A Stake in the Land

by Peter A. Speek

In regard to afternoon classes for the women, one of the home teachers, Mrs. Amanda Mathews Chase, writes as follows: [51]

Organize mothers' classes to meet afternoons at the schoolhouse. This group work seems to me absolutely necessary in order to cover the ground efficiently, and also because of the outlook and inspiration for the mothers.... I would suggest forming classes from the leading nationalities, each class to meet two afternoons a week. One afternoon the program can be an English lesson, followed by cooking, cleaning, or laundry. The other afternoon the program might comprise English followed by sewing, mending, weaving, or similar handcraft instruction. Sanitation, including personal hygiene, and patriotic teaching should be kept in mind.... Every forenoon will be spent in the homes. After all, the classes will only be islands in the sea of your visiting. You must visit to form the classes and visit to hold them. You must visit to see that the knowledge absorbed at school is actually put into practice at the home. You must visit to talk over many matters too delicate and personal to be taken up on class afternoons.

The school system of Los Angeles has, under this law, employed an educated Jewish woman from Russia for work in the colony of the Russian sectarian peasants. The impression of the writer when he visited the colony was that she was doing splendid work in helping the peasant women. The writer's belief is that if she had been of the Russian nationality she would have accomplished still better results, as the writer observed some antisemitic feeling among the peasants in connection with her. One peasant woman told the writer that this home teacher was a good protector for them, but did not recognize that she was their educator. As the colony is large, the home teacher really could not do much educational work other than to supervise the attendance of the children at school and to help disentangle family difficulties. It would be advisable to train and employ home teachers who are of the same nationality as the people of the colony in which they work.

ORGANIZATION OF IMMIGRANT WOMEN

Immigrant women's organizations have been already started here and there on the initiative, and by the efforts of the immigrant women themselves. For instance, Finnish women in Calumet, Michigan, have organized an "Americanization Club" for Finnish women, with the intention of extending the movement into other Finnish colonies in America. The program of the meetings consists of learning American songs, of addresses on America, its history, civics, women's social work, child welfare. The club activities hope to combat disloyalty, which the club members believe to exist among a number of the immigrants of certain nationalities. The main aim of the club, as its leaders state, is to assist in the Americanization of the Finnish women in America—to eliminate the hyphen, to make the Finnish-American women Americans.

The Council of Jewish Women in Newark, New Jersey, has established an Americanization center for the Jewish women, mothers and grown-up Jewish girls; while this center is in the city it illustrates the principle involved. The activities of the "center" consist of an afternoon English class for mothers, in order that they may "overtake their children on the long road of learning," and of an English class in the evening for Jewish girls who work in the factories. The chairman of the council states that they have found a way to make the learning of English really interesting to the foreign-born woman, that until now the woman who wanted to keep up with her children in English had had to go to the evening school, where she found a mixture of men and women of all races and all ages. She soon fell behind the younger and smarter pupils, and lost her interest. In these English classes of the "center" the women are practically all of the same age, the same race, and have the same interests.

These attempts at Americanization by the immigrant women themselves, under the stress of the tragedies caused by the estrangement of their children through the American schooling, point the way to the remedy above outlined. Help the immigrant mothers to keep pace with their children. This is even more important, the writer believes, than work with the immigrant fathers.

THE PUBLIC EVENING SCHOOL

When the writer visited an immigrant rural colony and found there a large number of old-time immigrants still unnaturalized, there were two explanations given. There was, first, the red tape in the naturalization proceedings; and second, ignorance of English and of American geography, history, and form of government. There had been no opportunity to learn all these things, although the colonists had wanted to. Only in a few cases did their own neglect seem to be a cause for their not being naturalized.

The following field notes of the writer, taken at random, illustrate the situation in regard to the knowledge of English and the naturalization of the settlers in the immigrant colonies.