CHAPTER VINational Unity
Military Preparedness.Industrial Mobilization.Universal Service.Americanization.International Duty.
The decision America is called upon to make to-day is whether America shall emerge from this world-wide struggle as a nation of many peoples or whether it will imperil its very existence by remaining half native, half alien; half free and half slave to foreign influences.
We are in the midst of a bitter contest in which the forces for weakness are contending with those for strength in terms of fortifications, battleships, and guns amidst the sordid influences of appropriations, sectional selfishness, and party campaign considerations.
Preparedness meanssomething more than a larger army and navy. It means also having a united America back of that army and navy.
Shall we get nothing except the material standards of preparedness from the mighty struggle in Europe, where nations are contending for the preservation of the liberties and security we now enjoy?
What will it avail this nation to build battleships and a merchant marine, if we do not at the same time create a nation-wide loyalty that will prevent explosions wrecking their holds?
Shall we strengthen our coast defenses and leave our transportation lines, upon which they depend, to be manned by unskilled workmen whom Americans have not shown how to love America, and in whom dual allegiance still persists? Shall we conserve our resources in mines, quarries, and fields and build more factories and man them with discontented workmen who will see American defenses only in terms of profit and advantage?
Shall we have citizens’ training camps and train to higher efficiency only those already filled with patriotism, or shallwe in these same camps bring new and old citizens together and bring up the ranks in discipline and efficiency for a better America?
Can we become a really strong nation if Americanization is for native-born men and women only, while we do nothing for the millions of foreign-born men and women who constitute our reserve strength?
These and many other similar questions must be included in any adequate program of defense, and yet in no council of government or of citizens have they been given the consideration their importance demands. The great immediate task before us is mobilization and Americanization, the welding of the many races and classes in this country into one enduring, steadfast, efficient nation.
The things that make for preparedness in peace or war, that make France and Germany the two leading contestants in the present war, are as much social and economic, as military preparedness. We shall not attain this until we have Americanized our foreign-born residents and many of our American-born as well.We cannot do this by legislation or proclamation, but only by the patriotic action of each and every resident in America disciplined for national service.
Some one has brought to America a remarkable series of moving pictures called “Britain Prepared.” The conspicuous thing about them is that the emphasis is put upon the training of men, the kind of training we find in the gymnasium and in sports and among boy scouts. Guns and battleships and horses are there, to be sure, but they are always beingmastered by men. Somehow in our defense propaganda during the past year we have missed this dominant note. We talk about an increased army and navy and aëroplanes and coast defenses, but we always get the sense of guns and machines and mechanics and never the sense of their mastery.
The defense bills in Congress this winter are marked by the same fatal presumption—that defense is entirely a matter of physical preparedness and that it is to be brought about chiefly by legislation and appropriations. We are apparently looking only to the immediateand obvious and popular kind of preparedness and have not yet begun upon the real problem of preparedness which involves long, slow, patient consideration of many intricate matters vital to any adequate national defense of America.
I believe that the work of the agitator and propagandist in arousing America is about done. The hundreds of volunteer, happy-go-lucky, hit-and-miss organizations throughout the country that have divided public attention with Congress have accomplished their task. We are entering upon the serious business of investigation, organization, and administration. We are ready for a policy, a program, and a leader. We are ready to act as a nation and not as the spokesman for any section or race.
A thoroughgoing policy of national preparedness to insure national unity and action cannot comprise less than five main divisions, all proceeding together toward a common goal. They are military preparedness, industrial mobilization, universal service, Americanization, and international duty.
Military defense has centered chieflyupon the army and navy and has dealt largely with numbers and appropriations. The pending measures can hardly be said to represent a policy. The conflicting provisions scarcely constitute a program.
Let us see how we have approached this subject: Under the guise of a first and immediate defense step we are urged to provide for a tunnel through the Rocky Mountains; for a road connecting two forts in Georgia; for rifle clubs, the Federal government to supply the rifles; for a national aviation corps school; for volunteer training camps for high school students; for the purchase of the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal; for a naval or a military academy in this or that particular state; for a “multiroad highway”; for a marvelous continental army on a voluntary plan, whereby 88,000 men are to enlist for six months, a second 88,000 within sixty days, and so on “as long as in the opinion of the President this procedure is necessary to public welfare.” This last bill well illustrates the detached point of view we have adopted toward the defense issue—an army ofvolunteers,i.e.whoever see fit, is to beraised overnight, and another army two months later and so on, so long as the President thinks there is any danger. Then this volunteer force is to dissolve into civilian life, and we are all to rest easy again until the next scare comes—when we shall again leave it to the most adventurous or the most conscientious among us to make up a hasty miscellaneousvolunteerforce to defend our homes and our liberty.
There is the usual supply of academic bills providing for commissions to investigate this or that aspect of defense. No doubt accurate information and therefore investigation on many points is necessary, but—the commission is too often a death chamber. By one bill a joint committee of the House and Senate is instructed as one of a series of academic charges to “investigate the advisability of universal service.” The problem has come upon the horizon, so to speak, and in a leisurely and philosophical way we get out our field glasses to observe it.
We have been doing too many sums in our defense propaganda. How many men in the army, how many millions ofdollars for the navy,—all of these important,—but when an adequate plan is worked out for trainingeveryman and woman, according to his or her capacity, the numbers will take care of themselves. Until we are all “volunteers” we can dispense with mathematics.
The defense legislation of the year is evidence of heartbreaking national failure. The collection of sectional, personal, sometimes obviously dishonest, and, at best, ill-considered bills, evidences a graver charge than the political “expediencies” to which we are well enough accustomed. They are a testimony to the faithlessness of legislators in the highest places of the land, a miserable failure in patriotism, and that they have gone on so many months unchallenged is another proof of the supine patience, flabbiness, and stupidity of the average American citizen.
What should we have done? We had ample warning when Congress adjourned in 1915 that we would face the issue of preparedness as a vital compelling matter in 1916. Instead of depending upon separate and often conflicting reports fromvarious departments and staff officers, the party in power should have had in hand in December—when Congress reassembled—the outline of a national policy, substantiated by certified facts, along which a series of bills could have been drafted to meet the needs at all points, and to avoid duplications at any point. Then the reserves of the majority party should have begun their own nation-wide campaign to carry their program. Failing this, the minority party in Congress had its opportunity. Such a plan would have rallied all the citizenship force for defense in support of its program and would have avoided the conflicts that now wage throughout the land. This program broadly conceived would have commanded the most comprehensive information in the country; not only from the Interstate Commerce Commission on transportation; from the Federal trade commission on industrial capacities and reserves; from the Public Health Service on port conditions; from the Federal reserve board on credit; from the Department of Labor on conserving men and stabilizing labor and Americanizingaliens, but it would have had the coöperation of such organizations as the American Federation of Labor and the United States Chamber of Commerce. The best thought of the country would have been crystallized, and instead of the prevailing chaos we would have a program free from partisan or sectional influences. Instead of haggling over the number of men, and where to get the money, and resurrecting letters from files to prove responsibility, we would be reapportioning our army posts on the basis of national defense, instead of on the basis of a civil war; we would be locating our munition plants in safe places; we would be building model ammunition plants, we would have an aviation corps and training schools worthy of the name—and Villa would not have raided Texas.
We are about where we started so far as actual accomplishment is concerned. I think but little of writing a statute and appropriating money until we see who is to spend the money and where. Nine tenths of the achievement for success lies in the organization and administration which follows the passing of laws. Weare in the Congressional eleventh hour still agitating for a council to gather the necessary information, and propose a plan, which the Cabinet officers should have had in hand and operation jointly months ago. The whole situation has become so muddled that there is no one non-partisan, scientific, accurate, efficient, dependable source to which one can go and obtain the information necessary to formulate a policy or outline a program, and we have not yet established our first line of defense in an unassailable position.
The mobilization of industry is as important as the mobilization of men. The enlisted men must be taken from offices and shops and we must still maintain our output in products, get it to the places it is needed, when it is needed, and in prime condition. Soldiers without supplies and arms are useless; as are civilians behind the line.
The business of industry is to meet the demands and opportunities of foreign markets and to supply the needs of America; to transport men and supplies upon short notice on a large scale.
The work of industrial preparedness isnot the primary task of government—it is the obligation of every plant in America, every leader at the head of it, every workman within it.
America has capital, resources, inventions, and leadership. It is short of average men to meet its industrial as well as citizenship needs. The country needs to keep every able-bodied man in America by making him an efficient, loyal citizen and by giving him, not a job, but a stake in the industry and a home stake in the country.
First of all in mobilizing industries we need an inventory so the government may know the location and capacity of its plants and who mans them; what the investment is and whether there are any international strings tied to the business and of what kind. It needs to know its present capacity, what it makes best, and how far its capacity can be increased, if need be. It needs to know how its products are transported and marketed; whether army supplies have ever been made and what agreements might be entered into. After twenty months of the war, the schedule for such an inventoryhas been formulated by a volunteer committee and paid for with private funds!
This is the Industrial Preparedness Committee of the Naval Consulting Board, of whichMr.Howard Coffin is chairman. It proposes first to take an inventory of the resources of 30,000 industries, each to be covered by an engineer. This in itself is a magnificent educational measure. It will make these engineers and industries think about a great many questions they have not faced before. This Committee has secured the coöperation of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the World, of whichMr.Herbert Houston is president. This insures the most widespread and accurate publicity of work and results, free from any political manipulation. It also insures a highly intelligent and forceful education of the public, free from self-interest or organization interest. The unfortunate thing is that this inventory comes too late for Congress to make any real use of the results unless it stays in session very late. It is also not yet clear just how these results will be related toother important fields or whether the Secretary of the Navy will bury them somewhere. The essential thing, however, is that we have a wholly satisfactory industrial preparedness program under way in the hands of men the country trusts for ability, integrity, efficiency, and knows to be without self-interest.
So far as I am aware we are not dealing with the conservation of resources in any such way, as this inventory applies only to manufacturing. I believe the different Federal departments have been called upon to make some such survey and report, but its results seem not to have found their way into action nor to have the coöperation of practical business men. Agricultural organization also we consider of little interest in defense, even though the land feeds the nation.
Undoubtedly a most important factor in our national defense is transportation. The President has recommended an inquiry into railroad rates and regulation, but the resolution introduced does not seem to go beyond the subject of rates. It does not seem to include a study of the railroad situation by a competent staffthat would be prepared to take over and operate the railroads for military purposes if the necessity arose; it does not imply that we might need a railway construction corps for use in a military zone, taking the places of the aliens now employed on this work. It does not indicate that there is need for our army officers and leading railway officers to get together in times of peace in order to prevent friction in time of war. It does not indicate that there is need of approved regulations which should be formulated now so they could be put into operation immediately should occasion arise. There is no indication that it might be well to provide a way by which operating men should become army officers in time of war and thus have the handling of supplies under an efficient military direction.
The country is fortunate in having a competent committee appointed by the American Railway Association,Mr.Fairfax Harrison, president of the Southern RailwayCo.,Mr.W. G. Besler, president CentralR. R.ofN. J., R. H. Aishton, vice president, Chicago & NorthwesternR. R., Chicago,Ill., and A. W. Thompson,general manager of the Baltimore & OhioR. R.
The work of this Committee has not yet been definitely related to the Federal departments which could make most use of its experience, knowledge, and ability. It is ready to devote itself to this question along such important lines as the following among many others:
First, a distinct understanding between the War Department and the railroads should be arrived at concerning the tariffs for military traffic, freight, passenger, and baggage, in order that there may be no confusion whatever on these points when the time comes to move large bodies.Second, the simplification of the settlement of railway accounts in consequence of such agreements.Third, complete and competent agreement in regard to the classification and traffic on impedimenta accompanying troops so as to deliver the burden of the paper work that ordinarily nowadays is essential to the shipment of such bodies and impedimenta.Fourth, the physical operations of the railroads in carrying supplies to mobilization points, concentration points, and embarkationpoints, must be coördinated and regulated. The necessity of having a uniform method and a complete understanding between the Department and the railroads is of course obvious.Fifth, a clear arrangement should be had with the proper officials of the railways in regard to provisions for spurs, switches, side tracks, and all facilities for handling troops and supplies on reaching mobilization points and concentration points and embarkation points or the base of operations.“There should be some means of bringing together railroad men, including the freight and passenger traffic departments, the construction and operating branches of the railroads, in close consultation with the officers of the army whose function it is to provide for the transportation of troops and supplies. There should be provision made for a reserve corps, not only of railroad men, but of all that class of civilians whose services could be used advantageously in the army in a directing capacity—railroad men of every description, whether belonging to the operating branch or the accounting branch, the passenger or freight department, or the construction branch. Automobile experts of every class would be in very great demand. We have a paperorganization which would exactly fit the accomplishments of men of that character. Men having exceptional knowledge of the handling and distribution of great quantities of supplies would be invaluable. Men recruited from all the industries of peace should form such a reserve corps as would be available for immediate service upon mobilization.”
First, a distinct understanding between the War Department and the railroads should be arrived at concerning the tariffs for military traffic, freight, passenger, and baggage, in order that there may be no confusion whatever on these points when the time comes to move large bodies.
Second, the simplification of the settlement of railway accounts in consequence of such agreements.
Third, complete and competent agreement in regard to the classification and traffic on impedimenta accompanying troops so as to deliver the burden of the paper work that ordinarily nowadays is essential to the shipment of such bodies and impedimenta.
Fourth, the physical operations of the railroads in carrying supplies to mobilization points, concentration points, and embarkationpoints, must be coördinated and regulated. The necessity of having a uniform method and a complete understanding between the Department and the railroads is of course obvious.
Fifth, a clear arrangement should be had with the proper officials of the railways in regard to provisions for spurs, switches, side tracks, and all facilities for handling troops and supplies on reaching mobilization points and concentration points and embarkation points or the base of operations.
“There should be some means of bringing together railroad men, including the freight and passenger traffic departments, the construction and operating branches of the railroads, in close consultation with the officers of the army whose function it is to provide for the transportation of troops and supplies. There should be provision made for a reserve corps, not only of railroad men, but of all that class of civilians whose services could be used advantageously in the army in a directing capacity—railroad men of every description, whether belonging to the operating branch or the accounting branch, the passenger or freight department, or the construction branch. Automobile experts of every class would be in very great demand. We have a paperorganization which would exactly fit the accomplishments of men of that character. Men having exceptional knowledge of the handling and distribution of great quantities of supplies would be invaluable. Men recruited from all the industries of peace should form such a reserve corps as would be available for immediate service upon mobilization.”
The weakest point in industrial preparedness is the question of labor supply. We deal with resources and transportation on the assumption that our supply of men is adequate and all sufficient in training and efficiency. This is by no means the case, and in order to cover this defect, the Immigration Committee of the United States Chamber of Commerce is making an inventory of the labor supply and its conservation. It began its work with a questionnaire upon the probable immigration after the war. With the coöperation of the railways it received 934 replies, representing about 20,000 rail and steamship agents, based upon their inquiries among some 2,000,000 foreign-born peoples in this country. The questions covered were the following:
A.Are those of foreign birth or parentage in this country saving money at the present time with a view to bringing their European relatives and friends to this country after the War?B.Does the personal correspondence which they are receiving from Europe indicate that there will be any considerable movement to this country after the War is over, and what, so far as you can get the information, do the estimates indicate as to the volume?C.Will such immigration as does come consist of people who have been working on farms, or of those from the factories?D.After the War is over, will there be any considerable emigration from this country to Europe of those going back to live permanently there?E.How great will be the movement of those going back to Europe temporarily after the War to look after their relatives, or through sentiment to view the destruction of their early homes,et cetera, and who will return to this country after a short visit?
A.Are those of foreign birth or parentage in this country saving money at the present time with a view to bringing their European relatives and friends to this country after the War?
B.Does the personal correspondence which they are receiving from Europe indicate that there will be any considerable movement to this country after the War is over, and what, so far as you can get the information, do the estimates indicate as to the volume?
C.Will such immigration as does come consist of people who have been working on farms, or of those from the factories?
D.After the War is over, will there be any considerable emigration from this country to Europe of those going back to live permanently there?
E.How great will be the movement of those going back to Europe temporarily after the War to look after their relatives, or through sentiment to view the destruction of their early homes,et cetera, and who will return to this country after a short visit?
The Committee is now following this with a schedule to industries covering the source of the labor supply, laborturn-over, methods of employment, promotions, transfers, and voluntary lay-offs, insurance, and other methods in use to conserve the labor of the country. It includes inquiries into the living conditions, as housing and sanitation, and into citizenship and knowledge of English.
From the data already at hand, it has begun holding a series of conferences with industrial leaders throughout the country, looking toward the conserving of men, keeping immigrants in America, and stabilizing the labor market. It is essential, however, that the fields of production, transportation, conservation of resources and of the labor supply be brought together and a national policy be worked out as the result of the combined effort. It is important that this whole field be related to universal service and military preparedness. Let us illustrate the nature of the interdependence.
In any system of universal service there needs to be some plan of industrial adjustment, as to time, payments, and releases from work, so that the burden will not fall too heavily upon special industries at critical times of output.The efficiency records of plants make the selection of good officers easier. There needs to be a careful handling of skilled labor in order that it may not be withdrawn too heavily at vital points. Even our voluntary civilian training camps are being filled with coöperation of industry, which is arranging vacations, paying wages during the training period, and urging its men, by competition and in other ways, to attend. No military system can operate successfully without understanding effort on the part of production and transportation men. The pursuit of Villa showed the absence of this, and to date it seems to be largely a moral victory.
When we have this information along many lines, industry is not mobilized. We have but secured the knowledge to begin the real task.
The mobilization of industry for America’s defense cannot stop with the plant. Is the employer’s responsibility ended with the eight-hour day and an increase in wages? The best-equipped plant in the world will not give us strong, able, efficient men unless they live decently,have the right kind of recreation, and get a home stake in the country to defend. There are minimum standards in the matters of numbers, separation of sexes, family privacy, sanitation, and cleanliness which no American workman can fall below and be a loyal citizen fit for defense. It is part of the mobilization of industry to see that conditions do not prevail which give American defense men unable or unwilling to defend it.
Industrial preparedness means a knowledge and system by which skilled workmen at strategic points in industry, supplies, and traffic shall not enlist, but will be released at the greatest point of efficiency. Telegraph companies for instance do not encourage their men to enlist, but are fitting them for signal men in time of need!
We have in all of our preparedness activity failed to grasp the point that there can be no industrial preparedness without the nationalization of business. An inventory of resources and the utilization of the full power of each plant is only possible when all men coöperate for a mutual end and not when they competefor contracts. The employer who cares nothing about the labor market so long as he has plenty of men does little to stabilize that market or regularize employment or distribute men advantageously, and yet in the final analysis defense comes back to efficient, loyal, individual men doing their full duty at some inconspicuous post all over the country.
The nationalization of business is not a matter of legislation, or of regulation, or of coercion. It is the duty and obligation of each responsible person in industry—all working together on a national coöperative basis instead of on a local, sectional, competitive basis. It means a new spirit abroad in business—patriotic Nationalism.
We have come to regard universal service, with a period of compulsory training in a military camp, as a measure of military defense only. We seem to think it means only learning how to shoot and acquiring a thirst for blood. I believe it has a great civic value hitherto disregarded. We have two things to acquire from the training camp: individual proficiencyand team work, and a national spirit and point of view.
The American factory and the American city have failed as a melting pot.—The dog tent may succeed. It may become the best school of practical civics there is—a place where all Americans can meet together for the common good of America.
It may restore the balance to our triumvirate of the Declaration of Independence—Liberty, opportunity, and obligation. We have demanded and used the first two—we have neglected the third.
The civilian training-camp movement, which started at Plattsburg and is now continued at Fort Oglethorpe, is the biggest civic movement in America, and when crystallized along the lines of the Swiss system, will become the dynamo for national progress in America. There can be no question but that America is desperately in need of some national civic movement which is in its interest alone and which represents nothing but itself.
America is full of undisciplined, native-bornyoung men and has besides a large transfusion of still raw foreigners. It could not bestow any greater favor upon its young men than to give all of them the benefits of military methods of drilling and education. It would “set them up” physically; they would acquire a knowledge of hygiene, sanitation, prevention of disease, etc., and they would also learn, to their great advantage, obedience, promptness, precision, regularity of habits, abstinence, economy, avoidance of waste, and respect for authority, all of which would make them more competent for their daily tasks—whatever they may be. Germany perhaps furnishes the best example of a well-governed people, but what the world needs is to govern itself, just as the best men are the men who exercise self-control.
Many of our young men, in their desire to remain “independent,” are inefficient, unreliable, and irresponsible; they are disobedient, headstrong, or rebellious under authority; they are discourteous, careless of obligations, and indifferent to broken promises. The average boy is prompt with excuses and self-justification underdiscipline—and this has been seen most conspicuously in our nation’s attitude in the present war.
Inevitably all of this leads to slovenly work; to indifferent citizenship; to play in which entertainment, not participation, is the rule; and to a shifting of responsibility in all walks of life. In the supplementing of individual by social ideals; in the transition from individual to social conscience; in the great change from personal to social control of many individual affairs, we have somehow lost the finer traits of character and those ancient Christian virtues which make for strong nations as well as for strong men.
I believe the training camp is unparalleled in its power to develop social consciousness and social control, and to show men the means by which they can work together for a common end. America needs sportsmanship in the best sense of the word, and the training camp can give it. America needs the abolition of its foolish class lines, now drawn in industry and in society; emphasized among races and by creeds, and nowhere worse than in the army itself. There is no place forit in the training camp. American industry has failed to Americanize the foreign-born citizens through its pay envelope; the training camp may succeed through the dog tent.
In our idea of universal service we should not stop with the training camp. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women, with a desire to serve, that cannot go to the training camp. We have throughout the country to-day a splendid expression of the desire to serve.
I believe that every citizen of this republic, male or female, and of any age after childhood, should have a regular scheme of duties, a regular enlistment for service of a definite nature suited to his or her status of capacity, which he must be prepared to render upon demand,and which he or she must keep in training to deliver. To work out the plans for such service for men and women alike, whether in motor corps, red cross camps, health service, or in many other ways, may well be the charge of citizens’ defense organizations, but they should be related to the civilian training camp to maintain standards and methods and unity.
The defense organizations, some fifty of national name and scope, are missing their great opportunity. They are getting people to sign pledge cards focusing attention, as it should be focused, on legislation and party programs. But they are not lining up the citizenship of the country in definite citizenship service. And by their lack of coöperation and lack of actual information about one another’s activities, they are further splitting up and sectionalizing sentiment where the real necessity is to collect and focus it. All over the country, in this place or that, groups of citizens are trying in a promising way to form definite, practical, little associations for training and defense. Aside from the training-camp movement now so hopefully developed, business men are joining together to try to settle upon uniform ways of coöperating with training camps and the national guard by making it possible for their employees to profit by these and to render national service in this way. People that own motors or own or control motor trucks are getting together to see how they could work out the transportationservice which experts agree would be an absolute necessity in case of war in this country. Rifle clubs are being formed, business men are training one night a week in armories, women are forming red cross branches with definite courses of instruction in many cities, schoolboys are being sent to camps, suburbanites are organizing to breed police and army dogs, city tradesmen are organizing parades.
But as a whole the civilian defense movement is confused and incoherent, not nationally coördinated, having no national guidance or even suggestion. If the various defense organizations were to get together in a spirit of coöperation, they could gather up and unite these sporadic citizens’ movements all over the country, give them standards of organization and accomplishment, start movements in different states which are as yet practically untouched by defense sentiment. Just as the Industrial Preparedness Committee of the Naval Consulting Board is working out the mobilization of industry throughout the country down to the last practical detail, so the preparednessorganizations in combination could work out the mobilization of civilian resources and activities throughout the country. In some way all of these efforts should be brought into relation with each other under control and direction and discipline. They should be associated with the training camps and recognized as volunteer corps and be given the standing necessary to perfect their organization and administer their control. We have passed the stage of propaganda; we now need organization and administration of volunteer efforts if we are not to waste the precious patriotism and enthusiasm for Americanism throughout the country.
Americanization is basic preparedness. It is fundamental and enduring. The first question is how to nationalize our native-born American into doing his duty in the military training camp, in his industry, in his town, at the polls, with the welfare of the nation in his mind, and national service as his purpose. No system of laws, no plan of administration will do this—it is a problem for leaders, for education, for the spirit of the youthof America to grapple with. The reason so many public monuments, promisingly begun in America, fall through or dwindle, is because it is so difficult, so well-nigh impossible without constantly renewed stimulants, to keep individuals firm and enthusiastic in a social and national point of view. The defense movement has illustrated on a broader scale the same thing that has been illustrated in this country many times before—the American religion of individualism in arrogant array against a critical national need. Only two things—a rediscovery of a stern sense of duty among American youth; and a recovery of that stern idealism that persistently exacts of men a social responsibility, a consideration of afirstclaim beyond the claim of family, personal success, career—can establish American citizenship on a sound basis. With the native American these things are, as I have said, arediscovery. The tradition exists and was incorporated in the very principles of our foundation.
With the immigrants, it is different. They come to us, mostly adults, with certain specific needs and tendencies, andhere we need to assume a constructive and painstaking task—that of interpreting the principles of Americanism and the obligations as well as the privileges of American citizenship to the men we invite to come here to do American work, and permit to be a large percentage of the population of many American industrial towns.
Immigration is a great force in American life. It is not, as has often hitherto been regarded, a labor subject or a health subject. It is primarily a citizenship subject, to be administered along the broad lines of nationalism and the future best interests of all America. It is properly an interior subject, and all of our dealings with it should proceed from a consideration of conditions in America. We admit or reject people because of the effect on America; we distribute them to avoid congestion, misery, and bad conditions in cities and to develop America; we educate them for citizenship in America; we protect them, looking again toward a better citizenship. We can never have a real policy of dealing with our immigrant people, from the time theyarrive until they become citizens, so long as officials remain as they are, unless the administration of existing laws, the drafting of new laws, gathering of necessary information, and formulation of broad policies, rest with some one department. Somehow we must treat this matter as a citizenship and not as a labor matter. It is useless to preach to the employer that he cease to regard the immigrant as a cog in his machinery when the government puts this stamp upon him when it admits him. We now have a probationary period of five years for citizenship. We can well use that as the period for applying our immigration policy which shall begin with his admission, exclusion, and deportation within that period—the deportation clause being extended to conform to the citizenship standard.
What does Americanization mean in national defense?
It means putting the American flagabove all others, abolishing dual citizenship, and pledgingopenallegiance to America.
It means American citizenship for every alien within our borders, or deportationand closing our doors to political scouts and birds of passage. We can no longer endure as a “polyglot boarding house.” Citizenship will give us an intelligent body of voters, for it will mark the end of the “voting the hunkies” by ward bosses. This desecration of American citizenship cannot exist side by side with an aggressive effort on the part of the public schools of the country to instruct the foreign born, adults as well as children, in the real meaning of citizenship. It means, finally, economic stability. The thousands of immigrants that become “birds of passage” and return to their own country because they have never been able to make any American contact except through their pay envelope will be enabled really to settle their homes, their affections, and their earnings in America, increasing the prosperity of the immigrant family here, cementing its bonds with this country, and also contributing to the prestige and prosperity of the American nation.
It means one language for all America and the elimination of illiteracy.Confusion of tongues and ignorance of Americaninstitutions and opportunities are foes of efficient preparedness. This means the end of “Little Italys,” “Little Hungaries,” and the end of filthy, remote foreign villages on the outskirts of our towns and cities, inhabited by foreign-speaking men and women with no way of learning American standards of living and American customs, and with no way to protest against standards of living which in many cases they do not “lower” at all, but which they accept only because they are too ignorant to protest when the conditions are forced upon them. There are to-day thousands of communities where decent living conditions do not and cannot prevail. Our war contracts are starting boom towns that are a menace to our very civilization and a source of danger in time of war. It means a higher level of intelligence, the wiping out of illiteracy, and the establishment of the rule of the English language and of a common citizenship.
It means the abolition of class prejudices and of racial hatreds and of theintolerance of the old stock for new stock, which stand in the way of United America.
It means one American standardof living. As we cannot have a double standard of morality, we cannot have a double standard of living. We can no longer sacrifice the preservation of this country to industrial necessities. So long as our industrial communities are made up of large groups of un-Americanized immigrants, without the English language, without an understanding of American conditions, too helpless to bring their grievances to the attention of their employers, too ignorant to understand or trust compromises, if compromises are offered, too ignorant to force them in legitimate ways if they are not offered, able to understand only the radical agitators addressing them in their own language—just so long will the industrial history of America be blotted by Ludlows, Lawrences, and Wheatlands. The road to American citizenship, to the English language, and an understanding of American social and political ideals is the road to industrial peace.
It means the Americanization of women.Now women automatically become citizens with their fathers and husbands, althoughin some states they vote. The best Americanization agency is the home. We can only reach foreign-born women in their homes, and we must go to them. They are now isolated, forgotten, ignored, and constitute the greatest single backward factor in the progress of citizenship among women.
It means, lastly, not America first and safety first, which are sectional and selfish banners under which no man can fight his best, but liberty, justice, honor, and right first.
This is no small task. The figures for 1910 tell us that America has about thirty-three million foreign-born people and persons of foreign-born parentage. One third have, therefore, in our immediate environment foreign traditions and standards. The problem is to keep the best of these and make them serve America. No nation in the civilized world would think itself “prepared” with such an internal situation, and yet we officially ignore it.
These intricate, delicate, interlocking questions, mostly unsolved in any national way, are found in education, savings andinvestments, standards of living, and in all of the other fields before us. They are as important and as difficult as those we are solving in military defenses and industrial mobilization. They are the problems of nationalism—the things that make the immigrant man a good citizen, workman, or soldier. They must be considered in any movement for a unified America. They have always been approached by our government from some sectional, local, or isolated point of view. They have never been approached from the national point of view. The 42 volumes of the Federal Immigration Commission are silent on a national policy other than the negative one of exclusion. They deal exhaustively with conditions in industry, in philanthropy, but nowhere do they lead us to a policy of a program for America that meets its present requirements.
We shall never attain this united America back of our firing line, in our shops, in our cities, in our schools, on our great arteries of communications and supply, by the most intelligent policy, by the wisest of laws, by the fairest enforcementof law, unless each and every American resident does his share—and realizes that a prepared America at every point comes back to him and to him alone.
We shall not accomplish preparedness through Americanization without organization. We have the beginnings of many excellent movements of Americanization, in much the same state as our army and navy. Each bureau interested in some phase of the subjects carries on its work, drafts bills, and enforces laws. We are as wholly lacking in policy, program, and leadership as in any other phase of preparedness. We do not yet recognize as a nation thatAmericanizationis fundamentalpreparednessand should be vitally related to military and industrial preparedness and to universal service.
No policy of preparedness can be complete without a strong sense of international duty and a willingness to defend it as loyally as American institutions. We are emerging from the haze of what we should have done to preserve international law. We have before us somepertinent problems which will test this new-found honor.
We owe it to ourselves, in our new treaties and new relations arising after the war, to have a thorough understanding in regard to citizenship so the protection of the American flag will follow every citizen, native and foreign born, to every country in the world under whatever conditions.
We owe it to the people who come to our shores asking admissionthat all of the regulations of aliens should be in our national admission law and not hidden in state and local laws preventing their earning a living and becoming good citizens. This whole law should be based upon America’s welfare and capacity for making these men and women good citizens. We do not want them unless they are willing to join with us for defense of American liberty.
When we have a common policy which all America understands and believes; a program to which every American can give efficient and loyal service; and leaders that Americans can and will follow, then we shall be a prepared nation,—standingagain as we stood one hundred and forty years ago: for justice and right and liberty.
“And in support of these truthswe mutually pledge to each otherour lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Printed in the United States of America.