Straight America, a call to national service

by Frances Kellor

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”

Nothing was said about “the claims of business,” or being “willing to do anything that may be necessary when the need actually arises.” When the twentieth-century Americans “mutually pledge to each other” these things, we shall cease talking about “reasonable preparedness.” We will arm and train all our manhood. We will restore democracy to the twentieth century. And we will restore Americanism to America!

Restoring our real traditions of liberty is not a vague task. The general principles of liberty as stated in the Declaration of Independence are, in part, very practically interpreted in the Constitution. As there enumerated they include: freedom of religion; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; the right of petition; the right to keep and bear arms; the right to protest against unreasonable searches and seizures; the right of protection for persons and property; the right of trial by jury; the right to vote without abridgment of this right because of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude.

These are only minimum guarantees. There are other rights of far-reaching importance—as the right to profit by a free system of education. And there are besides these rights countless privileges and dignities which no specific enumeration will cover.

At some time and some where this nation began to think of these privileges and opportunities rather in deed than in spirit, and to set them aside as prerogatives for “first Americans.” We began to think of ourselves as better than other men and to create barriers which could not but result in injustice and intolerance. And just at that point we laid the corner stone of our shame to-day.

“First Americans” have already pointed out to us that the framers of the Constitution never foresaw the “Southern European hordes” that now flock here. Perhaps not. But I question if the vision would have disturbed them, or whether it could ever have put greater caution and reserve into the instrument they were drawing up. The magnanimity of spirit there expressed is based upon something greater than philosophy. It is based upon a quality that has nothing to do with changes of times or conditions, a quality of stern fearlessness, a national conviction that the destiny of this nation was to be above all else the safeguard and champion of liberty.

The extent to which we have departed from the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is best measured by the way we have come to regard and to treat the most helpless and trusting of our people—the immigrants who come to our shores. Our early policy at Castle Garden was to meet them, advise them, protect them by laws, safeguard their journey, and to consider them as a valuable asset to America and its future development. Compare with this the route of the immigrant in America to-day, keeping in mind our forefathers’ conception of American guarantees of life, liberty, and happiness.

The immigrant arrives at the port of entry. After passing his examination (during which time not a friendly word of greeting is given him, or a personal interest taken in him) he is turned loose upon the city to be met at the gate by cabmen, porters, runners, crooks, thieves, and every conceivable kind of exploiter interested in getting his cash money. This is America’s first reception line. He then meets our second reception line—the employment agent, the private banker, and “steering agent” who derive profit from his labor before it has even become productive. When the immigrant actually goes to work, he has generally lost his money and is in debt. He then meets our third American reception line, the employer interested only in his labor output, and he is treated accordingly. He is generally left alone, to live as best he can, until he begins to save money. This immediately calls forth our fourth reception line—the private banker who renews his acquaintance and offers to help him send his money home; the speculator in land who looks him up; the get-rich-quick concerns that advertise in the papers he reads, and the medical quack who sells him so-called “American” medicines. Some one tells him he may be better off as a citizen, and then appears our fifth American reception line—the politician willing to buy his vote because he needs it, the notary public who is ready to settle his affairs at home so that he can “cut loose,” and the labor leader who thinks now he ought to be organized.

By the time the immigrant has shaken hands along these various reception lines he feels he knows everybody, and he has a very definite idea of liberty, justice, freedom, law, order, and measures of happiness which in no sense accords with our forefathers’ ideal of America.

I sometimes wonder when I see men in the night schools studying our Constitution to enable them to pass their citizenship examinations how they square its teaching with their various experiences under the peonage system of the South; with the robberies by the company store in the coal mines; with the sentences they receive for minor offenses in justice-of-peace courts which have no interpreters; with the prohibition that they cannot work at certain trades, for example in Michigan where they cannot be barbers; with restrictions upon personal liberty, as in Pennsylvania where they cannot keep a dog; with the repeated private bank failures in which all their savings were lost; with the double standard of living under which they see their American neighbors protected and themselves neglected and exploited.