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 theAtlantic 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.
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 theAtlantic 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.
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 iswasted 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 neverarose, 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 withthe 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 willlove 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.