But I do not blame the immigrants, neither for coming nor for what they do after they get here. The present condition of the country is the fault of persons like myself—Americans born and bred, the descendants of the men and women who planted our colonies, fought and won the Revolution, and founded our government.
Proud in our own conceit, we have allowed the control of the country, handed over to our keeping by our fathers, to slip out of our hands. Like a pack of second-rate shop-keepers we have lost all initiative, and assuming an air of lofty indifference, pretend to be unconscious that the parvenu establishment across the street has taken all the trade that used to belong to us.
Why, there was a time when we got so exclusive, the whole pack of us, that we boasted:
“No gentleman will go into politics—such low associates.”
Then Theodore Roosevelt came. Being President of the United States became almost as aristocratic as tooling a coach or breeding dogs. And in a government of the people, by the people, for the people. To see the result of that un-American snobbishness one needs only to read a list of the men holding the highest political offices in our largest cities.
The descendants of the men and women who settled the country and founded the government are as scarce as hens’ teeth.
It is also the fault of us original Americans that immigrants have not become Americanized more rapidly. How could any one, you or I, become familiar with the ideals and aims of a Bedouin Arab if we had never come in speaking distance with a Bedouin Arab, could neither speak nor read his language, and only caught a glimpse of him careening by on his camel?
Take the residential districts of New York City, for instance. As soon as an immigrant moves in, what is known as “fashion” moves out. It is that habit of running hot-footed from the immigrant that was the beginning of New York slums. And not alone in New York, it’s all over the country.
In the small city in which I am now writing, the most beautiful, the best-drained, and healthiest section is being deserted. Wonderful homes with orange and grape-fruit trees in full bearing are being given up, their owners moving to a newly settled and less desirable quarter. All because of “the Latins”—Cubans, Spaniards, French, and Italians.
“But what is the matter with the Latins?” I asked a woman who had complained to me that her husband had refused to break up his home and move to Hyde Park.