This is still largely an ideal and a dream—something to be worked out with infinite care and patience to bring good results. We shall never have prepared citizens until we have Federal aid to local communities. Outside of the large cities the local school can barely meet its local obligations to children, and it will be a long time before there are adequate facilities for night schools. This is by no means all of the problem of standards. I am convinced that we shall have to have a Federal admission law compelling the acquirement of the English language or similar compulsory state laws to get immigrants into the school. Let us tell the truth. We have empty night schools in America as well as aliens without school facilities. Why? The foreign governments and the bulk of the foreign-language newspapers are against the immigrant learning the English language. It opens the door too rapidly to Americanization. The short-sighted business man is against his workmen becoming literate, learning English and too much about America. He thinks they will move up and want higher wages. The trade union is against it, as it also thinks they will move up and displace union men. No school can succeed where the employer discourages attendance, works his men nights or overtime, interfering with attendance, or in alternate weekly shifts, destroying continuity of attendance. The coöperation of business and the adjustment of the school system for adults to the industrial system are vital to success. No school can fully succeed that does not have the support and understanding of the local political and religious leaders, as they may make for or against attendance. A national governmental plan of preparation for citizenship depends in its last analysis upon local activity, sympathy, and understanding, and upon adequate funds. Why did Detroit double its appropriation for night schools in 1915 and increase its attendance 156 per cent? Because organized business, wide awake and far seeing, saw that the stable working population in the future in America will be men with a citizenship and a home stake in America. They set out to provide it, and the latest step taken is that of the Packard Motor Car Company, basing advancement upon citizenship.
Citizenship preparation cannot be a paper propaganda—it must bear a vital relation to the work, play, and living conditions of each citizen and take him not only to the school but to the military training camp; not only to the job but to the polls; not only to better conditions in America but to unswerving loyalty to America.
So much for standards. What have we done about states’ rights? In the chapter on the American Vote, I have dealt with the confusion between our state and Federal voting laws. We have a more serious problem in the economic imprint we have permitted states and cities to put upon citizenship. As a result of these laws citizenship has become in many states a kind of economic patchwork. In order to preserve certain rights, advantages, and fields of effort to native-born and naturalized citizens, we have made certain discriminations against aliens which have resulted in a purely commercial incentive to citizenship or evasions of law.
As illustrative of America’s attitude in these matters, let us take public service. Aliens are shut out from public service by several laws and many municipal ordinances. The state laws are sometimes very sweeping, excluding the alien from employment in any capacity in any department of the state. In California, for instance, only citizens may be employed in any department of the state, county, city, or town. This law was invoked last winter to prevent the payment of salaries of several Canadians who had been employed as teachers in the public schools. This law was later amended, allowing aliens who had made their declaration of intention to be employed as teachers and exempting the University of California from the operation of the act.
State civil service laws prescribe citizenship as a qualification in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The Federal civil service law has a similar requirement. In most states these laws apply to unskilled labor on public improvements, road building and ditch digging, even where sublet by the city to a contractor. The result is a wholesale evasion of the law, made necessary in order for the city to get its work done. The alien knows he is a law breaker and gets his first lesson in American law enforcement. He works in peace and security while some one else pays the necessary fines. If the worst happens, he applies for his first papers and then works under an injunction until the law can be interpreted or amended—which is done if labor is very scarce.
It is a sound policy necessary for the protection of the country to require that only citizens shall administer its government and hold positions of trust and responsibility. As a measure of defense, which is its main justification, it should be national. It is no defense against a foreign foe to have it obtain in one state and not in another; in one city and not in another. A state or city that needs protection from a neighboring state or city has not yet attained a national point of view and stands in the way of Americanism and nationalism. It is sound to keep alien workmen off our waterways and water-supply systems and other public works of importance in defense, but we defeat our entire purpose of safety when any alien resident here for a few months can go on those arteries of our defense system with a declaration of intention in his pocket.
It is a sound policy that the instruction in our public schools should be by American citizens with an American point of view and loyalty, but compliance with that law, as in California, by granting first papers, will not carry out that policy or give assurance of teaching from the American point of view. Americans regard the possession of a paper as evidence of intent and of qualifications, whereas it is generally regarded by the alien as a technical requirement necessary to earn money in America.
In some states there is a modified form of this law, requiring that preference be given to citizens. At this stage it becomes clear that these laws are not national defense laws, but labor preference laws. If Americanism means anything in justice, law, order, or opportunity, such laws should have their purpose expressed and their terms defined in the Federal statutes and due notice should be given the alien before he emigrates to America. Are we a nation dealing squarely with all peoples and honorably with those we admit, or are we a federation of states each dealing with the alien as it sees fit, after the nation has admitted him? All right-thinking Americans must see that we must deal as a nation and not locally with the subjects of alienism and citizenship.
Local temporizing with national honor and fair play has led us into even more unjust discriminations, indefensible in the light of our treaty obligations. Aliens are in some states excluded from pursuing certain private callings. In many states an alien may not be an attorney; in other states that profession is open to declarants, showing again our utter lack of comprehension of such laws as defense measures. For example, in Louisiana, an alien cannot get a contract for public printing; in Michigan he cannot get a barber’s license; in many states, such as New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, etc., only a citizen can get a liquor license. In six states the alien is excluded from gaining a livelihood by hunting and fishing; in Tennessee he may not be a market hunter, and in Wyoming he may not be a guide. In Virginia only a citizen may get a junk-dealer’s license, and in Georgia only a citizen or a declarant can get a peddler’s license. In New Jersey an alien cannot get a license to transmit money to foreign countries, or receive money on deposit for transmission to foreign countries, or buy and sell foreign money.
What is the situation in relation to property? The United States consists of a federation of states, each sovereign in its own domain except for the powers delegated to the Federal government. The tenure of real property is not one of the powers so delegated. Each state consequently has sovereign power over its own soil, and can determine by whom it will permit its soil to be held and what conditions it will attach to the tenure. For this reason the state enactments regarding real property are of the utmost importance. In twenty-nine states resident aliens are given the same property rights as citizens; in two other states the same rights are given to white aliens.