The one great fact that stands out is this: That the voting quality of a number of our states is not and never has been subject to review, from the point of view of national political ideals, of Americanism. So long as we have citizens of states that vote who are not citizens of the nation, we have a disrupting force in our national political organization. Citizenship in the United States is constitutionally defined in Amendment 14 thus: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States, and of the states in which they reside.” No other kind of citizenship is provided for in the Constitution. A state may need voters, and undoubtedly many of the first-paper men, pioneers in our western states, have voted wisely and well, with a grasp of local conditions. But because of the greater variety in our present immigration as compared with that of former years, and because American citizenship, including the power to vote, is a matter for national valuation, a state should no more arrogate unto itself the power to make its own citizens than to coin its own money or set up its own postal system. The time has come for conscious statesmanship, for international purposeful dealing with this fundamental element in our political organization.
A situation quite as much in need of national review concerns the relation of women to citizenship. An immigrant woman, no matter what her educational qualifications or length of residence in this country, becomes a citizen by the act of her husband or father’s naturalization. This means in eleven states of the Union that she can vote at all elections. But immigrant women are very generally years behind the men in Americanization. They lack not only the social assimilation which makes them fit to vote, but even the technical requirements for citizenship, which their husbands or fathers have at least mastered. And yet of 3,723,971 possible women voters in the suffrage states, 902,129 are foreign born—one quarter of the whole number. Of late a number of our western suffragist leaders have assured us that the immigrant woman makes a good voter—that she is conscientious about going to the polls, and seems to take a direct and personal interest in registering her opinion on matters that she knows to affect the welfare of her home, her husband, her children. But there are many thousands of immigrant women in this country who have not mastered the English language in even a small degree, who have had no opportunity to learn our civic ideals, whose homes are not American homes. The thing that concerns us is not that this vote of immigrant women will corrupt our political situation. It is rather to lament that so much civic force and interest, of inestimable value in political rating, is lost to the community and to the nation.
We must know and direct the political forces, or we shall direct the social and civic forces in vain. “Civic consciousness” is coming to be too diluted a quantity, too general, too philosophic, too “broad” and non-partisan to act promptly or definitely. It stands for too much, directs too little. The civic welfare of towns has become separate from their political welfare. And the real danger of the salutary modern social and civic movements that are spreading through our cities and towns is that it tends to become so. Most American towns, as such, never think of their immigrants, representing one third or one half of the town in numbers, as voters or as potential voters—or make any effort to bring their force into play in any national way, as a part of public sentiment. They are left to the by-ways of politics. And it is small wonder if they learn the habit and tricks of the by-ways.
Hundreds of immigrants in small towns to-day are getting their political education from just two sources: the ward boss, who tells them no more than he thinks they need to know; and the foreign language newspaper, which is published in the big city and circulated in hundreds of small towns over a wide radius. There are at least 1500 such papers in the country, reaching more than 9,000,000 regular readers daily. Many of them have an acknowledged political interest and trend—witness the vigor of the campaign editorials now beginning to appear with such calculated timeliness. Many of the editors of these papers regard it as their first charge to instruct their fellow countrymen in the political events and tendencies and issues of America. But a very great many of these editors are themselves not initiated in these things. The force that guides the immigrant to the polls must come more directly and warmly from the American center of American affairs.
The American attitude of indifference to the vote, of refusal to consider it a national privilege and a national service, is at bottom responsible for our difficulties with the immigrant vote. When that changes, and the force of the change carries through the political world, the American vote will be regenerated among native and foreign born alike. I should make the occasion of giving an immigrant the vote the occasion for insisting upon the duties that must go with the exercise of it. At present the immigrant is too much in possession of the idea that it is a right and a privilege—partly sold to him, and which it is his privilege—or duty—to sell or contribute to his benefactors or superiors in return.
The problem before the political parties has long been how to extend the social ideal and how to make it count in the body politic. The “politicians” of vigor and imagination cherish a practical hope of organizing the idealism of men, restoring human belief and values to party organization. In the peculiar opportunity now presented to the country to take stock of its citizenship, to reënforce its unity, to justify itself as a democracy, to make the most of its powers, to use the intelligence and the ardor of its citizens of many races, and to bring the newest of these into accord with its ideals and its practices, lies a great opportunity for the political parties of this country. By an organized effort to instruct newly naturalized citizens in the use of the American vote, and to bring them into real accord with the social forces behind the vote, we shall secure Americanism in politics, without which we can have no genuine preparedness.
CHAPTER VI
National Unity
Military Preparedness.
Industrial Mobilization.
Universal Service.
Americanization.
International Duty.
The decision America is called upon to make to-day is whether America shall emerge from this world-wide struggle as a nation of many peoples or whether it will imperil its very existence by remaining half native, half alien; half free and half slave to foreign influences.
We are in the midst of a bitter contest in which the forces for weakness are contending with those for strength in terms of fortifications, battleships, and guns amidst the sordid influences of appropriations, sectional selfishness, and party campaign considerations.