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Title: The American Spirit in the Writings of Americans of Foreign Birth
Author: Various
Language: English
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT IN THE WRITINGS OF AMERICANS OF FOREIGN BIRTH
* * * * *
The American Spirit in the Writings of Americans of Foreign Birth
SELECTIONS CHOSEN AND EDITED
BY
ROBERT E. STAUFFER, A. M., B. L. S.
[Illustration]
The Christopher Publishing House
Boston, U. S. A.
* * * * *
COPYRIGHT 1922
BY THE CHRISTOPHER PUBLISHING HOUSE
PRINTED IN U. S. A.
* * * * *
To my revered friend and teacher
Joseph Lorain Shunk
And to my younger friend
Henry Praus
The one born in the United States
The other in far-away Czecho-Slovakia
But in both of whom I have found
True and noble manifestations
Of the American spirit
* * * * *
Let us judge our immigrants also out of their own mouths, as future
generations will be sure to judge them.
_Mary Antin._
_He_ is an American, who, leaving behind him all his ancient
prejudices and manners, receives new ones from the new mode of life
he has embraced, the new government he obeys, and the new rank he
holds.... The American is a new man, who acts upon new principles; he
must therefore entertain new ideas, and form new opinions.
_Crèvecoeur._
Where the schoolhouse banner flaunts the morning breeze,
Where the rough farm student strides amid the wheat,
Where the voice of knowledge fills a thousand halls,
Where the athletes in their mimic warfare meet;
Where the master grasps the brand
Of lightning in his hand,
And the hidden Powers of Air to service bent
Proclaim the issue of the long experiment,
I behold the future race
Arise in strength and grace;
Shall they falter? Shall they fail? Shall they endure?
Lo, the onward march is sure.
_William James Dawson._
INTRODUCTION
A visit to the public library of many towns and cities of five to
twenty thousand inhabitants, and inquiry among persons of considerable
and even college education, reveals a widespread unacquaintance with
the writings of our foreign-born citizens. Seldom does one find the
books of more than four or five of these authors upon the shelves of
the smaller public and college libraries; yet these institutions are
doing much to develop public opinion in countless communities made up
for the most part of native Americans who have hitherto been largely
ignorant of and indifferent to the condition and aims of the foreign
population, but whose intelligent and sympathetic interest in the
foreign-born must be aroused if the great gulf between the two is to be
bridged.
The funds of many libraries, it is true, are so limited as to preclude
the purchase of a majority of these books, worth while as they are;
yet the splendid American spirit to be found in many of them ought
to be more familiar to Americans, whether native or foreign-born.
This volume of selections is offered, therefore, not as an equivalent
for the reading of the complete works here represented, but to help
stimulate a more general interest in their authors and in books of this
type, and to show with a cumulative emphasis the essence of the genuine
Americanism with which these writings are imbued.
As one reads these and other works of the foreign-born in historical
sequence, he will notice that their manner of writing has become less
reflective and philosophical and more critical and impassioned, but
that keeping pace there has been an intense and burning patriotism.
The early colonists and immigrants were seldom touched except in their
political liberties; recent immigrants have been growing increasingly
sensitive to the infringement of their social and economic rights.
This, of course, is a quality not peculiar to the writings of the
foreign-born, but is incident to the modern industrial and social
situation with conditions very different from those obtaining in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The struggle against social
forces with their great complexity and ever renewed and boundless
energy has demanded of the recent immigrants the highest qualities for
success.
Nearly all the selections included in this volume will be found charged
with a strong human quality, revealing the poignant homesickness of the
stranger in a new world, his sensitiveness, his forward-looking hope,
his realization of both the humorous and the tragic side of his case,
his fine hero-worship, his firm belief in the unique mission and high
destiny of his adopted country, and his faith in the brotherhood of man
and the dawning of a new day upon the earth.
It is not within the scope of this introduction to plead for any
particular immigration policy. Whether we shall adopt one of rigid
restriction or assume a liberal attitude, and what shall be the bases
of the selection of the immigrant in the future, are questions to be
answered not by the petty politician, the unscrupulous demagogue,
the uninformed provincial, or the alarmists of little faith who, in
their hysteria, would completely reverse the traditions of the nation
by closing the gates entirely, but are matters to be determined by
fair-minded and representative leaders after a careful and unbiased
study of the problem in its various economic, social and national
aspects. The chief concern here is with our attitude toward the
millions of unassimilated immigrants already among us. To them it would
be well for most of us to give our attention before attempting to solve
the intricate and perplexing question of an immigration policy. Perhaps
if we did, we might get more light and arrive at a more unanimous and
consistent conclusion regarding the admission of those who are now said
to be ready in such great numbers to knock at our gates.
In these selections, it is believed, will be found convincing proof
that to try to educate and Americanize the foreign-born by force is
not only unwise and will prove futile, because it flies in the face of
the principles of human nature, but is also unnecessary. Still, the
dejection on the part of many persons over our apparent failure to
assimilate the immigrant is truly pathetic. But why so much despair
about this, when countless thousands of native Americans have little
or no realizing sense of the duties of citizenship? Who is the more
culpable, the man who, being in a new land and often lonely and
neglected, finds it difficult to overleap the barriers of timidity and
suspicion and a foreign language and strange customs, in order to seize
the larger opportunities; or the man who, though born and reared in the
midst of all the advantages of American life, fails to appreciate his
precious heritage and treats with indifference or abuses the sacred
right of franchise? Certainly hostility and neglect will accomplish
nothing, where hospitality and helpfulness may go far to induce the
newcomers to avail themselves of the opportunities and responsibilities
open to them in America.
An illustration of how readily the foreigner may respond to the least
show of kindness and fellowship is afforded by the following incident.
A traveller on a west-bound train out of New York was accosted by
a young Italian immigrant, who handed him a card of the Italian
Immigration Society on the reverse of which was written, “Please direct
this man to Santa Cruz train.” Now it happened that the American had
once visited Italy and had picked up a smattering of the language, and
partly by this and partly by the use of signs he did his best to convey
the desired information. He then asked the young man into his own seat;
and, as they talked together of Italy and the places the American had
visited, the youth’s face glowed with the joy of remembrance. And
then it was revealed that this sturdy and warm-hearted Italian, from
whom the American might have turned as from a “dago” and “scum of
the earth,” was one of the heroes of the Great War; that he had been
wounded in the terrible disaster of Caporetto, and had received from
the Italian minister of war testimonials and medals for gallant conduct
in battle.
It is at least a question whether a vast amount of time, energy, and
money has not been misspent in a hysterical endeavor to get the adult
immigrant to change his vernacular and foreign ways. Realizing from
my own experience, both as a student and as a teacher of English to
foreigners, the immense effort necessary to acquire even a rudimentary
knowledge of a strange language after the plastic period of youth
has passed, I am convinced that too much stress may be laid upon the
importance of the mere acquisition of the English language by the adult
immigrant.
A change in the manners and customs of the immigrant has undoubtedly a
useful and necessary part in his Americanization; but undue emphasis
upon mere externals may, with its false implications, easily create
erroneous impressions. Just now there comes to mind in this connection
an illustration prominently displayed upon the front page of one of
our most respected periodicals,--a photograph of an immigrant mother
standing between her two sons, one of whom is garbed in American
hat and overcoat, the other in uncouth workaday attire. Beneath the
picture appears this question, “Which is Americanized?” One feels he
must protest against the shallow and all too prevalent thinking which
finds in the mere alteration of language and dress the essentials of
Americanism, and which consequently has so little constructive and
farsighted assistance to give to the momentous work of Americanization.
It has been far too frequently demonstrated that a person may not only
wear American clothes and speak English fluently, but may have been
educated from his youth up in American institutions without being
really Americanized.
The elder generation should, of course, be aided in every reasonable
and practicable way; but it should soberly be borne in mind that it
is going to take decades, if not centuries, to Americanize America,
and that the hope of the nation is in the children, both native and
foreign-born. It is a splendid demonstration of the truth of this that
the most fervid tributes to America come from the lips of those who
have arrived in the United States in the impressionable years of youth.
If, then, the rate of progress toward perfection is to be appreciably
accelerated, there must be much more liberality in the support of the
public schools and other educational and humanizing institutions.
What is an American, or what is Americanism? Many persons to-day are
asking this question, to which perhaps only the future can give a
complete answer. I venture to say, however, that an American is not
one who expects to find in the United States Utopian conditions, but
one who realizes the imperfections of American society and yet has
faith in the ultimate goal toward which the diverse human elements
here are struggling; that he is one who does not seek or propose any
single panacea for the ills of the nation, but who, above all else,
is conscious of his spiritual unity with those American minds that
are striving in the sanest and best, though various, ways for the
attainment of the high ends for which the republic was founded, and
that desire to see the golden rule and “reason and the will of God”
prevail in American life.
And it is just this consciousness of spiritual unity that is perhaps
the most intense and valuable element in the writings of those who
have paid the highest price for their citizenship, and that is so
well worth bringing to the attention of those who, whether native or
foreign-born, have never passed from the “centre of indifference” into
the “everlasting yea” of patriotism and national feeling.
Much available and appropriate material has of necessity been omitted
from this compilation, periodical articles in particular, with two
exceptions, being excluded. But although the selections chosen
constitute the utterances of only a small minority of the foreign-born,
it is felt that their validity and representative character are not
impaired. It must be remembered that there are thousands of American
citizens of foreign birth leading contented and useful lives,--lawyers,
physicians, clergymen, artists, teachers, and craftsmen, whose ideals
and life-work have either not found expression in books, or whose
writings have been impersonal in character, but who, if they were to
write down their feelings, would express themselves in sentiments
similar to those of their gifted compatriots of literary tendencies;
and even among the inarticulate mass there is a potential devotion,
which, under the proper conditions, can be kindled into an ardent
loyalty and patriotism.
Theodore Roosevelt once said, in writing the foreword to one of the
works here quoted: “When we tend to grow disheartened over some of
the developments of our American civilization, it is well worth
while seeing what this same civilization holds for starved and eager
souls who have elsewhere been denied what here we hold to be as a
matter of course, rights free to all--although we do not, as we
should do, make these rights accessible to all who are willing with
resolute earnestness to strive for them.” That in part has been the
aim in bringing these selections together. It is hoped that they may
contribute not a little to a better understanding between America, new
and old, and that they may help to allay the fears of those who have
been inclined to ascribe most of our national ills to the presence
among us of the foreign-born, and who have had their share in the “wave
of blind distrust of the foreigner” which has recently swept over the
land. Surely, no one is justified in judging the foreign-born, or is
worthy or fitted to aid in educating them in regard to the duties of
citizenship, unless he has first acquainted himself with their hopes,
their disappointments, their aspirations, the travail and pathos
of their new birth, and their deep-rooted love for America, as set
forth in their own writings; for these are probably the strongest
Americanization documents we possess and one of the surest proofs of
the soundness of our institutions.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For generous permission to use copyrighted selections grateful
acknowledgment is given to the following publishers and individuals: To
Messrs. Harper & Brothers for the selections by M. E. Ravage; to The
Pilgrim Press for the selection by George A. Gordon; to Messrs. Charles
Scribner’s Sons for the selection by Edwin L. Godkin; to The Four Seas
Company for the selections by Robert M. Wernaer; to Fleming H. Revell
Company for the selections by Edward A. Steiner; to J. B. Lippincott
Company for the use of part of the address, “True Americanism,” by
Carl Schurz; to The Christopher Publishing House for the selections by
Enrico C. Sartorio; to Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. for the selection by
Felix Adler; to Messrs. P. J. Kenedy & Sons, to the trustees of the
estate of Mary J. A. O’Reilly, and to the daughters of the poet, Mrs.
William E. Hocking, Miss Mary Boyle O’Reilly and Miss Elizabeth Boyle
O’Reilly for the use of poems or parts of poems from the work of John
Boyle O’Reilly; to The Century Company and to Miss Anzia Yezierska for
the selection, “How I Found America,” from the _Century Magazine_; to
The Century Company also for the selection by Oscar Straus; to Mr.
Seraphim G. Canoutas for the selection from his “Hellenism in America”;
to The State Historical Society of Iowa and to Mr. Jacob Van der Zee
for the selection from “The Hollanders of Iowa”; to Messrs. Doubleday,
Page & Co. and to Mr. Stefano Miele for the selection from an article
by Mr. Miele in the _World’s Work_; to The Macmillan Company for the
selections by Angelo Patri and E. G. Stern; to The Macmillan Company
and The Outlook Company for the selections by Jacob Riis; and to Mr.
Otto H. Kahn and to Mr. John Kulamer for the selections appearing under
their names.
The selections by Mary Antin and Abraham M. Rihbany, and the one from
Carl Schurz’s “Abraham Lincoln” are used by permission of, and by
special arrangement with, Houghton Mifflin Company, the authorized
publishers of their works.
Thanks are here also cordially given to those persons, including
several authors not mentioned above, who, by their courtesies and
encouragement, and in a number of instances by specific suggestions,
have assisted in the work of compilation and editing.
CONTENTS[1]
PAGE
INTRODUCTION 9
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 15
PHILIP SCHAFF 20
Cosmopolitan Character of “American
Nationality” 21
FRANCES D’ARUSMONT 29
The Constitution and Establishment of
the Federal Government 30
FRANCIS LIEBER 33
A German Immigrant Points Out the
Dangers of Segregation 34
Political Liberty in America 36
CARL SCHURZ 38
An Immigrant’s Tribute to Lincoln 39
“True Americanism” 40
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN 44
An Immigrant’s Faith in Democracy 45
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY 52
“The Exile of the Gael” 52
“The Pilgrim Fathers” 54
“Liberty Lighting the World” 55
“America” 57
HANS MATTSON 58
Scandinavian Contribution to American
Nationality 59
JACOB RIIS 61
“A Young Man’s Hero”: An Immigrant’s
Tribute to Roosevelt 63
JACOB VAN DER ZEE 66
“Why Dutch Emigrants Turned to America” 67
EDWARD BOK 71
OSCAR SOLOMON STRAUS 72
“America and the Spirit of
American Judaism” 73
FELIX ADLER 77
The American Ideal 78
MARY ANTIN 82
An Immigrant’s Tribute to the Public
School and to George Washington 83
“The Law of the Fathers”: A View of
the Declaration of Independence 89
ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY 91
America Offers Something Better
than Money 92
An Immigrant Tells his Struggles with
the English Language 94
EDWARD ALFRED STEINER 96
“The Criminal Immigrant” 97
Industrialism and the Immigrant 105
GEORGE A. GORDON 111
“The Foreign-born American Citizen”:
Cost, Privilege and Duties of his
Citizenship 112
SERAPHIM G. CANOUTAS 121
Americanization: Its Principles
and Meaning 123
STEFANO MIELE 125
Some Obstacles to Americanization 126
JOHN KULAMER 130
“The American Spirit and
Americanization” 131
ENRICO C. SARTORIO 136
Patronizing the Foreigner 137
Training for Citizenship 140
OTTO HERMANN KAHN 143
“Capital and Labor--A Fair Deal” 144
MARCUS ELI RAVAGE 150
The New Immigration 151
What College Life in the West Did for
an Immigrant 152
ELIZABETH G. STERN 160
The Pathos of Readjustment 161
ROBERT M. WERNAER 166
“The Soul of America” 167
“We Must Be True” 172
ANGELO PATRI 173
An Immigrant and His Father 174
An Immigrant and the Children 177
ANZIA YEZIERSKA 181
“How I Found America” 182
* * * * *
LIST OF AUTHORS WITH THEIR WRITINGS FROM WHICH SELECTIONS HAVE BEEN
TAKEN FOR INCLUSION IN THIS VOLUME
PAGE
Adler, Felix 77
_The World Crisis and Its Meaning_
Antin, Mary 82
_The Promised Land_
_They Who Knock at Our Gates_
Bok, Edward 71
Canoutas, Seraphim G. 121
_Hellenism in America_
D’Arusmont, Frances (1795-1852) 29
_Views of Society and Manners
in America_
Godkin, Edwin L. (1831-1902) 44
_Problems of Modern Democracy_
Gordon, George A. 111
_The Appeal of the Nation_
Kahn, Otto H. 143
_Capital and Labor--A Fair Deal._
Pam. pub. by the author
Kulamer, John 130
_The American Spirit
and Americanization_
Lieber, Francis (1800-1872) 33
_The Stranger in America_
Mattson, Hans (1832-1893) 58
_Reminiscences_
Miele, Stefano 125
_America As a Place to Make Money._
(In “World’s Work,” December, 1920)
O’Reilly, John Boyle (1844-1890) 52
_Selected Poems._ Kenedy
Patri, Angelo 173
_A Schoolmaster of the Great City_
Ravage, Marcus E. 150
_An American in the Making_
Rihbany, Abraham M. 91
_A Far Journey_
Riis, Jacob (1849-1914) 61
_The Making of an American_
_Theodore Roosevelt, the Citizen_
Sartorio, Enrico C. 136
_Social and Religious Life of
Italians in America_
Schaff, Philip (1819-1893) 20
_American Nationality._ Pam.
Schurz, Carl (1829-1906) 38
_Abraham Lincoln: An Essay._ Houghton
_Speeches._ 1865. Lippincott
Steiner, Edward A. 96
_From Alien to Citizen_
_Nationalizing America_
Stern, Elizabeth G. 160
_My Mother and I_
Straus, Oscar S. 72
_The American Spirit_
Van der Zee, Jacob 66
_The Hollanders of Iowa_
Wernaer, Robert M. 166
_The Soul of America_
Yezierska, Anzia 181
_How I Found America._ (In “Century
Magazine,” November, 1920)
FOOTNOTE:
[1] Several titles have been supplied by the editor; those given in the
words of the author are enclosed in quotation marks.
* * * * *
The American Spirit in the Writings of Americans of Foreign Birth
PHILIP SCHAFF
It is as a theologian and as editor of the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia
and other religious works that Philip Schaff is chiefly known; but
there is a slighter work of his which hardly deserves the neglect
into which it has fallen,--that is, his address on “American
Nationality,” delivered before the Irving Society of the College
of St. James, Maryland, June 11th, 1856. He was born at Coire,
Switzerland, and was educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium and at the
universities of Tübingen, Halle and Berlin. After traveling for a
while as a private tutor he was called to a professorship in the
theological seminary of the German Reformed Church at Mercersburg,
Pennsylvania, and came to the United States in 1844. In 1870 he
accepted the professorship of sacred literature in Union Theological
Seminary, New York City. He revisited Europe several times, on one
occasion going to Russia in behalf of oppressed people there. It is
not unnatural that one who was born in a land that has sheltered so
many nationalities, and where a strong spirit of liberty has always
existed, should have so keen and farsighted an appreciation of the
meaning and influence of the cosmopolitan character of the American
nation.
Cosmopolitan Character of American Nationality
By nationality we understand the peculiar genius of a people which
animates its institutions, prompts its actions and begets a feeling of
common interest and sympathy. It is not the result of any compact, but
an instinct of human nature in its social capacity, an expansion of
the inborn love of self and kindred. To hate his own countrymen is as
unnatural as to hate his own brothers and sisters.
Nationality grows with the nation itself and acts as a powerful
stimulus in its development. But on the other side it presupposes an
organized state of society and is the result of a historical process.
Barbarians have no nationality, because they are no nations, but
simply material for nations. It is not only the community of origin
and language, but also the community of rights and duties, of laws
and institutions, of deeds and sufferings, of freedom and oppression,
of literature and art, of virtue and religion, that enters into the
definition of a nation and gives vigor to the sense of nationality.
Historical reminiscences of glory and woe, whether preserved in
monuments, or written records, or oral traditions, popular songs and
national airs, such as “God save the Queen,” “Ye mariners of England,”
“Rule, Britannia,” “Scots wha hae with Wallace bled,” “Allons enfants
de la patrie,” “Was ist des Deutschen Vaterland,” “The Star Spangled
Banner,” “Hail, Columbia,” contribute powerfully to strengthen the
national tie and to kindle the fire of national enthusiasm.
Nationality begets patriotism, one of the noblest of natural virtues
that has filled the pages of history with so many heroic deeds and
sacrifices. Who can read without admiration the immortal story of
Gideon, Leonidas, Cincinnatus, Horatius Cocles, William Tell, Arnold
von Winkelried, the Maid of Orleans, John Hampden, Prince William of
Orange, Andreas Hofer, George Washington, who lived or died for their
country?
True patriotism does not imply hatred or contempt of foreigners, and
is entirely compatible with a proper regard for the rights and welfare
of other nations, just as self-love and self-respect may and should
coexist with the most generous philanthropy. A narrow-minded and
narrow-hearted nationalism which walls out the life of the world, and
for this very reason condemns itself to perpetual imprisonment in the
treadmill of its own pedantry and conceit, may suit semi-barbarians,
or the stagnant heathen civilization of China and Japan[2], but not
an enlightened Christian people. True and false nationalism and
patriotism are related to each other, as self-love to selfishness.
The first is a law of nature, the second a vice. We respect a man
in the same proportion in which his self-love expands into love of
kindred and country, and his patriotism into love of humanity at
large. Washington was always generous to the enemy and was the first
to establish amicable relations with England after the conclusion of
the American war. The Christian religion, which commands us to love God
supremely and our neighbor as ourselves, tends to purify and elevate
patriotism, like every other natural virtue, by emancipating it from
the selfish, overbearing, all-grasping passion of conquest, and making
it contributory to the general welfare of the human family. One of the
noblest acts of the English nation, as a nation, is the disinterested
abolition of the African slave trade.
The events of modern times tend more and more to break down the
barriers between the nations, to bring the ends of the earth together
and to realize the unity and universality of the human race.
This we must steadily keep in view, if we would understand the
distinctive character and mission of the _American_ nation, i. e., the
people of the United States, who are emphatically called by that name,
as the chief bearers of the historical life and future significance of
the entire Western Continent.
In discussing this interesting topic, we shall avoid, of course, the
whirlpool of party politics, and endeavor to rise above those violent
sectional strifes, which, for some time past, have been and are still
agitating our country on the question of the true nature of Americanism.
Of all the great nations of the earth none has entered into existence
under more favorable auspices and prospects, none is better prepared
and more clearly called to represent a compact, well defined and yet
expansive, world-embracing nationality, than the American. Our motto,
_E Pluribus Unum_, is an unconscious prophecy of our national character
and destiny, as pointed out by the irresistible course of events and
the indications of Providence. Out of many nations, yea, out of all the
nations of Christendom, is to be gathered the one cosmopolitan nation
of America on the strong and immovable foundation of the Anglo-Saxon
race....
Let us now proceed to an analysis of the different elements, which
enter into the composition of the American nationality and will, in
their combined action, enable it to fulfil its great destiny.
It is evident to the most superficial observer that the basis of our
national character is English. It is so, not only in language, but also
in manners and customs, in our laws and institutions, in the structure
of our domestic, political and ecclesiastical life, in our literature
and religion. It is perfectly idle to think that this country will
ever become German, or French, or Irish, or Dutch. Let them emigrate
by hundreds of thousands from the continent of Europe, they will
modify and enrich, but they can never destroy or materially change the
Anglo-Saxon ground-element of the American people....
But with all due regard for good old England, America is by no means
intended to be a mere copy or continuation of it. If our nationality,
owing to its youth and the many foreign elements still entering into
its composition, is less solid and compact than that of our older
brother, it is, on the other hand, more capable of expansion and
development; it is composed of a greater variety of material and
destined ultimately for more comprehensive ends by the Almighty Ruler
of nations, who assigned us not an island, but a continent for a home,
and two oceans for a field of action.
If ever a nation was laid out on a truly cosmopolitan basis and gifted
with an irresistible power of attraction, it is the American. Here
where our globe ends its circuit seems to terminate the migration
of the human race. To our shores they come in an unbroken stream
from every direction. Even the tribes of Africa and Asia are largely
represented amongst us and call our country their home. But whatever
may be the ultimate fate of the red man, the negro and the Chinese,
who are separated from us by the unsurmountable difference of race, it
is evident that all the civilized nations of Europe, especially those
of Germanic origin, have contributed and will continue to contribute
to our stock. They meet here on the common ground of freedom and
equality, to renew their youth and to commingle at last into one grand
brotherhood, speaking one language, pervaded by one spirit, obeying the
same laws, laboring for one aim, and filling in these ends of the earth
the last and the richest chapter in the history of the world. As Europe
is a great advance on the civilization of Asia, so we have reason to
believe that America will be in the end a higher continuation of the
consolidated life of Europe. The eyes of the East are instinctively
turned to the West, and civilization follows the march of the sun.
The history of the colonization and growth of this country strongly
supports the view here taken. The descendants of England were indeed
the chief, but by no means the only agents in the Colonial period.
The Dutch on the banks of the Hudson, the Swedes on the Delaware, the
Germans in Pennsylvania and the neighboring States, the Huguenots in
South Carolina, New York and Boston, were amongst our earliest and most
useful settlers. In a more recent period Scotland, Ireland and all
parts of Germany have made the largest contributions to our population.
Florida, California and New Mexico are of Spanish origin. The French
claimed once by right of exploration and partial occupation the immense
central valley from the Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Gulf of Mexico,
and between the Alleghenies and the Rocky Mountains; and although
these possessions have long since been ceded to England and the United
States, the French element can never be entirely effaced on the banks
of the lower Mississippi or in Canada East.
In the Revolutionary War the descendants of the Continental Europeans,
especially the Germans of Pennsylvania and Virginia, in proportion
to their number, fought with as much zeal and success and shed
their blood as freely for the independence of the country as the
Anglo-Americans. Some of them, as the Muhlenbergs and the Hiesters,
acquired considerable distinction as officers of the army or members of
the first Congress.
But a number of our most eminent Revolutionary heroes were not even
native Americans, but came from different nations to offer us the aid
of their means, their enthusiasm, their military skill and experience
in the hour of trial. The Irish Montgomery died for us at the gates
of Quebec. General Mercer, who fell in the battle of Princeton, was
a native of Scotland. Kosciusko, the Pole, paid his early vows to
liberty in our cause, and his countryman, Pulaski, perished for it at
Savannah. The noble Germans, Baron de Kalb, who shared with Gaines the
glory of capturing Burgoyne and fell in the battle of Camden in South
Carolina, bleeding of seven wounds, and Steuben, the pupil of Frederic
the Great, and the Seven Years War, who left a handsome pension to
serve his adopted country and helped to decide the day at Yorktown,
crowned in the new world the high military reputation which they had
previously acquired in the old; they were amongst the most experienced
officers in the American army, and did it essential service, especially
by training, with immense labor, the raw recruits, and preparing them
for the victories of the battle-field. Our Congress knew well how
to appreciate their merits, by erecting to the former a monument at
Annapolis, and by voting to the latter a handsome annual pension, to
which the legislatures of Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York added
large donations of land. France threw the weight of her powerful moral
influence and material aid into our scale, and sent us the Count de
Rochambeau, Baron de Viomenil, and especially the Marquis of Lafayette,
the citizen of two worlds, whose name will be handed down to the latest
American, as well as French posterity, in inseparable connection
with Washington. The West Indies gave us Alexander Hamilton, who
fought gallantly in the war, and, after its conclusion, organized our
financial credit and took the most distinguished part in the formation
and defence of our Federal Constitution, thus joining to the laurels of
the battle-field the more enduring honors of peace, like his friend,
the Father of his Country, whom we justly revere and love as “first in
war, first in peace, and first in the hearts of his countrymen.”
Thus all the leading nations of Christendom were actively and honorably
represented in the first settlement of our country, and in that great
struggle which resulted in the birth of a new nation, and thus earned a
title to a share in the blessings of its freedom....
As long, then, as we have such an immense body of land waiting for
living men, and such a gigantic task of the future before us, there is
no cause to discourage immigration. Let this continent of land continue
to attract another continent crowded with men, that they may thus both
prove a blessing to each other. How could we cherish a proscriptive
spirit without striking at the fundamental creed and glory of our
institutions? How could we indulge in hatred of foreigners and shut the
gate to the stranger, without insulting the memory of our own fathers
and of the fathers of this country? Let us never forget the sacred
trust of civil and religious liberty committed to us; never forget our
past history and our comprehensive destiny. Ourselves the children of
the pilgrims of a former generation, let us welcome the pilgrims of
the present day, and open a hospitable asylum to the oppressed and
persecuted of every Christian nation. Favored by the free gift of
Providence with a territory almost as large as Europe, and capable
of sustaining ten times the amount of our present population, let
us cordially invite and encourage the immigrants, till prairies and
forests, and mountains and valleys resound with the songs of living men
and the praises of God.
Here are our millions of acres stretching towards the setting sun
and teeming with hidden wealth, that must be made available for the
benefit of society. Here is room enough for all the science, learning,
art, wisdom, virtue and religion of Europe, that, transplanted into a
virgin soil and breathing the atmosphere of freedom, they may bring
forth new blossoms and fruit and open a new epoch in the onward march
of civilization. Here is the general congress of the noblest nations
of Christendom, the sterling, energetic Briton; the strong-willed,
enterprising Scotch; the hard-working, generous Irish; the industrious,
deep-thinking German; the honest, liberty-loving Swiss; the hardy,
thrifty Scandinavian; the even-tempered, tenacious Dutch; the easy,
elegant Frenchman; the earnest, dignified Spaniard; the ingenious,
imaginative Italian; the patriotic, high-minded Magyar and Pole,--that
they might renew their youth, and, laying aside their prejudices and
defects and uniting their virtues, may commingle into the one American
nation, the freest, the most enlightened, the most comprehensive of
all, the nation of the new world, the nation of the future....
The destiny and mission of such a cosmopolitan nation can hardly be
estimated. It must be majestic as our rivers, magnificent as the
Niagara Falls, lofty as the Rocky Mountains, vast as our territory,
deep as the two oceans around it, far-reaching as the highways of
commerce that already carries our name and influence to the remotest
regions of the globe. History points to a boundless future before it,
and nothing can prevent it from filling the most important pages in
the annals of coming centuries [except] its own unfaithfulness to its
providential trust....
Such high views on the destiny of our nation, so far from nourishing
the spirit of vanity and self-glorification, ought rather to humble
and fill us with a deep sense of our responsibility to the God of
nations, who entrusted us with a great mission for the world and the
Church, not from any superior excellency of our own, but from free
choice and an inscrutable decree of infinite wisdom. Nor should we
forget that there are fearful tendencies and dangers growing up in our
national life, which threaten to unfit us for our work and to expose
us to the judgment of the Almighty Ruler of the Universe, who is not
bound to any particular human instrumentality, but can raise a new
generation on the ruins of our own to carry out His designs. It is only
in steady view of these dangers, and by an earnest struggle against
evil temptations, that we can at all succeed and accomplish the great
ends for which Providence has called us into existence.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] The reader will, of course, note that this statement was made prior
to the modern awakening in these Oriental countries.
FRANCES D’ARUSMONT
Frances D’Arusmont, better known as Frances Wright, was born in
Dundee, Scotland. She seems to have inherited the intellectuality and
liberal feeling of her father, who was a man of independent means and
considerable accomplishments. Scarcely three years after her birth in
1795, she lost both her parents and was brought up by a maternal aunt
in England. She was largely self-educated, and from early youth was
keenly interested in history, particularly the history and condition
of the United States. This interest found definite expression in her
determination to sail for America in 1818, where she spent two years
in the States, publishing in 1821 her “Views of Society and Manners
in America,” a series of letters to a friend in England. While it
is true that these letters are filled with prepossessions, they had
a wholesome effect in counterbalancing a great deal of ignorance
about and prejudice against the United States at that time. After
going back to Europe for a short stay, she returned to the United
States in 1824, eager to solve the slave question. In pursuance of
this desire she bought a tract of land in Tennessee, about fourteen
miles northwest of Memphis, and settled negro slaves on it, in the
hope that they would work out their own liberty and that the Southern
planters would be induced to follow her example. The experiment
proved a failure, and, with health broken, she was ordered to Europe
by her physician. On returning to America again, she became a member
of Robert Owen’s colony at New Harmony in Indiana, and with the
assistance of Robert Dale Owen conducted a socialistic journal. At
this time she frequently appeared on the lecture platform in many
parts of the country. During one of her numerous trips to Europe
she was married in France to M. Phiquepal-D’Arusmont. She died at
Cincinnati in 1852.
Though no fanatic, Frances D’Arusmont had several qualities of the
visionary, courage and enthusiasm without prudence and judgment. It
is greatly to her credit and honor, however, that she was among the
first to realize the importance of the slavery question and to make
an effort to settle it amicably. It is to be regretted that she did
not devote her life solely to the solution of this momentous problem.
The selection here given from her “Views of Society and Manners in
America,” follows the text of the first New York edition, 1821.
THE CONSTITUTION AND ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
What is most worthy of admiration in the history of America is not
merely the spirit of liberty which has ever animated her people, but
their perfect acquaintance with the science of government, which has
ever saved that spirit from preying on itself. The sages who laid the
foundation of her greatness possessed at once the pride of freemen
and _the knowledge of English freemen_; in building the edifice, they
knew how to lay the foundation; in preserving untouched the rights
of each individual, they knew how to prevent his attacking those
of his neighbor: they brought with them the experience of the best
governed nation then existing; and, having felt in their own persons
the errors inherent in that constitution, which had enlightened, but
only partly protected them, they knew what to shun as well as what to
imitate in the new models which they here cast, leisurely and sagely,
in a new and remote world. Thus possessed from the beginning of free
institutions, or else continually occupied in procuring or defending
them, the Colonies were well prepared to assume the character of
independent States. There was less of an experiment in this than their
enemies supposed.[3] Nothing, indeed, can explain the obstinacy of the
English ministry at the commencement of the Revolutionary struggle but
the supposition that they were wholly ignorant of the history of the
people to whom they were opposed. May I be forgiven the observation,
that the inquiries of ... have led me into the belief that some candid
and well-informed English gentlemen of the present day have almost as
little acquaintance with it as had Lord North.
Respecting the Revolution itself, the interest of its military history
is such as to fix the attention of the most thoughtless readers; but in
this, foreigners sometimes appear to imagine, was expended the whole
virtue of America. That a country which could put forth so much energy,
magnanimity, and wisdom, as appeared in that struggle, should suddenly
lose a claim to all these qualities, would be no less surprising than
humiliating. If we glance at the civil history of these republics
since the era of their independence, do we find no traces of the same
character? Were we to consider only the national institutions, the mild
and impartial laws, the full establishment of the rights of conscience,
the multiplication of schools and colleges to an extent unknown in any
other country of the world, all the improvements in every branch of
internal policy which have placed this people in their present state of
peace and unrivalled prosperity, we must allow them to be not only wise
to their interests, but alive to the pleas of humanity; but there are
not wanting instances of a yet more liberal policy.
How seldom is it that history affords us the example of a voluntary
sacrifice on the part of separate communities to further the common
good! It appears to me that the short history of America furnishes us
with more examples of this kind than that of any other nation, ancient
or modern. Throughout the war of the Revolution, and for some years
preceding it, the public feeling may be said to have been unusually
excited. At such times, men, and societies of men, are equal to actions
beyond the strength of their virtue at cooler moments. Passing on,
therefore, to the peace of 1783, we find a number of independent
republics gradually reconciling their separate and clashing interests,
each yielding something to promote the advantage of all, and sinking
the pride of individual sovereignty in that of the united whole. The
remarks made by Ramsay on the adoption of the federal constitution are
so apposite that I cannot resist quoting them:
“The adoption of this constitution was a triumph of virtue and good
sense over the vices and follies of human nature; in some respects, the
merit of it is greater than that of the Declaration of Independence.
The worst of men can be urged to make a spirited resistance to invasion
of their rights; but higher grades of virtue are requisite to induce
freemen, in the possession of a limited sovereignty, voluntarily to
surrender a portion of their natural liberties; to impose on themselves
those restraints of good government which bridle the ferocity of man,
compel him to respect the claims of others, and to submit his rights
and his wrongs to be decided upon by the voices of his fellow citizens.
The instances of nations which have vindicated their liberty by the
sword are many; of those which have made a good use of their liberty
when acquired are comparatively few.”
Nor did the liberality of these republics evince itself only in the
adoption of the general government. We find some making voluntary
concessions of vast territories, that they might be devoted to national
purposes; others releasing part of their own people from existing
engagements, and leaving them to consult their wishes and convenience
by forming themselves into new communities.
Should we contrast this policy with that employed by other nations,
we might hastily pronounce this people to be singularly free from
the ordinary passions of humanity. But, no; they are only singularly
enlightened in the art of government; they have learned that there is
no strength without union, no union without good fellowship, and no
good fellowship without fair dealing; and, having learned this, they
are only singularly fortunate in being able to reduce their knowledge
to practice.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Mr. Burke, who seems to have possessed a more thorough acquaintance
with the institutions and character of the Colonists than any other
British statesman, insisted much on “the form of their provincial
legislative assemblies,” when tracing the consequences likely to result
from the oppressive acts of parliament. “Their governments,” observed
this orator, “are popular in a high degree; some are merely popular; in
all, the popular representative is the most weighty; and this share of
the people, in their ordinary government, never fails to inspire them
with lofty sentiments, and with a strong aversion from whatever tends
to deprive them of their chief importance.” (Author’s note.)
FRANCIS LIEBER
In these latter days when the world has been inclined to wonder
whether any good could come out of Prussia, it is interesting to
recall that Francis Lieber, who came to the United States in 1827 in
the vanguard of the German political refugees of the early nineteenth
century, was born in Berlin, March 18, 1800. His life was one of
intense activity, both physical and mental. He fought in the Prussian
army at Ligny and at Waterloo, and was severely wounded in the attack
on Namur. After the Napoleonic wars he studied in Berlin; and in
1819, because of his political ideas, he was imprisoned on the charge
of plotting against the government. He was discharged without trial;
but, being forbidden to stay at the Prussian universities, he took
his degree at Jena in 1820. After taking part in the Greek Revolution
of 1821 he went to Rome, where he became a tutor in the family of the
famous historian, Niebuhr. On returning to Berlin he was rearrested
and imprisoned, but released through the efforts of Niebuhr. Tired of
this relentless persecution, he left his native land forever in 1825.
Before embarking for the New World he was a teacher in London for a
short time.
Lieber’s first literary undertaking after reaching the United States
was the editing of the Encyclopædia Americana in Boston, 1827-32.
For the next twenty years he was professor of political economy
in South Carolina College, where his most important works were
produced,--“A Manual of Political Ethics,” 1838; “Legal and Political
Hermeneutics,” 1839; “Civil Liberty and Self-government,” 1852. In
1856 he was called to a similar professorship in Columbia College,
New York. He was member of the French Institute and other learned
societies in Europe and America.
The spirit of the man and his work is manifested in his favorite
motto, _Nullum jus sine officio, nullum officium sine jure_ (“No
right without its duties, no duty without its rights”). It is
not necessary to mention his numerous writings except the one of
immediate interest here,--“The Stranger in America,” published in
1834, a series of letters written to a friend in Germany. In the
selection that follows, the reader will be struck by the wisdom and
foresight in pointing out the danger of segregation and the futility
of German immigrants attempting to erect a German state within the
United States.
A GERMAN IMMIGRANT POINTS OUT THE DANGERS OF SEGREGATION
The Germans, as I said, form a most valuable addition to our
population, when mingled with the great predominant race inhabiting
the northern part of this continent. Whenever colonists settle among
a different nation, in such numbers and so closely together that
they may live on among themselves, without intermixture with the
original inhabitants, a variety of inconveniences will necessarily
arise. Living in an isolated state, the current of civilization of the
country in which they live does not reach them; and they are equally
cut off from that of their mother country: mental stagnation is the
consequence. They remain a foreign element, an ill-joined part of the
great machinery of which they still form, and needs must form, a part.
Sometimes, indeed, particular circumstances may alter the view of the
case. When the French Protestant colonists were received into Prussia,
it was perhaps judicious to allow them, for example in Berlin, to form
for a time a community for themselves, to have their own jurisdiction,
schools, and churches, because they were more perfect in many branches
of industry than the people among whom they settled; and, had they been
obliged to immerge forthwith, their skill, so desirable to those who
received them, might have been lost.
At present, however, they too are immerged in the mass of the
population. Besides, the inconvenience arising from their forming a
separate community was never very great, since they were few in number,
and belonged by their professions to the better educated classes. But
take an example in the Hussites, who settled in Germany; remember the
Bohemian village near Berlin, called Rixdorf, the inhabitants of which
obstinately refused intermarrying with Germans, and many of whom, until
very recently, continued to speak Bohemian only. Those, therefore, who
lately proposed to form a whole German state in our west, ought to
weigh well their project before they set about it, if ever it should
become possible to put this scheme into practice, which I seriously
doubt. “Ossification,” as the Germans call it, would be the unavoidable
consequence. These colonists would be unable, though they might come
by thousands and tens of thousands, to develop for themselves German
literature, German language, German law, German science, German art;
everything would remain stationary at the point where it was when they
brought it over from the mother country, and within less than fifty
years our colony would degenerate into an antiquated, ill-adapted
element of our great national system, with which, sooner or later, it
must assimilate. What a voluntary closing of the eyes to light would it
be for a colony among people of the Anglican race, which, in point of
politics, has left every other race far behind, to strive to isolate
itself!
POLITICAL LIBERTY IN AMERICA
As a thousand things co-operated in ancient Greece to produce that
unrivalled state of perfection in which we find the fine arts to have
been there,--a happy constellation of the most fortunate stars,--so a
thousand favorable circumstances concur in America to make it possible
that a far greater amount of liberty can be introduced into all the
concerns of her political society than ever was possible before with
any other nation, or will be at any future period, yet also requiring
its sacrifices, as the fine arts with the Greeks required theirs.
The influence of this nation has been considerable already; it will be
much more so yet in ages to come; political ideas will be developed
here, and have a decided effect on the whole European race, and, for
aught I know, upon other races. But as the Grecian art has kindled the
sense of the beautiful with many nations, but never could be equalled
again (as a national affair), so it is possible that political notions,
developed here and received by other nations, will have a sound
influence only if in their new application they are modified to the
given circumstances; for it is not in the power of any man or nation to
create all those circumstances under the shade of which liberty reposes
here. Politics is civil architecture, and a poor architect indeed is
he who forgets three things in building: the place where the building
is to be raised, the materials with which he has to build, and the
object for which the structure is erected. If the materials are Jews
of Palestine, and if the object of the fabric be to keep the people as
separate from neighbors as possible, the architect would not obtain his
end by a constitution similar to that of one of our new States.
It was necessary for the Americans, in order to make them fit to solve
certain political problems, which, until their solution here, were
considered chimerical (take as an instance the keeping of this immense
country without a garrison), that they should descend from the English,
should begin as persecuted colonists severed from the mother country,
and yet loving it with all their heart and all their soul; to have a
continent, vast and fertile, and possessing those means of internal
communication which gave to Europe the great superiority over Asia and
Africa; to be at such a distance from Europe that she should appear
as a map; to be mostly Protestants, and to settle in colonies with
different charters, so that, when royal authority was put down, they
were as so many independent States, and yet to be all of one metal, so
that they never ceased morally to form one nation, nor to feel as such.
You may say, “Strange, that an abuse of liberty, as this apparent or
real party strife in election contests actually is, should lead you to
the assertion that no nation is fitter for a government of law.” Yet I
do repeat it. How would it be with other nations? It would be _after_
an election of this kind that the real trouble would only _begin_; we
see an instance in South America. Here, on the other hand, as soon as
the election is over, the contest is settled, and the citizen obeys
the law. “Keep to the right, as the law directs,” you will often find
on sign-boards on bridges in this country. It expresses the authority
which the law here possesses. I doubt very much whether the Romans,
noted for their obedience to the law, held it in higher respect than
the Americans.
CARL SCHURZ
Carl Schurz, probably the most eminent of German immigrants to the
United States, was born in Rhenish Prussia, in 1829. He came to
America in 1852 and settled in Missouri, from which State he was
sent to Congress as Senator. He served as a general in the Union
Army during the Civil War. In 1875 he removed to New York City and
was editor of _The Evening Post_ from 1881 to 1884. He was active
in support of civil service reform, and as a political thinker
commanded high respect. His most notable works are his “Speeches,”
his “Reminiscences,” a “Life of Henry Clay,” and “Abraham Lincoln: an
Essay.” The last was originally published in _The Atlantic Monthly_
as a review of “Abraham Lincoln: A History,” by Nicolay and Hay.
As a tribute to the life and work of Lincoln it is worthy to stand
beside the “Commemoration Ode” of Lowell and the memorial poems of
Whitman. Both from his natural sympathies and endowments and because
of his participation in the events of the time, Schurz was eminently
qualified to write on the subject. With fine enthusiasm and yet
avoiding extravagant eulogy, he never loses sight of the essentially
human characteristics of the great President. The following passage
comprises the closing words of the essay. The selections on “True
Americanism” are taken from an address delivered in Faneuil Hall,
Boston, on the 18th of April, 1859.
AN IMMIGRANT’S TRIBUTE TO LINCOLN
To the younger generation Abraham Lincoln has already become a
half-mythical figure, which, in the haze of historic distance, grows
to more and more heroic proportions, but also loses in distinctness of
outline and feature. This is indeed the common lot of popular heroes;
but the Lincoln legend will be more than ordinarily apt to become
fanciful, as his individuality, assembling seemingly incongruous
qualities and forces in a character at the same time grand and most
lovable, was so unique, and his career so abounding in startling
contrasts. As the state of society in which Abraham Lincoln grew up
passes away, the world will read with increasing wonder of the man
who, not only of the humblest origin, but remaining the simplest
and most unpretending of citizens, was raised to a position of
power unprecedented in our history; who was the gentlest and most
peace-loving of mortals, unable to see any creature suffer without a
pang in his own breast, and suddenly found himself called to conduct
the greatest and bloodiest of our wars; who wielded the power of
government when stern resolution and relentless force were the order
of the day, and then won and ruled the popular mind and heart by the
tender sympathies of his nature; who was a cautious conservative by
temperament and mental habit, and led the most sudden and sweeping
social revolution of our time; who, preserving his homely speech and
rustic manner even in the most conspicuous position of that period,
drew upon himself the scoffs of polite society, and then thrilled the
soul of mankind with utterances of wonderful beauty and grandeur;
who, in his heart the best friend of the defeated South, was murdered
because a crazy fanatic took him for its most cruel enemy; who, while
in power, was beyond measure lampooned and maligned by sectional
passion and an excited party spirit, and around whose bier friend and
foe gathered to praise him--which they have since never ceased to
do--as one of the greatest of Americans and the best of men.
TRUE AMERICANISM
It is one of the earliest recollections of my boyhood that one summer
night our whole village was stirred up by an uncommon occurrence. I say
our village, for I was born not far from the beautiful spot where the
Rhine rolls his green waters out of the wonderful gate of the Seven
Mountains, and then meanders with majestic tranquillity through one of
the most glorious valleys of the world. That night our neighbors were
pressing around a few wagons covered with linen sheets and loaded with
household utensils and boxes and trunks to their utmost capacity. One
of our neighboring families was moving far away across a great water,
and it was said they would never again return. And I saw silent tears
trickling down weather-beaten cheeks, and the hands of rough peasants
firmly pressing each other, and some of the men and women hardly able
to speak when they nodded to one another a last farewell. At last the
train started into motion, they gave three cheers for _America_, and
then in the first gray dawn of the morning I saw them wending their way
over the hill until they disappeared in the shadow of the forest. And I
heard many a man say, how happy he would be if he could go with them to
that great and free country, where a man could be himself.
That was the first time that I heard of America, and my childish
imagination took possession of a land covered partly with majestic
trees, partly with flowery prairies, immeasurable to the eye, and
intersected with large rivers and broad lakes,--a land where everybody
could do what he thought best, and where nobody need be poor because
everybody was free.
And later, when I was old enough to read, and descriptions of this
country and books on American history fell into my hands, the offspring
of my imagination acquired the colors of reality, and I began to
exercise my brain with the thought what man might be and become when
left perfectly free to himself. And still later, when ripening into
manhood, I looked up from my schoolbooks into the stir and bustle of
the world, and the trumpet-tones of struggling humanity struck my ear
and thrilled my heart, and I saw my nation shake her chains in order
to burst them, and I heard a gigantic, universal shout for Liberty
rising up to the skies; and at last, after having struggled manfully
and drenched the earth of Fatherland with the blood of thousands
of noble beings, I saw that nation crushed down again, not only by
overwhelming armies, but by the dead weight of customs and institutions
and notions and prejudices, which past centuries had heaped upon them,
and which a moment of enthusiasm, however sublime, could not destroy;
then I consoled an almost despondent heart with the idea of a youthful
people and of original institutions clearing the way for an untrammeled
development of the ideal nature of man. Then I turned my eyes
instinctively across the Atlantic Ocean, and America and Americanism,
as I fancied them, appeared to me as the last depositories of the hopes
of all true friends of humanity.
I say all this, not as though I indulged in the presumptuous delusion
that my personal feelings and experience would be of any interest to
you, but in order to show you what America is to the thousands of
thinking men in the old world, who, disappointed in their fondest hopes
and depressed by the saddest experience, cling with their last remnant
of confidence in human nature, to the last spot on earth where man is
free to follow the road to attainable perfection, and where, unbiased
by the disastrous influence of traditional notions, customs, and
institutions, he acts on his own responsibility. They ask themselves:
Was it but a wild delusion when we thought that man has the faculty to
be free and to govern himself? Have we been fighting, were we ready to
die, for a mere phantom, for a mere product of a morbid imagination?
This question downtrodden humanity cries out into the world, and from
this country it expects an answer....
They speak of the greatness of the Roman Republic! Oh, sir, if I could
call the proudest of Romans from his grave, I would take him by the
hand and say to him, Look at this picture, and at this! The greatness
of the Roman Republic consisted in its despotic rule over the world;
the greatness of the American Republic consists in the secured right of
man to govern himself. The dignity of the Roman citizen consisted in
his exclusive privileges; the dignity of the American citizen consists
in his holding the natural rights of his neighbor just as sacred as
his own. The Roman Republic recognized and protected the _rights of
the citizen_, at the same time disregarding and leaving unprotected
the _rights of man_; Roman citizenship was founded upon monopoly, not
upon the claims of human nature. What the citizen of Rome claimed for
himself, he did not respect in others; his own greatness was his only
object; his own liberty, as he regarded it, gave him the privilege
to oppress his fellow-beings. His democracy, instead of elevating
mankind to its own level, trampled the rights of man into the dust. The
security of the Roman Republic, therefore, consisted in the power of
the sword; the security of the American Republic rests in the equality
of human rights! The Roman Republic perished by the sword; the American
Republic will stand as long as the equality of human rights remains
inviolate. Which of the two Republics is the greater--the Republic of
the Roman, or the Republic of _man_?
Sir, I wish the words of the Declaration of Independence, “that all men
are created free and equal, and are endowed with certain inalienable
rights,” were inscribed upon every gatepost within the limits of this
Republic. From this principle the Revolutionary Fathers derived their
claim to independence; upon this they founded the institutions of this
country, and the whole structure was to be the living incarnation of
this idea. This principle contains the programme of our political
existence. It is the most progressive, and at the same time the most
conservative one; the most progressive, for it takes even the lowliest
members of the human family out of their degradation, and inspires
them with the elevating consciousness of equal human dignity; the most
conservative, for it makes a common cause of individual rights. From
the equality of rights springs identity of our highest interests; you
cannot subvert your neighbor’s rights without striking a dangerous blow
at your own. And when the rights of one cannot be infringed without
finding a ready defence in all others who defend their own rights in
defending his, then, and only then, are the rights of all safe against
the usurpation of governmental authority.
This general identity of interests is the only thing that can guarantee
the stability of democratic institutions. Equality of rights,
embodied in general self-government, is the great moral element of
true democracy; it is the only reliable safety-valve in the machinery
of modern society. There is the solid foundation of our system of
government; there is our mission; there is our greatness; there is our
safety; there, and nowhere else! This is true Americanism, and to this
I pay the tribute of my devotion.
EDWIN LAWRENCE GODKIN
Edwin Lawrence Godkin was born of English ancestry at Moyne, County
Wicklow, Ireland, on October 2, 1831. His father, the Rev. James
Godkin, a Presbyterian minister of literary talents, after being
forced from his pulpit for espousing the cause of Young Ireland,
became a journalist of some distinction. The son received his
preparatory education at Armagh, and at Silcoates School, Wakefield,
Yorkshire. In 1846 he entered Queen’s College, Belfast. After
graduating from this institution in 1851, he went to London to study
law at Lincoln’s Inn. After some journalistic experience in the
Crimea and in Belfast, he came to America in 1856 and settled in
New York. His real career began with the founding of _The New York
Nation_ in 1865. His connection with this journal was both long and
distinguished, and his efforts for the encouragement of a sound
and enlightened public opinion have recently been appropriately
recognized in the semi-centenary volume, “Fifty Years of American
Idealism,” edited by Gustav Pollak. He contributed many incisive
essays on political and economic subjects to various magazines.
The most important of these have been collected in three volumes,
“Reflections and Comments,” “Problems of Modern Democracy,” and
“Unforeseen Tendencies of Democracy.” It is from the opening essay of
the second that the following selection is taken.
Wendell Phillips Garrison, his associate, said of him: “As no
American could have written Bryce’s ‘American Commonwealth’ or
Goldwin Smith’s ‘History of the United States,’ so it may be doubted
if any native of this country could have erected the standard of
political independence which Mr. Godkin set up in _The Nation_ and
maintained in _The Evening Post_. He did this, however, not as a
foreigner, but as an American to the core. A utilitarian of the
school of Bentham, an economist of the school of John Stuart Mill, an
English Liberal to whom America, with all its flagrant inconsistency
of slaveholding, was still the hope of universal democracy, he
cast in his lot with us, became a naturalized citizen, took an
American wife--gave every pledge to the land of his adoption except
that of being a servile follower of party.” Brilliant, thoughtful,
questioning, he was keenly sensible of the many evil tendencies
in modern democracy; yet with philosophic insight he rejected the
unsound comparisons drawn by many political thinkers between ancient
aristocratic democracies and modern democracy, which he viewed as a
new experiment and therefore to be tested by new principles and new
conditions.
AN IMMIGRANT’S FAITH IN DEMOCRACY[4]
If, indeed, the defects which foreign observers see, and many of
which Americans acknowledge and deplore, in the politics and society
of the United States were fairly chargeable to democracy,--if “the
principle of equality” were necessarily fatal to excellence in the
arts, to finish in literature, to simplicity and force in oratory,
to fruitful exploration in the fields of science, to statesmanship
in the government, to discipline in the army, to grace and dignity
in social intercourse, to subordination to lawful authority, and to
self-restraint in the various relations of life,--the future of the
world would be such as no friend of the race would wish to contemplate;
for the spread of democracy is on all sides acknowledged to be
irresistible. Even those who watch its advance with most fear and
foreboding confess that most civilized nations must erelong succumb to
its sway. Its progress in some countries may be slower than in others,
but it is constant in all; and it is accelerated by two powerful
agencies,--the Christian religion and the study of political economy.
The Christian doctrine that men, however unequal in their condition
or in their gifts on earth, are of equal value in the eyes of their
Creator, and are entitled to respect and consideration, if for no other
reason, for the simple one that they are human souls, long as it has
been preached, has, strange to say, only very lately begun to exercise
any perceptible influence on politics. It led a troubled and precarious
life for nearly eighteen hundred years in conventicles and debating
clubs, in the romance of poets, in the dreams of philosophers and the
schemes of philanthropists. But it is now found in the cabinets of
kings and statesmen, on the floor of parliament houses, and in the most
secret of diplomatic conferences. It gives shape and foundation to
nearly every great social reform, and its voice is heard above the roar
of every revolution.
And it derives invaluable aid in keeping its place and extending its
influence in national councils from the rapid spread of the study of
political economy, a science which is based on the assumption that men
are free and independent. There is hardly one of its principles which
is applicable to any state of society in which each individual is not
master of his own actions and sole guardian of his own welfare. In a
community in which the relations of its members are regulated by status
and not by contract, it has no place and no value. The natural result
of the study and discussion which the ablest thinkers have expended on
it during the last eighty years has been to place before the civilized
world in the strongest light the prodigious impulse which is given
to human energy and forethought and industry, and the great gain to
society at large, by the recognition in legislation of the capacity,
as well as of the right, of each human being to seek his own happiness
in his own way. Of course no political system in which this principle
has a place can long avoid conceding to all who live under it equality
before the law; and from equality before the law to the possession of
an equal share in the making of the laws, there is, as everybody must
see who is familiar with modern history, but a very short step.
If this spread of democracy, however, was sure, as its enemies
maintain, to render great attainments and great excellence impossible
or rare, to make literary men slovenly and inaccurate and tasteless,
artists mediocre, professors of science dull and unenterprising, and
statesmen conscienceless and ignorant, it would threaten civilization
with such danger that no friend of progress could wish to see it.
But it is difficult to discover on what it is, either in history or
human nature, that this apprehension is founded. M. de Tocqueville
and all his followers take it for granted that the great incentive
to excellence, in all countries in which excellence is found, is the
patronage and encouragement of an aristocracy; that democracy is
generally content with mediocrity. But where is the proof of this?
The incentive to exertion which is widest, most constant, and most
powerful in its operation in all civilized countries, is the desire
of distinction; and this may be composed either of love of fame or
love of wealth, or of both. In literary and artistic and scientific
pursuits, sometimes the strongest influence is exerted by a love of the
subject. But it may be safely said that no man has ever yet labored
in any of the higher callings to whom the applause and appreciation
of his fellows was not one of the sweetest rewards of his exertions.
There is probably not a masterpiece in existence, either in literature
or in art, probably few discoveries in science have ever been made,
which we do not owe in a large measure to the love of distinction. Who
paints pictures, or has ever painted them, that they may delight no
eye but his own? Who writes books for the mere pleasure of seeing his
thoughts on paper? Who discovers or invents, and is willing, provided
the world is the better of his discoveries or inventions, that another
should enjoy the honor? Fame has, in short, been in all ages and in all
countries recognized as one of the strongest springs of human action--
“The spur that doth the clear spirit raise
To scorn delight and live laborious days,--”
sweetening toil, robbing danger and poverty and even death itself of
their terrors.
What is there, we would ask, in the nature of democratic institutions,
that should render this great spring of action powerless, that should
deprive glory of all radiance, and put ambition to sleep? Is it not
notorious, on the contrary, that one of the most marked peculiarities
of democratic society, or of a society drifting toward democracy, is
the fire of competition which rages in it, the fevered anxiety which
possesses all its members to rise above the dead level to which the
law is ever seeking to confine them, and by some brilliant stroke
become something higher and more remarkable than their fellows?
The secret of that great restlessness, which is one of the most
disagreeable accompaniments of life in democratic countries, is in
fact due to the eagerness of everybody to grasp the prizes of which
in aristocratic countries only the few have much chance. And in no
other society is success more worshipped, is distinction of any kind
more widely flattered and caressed. Where is the successful author, or
artist, or discoverer, the subject of greater homage than in France
or America? And yet in both the principle of equality reigns supreme;
and his advancement in the social scale has gone on _pari passu_ in
every country with the spread of democratic ideas and manners. Grub
Street was the author’s retreat in the aristocratic age; in this
democratic one, he is welcome at the King’s table, and sits at the
national council board. In democratic societies, in fact, excellence
is the first title to distinction; in aristocratic ones, there are two
or three others which are far stronger, and which must be stronger,
or aristocracy could not exist. The moment you acknowledge that the
highest social position ought to be the reward of the man who has the
most talent, you make aristocratic institutions impossible. But to make
the thirst for distinction lose its power over the human heart, you
must do something more than establish equality of conditions; you must
recast human nature itself....
There are some, however, who, while acknowledging that the love of
distinction will retain its force under every form of social or
political organization, yet maintain that to excel in the arts,
science, or literature requires leisure, and the possession of
leisure implies the possession of fortune. This men in a democratic
society cannot have, because the absence of great hereditary wealth
is necessary to the perpetuation of democracy. Every man, or nearly
every man, must toil for a living; and therefore it becomes impossible
for him to gratify the thirst for distinction, let him feel it ever so
strongly. The attention he can give to literature or art or science
must be too desultory and hasty, his mental training too defective, to
allow him to work out valuable results or conduct important researches.
To achieve great things in these fields, it is said and insinuated,
men must be elevated, by the possession of fortune, above the vulgar,
petty cares of life; their material wants must be provided for before
they concentrate their thoughts with the requisite intensity on the
task before them. Therefore it is to aristocracy we must look for any
great advance in these pursuits.
The history of literature and art and philosophy is, however, very far
from lending confirmation to this opinion. If it teaches us anything,
it teaches us that the possession of leisure, far from having helped
men in the pursuit of knowledge, seems to have impeded them. Those who
have pursued it most successfully are all but invariably those who
have pursued it under difficulties. The possession of great wealth no
doubt gives facilities for study and cultivation which the mass of
mankind do not possess; but it at the same time exerts an influence on
the character which, in a vast majority of cases, renders the owner
unwilling to avail himself of them. We owe to the Roman aristocracy
the great fabric of Roman jurisprudence; but, since their time, what
has any aristocracy done for art and literature, or law? They have for
over a thousand years been in possession of nearly the whole resources
of every country in Europe. They have had its wealth, its libraries,
its archives, its teachers, at their disposal; and yet was there ever
a more pitiful record than the list of “Royal and Noble Authors.”
One can hardly help being astonished, too, at the smallness and
paltriness of the legacies which the aristocracy of the aristocratic
age has bequeathed to this democratic age which is succeeding it. It
has, indeed, handed down to us many glorious traditions, many noble
and inspiring examples of courage and fortitude and generosity. The
democratic world would certainly be worse off than it is if it never
heard of the Cid, or Bayard, or Du Guesclin, of Montrose, or Hampden,
or Russell. But what has it left behind it for which the lover of art
may be thankful, by which literature has been made richer, philosophy
more potent or more fruitful? The painting and sculpture of modern
Europe owe not only their glory, but their very existence, to the
labors of poor and obscure men. The great architectural monuments
by which its soil is covered were hardly any of them the product
of aristocratic feeling or liberality. If we except a few palaces
and a few fortresses, we owe nearly all of them to the labor or the
genius or the piety of the democratic cities which grew up in the
midst of feudalism. If we take away the sum total of the monuments of
Continental art all that was created by the Italian republics, the
commercial towns of Germany and Flanders, and the communes of France,
and by the unaided efforts of the illustrious obscure, the remainder
would form a result poor and pitiful indeed. We may say much the same
thing of every great work in literature, and every great discovery in
science. Few of them have been produced by men of leisure, nearly all
by those whose life was a long struggle to escape from the vulgarest
and most sordid cares. And what is perhaps most remarkable of all
is, that the Catholic Church, the greatest triumph of organizing
genius, the most impressive example of the power of combination and
of discipline which the world has ever seen, was built up and has
been maintained by the labors of men drawn from the humblest ranks of
society.
Aristocracy applied itself exclusively for ages to the profession of
arms. If there was anything at which it might have seemed hopeless
for democracy to compete with it, it was in the raising, framing and
handling of armies. But the very first time that a democratic society
found itself compelled to wage war in defence of its own ideas, it
displayed a force, an originality, a vigor and rapidity of conception,
in this, to it, new pursuit, which speedily laid Europe at its feet.
And the great master of the art of war, be it ever remembered, was born
in obscurity and bred in poverty.
Nor, long as men of leisure have devoted themselves to the art of
government, have they made any contributions worth mentioning to
political science. They have displayed, indeed, consummate skill
and tenacity in pursuing any line of policy on which they have once
deliberately fixed; but all the great political reforms have been,
though often carried into effect by aristocracies, conceived, agitated,
and forced on the acceptance of the government by the middle and lower
classes. The idea of equality before the law was originated in France
by literary men. In England, the slave-trade was abolished by the
labors of the middle classes. The measure met with the most vigorous
opposition in the House of Lords. The emancipation of the negroes,
Catholic emancipation, Parliamentary reform, law reform, especially
the reform in the criminal law, free trade, and, in fact, nearly every
change which has had for its object the increase of national happiness
and prosperity, has been conceived by men of low degree, and discussed
and forced on the upper classes by men busy about many other things.
We are, however, very far from believing that democratic society
has no dangers or defects. What we have been endeavoring to show
is that the inquiry into their nature and number has been greatly
impeded by the natural disposition of foreign observers to take the
United States as a fair specimen of what democracy is under the most
favorable circumstances. The enormous extent of unoccupied land at
our disposal, which raises every man in the community above want, by
affording a ready outlet for surplus population, is constantly spoken
of as a condition wholly favorable to the democratic experiment,--more
favorable than could possibly offer itself elsewhere. In so far as it
contributes to the general happiness and comfort, it no doubt makes the
work of government easy; but what we think no political philosopher
ought to forget is that it also offers serious obstacles to the
settlement of a new society on a firm basis, and produces a certain
appearance of confusion and instability, both in manners and ideas,
which unfit it to furnish a basis for any inductions of much value as
to the tendencies to defects either of an equality of conditions or of
democratic institutions.
FOOTNOTE:
[4] From “Problems of Modern Democracy.” Copyright, 1896, by Charles
Scribner’s Sons. By permission of the publishers.
JOHN BOYLE O’REILLY
The extremely romantic life of John Boyle O’Reilly began on June
28th, 1844, at Dowth Castle, near the town of Drogheda in Ireland.
His chivalrous nature and passionate love of country and of liberty
were stimulated by the traditions and beauty of the surroundings and
by the atmosphere of legend and story in which he was brought up by
his schoolmaster father and clever and gifted mother. As a young man
he was employed as a compositor in a printing office in Ireland and
later at Preston in Lancashire. In consequence of his connection with
the Fenian movement he was banished to Australia, whence he escaped
to America in 1869, settling in Boston, where his ability as poet,
journalist and orator was quickly recognized. Maurice Francis Egan
has said of him: “In the United States, after adventures by sea and
land, and tortures and suffering borne with a heroism that was both
Greek and Christian, he found the spirit of freedom in concrete form.
Our country satisfied his aspirations for liberty; he loved Ireland
not less, but America more; he was exiled from the land of his birth,
yet he found ample consolation in the country he had chosen.”
The life of the poet by James Jeffrey Roche, together with his
complete poems and speeches, edited by Mrs. O’Reilly, was published
by Cassell in 1891. A volume of selected poems was published by
Kenedy in 1913.
THE EXILE OF THE GAEL
“What have ye brought to our Nation-building, Sons of the Gael?
What is your burden or guerdon from old Innisfail?”
“No treasure we bring from Erin--nor bring we shame nor guilt!
The sword we hold may be broken, but we have not dropped the hilt!
The wreath we bear to Columbia is twisted of thorns, not bays,
And the songs we sing are saddened by thoughts of desolate days.
But the hearts we bring for Freedom are washed in the surge of tears,
And we claim our right by a People’s fight outliving a thousand
years!”
“What bring ye else to the Building?”
“Oh, willing hands to toil;
Strong natures tuned to the harvest-song and bound to the kindly soil;
Bold pioneers for the wilderness, defenders in the field,--
The sons of a race of soldiers who never learned to yield.
Young hearts with duty brimming--as faith makes sweet the due;
Their truth to me their witness they cannot be false to you!”
“What send ye else, old Mother, to raise our mighty wall?
For we must build against Kings and Wrongs a fortress never to fall.”
“I send you in cradle and bosom, wise brain and eloquent tongue,
Whose crowns should engild my crowning, whose songs for me should be
sung.
Oh, flowers unblown, from lonely fields, my daughters with hearts
aglow,
With pulses warm with sympathies, with bosoms pure as snow,--
I smile through tears as the clouds unroll--my widening river that
runs!
My lost ones grown in radiant growth--proud mothers of free-born
sons.”
“It is well, aye, well, old Erin! The sons you give to me
Are symboled long in flag and song--your Sunburst on the Sea.
All mine by the chrism of Freedom, still yours by their love’s belief;
And truest to me shall the tenderest be in a suffering Mother’s grief.
Their loss is the change of the wave to the cloud, of the dew to the
river and main;
Their hope shall persist through the sea and the mist, and thy streams
shall be filled again.
As the smolt of the salmon go down to the sea, and as surely come back
to the river,
Their love shall be yours while your sorrow endures, for God guardeth
His right forever.”
THE PILGRIM FATHERS
In every land wherever might holds sway
The Pilgrims’ leaven is at work to-day.
The Mayflower’s cabin was the chosen womb
Of light predestined for the nations’ gloom.
God grant that those who tend the sacred flame
May worthy prove of their Forefathers’ name.
More light has come,--more dangers, too, perplex:
New prides, new greeds, our high condition vex.
The Fathers fled from feudal lords and made
A freehold state; may we not retrograde
To lucre-lords and hierarchs of trade.
May we, as they did, teach in court and school
There must be classes, but no class shall rule:
The sea is sweet, and rots not like the pool.
Though vast the token of our future glory,
Though tongue of man hath not told such a story,
Surpassing Plato’s dream, More’s phantasy, still we
Have no new principles to keep us free.
As Nature works with changeless grain on grain,
The truths the Fathers taught we need again.
Depart from this, though we may crowd our shelves
With codes and precepts for each lapse and flaw,
And patch our moral leaks with statute law,
We cannot be protected from ourselves!
Still must we keep in every stroke and vote
The law of conscience that the Pilgrims wrote;
Our seal their secret: _Liberty can be;_
_The State is freedom if the Town is free._
The death of nations in their work began;
They sowed the seed of federated man.
Dead nations were but robber-holds, and we
The first battalion of Humanity!
All living nations, while our eagles shine,
One after one, shall swing into our line;
Our freeborn heritage shall be the guide
And bloodless order of their regicide;
The sea shall join, not limit; mountains stand
Dividing farm from farm, not land from land.
O People’s Voice! when farthest thrones shall hear;
When teachers own; when thoughtful rabbis know;
When artist minds in world-wide symbol show;
When serfs and soldiers their mute faces raise;
When priests on grand cathedral altars praise;
When pride and arrogance shall disappear,
The Pilgrims’ Vision is accomplished here!
LIBERTY LIGHTING THE WORLD[5]
Majestic warder by the nation’s gate,
Spike-crowned, flame-armed like Agony or Glory,
Holding the tablets of some unknown law,
With gesture eloquent and mute as Fate,--
We stand about thy feet in solemn awe,
Like desert-tribes who seek their sphinx’s story,
And question thee in spirit and in speech;
What art thou? Whence? What comest thou to teach?
What vision hold those introverted eyes
Of revolutions framed in centuries?
Thy flame--what threat, or guide for sacred way?
Thy tablet--what commandment? What Sinai?
Lo! as the waves make murmur at thy base,
We watch the somber grandeur of thy face,
And ask thee--what thou art.
I am Liberty--God’s daughter!
My symbols--a law and a torch;
Not a sword to threaten slaughter,
Nor a flame to dazzle or scorch;
But a light that the world may see
And a truth that shall make men free.
I am the sister of Duty,
And I am the sister of Faith;
To-day adored for my beauty,
To-morrow led forth to death.
I am she whom ages prayed for;
Heroes suffered undismayed for;
Whom the martyrs were betrayed for!
I am Liberty! Fame of nation or praise of statute is naught to me:
Freedom is growth and not creation: one man suffers, one man is free.
One brain forges a constitution; but how shall the million souls be
won?
Freedom is more than a resolution--he is not free who is free alone.
Justice is mine, and it grows by loving, changing the world like the
circling sun;
Evil recedes from the spirit’s proving as mist from the hollows when
night is done.
Hither, ye blind, from your futile banding; know the rights and the
rights are won;
Wrong shall die with the understanding--one truth clear and the work
is done.
Nature is higher than Progress or Knowledge, whose need is ninety
enslaved for ten;
My word shall stand against mart and college; _The planet belongs to
its living men!_
And hither, ye weary ones and breathless, searching the seas for a
kindly shore,
I am Liberty! patient, deathless--set by love at the nation’s door.
AMERICA[6]
O Land magnanimous, republican!
The last for Nationhood, the first for Man!
Because thy lines by Freedom’s hand were laid,
Profound the sin to change or retrograde.
From base to cresting let thy work be new;
’Twas not by aping foreign ways it grew.
To struggling peoples give at least applause;
Let equities, not precedent, subtend your laws;
Like rays from that great Eye the altars show,
That fall triangular, free states should grow,
The soul above, the brain and hand below.
Believe that strength lies not in steel nor stone;
That perils wait the land whose heavy throne,
Though ringed by swords and rich with titled show,
Is based on fettered misery below;
That nations grow where every class unites
For common interests and common rights;
Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son,
Till step by step the topmost height is won;
Where every hand subscribes to every rule,
And free as air are voice and vote and school!
A nation’s years are centuries. Let Art
Portray thy first, and Liberty will start
From every field in Europe at the sight.
“Why stand these thrones between us and the light?”
Strong men will ask, “Who built these frontier towers
To bar out men of kindred blood with ours?”
Oh, this thy work, Republic! this thy health,
To prove man’s birthright to a commonwealth;
To teach the peoples to be strong and wise,
Till armies, nations, nobles, royalties,
Are laid at rest with all their fears and hates;
Till Europe’s thirteen monarchies are states,
Without a barrier and without a throne,
Of one grand federation like our own!
FOOTNOTES:
[5] The poem is given in the abridged form in which it is printed in
the volume of O’Reilly’s selected poems, published by P. J. Kenedy &
Sons.
[6] This poem, which is here quoted in part only, was read at the
reunion of the Army of the Potomac, in Detroit, June 14, 1882, General
Grant being present on the occasion.
HANS MATTSON
Hans Mattson was the son of an independent freeholder and successful
farmer of the parish of Onnestad, near the city of Kristianstad,
Sweden. In an unpretending little cabin built by his father he spent
the first years of his happy and peaceful childhood. On one occasion
he was taken by his parents to see the king, who was to pass by on
the highway near his home. In the midst of the confusion he did
succeed in getting a glimpse of King Oscar I. In his childish mind he
had fancied that the king and his family and all others in authority
were the peculiar and elect people of the Almighty, but after this
event he began to entertain serious doubts as to the correctness of
his views on this matter.
After a year and a half in the Swedish army he decided to leave
the service and try his luck “in a country where inherited names
and titles were not the necessary conditions of success.” He says:
“At that time America was little known in our part of the country,
only a few persons having emigrated from the whole district. But we
knew that it was a new country, inhabited by a free and independent
people, that it had a liberal government and great natural resources,
and these inducements were sufficient for us.”
From the time of his arrival at Boston until his final settling in
Minnesota, his career is but typical of that of the many sturdy and
enterprising pioneers of Scandinavian origin who have contributed
so much to the building of the Northwest. He served as a colonel
in the Civil War, and in 1869 was elected as Secretary of State in
Minnesota. Later he was Consul General of the United States in India.
The selection that follows is taken from the final chapter of his
“Reminiscences,” the English translation of which was published in
1892.
SCANDINAVIAN CONTRIBUTION TO AMERICAN NATIONALITY
It is a great mistake which some make, to think that it is only for
their brawn and muscle that the Northmen have become a valuable
acquisition to the American population; on the contrary, they have
done, and are doing, as much as any other nationality within the domain
of mind and heart. Not to speak of the early discovery of America by
the Scandinavians four hundred years before the time of Columbus, they
can look back with proud satisfaction on the part they have taken in
all respects to make this great republic what it is to-day.
The early Swedish colonists in Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey
worked as hard for liberty and independence as the English did in New
England and in the South. There were no tories among them, and when
the Continental Congress stood wavering equal in the balance for and
against the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, it was a
Swede, John Morton (Mortenson), of the old Delaware stock, who gave the
casting vote of Pennsylvania in favor of the sacred document.
When, nearly a century later, the great rebellion burst upon the land,
a gallant descendant of the Swedes, Gen. Robert Anderson, met its first
shock at Fort Sumter, and, during the bitter struggle of four years
which followed, the Scandinavian-Americans were as true and loyal to
their adopted country as their native-born neighbors, giving their
unanimous support to the cause of the Union and fighting valiantly for
it. Nor should it be forgotten that it was the Swede, John Ericsson,
who, by his inventive genius, saved the navy and the great seaports of
the United States, and that it was another Swede by descent, Admiral
Dahlgren, who furnished the model for the best guns of our artillery.
Surely love of freedom, valor, genius, patriotism and religious fervor
was not planted in America by the seeds brought over in the Mayflower
alone.
Yes, it is verily true that the Scandinavian immigrants, from the early
colonists of 1638 to the present time, have furnished strong hands,
clear heads and loyal hearts to the republic. They have caused the
wilderness to blossom like the rose; they have planted schools and
churches on the hills and in the valleys; they have honestly and ably
administered the public affairs of town, county and state; they have
helped to make wise laws for their respective commonwealths and in the
halls of Congress; they have, with honor and ability, represented their
adopted country abroad; they have sanctified the American soil by their
blood, shed in freedom’s cause on the battle-fields of the Revolution
and the Civil War; and, though proud of their Scandinavian ancestry,
they love America and American institutions as deeply and as truly
as do the descendants of the Pilgrims, the starry emblem of liberty
meaning as much to them as to any other citizen.
Therefore, the Scandinavian-American feels a certain sense of
ownership in the glorious heritage of American soil, with its rivers,
lakes, mountains, valleys, woods and prairies, and in all its noble
institutions; and he feels that the blessings which he enjoys are not
his by favor or sufferance, but by right;--by moral as well as civil
right. For he took possession of the wilderness, endured the hardships
of the pioneer, contributed his full share toward the grand results
accomplished, and is in mind and heart a true and loyal American
citizen.
JACOB RIIS
Jacob Riis, who may well stand as a representative of the best that
America has received from the Scandinavian countries, was born at
Ribe, Denmark, May 3, 1849. He emigrated to the United States in
1870, where he subsequently obtained a position as reporter on _The
New York Tribune_ and _The Evening Sun_. It is at the close of his
well-known autobiography that he relates how he came to a realization
that he was indeed an American in heart as well as in name. In words
of patriotic fervor he says:--
“I have told the story of the making of an American. There remains to
tell how I found out that he was made and finished at last. It was
when I went back to see my mother once more and, wandering about the
country of my childhood’s memories, had come to the city of Elsinore.
There I fell ill of a fever and lay many weeks in the house of a
friend upon the shore of the beautiful Oeresund. One day when the
fever had left me, they rolled my bed into a room overlooking the
sea. The sunlight danced upon the waves, and the distant mountains of
Sweden were blue against the horizon. Ships passed under full sail
up and down the great waterway of the nations. But the sunshine and
the peaceful day bore no message to me. I lay moodily picking at the
coverlet, sick and discouraged and sore--I hardly knew why myself.
Until all at once there sailed past, close inshore, a ship flying at
the top the flag of freedom, blown out on the breeze till every star
in it shone bright and clear. That moment I knew. Gone were illness,
discouragement, and gloom! Forgotten weakness and suffering, the
cautions of doctor and nurse. I sat up in bed and shouted, laughed
and cried by turns, waving my handkerchief to the flag out there.
They thought I had lost my head, but I told them no, thank God! I
had found it, and my heart, too, at last. I knew then that it was
my flag; that my children’s home was mine, indeed; that I also had
become an American in truth. And I thanked God, and, like unto the
man sick of the palsy, arose from my bed and went home, healed.”
Besides being the author of several books, such as “The Battle
with the Slum,” “How the Other Half Lives,” and “The Children of
the Poor,” dealing with the life of the people of New York’s East
Side, he was an active and practical reformer. In the course of his
struggles to ameliorate the condition of the poor, he met Theodore
Roosevelt and formed the friendship which inspired the volume
represented in the following selection. Riis and Roosevelt had much
in common. There was in both a great deal of the old Anglo-Saxon
fighting spirit, ennobled by modern influences and employed in
defense of right and justice. Their mutual and steadfast devotion
to each other resembled that of ancient liegeman and lord. This
hero-worship is, after all, not unique in our history. It should
be a cause for great pride that so many of our leaders, of whom,
of course, Lincoln is the most striking example, by embodying the
noblest and the best in American life, have been the living ideal of
countless immigrants.
A YOUNG MAN’S HERO: AN IMMIGRANT’S TRIBUTE TO ROOSEVELT
There was never a day that called so loudly for such as he, as does
this of ours. Not that it is worse than other days; I know it is
better. I find proof of it in the very fact that it is as if the
age-long fight between good and evil had suddenly come to a head, as if
all the questions of right, of justice, of the brotherhood, which we
had seen in glimpses before, and dimly, had all at once come out in the
open, craving solution one and all. A battle royal, truly! A battle for
the man of clean hands and clean mind, who can think straight and act
square; the man who will stand for the right “because it is right”; who
can say, and mean it, that “it is hard to fail, but worse never to have
tried to succeed.” A battle for him who strives for “that highest form
of success which comes, not to the man who desires mere easy peace, but
to him who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter
toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.” I am
but quoting his own words, and never, I think, did I hear finer than
those he spoke of Governor Taft when he had put by his own preferences
and gone to his hard and toilsome task in the Philippines; for the
whole royal, fighting soul of the man was in them.
“But he undertook it gladly,” he said, “and he is to be considered
thrice fortunate; for in this world the one thing supremely worth
having is the opportunity coupled with the capacity to do well and
worthily a piece of work the doing of which is of vital consequence to
the welfare of mankind.”
There is his measure. Let now the understrappers sputter. With that for
our young men to grow up to, we need have no fear for the morrow. Let
it ask what questions it will of the Republic, it shall answer them,
for we shall have men at the oars.
This afternoon the newspaper that came to my desk contained a cable
despatch which gave me a glow at the heart such as I have not felt for
a while. Just three lines; but they told that a nation’s conscience
was struggling victoriously through hate and foul play and treason:
Captain Dreyfus was to get a fair trial. Justice was to be done at
last to a once despised Jew whose wrongs had held the civilized world
upon the rack; and the world was made happy. Say now it does not
move! It does, where there are men to move it,--I said it before: men
who believe in the right and are willing to fight for it. When the
children of poverty and want came to Mulberry Street for justice, and
I knew they came because Roosevelt had been there, I saw in that what
the resolute, courageous, unyielding determination of one man to see
right done in his own time could accomplish. I have watched him since
in the Navy Department, in camp, as Governor, in the White House, and
more and more I have made out his message as being to the young men
of our day, himself the youngest of our Presidents. I know it is so,
for when I speak to the young about him, I see their eyes kindle, and
their handshake tells me that they want to be like him, and are going
to try. And then I feel that I, too, have done something worth doing
for my people. For, whether for good or for evil, we all leave our mark
upon our day, and his is that of a clean, strong man who fights for the
right _and wins_.
Now, then, a word to these young men who, all over our broad land, are
striving up toward the standard he sets, for he is their hero by right,
as he is mine. Do not be afraid to own it. The struggle to which you
are born, and in which you are bound to take a hand if you would be men
in more than name, is the struggle between the ideal and the husk; for
life without ideals is like the world without the hope of heaven, an
empty, meaningless husk. It is your business to read its meaning into
it by making the ideals real. The material things of life are good in
their day, but they pass away; the moral remain to bear witness that
the high hopes of youth are not mere phantasms. Theodore Roosevelt
_lives his ideals_; therefore you can trust them. Here they are in
working shape: “Face the facts as you find them; strive steadily for
the best.” “Be never content with less than the possible best, and
never throw away the possible best because it is not the ideal best.”
Maxims, those, for the young man who wants to make the most of himself
and his time. Happily for the world, the young man who does not is
rare.
JACOB VAN DER ZEE
“The Hollanders of Iowa,” by Jacob Van der Zee, was published at Iowa
City in 1912 by the State Historical Society of Iowa. The following
facts regarding the author and his book are given in the introduction
of the editor, Mr. Benjamin F. Shambaugh:--
“The author of this volume on ‘The Hollanders of Iowa’ was admirably
fitted for the task. Born of Dutch parents in The Netherlands and
reared among kinsfolk in Iowa, he has been a part of the life which
is portrayed in these pages. At the same time Mr. Van der Zee’s
education at The State University of Iowa, his three years’ residence
at Oxford as a Rhodes scholar, and his research work in The State
Historical Society of Iowa have made it possible for him to study the
Hollanders objectively as well as subjectively. Accordingly, his book
is in no respect an overdrawn, eulogistic account of the Dutch people.
“The history of the Hollanders of Iowa is not wholly provincial:
it suggests much that is typical in the development of Iowa and in
the larger history of the West: it is ‘a story of the stubborn and
unyielding fight of men and women who overcame the obstacles of a new
country and handed down to their descendants thriving farms and homes
of peace and plenty.’”
The selection here given comprises chapter four of the book.
WHY DUTCH EMIGRANTS TURNED TO AMERICA
Such was the condition of things in The Netherlands that thousands
of people lived from hand to mouth, the prey of poverty and hunger,
stupefied by the hopelessness of securing the necessities of life, and
barely enabled through the gifts of the well-to-do to drag out their
wretched lives. At the same time many of these unfortunate persons were
hopeful and eager to find a place where they might obtain a livelihood,
lead quiet lives of honesty and godliness, and educate their children
in the principles of religion without let or hindrance. The leaders of
the Separatists looked forward to a life of freedom in a land where
man would not have to wait for work, but where work awaited man, where
people would not rub elbows by reason of the density of population, and
where God’s creation would welcome the coming of man.
When social forces such as these, mostly beyond human control, began
to operate with increasing power, the Dutch people were not slow to
recognize the truth that emigration was absolutely necessary. The
seriousness of the situation dawned upon all thinking men,--especially
upon state officials, who feared that unless the stream of emigration
could be directed toward the Dutch colonies, their country would suffer
an enormous drain of capital and human lives. Accordingly the attention
of prospective emigrants was called to the Dutch East Indies,--chiefly
to the advantages of the rich island of Java, “that paradise of the
world, the pearl in Holland’s crown.”
The religion of the Dissenters, however, was responsible for turning
the balance in favor of some other land. To them Java was a closed
door. Beside the fear of an unhealthful climate towered the certainty
of legislation hostile to their Christian principles and ideals.
Moreover, could poor men afford the expense of transportation thither,
and could they feel assured of getting land or work in Java? State
officials, men of learning, and men of business from several parts
of the country were summoned to an important conference at Amsterdam
to discuss the whole emigration movement. The Separatist leaders were
asked why they should not remain Netherlanders under the House of
Orange by removing to the colonies just as the people of the British
Isles found homes in the English colonies. Two Separatist ministers
appealed to the government to direct the flood of emigration toward
Java by promises of civil and religious liberty. But the attempt to
secure a free Christian colony in Java produced only idle expectations.
Then it was that the people turned their eyes away from the East
toward the United States of North America,--a land of freedom and rich
blessings, where they hoped to find in its unsettled interior some
spot adaptable to agriculture, and thus rescue themselves from the
miseries of a decadent state. To the discontented, ambitious Hollander
was presented the picture of a real land of promise, where all things
would smile at him and be prepared, as it were, to aid him. It was
said that “after an ocean passage of trifling expense the Netherlander
may find work to do as soon as he sets foot on shore; he may buy land
for a few florins per acre; and feel secure and free among a people
of Dutch, German and English birth, who will rejoice to see him come
to increase the nation’s wealth.” Asserting that they could vouch for
the truthfulness of this picture, as based on the positive assurances
and experiences of friends already in America, the Separatist
clergyman-pamphleteers openly declared that they would not hesitate
to rob Holland of her best citizens by helping them on their way to
America.
Of the people and government of the United States, Scholte, who was
destined to lead hundreds of his countrymen to the State of Iowa, at an
early date cherished a highly favorable opinion, which he expressed as
follows:--
“I am convinced that a settlement in some healthful region there will
have, by the ordinary blessing of God, excellent temporal and moral
results, especially for the rising generation.... Should it then excite
much wonder that I have firmly resolved to leave The Netherlands and
together with so many Christian relatives adopt the United States as a
new fatherland?
“There I shall certainly meet with the same wickedness which troubles
me here; yet I shall find also opportunity to work. There I shall
certainly find the same, if not still greater, evidence of unbelief and
superstition; but I shall also find a constitutional provision which
does not bind my hands in the use of the Sword of the Spirit, which is
the Word of God; there I can fight for what I believe without being
disobedient to the magistrates and authorities ordained by God. There I
shall find among men the same zeal to obtain this world’s goods; but I
shall not find the same impulse to get the better of one another, for
competition is open to all; I shall not find the same desire to reduce
the wages of labor, nor the same inducement to avoid taxation, nor the
same peevishness and groaning about the burden of taxation.
“There I shall find no Minister of Public Worship, for the separation
of Church and State is a fact. There I shall not need to contribute
to the support of pastors whose teachings I abhor. I shall find no
school commissions nor school supervisors who prohibit the use of the
Bible in schools and hinder the organization of special schools, for
education is really free. I shall find there the descendants of earlier
inhabitants of Holland, among whom the piety of our forefathers still
lives, and who are now prepared to give advice and aid to Hollanders
who are forced to come to them.”
Scholte, however, never claimed to be a refugee from the oppression
of the Old World. He left Europe because the social, religious, and
political condition of his native country was such that, according to
his conviction, he could not with any reasonable hope of success work
for the actual benefit of honest and industrious fellow-men. Very many
members of Scholte’s emigrant association felt certain that they and
their children would sink from the middle class and end their lives as
paupers, if they remained in Holland.
Later emigration to America was in no small degree due to a cause which
has always operated in inducing people to abandon their European homes.
After a period of residence in America, Hollanders, elated by reason
of their prosperity and general change of fortune, very naturally
reported their delight to friends and relatives in the fatherland,
strongly urging them to come and share their good luck instead of
suffering from want in Holland. They wrote of higher wages, fertile
soil, cheapness of the necessities of life, abundance of cheap land,
and many other advantages. If one’s wages for a day’s work in America
equalled a week’s earnings in Holland, surely it was worth while to
leave that unfortunate country. Such favorable reports as these were
largely instrumental in turning the attention of Hollanders to the New
World as the one great land of opportunity.
EDWARD BOK
Although it was impossible to include in this volume selections from
“The Americanization of Edward Bok,” recently published, it seems
that some mention should be made of this delightfully reminiscent
autobiography and of its author, who came to this country in 1870 as
a little Dutch boy of six years.
There are entertaining chapters on his passion for collecting
autographs from famous people, on his visit to Boston and Cambridge
to see Holmes and Longfellow and Emerson, on his relations with
prominent statesmen and other notable men of his time, and on his
experiences as editor of an influential and successful magazine; but
most pertinent to the purpose of this work are the last two chapters
of the book, “Where America Fell Short with Me,” and “What I Owe to
America,” which should be read by all those actively interested in
the Americanization of the foreign-born. In the first of these he
points out that America failed to teach him thrift or economy; that
the importance of doing a task thoroughly, the need of quality rather
than quantity, was not inculcated; that the public school fell short
in its responsibility of seeing that he, a foreign-born boy, acquired
the English language correctly; that he was not impressed with a
wholesome and proper respect for law and authority; and that, at the
most critical time, when he came to exercise the right of suffrage,
the State offered him no enlightenment or encouragement. Yet, in
spite of all this, he is able to say: “Whatever shortcomings I may
have found during my fifty-year period of Americanization; however
America may have failed to help my transition from a foreigner into
an American, I owe to her the most priceless gift that any nation can
offer, and that is opportunity.”
OSCAR SOLOMON STRAUS
Oscar S. Straus, formerly United States Ambassador to Turkey, was
born in Bavaria. Besides the degree A.B. from Columbia University,
he has received honorary degrees from various institutions. He was
appointed a member of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The
Hague, 1902, and Secretary of Commerce and Labor in the cabinet of
President Roosevelt, and has held many other prominent positions in
civil and political affairs.
His chief writings are: “The Origin of Republican Form of Government
in the United States,” 1886; “Roger Williams, the Pioneer of
Religious Liberty,” 1894; “The American Spirit,” a collection of
various addresses, published in one volume by the Century Company
in 1893. The address selected for quotation here is that delivered
at the banquet of the American Hebrew Congregations, in New York,
January 18, 1911.
AMERICA AND THE SPIRIT OF AMERICAN JUDAISM
The spirit of American Judaism first asserted itself when Stuyvesant,
the Governor of New Amsterdam, would not permit the few Jews who had
emigrated from Portugal to unite with the other burghers in standing
guard for the protection of their homes. When the tax-collector came to
Asser Levy to demand a tax on this account, he asked whether that tax
was imposed on all the residents of New Amsterdam. “No,” was the reply,
“it is only imposed upon the Jews, because they do not stand guard!”
“I have not asked to be exempted,” replied Asser Levy. “I am not only
willing, but I demand the right to stand guard.” That right the Jews
have asserted and exercised as officers in the ranks of the Continental
Army and in every crisis of our national history from that time until
the present day.
The American spirit and the spirit of American Judaism were nurtured
in the same cradle of Liberty, and were united in origin, in ideals,
and in historical development. The closing chapter of the chronicles of
the Jews on the Iberian peninsula forms the opening chapter of their
history on this Continent. It was Luis Santangel, “the Beaconsfield of
his time,” assisted by his kinsman Gabriel Sanches, the Royal Treasurer
of Aragon, who advanced out of his own purse seventeen thousand florins
which made the voyages of Columbus possible. Luis de Torres, the
interpreter as well as the surgeon and the physician of the little
fleet, and several of the sailors who were with Columbus on his first
voyage, as shown by the record, were Jews.
Looking back through this vista of more than four centuries, we have
reason to remember with justified gratitude the foresight and signal
services of those Spanish Jews who had the wisdom to divine the
far-reaching possibilities of the plans of the great navigator, whom
the King and the Queen, the Dukes and the Grandees united in regarding
as merely “a visionary babbler” or, worse than this, as “a scheming
adventurer.” The royal patrons were finally won over by the hope that
Columbus might discover new treasures of gold and precious stones to
enrich the Spanish crown. But not so with the Jewish patrons, who
caused Columbus, or, as he was then called, Christopher Colon, to be
recalled, and who, without security and without interest, advanced
the money to fit out his caravels, since they saw, as by divine
inspiration, the promise and possibility of the discovery of another
world, which, in the words of the late Emilio Castelar--the historian,
statesman, and one time President of Spain--“would afford to the
quickening principles of human liberty a temple reared to the God
of enfranchised and redeemed conscience, a land that would offer an
unstained abode to the ideals of progress.” Fortunately, the records of
these transactions are still preserved in the archives of Simancas in
Seville.
It is idle to speculate upon hypothetical theories in the face of
the facts of history. Of course, America would have been discovered
and colonized had Columbus never lived; but had the streams of the
beginnings of American history flown from other sources in other
directions, it would be futile even to make an imaginative forecast of
the effect they would have produced upon the history and development of
this Continent. The merciless intolerance of an ecclesiastical system
and the horror of its persecutions stimulated the earliest immigration,
and subsequently brought about the Reformation in Saxon and Anglo-Saxon
lands, and the same spirit drove to our shores the Pilgrim and the
Puritan fathers; which chain of circumstances destined this country
from the very beginning to be the land of the immigrant and a home for
the fugitive and the persecuted.
The difference between government by kings and nobles and government
under a Democracy is, that the former rests upon the power to compel
obedience, while the latter rests essentially upon the sacrifice by
the individual for the community, based upon the ideals of right and
justice. If the Pilgrims, the Puritans, and the Huguenots brought with
them, as they certainly did, the remembrance of sufferings for ideals
and the spirit of sacrifice, how much longer was that remembrance, and
with how much greater intensity did that spirit glow in the souls of
the Jews, whose whole history is a record of martyrdom, of suffering,
and of sacrifice for the ideals of civil and religious liberty;
concerning whom it has been said: “Of all the races and nations of
mankind which quarter the arms of Liberty on the shields of their
honor, none has a better title to that decoration than the Jews.”
The spirit of Judaism became the mother spirit of Puritanism in Old
England; and the history of Israel and its democratic model under the
Judges inspired and guided the Pilgrims and the Puritans in their
wandering hither and in laying the foundation of their commonwealths in
New England. The piety and learning of the Jews bridged the chasm of
the Middle Ages; and the torch they bore amidst trials and sufferings
lighted the pathway from the ancient to the modern world.
“The historical power of the prophets of Israel,” says James
Darmesteter, “is exhausted neither by Judaism nor by Christianity, and
they hold a reserve force for the benefit of the coming century. The
twentieth century is better prepared than the nineteen preceding it to
understand them.” While Zionism is a pious hope and a vision out of
despair in countries where the victims of oppression are still counted
by millions, the republicanism of the United States is the nearest
approach to the ideals of the prophets of Israel that ever has been
incorporated in the form of a state. The founders of our government
converted the dreams of philosophers into a political system,--a
government by the people, for the people, whereunder the rights of
man became the rights of men, secured and guaranteed by a written
constitution. Ours is peculiarly a promised land wherein the spirit of
the teachings of the ancient prophets inspired the work of the fathers
of our country.
American liberty demands of no man the abandonment of his conscientious
convictions; on the contrary, it had its birth, not in the narrowness
of uniformity, but in the breadth of diversity, which patriotism fuses
together into a conscious harmony for the highest welfare of all. The
Protestant, the Catholic, and the Jew, each and all need the support
and the sustaining power of their religion to develop their moral
natures and to keep alive the spirit of self-sacrifice which American
patriotism demands of every man, whatever may be his creed or race, who
is worthy to enjoy the blessings of American citizenship.
I do not wish to be misunderstood as claiming any special merit for
the Jews as American citizens which is not equally possessed by the
Americans of other creeds. They have the good as well as the bad among
them, the noble and the ignoble, the worthy and the unworthy. They have
the qualities as well as the defects of their fellow-citizens. In a
word, they are not any less patriotic Americans because they are Jews,
nor any less loyal Jews because they are primarily patriotic Americans.
The Jew is neither a newcomer nor an alien in this country or on this
continent; his Americanism is as original and ancient as that of any
race or people with the exception of the American Indian and other
aborigines. He came in the caravels of Columbus, and he knocked at the
gates of New Amsterdam only thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers
stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock.
FELIX ADLER
Felix Adler, lecturer and writer on moral and ethical subjects, was
born in Alzey, Germany, in 1851. He received the degree A.B. from
Columbia University, and continued his studies at Berlin and at the
University of Heidelberg. From 1874 to 1876 he was professor of
Hebrew at Cornell University. Since 1902 he has been professor of
political and social ethics at Columbia. He has produced numerous
works on moral and ethical topics. In 1915 there was published his
book, “The World Crisis and its Meaning,” the third chapter of which
is here quoted in part.
Adler’s keen interest in international ethics has been expressed in
several addresses delivered before the New York Society of Ethical
Culture, which was founded by him in 1876. Among other things he
pleads for altruism among the nations, and truthfulness, and believes
in a purified nationalism instead of anti- or inter-nationalism.
THE AMERICAN IDEAL
The American ideal is that of the uncommon quality latent in the common
man. Necessarily it is an ethical ideal, a spiritual ideal; otherwise
it would be nonsense. For, taking men as they are, they are assuredly
not equal. The differences between them, on the contrary, are glaring.
The common man is not uncommonly fine spiritually, but rather, seen
from the outside, “uncommonly” common. It is therefore an ethical
instinct that has turned the people toward this ethical conception.
It is true that in Germany and in England, side by side with the
efficiency and the mastery ideals, there has always existed this same
spiritual or religious ideal; side by side with the stratification
and entitulation of men, the labelling of them as lower and higher,
as empirically better or worse, there has always been the recognition
that men are equal,--equal, that is to say, in church, but not
outside, equal in the hereafter, but not in this life. If we would
fathom the real depth and inner significance of the democratic ideal
as it slumbers or dreams in the heart of America, rather than as yet
explicit, we must say that it is an ideal which seeks to overcome this
very dualism, seeks to take the spiritual conception of human equality
out of the church and put it into the market place, to take it from
far off celestial realms for realization upon this earth. For men are
not equal in the empirical sense; they are equal only in the spiritual
sense, equal only in the sense that the margin of achievement of which
any person is capable, be it wide or narrow, is infinitesimal compared
with his infinite spiritual possibilities.
It is because of this subconscious ethical motive that there is this
generous air of expectation in America, that we are always wondering
what will happen next, or who will happen next. Will another Emerson
come along? Will another Lincoln come along? We do not know. But this
we know, that the greatest lusters of our past already tend to fade in
our memory, not because we are irreverent, but because nothing that
the past has accomplished can content us; because we are looking for
greatness beyond greatness, truth beyond truth ever yet spoken. The
Germans have a legend that in their hour of need an ancient emperor
will arise out of the tomb where he slumbers to stretch his protecting
hand over the Fatherland. We Americans, too, have the belief that, if
ever such an hour comes for us, there will arise spirits clothed in
human flesh amongst us sufficient for our need, but spirits that will
come, as it were, out of the future to meet our advancing host and lead
it, not ghosts out of the storied past. For America differs from all
other nations in that it derives its inspiration from the future. Every
other people has some culture, some civilization, handed down from the
past, of which it is the custodian, and which it seeks to develop. The
American people have no such single tradition. They are dedicated, not
to the preservation of what has been, but to the creation of what never
has been. They are the prophets of the future, not the priests of the
past.
I have spoken above of ideals, of what is fine in a nation, of fine
tendencies. The idea which a people has of itself, like the idea which
an individual has of himself, often does not tally with the reality. If
we look at the realities of American life,--and, on the principle of
_corruptio optimi pessima_, we should be prepared for what we see,--we
are dismayed to observe in actual practice what seems like a monstrous
caricature,--not democracy, but plutocracy; kings expelled and the
petty political bosses in their stead; merciless exploitation of the
economically weak,--a precipitate reduction of wages, for instance,
at the first signs of approaching depression, in advance of what is
required,--instead of respect for the sacred personality of human
beings, the utmost disrespect. Certainly the nation needs strong and
persistent ethical teaching in order to make it aware of its better
self and of what is implied in the political institutions which it has
founded.
But ethical teaching alone will not suffice. It must be admitted
that a danger lurks in the idea of equality itself. The danger is
that differences in refinement, in culture, in intellectual ability
and attainments are apt to be insufficiently emphasized; that the
untutored, the uncultivated, the intellectually undeveloped, are apt
presumptuously to put themselves on a par with those of superior
development; and hence that superiority, failing to meet with
recognition, will be discouraged and democracy tend to level men
downward instead of upward. This will not be true so much of such moral
excellence as appears in an Emerson or a Lincoln,--for there is that
in the lowliest which responds to the manifestations of transcendent
moral beauty,--but it will hold good of those minor superiorities that
fall short of the highest in art and science and conduct, yet upon the
fostering of which depends the eventual appearance of culture’s richest
fruits.
In order to ward off this danger we must have a new and larger
educational policy in our schools than has yet been put in practice.
Vocational training in its broadest and deepest sense will be our
greatest aid.
Democracy, the American democracy, is the St. Christopher. St.
Christopher bore the Christ child on his shoulders as he stepped into
the river, and the child was as light as a feather. But it became
heavier and heavier as he entered the stream, until he was well nigh
borne down by it. So we, in the heyday of 1776, stepped into the stream
with the infant Democracy on our shoulders, and it was light as a
feather’s weight; but it is becoming heavier and heavier the deeper we
are getting into the stream--heavier and heavier. When we began, there
were four or five millions. Now there are ninety millions. Heavier
and heavier! And there are other millions coming. When we began we
were a homogeneous people; now there are those twenty-three languages
spoken in a single school. And with this vast multitude, and this
heterogeneous population, we are trying the most difficult experiment
that has ever been attempted in the world,--trying to invest with
sovereignty the common man. There has been the sovereignty of kings,
and now and then a king has done well. There has been the sovereignty
of aristocracies, and now and then an English aristocracy or a Venetian
aristocracy has done well--though never wholly well. And now we are
imposing this most difficult task of government, which depends on the
recognition of excellence in others, so that the best may rule in our
behalf, on the shoulders of the multitude. These are our difficulties.
But our difficulties are also our opportunities. This land is the
Promised Land. It is that not only in the sense in which the word
is commonly taken--that is to say, a haven for the disadvantaged of
other countries, a land whither the oppressed may come to repair
their fortunes and breathe freely and achieve material independence.
That is but one side of the promise. In that sense the Anglo-American
native population is the host, extending hospitality, the benefactor
of the immigrants. But this is also the land of promise for the native
population themselves, in order that they may be penetrated by the
influence of what is best in the newcomers, in order that their too
narrow horizon may be widened, in order that their stiffened mental
bent may become more flexible; that festivity, pageant and song may be
added to their life by the newcomers; that echoes of ancient prophecy
may inspire the matter-of-fact, progressive movements, so-called, of
our day.
America is the Wonderland, hid for ages in the secret of the sea,
then revealed. At first, how abused! Spanish conquerors trampled it;
it was the nesting place of buccaneers, adventurers, if also the home
of the Puritans--bad men and good men side by side. Then for dreary
centuries the home of slavery. Then the scene of prolonged strife. And
now, on the surface, the stamping ground of vulgar plutocrats! And yet,
in the hearts of the elect,--yes, and in the hearts of the masses,
too,--inarticulate and dim, there has ever been present a fairer and
nobler ideal, the ideal of a Republic built on the uncommon fineness
in the common man! To live for that ideal is the true Americanism, the
larger patriotism. To that ideal, not on the field of battle, as in
Europe, but in the arduous toil of peace, let us be willing to give the
“last full measure of devotion.”
MARY ANTIN
With the publication in 1912 of Mary Antin’s “The Promised Land,” a
new interest was awakened in the experiences of the foreign-born,
and since then several important autobiographies of immigrants have
appeared.
Miss Antin, who was born in Polotzk, Russia, in 1881, and came to
America in 1894, was educated in the public schools of Boston, later
attending Teachers’ College and Barnard College, Columbia University.
Many an American boy and girl is familiar with her fine tribute to
the part of the public school in her Americanization.
In 1914 she published “They Who Knock at Our Gates,” “a complete
gospel of immigration,” in which she aims to refute the material
and selfish arguments of the restrictionists, basing her plea for
a nobler and more liberal treatment of the immigration question
upon the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence.
It is from this volume and “The Promised Land” that the following
selections are taken.
AN IMMIGRANT’S TRIBUTE TO THE PUBLIC SCHOOL AND TO GEORGE WASHINGTON
The public school has done its best for us foreigners, and for the
country, when it has made us into good Americans. I am glad it is mine
to tell how the miracle was wrought in one case. You should be glad
to hear of it, you born Americans; for it is the story of the growth
of your country; of the flocking of your brothers and sisters from
the far ends of the earth to the flag you love; of the recruiting of
your armies of workers, thinkers, and leaders. And you will be glad to
hear of it, my comrades in adoption; for it is a rehearsal of your own
experience, the thrill and wonder of which your own hearts have felt.
How long would you say, wise reader, it takes to make an American? By
the middle of my second year in school I had reached the sixth grade.
When, after the Christmas holidays, we began to study the life of
Washington, running through a summary of the Revolution, and the early
days of the Republic, it seemed to me that all my reading and study had
been idle until then. The reader, the arithmetic, the song book, that
had so fascinated me until now, became suddenly sober exercise books,
tools wherewith to hew a way to the source of inspiration. When the
teacher read to us out of a big book with many bookmarks in it, I sat
rigid with attention in my little chair, my hands tightly clasped on
the edge of my desk; and I painfully held my breath, to prevent sighs
of disappointment escaping, as I saw the teacher skip the parts between
bookmarks. When the class read, and it came my turn, my voice shook and
the book trembled in my hands. I could not pronounce the name of George
Washington without a pause. Never had I prayed, never had I chanted the
songs of David, never had I called upon the Most Holy, in such utter
reverence and worship as I repeated the simple sentences of my child’s
story of the patriot. I gazed with adoration at the portraits of George
and Martha Washington, till I could see them with my eyes shut. And
whereas formerly my self-consciousness had bordered on conceit, and
I thought myself an uncommon person, parading my schoolbooks through
the streets, and swelling with pride when a teacher detained me in
conversation, now I grew humble all at once, seeing how insignificant I
was beside the Great.
As I read about the noble boy who would not tell a lie to save
himself from punishment, I was for the first time truly repentant
of my sins. Formerly I had fasted and prayed and made sacrifice on
the Day of Atonement, but it was more than half play, in mimicry of
my elders. I had no real horror of sin, and I knew so many ways of
escaping punishment. I am sure my family, my neighbors, my teachers
in Polotzk--all my world, in fact--strove together, by example and
precept, to teach me goodness. Saintliness had a new incarnation in
about every third person I knew. I did respect the saints, but I could
not help seeing that most of them were a little bit stupid, and that
mischief was much more fun than piety. Goodness, as I had known it,
was respectable, but not necessarily admirable. The people I really
admired, like my Uncle Solomon and Cousin Rachel, were those who
preached the least and laughed the most. My sister Frieda was perfectly
good, but she did not think the less of me because I played tricks.
What I loved in my friends was not inimitable. One could be downright
good if one really wanted to. One could be learned if one had books and
teachers. One could sing funny songs and tell anecdotes if one traveled
about and picked up such things, like one’s uncles and cousins. But a
human being strictly good, perfectly wise, and unfailingly valiant,
all at the same time, I had never heard or dreamed of. This wonderful
George Washington was as inimitable as he was irreproachable. Even if
I had never, never told a lie, I could not compare myself to George
Washington; for I was not brave,--I was afraid to go out when snowballs
whizzed,--and I could never be the First President of the United States.
So I was forced to revise my own estimate of myself. But the twin of
my new-born humility, paradoxical as it may seem, was a sense of
dignity I had never known before. For if I found that I was a person
of small consequence, I discovered at the same time that I was more
nobly related than I had ever supposed. I had relatives and friends
who were notable people by the old standards,--and I had never been
ashamed of my family,---but this George Washington, who died long
before I was born, was like a king in greatness, and he and I were
Fellow-Citizens. There was a great deal about Fellow-Citizens in the
patriotic literature we read at this time; and I knew from my father
how he was a Citizen through the process of naturalization, and how I
also was a Citizen by virtue of my relation to him. Undoubtedly I was
a Fellow-Citizen, and George Washington was another. It thrilled me to
realize what sudden greatness had fallen on me, and at the same time
sobered me, as with a sense of responsibility. I strove to conduct
myself as befitted a Fellow-Citizen.
Before books came into my life, I was given to stargazing and
daydreaming. When books were given me, I fell upon them as a glutton
pounces on his meat after a period of enforced starvation. I lived with
my nose in a book, and took no notice of the alterations of the sun and
stars. But now, after the advent of George Washington and the American
Revolution, I began to dream again. I strayed on the Common after
school instead of hurrying home to read. I hung on fence rails, my
pet book forgotten under my arm, and gazed off to the yellow-streaked
February sunset, and beyond, and beyond. I was no longer the central
figure of my dreams; the dry weeds in the lane crackled beneath the
tread of Heroes.
What more could America give a child? Ah, much more! As I read how
the patriots planned the Revolution, and the women gave their sons
to die in battle, and the heroes led to victory, and the rejoicing
people set up the Republic, it dawned on me gradually what was meant by
_my country_. The people all desiring noble things, and striving for
them together, defying their oppressors, giving their lives for each
other,--all this it was that made _my country_. It was not a thing
that I _understood_; I could not go home and tell Frieda about it, as I
told her other things I learned at school. But I knew one could say “my
country” and _feel_ it, as one felt “God” or “myself.” My teacher, my
schoolmates, Miss Dillingham, George Washington himself, could not mean
more than I when they said “my country,” after I had once felt it. For
the Country was for all the Citizens, and _I was a citizen_. And when
we stood up to sing “America,” I shouted the words with all my might. I
was in very earnest proclaiming to the world my love for my new-found
country.
“I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills.”
Boston Harbor, Crescent Beach, Chelsea Square,--all was hallowed ground
to me. As the day approached when the school was to hold exercises in
honor of Washington’s Birthday, the halls resounded at all hours with
the strains of patriotic songs; and I, who was a model of the attentive
pupil, more than once lost my place in the lesson as I strained to
hear, through closed doors, some neighboring class rehearsing “The
Star-Spangled Banner.” If the doors happened to open, and the chorus
broke out unveiled,--
“O! say, does that Star-Spangled Banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free, and the home of the brave?”
delicious tremors ran up and down my spine, and I was faint with
suppressed enthusiasm.
Where had been my country until now? What flag had I loved? What
heroes had I worshipped? The very names of these things had been
unknown to me. Well I knew that Polotzk was not my country. It was
_goluth_--exile. On many occasions in the year we prayed to God to lead
us out of exile. The beautiful Passover service closed with the words,
“Next year, may we be in Jerusalem.” On childish lips, indeed, those
words were no conscious aspiration; we repeated the Hebrew syllables
after our elders, but without their hope and longing. Still not a
child among us was too young to feel in his own flesh the lash of the
oppressor. We knew what it was to be Jews in exile, from the spiteful
treatment we suffered at the hands of the smallest urchin who crossed
himself; and thence we knew that Israel had good reason to pray for
deliverance. But the story of the Exodus was not history to me in the
sense that the story of the American Revolution was. It was more like a
glorious myth, a belief in which had the effect of cutting me off from
the actual world, by linking me with a world of phantoms. Those moments
of exaltation which the contemplation of the Biblical past afforded
us, allowing us to call ourselves the children of princes, served
but to tinge with a more poignant sense of disinheritance the long
humdrum stretches of our life. In very truth we were a people without
a country. Surrounded by mocking foes and detractors, it was difficult
for me to realize the persons of my people’s heroes or the events in
which they moved. Except in moments of abstraction from the world
around me, I scarcely understood that Jerusalem was an actual spot on
the earth, where once the Kings of the Bible, real people, like my
neighbors in Polotzk, ruled in puissant majesty. For the conditions of
our civil life did not permit us to cultivate a spirit of nationalism.
The freedom of worship that was grudgingly granted within the narrow
limits of the Pale by no means included the right to set up openly
any ideal of a Hebrew State, any hero other than the Czar. What we
children picked up of our ancient political history was confused with
the miraculous story of the Creation, with the supernatural legends and
hazy associations of Bible lore. As to our future, we Jews in Polotzk
had no national expectations; only a life-worn dreamer here and there
hoped to die in Palestine. If Fetchke and I sang, with my father, first
making sure of our audience, “Zion, Zion, Holy Zion, not forever is it
lost,” we did not really picture to ourselves Judæa restored.
So it came to pass that we did not know what _my country_ could mean
to a man. And as we had no country, so we had no flag to love. It was
by no far-fetched symbolism that the banner of the House of Romanoff
became the emblem of our latter-day bondage in our eyes. Even a child
would know how to hate the flag that we were forced, on pain of severe
penalties, to hoist above our housetops, in celebration of the advent
of one of our oppressors. And as it was with country and flag, so it
was with heroes of war. We hated the uniform of the soldier, to the
last brass button. On the person of a Gentile, it was the symbol of
tyranny; on the person of a Jew, it was the emblem of shame.
So a little Jewish girl in Polotzk was apt to grow up hungry-minded
and empty-hearted; and if, still in her outreaching youth, she was set
down in a land of outspoken patriotism, she was likely to love her
new country with a great love, and to embrace its heroes in a great
worship. Naturalization, with us Russian Jews, may mean more than the
adoption of the immigrant by America. It may mean the adoption of
America by the immigrant.
THE LAW OF THE FATHERS: A VIEW OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE
If I ask an American what is the fundamental American law, and he does
not answer me promptly, “That which is contained in the Declaration of
Independence,” I put him down for a poor citizen. He who is ignorant
of the law is likely to disobey it. And there cannot be two minds
about the position of the Declaration among our documents of State.
What the Mosaic Law is to the Jews, the Declaration is to the American
people. It affords us a starting-point in history and defines our
mission among the nations. Without it, we should not differ greatly
from other nations who achieved a constitutional form of government and
various democratic institutions. What marks us out from other advanced
nations is the origin of our liberties in one supreme act of political
innovation, prompted by a conscious sense of the dignity of manhood. In
other countries advances have been made by favor of hereditary rulers
and aristocratic parliaments, each successive reform being grudgingly
handed down to the people from above. Not so in America. At one bold
stroke we shattered the monarchical tradition, and installed the people
in the seats of government, substituting the gospel of the sovereignty
of the masses for the superstition of the divine right of kings.
And even more notable than the boldness of the act was the dignity
with which it was entered upon. In terms befitting a philosophical
discourse, we gave notice to the world that what we were about to do,
we would do in the name of humanity, in the conviction that as justice
is the end of government, so should manhood be its source.
It is this insistence on the philosophic sanction of our revolt that
gives the sublime touch to our political performance. Up to the moment
of our declaration of independence, our struggle with our English
rulers did not differ from other popular struggles against despotic
governments. Again and again we respectfully petitioned for redress
of specific grievances, as the governed, from time immemorial, have
petitioned their governors. But one day we abandoned our suit for
petty damages, and instituted a suit for the recovery of our entire
human heritage of freedom; and by basing our claim on the fundamental
principles of the brotherhood of man and the sovereignty of the masses,
we assumed the championship of the oppressed against their oppressors,
wherever found.
It was thus, by sinking our particular quarrel with George of England
in the universal quarrel of humanity with injustice, that we emerged a
distinct nation, with a unique mission in the world. And we revealed
ourselves to the world in the Declaration of Independence, even as
the Israelites revealed themselves in the Law of Moses. From the
Declaration flows our race consciousness, our sense of what is and
what is not American. Our laws, our policies, the successive steps of
our progress,--all must conform to the spirit of the Declaration of
Independence, the source of our national being.
The American confession of faith, therefore, is a recital of the
doctrines of liberty and equality. A faithful American is one who
understands these doctrines and applies them in his life.
ABRAHAM MITRIE RIHBANY
An intense seriousness is one of the prominent characteristics of the
writings of the immigrant; for immigration is a serious and often
a hazardous undertaking, as the immigrant best knows. But that he
has not failed to appreciate the amusing side of the readjustment
period is evidenced by the many touches of humor in his accounts
of his relation to his new environment. One of the most pleasing
and inspiriting of these accounts is “A Far Journey,” by Abraham M.
Rihbany, who was born in Syria in the year 1869, and who came to the
United States with little money, but with much native intelligence
and an open and receptive mind and soul, eager for the very best that
America has to give.
The bad effects of the gregariousness of the foreigner in America
have frequently been pointed out and deplored; most writers on
immigration have failed to see or mention any of its benefits. It
is interesting to know the opinion on this vexing question of one
who has himself passed safely through a critical transition period.
Speaking of his own experience he says that the Syrian colony in New
York “was a habitat so much like the one I had left behind me in
Syria that its home atmosphere enabled me to maintain a firm hold
on life in the face of the many difficulties which confronted me in
those days, and just different enough to awaken my curiosity to know
more about the surrounding American influences.” Impelled by the
question, “Where is America?” and longing for “something more in the
life of America than the mere loaves and fishes,” he determined to
leave New York and “seek the smaller centers of population, where men
came in friendly touch with one another, daily.”
AMERICA OFFERS SOMETHING BETTER THAN MONEY
I was told while in Syria that in America money could be picked
up everywhere. That was not true. But I found that infinitely
better things than money--knowledge, freedom, self-reliance, order,
cleanliness, sovereign human rights, self-government, and all that
these great accomplishments imply--can be picked up everywhere in
America by whosoever earnestly seeks them. And those among Americans
who are exerting the largest influence toward the solution of the
“immigration problem” are, in my opinion, not those who are writing
books on “good citizenship,” but those who stand before the foreigner
as the embodiment of these great ideals.
The occasions on which I was made to feel that I was a foreigner--an
alien--were so rare that they are not worth mentioning. My purpose
in life, and the large, warm heart of America which opens to every
person who aspires to be a good and useful citizen, made me forget that
there was an “immigration problem” within the borders of this great
Commonwealth. When I think of the thousand noble impulses which were
poured into my soul in my early years in this country by good men and
women in all walks of life; when I think of the many homes in which I
was received with my uncomely appearance and with my crude manners,
where women who were visions of elegance served me as an honored guest,
of the many counsels of men of affairs which fed my strength and taught
me the lasting value of personal achievements, and that America is the
land of not only great privileges, but great responsibilities, I feel
like saying (and I do say whenever I have the opportunity) to every
foreigner, “When you really know what America is, when you are willing
to share in its sorrows, as well as its joys, then you will cease to be
a whining malcontent, will take your harp down from the willows, and
will not call such a country ‘a strange land.’”
Of all the means of improvement other than personal associations with
good men and women, the churches and the public schools gripped most
strongly at the strings of my heart. Upon coming into town, the sight
of the church spires rising above the houses and the trees as witnesses
to man’s desire for God, always gave me inward delight. True, religion
in America lacks to a certain extent the depth of Oriental mysticism;
yet it is much more closely related than in the Orient to the vital
issues of “the life which now is.” Often would I go and stand on the
opposite side of the street from a public-school building at the hour
of dismissal (and this passion still remains with me) just for the
purpose of feasting my eyes on seeing the pupils pour out in squads, so
clean and so orderly, and seemingly animated by all that is noblest in
the life of this great nation. My soul would revel in the thought that
no distinctions were made in those temples of learning between Jew and
Gentile, Protestant and Catholic, the churched and the unchurched; all
enjoyed the equality of privileges, shared equally in the intellectual
and moral feast, and drank freely the spirit of the noblest patriotism.
AN IMMIGRANT TELLS HIS STRUGGLES WITH THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE
My struggles with the English language (which have not yet ceased)
were at times very hard. It is not at all difficult for me to realize
the agonizing inward struggles of a person who has lost the power of
speech. When I was first compelled to set aside my mother-tongue and
use English exclusively as my medium of expression, the sphere of my
life seemed to shrink to a very small disk. My pretentious purpose of
suddenly becoming a lecturer on Oriental customs, in a language in
which practically I had never conversed, might have seemed to any one
who knew me like an act of faith in the miraculous gift of tongues.
My youthful desire was not only to inform but to _move_ my hearers.
Consequently, my groping before an audience for suitable diction within
the narrow limits of my uncertain vocabulary was often pitiable.
The exceptions in English grammar seemed to be more than the rules.
The difference between the conventional and the actual sounds of
such words as “victuals” and “colonel” seemed to me to be perfectly
scandalous. The letter _c_ is certainly a superfluity in the English
language; it is never anything else but either _k_ or _s_. In my native
language, the Arabic, the accent is always put as near the end of the
word as possible; in the English, as near the beginning as possible.
Therefore, in using my adopted tongue, I was tossed between the two
extremes and very often “split the difference” by taking a middle
course. The sounds of the letters, _v_, _p_, and the hard _g_, are not
represented in the Arabic. They are symbolized in transliteration by
the equivalents of _f_, _b_, and _k_. On numerous occasions, therefore,
and especially when I waxed eloquent, my tongue would mix these sounds
hopelessly, to the amused surprise of my hearers. I would say “coal”
when I meant “goal,” “pig man” for “big man,” “buy” for “pie,” “ferry”
for “very,” and _vice versa_. For some time I had, of course, to think
in Arabic and try to translate my thoughts _literally_ into English,
which practice caused me many troubles, especially in the use of the
connectives. On one occasion, when an American gentleman told me that
he was a Presbyterian, and I, rejoicing to claim fellowship with him,
sought to say what should have been, “We are brethren in Christ,” I
said, “We are brothers, by Jesus.” My Presbyterian friend put his
finger on his lip in pious fashion, and, with elevated brows and a most
sympathetic smile, said, “That is swearing!”
But in my early struggles with English, I derived much negative
consolation from the mistakes Americans made in pronouncing my
name. None of them could pronounce it correctly--Rih-bá-ny--without
my assistance. I have been called Rib-beny, Richbany, Ribary,
Laborny, Rabonie, and many other names. An enterprising Sunday
School superintendent in the Presbyterian Church at Mansfield, Ohio,
introduced me to his school by saying, “Now we have the pleasure of
listening to Mr. Rehoboam!” The prefixing of “Mr.” to the name of the
scion of King Solomon seemed to me to annihilate time and space, and
showed me plainly how the past might be brought forward and made to
serve the present.
EDWARD ALFRED STEINER
None of our immigrant authors has written with more earnestness of
America and things American than Edward A. Steiner, who was born
in Vienna, Austria, in 1866. Unlike the average immigrant, before
coming to the United States he had received considerable education in
the public schools of his native city, in the gymnasium at Pilsen,
Bohemia, and at the University of Heidelberg. After passing through
most of the hardships incident to the life of an alien, he was
graduated from the Oberlin Theological Seminary and was ordained a
minister of the Congregational Church. Several years were then spent
in pastoral work, and in 1903 he was elected to the Chair of Applied
Christianity at Grinnell College, Iowa. He is widely known both as a
lecturer and an author, and among his numerous books may be mentioned
“On the Trail of the Immigrant,” 1906; “Against the Current,” 1910;
“From Alien to Citizen,” 1914; “Introducing the American Spirit,”
1915; “Nationalizing America,” 1916; “Confession of a Hyphenated
American,” 1916. This last voices the sensitiveness so commonly felt
by Americans of foreign and particularly German birth in the face
of much unreasonable suspicion and prejudice prior to and at the
entrance of the United States into the European War. “Nationalizing
America” is perhaps his most searching book; for in this almost every
American institution is scrutinized, the State, the Church, the
school, and the industrial life being examined in their relation to
the immigrant.
Selections from two chapters of this book (“The Stomach Line” and
“History and the Nation”) have been combined under one title,
“Industrialism and the Immigrant.” “The Criminal Immigrant” is taken
from chapter fourteen of the autobiographical volume, “From Alien to
Citizen.”[7]
THE CRIMINAL IMMIGRANT
To recall prison experiences is not pleasant, and would not be
profitable, if this were merely a narration of what happened to one
individual, a quarter of a century ago. Conditions are not sufficiently
changed, either in judicial procedure or in methods of punishment, to
make this account of _historic_ importance. Its value lies only in
the fact that _no changes_ have occurred, and that my experience then
is still the common fate of multitudes of immigrants, who swell the
criminal records of their race or group, and are therefore looked upon
with dislike and apprehension.
The jail in which I found myself was an unredeemed, vermin-infested
building, crowded by a motley multitude of strikers and strike
breakers,--bitter enemies all, their animosity begotten in the
elemental struggle for bread, and hating one another with an
unmodified, primitive passion.[8]
The strikers had the advantage over us, for they were more numerous and
were acquainted with the ways of American officials. This gave them
the opportunity (which they improved) to make it unpleasant for the
“Hunkies.”
The straw mattress upon which I slept the first night was missing the
second; salt more completely spoiled the mixture called by courtesy
coffee, and the only thing which saved me from bodily hurt was the fact
that there was no spot on me which was not already suffering.
I mention without malice and merely as a fact in race psychology, that
the Irish were the most cruel to us, with the Germans a close second,
while the Welsh were not only inoffensive, but sometimes kind.
One of them, David Hill--smaller than the ordinary Welshman, but
with the courage of his Biblical namesake--stood between me and a
burly Irish Goliath who wanted to thrash this particular “furriner,
who came over here to take away the bread from the lips of _dacent,
law-abiding_ Americans.”
The jailer maintained no discipline and heeded no complaints. His task
was to keep us locked up; the bars were strong and the key invariably
turned.
The strikers gradually drifted from the jail, being bailed out or
released, and I was not sorry to see them go.
Poor food, vermin of many varieties and the various small tortures
endured, were all as nothing to me compared with the fact that for more
than six weeks I was permitted to be in that jail without a hearing;
without even the slightest knowledge on my part as to why I had
forfeited my liberty.
From the barred jail window I could see the workmen going unhindered
to their tasks; on Sunday pastor and people passed, as they went to
worship their Lord who, too, was once a prisoner. None, seemingly, gave
us a thought or even responded by a smile to the hunger for sympathy
which I know my face must have expressed.
My letters to the Austro-Hungarian Consul remained unanswered, and the
jailer gave my repeated questionings only oaths for reply.
The day of my hearing finally came, and I was dragged before the
judge. The proceedings were shockingly disorderly, irreverent and
unjust. I was charged with shooting to kill. The weapon which had
been found in my pocket was the revolver bequeathed me by the dying
man in the Pittsburgh boarding house. As all its six cartridges were
safely embedded in rust, the charge was changed to “carrying concealed
weapons.” I think my readers will agree with me that the sentence of
one hundred dollars fine and three months in the county jail was out of
all proportion to the offence.
The court wasted exactly ten minutes on my case, and then I was
returned to my quarters in the jail, an accredited prisoner. Let me
here record the fact that I carried back to my cell a fierce sense of
injustice and a contempt for the laws of this land and its officials,
feelings that later ripened into active sympathy with anarchy, which at
that time occupied the attention of the American people. My knowledge
of that subject came to me through old newspapers which drifted as
waste around the jail.
In all those months, more than six, for my fine had to be worked out,
or rather idled out, no one came to me to comfort or explain. For more
than six months I was with thugs, tramps, thieves and vermin. I was a
criminal immigrant, a component element of the new immigration problem.
I recall all this now in no spirit of vengeance; as far as my memory is
concerned, I have purged it of all hate. I recall my experience because
those same conditions exist to-day in more aggravated form, while
multitudes of ignorant, innocent men suffer and die in our jails and
penitentiaries.
Since then I have visited most of the county jails, prisons and
penitentiaries in which immigrants are likely to be found. Intelligent
and humane wardens, of whom there are a few, have told me that
more than half the alien prisoners are suffering innocently, from
transgressing laws of which they were ignorant, and that their
punishment is too often much more severe than necessary.
The following narration of several incidents which recently came under
my observation will be pardoned, I hope, when their full import is seen.
Not long ago I went to lecture in a Kansas town,--one of those
irreproachable communities in which it is good to bring up children
because of the moral atmosphere. The town has a New England conscience
with a Kansas attachment. It boasts of having been a station in the
underground railway, and it maintains a most uncompromising attitude
toward certain social delinquencies, especially the sale of liquor.
Upon my arrival I was cordially received by a committee, and one of its
members told me that the jail was full of criminal foreigners--Greeks.
What crimes they had committed he did not know.
Recalling my own experience, I made inquiries and found that six Greeks
were in the county jail. They had been arrested in September (it
was now March) charged with the heinous crime of having gone to the
unregenerate State of Nebraska, where they purchased a barrel of beer
which they drank on the Sabbath day in their camp by the railroad.
Possibly these Greeks were just ignorant foreigners and now harbor no
sense of injustice suffered; possibly they still think this country
“the land of the free and the home of the brave.” They may even be
ready to obey its laws and reverence its institutions. I do not know
how they feel, but I do know this: those Greeks were kept in prison for
breaking a law of which they were ignorant, and even if they were aware
of its existence and broke it knowingly, the punishment did not fit the
crime.
They were kept as criminals and regarded as criminals; they were
unvisited and uncomforted; and they were incarcerated at a time when
their country called for her native sons to do battle against the Turk.
Some day the sense of injustice suffered may come to them, and they
will ask themselves whether every man in Kansas who drinks beer is
punished as they were. They will wonder why real criminals go free, or
escape with nominal punishment. I venture to predict that in some great
crisis, when this country needs men who respect her laws and love her
institutions, these men, and multitudes of others who have suffered
such injustices as they have, will fail her.
I pleaded for those imprisoned Greeks that night, and my plea was
effective. The just judge who condemned them pardoned them; but so just
was he that the fine of one hundred dollars each, not yet paid, was
left hanging over them, and to their credit be it said, they remained
in that town and paid every cent of it. This judge no doubt knows
his New Testament; he certainly made the Greeks pay the “uttermost
farthing” before his outraged sense of justice was appeased.
Those Greeks spent, together, over three years in jail, forfeited more
than fifteen hundred dollars in wages, and lost in bodily health and
self-respect beyond calculation.
Another incident occurred last spring as I was passing through a border
on one of those nerve-racking coal roads.
At a small, desolate mining village a group of men entered the car,
unwillingly enough. They were chained to one another and were driven
to their seats with curses and the butt of a gun. They were Italian
miners, part of that human material now scattered all over the United
States, carried by something swifter, though not less insistent than
the glacial movements which graved the beds of the rivers and shifted
so much of earth’s original scenery. There was some danger of violence,
and the accompanying minions of the law held back the angry passengers.
There was scarcely a moment, however, when they themselves did not
apply some vigorous measure to assure themselves that three undersized
Southern Italians, chained to one another, should not escape them.
The car was uncomfortably crowded and grew more so at every station;
for the next day the new governor was to be inaugurated at the capital,
toward which our train was leisurely travelling.
I had some difficulty in ethnologically classifying the man who shared
my seat. He was large, the colonel and major type, although his head
was rounder. The features, too, were of a different cast, his speech
less refined and his manners less gentle.
He wore a broad, new hat, his hair was long, curling slightly, and he
had an air of special importance, the cause of which I discovered later.
“I wonder why they are treating those poor fellows so roughly,” I
audibly soliloquized, turning to him. He was studying a typewritten
document and evidently did not relish the interruption.
“Is that any of your business?” he asked, punctuating the short
sentence with a liberal supply of oaths.
“Yes, I have no other business,” I replied. “I travel about the world
trying to find out why we people treat one another as we do, if we
happen to be of different races.”
“What kind of business is that?” looking up from his manuscript and
regarding me suspiciously.
“Well,” I said, “we call that ‘Social Psychology.’”
“That’s a new graft,” he replied with a laugh. “How much is there in
it?”
“A little money and a great deal of joy,” I said with an answering
smile.
Then he folded his manuscript and made ready to find out more about my
“graft,” which I proceeded to explain.
“You see, from the beginning, when a man saw another who wasn’t just
like him, he said: ‘Will he kill me or shall I kill him?’ Then they
both went about finding out. The man who survived regarded himself as
the greater man, and his descendants belonged to the superior race.
“We haven’t gone much beyond that point,” I continued. “We hide our
primitive hate under what we proudly call race prejudice or patriotism,
but it’s the old, unchanged fear and dislike of the unlike, and we
act very much as the savages did who may have lived here before the
glaciers ploughed up your State and helped to manufacture the coal you
are now digging.
“I don’t know you,” I went on, “but I am pretty sure that you feel
mean toward those poor ‘Dagoes’ just because you want to assert your
superiority.
“I have discovered that a man isn’t quite happy unless he can feel
himself superior to something, and these mountain folk of yours take
those mangy, hungry looking dogs along just so they can have something
to kick. Am I right?”
“Well,” he replied, clearing his throat and straightening himself,
while into his eyes came a steel-like coldness, “you don’t mean to say
that we are not superior to these Dagoes, these Black Hand murderers?”
“No, I am not ready to say that yet; but tell me about them. Whom did
they kill, and how?”
Then he told me the story and he knew it well, for he was a re-elected
State official now going to be sworn in. There was a coal miners’
strike--rather a chronic disease in that somewhat lawless State--and
the militia was called out. Violence begat violence, and one of the
militiamen, standing guard at night, was killed by a bullet, fired from
a Winchester rifle at an approximately certain distance.
The Italians were found at that place the next day, were arrested, and
were now on their way to the county seat to be tried.
My companion evidently had found my “graft” interesting, for he
permitted me to interview the Italians.
None of them knew definitely of what crime they were accused, and all,
of course, protested their innocence.
None of them had served as soldiers and all said they were unacquainted
with the use of firearms.
When we reached the end of the road where we were all admonished to
change cars and not forget our parcels, the officer graciously allowed
me to make an experiment. The men were freed from their shackles, and
I told them that a high and mighty official was watching them and that
the best marksman of the group would find favor in his sight. They
were then in turn given the Winchester rifle, which they handled as if
it were a pickaxe. They did not know how to load it, and after it was
loaded for them and I asked them to fire, they fell upon their knees
and begged to be permitted to show their prowess with a stiletto, the
use of which they understood. Within twenty-four hours additional
testimony was furnished, which proved beyond doubt that the Italians
were not implicated in the crime with which they were charged.
I felt deeply grateful to the man who permitted me to intervene in
their behalf; but what would have happened if by chance, or the power
we call Providence, I had not been thrown into the sphere of their
suffering? Undoubtedly they would have been convicted of murder and
paid the penalty for a crime which they never committed.
Not only is ignorance of our laws and language a fruitful cause of
the delinquency of immigrants and their children, but the venality of
police officials, the condition of our courts and prisons, not only
fail to inspire respect, but contribute much to the development of
those criminal tendencies with which nature has, to a degree, endowed
all men....
Fortunately, I left the county jail with no thirst for blood; but with
a fiercer passion to right the wrongs under which men suffer, and that,
I think, was my one purpose in life when the prison door closed behind
me.
INDUSTRIALISM AND THE IMMIGRANT
We talk much about the American home, which is even yet the basis of
national well-being, although many of its functions are abrogated. The
home still determines the good or ill of the child, and through him the
good or ill of the nation. Yet we permit millions of people to work,
with no chance to make a real home.
Children there will be, Nature sees to that; but what kind of children
can be begotten in our slums?
The slums in America are as much a national disgrace as they are a
national menace. The gunmen of New York were bred in hovels which even
the home-making genius of the Jewish people could not turn into homes,
or make fit for the training of children to decent living.
You who go slumming to see the sights, and turn up your sensitive noses
at the bad smells, and your eyes to heaven, thanking God that you
“are not as other men,” must not forget that the vast majority of our
foreign-born workers are compelled to live as they do by economic and
social forces, which they cannot control.
You remain ignorant of the brave struggles for the home, and the heroic
stand for virtue behind those sooty walls. You know nothing of the fear
of God, the desire to obey His law, and the love of their country,
which filters in to those receptive souls.
The growth and power of the I. W. W., a revolutionary organization of
the most radical type, anti-national, anti-religious, repudiating God
and State with horrifying blasphemy, were made possible by the fact
that our industrial leaders, our so-called “hard-headed business men,”
have the hard spot in their hearts and a very soft spot in their heads.
Of all the blind men I have met, the blindest are those farsighted ones
who see wealth in everything, and every common bush aflame with gold,
and see nothing else. Blind they are to their own larger good, blind to
the nation’s needs, blind to the signs of the times. The social weal
of our country is in the hands of the most unsocial....
As I analyze my own relation to the nation of which I am as much a part
as if I had been born under its flag, I find that it rests itself upon
the feeling of gratitude. Not for the bread I eat, for I had bread
enough in my native country; not for the comfort of home, for I had
fair comforts before I came; not even for liberty and democracy as
abstractions, or even as embodied in the State; for I have found that
freedom is within, and democracy a matter of attitude towards one’s
fellows.
I am grateful for the chance I have had here to develop unhampered
my own self, for a certain largeness of vision which I think I would
not have developed anywhere else; for the richness which a broad,
unhindered contact with all sorts and conditions of men has brought
into my life.
There is something more than gratitude in my heart now. There
is a larger sense of the values I received which I have not yet
appropriated. There is in my heart a sublime passion for America. Would
it have grown into the burning flame it is, if I had always worked in
New York’s sweat-shops?
If I had been beaten by New York’s police? If I had reared my family in
a tenement, and had to send my children to work when they should have
played and studied?
If I had known America only through her yellow journalism, and sensed
her spirit only in ward elections? I do not know.
What has kept me from becoming an Anarchist, from being jailed or
hanged for leading mobs against their despoilers, God alone knows. His
guidance is as unquestioned as it is mysterious. There were disclosed
to me, early in my career, in some strange way, the spiritual values
latent here. In spite of the gross, granite-like materialism at the
top, I discovered the richness of the heritage left by the fathers of
this Republic; in spite of the poverty and hardship in which I had
to share, I saw here the fine quality of its vision; in spite of the
crudeness of its blundering ways, all the love a man may have for a
country grew in my heart, and changed only in growing stronger. Yet I
am not in the mood to call to account those toilers whose patriotism is
less fervent than mine and whose ideals are still held in check by the
“stomach line.”
Editors and preachers, teachers and capitalists, with all the loud if
not mighty host of us who are yammering about the want of patriotism
among the masses, and the weakness of our national spirit; we are the
first who must move a notch higher in our love of country and above the
“stomach line.” We must make real the spiritual ideals for which this
country stands, or at least try to realize them, before we can teach
the alien and his children, or even our own, the meaning of liberty and
democracy. Before we can ask them to die for our country we shall have
to learn to live for it, and the definite task we have before us is not
the mere idolatry of our flag, or the making of shard and shell.
To provide an adequate wage for our men, to so arrange our industrial
order that there shall not be feverish activity to-day, and idleness,
poverty, bread lines and soup kitchens to-morrow. To make working
conditions tolerable, to provide against accidents and sickness,
unemployment and old age, and to be true to the life about us.
These are national factors, essential to the making of an effective
national state in our industrial age. Capital, in common with labor,
must learn how to lend itself to the national purpose; for we have come
upon a time, or the time has come upon us, when we must learn how to
melt all classes, all sections and all races into a final unit. This
is the time to touch the hearts and gain the confidence of all the
people by a high regard for all, so that together we may turn our faces
towards our ultimate goal....
The Commonwealth Steel Company of Granite City, Illinois, one of those
remarkable corporations with a soul, whose business is rooted in the
ideal of service, found its foreign laborers quartered in what was
called “Hungry Hollow.” This company so exemplified the American spirit
of fair play that, when the foreign employees were aroused to proper
civic pride, they rebaptized “Hungry Hollow” into “Lincoln Place,”
because Lincoln’s spirit was manifested towards them.
The Lincoln Progressive Club, as they named their organization,
has as its immediate aim the study of the English language, and
Americanization.
I wish there might be erected in every industrial center a statue of
Abraham Lincoln for masters and men to see and reverence, thus being
reminded of their duty towards each other and towards their common
country.
What a people we could become if the immortal words he spoke were
graven upon the pedestal of such a statue, “With malice towards
none, with charity towards all,” ... to greet our eyes daily, and to
challenge our conduct.
The history of the United States since the Civil War has not yet been
written, for it is the story of an epoch just closing. It marks the
sudden leaping of a people into wealth, if not into power; the fabulous
growth of cities, the end of the pioneer stage, the beginning of an
industrial period, and the pressure of economic and social problems
towards their solution.
At least twenty millions of people have come full grown into our
national life from the steerage, the womb out of which so many of us
were born into this newer life. Most of us came to build and not to
destroy; we came as helpers and not exploiters; we brought virtues and
vices, much good and ill, and that, not because we belonged to this or
the other national or racial group, but because we were human.
It is as easy to prove that our coming meant the ill of the nation as
that it meant its well-being. To appraise this fully is much too early;
it is a task which must be left to our children’s children, who will be
as far removed from to-day’s scant sympathies as from its overwhelming
prejudices.
The great war has swung us into the current of world events, and it
ought to bring us a larger vision of the forces and processes which
shape the nations and make their peoples. As yet we are thinking
hysterically rather than historically, and the indications are that we
may not learn anything, nor yet unlearn, of which we have perhaps the
greater need.
Thus far we have become narrower rather than broader, for the feeling
towards our alien population is growing daily less generous, and our
treatment of it less wise.
Nor am I sure in what wisdom consists; the situation is complex; for
we are the Balkan with its national, racial and religious contentions.
We are Russia with its Ghetto, its Polish and Finnish problem. We are
Austria and Hungary with their linguistic and dynastic difficulties.
We are Africa and Asia; we are Jew and Gentile; we are Protestant and
Greek, and Roman Catholic. We are everything out of which to shape the
one thing, the one nation, the one people.
Yet I am sure that we cannot teach these strangers the history of their
adopted country, and make it their own, unless we teach them that our
history is theirs as well as ours, and that their traditions are ours,
at least as far as they touch humanity generally, and convey to all
men the blessings which come from the struggle against oppression and
superstition.
In their inherited, national prejudices, in their racial hates, in
their tribal quarrels, we wish to have no share, except as we hope to
help them forget the old world hates in the new world’s love.
None of us who have caught a vision of what America may mean to the
world wish to perpetuate here any one phase of Europe’s civilization or
any one national ideal.
Although our institutions are rooted in English history, though we
speak England’s language and share her rich heritage of spiritual and
cultural wealth, we do not desire to be again a part of England, or
nourish here her ideals of an aristocratic society.
In spite of the fact that for nearly three hundred years a large part
of our population has been German, and that our richest cultural
values have come from Germany, in spite of her marvellous resources in
science, commerce and government, we do not care to become German, and
I am sure that Americans of German blood or birth would be the first to
repudiate it, should Germany’s civilization threaten to fasten itself
upon us.
We do not wish to be Russian, in spite of certain values inherent in
the Slavic character, nor do we desire to be French.
We do crave to be an American people--and develop here an American
civilization; but if we are true to the manifold genius of our varied
peoples, we may develop here a civilization, richer and freer than any
of these, based upon all of them, truly international and therefore
American.
Historians tell us that the history of the United States illumines and
illustrates the historic processes of all ages and all people.
To this they add the disconcerting prophecy that we are drifting
towards the common goal, and that our doleful future can be readily
foretold. We have had our hopeful morning, our swift and brilliant
noon, and now the dark and gruesome end threatens us.
I will not believe this till I must.
I will not, dare not lose the hope that we can make this country to
endure firmly, to weather the storm, or at least put off the senility
of old age to the last inevitable moment.
When, however, the end comes, as perhaps it must, I pray that we may
project our hopes and ideals upon the last page of our history, so that
it may read thus: This was a state, the first to grow by the conquest
of nature, and not of nations. Here was developed a commerce based upon
service, and not upon selfishness; a religion centering in humanity and
not in a church.
Here was maintained sovereignty without a sovereign, and here the
people of all nations grew into one nation, held together by mutual
regard, not by the force of law.
Here the State was maintained by the justice, confidence and loyalty of
its people, and not by battleships and armaments. When it perished, it
was because the people had lost faith in God and in each other.
FOOTNOTES:
[7] Copyright, by Fleming H. Revell Co. Reprinted by permission of the
publishers.
[8] The author was working as a miner at Connellsville, Pennsylvania,
when the strike and general riot occurred, during which he was beaten
into unconsciousness and hustled off to jail.
GEORGE A. GORDON
The Old South Church, Boston, has had a prominent and patriotic part
in American history since early days. It was a Puritan immigrant
and layman of this church, Samuel Sewall, who was one of the first
to speak out against human slavery in his tract, “The Selling of
Joseph”; and it was in this church that the five patriotic addresses,
published in 1917 under the title, “The Appeal of the Nation,” were
delivered by George Angier Gordon, pastor of the church since 1884.
The Rev. Dr. Gordon, who was born in Scotland in 1853 and received
his common school education there, came to the United States in
1871. In 1881 he obtained the degree A.B. from Harvard. He has since
served his Alma Mater frequently in the capacity of University
preacher, and many Harvard men will recall his inspiring talks in the
college chapel. In the following selection he manifests the poignant
homesickness, the sterling loyalty, and the noble aspiration so
common in the writings of the immigrant.
THE FOREIGN-BORN AMERICAN CITIZEN: COST, PRIVILEGE AND DUTIES OF HIS
CITIZENSHIP
The Republic of the United States is in fact a nation of immigrants,
a nation of aliens. All have made the great migration, all have come
hither from other parts of the earth. The only difference among
Americans is that some came earlier while others came much later,
indeed as it were yesterday, to these shores. The only aboriginal
American is the Indian. This historic fact should be forever borne in
mind. We came hither first or last, across the ocean, and from the ends
of the earth.
There is however a ground of distinction among Americans; they are
rightly divided into native citizens and citizens foreign-born. The
native citizen has grown into the being of the society that his alien
ancestors helped to form. He has in his blood an American inheritance;
his instincts have been fed with native food; he is alive to nothing
else as he is to the American Republic. We foreign-born Americans
acknowledge his distinction, we rejoice in his happiness, we count
ourselves fortunate to stand with him in the great communion of
free citizens. We ask him, in his turn, to read in the story of our
migration the struggle of his ancestors; we remind him of what we
left behind, what we brought with us, and at what cost we gained our
American citizenship.
In the words that I have chosen as my text[9] we have a foreign-born
Roman citizen. Exactly where he was born we do not know; we do know
that he was born outside Roman citizenship. He was, therefore, an
adopted citizen of the Roman Empire, and to this he refers in the words
that I have quoted, “With a great sum obtained I this citizenship.”
There are three implications in these words: the cost of citizenship
to this man; the privilege of citizenship to him; his duty as a Roman
citizen. These three points will be a convenient guide to us in our
discussion of the subject of the morning--“The Foreign-born American
Citizen.”
1. First of all, then, there is the cost to this man of citizenship in
the Roman Empire. He obtained it with a great sum; to get it made him
poor.
There are few among native-born American citizens who understand
the sacrifice made by the foreign-born citizens of the heritage of
childhood and boyhood in the wonder world of early life. There is the
bereavement of the early mystic, unfathomable touch of nature that
comes to one only through one’s native land. Never again to see the sun
rise and set over the dear old hills, with the hero’s mantle like the
bloom of the heather resting upon them, and the shadow of an immemorial
race, is truly a great bereavement. Never again to see the green
pastures, with the flocks quietly feeding in them, under the shade of
the plot of trees here and there mercifully provided by the humanity of
previous generations, nor to hear the music of the river that has sung
into being and out of being forty generations of human lives; never
again to see the fields covered with corn, nor to hear the reaper’s
song among the yellow corn; never again to see the light that welcomed
you when you were born, that smiled on you when you were baptized, that
went with you to school, that watched your play, that constituted the
beautiful, the glorious environment of your early days; never again
to hear the song of the native birds, the skylark in the morning, the
mavis at nightfall, and the wild whistle of the blackbird under the
heat of noon from his thorny den,--all this is simply inexpressible
bereavement. Nature is inwoven with the soul in its earliest years;
its beauty, its wildness, its soul becomes part of the soul of every
deep-hearted human being, and never again can nature be seen as she was
seen through the wonder of life’s morning.
It is this spell of nature over the young soul that gives its exquisite
pathos to Hood’s world-familiar melody:
“I remember, I remember,
The house where I was born,
The little window where the sun
Came peeping in at morn;
He never came a wink too soon.
Nor brought too long a day,
But now I often wish the night
Had borne my breath away!
...
“I remember, I remember,
The fir trees dark and high;
I used to think their slender tops
Were close against the sky:
It was a childish ignorance,
But now ’tis little joy
To know I’m farther off from heav’n
Than when I was a boy.”
There it is, the mystic, divine influence of nature through the
atmosphere of the country of one’s birth; every immigrant to this
country makes that great surrender.
There is, too, the early humanity. You go down town, you who are
native-born American citizens, and every day you meet those whom you
have known from birth, your earliest playmates and schoolmates, and
those who went to college with you, who entered business with you, who
fought side by side with you through the Great War, who loved what you
loved in early life, revered what you revered, laughed at what you
laughed at and felt as you felt over the glory and the tenderness of
existence. You do not know what they have left behind them who never
see a face that they knew in childhood, who will never meet again, till
time is no more, a schoolmate or an early companion, who will never
gather again in the old home with father and mother and brothers and
sisters; only the most favored have had a fugitive glance, like looking
at a telegraph pole from an express train, of those dear, early faces.
There is a whole world of bereavement of early, tender, beautiful
humanity on the part of all who come here. And this again you hear in
those two verses in “Auld Lang Syne”:--
“We twa hae run about the braes,
And pu’d the gowans fine,
But we’ve wander’d monie a weary foot
Sin’ auld lang syne.
“We twa hae paidl’d in the burn
From morning sun till dine,
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
Sin’ auld lang syne.”
There is due other surrender: there is the suffering of adjustment in
a new country. The first year I spent in Boston, from July, 1871, to
considerably more than July, 1872, I conceived my condition to be as
near that of the spirits in hell as anything I could well imagine! To
be in a city where nobody knew you, where you knew nobody, where so
many wanted to take advantage of the “greenhorn,” to laugh at him if
he ever grew for a moment a bit sentimental, was not exactly heaven.
Many and many a time I went down to the wharf to see the ships with
their white sails, written all over with invisible tidings from the
far, sunny islands left behind, and if I had not been restrained by
shame and pride I should have gone home. That is the experience of
Scandinavian, English, Scotch, Irish, Teuton, Slav, Armenian, Syrian,
and Latin; the great bereavement of nature and of early humanity is
deepened by the sorrow of readjustment in a foreign land. “With a great
sum obtained we this citizenship”; few understand it, few indeed.
Foreign-born American citizenship is preceded by a vast sacrifice, and
you never can understand that sort of citizenship till you take account
of this really profound experience.
2. The next thing in the experience of the chief captain was his
privilege as a Roman citizen. His station and bearing and power told of
that privilege. He was a military tribune in the legion stationed in
Jerusalem; he had risen to important command and power impossible for
him, inaccessible to him if he had not obtained citizenship.
America has been called the land of opportunity. Look at this fact
in three directions only, since time will not allow more. The common
workman may become, by intelligence, by diligence and by fidelity,
the master workman. Cast your eyes over the land to-day and assemble
the master workmen, and you will find that the vast majority of them
have risen from the position of ordinary workmen to the chief places
in their trade and calling. Such a chance for ascension in a broad way
for all competent men, in the Old World, is a simple impossibility. The
chance does not exist there. Men rise there by talent and by luck, by
talent and by favoritism. But here in a broad and magnificent manner
they rise by talent and industry, fidelity and force; here as nowhere
else, they have a chance to work out what is in them.
Consider this in the things of the intellect. The Old World calls us
an uneducated race. It is true that we have not many great scholars;
the reason is that we are engaged with immediate pressing problems; we
apply intelligence to living issues which in other lands is applied to
the Genitive and the Accusative and the Dative cases of the Latin and
Greek languages. When we look backward and consider the provision made
for the intellect of the nation during the last fifty years, we claim
that there is no parallel to it in any country on which the sun shines.
More money has gone to found colleges and schools and universities for
men and for women, open to all talent from ocean to ocean and from the
Canadian border to the Gulf, than was ever dedicated to education in
the same length of time in the history of mankind. Not only is there
provision for the regulars, but also for the irregulars; all sorts of
evening schools flourish in our cities where the first teachers of the
community are available for talented and aspiring youth of slender
means. Men are practicing medicine and law; they are in the ministry
and in other professions, usually called learned, who never saw the
inside of a college or a university, who have obtained an education
in what is called an irregular way, from and by the very men who are
teaching in these regular academic institutions.
Let me remind you of the abundant hospitality, the wonderful generosity
of the American people toward aspiring youth. Talent which would be
ignored in Great Britain, promise which would be sneered at in every
continental country in Europe, is here discovered and encouraged
to develop into power. This is a phenomenon of which we must never
lose sight, the chance here in the United States for a man to be
intellectually all that it is possible for him to be. The best teachers
may often be seen here wielding the educational power of history and
the arts to train the youth to whom college is an impossibility, for
service requiring educated powers, in his day and generation.
There is to be noted the opportunity in the way of character and moral
influence that comes to citizens of the United States. What does that
mean? The chance to change and improve the law of the land, the chance
for a man to change and improve the government of the United States,
the chance to modify, in the line of humanity, the social feeling of
the United States. And freedom is here the condition of all; every man
who complains that things are not what they should be has a chance by
his vote to remedy the abuse and to take another step toward the ideal.
Here again there is something new, measuring it against the whole
people. We are dupes and fools when we allow ourselves to be ruled by
groups in this country; we are free men, with the power in our hands.
If we have moral ideals of our own, and moral character, we can so use
them as to lift the character of the land in which we live.
3. Finally, there was the duty of the tribune as a Roman citizen. Paul
was about to be bound and tortured, without trial, when he appealed
to the chief captain, “Is it lawful for you to scourge a man that is
a Roman and uncondemned?” This startled the man. “Tell me, art thou a
Roman? Good heavens, this will never do! I am pledged to do my duty!
Get off those shackles and set the man free and guard his life!” There
was the man’s sense of his duty.
What is the duty of foreign-born American citizens? First to learn the
English language and to prefer it to all other tongues on the face of
the earth. That tongue comes in the splendor of a June day; it breaks
over life like a June sunrise, with an atmosphere, tone, beauty, and
power which for Americans must ever be unapproachable. Let no American
citizen hug his foreign tongue, go into the closet with it and shut out
the light of the great English language which carries all our ideals as
Americans! The very vessel of the Lord it is, in which American freedom
is carried,--the language of Shakespeare and Milton, the incomparable
free man; the language of Bacon and Burke and Washington and Hamilton
and Webster and Lincoln. This tongue consecrates the immigrant who
would be a citizen; he never can be a citizen of the United States
without that, never. This is the tongue that carries in a unique
translation the literature of Israel; the Bible is the maker of free
peoples.
Next, we foreign-born American citizens must read the story of the
Revolution into our blood. What is the significance of the Revolution
for the foreign-born American citizen? These men were Englishmen or
the sons of Englishmen; they loved the British Isles better than
any portion of the earth’s surface, except their own Colonies; they
loved them with an inexpressible love. Yet when it came to question
of principle they stood out and said, “We must be free; the Colonies,
or the United States, first!” You recall Daniel Webster’s splendid
eloquence here:--
“On this question of principle, while actual suffering was yet afar
off, they raised their flag against a power to which, for purposes of
foreign conquest and subjection, Rome in the height of her glory is not
to be compared,--a power which has dotted over the surface of the whole
globe with her possessions and military posts, whose morning drumbeat,
following the sun, and keeping company with the hours, circles the
earth with one continuous and unbroken strain of the martial airs of
England.”
Against that power to which they were as nothing, against that lovely
land of their origin they stood out when it was a question of their
own independence and their own manhood.
That applies to every foreign-born American citizen to-day,--Saxon,
Celt, Scandinavian, Teuton, Slav, Latin, Syrian, bond and free. Learn
the lesson of the Revolution. This country will have no hands upon
it, from any origin, anywhere outside of itself. Learn the lesson of
the Civil War; the nation that set to work to keep its integrity as a
political whole, to keep its integrity as a human whole, to fight, as
it had done a foreign dominion, an evil genius inside its own border.
There again is a vast lesson to all of us who are foreign-born. Once
again we should store in memory and ponder in clearest conscience and
intelligence the great ideas, the great political ideas of America as
they are exhibited in Washington, in Hamilton the Nationalist and in
Jefferson the State Rights’ patriot; and again in Webster and Calhoun,
in Lincoln and the Confederate, and as they issued at last in a true
conception of State freedom in a sisterhood of States that constitutes
a great nation. These things should be part of the common store of
knowledge of the adopted citizen. They are the great forces that have
moved this country from its earliest beginning, and that have lifted it
into power and renown.
America must be first; cherish your love for the old country, your
tenderness,--a man does not need to hate his mother because he loves
his wife, but it is his duty to stand by his wife even against his
mother. What kind of a country should we have if every citizen, when
trouble comes, should prefer in loyalty the land of his birth! What
a confused mob of a country we should have! Duty overrides origin,
tradition, sentiment. Here and here alone is our supreme and inviolable
obligation.
I often think that this great country of ours is ultimately to be the
deepest-hearted and the brightest-minded nation of the world. Hither
come, with sore hearts, burdened humanity and quickened intelligence,
the elect from all nations. You look at them when they land, and you
laugh. If you had been in Quebec when I landed, perhaps you would not
have wanted me as your minister! The elect from all nations, parts
of a splendid orchestra,--violin, flute, cornet, drum, trumpet, and a
score of other instruments, all pouring forth their genius to make the
great, swelling, soul-stirring symphony of this mighty nation. Thus
from Scandinavia, Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Armenia, Greece; from
England, Ireland, and Scotland they come,--all are here with great
souls to make a new and greater America. Out of this composite land,
this Pentecostal nation,--sometimes it seems to me minus the Holy
Ghost,--this nation gathered from every people under the heaven, rags
and tatters and dirt and all, I believe the Eternal Spirit will evolve
and establish the most gifted, the most far-shining and the mightiest
people in the world. God grant that our dream may come true!
FOOTNOTE:
[9] _And the chief captain answered, With a great sum obtained I this
citizenship._--Acts xxii. 28.
SERAPHIM G. CANOUTAS
An American Greek who has traveled extensively throughout the
United States, and has mingled freely with his people and therefore
understands their aspirations and needs, is Seraphim G. Canoutas,
member of the Boston Bar and author of the “Greek-American Guide” and
the “Adviser for Greeks in America.”
The following plain recital of Mr. Canoutas’s struggle and
achievement is worthy of presentation here, because it shows that
what the immigrant seeks for in America he may find, and that back
of real success and contentment lies the will to serve. He says in a
letter to the editor:--
“I arrived in this country fifteen years ago, and my hardships during
the first five to seven years cannot be briefly told. Still, I am
glad that I have suffered so much. I was born in a little village
of Greece, in 1873 or 1874; I do not know the exact date of my
birth. There were no records kept in those days, and my parents were
illiterate. There was no school in the little village; no church
either. I went to school to another village at a distance of about
three miles. I do not know how I managed to go to what they call
Gymnasium in Greece, and finally to the University at Athens--a
very uncommon thing for a poor peasant’s son. I graduated from
the University of Athens, Law Department, in 1898, and in 1899 I
received my license to practise law. But a poor young man in those
days had no chance whatever to get any clients in Greece, except
by selling his conscience and his principles to some politician. I
left Greece immediately after my admission to the bar and settled
in Constantinople, Turkey, where I started to practise law before
the Consular Court of Greece. (Each nation maintains separate courts
for its citizens or subjects in Turkey.) I practised law there for
over five years and was doing very well. But I wanted to see other
countries; there was something there which I did not like. I went to
France, Italy, Austria, and at last I decided to come to America.
When I arrived in America, I found myself wholly discouraged. Nobody
could give me advice what to do. There were very few educated Greeks,
fifteen years ago, in this country, and they did not know how to help
others; they rather discouraged me. I knew not a word of English;
but, knowing French, I managed to learn some English in a few months.
Two years after my arrival I started to write a book for the new
immigrants under the title of ‘Greek-American Guide,’ giving them
as much information about the country as I knew. But books do not
pay. Although everybody appreciated the usefulness of my book, the
purchasers were very few.
“In 1909 to 1910 I made a trip all over the United States and
Canada to gather information about my countrymen from personal
experience. Finally I met a good American who told me how I could
study law in this country and be admitted to the bar. In 1912 I was
admitted to the bar in Boston, and have practised law since; but I
like social work better than law. I have continued to lecture to
Greeks throughout this State and in New England; and I feel a great
satisfaction that I have been able to do some good for my countrymen,
as well as for my adopted country, which offers the greatest
opportunities to everybody, although it takes a long time for a
foreigner to find out.”
In 1918 Mr. Canoutas published his “Hellenism in America,” dedicating
the book “to the Greeks in America in general, but those serving
under the glorious American flag in particular ... in perpetual
remembrance of their devotion to our beloved country and their
heroic sacrifices for the cause of democracy.” From this volume the
following sensible advice on Americanization is quoted.
AMERICANIZATION: ITS PRINCIPLES AND MEANING
It was a wrong practice, in my opinion, and against the principles of
true democracy, for certain Americans to induce foreigners to become
American citizens quickly if they wished “to make more money and to
get better jobs.” Because love of mere money and better jobs, above
all other things, leads to materialism, plutocracy, bureaucracy and
aristocracy, and not to true democracy.
Candidates for admission to citizenship of a democratic country should
be taught to understand and appreciate the superiority and the beauty
of its democratic principles instead of being promised “better jobs and
more money.”[10]
When a man or woman is inspired by those high and noble ideas and
principles stated in the Declaration of Independence, and repeated
by such unselfish and magnanimous heads of a Republic as Lincoln and
Wilson, and feels them and applies them, we can say that person has
been influenced by Americanism or is Americanized. But unfortunately a
tendency prevails lately to confuse the word “Americanization” with the
word “naturalization.” There is nothing more erroneous than to consider
every naturalized person as Americanized, or to accept as a general
proposition that a person not naturalized cannot be Americanized.
Naturalization is simply a matter of form, while Americanization
refers to a person’s heart and soul and mind. A naturalized American
citizen who has not been inspired by the lofty principles which
Americanism stands for, but who has been induced to acquire American
citizenship for some material profit, bears the same relation to the
State as a hypocrite bears to the Church. For this reason I have always
been astonished to hear Americans, even among the best statesmen
and educators, encouraging wholesale naturalization before they
become sure of the Americanization of the applicants. What has the
State or the nation to gain from the man who is induced by the petty
politician to become a citizen because it pays? What has the State to
profit by me, for instance, for being an American citizen if I am not
Americanized? On the contrary, it is dangerous, because in a serious
crisis, like the present one, I may use my citizenship as a shield in
defence of my un-American conduct. Common sense therefore requires that
the foreigner should not be given that powerful weapon before we are
sure that he will use it in defending his fellow-citizens and American
institutions, and not in destroying them.
Prudence requires us to educate the foreigner and thoroughly
Americanize him, if he appreciates Americanism, before admitting him to
citizenship. But this education and Americanization cannot be carried
out successfully by words or preaching alone. We must show to the
foreigners by our example, by acts and deeds, that we ourselves stand
for Americanism and apply the American ideals in our daily life, in our
every-day contact with foreigners.
If Americans look down with contempt upon the immigrant, because he is
poor, uneducated, or cursed with certain faults which he acquired while
living in a poor or ill-governed country, they cannot make him believe
that America stands for democracy, justice and general brotherhood....
When Americans, in their struggle to instruct the foreigners, have
acquired for their own part a better knowledge of the characteristics
of each race, when they rightly attribute the faults of foreigners to
the painful conditions under which they lived in their own country,
when they patiently bring to light the better qualities of those whom
they aspire to educate, then that unity so desirable, so necessary
for this great nation, will be perfected. Then there will be no more
“foreigners,” but all races will be one people, offering their best
efforts to the land in which they have equal obligations and equal
rights.
FOOTNOTE:
[10] This and the two following paragraphs are part of an address given
at an Americanization meeting held in Attleboro, Massachusetts, in 1917.
STEFANO MIELE
That one should come to America for the sole purpose of making money,
as the author of the following selection frankly states he did,
may seem an unworthy motive; but, after all, it is not essentially
different from the impulse that causes the country-bred American
boy to seek the larger cities for what he thinks will be greater
financial opportunities. Motives, in the final analysis, must be
judged in large part by their issues and results.
This young Italian, ambitious to become a lawyer and finding it
impossible in Italy to get employment with an opportunity to study,
decided to try his luck in America, where he was willing to “shovel
coal,” “wash dishes,” or “do anything to get up.” In a little more
than five years after landing at Ellis Island he was admitted to the
New York bar.
The following selection is reprinted from his article, “America as a
Place to Make Money,” published in the issue of _The World’s Work_
for December, 1920.
SOME OBSTACLES TO AMERICANIZATION
I was about twenty years old when I first thought of going to America.
But it is not so easy to leave one’s native land: it was not until
three years later that I said good-by to my father and mother and
our neighbors. I did not think for a moment that it was for the last
time--I was only going to America to make money and then return to
Baiano and the old folks.
My father gave me a little money so that I could buy a second-class
ticket. But I was young; I was starting on my first big adventure;
and--in Naples my money went, this way, that way--I came in the
steerage. It was no great hardship. My fellow-passengers were
Italians, most of them laborers, men used to hard work. They were very
happy--laughing, singing, playing--full of dreams, ambitions.
Then came Ellis Island!
Every one crowded--discomfort--lice--dirt--harshness--the officers
shouting “Come here,” “Go there,” as though they were driving animals.
And then the uncertain period of detention--sometimes a week, sometimes
two, three, or even four weeks--it is as though a man were in prison.
Ellis Island does not give the immigrant a good first lesson in
Americanization.
America wants the immigrant as a worker; but does it make any effort
to direct him, to distribute him to the places where workers are
needed? No; it leaves the immigrant to go here, there, any place. If
the immigrant were a horse instead of a human being, America would be
more careful of him; if it loses a horse, it feels it loses something;
if it loses an immigrant, it feels it loses nothing. At any rate, that
is the way it seems to the immigrant; and it strengthens his natural
disposition to settle among people of his own race.
A man needs to be a fighter to come to America without friends. I was
more fortunate than many: I had a brother in America. He worked in
a private bank. He met me when I landed and took me to his home in
Brooklyn. I looked for a job for about a month. I tried to get work on
the Italian newspapers; I tried to get work in a law office. Finally
a friend took me to a Jewish law office, and I was employed--I was
to get 25 per cent. of the fees from any clients that I brought in.
I stayed there two months and got $5. Three months after I arrived
in New York I was given the kind of a place that I had looked for in
vain in my native land--one that would enable me to support myself and
study my chosen profession. I was given a place on an Italian religious
newspaper. I worked from eight in the morning to six in the evening,
and attended the night course of the New York Law School.
It was about August when I landed in America, and already there was
election talk. (It was the year McClellan ran for Mayor.) I met some
of the Italian-American politicians. It is said that I have a gift for
oratory. The politicians asked what would be my price to talk in the
Italian sections of the city. I said that I did not want anything. I
made speeches for McClellan, and I have made speeches in every campaign
since.
That was one of the first things that struck me in America--that every
one working in politics was working for his own pocket. Another thing
that also amazed me was that most of the men elected to an office,
in which they are supposed to deliberate and legislate, were in
reality only figureheads taking orders from some one else. They had no
independence, no individuality. Another discovery was that the Italians
with most political influence were men of low morality, of low type.
Then I discovered the reason: the politicians needed repeaters and
guerillas, and that was why “the boss had to be seen” through a saloon-
or dive-keeper.
A thing that seemed very strange was the way the American newspapers
magnified crime in Italian districts, how they made sensational
stories out of what were really little happenings, how they gave the
Italians as a people a character for criminality and violence. No
less strange was the way the Italian newspapers answered the American
press. They were both building up a barrier of prejudice. If I were
to judge America through the American newspapers, I would not have
become an American citizen; or if I could know America only through the
Italian-American newspapers, I would say that the Americans are our
enemies.
It must be frankly admitted, however, that there is a change in the
second generation, a change that is too frequently not for the better.
As I have said, the majority of Italian immigrants come from the rural
districts of Italy, and, because there is no policy of distribution,
most of them settle in the big cities. They are not prepared to meet
the situation presented in a big industrial centre. They think to
apply the same principle in bringing up children that had been applied
in the little village or on the farm in Italy. They let the children
run loose. And in the streets of the crowded tenement districts the
children see graft, pocketpicking, street-walking, easy money here,
easy money there; they see the chance to make money without working.
The remedy is to be found in distributing the newly arrived immigrants.
Most of what I have said has been of the faults of America. I have
spoken of them because they are things that hold back Americanization.
America has been good to me. I have prospered here as I could not
have prospered in Italy. I came to make money and return; I have made
money and stayed. A little more than five years after I had landed
at Ellis Island I was admitted to the New York bar. I have already
had greater success than I dreamed, when I left Italy, that I should
have. And I look forward to still greater success. For me, America has
proved itself, and promises to continue to prove itself, the land of
opportunity, but I have not forgotten Italy--it is foolish to tell any
Italian to forget Italy. I say Italy; but for me, as for the others,
Italy is the little village where I was raised--the little hills, the
little church, the little garden, the little celebrations. I am forty
years old, but Christmas and Easter never come around but what I want
to return to Baiano. In my mind I become a little child again. But I
know enough to realize that I see all those scenes from a distance and
with the eye of childhood.
But even if I wanted to return to Italy, my children would not let me.
America is their country. My father is dead. I have brought my mother
here. When an Italian brings his parents to America, he is here to stay.
America is a wonderful nation. But we make a mistake if we assume
that the Anglo-Saxon is the perfect human being. He has splendid
qualities, but he also has faults. The same thing is true of the
Latins. The Anglo-Saxon is pre-eminently a business man, an executive,
an organizer, energetic, dogged. But in the Anglo-Saxon’s civilization
the Latin finds a lack of the things that go to make life worth
living. I remember the returned Italians, the “Americans,” that
I used to see at Baiano: they had made money in America and were
prosperous and independent, but they had also lost something--a certain
light-heartedness, a joy in the little things--the old jests no longer
made them laugh. The Latin has the artistic, the emotional temperament,
a gift for making little things put sunshine into life, a gift for
the social graces. If the Latin could get the qualities that the
Anglo-Saxon has, and give to the Anglo-Saxon those that he lacks,--if
all the nationalities that make up America could participate in this
give-and-take process,--then we would have a real Americanization.
JOHN KULAMER
John Kulamer was born on May 3, 1876, at Spisske Podhradie, Spisska
Zupa, Czecho-Slovak Republic, and came to this country in 1891,
alone. In June, 1909, he was admitted to the bar in Allegheny County,
Pennsylvania.
In an article, entitled “Americanization: the Other Side of the
Case,” contributed to the _Atlantic Monthly_, March, 1920, he says:
“Although born in far-off Czecho-Slovakia, under the shadow of the
snow-capped Tatra, I can without boasting say that I yield to no one
in my loyalty to the Stars and Stripes; and if I differ in my views
as to the methods to be used in Americanizing those who, like me,
were born in other countries, I do it out of love for my adopted
country, and because I am anxious to see these efforts crowned with
success.”
Mr. Kulamer has favored us with the following essay, in which he
further presents his ideas on this subject.
THE AMERICAN SPIRIT AND AMERICANIZATION
No matter how uncouth in appearance the immigrant when he sets foot
on American soil, the criminal fleeing from the hands of justice
excepted, there burns in his soul an intense love for the country of
his nativity, inherited from generations of his ancestors; the more
primitive his heart, the simpler and stronger is this love. He may have
come to this country only to earn sufficient money to relieve his wants
at home or to enlarge his means of living, or he may have come here as
to a land of promise of whose great opportunities and larger freedom he
has heard, still his heart remains in the land of his birth where the
ashes of his forefathers are resting and to which the memories of his
happiest childhood days are clinging. Leaving his home-nest, forsaking
friends and family and turning his face to a strange land to mix with
people whose customs and language he knows not, is a thrilling and
tragic adventure to every immigrant. And it is well that his soul is so
constituted, because he has the capacity to become a true patriot. Your
cosmopolite is of different stuff; he is callous and incapable of those
noble sentiments which urge the patriot to sacrifice even his life for
his country, either of birth or adoption. A man who pays no homage to
any land is incapable of harboring those feelings of brotherly love and
kinship on which the solidarity of a nation rests. If Americanizers
wish to wean the immigrant from the old to the new, they must have
genuine respect for his feelings and not wound them; he must be wooed,
he cannot be forced.
What is the object of this Americanization which is so much talked
about and on which so much energy and money is spent? Is it simply to
wipe out the difference between the customs and habits of the older
and newer settlers; or is it to amalgamate the various human elements
into one homogeneous mass, into one nation? If it is the former, it is
wasted energy; time will accomplish it. If it is the latter, then the
aliens must be considered as human beings whose souls are made of the
same material as those of the Pilgrim Fathers. Nations do not appear
on the earth spontaneously; they are the result of historical growth,
lasting for centuries. Many factors exert their influences upon a
nation in the formative stage. Stop immigration, if you can get along
without it, and in another generation the inhabitants of this country
will be such Americans as America will have made them. If they should
not turn out to be true Americans, it will be America’s fault. Even now
the children of alien parents speak the same language, dress the same
way, dance the same dances, sing the same songs, have the same good
qualities and the same faults as the children whose ancestors came here
sooner. If you want to convert the old folks into Americans, then it is
necessary to handle the situation with tact. Love is a tender plant;
it does not take root easily, and the least inclement weather will
blast it; but it is very sturdy when full grown, nothing less than a
thunderbolt will shatter it. Furthermore, it is of a spiritual essence,
and money cannot buy it.
To succeed in this purpose it is, first of all, necessary to study each
nationality separately. The very fact that all of them are treated
alike is detrimental. It is unfair to class them all alike. They
all have their good and bad qualities; and justice demands that the
latter be not attributed to those who do not possess them. There is
not one nationality that would admit its inferiority to the others,
and every one of them considers itself equal to, if not better than,
many others. Consequently, to be classed with races looked down upon
is a humiliation to which no one with self-respect will submit without
protest. This is a fact which must not be lost sight of; it is rooted
in human nature. It is further necessary to study the habits, customs,
prejudices and inclinations of every nationality separately, so that
such as are too deeply rooted may not be violently antagonized.
Take, for example, the matter of language. The Swede or the Spaniard
may not object to being forced by law to learn English, because in his
mother country this question never arose, it did not enter into his
daily life. It is different with the Slovak or the Pole, whose soul was
stirred to its very depths because the Magyar or the Prussian wanted
by law to force a strange tongue on him. It was a tradition with him
to resist such an attempt; he looked upon it as an oppression in his
mother country, and he is likely to look upon it in the same light
here. The conditions in Europe and here may be different; he may be
justified in objecting there and not here; but his mind is habituated
to opposing the ruling powers in their efforts to force upon him a
strange language. A common workingman is not used to psychological
self-analysis or to studying archæology; he is controlled mainly by his
impulses. He will note only that he is required to submit here to laws
which he considered oppressive and tyrannical in the old country.
The glories and advantages of this country should not be fed to the
immigrant in excessive doses, but presented tactfully. He is liable
to look upon it as an attempt to humiliate him, as unwarranted
boasting. It is not difficult to pick flaws in the armor of American
complacency. Every man is a hero-worshipper at heart, and every man
has his childhood heroes to whom he clings. Judged by an absolute
standard, if there is such a standard, the American heroes may stand
on a higher plane; but if rude hands are placed upon the childhood
heroes of the alien he is likely to resent it. The skies are just as
blue, the fields are carpeted just as beautifully with flowers and the
nights are illuminated with the same glorious stars on the Eastern as
on the Western Hemisphere. The majority of the aliens enjoyed more of
these beauties at home than they do in the mines and smoke-infested
atmosphere of the industrial American cities. It is true that they earn
more money here in dollars and cents; but they work harder for it and
sometimes under the most cruel taskmasters.
Teaching aliens the English language, American customs, ideals,
political institutions and history, will, of course, go a great way
in making them formal Americans, and, in some cases, it may awaken
in them a love for their new home; but it is indispensably necessary
that in their daily contact with the older Americans they see that
these ideals are put into practice. They have a very high idea of
Americanism, and they scrutinize very critically the conduct of the
Americans with whom they come into contact, to see whether it squares
with these ideals. They watch the manner in which the laws are enforced
by the officials, and compare it with the way in which they are
enforced in their native land; and, if they find out that the Americans
do not practice what they preach, that the administration of public
affairs is not essentially different here from what they know it to
be at home, their opinion of America is not exalted. They look upon
all the loud protestations as bluff and hypocrisy, and no amount of
Americanization work will change their views. They are on trial here,
but they also put the Americans to a test.
This Americanization work must be looked upon as the molding of human
souls. When men’s habits of thought and action have become fixed by
age, when they have lost their youthful plasticity, to recast their
souls into predetermined molds without subjecting them first to the
gentle heat of sympathy is like forging cold steel into new shapes. It
can be done, but it requires enormous energy and the results are never
as satisfactory as when the steel is first heated into a flux and then
cast.
If Americanization is to accomplish its purpose,--the amalgamation of
all the races and nationalities that inhabit the United States into one
nation, the transformation of the aliens into one hundred per cent.
Americans,--if it is to be beneficial and not harmful, it must be
looked upon as a spiritual regeneration. Naturalization makes a citizen
out of an alien; learning the English language makes him more efficient
both for good and evil; conformity to American habits and customs wipes
out social differences; knowledge of American institutions and laws
enables him to live up to them or to break them consciously; but none
of these nor all combined will make him an enthusiastic American unless
his heart has been alienated from his mother country and his affections
transferred to his adopted home. Not until the alien will love America
above all, not until he will boast of it and defend its faults, can he
be considered a true American. And he will do neither unless he has
placed America above his mother country in his estimation. This means a
re-birth in his soul.
ENRICO C. SARTORIO
“The Social and Religious Life of Italians in America,” by Enrico
C. Sartorio, is written from the viewpoint of one who came as a
foreigner to America when he was already a young man. It aims to show
how a foreigner really feels. In the words of Dean George Hodges,
who writes the Introduction to the book, it “is a timely revelation
of the width and depth of a racial gulf which must first be bridged
and then filled. His suggestions as to the accomplishing of this
necessary work are definite and practical inferences from his own
successful experience.”
Mr. Sartorio studied at the Cambridge Episcopal Theological School
and has since been successfully engaged in pastoral work in the city
of Boston.
PATRONIZING THE FOREIGNER
Among certain people there still exists the old prejudice that there
must be something the matter with a foreigner. Exclusiveness on one
side, loneliness on the other, do not help to interpret American life
in the right spirit to the foreigner. If educated Italians thus do not
know the real America, you can easily imagine what the immigrant’s
conception of America may be. My barber, who has been in this country
twenty-eight years, was dumbfounded when I told him the other day that
six people out of seven in America are Protestant. The poor fellow had
gone about for twenty-eight years tipping his hat to every church,
thinking that they were all Roman Catholic churches. I have found over
and over again Italian couples living together in the belief that
they were husband and wife, because they misunderstood American law.
They had been told that in America a civil marriage was as valid as a
religious one, so they went to the City Hall, and by going through the
process of answering questions in taking out the marriage license, they
thought they had been married and went happily home to live together
as husband and wife. An Italian tried to explain to me the meaning
of Thanksgiving Day. “You see,” he said, “the word explains itself,
‘Tacchins-giving Day’”; “tacchin” meaning turkey in Italian, it was,
according to this man, the day on which Americans gave away turkeys.
And what opportunity has an immigrant to know this country when he sees
America only at its worst? Through the gum-chewing girls whom he meets
in factories, through the hard-drinking and hard-swearing “boss” who
orders him about, through the dubious type of youth whom he meets at
the saloon and in the dance hall, through the descriptions given in
Italian newspapers and by cheap orators he comes to know America. Add
to that poor wages, quarters in the slums, policemen, car conductors
and ushers who laugh at him when he asks for information, “bosses” who
claim a fee for securing him a job, and the sweet names of “Dago” and
“Guinea” by which the supposed American thinks himself entitled to call
him, and you can imagine what a delightful feeling the average Italian
has toward this country.
Where does the fault lie? In prejudice and indifference, and in the
spirit of patronage. Americans who judge by appearances, who have not
travelled in Italy or studied modern Italian life, scornfully turn
away from the Italian immigrant because he is not as clean-shaven
or as well-kempt as the American workingman. Other Americans do not
concern themselves with foreigners. They have a vague knowledge that
there is somewhere, in some God-forsaken corner of the city, a foreign
population, and that is all. Still others take a sentimental view of
the matter; they have somewhat the feeling that existed in the bosom of
an Irishwoman, a neighbor of mine. On Saturday night,--she was always
affectionate on that special night,--she would wipe her eyes and say,
“Thim poor Eyetalians.” This kind of person means well, but generally
has zeal without knowledge.
A lady of refinement, born in a leading city of Italy, married to an
Italian Protestant minister who is now at the head of an important
religious movement in Italy, one day received the following letter:--
“_Dear Madam_:
“We are going to have a bazaar for the benefit of Italians. Please
come to help us, _dressed in the national costume that you used to
wear in Italy_.”
A son of a leading lawyer of Naples came to this country and was soon
holding a fine position and making a good living. He met at church an
American lady, who told him that she would be very glad to see him
the next day at her house. At the appointed hour our young gentleman
went there and handed his card to the servant. “Oh, yes,” she said,
“the lady gave me something for you,” and she thrust into his hand a
dilapidated suitcase and a note. The note read:--
“_Dear Sir_:
“I have been called away suddenly, but my maid will give you the
article which I intended to present to you in asking you to call. As
I no longer have use for this suitcase, perhaps it would serve you on
your next trip to Italy.
“Trusting to see you at church next Sunday,
“Sincerely yours,
---- ----.”
On another occasion an Italian minister was sent to a new field. A few
days after he had settled down he had a telephone call from the wife
of a minister of the town, who invited him to call at her house. At
the appointed hour he went and was met by the servant, who gave him a
newspaper bundle. The young man protested, saying that he had come to
call in response to an invitation. The servant went upstairs, but came
back, saying there was no mistake, that the lady wished that given to
him. On reaching home he found that the contents consisted of cast-off
clothing for his children. He bought a handsome edition of an Italian
book for children, translated into English, and sent it with his
regards to the patronizing lady.
TRAINING FOR CITIZENSHIP
There should be, in the large foreign colonies, organized lectures,
clubs, stereopticon lectures, distribution of information, both in
Italian and in English, to explain and to instruct in regard to
American history, laws, institutions, and ideals. There should be
free courses on a university extension plan for Italian professional
men, with a view to preparing them to expound to their people in the
right way the principles and standards of American life. A regular
and carefully carried out campaign should be started in the Italian
newspapers, with well-written articles by leading men on the subject of
American life; and a careful censorship of Italian newspapers should be
established to challenge every article that is unduly depreciatory of
America.
Churches should be centres where American volunteers of the best
kind can in deed and word represent their country to the foreigner.
Churches furnish a good means to bring about Americanization. Italians
are apt to move from place to place, and those who become attached
to Evangelical churches, besides the good which they eventually get
in their own churches, are also brought into contact with American
congregations, who by their example initiate them into the ways of
American life.
A campaign to enlighten the immigrant as to his duties towards his new
country should be started on a somewhat different basis from those
already tried. The immigrant is often made to feel how great the
material advantage is for him in becoming an American citizen, and
thus is trained to enter into American public and political life in a
mercenary spirit. When I applied for citizenship papers, I received
this letter from the Bureau of Naturalization, Washington, D.C.:--
“_Dear Sir_:
“You have just filed your petition for naturalization to become a
citizen of the United States, and because of this the United States
Bureau of Naturalization is sending this letter to you, as it desires
to show you how you can become an American citizen. It also wants to
help you to get a better position that pays you more money for your
work. In order to help you better yourself it has sent your name to
the public schools in your city, and the superintendent of those
schools has promised to teach you the things which you should know
to help you to get a better position. If you will go to the public
school building nearest where you live the teacher will tell you what
nights you can go to school and the best school for you to go to.
You will not be put in a class with boys and girls, but with grown
people. It will not cost you anything for the teaching which you will
receive in the school, and it will help you get a better job and also
make you able to pass the examination in court when you come to get
your citizen’s papers.
“You should call at the schoolhouse as soon as you receive this
letter so that you may start to learn and be able to get a better job
as soon as possible.
“Very truly yours,
N. N.”
As you see, four times there occurs in this letter the exhortation
to become a citizen and to learn the English language in order to
get “a better job.” The letter contains not a single appeal to
higher motives nor a reference to the duties and responsibilities of
American citizenship, yet it is sent to every foreigner who applies
for citizenship. I think a letter of this kind is demoralizing. I
wonder whether America is better off for exhorting foreigners to become
citizens from such motives, or whether it would not be more desirable
to instruct immigrants carefully on the altruistic side as to the duty
of sharing the responsibilities of American life.
It may be worth mentioning that thirty years of residence in the city
of Rome is required of any man, even of Italian birth, in order to
become a Roman citizen.
Human nature, fortunately, is always longing for an appeal to its best
side. I accompanied a friend when the American citizenship was granted
to him. The judge, a man with a fine, clean-cut face, turned toward the
candidates--there were about a hundred in the room--and told the story
of the Pilgrim Fathers who, although starved and in great distress,
refused the opportunity of going back to England, where religious and
political freedom was denied them. The words were to me an inspiration,
and in glancing around I saw the faces of those present light up and
show signs of emotion. Big Irishmen, heavy-faced Slavs, small, dried-up
Jews, dark Italians, small-headed Greeks, I could see in the eyes of
them all the light of men who were seeing a vision. The appeal to
the best there is in man should be the leading thought in educating
immigrants to a desire for American citizenship.
OTTO HERMANN KAHN
Otto H. Kahn was born at Mannheim, Germany, February 21, 1867. His
father had emigrated to the United States in 1848, where he became a
naturalized citizen, returning to Germany ten years later. The son
was educated in Germany and served one year in the German army. He
then learned banking, and for five years was with the London branch
of the Deutsche Bank. In 1893 he came to the United States, where he
became connected with the banking house of Speyer & Co., and later
with the firm of Kuhn, Loeb & Co.
During the Great War Mr. Kahn delivered several patriotic speeches
which were collected under the title, “Right Above Race.”
The following excerpt is part of an address given at Carnegie
Institute, Pittsburgh, April 24, 1919.
CAPITAL AND LABOR--A FAIR DEAL
We have often heard it said recently--it has become rather the fashion
to say it--that the rulership of the world will henceforth belong to
labor. I yield to no one in my respect and sympathy for labor, or in my
cordial and sincere support of its just claims. The structure of our
institutions cannot stand unless the masses of workmen, farmers, indeed
all large strata of society, feel that under and by these institutions
they are being given a square deal within the limits, not of Utopia,
but of what is sane, right and practicable.
But the rulership of the world will and ought to belong to no one
class. It will and ought to belong neither to labor nor to capital,
nor to any other class. It will, of right and in fact, belong to
those of all classes who acquire title to it by talent, hard work,
self-discipline, character and service.
He is no genuine friend or sound counselor of the people nor a
true patriot who recklessly, calculatingly or ignorantly raises or
encourages expectations which cannot or which ought not to be fulfilled.
We must deal with all these things with common sense, mutual trust,
with respect for all, and with the aim of guiding our conduct by the
standard of liberty, justice and human sympathy. But we must rightly
understand liberty. We must resolutely oppose those who in their
impatient grasping for unattainable perfection would make of liberty a
raging and destructive torrent instead of a majestic and fertilizing
stream.
Liberty is not fool-proof. For its beneficent working it demands
self-restraint, a sane and clear recognition of the reality of things,
of the practicable and attainable, and a realization of the fact that
there are laws of nature and of economies which are immutable and
beyond our power to change.
Nothing in history is more pathetic than the record of the instances
when one or the other of the peoples of the world rejoicingly followed
a new lead which it was promised and fondly believed would bring it to
freedom and happiness, and then suddenly found itself, instead, on the
old and only too well-trodden lane which goes through suffering and
turmoil to disillusionment and reaction.
I suppose most of us when we were twenty knew of a short cut to the
millennium, and were impatient, resentful and rather contemptuous of
those whose fossilized prejudices or selfishness, as we regarded them,
prevented that short cut from becoming the high road of humanity.
Now that we are older, though we know that our eyes will not behold the
millennium, we should still like the nearest possible approach to it;
but we have learned that no short cut leads there, and that anybody who
claims to have found one is either an impostor or self-deceived.
Among those wandering signposts to Utopia we find and recognize certain
recurrent types:--
There are those who, in the fervor of their world-improving mission,
discover and proclaim certain cure-alls for the ills of humanity, which
they fondly and honestly believe to be new and unfailing remedies, but
which, as a matter of fact, are hoary with age, having been tried on
this old globe of ours at one time or another, in one of its parts or
another, long ago,--tried and found wanting and discarded after sad
disillusionment.
There are the spokesmen of sophomorism rampant, strutting about in
the cloak of superior knowledge, mischievously and noisily, to the
disturbance of quiet and orderly mental processes and sane progress.
There are the sentimental, unseasoned, intolerant and cocksure
“advanced thinkers,” claiming leave to set the world by the ears, and
with their strident and ceaseless voices to drown the views of those
who are too busy to indulge in much talking.
There are the self-seeking demagogues and various related types, and
finally there are the preachers and devotees of liberty run amuck,
who in fanatical obsession would place a visionary and narrow class
interest and a sloppy internationalism above patriotism, and with
whom class hatred and envy have become a ruling passion. They are
perniciously, ceaselessly and vociferously active, though constituting
but a small minority of the people, and though every election and other
test has proved, fortunately, that they are not representative of
labor, either organized or unorganized.
Among these agitators and disturbers who dare clamorously to assail the
majestic and beneficent structure of American traditions, doctrines and
institutions there are some, far too many, indeed--I say it with deep
regret, being myself of foreign birth--who are of foreign parentage
or descent. With many hundreds of thousands they or their parents
came to our free shores from lands of oppression and persecution. The
great republic generously gave them asylum and opened wide to them the
portals of her freedom and her opportunities.
The great bulk of these newcomers have become loyal and enthusiastic
Americans. Most of them have proved themselves useful and valuable
elements in our many-rooted population. Some of them have accomplished
eminent achievements in science, industry and the arts. Certain of the
qualities and talents which they contribute to the common stock are of
great worth and promise.
When the great test of the war came, the overwhelming majority of them
rang wholly and finely true. The casualty lists are eloquent testimony
to the patriotic devotion of “the children of the crucible,” doubly
eloquent because many of them fought against their own kith and kin.
But some there are who have been blinded by the glare of liberty as a
man is blinded who, after long confinement in darkness, comes suddenly
into the strong sunlight. Blinded, they dare to aspire to force their
guidance upon Americans who for generations have walked in the light of
liberty.
They have become drunk with the strong wine of freedom, these men who
until they landed on America’s coasts had tasted little but the bitter
water of tyranny. Drunk, they presume to impose their reeling gait upon
Americans to whom freedom has been a pure and refreshing fountain for
a century and a half.
Brooding in the gloom of age-long oppression, they have evolved a
fantastic and distorted image of free government. In fatuous effrontery
they seek to graft the growth of their stunted vision upon the splendid
and ancient tree of American institutions.
Admitted in generous trust to the hospitality of America, they grossly
violate not only the dictates of common gratitude, but of those
elementary rules of respect and consideration which immemorial custom
imposes upon the newcomer or guest. They seek, indeed, to uproot the
foundations of the very house which gave them shelter.
We will not have it so, we who are Americans by birth or by adoption.
We reject these impudent pretentions. By all means, let us move forward
and upward, but let us proceed by the chart of reason, experience and
tested American principles and doctrines, and let us not entrust our
ship to demagogues, visionaries or shallow sentimentalists who most
assuredly would steer it on the rocks.
When you once leave the level road of Americanism to set foot upon the
incline of Socialism, it is no longer in your power to determine where
you will stop. It is an axiom only too well attested by the experience
of the past, that the principal elements of the established order of
civilization (of which the institution of private property is one)
are closely interrelated. If you tolerate grave infringement upon any
of these elements, all history shows that you will have laid open to
assault the foundations of personal liberty, of orderly processes of
government, of justice and tolerance, as well as the institution of
marriage, the sanctity of the home, and the principles and practices of
religion.
The strident voices of the fomenters of unrest do not cause me any
serious apprehension, but we must not sit silently by, we must not look
on inactively. Where there are grievances to redress, where there are
wrongs existing, we must all aid in trying to right them to the best of
our conscience and ability.
To the extent that social and economic institutions, however deep and
ancient their roots, may be found to stand in the way of the highest
achievable level of social justice and the widest attainable extension
of opportunity, welfare and contentment, they will have to submit to
change. And the less obstructive and stubborn, the more broad-minded,
co-operative, sympathetic and disinterested those who pre-eminently
prospered under the old conditions will prove themselves in meeting the
spirit of the new day and the reforms which it may justly call for, the
better it will be both for them and for the community at large.
But to the false teaching and the various pernicious “isms” with which
un-Americans, fifty per cent. Americans or anti-Americans are flooding
the country, we must give battle through an organized, persistent,
patient, nationwide campaign of education, of information, of sane
and sound doctrine. The masses of the American people want what is
right and fair, but they “want to be shown.” They will not simply take
our word for it that because a thing is so and has always been so,
therefore it should remain so. They do not mean to stand still. They
want progress. They have no use for the standpatter and reactionary.
Even before the war a great stirring and ferment was going on in the
land. The people were groping, seeking for a new and better condition
of things. The war has intensified that movement. It has torn great
fissures in the ancient structure of our civilization. To restore
it will require the co-operation of all patriotic men of sane and
temperate views, whatever may be their occupation or calling or
political affiliations.
It cannot be restored just as it was before. The building must be
rendered more habitable and attractive to those whose claim for
adequate houseroom cannot be left unheeded, either justly or safely.
Some changes, essential changes, must be made. I have no fear of the
outcome and of the readjustment which must come. I have no fear of
the forces of freedom unless they be ignored, repressed or falsely or
selfishly led.
Changes the American people will make as their needs become apparent,
improvements they welcome, the greatest attainable well-being for all
those under our national roof-tree is their aim. They will strive to
realize what formerly were considered unattainable ideals. But they
will do all that in the American way of sane and orderly progress--and
in no other.
Whatever betide in European countries, this nation will not be torn
from its ancient moorings. Against foes within, no less than against
enemies without, the American people will ever know how to preserve
and protect the splendid structure of light and order, which is the
treasured inheritance of all those who rightfully bear the name
Americans, whatever their race and origin.
MARCUS ELI RAVAGE
The story of the Rumanian immigrant, Marcus E. Ravage, was published
in 1917 under the title, “An American in the Making.” The most
significant steps in his transformation from alien to American seem
to have been his experiences as a sweat-shop worker and as a student
at the University of Missouri. It has sometimes been thought that the
immigrant who wishes to find the real America should go West. At any
rate Ravage is not the only one who has felt the stimulus of the free
and democratic spirit among the people of the Great Plains. We have
heard much in times past of an exchange of professors between the
United States and Europe. One wonders whether a more liberal exchange
both of professors and students between our larger and smaller, our
Eastern and Western and Northern and Southern, and our metropolitan
and our rural institutions of higher learning might not be beneficial
to the intellectual life of the colleges and universities and also,
by helping to eradicate provincialism and sectionalism, to greater
and more abiding national unity.
THE NEW IMMIGRATION
Oh, if I could show you America as we of the oppressed peoples see
it! If I could bring home to you even the smallest fraction of this
sacrifice and this upheaval, the dreaming and the strife, the agony
and the heartache, the endless disappointments, the yearning and the
despair,--all of which must be ours before we can make a home for our
battered spirits in this land of yours. Perhaps if we be young we dream
of riches and adventure, and if we be grown men we may merely seek a
haven for our outraged human souls and a safe retreat for our hungry
wives and children. Yet however aggrieved we may feel toward our native
home, we cannot but regard our leaving it as a violent severing of the
ties of our life, and look beyond toward our new home as a sort of
glorified exile. So, whether we be young or old, something of ourselves
we always leave behind in our hapless, cherished birthplaces. And the
heaviest share of our burden inevitably falls on the loved ones that
remain when we are gone. We make no illusions for ourselves. Though
we may expect wealth, we have no thought of returning. It is farewell
forever. We are not setting out on a trip; we are emigrating. Yes, we
are emigrating, and there is our experience, our ordeal, in a nutshell.
It is the one-way passport for us every time. For we have glimpsed a
vision of America, and we start out resolved that, whatever the cost,
we shall make her our own. In our heavy-laden hearts we are already
Americans. In our own dumb way we have grasped her message to us.
Yes, we immigrants have a real claim on America. Every one of us who
did not grow faint-hearted at the start of the battle, and has stuck it
out, has earned a share in America by the ancient right of conquest. We
have had to subdue this new home of ours to make it habitable, and in
conquering it we have conquered ourselves. We are not what we were when
you saw us landing from the Ellis Island ferry. Our own kinsfolk do not
know us when they come over. We sometimes hardly know ourselves.
WHAT COLLEGE LIFE IN THE WEST DID FOR AN IMMIGRANT
ACQUIRING A SENSE OF HUMOR
On the whole, then, it looked as if I might yet work out my salvation
if only those barbarians would leave me to myself. But it was not in
them to do that. They seemed determined on disturbing my peace of
mind. They were devoting, I honestly believe, all their spare thoughts
and all their inventive genius to thinking up ways of making me
uncomfortable. One young gentleman, still reminiscent of my ignorance
of rural things, made up a tale of how I went to get a job on a farm,
and proceeded to relate it at the table. “The farmer gave Max a pail
and a stool and sent him out to milk the cow. About an hour later, when
the old boy failed to show up with the stuff, Reuben went out to see
what was the trouble. He found his new assistant in a fierce pickle.
His clothes were torn and his hands and face were bleeding horribly.
‘What in heck is the matter?’ asked the farmer. ‘Oh, curse the old
cow!’ said Max, ‘I can’t make her sit on that stool.’” A burst of
merriment greeted the climactic ending, although the yarn was a trifle
musty; and the most painful part of it was that I must laugh at the
silly thing myself.
It was not at all true, as one of my numerous room-mates tried to
intimate, that I shunned baths. I was merely conservative in the
matter. One day, however, he had the indelicacy to ask me the somewhat
personal question whether I ever took a bath; and I told him rather
sullenly, that I did once in a while. Some time later I overheard
him repeat the dialogue to the other men in the house and provoking
shouts of laughter. It puzzled me to see where the joke was, until I
learned that these fellows were taking a shower-bath at the gymnasium
every day. It seemed to me that that was running a good thing into
the ground. Again, I noticed that my room-mates were making a great
show of their toothbrushes. They used them after every meal and before
retiring--as the advertisements say--and always with an unnecessary
amount of splash and clatter. At home I had been taught to keep my
mouth and teeth clean without all this fuss. Nevertheless, I thought
that I would get a brush and join in the drill. After that the other
brushes became noticeably quiet.
And then, of course, there was the institution of the practical joke.
On April 1st there was soap in the pie. If you got in late to a meal,
it was wise to brush your chair and “pick your bites,” if any bites
were left. If not, there was no telling what you might swallow or sit
on. More than once I tasted salt in my water and pepper in my biscuits.
I seemed to have been marked from the first as a fit subject for these
pranks.
On Hallowe’en a squad of cadets commanded by a corporal entered my room
and ordered me to get into my uniform, shoulder my gun, and proceed
to the gymnasium, which, according to the order read, the commandant
assigned me to guard against stragglers. I guarded through a whole
uneventful night. Toward morning the captain of the football team,
who had a room in the gymnasium, returned from a party. I ordered him
to halt and give the password. He smiled and tried to enter. I made a
lunge for him, and would have run my bayonet through him if he had not
begun to laugh. “Go on home, you poor boy,” he said. “They pull that
stunt off every year. Poor joke, I think.” The next day my table-mates
tried to jolly me about it. They said I would be court-martialed as
a deserter from duty. I got angry, and that made them all the more
hilarious. Then a great, strapping fellow named Harvey spoke up. “Be
still, you galoots,” he said to them; and then to me, “For gosh sake,
fellow, be human!” I tried a long time to figure out what he meant by
“human,” and for the rest of my college career I strove to follow his
advice. It was the first real hint I had got on what America, through
her representatives in Missouri, was expecting of me. Harvey became my
first American friend.
THE ROMANCE OF READJUSTMENT
So to New York I went, and lived through the last and the bitterest
episode in the romance of readjustment. During that whole strenuous
year, while I was fighting my battle for America, I had never for a
moment stopped to figure the price it was costing me. I had not dreamed
that my mere going to Missouri had opened up a gulf between me and
the world I had come from, and that every step I was taking toward my
ultimate goal was a stride away from everything that had once been
mine, that had once been myself. Now, no sooner had I alighted from the
train than it came upon me with a pang that that one year out there had
loosened ties that I had imagined were eternal.
There was Paul faithfully at the ferry, and as I came off he rushed
up to me and threw his arms around me and kissed me affectionately.
Did I kiss him back? I am afraid not. He took the grip out of my hand
and carried it to the Brooklyn Bridge. Then we boarded a car. I asked
him where we were going, and he said, mysteriously, “To Harry’s.” A
surprise was awaiting me, apparently. As we entered the little alley
of a store in the Italian quarter, I looked about me and saw no one.
But suddenly there was a burst of laughter from a dozen voices, a door
or two opened violently, and my whole family was upon me,--brothers,
a new sister-in-law, cousins of various degrees, some old people, a
few children. They rushed me into the apartment behind the store,
pelting me with endearments and with questions. The table was set as
for a Purim feast. There was an odor of pot-roasted chicken, and my
eye caught a glimpse of chopped eggplant. As the meal progressed, my
heart was touched by their loving thoughtfulness. Nothing had been
omitted,--not even the red wine and the Turkish peas and rice. Harry
and every one else kept on urging me to eat. “It’s a long time since
you have had a real meal,” said my sister-in-law. How true it was! But
I felt constrained, and ate very little. Here were the people and the
things I had so longed to be with; but I caught myself regarding them
with the eyes of a Western American. Suddenly--at one glance, as it
were--I grasped the answer to the problem that had puzzled me so long;
for here in the persons of those dear to me I was seeing myself as
those others had seen me.
I went about revisiting old scenes, and found that everything had
changed in my brief absence. My friends were not the same; the East
Side was not the same. They never would be the same. What had come over
them? My kinsfolk and my old companions looked me over and declared
that it was I who had become transformed. I had become soberer. I
carried myself differently. There was an unfamiliar reserve, something
mingled of coldness and melancholy, in my eye. My very speech had a new
intonation. It was more incisive, but, less fluent, less cordial, they
thought. Perhaps so. At any rate, while my people were still dear to
me, and always would be dear to me, the atmosphere about them repelled
me. If it _was_ I who had changed, then, as I took in the little world
I had emerged from, I could not help telling myself that the change was
a salutary one.
While calling at the old basement bookshop on East Broadway I suddenly
heard a horrible wailing and lamenting on the street. A funeral
procession was hurrying by, followed by several women in an open
carriage. Their hair was flying, their faces were red with weeping,
their bodies were swaying grotesquely to the rhythm of their violent
cries. The oldest in the group continued mechanically to address the
body in the hearse: “Husband dear, upon whom have you left us? Upon
whom, husband dear?” A young girl facing her in the vehicle looked
about in a terrified manner, seized every now and then the hand of her
afflicted mother, and tried to quiet her. The frightful scene, with
its tragic display, its abysmal ludicrousness, its barbarous noise,
revolted me. I had seen the like of it before, but that was in another
life. I had once been part of such a performance myself, and the grief
of it still lingered somewhere in my motley soul. But now I could only
think of the affecting simplicity, the quiet, unobtrusive solemnity of
a burial I had witnessed the previous spring in the West.
The afternoon following my arrival I flew uptown to see Esther. She
waved to me and smiled as I approached--she had been waiting on the
“stoop.” As she shook my hand in her somewhat masculine fashion, she
took me in with a glance, and the first thing she said was: “What a
genteel person you have become! You have changed astonishingly.” “Do
you think so?” I asked her. “I am afraid I haven’t. At least they do
not think so in Missouri.” Then she told me that she had got only ten
points, but that she was expecting three more in the fall. She was
almost resigned to wait another year before entering college. That
would enable her to make her total requirements, save up a little more
money, and get her breath. “A woman is not a man, you know,” she added.
“I am beginning to feel the effects of it all. I am really exhausted.
Geometry has nearly finished me. And mother has added her share. She is
no longer young, and this winter she was ill. I have worried and I have
had to send money. But let us not talk about my troubles. You are full
of things to tell me, I know.”
Yes, I had lots I wanted to say, but I did not know where to begin;
and the one thing that was uppermost in my mind I was afraid to utter
lest she should misunderstand and feel injured and reproach me. I did
not want her to reproach me on first meeting. I wanted to give myself
time as well as her. And so we fell into one of those customary long
silences, and for a while I felt at home again, and reflected that
perhaps I had been hasty in letting the first poignant reactions
mislead me. Toward evening Esther remarked that it was fortunate I
had got to town the day before. If I had no other plans, she would
take me to a meeting at Clinton Hall where Michailoff was to speak on
“The Coming Storm in America.” It would be exciting, she said, and
enlightening. Michailoff had just come out of prison. He was full of
new impressions of America and “the system” generally, and one could
rely on him to tear things open.
Of course we went, and the assemblage was noisy and quarrelsome and
intolerant, and the hall was stuffy and smelly, and the speaker was
honest and fiery and ill-informed. He thundered passionately, and as if
he were detailing a personal grievance against American individualism
and the benighted Americans who allowed a medieval religion and an
oppressive capitalistic system to mulct and exploit them, and referred
to a recent article in the _Zukunft_ where the writer had weakly
admitted the need of being fair even to Christianity, and insisted that
to be fair to an enemy of humanity was to be a traitor to humanity. I
listened to it all with an alien ear. Soon I caught myself defending
the enemy out there. What did these folk know of Americans, anyhow?
Michailoff was, after all, to radicalism what Higgins and Moore were to
Christianity. His idea of being liberal was to tolerate anarchism if
you were a socialist and communism if you were an individualist. And,
as we left the hall, I told Esther what I had hesitated to tell her
earlier in the evening.
“Save yourself, my dear friend. Run as fast as you can. You will find
a bigger and freer world than this. Promise me that you will follow me
to the West this fall. You will thank me for it. Those big, genuine
people out in Missouri are the salt of the earth. Whatever they may
think about the problem of universal brotherhood, they have already
solved it for their next-door neighbors. There is no need of the social
revolution in Missouri; they have a generous slice of the kingdom of
heaven.”
Maybe I was exaggerating, but that was how I felt. From this distance
and from these surroundings Missouri and the new world she meant to me
was enchanting and heroic. The loneliness I had endured, the snubbing,
the ridicule, the inner struggles--all the dreariness and the sadness
of my life in exile--had faded out of the picture, and what remained
was only an idealized vision of the clean manhood, the large human
dignity, the wholesome, bracing atmosphere of it, which contrasted so
strikingly with the things around me.
No, there was no sense in deceiving myself, the East Side had somehow
ceased to be my world. I had thought a few days ago that I was going
home. I had yelled to Harvey from the train, as it was pulling out of
the station at Columbia, “I am going home, old man!” But I had merely
come to another strange land. In the fall I would return to that other
exile. I was, indeed, a man without a country.
During that entire summer, while I opened gates on an Elevated train
in Brooklyn, I tussled with my problem. It was quite apparent to me
from the first what its solution must be. I knew that now there was no
going back for me; that my only hope lay in continuing in the direction
I had taken, however painful it may be to my loved ones and to myself.
But for a long time I could not admit it to myself. A host of voices
and sights and memories had awakened within me that clutched me to my
people and to my past.
As long as I remained in New York I kept up the tragic farce of making
Sunday calls on brother Harry and pretending that all was as before,
that America and education had changed nothing, that I was still one
of them. I had taken a room in a remote quarter of Brooklyn, where
there were few immigrants, under the pretense that it was nearer to
the railway barns. But I was deceiving no one but myself. Most of my
relatives, who had received me so heartily when I arrived, seemed to be
avoiding Harry’s house on Sundays, and on those rare occasions when I
ran into one of them he seemed frigid and ill at ease. Once Paul said
to me: “You are very funny. It looks as if you were ashamed of the
family. You aren’t really, are you? You know they said you would be
when you went away. There is a lot of foolish talk about it. Everybody
speaks of Harry and me as the doctor’s brothers. Can’t you warm up?”
I poured out my heart in a letter to Harvey. If a year ago I had been
told that I would be laying my sorrows and my disappointments in my own
kindred before any one out there, I would have laughed at the idea. But
that barbarian in Missouri was the only human being, strangely enough,
in whom I could now confide with any hope of being understood. I tried
to convey to him some idea of the agonizing moral experience I was
going through. I told him that I was aching to get back to Columbia
(how apt the name was!), to take up again where I had left off the
process of my transformation, and to get through with it as soon as
might be.
And in the fall I went back--this time a week _before_ college
opened--and was met by Harvey at the station, just as those
rural-looking boys had been met by their friends the year before. When
I reached the campus, I was surprised to see how many people knew me.
Scores of them came up and slapped me on the back and shook hands in
their hearty, boisterous fashion, and hoped that I had had a jolly
summer. I was asked to join boarding-clubs, to become a member in
debating societies, to come and see this fellow or that in his room.
It took me off my feet, this sudden geniality of my fellows toward me.
I had not been aware how, throughout the previous year, the barriers
between us had been gradually and steadily breaking down. It came
upon me all at once. I felt my heart going out to my new friends. I
had become one of them. I was not a man without a country. I was an
American.
ELIZABETH G. STERN
The pathos of the readjustment of the foreign-born to the new life in
America has nowhere been more touchingly presented than in the story,
“My Mother and I,” by Mrs. E. G. Stern, who was born in Russian
Poland.
Anyone who has gone on a long journey to make his home far from
friends and relatives knows something of the pain of separating from
loved ones; but the pain of such a separation cannot compare with
the travail of taking a far spiritual journey. That one may still
have deep reverence for the past, though breaking away from it, is
the conviction of the author, who says: “And I shall always remember
that, though my life is now part of my land’s, yet, if I am truly
part of America, it was mother, she who does not understand America,
who made me so. I wonder if, as the American mother I strive to be, I
can find a finer example than my own mother!”
THE PATHOS OF READJUSTMENT
AUTHOR’S PURPOSE IN WRITING
The mere writing of this account is a chain, slight, but never to be
broken; one that will always bind me to that from which I had thought
myself forever cut off. For I am writing not only of myself. In myself
I see one hundred thousand young men and women with dark eyes aflame
with enthusiasm, or blue eyes alight with hope. In myself, as I write
this record, I see the young girl whose father plucked oranges in
Italian gardens, the maiden whose mother worked on still mornings in
the wide fields of Poland, the young man whose grandmother toiled in
the peat bogs of Ireland. I am writing this for myself and for those
who, like me, are America’s foster children, to remind us of them,
through whose pioneer courage the bright gates of this beautiful land
of freedom were opened to us, and upon whose tumuli of gray and weary
years of struggle we, their children, rose to our opportunities.
I am writing to those sons and daughters of immigrant fathers and
mothers who are now in America, and to those who will come after this
devastating war to America, and to those who will receive them.
MARRIAGE AND AFTER
My friends are now my husband’s friends. My home is that kind of a home
in which he has always lived. With my marriage I entered into a new
avenue. We have traveled. We have worked at tasks we believed in and
loved. We have our little son. I have not written much to mother about
my life. My letters have been--just letters. Her own letters have been
growing briefer these last years. She never came to see me in my home.
It was our little son who was the real cause of her coming finally.
I thought of his birth as the tearing down of that barrier that had
come between us. Mother was intoxicated with the delight of her first
grandchild, the first child of her first child. “Now we understand each
other better, now that we both are mothers, my daughter,” she wrote to
me, not knowing how much more than she meant to say her letters told.
I, too, felt that in my own motherhood I saw the explanation now for
mother’s unquestioning, unceasing striving and toiling and hoping and
planning and achieving for her children. “Now I can find the joy of all
mothers again. I can find my lost young motherhood in your child,” she
wrote. “I am coming to my grandson.”
Mother had not traveled since she took that long trip, twenty-five
years ago, from Poland to America, to come to her husband. And now
she was preparing to come from Soho--to us, to her first grandchild.
We were excited as the letters from home told us that they were. Day
after day, my sisters wrote to us, women came to mother, giving her
messages to take to me, whom they had known so well as a child. They
brought mother cake and jellies and wines, as if she were about to
travel a year instead of one night. My aunts came to help her sew her
clothes, my uncles came to pack her suitcases. It was as if all Soho
were coming here to us in the person of mother. Father hurried back and
forth securing mileages, a berth. He carefully explained to mother what
a berth was, and warned her above all not to forget to give the black
man, when he gave her her hat, a quarter. My sisters wrote such dear
letters, describing it all there at home.
We could hardly wait. Our little boy asked every day for “grammy.”
There came a deluge of telegrams to us, which clearly told us the haste
and nervousness in the little home in Soho, and we knew that mother was
on her way to us.
She came in the morning. She did not stop to kiss me, nor to look about
her, but as soon as she entered my home she cried breathlessly, “Where
is my grandchild?” And she held him to her, and the tears filled her
eyes. “Such a boy! But a boy!” she cried. We had written to her that
our boy was speaking now. She sat down beside him, and she crooned
love-words to him.
Son is a friendly little lad. I felt that, if I left them alone
together, he and mother would grow close in a day or two. I peeped one
morning into the nursery. Mother was standing, looking dully at the
spotless baby cot, the white wicker chairs, the little washable rugs on
the floor, the gay pictures on the white walls. Her worn plump hands
were folded one upon the other in a gesture that I know. Little son
was in a corner, gravely building a tower. Little son has been taught
that he must play without demanding help or attention from adults about
him, that “son must help himself.” In Soho little boys are spanked and
scolded and carried and physicked and loved and fed all day and all
night.
Mother called to little son a quaint love name, and he turned to her
with his bright smile, understanding her love tone. Then he quietly
turned away from her to his toys again. And mother stood there in that
strange white baby world which was her grandson’s. Perhaps she was
thinking of what she had thought to find him, like one of the children
of her own young motherhood, dear burdens that one bore night and day.
She was afraid to touch the crib, to soil the spotless rugs. Here was
her grandchild, they were together, it is true. And her grandchild had
no need of her. She felt alien, unnecessary.
I felt the tears in my eyes. I ran in, called son to come to play with
grammy and mother. He came readily, laughingly, speaking his baby
phrases that are so adorably like the words we adults, his parents,
use. I had been anticipating, even before she came, how much mother and
I would enjoy his baby talk. But mother said in a very low voice, “You
say he speaks, daughter. I do not understand the words he means to say
now. And--he will never learn--learn my language.”
And mother’s first tears fell.
We had planned for every hour of her visit to us, even for the hours of
needed rest between whiles. In those rest spaces she would come into
our living room. She is not accustomed to sitting in living rooms. Her
life has been a life of toil. And our living room is to her as strange
a place as was to me the first sitting room I saw long ago.
She looked with a little smile about her. She glanced at the bookcase,
filled with books she cannot read, and about things she does not know.
Finally her gaze rested upon a certain place, and my eyes followed
hers. There stood the old candlesticks which she had known in her
father’s home in Poland, and which had stood in her own kitchen in
Soho. And there, in my living room stands also, with its bronze
curves holding autumn leaves--the copper fish pot! “In America,” said
mother quaintly, with a little “crooked smile” only on her trembling,
questioning lips, “they have all things--so different.”
There is no need for mother’s pot in my kitchen; it has become an
emblem of the past, an ornament in my living room. Mother cannot
understand our manner of cooking, the manner I learned _away_ from
home. She cannot eat the foods we have; her plate at meals was left
almost untouched. She does not understand my white kitchen, used only
for cooking. When she came into my kitchen, my maid asked her quickly,
eager to please her, pleasantly and respectfully, “What can I do for
you?”
So mother went out to the porch, and she looked out upon the
tree-shaded street. And an infinite loneliness was hers, a loneliness
at thought of the crowded, homely ghetto street, where every one goes
about in shirt sleeves, or apron and kimono, where every one knows his
neighbor, where every one speaks mother’s speech.
She cannot understand my friends, nor they her. I am the only thing
here that is part of her life. I for whom those hands of hers are hard
and worn, and her eyes weary with the stitching of thousands of seams.
She helped me to come into this house, to reach the quiet peace of this
street. And she has come to see this place whither she toiled to have
me come; and now that she came to see my goal she was afraid, lonely.
She did not understand.
There is nothing that we have in common, it may appear, this mother
of mine, and I, the mother of my son. Her life has lain always within
the four dim walls of her ghetto home. And I have books, clubs, social
service, music, plays. My motherhood is a privilege and an experience
which is meaningful not only to my son and to me, but to my community.
In this short visit of hers, for the first time mother saw me as
that which I had always wished to be, an American woman at the head
of an American home. But our home is a home which, try as I may, we
cannot make home to mother. She has seen come to realization those
things which she helped me to attain, and she cannot share, nor even
understand, them.
But there is one thing we have in common, mother and I. We have this
woman that I am, this woman mother has helped me to become. And I shall
always remember that, though my life is now part of my land’s, yet, if
I am truly part of America, it was mother, she who does not understand
America, who made me so. I wonder if, as the American mother I strive
to be, I can find a finer example than my own mother!
There are many men and women who have gone, as I have, far from that
place where we started. When I think of them lecturing on the platform,
teaching in schools and colleges, prescribing in offices, pleading
before the bar of law, I shall never be able to see them standing
alone. I shall always see, behind them, two shadowy figures who will
stand with questioning, puzzled eyes, eyes in which there will be love,
but no understanding, and always an infinite loneliness.
For those men and women who are physicians and lawyers and teachers
and writers, they are young, and they belong to America. And they
who recede into the shadow, they are old, and they do not understand
America. But they have made their contribution to America--their sons
and their daughters.
ROBERT M. WERNAER
Robert Maximilian Wernaer was born in 1865 in Jena, Germany, where he
received his early education. After coming to the United States in
1884, he took a course in law at the Albany Law School, and attended
Harvard University, from which he received his Ph.D. degree in 1903.
His studies were continued abroad at Leipzig, Heidelberg, Geneva,
and Berlin. He was admitted to the Bar in 1889 and practiced law
in Brooklyn and New York. Later he was instructor in German at the
universities of Wisconsin and Harvard, being also lecturer on German
literature at the latter institution in 1908.
In 1917 there was published his stirring, patriotic poem, “The Soul
of America,” which leaves no doubt concerning his stand on the great
question of the hour. The parts reprinted here are taken chiefly from
the opening cantos of the poem.
THE SOUL OF AMERICA[11]
O America! Land of forests and prairies.
Land of races and peoples,
Land of freedom and tolerance,
Looked-for haven of the nations of the world!
To you I came, and you I adopted.
I have infolded you as a child infolds its mother.
I say to you: “My mother!”
I love you because you hold the torch of liberty in your outstretched
hand.
I love you because your constitution speaks of the people as the
rulers.
(I am a man--I salute you, brother!)
I love you because you are not governed by a king.
I love you because princes and nobles are not met on your streets--
The dignity of man is not lowered.
I love you because of the true red mixture of human blood that flows
in your veins.
Blessed are the dreams of the first settlers!
I love you because, in the beginning of your history,
You gathered together your people;
You girded your loins;
You armed yourself with weapons of steel;
And you fought.
You fought for liberty;
You fought for independence;
O divine freemanship!
You fought for democracy;
You fought for nature’s own laws;
And you won.
Blessed are the noble men in whom the dreams of our fathers still
live!
And since those days, the peoples came from the ends of the earth,
And you increased;
And your stars now count forty and eight.
I love you because of what you did in the middle of the nineteenth
century,--
You liberated some millions of dark-colored people living among you;
You emancipated them.
I love you because you gave your blood for the Cubans.
You fought for them, but took no soil.
You made them free.
The Filipinos will be free also.
I love [you] because you are a nation of givers.
Above all else, I love you because of your Soul,
The infinite vistas opening out from your Soul.
Blessed be that Soul!
And since I love you,
Since my life is entwined with your life,
My ideals with your ideals,--
Gray matter and red blood have sealed the pledge,--
I wish you to guard the beacon fires lit on your mountains,
I wish you to grow,
And increase in the strength of body,
In the strength of Soul,
The things unseen,
Your birthrights, O America!
III
America, my country!
Brothers all!
What is that Liberty of which you sing?
Which impelled the first settlers to seek your soil?
For which they offered up their blood?
Which you sent abroad in your calls of love?
Which brought the nations of the earth to you?
Singing, singing, singing!
Which you have stamped upon your documents and silver coins?
The sunlight spread out over the States?--
What is that Liberty?
You say it is your life-principle.
Yes: it is your life-principle;
The igniting spark that keeps your fires, O America!
That feeds your Soul, your Spirit, your Being:
As your Liberty is, so is your Soul;
As your Soul is, so is your Liberty.
You are not merely dwellers on this continent;
You are no longer a province;
No longer in the leading strings of a parent land.
Not now!
You are a new land,--
New, because of a new era started;
New, because you are not a land of just one race,
But a company of races,
Held together by a secret bond,
By a _sacred_ bond,
Sacred as a consecrated altar,
The link between you and your destiny,--
Your very Soul, your Spirit, your Being.
Are you conscious of that?
Do you feel it as you feel the pulsing of your heart?
Do you feel it strike the tablet of your mind as a conviction?
Do you feel it quiver through your body when the word “American” is
uttered?
What then is Liberty?
What does the uplifted torch mean?
The wreath about her brow?
What is this Soul I am speaking about?
Brother, ask yourself that question.
Ask yourself at night in the hour of rest.
And in the morning when a new day dawns.
Ask yourself now!
For it is the time of a new consecration.
To-day! To-day!
Ask yourself a thousand times,
For America’s To-morrow depends upon your answer!
Yea, the world’s To-morrow depends upon your answer!
IV
I know a man who years ago
Departed from his native land,
With treasures, wife and child;
And settled in the kingdom of the sea.
Rich he was, and, in due time, the king made him a lord.
He was born in America, and had breathed her
Principle of life, yet never known her Soul;
Was born in America, yet had not been American.
I know a woman of leisure who lived in Paris;
Ten happy, fleeting years she had spent there;
Then she returned to the land of her birth--
For a visit.
She made the visit shorter than she had intended;
She thought of the arts she had left behind;
She thought of the boulevards and lighted cafes;
She thought of the Countess de C. and her _cercle_ of friends;
Our streets and cities she no longer liked;
Our people seemed bourgeois to her;
Our life was too busy, and fulsome of noise;
She longed for leisure and fashion;
She scorned our ways.
She, too, had not known the Soul of our land,
Though born under the Stars and Stripes.
My brothers, there are many of these.
VII
My brother, what is Liberty?
What is Democracy?
I feel a quiver run
Through our nation--
What is it we have left undone
In faith and consecration?
Our faith of old--
Has it grown cold?
Is it the search for gold
That made us turn from pledges of the past,
Forgetful of the things that last?
To play?
To chase the shadows in the sun?
To count the trifles won?
My brother,
What is it we have left undone?
What is it we must do?
How can we see things through,
In this New Age?
There is the flesh of body, in which the life of man is rooted;
There is the light of the soul, which makes that life a child of God.
There is the flesh of body, in which the life of a people is rooted;
There is the light of her soul, which makes that life a nation.
What is our nation’s Soul?
America’s Light?
Her entity as a nation among nations?
Her Being, I mean, her Heart, the glow
Of her Spirit whereby she grows;
Her mind whereby she knows
Herself; her Entity
Among the nations, free
Or bound;--this Soul, do you know?
My brother, I tell you no new truth,
Though a deep and wondrous truth.
You may have forgotten--forgotten it!
You, who have been here too long--
My brother, know it again, again!
Or you, newcomer, no one may have told you--
Hear me, then!
It is a faith,--
A faith on which hangs all the law and the singer’s prophecy;
Which cuts down to the life-roots of our Being;
Which lays bare the red-flowing blood,--the sap of life;
And the white-shining Light,--the blossoms of life;
Which makes us stand before our grave, and face to face with God.
Blessed are the men of the past who saw the Light, who had the faith!
It is a faith,--
The faith that through our democracy,
A government and a people sprung from American soil,
Many peoples, peoples sprung from the races of the world--
Through this democracy--
The high-held promises that sleep in man,
Infinite stretches of powers potential,
Social, intellectual, moral,
In embryo traced in lines of beauty,
Can into vital life be quickened,
Strike deep their roots,
Fed in this wondrous soil,
And gather mighty powers of growth,
Unfolding wing on wing of nascent life,
Nearing the stature of ideal selfhood
God has destined they should be,
Through this democracy,
Through a democracy of many peoples,
The great American Experiment,
The new hope-anointed start,
A nation in which the people are the rulers,
A free people of peoples free,
Living in concord one with another,
Striving steadfast for a high humanity,
Reaching out to the ends of the world,
Making an end of Race for the sake of Man,
A humanity, great because it is a race of races,
Great because pledged to advance the statehood of man,
Crowned with the crown of freedom,
Won with eyes and ears, and swords and plows,
And creative brother-will,
And love for noble deeds, and noble song, and noble art,
Calling all men “brothers.”--
That is America’s Soul!
Her Soul in the making.
WE MUST BE TRUE
We must be true, with faith renew
Our solemn vows, forever true!
True as the very prairie grass,
The woods and fields and soil and mass
Of rock, which sun and air have wrought,--
Growing without a thought,
Truly American!
True to historic days, the flow
And national ebb of times ago!
True to the very drops of life,
The battles fought, the stress and strife
Of anguished years to make man free,--
Loving our Liberty,
Truly American!
True to the Lincoln man, the love-chart
Of a great impassioned human heart!
True to the very cry of our Soul
For better days, the far-out goal
Of struggling man,--knowing no race,
Lighted by a brother’s face,
Truly American!
We must be true, with faith renew
Our solemn vows, forever true!
True to the very stars above,
To truth, to freedom, justice, love
For right; yea, unfaltering,--with the brave,
Ready for a freeman’s grave,
Truly American!
FOOTNOTE:
[11] Copyright, 1917, by The Four Seas Company. By permission of the
publishers.
ANGELO PATRI
The country which gave Dante and Garibaldi and Mazzini and Madame
Montessori to the world saw the birth, in 1877, of Angelo Patri,
teacher in the public schools of New York City and author of “A
Schoolmaster of the Great City.” This book recounts his endeavors
to realize his educational ideals. That he has been triumphantly
successful does not seem to be entirely to the credit of contemporary
pedagogical methods, and his arraignment of much current educational
theory and practice is as severe as his passionate, Christ-like love
of childhood is touching and beautiful. The World War has convinced
educators rather generally of the need of vitalizing the work of the
schools through contact with life itself, and for this none pleads
more eloquently than he.
The following selections under altered titles are taken from chapters
one, seven and eight.
AN IMMIGRANT AND HIS FATHER
I remember sitting with the family and the neighbors’ families about
the fireplace, while father, night after night, told us stories of the
Knights of the Crusades or recounted the glories of the heroes of proud
Italy.
How he could tell a story! His voice was strong and soft and soothing,
and he had just sufficient power of exaggeration to increase the
attractiveness of the tale. We could see the soldiers he told us about
pass before us in all their struggles and sorrows and triumphs. Back
and forth he marched them into Asia Minor, across Sicily, and into the
castles of France, Germany and England. We listened eagerly and came
back each night ready to be thrilled and inspired again by the spirit
of the good and the great.
Then came the journey over the sea, and the family with the neighbors’
families were part of the life of New York. We were Little Italy.
I was eleven before I went to a city school. All the English I knew had
been learned in the street. I knew Italian. From the time I was seven I
had written letters for the neighbors. Especially the women folk took
me off to a corner and asked me to write letters to their friends in
Italy. As they told me the story, I wrote it down. I thus learned the
beat of plain folks’ hearts.
My uncle from whom I had learned Italian went back to Italy, and I was
left without a teacher; so one day I attached myself to a playmate
and went to school,--an “American” school. I gave my name and my
age, and was told to sit in a long row of benches with some sixty
other children. The teacher stood at the blackboard and wrote “March
5, 1887.” We all read it after her, chanting the singsong with the
teacher. Each morning we did the same thing; that is, repeated lessons
after the teacher. That first day and the second day were alike, and so
were the years that followed. “If one yard of goods cost three cents,
how much will twenty-five yards cost?” If one yard costs three cents,
then twenty-five yards will cost twenty-five times three cents, or
seventy-five cents. The explanation could not vary, or it might not be
true or logical.
But there was one thing that was impressed more strongly than this
routine. I had always been a sickly, thin, pale-faced child. I did not
like to sit still. I wanted to play, to talk, to move about. But if I
did any of these things, I was kept after school as a punishment. This
would not do. I had to get out of the room, and frequently I endured
agonies because the teacher would not permit me to leave the room
whenever I wanted to. Many times I went home sick and lay abed.
Soon I discovered that the boys who sat quietly, looked straight ahead
and folded their arms behind their backs, and even refused to talk to
their neighbors, were allowed the special privilege of leaving the room
for one minute, not longer. So I sat still, very still, for hours and
hours, so that I might have the one minute. Throughout my whole school
life this picture remains uppermost. I sat still, repeated words, and
then obtained my minute allowance.
For ten years I did this, and because I learned words I was able to
go from the first year of school through the last year of college. My
illness and the school discipline had helped after all. They had made
my school life shorter by several years than it otherwise might have
been.
The colony life of the city’s immigrants is an attempt to continue the
village traditions of the mother country. In our neighborhood there
were hundreds of families that had come from the same part of Italy. On
summer nights they gathered in groups on the sidewalks, the stoops, the
courtyards, and talked and sang and dreamed. In winter the men and boys
built Roman arches out of the snow.
But gradually the families grew in size. The neighborhood became
congested. A few families moved away. Ours was one of them. We began
to be a part of the new mass instead of the old. The city with its
tremendous machinery, its many demands, its constant calling, calling,
began to take hold. What had been intimate, quaint, beautiful, ceased
to appeal.
I went to school, father went to work, mother looked after the house.
When evening came, instead of sitting about the fire, talking and
reliving the day, we sat, each in his own corner. One nursed his tired
bones, another prepared his lessons for the morrow. The demands of
the school devoured me; the work world exhausted my father. The long
evenings of close contact with my home people were becoming rare. I was
slipping away from my home; home was slipping away from me.
Yet my father knew what he was about. While the fathers of most of the
boys about me were putting their money into business or into their
houses, mine put his strength, his love, his money, his comforts into
making me better than himself. The spirit of the crusaders should live
again in his son. He wanted me to become a priest: I wanted to become a
doctor.
During all the years that he worked for me, I worked for myself. While
his hopes were centred in the family, mine were extending beyond it.
I worked late into the nights, living a life of which my father was
not a part. This living by myself tended to make me forget, indeed to
undervalue, the worth of my people. I was ashamed sometimes because my
folk did not look or talk like Americans.
When most depressed by the feeling of living crudely and poorly, I
would go out to see my father at work. I would see him high up on a
scaffold a hundred feet in the air, and my head would get dizzy and my
heart would rise to my throat. Then I would think of him once more as
the poet story-teller with the strong, soothing voice and the far-off
visioned eye, and would see why on two-dollar-a-day wages he sent me to
college.
Proud of his strength, I would strengthen my moral fibre and respond to
his dream. Yet not as he dreamed; for when he fell fifty feet down a
ladder and was ill for a whole year, I went to work at teaching.
AN IMMIGRANT AND THE CHILDREN
The schools will change for the better when their life is made
basically different from what it has been.
They are pointed in the direction of the fundamentals of knowledge,
but working with the tools of the classicists. They have developed
and developed until we find life on one side,--that is, outside the
school,--and learning on the other side,--that is, inside the school.
Now the schools must be pointed so that life and the school become one.
To begin with, better school conditions must be provided for the
youngest children. The first steps in child teaching must be sound. The
primary years of school must be worth while. Unless the basic structure
is real, soul satisfying, higher education will be halting and futile.
The child is entitled to a fine start in his life’s journey if he is to
have a fair chance of carrying his head high and his shoulders straight.
He comes to school a distinct personality. He is joyous, spontaneous,
natural, free. But from the first day, instead of watching, encouraging
that personality, the school begins to suppress it and keeps up the
process year in and year out. By and by we begin to search for the
individuality that has been submerged. We make tempting offers to the
student in the high school and in the college--we give him better
teachers, better equipment, greater freedom, more leisure, smaller
classes, direct experiences. We call upon him to stand out, to face the
problems of life honestly, squarely,--to be himself. How blind we are!
First we kill, and then we weep for that which we have slain.
We do not look upon the children as an important economic factor.
Children are a problem to the parent and teacher, but not to the race.
Do you raise pigs? The government is almost tearful in its solicitude
for their health and welfare. The Agricultural Bureau sends you
scientific data gathered at great pains and expense. But do you raise
children? Ah! They are very expensive. And there are so many of them!
One teacher to fifty is the best we can do for you. Teachers who are
specialists in their profession? Oh, now really! You know we could
never afford that. We must pay for high-priced teachers for the high
schools and upper grades, but for the little children--all you want is
a pleasant personality that is able to teach the rudiments of learning.
There’s not much to do in those grades--just the rudiments, you know.
There’s no disciplining to do there, the children are so easily
suppressed. It’s only in the upper grades we have the trouble!
Stupid and topsy-turvy!
We need the scientist, the child specialist, the artist, in the first
year of school. We need few children to a teacher and plenty of space
to move about in.
It’s there the teacher should eagerly, anxiously, reverently, watch for
the little spark of genius, of soul, of individuality, and so breathe
the breath of life upon it that it can never again be crushed or
repressed.
We must spend more money on elementary education if the money we
now spend on higher education is to bring forth results that are
commensurate with our national needs. We spend fifty dollars a year on
the education of a child and ten times that amount on the education of
a young college man....
Do we really believe in children? Can we say with the Roman mother,
“These are my jewels”? How long ago is it that the state legislature
passed a bill enabling the canneries to employ children and women
twelve hours a day? Fifty children to a teacher, adulterated foods,
military discipline, are not beliefs in children. Enslaving mothers is
not a belief in children.
Our belief in children, like our belief in many other good things, is
mainly a word belief. What we need is a practical belief. We are still
at the stage where we separate work and thought, action and theory,
practice and ethics. If we would be saved, we must follow the child’s
way of life. His way is the direct way. He learns from contact with the
forces about him. He feels them, he sees them, he knows what they do
to him. He thinks and does and discovers all in one continuous flow of
energy.
The child says: “I am of things as they are. I am the fighter for the
things that ought to be. I was the beginning of human progress, and
I am the progress of the world. I drive the world on. I invent, I
achieve, I reform. About me is always the glory of mounting. I have no
fear of falling, of slipping down, down. I have no fear of being lost.
I am truth. I am reality, and always I question chaos.”
When the child begins to question the wisdom of the group, its
religion, its literature, its dress, its tastes, its method of
government, its standard of judgment, that moment the group should
begin to take heed. It should take the child’s questioning seriously.
When the group fails to do this, it gives up its existence, it ceases
to grow because it looks back, it worships tradition, it makes history
in terms of the past rather than in terms of the future.
Belief in evolution is a belief in the child.
What the race needs is a principle of growth, spiritual growth, that
can never be denied. Such a principle it will find in the child,
because the spirit of the child is the one factor of the group
existence that in itself keeps changing, growing. The child is nature’s
newest experiment in her search for a better type, and the race will be
strong as it determines that the experiment shall be successful.
We develop national characteristics in accord with our adherence to
a common ideal. We must therefore surrender ourselves for the common
good, and the common good to which we should surrender is epitomized in
the child idea.
I feel that the attitude towards the school and the child is the
ultimate attitude by which America is to be judged. Indeed, the
distinctive contribution America is to make to the world’s progress is
not political, economical, religious, but educational, the child our
national strength, the school as the medium through which the adult is
to be remade.
What an ideal for the American people!
When my father came to America, he thought of America only as a
temporary home. He learned little or no English. As the years went
by he would say, “It is enough; my children know English.” Then more
years rolled by. One day he came to me and asked me to help him get
his citizenship papers. He and I began reading history together. Month
after month we worked, laboring, translating, questioning, until the
very day of his examination.
That day I hurried home from college to find a smiling, happy father.
“Did you get them?” I asked.
“Yes, and the judge wanted to know how I knew the answers so well,
and I told him my son who goes to college taught me, and the judge
complimented me.”
I have been a part of many movements to Americanize the foreigner,
but I see that the child is the only one who can carry the message
of democracy if the message is to be carried at all. If the child
fails to make the connection between the ideals of the school and the
fundamental beliefs of the people, there is none other to do it. The
children are the chain that must bind people together.
I have told about parents growing because they sought growth for their
children. I saw them grow through the initiative of the school. These
were tenement dwellers. Would this thing hold where the parents are
well to do, and the streets are clean and music is of the best, and
home ideals are of the highest and the social life of the neighborhood
is intimate? Is it still necessary for the school to gather the parents
about itself? Is it still necessary for the school to go out into the
community and get the parents to consciously work as a group for the
children’s interest, to consciously shape their philosophy of life in
conformity with the dynamic philosophy that childhood represents?
More necessary! If not to save the children, it should be done to save
the parents.
No matter who the people are, they need the school as a humanizing
force, so that they may feel the common interest, revive their visions,
see the fulfillment of their dreams in terms of their children, so
that they may be made young once more. Americanize the foreigner, nay,
through the child let us fulfill our destiny and Americanize America.
ANZIA YEZIERSKA
Anzia Yezierska was born in a Polish province of Russia in the year
1886, and migrated, when nine years old, to New York City, where
she was sent to work in an East Side sweatshop at a dollar and a
half a week. Her life in America has been a heroic struggle for
self-expression both in a literary and spiritual sense.
Since upon every hand one hears the cry that more should be required
of the immigrants in the way of preparation for citizenship, in
loyalty and in service, it is very fitting that this book of
selections should close with that touching passage of her story,
“How I Found America,” which sets forth the immigrants’ yearning
for fellowship with native Americans and their passionate desire
to serve. Will not here be found the two master keys--fellowship
and service--to the successful accomplishment of the work
of Americanization; in fact, without which all attempts at
Americanization will prove futile?
The writings of the immigrants have hitherto been largely historical
and sociological in character. Miss Yezierska’s work suggests the
unlimited artistic possibilities of the newer elements in our
national life,--gifts on which we should not lay violent hands,
but which we should carefully conserve as a part of the heritage
of America to the future. It is interesting to note that one of
her stories was selected by Edward J. O’Brien as the best piece of
imaginative writing in short form produced during the year 1919.
That part of the story that follows is taken from the issue of _The
Century_ for November, 1920. The same story in longer and somewhat
different form is found in a volume of her collected writings
recently published by Houghton Mifflin under the title, “Hungry
Hearts.”
HOW I FOUND AMERICA
Times changed. The sweat-shop conditions that I had lived through had
become a relic of the past. Wages had doubled, tripled, and went up
higher and higher, and the working day became shorter and shorter. I
began to earn enough to move my family uptown into a sunny, airy flat
with electricity and telephone service. I even saved up enough to buy a
phonograph and a piano.
My knotted nerves relaxed. At last I had become free from the worry
for bread and rent, but I was not happy. A more restless discontent
than ever before ate out my heart. Freedom from stomach needs only
intensified the needs of my soul.
I ached and clamored for America. Higher wages and shorter hours of
work, mere physical comfort, were not yet America. I had dreamed
that America was a place where the heart could grow big with living.
Though outwardly I had become prosperous, life still forced me into an
existence of mere getting and getting.
_Ach!_ how I longed for a friend, a real American friend, some one to
whom I could express the thoughts and feelings that choked me! In the
Bronx, the uptown ghetto, I felt myself farther away from the spirit
of America than ever before. In the East Side the people had yet
alive in their eyes the old, old dreams of America, the America that
would release the age-old hunger to give; but in the prosperous Bronx
good eating and good sleeping replaced the spiritual need for giving.
The chase for dollars and diamonds deadened the dreams that had once
brought them to America.
More and more the all-consuming need for a friend possessed me. In the
street, in the cars, in the subways, I was always seeking, ceaselessly
seeking for eyes, a face, the flash of a smile that would be light in
my darkness.
I felt sometimes that I was only burning out my heart for a shadow, an
echo, a wild dream, but I couldn’t help it. Nothing was real to me but
my hope of finding a friend. America was not America to me unless I
could find an American that would make America real.
The hunger of my heart drove me to the night-school. Again my dream
flamed. Again America beckoned. In the school there would be education,
air, life for my cramped-in spirit. I would learn to think, to form
the thoughts that surged formless in me. I would find the teacher that
would make me articulate.
I joined the literature class. They were reading “The De Coverley
Papers.” Filled with insatiate thirst, I drank in every line with
the feeling that any moment I would get to the fountain-heart of
revelation. Night after night I read with tireless devotion. But of
what? The manners and customs of the eighteenth century, of people two
hundred years dead.
One evening, after a month’s attendance, when the class had dwindled
from fifty to four, and the teacher began scolding us who were present
for those who were absent, my bitterness broke.
“Do you know why all the girls are dropping away from the class? It’s
because they have too much sense than to waste themselves on ‘The De
Coverley Papers.’ Us four girls are four fools. We could learn more
in the streets. It’s dirty and wrong, but it’s life. What are ‘The De
Coverley Papers?’ Dry dust fit for the ash-can.”
“Perhaps you had better tell the principal your ideas of the standard
classics,” she scoffed, white with rage.
“All right,” I snapped, and hurried down to the principal’s office.
I swung open the door.
“I just want to tell you why I’m leaving. I--”
“Won’t you come in?” The principal rose and placed a chair for me
near her desk. “Now tell me all.” She leaned forward with an inviting
interest.
I looked up, and met the steady gaze of eyes shining with light. In
a moment all my anger fled. “The De Coverley Papers” were forgotten.
The warm friendliness of her face held me like a familiar dream. I
couldn’t speak. It was as if the sky suddenly opened in my heart.
“Do go on,” she said, and gave me a quick nod. “I want to hear.”
The repression of centuries rushed out of my heart. I told her
everything--of the mud hut in Sukovoly where I was born, of the Czar’s
pogroms, of the constant fear of the Cossack, of Gedalyah Mindel’s
letter, of our hopes in coming to America, and my search for an
American who would make America real.
“I am so glad you came to me,” she said. And after a pause, “You can
help me.”
“Help you?” I cried. It was the first time that an American suggested
that I could help her.
“Yes, indeed. I have always wanted to know more of that mysterious,
vibrant life--the immigrant. You can help me know my girls. You have so
much to give--”
“Give--that’s what I was hungering and thirsting all these years--to
give out what’s in me. I was dying in the unused riches of my soul.”
“I know; I know just what you mean,” she said, putting her hand on mine.
My whole being seemed to change in the warmth of her comprehension. “I
have a friend,” it sang itself in me. “I have a friend!”
“And you are a born American?” I asked. There was none of that sure,
all-right look of the Americans about her.
“Yes, indeed. My mother, like so many mothers,”--and her eyebrows
lifted humorously whimsical,--“claims we’re descendants of the Pilgrim
Fathers, and that one of our lineal ancestors came over in the
_Mayflower_.”
“For all your mother’s pride in the Pilgrim Fathers, you yourself are
as plain from the heart as an immigrant.”
“Weren’t the Pilgrim Fathers immigrants two hundred years ago?”
She took from her desk a book and read to me.
Then she opened her arms to me, and breathlessly I felt myself drawn
to her. Bonds seemed to burst. A suffusion of light filled my being.
Great choirings lifted me in space. I walked out unseeingly.
All the way home the words she read flamed before me: “We go forth all
to seek America. And in the seeking we create her. In the quality of
our search shall be the nature of the America that we create.”
So all those lonely years of seeking and praying were not in vain.
How glad I was that I had not stopped at the husk, a good job, a good
living! Through my inarticulate groping and reaching out I had found
the soul, the spirit of America.
* * * * *
Transcriber’s Notes:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
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