CHAPTER IIAmericanism

On the day this was written there appeared in the daily press a “pledge” now being circulated among young men, especially in our colleges and universities:

“I being over 18 years of age hereby pledge myself against enlistment as a volunteer for any military or naval service in international warfare,offensive or defensive, and against giving my approval to such enlistment on the part of others.”

Compare with this pledge that solemn oath taken many years ago by the wise elders of a new republic:

“... in support of these truths we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”

Which strikes the keynote to the future of America?

“We cannot in this country hope for the compelling devotion which has animated Germany, still less for the supreme moral and intellectual force which is the staying power of France,” says Miss Repplier in a recent statement.

What thencanwe hope for? Granted our geographical difficulties, granted our youth, our size, and the consequent imperfect control of our material resources, granted the complexity of our problem caused by the rapid immigration of the past years, granted that we are still a body of states—does this mean that we cannot acquire the spirit of France and the efficiency of Germany?

I believe Miss Repplier’s attitude (a typical native American one) shows an entirely mistaken conception of the situation. No nation ever had a more vigorous birth than ours. This country was founded upon a body of conviction, clarified by a white heat of passion, but representing the judgment of deliberate men and great statesmen, men who saw into the future, and built the ship of state by that vision.

I believe the foundation stones ofAmericanism are exactly what they were 140 years ago,—liberty, opportunity, and obligation. We have lost sight of the third. The conception of liberty upon which this country was founded was a chastened and a disciplined conception. It was chastened by a menace to rights as dear as life itself. It was disciplined by the immediate duty of defending theseby life itself, if need be. That chastened and disciplined conception of liberty is Americanism. We have now the sacred tradition. We have now the liberty. We have now the opportunity. Our task is to restore to it the austerity and the discipline of obligation.

A combination of rights and duties, of obligations and privileges, is the determining idea in those first vehicles of Americanism, our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. But in interpreting and reaffirming these in state constitutions, laws, and municipal ordinances,—in which for very natural reasons sectional and provincial points of view have often entered,—we have drifted away from the true balance between these fundamental rights and duties, a balancewhich is at once the delicate spring and the solid rock of our existence. Prosperity, unusual freedom of choice in vocations, varying and broad opportunities to control the vast material resources of the country, have made us complacent about accepting the privileges of a democracy. We have argued among ourselves endlessly as to just what these privileges are and whether perhaps any of them are being infringed. But we have rarely investigated whether we ourselves are giving to the democracy the respect and service that alone can keep it secure. Americanism has become for the great mass of Americans a point of view accompanied by a lukewarm sentiment. The rigor of duty and the ardor of a passionate belief have entered but little.

Through all our defense discussions and legislation, one amazing thing has stood out very clearly—that the great majority of private citizens in America recognize no compelling obligation to place themselves, their time, or their resources at the disposal of the nation. They regard this as a voluntary matter. They frequently question whether thepoint of national service ought to be raised at all with respect to the law-abiding citizen who earns his living, provides decently for his family, and treats his neighbor with respect. The time and energy outside the office or the job and the necessary duty to home belong to the moving picture or to the pool room, or to any other pleasure to which the freeman wishes to devote them. We have made a fetish of our industrial freedom and we have tied our Americanism to it. The everyday citizen has ceased to balance national opportunities with national duties.

In all the long years of our progress and prosperity no clearer concept or statement of Americanism than this has been made:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, that to secure these Rights, governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

But to these words, clear and solemn, this pledge was added:

“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our Sacred Honor.”

Nothing was said about “the claims of business,” or being “willing to do anything that may be necessary when the need actually arises.” When the twentieth-century Americans “mutually pledge to each other” these things, we shall cease talking about “reasonable preparedness.” We will arm and trainallour manhood. We will restore democracy to the twentieth century. And we will restore Americanism to America!

Restoring our real traditions of liberty is not a vague task. The general principles of liberty as stated in the Declaration of Independence are, in part, very practically interpreted in the Constitution. As there enumerated they include: freedom of religion; freedom of speech; freedom of the press; the right of petition; the right to keep and bear arms;the right to protest against unreasonable searches and seizures; the right of protection for persons and property; the right of trial by jury; the right to vote without abridgment of this right because of race, color, or previous conditions of servitude.

These are only minimum guarantees. There are other rights of far-reaching importance—as the right to profit by a free system of education. And there are besides these rights countless privileges and dignities which no specific enumeration will cover.

At some time and some where this nation began to think of these privileges and opportunities rather in deed than in spirit, and to set them aside as prerogatives for “first Americans.” We began to think of ourselves as better than other men and to create barriers which could not but result in injustice and intolerance. And just at that point we laid the corner stone of our shame to-day.

“First Americans” have already pointed out to us that the framers of the Constitution never foresaw the “Southern European hordes” that now flock here. Perhaps not. But I question if the visionwould have disturbed them, or whether it could ever have put greater caution and reserve into the instrument they were drawing up. The magnanimity of spirit there expressed is based upon something greater than philosophy. It is based upon a quality that has nothing to do with changes of times or conditions, a quality of stern fearlessness, a national conviction that the destiny of this nation was to be above all else the safeguard and champion of liberty.

The extent to which we have departed from the ideals set forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution is best measured by the way we have come to regard and to treat the most helpless and trusting of our people—the immigrants who come to our shores. Our early policy at Castle Garden was to meet them, advise them, protect them by laws, safeguard their journey, and to consider them as a valuable asset to America and its future development. Compare with this the route of the immigrant in America to-day, keeping in mind our forefathers’ conception of American guarantees of life, liberty, and happiness.

The immigrant arrives at the port of entry. After passing his examination (during which time not a friendly word of greeting is given him, or a personal interest taken in him) he is turned loose upon the city to be met at the gate by cabmen, porters, runners, crooks, thieves, and every conceivable kind of exploiter interested in getting his cash money. This is America’s first reception line. He then meets our second reception line—the employment agent, the private banker, and “steering agent” who derive profit from his labor before it has even become productive. When the immigrant actually goes to work, he has generally lost his money and is in debt. He then meets our third American reception line, the employer interested only in his labor output, and he is treated accordingly. He is generally left alone, to live as best he can, until he begins to save money. This immediately calls forth our fourth reception line—the private banker who renews his acquaintance and offers to help him send his money home; the speculator in land who looks him up; the get-rich-quick concerns that advertisein the papers he reads, and the medical quack who sells him so-called “American” medicines. Some one tells him he may be better off as a citizen, and then appears our fifth American reception line—the politician willing to buy his vote because he needs it, the notary public who is ready to settle his affairs at home so that he can “cut loose,” and the labor leader who thinks now he ought to be organized.

By the time the immigrant has shaken hands along these various reception lines he feels he knows everybody, and he has a very definite idea of liberty, justice, freedom, law, order, and measures of happiness which in no sense accords with our forefathers’ ideal of America.

I sometimes wonder when I see men in the night schools studying our Constitution to enable them to pass their citizenship examinations how they square its teaching with their various experiences under the peonage system of the South; with the robberies by the company store in the coal mines; with the sentences they receive for minor offenses in justice-of-peace courts which have no interpreters;with the prohibition that they cannot work at certain trades, for example in Michigan where they cannot be barbers; with restrictions upon personal liberty, as in Pennsylvania where they cannot keep a dog; with the repeated private bank failures in which all their savings were lost; with the double standard of living under which they see their American neighbors protected and themselves neglected and exploited.

I ask myself if the time will ever come when we shall restore Americanism as the signers of the Declaration of Independence conceived it. We cannot do this until we ourselves believe in practical Americanism. We are coming to realize that the native American who makes the lives of our foreign born wholly subservient to the industrial grind and who neither provides for nor permits them to become American citizens is himself a strong anti-American influence in this country; that the native American who permits the foreign born to enter and denies them the opportunities of America and the right to work, is really anti-American; that the native Americanwho emphasizes the liberties and opportunities of America without correspondingly emphasizing the duties of all American residents is anti-American. We are beginning to see that the native American is anti-American who perpetuates class consciousness and race hatred; who favors or perpetuates the immigrant colony or camp or section with different standards of living, different law enforcement and isolation from American influences; who establishes his own home and his own children in a well-policed, sanitary section of the town and leaves his immigrant neighbor in another section unprotected and living in filth and disorder. We are coming to regard that man as a selfish patriot who consistently and complacently in his factory exacts a physical toll from his workmen without regard to the cost in citizenship to America; and that woman as anti-American who takes a girl into the kitchen because of certain racial excellences, but refuses to consider that these excellences have any social value to America outside the walls of that kitchen and who therefore uses and monopolizesher labor capacity but contributes nothing toward making that girl an American citizen qualified to preside over an American home. We are coming to see that a political leader is a menace to a united America who uses newly naturalized immigrants to swing the American vote in this direction or that, but who does nothing to make the immigrant a good citizen, or even to see that he understands American political ideals.

It is impossible to have the spirit of Americanism prevail in this land when at least a quarter of its people do not understand it, or have been disillusioned in their dream of it, or have been despoiled in their search for it. I do not minimize the value of hardship of obstacles to be overcome. They make for the strength of a nation just as they do for the strength of a human being. But I like to see the obstacles set up in a fair field with no favor—where a man can see them and meet them intelligently. This is what Americanism stands for, but it is not what it means to the average immigrant. We point with pride to the immigrant who succeeds in spite of it, but I suspect thatoften we judge by his clothes and his house and his speech rather than by his outlook upon life and his inlook upon himself. We satisfy ourselves by comparing his lot here with what it was in his home country—often without real knowledge of either. We fail to see that we have lost the dream of what America may be and with the dream the ability to achieve it, when we become content that America should merely be better than Russia or freer than Austria instead of being the very best of which America is capable.

This country is full of so-called un-American types. Some of them are native born and some are foreign born. Immigrant men and women in this rank of life or that, who have been in this country for years, have found themselves isolated from and ignored by Americans. American customs and standards have therefore failed to alter them. The result is the perpetuation of foreign types or the creation of distinct types which we refuse to accept as ours, but in the making of which we have certainly had a controlling hand. Take the typical foreign-bornjournalist and publicist. There are hundreds of them to-day fighting the battle of Americanization for their fellow countrymen here against fearful odds because they are so far from being Americanized themselves. Many of them are philosophers, students, zealots; many of them are all-American in aspiration. But they are not themselves in possession of the very Americanism they seek to interpret. And their efforts at Americanizing their fellow countrymen fall as far short as would a piece of philosophy with a man in need of a pick to earn his living, bread to eat, or a tongue with which to speak.

Medical quacks, shyster lawyers, saloon-politicians, chronically bankrupt factory owners or lessees of foreign birth are continually pointed out to us as the types that are being inflicted upon a long-suffering America. They are in fact the types that a negligent America is inflicting upon itself.

How can we expect people from all the nations of the earth, from all kinds of governments and traditions, to understand the principles of liberty, as they have been handed down to us? The onething they do understand is that the surveillance that prevails in the old country does not prevail here. Take the small business man or small factory operator of foreign birth in New York, the frequenter of the bankruptcy court, the owner of flimsy factory lofts which, when they have been burnt down, show the evasion of the most obvious laws. These men as youths in new America see that every man is free to try his hand at anything he wishes. Seeingonlythis, they get the idea that the great American game is the strife of one man against the other, that this island of Manhattan and this country are a land of single combat on a large scale, of which competition is the real secret, endurance and cunning and aggression the winning qualities. When they once get this idea, and they often get it very rapidly, they follow it as the dominating principle of their practical existence in America. I say their practical existence, because the methods pursued by many immigrant traders, business and professional men in this country do not represent at allany moral point of view which they have evolved themselves.What they do represent is a practical routine, a thoughtless application of the principles they see Americans practicing all around them. And unlike the Americans, they have no background of American tradition which will interpret differences and distinctions to them and give them ageneralcriterion.

Certain things are essential to elucidating and preserving Americanism. One of these is a common language. Not until the necessity for national defense was thrust upon us have we considered seriously requiring that all American residents learn English. It is true we said in 1906 that all naturalized citizens must have a knowledge of the English language, but we neglected to define what we meant, so the knowledge may consist of as many words as each of several hundred judges may decide is a fair test. Not until the business man found that a knowledge of English reduced accidents did he indorse night schools. Only two states require compulsory attendance of minors under eighteen years of age to learn the English language.

This lack of a common language hasprevented the American born and foreign born from getting together in a common Americanism. It has been a closed door to nationalism.

A second is a common citizenship. We have thought of this as the most sacred of rights and have safeguarded it with every possible technicality. Again our policy has been negative, discouraging, and hampering. We have put up the bars with one hand while with the other we have poked holes through the hedges for the political boss. We make it impossible for an alien to acquire citizenship within five years, but permit him to vote—with all that implies—in eight states after he has been there a few months. What conception can he have of how we regard this privilege and right and why has he no compunction in selling it? He leaves his home country to escape military duty and attends meetings in America where he is told he is not even expected to defend this country in case of war. Not one public school in a hundred makes any provisions for teaching him about American conditions, life, and government. Again he finds a closed door to Americanism,and it is small wonder when it is opened that he enters, a skeptic of democracy.

Men work for and defend what is dear to them. When a job is the only stake, it is a rather narrow base for patriotism. The newly arrived immigrant is not given much of an opportunity to have any sentiment or inspiring associations about his job. The average employer feels that when he raises wages he has discharged his full duty to his workman and to his country. But America is concerned not only with what a man earns, but with how he spends it. It is interested in his having a home stake in America, and in his investing in America. Only a prodigal, short-sighted, hand-to-mouth nation can look with indifference upon workmen sending $400,000,000 abroad, and following their savings there each year.

So it is with his living conditions. In the vermin-ridden bunk house the Italian dreams of Italy. In the bungalow with a flower garden Italy is far in the background. The “pursuit of happiness” was mentioned with life and liberty, but as we have forgotten our duties in privileges,so have we neglected happiness for life in terms of gain.

We need a new social impulse back of our patriotism. We have come to the point where we even trifle with the idea that nationalism may be an outworn thing, too parochial a survival to stand the white light of the twentieth century. We have a great deal of social emotion of one kind or another in this country. It has put many healthy ideas into circulation, registered many needed protests. But it has been so remote from the actual business of life, so far removed from the job and the polling booth, that it has done little even for those that have served it best. The prevailing idea of social freedom in this country within the last few years has developed among the industrial groups of our large cities especially a kind of intellectual proletariat, whose creed is active social reform, but whose practice is intellectualism. This constitutes a curious menace to Americanism. It seeks to substitute the “brotherhood of man” for all the loyalties and obligations and relationships of life. I saw a month or two ago in a widely circulated magazinea symposium to which many writers and publicists contributed, stating whether or not they “believed in patriotism” and saw any validity in it. Some did and some did not. It was discussed as if it were the protective tariff.

The I. W. W.’s urge their followers to ignore national lines and unite only as “Workers of the World.” And a great many of those followers, truly united in their passion for industrial freedom, hoodwink themselves into believing that in this bond all the debts and privileges of a national citizenship are more than included. They come to speak slightingly of those that still hold to so practical a loyalty. The immigrants, wavering between two loyalties and firmly fixed in neither, and especially the immigrants who come from those countries where the social sense is strongly developed, are especially drawn or think they are by the appeal of a loyalty to “no God and no master”—and respond readily to the flexible and not too confiningideaof brotherhood. Theideamoves and sways the throng. But when they go home to their crowded rooms in tenements, whenthey go the next morning to the job, when they deal with property, those men and women need a government, understanding and equable, to carry and control the conditions of their lives, to safeguard their rights, to aid them to right their wrongs. It alone can give them the guarantees and the tradition of industrial freedom. They need a loyalty.

We must learn to care. Our hearts must be on fire with belief, or we shall never have Americanism. We need to go back again to the sources of our liberty and relight our torches there. It is because we have not Americanism in our hearts and souls, because we have not been through the process of Americanization, because we have become slaves to prosperity and faithless to our ideals that we have failed Europe at a critical time. Americanism has become a phrase, a trademark, a passport. Unless somehow and somewhere we can restore belief and zeal and faith in our destiny we face the disunion of this Republic into races and creeds, into sectionalism and localism, into class warfare between capital and labor, into selfish individualism rather than nationalism.

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