Chapter XIII: Preface (6)

The war has brought home to the nation the stern necessity of a united country. For the safety of the nation our ideals of freedom, justice, and opportunity must be put into practice for all the people of the nation. The “square deal” that we stand for must be given at home, the opportunity for better living and the development of character must not be denied any of our people. Only in this way shall we have loyal American citizens who value their allegiance and who feel the obligation to uphold our national ideals.

=The Immigrant Is a Great National Asset=: The country has been built up largely by his work. The railroads, the mines, the great buildings, the subways, waterworks, steel-mills, sugar-refining, clothes, cigars, furniture, most of the products of our factories, are made by immigrants. The great industries of the country would stop without the millions of hands that they supply.

The immigrant often comes here with high hopes of improving his condition, and he finds himself looked down on with contempt by the native American, exploited at every turn, and every advantage taken of his ignorance. After an alien is once admitted, there has been relatively little attempt made to protect him, to see that he is helped to settle where his skill can best be utilized, or even to aid him in learning our language and customs.

Many foreigners were skilled farmers before they came to this country, but although there is great need for such labor on the farms here, little provision is made to use their skill in that way. The immigrant often has to pay to get a chance to earn his living. When he gets a job his labor is exploited; he has to accept lower wages than an American would take; the living-quarters provided for him may not be fit for human habitation.

Here is a recent picture of a suburb of New York City, a community of 16,000 foreign-born workers: The married workman pays from fifteen to twenty dollars a month rent for a three- or four-room flat, the rooms about ten feet square, with no light but kerosene-lamps. The average family has four children, and each family takes from two to six boarders to help pay the rent. The only running water is on the first floor, and there is one out-of-door toilet. Is it any wonder that the children, the younger generation, are both sickly and lawless?

The factory buildings are large and well lighted, but in many communities of foreign-born unskilled workmen the housing provisions allow for no privacy and are a detriment to family life and morality. Such conditions are particularly bad for the immigrant woman whose work confines her indoors.

It is natural that the foreigner should settle with others of his own nationality, so almost every city and village in the State has a colony “across the track.” In the native section there will be police protection, paved streets, running water, sewage and garbage disposal, but this protection often does not extend “across the track.” There, disorder and filth abound and the death-rate is much higher.

=Every injustice to the immigrant reacts on us as a people.= He must be given a square deal before he can be made into a loyal American.

A common language is the first essential of a united nation. There are solid blocks in New York and other cities where not a word of English is spoken or understood. It is hopeless to try to make Americans of persons who do not understand our language. Speaking English is the first step in citizenship, and the public schools are the logical centers in which to make loyal Americans of our alien population.

=Night Schools= are sometimes provided, but there are many localities still without them; and, after all, it is difficult for a man who has been at manual labor all day to study at night. They are most successful when they are made interesting with stories and games. Experiments have been made with classes held from five to seven o’clock in the afternoon in the factory buildings, and employers often welcome them.

=Neighborhood Classes for Women= are being held in the afternoon in some localities. In this case the babies must be included. Provision is made for them in a separate room with a nurse or kindergartner to take charge of them. The best lessons for the mothers are not found in books, but are based on the interests connected with their daily lives and their domestic duties. Paper patterns and a lesson in how to make garments for her baby will chain her attention, and the English names of articles used will be learned unconsciously. “Playing store” with the articles she depends on to feed her family will fascinate her and teach her more practical English.

The immigrant woman is often keen to learn American ways and customs. She is eager to know how to take better care of her family. When the public schools of New York City give away pamphlets about economical cooking, the call for them from the mothers of the pupils is so great that the supply is soon exhausted.

The need for some special help for the foreign woman was never as great as it is to-day. There are about four hundred thousand of them in New York State who have become citizens because their husbands are citizens. They are going to vote. Many of them cannot speak English. In the course of time the law providing that a woman shall take the citizenship of her husband without qualifying for it herself, may be changed, but meanwhile these women are voters. They need help and education, and for the protection of the State the community must give it to them.

=Home Teaching= of women in the tenements as part of the regular school system is being tried in California. Teachers are sent into the homes to show by practical demonstration economical cooking, how to improve sanitary conditions, and to teach the mother how to care for her children.

=Naturalization= would do more to arouse a sense of responsibility in the alien if it were conferred with a ceremony which would appeal to the imagination. Many of the people who come to our shores come from countries where beauty and ceremonial are part of the national life. The process of naturalization, as conducted in many courts, is usually perfunctory and often sordid. If the courts are crowded, an applicant may have to come six or eight times with his witnesses, losing not only time, but being in danger of losing his job. He is often ignorant of the whole subject of government; he may know nothing of the questions involved in an election, but there is rarely an effort made to teach him anything of American ideals. The political club that wants his vote is the only thing connected with government that pays any attention to him, or offers him help. Often he finds that his vote has a market value. So the ballot, the symbol of freedom and self-government, becomes to him only a bit of graft. Definite standards of citizenship that apply to all alike, better tests of their knowledge of English and of our government, would help to impress on aliens the meaning of the oath of allegiance.

=Uniform Naturalization Laws=: In New York State an alien has to wait five years to become a citizen with a vote. In Nebraska, a Turk or a Greek or an Armenian who landed six months before, if he has taken out his citizenship papers, is permitted to vote, although he may have no educational qualifications of any kind, and know no English nor anything about our government. In seven other States a man can vote simply by declaring his intention of becoming a citizen.

=Ignorance of Laws=: Besides the lack of provision for learning the duties of citizenship, there is little opportunity for the immigrant either to become familiar with our laws or to learn respect for the law. He gets his knowledge of the vote from the ward boss, and he learns contempt for the law when he sees the curtains of the saloons pulled down in front, and the back door open. As he sees the constant disregard for law all around him, liberty becomes license in his mind. Then as he prospers and grows well-to-do, building laws, factory inspection, fire protection, and other attempts at government regulations, often seem to him restrictions which are to be evaded as much as possible.

Sweatshops and the padrone system are to his mind part of the American system for getting rich. In taking advantage of them for his own profit he feels that he is only following the custom of the country. A contempt for law and opposition to any attempt of the law to interfere with what he considers his rights are the natural results.

The study of civics[10] in the public schools should begin not in the high schools and colleges, but in the lower grades. A majority of children leave school before they reach the grammar school. A practical course in government may be made simple and interesting even for them.

The idea has been seriously advanced that the oath of allegiance, accompanied by a dignified and beautiful ceremony, might be administered to groups of boys and girls as they reach twenty-one years of age, in a manner to impress on the public mind the value of citizenship. The “citizen receptions” which have been given monthly in Cleveland and Los Angeles, to the new citizens of that period, have done this. After a patriotic program, with the judge of the court presiding, each successful applicant is very proud when he receives his naturalization papers like a diploma, awarded before his family and friends. Such a ceremonial cannot fail to carry home the conviction of the value of the citizenship so conferred, and the importance of living up to the responsibility imposed by it.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] The study of citizenship in the public schools may be made a vigorous aid to Americanization. Many foreign parents depend on their children for their knowledge of the customs of the new country. What the children learn in the public schools has its influence on the life of the family at home. If the children are taught orderliness, consideration for others, and respect for authority, they carry those qualities home. If they are undisciplined, they take home disregard for parental authority, and a lack of consideration for the rights of others, that will stand in the way of their comprehending the first principles of good citizenship.

XXIII

PATRIOTISM AND CITIZENSHIP

From the beginning of history there have always been individuals who have chosen death rather than slavery. As intelligence has grown and has displaced ignorance, their number has increased, but it is only within the last century and a half that people have demanded liberty in sufficient numbers to make it the fundamental principle in the forming of great nations.

We, in the United States, are the inheritors of the most courageous and forward thinking of the men and women of all nations who cared enough for human liberty to break all ties of home and country in order that they might “establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, and secure the blessings of liberty” for themselves and for us.

These phrases from the Constitution of the United States have usually been only words to us. We have been safe, our homes have been secure, our loved ones have been protected. Most of us have not personally been conscious of any overwhelming injustices, and those that we have heard of have been far enough away not to be disturbing. We have come and gone as we chose; we have thought and spoken as we pleased; we have worshiped as we would; our property has been safe; we have damned the government or any man in any public office without thought of danger to ourselves; we have feared no man. Why should we have talked about liberty or human freedom—it has been secure enough. So the call to defend liberty to some has fallen on dull ears, and the demand for an awakened patriotism in some places has gone unheeded. As a people, we have forgotten about the long centuries of fighting for freedom, the tremendous cost that has been paid, and the blood that has been shed.

Think what those words, “safety, defense, tranquillity, justice,” must have meant throughout the centuries when no man’s life was safe, when not only his welfare, but that of his family, was subject to the whim of the government, when he could be thrown into prison without knowing the reason why, when the honor of his wife or daughter could be taken without his being able to protest. Read your history again, of the middle ages, of England in the seventeenth century, of France before the Revolution, of Germany in the eighteenth century. Then read of the early struggles in America. It was nature and the Indians that man was fighting then. For personal safety he fought to make war and raiding unprofitable; he had to meet brute force with brute force, to prove his mastery over nature and savagery, and to gain peace and safety for himself and his home.

It is the untold sacrifices of countless men and women that have made liberty possible. That it shall be maintained, and that the world shall not be allowed to slip back, is a debt that every man and woman owes to the past.

Those who inherit the fruits of this age-long struggle must be ready to pay their part, for themselves and for the sake of those they love, for the sake of those who won it for them, and for those who shall come after them. The duty which rests on them is as great as the duty that was on the men of the Revolution, and on those who won the Magna Charta. If they do not, they are weakening the forces of civilization.

For liberty is not yet complete. There may be as great a struggle ahead of the world as lies in the past. Before the tremendous upheaval of the war, we took it for granted that the liberties we possess were common, more or less, in most of the civilized world. Since then the horrors, the unbelievable human suffering, the suspension of all human rights, in the region of the great struggle, we have laid to the war, and have not realized that in many parts of civilized Europe, before the war, human freedom as we know it did not exist, and that the denial of certain rights which we claim as fundamental, was common.

At the foundation of our national existence has been that belief in the principles of liberty, justice, and opportunity which the Constitution expresses. The rights given us by the founders of our nation have been the ideals which other democratic governments have sought to follow. They have been sufficiently elastic to meet the growth of the world’s belief in democracy, and to provide for all new developments in the ideals of human liberty. If these ideals have been denied to any of our people, it has been the fault of us as citizens. The degree in which they are maintained depends on us. Instead of denying the liberties that we actually enjoy, would we not do better to advance them and add to them? In place of tearing down the great structure already erected, is it not wiser to help to correct its imperfections and to continue to build on it?

There is an intelligent part of the public that desires good government and will help to maintain our ideals of justice, but they are in the minority. There is also a part that sees in government only their own selfish profit, but they are also a minority. The great mass of people are indifferent until something arouses them. They would rather be left alone by bad government than be bothered by good government. That is the great problem of democracy—to arouse all the people to a realization of the necessity of their active interest in and support of that democracy, to increase their sense of individual responsibility; and that is the reason for universal suffrage—to put yeast into a people and to ferment their dormant interest. Democracy is not static. It exists only as it is upheld.

We hear about the denials of justice and the failures of democracy more than we do about its blessings. Our sense of perspective is often wrong. We talk about an act of lawlessness in the United States, even if it is being prosecuted with energy by the government, and class it with a deliberate attempt by a government to crush a people. We make no distinction between a State with deficient labor laws and a country where the laboring classes have no right to make themselves heard. We see no difference between a suppression of disloyal utterances in time of war and a people that is never allowed to speak freely, or a censoring of papers in war-time and a press that never prints anything but what it is told to print.

We are apt to magnify the evils of democracy at home, and to forget the magnificent heritage of liberty that belongs to us.

What are the special privileges which we enjoy?

_First._—_Personal Security_, the right to live our daily lives without fear of personal danger, the right of being secure from unwarrantable seizure of person. This right has been ours so long that we do not know how precious a right it is. It is difficult even to conjure up in imagination an idea of what it would mean to be in daily fear of one’s safety.

_Second._—_Personal Liberty: Freedom of Thought and Speech._ Life would be unthinkable to us without this liberty. To stifle one’s thought, to be afraid to let a suspicion of it leak out would mean to make life unbearable. _Freedom of the Press_ is a right that we enjoy more than any other nation. _Freedom of Worship_ has so long been unquestioned that we forget that it has been little more than a short century since it was established. _Freedom of Assembly_ is a right which we accept without question.

_The Right of Petition_ was won by a bitter struggle. We can scarcely imagine that there was ever a time when it was denied.

_Third._—_Equality before the Law_ is a right that is guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, the right to a fair trial by jury, of habeas corpus, and due process of the law.

_Fourth._—_Security of Property_ is guaranteed by our Constitution. Private property may not be taken even by the government without a fair price being paid for it.

_Fifth._—_Political Rights_ are guaranteed to our people, universal suffrage, complete political liberty. This is the most valuable of all rights, because it is the right that secures all other rights.[11]

These rights are not absolute; they are dependent on public opinion as well as on the law. They are imperfectly administered. To the extent that they are denied, we must each one of us accept part of the blame, because liberty of action is ours. In time of war public safety may demand their suspension, and the people may give permission that this may be done temporarily.

The privilege of citizenship brings with it the obligation to defend the government of which that citizenship is a part. The right to vote is a right which might well be dependent on the loyalty of the citizen, and on his willingness to defend and maintain his country.

Men say even to-day that the vote has no value, that they do not care about it. Let them live for a time in a country where they would not be allowed to vote, where the people are governed by an autocratic power, and how long before they would be willing to sacrifice anything, even life itself, for political liberty?

The citizen of a democracy has not only the duty to defend his country, but is bound to transmit to future generations something better than he inherited from the past. As it is his part in time of war to defend the liberties that he enjoys, so it is his duty in time of peace to do his best to develop and strengthen liberty and justice.

That is a task even more difficult than to fight in time of war. The discouragements, the disappointments, are many.

Women are bound to meet these disappointments. The vote for which they have worked so hard and so long will not accomplish what they wish. Often it will seem to accomplish very little. The machinery of democracy is cumbersome and very imperfect. It is often heartbreaking to try to move it. It does not easily register the popular will. But in spite of the imperfections, and the discouragements, and the downright corruption, the foundation on which it is built is the best that the world has yet found. There are many labor-saving devices still to be invented for the bettering of the machinery of government—protective measures to be found against political corruption and to safeguard the interests of the people.

Side by side with the improvement in the mechanism of government must come a quickening of the public conscience. The yeast of universal suffrage is already working toward that end. The golden rule as the standard of action in government will make few mistakes. The prospect for an improved democracy in New York State is bright. The war has swept away many prejudices and has clarified many problems. Men and women are working together as never before, whole-heartedly, for the benefit of the State. To adapt the words of President Wilson, “the climax of the culminating and final war for human liberty has come, and we must be ready to put our own strength, our own highest purpose, our own integrity and devotion to the test,” and we must do this not only now in time of war, but also after peace has come, in the dedication of ourselves to the service of justice, freedom, and opportunity for all in our nation.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] Universal suffrage has meant in the past only manhood suffrage. With the ratification of the woman suffrage amendment to the National Constitution, universal suffrage will become for the first time a fact.