The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., July 01, 1923, Page 9, Image 9

JULY, 1923
THE WESTERN AMERICAN
social, educational and economic well-being of these
people after they have found their way into our
country.
Regardless of the suffering abroad in the world our
first duty is to our own country and to our own people
by birth and adoption. Wholesale adoption is unde­
sirable and dangerous, a menace to America’s na­
tional life.
So long as we place American homeless and im­
properly cared for boys and girls in a reformatory,
who should be in a pure homelike state institution
free from.contact with the contaminated and way­
ward dreg of society, so long will our generosity in
the world at large be a hollow mockery pf our boasted
institutions and our self sacrifice in the service of
humanity and the downtrodden of the earth.
Private institutions may cope with the situation in
a way, reaching the extreme cases. We may appro­
priate public funds for these institutions in propor­
tion to the number they shelter, but we have never­
theless failed to do our whole duty by these future
citizens in the way of furnishing them an unadulter­
ated environment from which all foreign influences
have been carefully removed.
The Americanizing influence should be extended
through public support to every alien home in Amer­
ica. Reasonable compensation for toil in American
industries is not sufficient to promote loyalty and love
of America among our alien neighbors and not enough
to insure good citizenship.
A greater concern in the health, happiness and in­
tellectual growth and development of every individual
in America will not interfere much with our relief
and educational work in foreign countries but it will
reveal a greater and more acceptable American.
FORCES OPPOSED TO A RESTRICTED IMMIGRA­
TION POLICY
LEW OF THE American daily papers are equipped
1 to penetrate the language veil of the foreign lan­
guage press in America for that reason this source
of opinion is quite secure behind its language wall and
feels free to express in a foreign tongue that which
its editors would be loathe to express in the American
tongue or to have translated into the all American
language.
It is not the foreign language press as such that is
objectionable to our national unity course, but it is
that which they contain in news and editorials that
smacks of severe and irritating abuse of things that
are distinctly American and the derisive way in which
they deal with things in general in America by which
they, through this method of writing, manage to keep
themselves and their groups of readers aloof from
the all American activities and current thought.
The following editorial which appeared recently in
The Portland Telegram, touches upon the subject in
a way that shows that this particular daily paper is
jnot afraid to tell the truth though by doing so it may
lose its prestige with the foreign language papers of
this community:
Foreign Press on Immigration
In the United States there are approximately 14,000,000
people of foreign birth, approximately one-half of whom are
9
not able to spea'k, read or write the language of America in
any helpful degree. This is a population equal in number to
that of all the Scandinavian countries of Europe—Norway,
Denmark, Sweden and the Scandinavian people of Finland. ' It
is more than the combined populations of Ireland, Scotland and
Wales. It is more than the combined population of Canada and
Australia; more than that of Egypt, and nearly twice that of
Belgium.
Among these people has grown up a foreign language press,
that while serving some good purpose temporarily, has had,
though in many cases unintentionality, the effect to block the
progress these people might have made in fitting themselves to
their new environment. In the World War we felt keenly the
hindering power of many of these foreign tongue publications,
holding back America from aid to the Allies.
These publications are now found very largely on the side of
freer immigration. They are uniting with the large manufac­
turers in calling for a more liberal policy toward the importa­
tion of cheap' labor. We find the Jewish, Italian and Balkan
language press the chief advocates of the admission of more
unskilled people. They denounce the shutting out of immi­
grants as “the fanatical acts of bigoted nativists,” and class
the law as oppressive and as unreasonable as the prohibition
amendment. The greater part of this propaganda comes from
publications in New York city, a city that is only American-
managed, and largely filled with unassimilated foreigners.
When the assault shall be made on our present immigration
law we must reckon with this foreign language press as being
almost solidly in the assaulting party.
Every time we think of Congress or of the legislature, we
feel for our money.
If, as they claim, jazz is in its infancy, the good old fashioned
across the knee ought to do a world of good.
Why is it that there is such a tendency to go to sleep in
political berths?
Money seems to go further when you are after it.
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