Neither in Milwaukee nor elsewhere did I find that the Church, whether Lutheran or Roman Catholic, had kept pace with the intellectual development of the home Church, nor has it come to feel its social responsibility to the community. The German Lutheran pastors, in certain synods, are often more exclusive than the Catholic priests in their unwillingness to coöperate with other churches for the public good; and while the churches in Germany are the most progressive on the continent, here they are the most conservative, and correspondingly inactive in the affairs which move society. Certain synods of the Lutheran Church, and those the most prosperous, hold to the Augsburg Confession more tenaciously than Luther ever did, and believe that beside that Church there is no Church, and outside of that creed no salvation.
I attended a Lutheran church one Sunday evening when it was crowded largely by young people, all of them wage-earners in the lower walks of life. The whole burden of the sermon of nearly forty-five minutes’ length was the thought that salvation is not in morality or merit or good deeds, but that the only thing necessary to it is a proper definition of the nature of Jesus Christ. There was not one ethical note in the whole sermon, and if it is a fair sample of that man’s discourses, his flock of more than fifteen hundred souls is feeding upon barren pasture. When I called upon a Lutheran pastor who was pointed out to me as a liberal, I found, upon asking him to define his liberality, that it turned entirely upon social habits and had nothing to do with theology. “I want to drink my beer whenever I want to,” was the article in his creed that had driven him into the arms of a more liberal synod.
Among the Germans of the Northwest there is a good deal of infidelity, fostered by the Turner societies; but they are languishing and dying, and with them dies the unbelief. I was told in Milwaukee by a business man that the disappearance of those societies is due to the fact that men of affairs discovered that it was poor business policy to belong to them, because it arrayed against them the conservative church element, and that the cessation of infidel agitation is not a sign of more faith, but simply a sign of more common sense. One free-thinking paper is still published in Milwaukee; but its constituency is gradually growing smaller, and the lecturers on infidelity, of whom there used to be many, have dwindled to one or two. They find it hard to make a living out of a thing that has no life. Yet the German immigrant contributes positive good to this nation’s life; he brings usually a sound body, and while seldom intellectual, he is nearly always intelligent. He is scrupulously honest in business affairs, and has elevated the business morals of his community. By his love of music he has robbed the social life in America of some of its sternness; and the German singing societies are known not so much for the artistic quality of their performance, as for keeping alive the spirit of good fellowship.
Unfortunately, the German falls an easy prey to the prevailing materialistic spirit, and when he worships mammon he becomes the most ardent of devotees. Then he has no time for his “Gesangverein,” nor for anything else which is not utilitarian, and “Geldmachen,” the making of money, is his great ideal. In his home life he still emphasizes those virtues which have given inspiration to the German poets’ best songs. His wife is, even in America, the model “Hausfrau”; for “she looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness.” Yet the Woman’s Club has touched her also, and the “Kaffeeklatsch,” with its innocent neighbourhood gossip, has given way to the formal reception and kindred social delusions. The German has been the prime factor in dispelling the Puritan idea of the Sabbath, which to many is a positive evil, but may at least be considered a mixed good. Still, he ought not to bear the blame alone, for the average American was ready to have his Sabbath broken for him and has easily followed into the breach; just as it often takes four or five grown persons to escort one child to the circus, so one may find four or five natives at every Sunday base-ball game, helping the German to amuse himself.
The disintegrating process has also been stimulated by the American tourists who annually cross the ocean, and who, during their visits in Continental Europe, leave much of the Puritan spirit behind them—too much for their own good and the good of their country.
The German has not largely contributed to the deepening of the religious life of the nation, although wherever he enters the life of the church he makes its expression more honest. The one thing which he hates desperately is hypocrisy, and because of that he guards himself very jealously and seldom speaks of his religious experiences. The German Methodist and Evangelical Churches, which are of the emotional type, are not only failing to grow, but are perceptibly becoming smaller. This is to be deplored, because they developed a somewhat deep if rather narrow Christian character, and strove to counteract the cold and more formal spirit of the majority of their brethren in other communions.
The German in America has not produced many great men, but he has filled this country with good men, which is infinitely better. The cause of the dearth of prominent German-Americans is due to the fact that they blend more quickly than any other foreigner (except the Scandinavian) with the nation’s life, especially if the German reaches any kind of eminence; and the effect which he has upon the life of the nation is difficult to trace just because of that.
The coarse, the crude and the low, retain their national stamp, while the finer and better soon become part of us. Some of us seem to know the German best and judge him most from the standpoint of the saloon and all it implies; but I have almost always found him industrious, intelligent, honest, frugal, patriotic, and God-fearing—noble qualities for American citizenship. If he has not risen to the highest which he is capable of reaching, and if he does not exert his influence for the best in all directions, it is not due to the fact that he is not willing to do it; but because he could not rise much higher than the highest marked out for him by the native citizens, or because he could not quite comprehend that this money-making, materialistic Yankee had ideals which he was trying honestly to realize.
If we misjudge the German, he misjudges the American and rates him much lower than he deserves. This has robbed him of a higher standard for himself and made him exaggerate our national weaknesses, imitating which has created a peculiar combination of character which does scant justice to himself or to his American neighbour. When he revisits his Fatherland, these weaknesses manifest themselves most; and then his adopted Fatherland comes in for a good share of the blame for his lack of manners. The following incident illustrates this point. In the lobby of a fashionable hotel in Berlin a German-American of this type was expectorating tobacco-juice with the exactness and frequency of an adept. To a German who called his attention to this nuisance, he replied: “Everybody does that in America.” He needs to know the American and value him as he deserves, and he ought to know that which he does not seem to, that the making of money is to the true American, after all, not the greatest of achievements; that the hypocrisy with which he charges him in his religious life is less frequent than he thinks it is, and that the national ideal is slowly but surely gaining ascendency. He ought also to know that, more than any other foreigner, he has impressed upon us both his strength and his weakness, and that we are growing quite definitely Teutonic. It is for us to find out what this strength is and to appropriate it more; and it is for him to grow conscious of his weakness and eliminate it from his social life, that he may become indeed one of the strongest pillars of this Republic, which already, like the coming Kingdom, is made up of “every nation and kindred and tribe and people under heaven.”