This book devotes itself to those who have become Americans not by birth, but of their own free will and accord, by that process of voluntarily adopting a fatherland known as Naturalization. It endeavors to tell generally what happens to them in that process, and something of what they do and contribute to our political life after they have been admitted to active membership in our body politic.
The subject is one much talked about—especially since the beginning of the World War—and little understood save by those who administer, or who in some way profit by, the operation, the shortcomings, and confusions of the existing law and the system which has grown up under it. That system is handicapped and beclouded by public indifference and by the survival of ancient attitudes and limitations, and bedeviled by the theories and prejudices of persons and interests who, innocently or willfully—often with impeccable intentions—stand in the way of progress or adhere for various reasons to ideas and methods long since outgrown, or in the light of to-day actively mischievous.
THESE ARE OUR VOTERS!
It is a current fashion of unthinking persons, contemplating the seething masses of immigrants congested in our cities and in certain rural sections, beholding the polyglot store signs and newspapers, sensing the existence of languages, manners, and customs unfamiliar and perhaps grotesque and even outrageous to their own habits and ideas of propriety, and reflecting vaguely upon the real and supposed evils of our political methods and machinery, to exclaim:
“And these are the people who corrupt our politics! These are the voters who elect our presidents!”
Many who should know better indulge in such absurdities, and even cite statistics to support them. A characteristic manner of reasoning would read something like this:
“In 1910 there were 13,000,000 foreign-born persons in the United States, and only a little more than 3,000,000 of them were naturalized!”
Leaving the unreflecting hearer to forget that of the 13,000,000 only about half (6,646,817) were males of twenty-one years and over; that more than half a million (570,772) had declared their intention to become citizens; that there was no report as to the citizenship of more than 775,000; so that the alien population of voting age, and of the then voting sex, known to be unnaturalized, was only about one-sixth of the total foreign born, or 2,266,535. This was bad enough in all conscience, and the Woman-Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution of the United States certainly has aggravated it, since through it married immigrant women were made possible voters through the naturalization of their husbands. But nothing can be gained by exaggerating the facts, or constructing mare’s nests by inferences from false assumptions. It is worth while to examine the conditions, to observe the extent to which the foreign born actually do participate in our political processes, and on the basis of such facts as are available, to judge the effect that foreign birth does tend to have upon the quality of that participation.
There is no disposition here to overlook or minimize the menace to our social and civic life involved in the presence of vast masses of undigested, unassimilated population of whatever race or kind—even of our own people, herded in colonies, dominating large communities, illiterate as regards our history and ideals, ignorant of our language, traditions, and customs. It constitutes a social problem of great magnitude and intricacy—though probably by no means so menacing as it is our fashion to believe. But it is not one directly affecting our political life or the operation of our political machinery to any such degree as it is the custom to declaim. There is little substantial evidence in these days that the foreign-born voter, as such, is a source of corruption or other evil influence in our politics.