Straight America, a call to national service

by Frances Kellor

I ask myself if the time will ever come when we shall restore Americanism as the signers of the Declaration of Independence conceived it. We cannot do this until we ourselves believe in practical Americanism. We are coming to realize that the native American who makes the lives of our foreign born wholly subservient to the industrial grind and who neither provides for nor permits them to become American citizens is himself a strong anti-American influence in this country; that the native American who permits the foreign born to enter and denies them the opportunities of America and the right to work, is really anti-American; that the native American who emphasizes the liberties and opportunities of America without correspondingly emphasizing the duties of all American residents is anti-American. We are beginning to see that the native American is anti-American who perpetuates class consciousness and race hatred; who favors or perpetuates the immigrant colony or camp or section with different standards of living, different law enforcement and isolation from American influences; who establishes his own home and his own children in a well-policed, sanitary section of the town and leaves his immigrant neighbor in another section unprotected and living in filth and disorder. We are coming to regard that man as a selfish patriot who consistently and complacently in his factory exacts a physical toll from his workmen without regard to the cost in citizenship to America; and that woman as anti-American who takes a girl into the kitchen because of certain racial excellences, but refuses to consider that these excellences have any social value to America outside the walls of that kitchen and who therefore uses and monopolizes her labor capacity but contributes nothing toward making that girl an American citizen qualified to preside over an American home. We are coming to see that a political leader is a menace to a united America who uses newly naturalized immigrants to swing the American vote in this direction or that, but who does nothing to make the immigrant a good citizen, or even to see that he understands American political ideals.

It is impossible to have the spirit of Americanism prevail in this land when at least a quarter of its people do not understand it, or have been disillusioned in their dream of it, or have been despoiled in their search for it. I do not minimize the value of hardship of obstacles to be overcome. They make for the strength of a nation just as they do for the strength of a human being. But I like to see the obstacles set up in a fair field with no favor—where a man can see them and meet them intelligently. This is what Americanism stands for, but it is not what it means to the average immigrant. We point with pride to the immigrant who succeeds in spite of it, but I suspect that often we judge by his clothes and his house and his speech rather than by his outlook upon life and his inlook upon himself. We satisfy ourselves by comparing his lot here with what it was in his home country—often without real knowledge of either. We fail to see that we have lost the dream of what America may be and with the dream the ability to achieve it, when we become content that America should merely be better than Russia or freer than Austria instead of being the very best of which America is capable.

This country is full of so-called un-American types. Some of them are native born and some are foreign born. Immigrant men and women in this rank of life or that, who have been in this country for years, have found themselves isolated from and ignored by Americans. American customs and standards have therefore failed to alter them. The result is the perpetuation of foreign types or the creation of distinct types which we refuse to accept as ours, but in the making of which we have certainly had a controlling hand. Take the typical foreign-born journalist and publicist. There are hundreds of them to-day fighting the battle of Americanization for their fellow countrymen here against fearful odds because they are so far from being Americanized themselves. Many of them are philosophers, students, zealots; many of them are all-American in aspiration. But they are not themselves in possession of the very Americanism they seek to interpret. And their efforts at Americanizing their fellow countrymen fall as far short as would a piece of philosophy with a man in need of a pick to earn his living, bread to eat, or a tongue with which to speak.

Medical quacks, shyster lawyers, saloon-politicians, chronically bankrupt factory owners or lessees of foreign birth are continually pointed out to us as the types that are being inflicted upon a long-suffering America. They are in fact the types that a negligent America is inflicting upon itself.

How can we expect people from all the nations of the earth, from all kinds of governments and traditions, to understand the principles of liberty, as they have been handed down to us? The one thing they do understand is that the surveillance that prevails in the old country does not prevail here. Take the small business man or small factory operator of foreign birth in New York, the frequenter of the bankruptcy court, the owner of flimsy factory lofts which, when they have been burnt down, show the evasion of the most obvious laws. These men as youths in new America see that every man is free to try his hand at anything he wishes. Seeing only this, they get the idea that the great American game is the strife of one man against the other, that this island of Manhattan and this country are a land of single combat on a large scale, of which competition is the real secret, endurance and cunning and aggression the winning qualities. When they once get this idea, and they often get it very rapidly, they follow it as the dominating principle of their practical existence in America. I say their practical existence, because the methods pursued by many immigrant traders, business and professional men in this country do not represent at all any moral point of view which they have evolved themselves. What they do represent is a practical routine, a thoughtless application of the principles they see Americans practicing all around them. And unlike the Americans, they have no background of American tradition which will interpret differences and distinctions to them and give them a general criterion.

Certain things are essential to elucidating and preserving Americanism. One of these is a common language. Not until the necessity for national defense was thrust upon us have we considered seriously requiring that all American residents learn English. It is true we said in 1906 that all naturalized citizens must have a knowledge of the English language, but we neglected to define what we meant, so the knowledge may consist of as many words as each of several hundred judges may decide is a fair test. Not until the business man found that a knowledge of English reduced accidents did he indorse night schools. Only two states require compulsory attendance of minors under eighteen years of age to learn the English language.

This lack of a common language has prevented the American born and foreign born from getting together in a common Americanism. It has been a closed door to nationalism.

A second is a common citizenship. We have thought of this as the most sacred of rights and have safeguarded it with every possible technicality. Again our policy has been negative, discouraging, and hampering. We have put up the bars with one hand while with the other we have poked holes through the hedges for the political boss. We make it impossible for an alien to acquire citizenship within five years, but permit him to vote—with all that implies—in eight states after he has been there a few months. What conception can he have of how we regard this privilege and right and why has he no compunction in selling it? He leaves his home country to escape military duty and attends meetings in America where he is told he is not even expected to defend this country in case of war. Not one public school in a hundred makes any provisions for teaching him about American conditions, life, and government. Again he finds a closed door to Americanism, and it is small wonder when it is opened that he enters, a skeptic of democracy.

Men work for and defend what is dear to them. When a job is the only stake, it is a rather narrow base for patriotism. The newly arrived immigrant is not given much of an opportunity to have any sentiment or inspiring associations about his job. The average employer feels that when he raises wages he has discharged his full duty to his workman and to his country. But America is concerned not only with what a man earns, but with how he spends it. It is interested in his having a home stake in America, and in his investing in America. Only a prodigal, short-sighted, hand-to-mouth nation can look with indifference upon workmen sending $400,000,000 abroad, and following their savings there each year.

So it is with his living conditions. In the vermin-ridden bunk house the Italian dreams of Italy. In the bungalow with a flower garden Italy is far in the background. The “pursuit of happiness” was mentioned with life and liberty, but as we have forgotten our duties in privileges, so have we neglected happiness for life in terms of gain.