With Poor Immigrants to America

by Stephen Graham

INGENIOUS PHOTOGRAPHS OF AMERICAN TYPES.

Making the city beautiful and fostering a love for the home-city, however dingy and dreary that city may at present be, is one of the most potent and attractive expressions of American patriotism, and it is well to note the characteristic. It has great promise for the America of the future, the America which the sons and daughters of the immigrants will inherit. The America of the future is to be one of artistically imagined cities and proud, responsible citizens. Even now, despite the unlovely state of New York and Chicago and the reputation for devastating ugliness which America has in Europe, there are clear signs of the commencement of an era of grace and order. Already the parks of the American cities are the finest in the world, and are worth much study in themselves. American townsmen have loved Nature enough to plant trees so that every decent town on the western continent has become a cluster of shady avenues. Some cities favour limes, some maples; New Haven is known as "The City of Elms"; in Washington alone it is said that there are 78,000 street trees; Cleveland has been called "The City of the Forest." Wherever I tramped in America I found the most delicious shade in the town streets—excepting, of course, the streets of the coaling infernos of Pennsylvania. No idea of the expense of land deters the American from getting space and greenery into the midst of his wilderness of brick and mortar. It is said that the value of the parks in such a city as Newark, for instance, is over two and a quarter millions of pounds (nine million dollars). "Our aim," says a Newark circular, "is the city beautiful, and it requires the aid of everyday patriots to make it so. Pericles said, 'Make Athens beautiful, for beauty is now the most victorious power in the world.'"

America has become the place of continuous crusades—against dirt, against municipal corruption, immorality, noise. It would surprise many Europeans to know the fight which is being made against bell-advertisement, steam whistles, organ-grinders' music, shouts of street hawkers, and the exuberance of holiday-makers.

"Don't be ashamed to fight for your city to get it clean and beautiful, to rid it of its sweat-shops and hells," I read in a Chicago paper. "Some folk call our disease Chicagoitis, but that is a thousand times better than Chicagophobia. Those suffering from Chicagophobia are as dangerous to society as those who have hydrophobia."

Then, most potent expression of all in American patriotism is the American's belief in the future of its democracy, the faith which is not shattered by the seeming bad habits of the common people, the flocking to music halls and cinema shows, the reading of the yellow press.

It has been noted in the last few years that there is a distinct falling off in the acceleration of reading at the public libraries. This is attributed to the extraordinary amount of time spent by men and women at the "movies," when they would otherwise be reading. Such a fact would breed pessimism in Great Britain or Europe were it established. But America has such trust in the hearts and hopes of the common people that it approves of the picture show. "If readers of books go back to the cinema, let them go," says the American; "it is like a child in the third class voluntarily going back to the first class, because the work being done there is more suited to his state of mind." The cinema show is doing the absolutely elementary work among the vast number of immigrants, who are almost illiterate. It is not a be-all and an end-all, but stimulates the mind and sets it moving, thinking, striving. The picture show will bring good readers to the libraries in time. It is the first step in the cultural ladder of the democracy.

Then people of good taste in Europe decry the reading of newspapers; a leader of thought and politics like A. J. Balfour can boast that he never reads the papers. But America says, "You have the newspaper habit. This habit is one of the most beneficial and entertaining habits you have. Few people read too many newspapers. Most people do not read enough." This, of American papers of all papers in the world. But let me go on quoting the most significant words of America's great librarian, J. Cotton Dana:

Readers of newspapers are the best critics of them. The more they are read the wiser the readers; the wiser the readers the more criticisms, and the more the newspapers are criticised the better they become.

Do you say this does not apply to the yellow journal? I would reply that it does. The yellow journal caters all the time to the beginners in reading, who are also the beginners in newspaper reading. A new crop of these beginners in reading is born every year. This new crop likes its reading simply printed, in large letters, and with plenty of pictures. The more of this new crop of readers there are the more the yellow journals flourish; and the more the yellow journals flourish the sooner this new crop is educated by the yellow journals, by the mere process of reading them, and the sooner they get into the habit of reading journals that are not yellow and contain a larger quantity of more reliable information, until at last the yellow journals are overpassed by the readers they have themselves trained.