As the campaign increased in intensity, I found myself a desired person in the eyes of the local campaign managers, but not one of them could tell me the significance and meaning of the privilege I was for the first time to exercise.
Finally, I spent an evening with Seth Low, and, of course, got the desired information.
But fancy the quest I had been compelled to make to acquire the simple information that should have been placed in my hands or made readily accessible to me.And how many foreign-born would take equal pains to ascertain what I was determined to find out?
Surely America fell short here at the moment most sacred to me: that of my first vote!
Is it any easier to-day for the foreign citizen to acquire this information when he approaches his first vote? I wonder! Not that I do not believe there are agencies for this purpose.You know there are, and so do I.But how about the foreign-born? Does he know it? Is it not perhaps like the owner of the bulldog who assured the friend calling on him that it never attacked friends of the family? "Yes," said the friend, "that's all right.You know and I know that I am a friend of the family; but does the dog know?"Is it to-day made known to the foreign-born, about to exercise his privilege of suffrage for the first time, where he can be told what that privilege means: is the means to know made readily accessible to him: is it, in fact, as it should be, brought to him?
It was not to me; is it to him?
One fundamental trouble with the present desire for Americanization is that the American is anxious to Americanize two classes--if he is a reformer, the foreign-born; if he is an employer, his employees.It never occurs to him that he himself may be in need of Americanization.
He seems to take it for granted that because he is American-born, he is an American in spirit and has a right understanding of American ideals.
But that, by no means, always follows.There are thousands of the American-born who need Americanization just as much as do the foreign-born.There are hundreds of American employers who know far less of American ideals than do some of their employees.In fact, there are those actually engaged to-day in the work of Americanization, men at the top of the movement, who sadly need a better conception of true Americanism.
An excellent illustration of this came to my knowledge when I attended a large Americanization Conference in Washington.One of the principal speakers was an educator of high standing and considerable influence in one of the most important sections of the United States.In a speech setting forth his ideas of Americanization, he dwelt with much emphasis and at considerable length upon instilling into the mind of the foreign-born the highest respect for American institutions.
After the Conference he asked me whether he could see me that afternoon at my hotel; he wanted to talk about contributing to the magazine.When he came, before approaching the object of his talk, he launched out on a tirade against the President of the United States; the weakness of the Cabinet, the inefficiency of the Congress, and the stupidity of the Senate.If words could have killed, there would have not remained a single living member of the Administration at Washington.
After fifteen minutes of this, I reminded him of his speech and the emphasis which he had placed upon the necessity of inculcating in the foreign-born respect for American institutions.
Yet this man was a power in his community, a strong influence upon others; he believed he could Americanize others, when he himself, according to his own statements, lacked the fundamental principle of Americanization.What is true of this man is, in lesser or greater degree, true of hundreds of others.Their Americanization consists of lip-service; the real spirit, the only factor which counts in the successful teaching of any doctrine, is absolutely missing.We certainly cannot teach anything approaching a true Americanism until we ourselves feel and believe and practise in our own lives what we are teaching to others.No law, no lip-service, no effort, however well-intentioned, will amount to anything worth while in inculcating the true American spirit in our foreign-born citizens until we are sure that the American spirit is understood by ourselves and is warp and woof of our own being.
To the American, part and parcel of his country, these particulars in which his country falls short with the foreign-born are, perhaps, not so evident; they may even seem not so very important.But to the foreign-born they seem distinct lacks; they loom large; they form serious handicaps which, in many cases, are never surmounted; they are a menace to that Americanization which is, to-day, more than ever our fondest dream, and which we now realize more keenly than before is our most vital need.
It is for this reason that I have put them down here as a concrete instance of where and how America fell short in my own Americanization, and, what is far more serious to me, where she is falling short in her Americanization of thousands of other foreign-born.
"Yet you succeeded," it will be argued.
That may be; but you, on the other hand, must admit that I did not succeed by reason of these shortcomings: it was in spite of them, by overcoming them--a result that all might not achieve.
