the purpose of restricting immigration but for the protection of the immigrant. The true value of a literacy test to secure protection has been observed by making use of it as a subterfuge to bring about restriction. But it should really be regarded as perhaps the best wholesale measure of protection that could be devised.
It has been abundantly shown that the bulk of the immigrant’s own burden and our burden because of him are due not to viciousness or abnormality of any sort, but to sheer helplessness. He is exploitable raw material, and he is exploited, and held, until he can push out of it, at a low grade of living detrimental to him and to the community. And the one effective measure to help the helpless is to bring them to a condition in which they can protect themselves.
The immigrant who has learned to read and write has gained control of the tool that brings him out of the stone age, with all its associated habits, into the age of bronze, where we live and work today. This may be only his own native language—as required by the bill which was vetoed last year—but through it he is at least brought into an immensely wider circle of communication than is afforded by word of mouth only, so that he need not be at the mercy of the nearest rascal who wants to take advantage of his ignorance. Having this, he is helped a long stage on the way of acquiring the use of the more effective tool—reading and writing the English language, which would be our next demand for him. For this we should ask state legislation, establishing compulsory education for non-English speaking adults (immigrant or otherwise).
The expense of such an undertaking should not be urged against it, for expense should be measured in relation to return, and, measured in this way, this particular expense would be found a profitable investment, as every citizen properly prepared for citizenship is an asset to the state. The original purpose of public education in this country was to perform this very task.
Does not the adult immigrant need this preparation much more than the native-born child, whose traditions, home surroundings and social advantages can supply many deficiencies in formal education?
Every state where foreign labor is massed in camps or colonies should require the establishment of schools in those places. Such schools would not only bring their own appropriate benefit, but would serve an equally useful purpose in banishing the evil spirits of mischief and disorder that infest places where the normal social influences are hindered in their free play.
If it be objected that school attendance could not be secured on account of the length of working hours, the obvious answer is that hours of labor which shut out all opportunity for exercise of the mental faculties or the social instincts, are thereby shown to be too long and should be reduced.
Should these two requirements be met, we need no longer be troubled whether immigration is heavy or light. Whether few or many, we should have in our immigrants an intelligent working force who can help develop our country, and for whom we may be grateful and of whom we may be proud.