We need a new social impulse back of our patriotism. We have come to the point where we even trifle with the idea that nationalism may be an outworn thing, too parochial a survival to stand the white light of the twentieth century. We have a great deal of social emotion of one kind or another in this country. It has put many healthy ideas into circulation, registered many needed protests. But it has been so remote from the actual business of life, so far removed from the job and the polling booth, that it has done little even for those that have served it best. The prevailing idea of social freedom in this country within the last few years has developed among the industrial groups of our large cities especially a kind of intellectual proletariat, whose creed is active social reform, but whose practice is intellectualism. This constitutes a curious menace to Americanism. It seeks to substitute the “brotherhood of man” for all the loyalties and obligations and relationships of life. I saw a month or two ago in a widely circulated magazine a symposium to which many writers and publicists contributed, stating whether or not they “believed in patriotism” and saw any validity in it. Some did and some did not. It was discussed as if it were the protective tariff.
The I. W. W.’s urge their followers to ignore national lines and unite only as “Workers of the World.” And a great many of those followers, truly united in their passion for industrial freedom, hoodwink themselves into believing that in this bond all the debts and privileges of a national citizenship are more than included. They come to speak slightingly of those that still hold to so practical a loyalty. The immigrants, wavering between two loyalties and firmly fixed in neither, and especially the immigrants who come from those countries where the social sense is strongly developed, are especially drawn or think they are by the appeal of a loyalty to “no God and no master”—and respond readily to the flexible and not too confining idea of brotherhood. The idea moves and sways the throng. But when they go home to their crowded rooms in tenements, when they go the next morning to the job, when they deal with property, those men and women need a government, understanding and equable, to carry and control the conditions of their lives, to safeguard their rights, to aid them to right their wrongs. It alone can give them the guarantees and the tradition of industrial freedom. They need a loyalty.
We must learn to care. Our hearts must be on fire with belief, or we shall never have Americanism. We need to go back again to the sources of our liberty and relight our torches there. It is because we have not Americanism in our hearts and souls, because we have not been through the process of Americanization, because we have become slaves to prosperity and faithless to our ideals that we have failed Europe at a critical time. Americanism has become a phrase, a trademark, a passport. Unless somehow and somewhere we can restore belief and zeal and faith in our destiny we face the disunion of this Republic into races and creeds, into sectionalism and localism, into class warfare between capital and labor, into selfish individualism rather than nationalism.
CHAPTER III
The Native American
I find the future of America a far more hopeful and beautiful thing to contemplate from the trenches of a new subway than from a Fifth Avenue bus. Perhaps it is because in one is seen the raw material of hopes, ideals, and ambitions in the making,—a people eagerly looking forward; while in the other these ideals are already fashioned, perhaps discarded,—a people looking backward. I am not more afraid of the ignorant vote than of the absent vote; of the discontented alien than of the satisfied American; of the hungry laborer than of the surfeited idler; of the casual laborer than of the overworked industrial captain; of the patient, plodding hand toiler than of the dreamer of the get-rich-quick concerns; of the alien with the family back home than of the American with no family at all. They all go to make up one America.
When we think of a united America, our minds naturally turn to Americanizing the immigrant. Big as that task is, I do not believe that our greatest difficulty lies with him. Rather I fear that we shall have to Americanize our native Americans first—in increased respect for the flag, in conscious renewed allegiance to America, in the patriotic use of the nation’s holidays, in measures of national service. We have, I think, to return to the civilian training camp and universal service as a melting pot for natives before we can make America a successful melting pot for aliens.
The average native American is local, provincial, self-interested, constitutionally opposed to any change that may threaten his particular established local order. The average native employer looks askance at anything that may upset his labor supply, be that a shop census or workmen’s compensation. The average native employee does not take to such new-fangled ideas as health insurance and promotion based on record. It is the native-born American woman who crosses to the American side of the street and who still meets and discusses the immigrant as a problem. I suspect it was a native American who dubbed the Italians “dagoes,” the Hungarians, “hunkies,” the Lithuanians “round heads,” and so on. There is no better invention for prolonging personal conflict than derisive nicknames, and America seems to have done its share in this direction.
It is natural that those who carry responsibilities should be conservative, but the native American seems to me to carry this responsibility to the verge of reaction and antagonism. I am reminded of a time when I had occasion to summon an employer and employee before me for a hearing upon a wage dispute and was reminded that it was presumption to set the employee opposite the employer to discuss such a trivial matter on equal terms. I am constantly asked to entertain women’s clubs who find immigration “interesting,” but whose members shrink from the neighborly services which they might render in their own communities.
There are always many exceptions to any general statement. But this does not alter the fact that the native American has a point of view, a state of mind, a prejudiced observance, a sense of superiority—which makes him greatly in need of Americanization. This is acquired by the native boy and girl early in life. What opportunity has the average native-born boy and girl to learn about American citizenship and its duties and rights? The public and parochial schools give little more than history and an indifferent kind of civil government, which seems to us as we learn it to have little to do with us or our future. Our patriotic days are largely holidays from school, filled with fun and pranks, but rarely with any sense of their real significance. They seem to have nothing to do with the very freedom we enjoy on those days. The boy becomes a voter by the mere act of registering his name. The average girl is unconscious that she ever becomes a citizen unless she is interested in suffrage or anti-suffrage, or unless practical property questions arise. We can hardly expect under these conditions much realization of what nationalism means, or that a call to national service will meet with much response. The surprising thing is that in spite of our official neglect and indifference, youths are filled with patriotism and desire to serve, if it can be utilized before the shop and home absorb all their energies.
I believe that a really careful, impartial analysis of our situation to-day would reveal two things: that there are two main systems of thought and lines of activity upon which the hope and future of America depend—one is government and the other is business. They alone have a nation-wide organization, whose units reach every American community and every American resident. To the government we look for law, order, education, justice, and the essentials of community life; to the industry for the job or the market which gives life to the community. Go where you will, in the last analysis a native American controls the situation. The man higher up, if you go high enough, is invariably a native-born American. It is said that there are more native-born sons of Connecticut in Oregon than in Connecticut, but the great industries of Connecticut that set the pace for the state are in the hands of native Americans. So it is with government. Minor offices, sometimes even important offices, are in the hands of naturalized citizens, but usually with the consent or approval of some native American—sometimes far removed from the scene of action.