April 29, 1920
THE NORTHMAN
10
Published every Thursday by
The Northman Publishing Co.
Offices and Publishing House
Labbe Building
Phone, Main 796
227% Washington Street, Portland Oregon
Subscription Rates:
In the United States.................... per year $3.00
To Foreign Countries.................... per year $4.00
Single Copies 10 Cents
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Remittances may be made by U. S. Postal Money
order or Bank drafts.
H. J. LANGOE, Managing Editor
H. S. SWENSON, Editor
Portland, Oregon, Thursday, April 29, 1920
TO READERS AND PATRONS.
The publishers of The Northman are
pleased to announce that Mr. H. S.
Swenson, whose ability is well known to
many, if not all, of our readers, will be
associated with the publication in the
capacity of editor, with Mr. H. J. Langoe
as managing editor.
Mr. Swenson comes to The Northman
with years of experience and practical
knowledge in American newspaper and
magazine work, and in the particular field
which this publication enters, he is
unhesitatingly pronounced, by those who
know him and his work best, to be without
question the most able and best equipped
man in the country.
The managing editor of The Northman,
during the years he has been editor of the
Pacific Skandinaven, has been deeply
interested in the idealism and strong
American quality of Mr. Swenson’s work,
and on determining to adopt the American
language immediately moved to enlist his
co-operation. In this he has been success
ful, supplying an important link in the
organization of the enterprise. With him
comes also the strength of the constit
uency of the American Scandinavian,
formerly published by him.
Thus equipped the work is taken up
in perfect confidence that merited suc
cess is assured.
The Northman Publishing Co.
LANGUAGE
I ANGUAGE is properly the servant of
thought and the vehicle of expression,
though it is sometimes made the master
and the driving force. It is in a perpetual
flux and accumulation so that there is a
slight but constant change.
The Pilgrim Fathers brought the Eng
lish language to America but the lingual
progress of three hundred years ought to
be considered a sufficient course of natu
ralization to entitle it to be called
AMERICAN.
As a matter of fact the language of
America is no longer English- This dis
covery was made by the boys of the
A. E. F .when they encountered placards
in the business houses, hotels and restaur
ants of France setting forth:
ENGLISH SPOKEN
AMERICAN UNDERSTOOD
America’s language is her own as well
as her government. Why not call it
AMERICAN instead of English.
While the American language has
grown to be our own, and we are proud of
it, it has developed much the way of ex
pression in its untrammeled growth that
bears a resemblance to long, uncombed
hair and bushy beard—picturesque per
haps, but decidedly suggestive of neglect
and slovenliness. Boston, perhaps, should
not be included in this statement.
It is true, also, that our language has
run so strongly to slang and fanciful and
capricious expressions that it is quite
possible for the accomplished in this re
spect to carry on conversation without
the use of any of the upwards of three
hundred thousand words appearing in
Mr. Webster’s handbook, beyond now and
then an article or conjunction. Orna
mented with expletives after the style of
some states, not excluding Oregon, it has
the jibberish of an ourang outang “skin
ned to the finest frazzle on the fag-end of
fareyouwell,” which is going some, as
they say.
However, with the feeling that Amer
ica’s language is her own and should be
kept reasonably well groomed even in its
every day labors, a current of public
opinion against slovenly language ought
to make itself felt. The boisterous Billy
Sunday in “giving the devil a run for his
money” probably has done more for the
cause of dignified language than any other
man in America.
By urging that care be exercised in
language it is not meant that , we should
employ the lilly and heliotrope expres
sions, but plain, pleasant, distinct and
straightforward American. We are, in
fact, building a language as well as a com
munity, a state and a nation, and it should
be given that care and attention necessary
to make it a language beautiful that it
may fittingly serve as an embellishment
of the better citizenship of the future.
OBJECT TO REGULATION.
T?ROM ALL SIDES come the wails of
1 the foreign language press protesting
against regulation in any degree and
frantically contending that it should be
left sweetly and completely alone to work
in the ambush of its position as it
inclines.
The Scandinavian section of the foreign
language press served a good purpose
when the tide of immigration was at the
flood and for a full generation later, but
the field has been steadily narrowing for
twenty years past and once prosperous
and influential publications have shrunk
into pale, attenuated ghosts of their
former selves. The pioneer newspapers
were sound to the core. Their editors
were men of virile thought and action—
Americans from the time they set foot on
American soil. In the trying days of the
civil strife of the sixties they rendered
this country great service through their
appeals to people in the old home lands-—
appeals which were round-robined, going
from hand to hand and home to home and
which brought thousands of young men to
America who immediately enlisted in the
Union army. There was no discount on
the Americanism of these newspaper
pioneers.
While the charge of disloyalty may not
be rightfully brought against the greater
part of the foreign language press aside
from the German, a decided change has
crept into the spirit of many Scandinavian
as well as other publications. They are
full of notes which do not ring true—■
nothing glaring which the law might make
ground for action, but things insidious,
crafty, shifty and viperish, freely lending
itself to syndicated unAmerican propa
ganda as editorial matter.
This condition is not a natural develop
ment. The succeeding generation took to
the language of the country and to its
newspapers as well as other literature.
Few aspired to literary careers in the
language of their fathers and the result
was that journalistic positions came to be
filled by men with the cult of the old
country upper crust—political and aca
demic longhorns, who were unable to get
along at home and yet whose material cir
cumstances made it necessary for them to
become industrious—came to this country
and found that about the only thing their
ideas of genteel occupation would permit
them to do was perpetrating something in
the literary field and they attached them
selves to the press. They never have been
Americans and never will be. They are
dangerous because they contribute their
bit to a decidedly dangerous whole-
No man of liberal thought will contend
that the foreign language press should
be eradicated, but it should be placed in
the arc of the searchlight and rendered
harmless. These disciples of a cult of
iconoclastic criticism have exposed the yel
low streak and cloven hoof of something
that is not an attribute of constructive
citizenship and roused suspicion against
them. Regulatory measures will undoubt
edly be passed by all the states where it
is in the smallest degree a factor.
ATTITUDE OF THE AMERICAN PRESS
F the daily press of Portland is indica
tive of the sentiment of the country on
the subject of Americanization in its rela
tion to the foreign language press, The
Northman will be received with high
favor from ocean to ocean as a force for
progressive action. Under the caption,
“United By One Language” the Morning
Oregonian says:
I
If all editors of'foreign language newspapers
took the same stand as H. J. Langoe, hyphenism
would not" long survive in the United States and
no long time would elapse before the foreign-
born population would become thoroughly unified
with the native-born. A single language, spoken
and written by all the people, no matter what
oher languages some-of them may at times use,
is essential to national unity. That is the moral
of he legend of Babel, in which the deity is said
to have caused confusion of tongues in order to
divide the people.
The purpose of the Oregon law requiring publi
cation in parallel columns of an English transla
tion of all matter which appears in a foreign
language newspaper is clear and unassailable. It
is to promote knowledge among the foreign-born
of the language of the country to impress on
them that they are expected to become in the full
sense members of the nation, not strangers among
the people; and in these days of alien revolution
ary agitation as a precaution against spread of
seditious matter under cover of a foreign lan
guage. Though the first purpose may somewhat
increase the cost of publishing newspapers in
foreign tongues, it will be approved by all immi
grants who have in good faith taken the oath of
citizenship, resolved to observe it in spirit as well
as letter. Having become loyal Americans, they
will readily support a law which has the effect of
stamping out-one form of alien revolutionary
propaganda.
This is not to say that on coming to America
immigrants should be cut off from all the memo
ries of childhood and all the treasures of litera
ture which are associated with their native
tongue. These may be preserved, and the lan
guage may be spoken in the family and among
friends of the same race, and children may be
instructed in it at home, provided always that the
language of the American people is that of the
school and of daily intercourse with citizens in
general. It should have first place,- while the
mother tongue should be chiefly for the home
circle and should pass out with the next genera
tion except as a matter of culture.