In the despatches of August 16, 1912, is an account of a gathering of ten thousand afflicted people at a shrine at Carey, Ohio, reputed to possess a miraculous healing virtue. Special trains brought together multitudes of credulous, and at least one "miracle" was reported. As this country fills up with the densely ignorant, there will be more of this sort of thing. The characteristic features of the Middle Ages may be expected to appear among us to the degree that our population comes to be composed of persons at the medieval level of culture.
YELLOW JOURNALISM
In accounting for yellow journalism, no one seems to have noticed that the saffron newspapers are aimed at a sub-American mind groping its way out of a fog. The scare-heads, red and green ink, pictures, words of one syllable, gong effects, and appeal to the primitive emotions, are apt to jar upon the home-bred farmer or mechanic. "After all," he reflects, "I am not a child." Since its success in the great cities, this style of newspaper has been tried everywhere; but it appears there are soils in which the "yellows" will not thrive. When a population is sixty per cent. American stock, the editor who takes for granted some intelligence in his readers outlasts the howling dervish. But when the native stock falls below thirty per cent. and the foreign element exceeds it, yellowness tends to become endemic. False simplicity, distortion, and crude emotionalism are the resources of newspapers striving to reach and interest undeveloped minds. But the arts that win the immigrant deprave the taste of native readers and lower the intelligence of the community.
PEONAGE
The friendless, exploitable alien by his presence tends to corrupt our laws and practices respecting labor. In 1908 the House of Representatives directed the Immigration Commission to report on the treatment and conditions of work of immigrants in certain Southern States "and other States." The last phrase was introduced merely to avoid the appearance of sectionalism, for no congressman dreamed that peonage existed anywhere save in the South. The investigation disclosed, however, the startling fact that immigrant peonage exists in every State but Oklahoma and Connecticut. In the West the commission found "many cases of involuntary servitude," but no prosecutions. It was in the lumber-camps of Maine that the commission found "the most complete system of peonage in the country."
CASTE SPIRIT
The desire to cure certain ills has been slow to develop among us because the victims are aliens who, we imagine, don't mind it very much. On learning that the low pay of the Italian navy forbids meat, we recall that all Italians prefer macaroni, anyhow. With downtrodden immigrants we do not sympathize as we would with downtrodden Americans. The foreign-born laborers are "wops" and don't count; the others are "white men." After a great mine disaster a Pittsburgh newspaper posted the bulletin: "Four hundred miners killed. Fifteen Americans." Of late a great split has opened between the American and Americanized working-men and the foreigners, with their new sense of being exploited and despised. The break shows itself sensationally in the bitter fight between the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World. The former denounces the red-flag methods of the latter, ignores I. W. W. strikes, and allows its members to become strike-breakers. When the latter precipitates a strike in some industry in which the Federationists are numerous, we shall see an unprecedented warfare between native and foreign groups of working-men. It is significant of the coming cleavage that the mother of the I. W. W., the Western Federation of Miners, at once the most American and the most radical of the great labor-unions, has disowned the daughter organization since its leaders sought to rally inflammable and irresponsible immigrants with the fierce cry, "Sabotage. No Truce."
THE POSITION OF WOMEN
Perhaps the most sensitive index of moral advancement is the position assigned to woman. Never is there a genuine advance that does not leave her more planet and less satellite. Until recently nowhere else in the world did women enjoy the freedom and encouragement they received in America. It is folly, however, to suppose that their lot will not be affected by the presence of six millions from belated Europe and from Asia, where consideration for the weaker sex is certainly not greater than that of the English before the Puritan Reformation.
With most of our Slavic nationalities, it is said, the boy may strike his sister with impunity, but the girl who strikes her brother is likely to be chastised. Few of the later immigrants think of giving the daughter as good a chance as the son. Among the American students in our colleges there are three young men to one young woman. For the native students of foreign fathers the ratio is four to one, and for the foreign-born eight to one.