The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., August 01, 1923, Image 5

THE
UNITED
m e r ican
A MAGAZINE OF GOOD CITIZENSHIP
Devoted to the Cause of
Americanization, Assimilation and Group Elimination; Pointing the way to a Constitutional
Americanism, to Equality in Citizenship, and a better understanding
between Native born and Foreign bom.
L 1
vctaë011' 19
Number U
August, 1923
ILLS, TREATMENT AND CURE
CAUSES AND EFFECTS OF REMEDIAL LEGISLATION
"'HE European immigrant of a decade or two ago
did not linger long in the American city. He
sually sought the open country, first finding employ-
lent on the farm, then taking up either a homestead,
renting or buying, on time, a piece of land where he
st to work to carve out his economic independence,
e toiled early and late. The thriving livestock herd,
le large fields, the neat little farmhome and the fine
oking barn—it all testified to the value of the new
cquisition in our citizenry. The wilderness gave
ay as these intrepid immigrants went at their task,
ransforming the central western continent into a
1st agricultural expanse.
As they prospered the speculators of the cities
ade them their prey, paying them far less for their
roducts than was justly due. Though they were not
earned in letters they were thoroughly grounded in
le practical principles that are embraced in honesty,
ntegrity and the square deal, and in spite of every
andicap in their fight to conquer the forest, the
■airie and the elements on one side and the city
larks on the other side, they prospered beyond their
ondest dreams. And they built America for their
hildren. Happy and content they laid their imple-
ents of toil aside to leave it all behind—to their
red ones, when the Voter’s messenger came to
em with his final sumifcuns. Theirs was a work of
re, sacrifice and prayer, and America is richer today
cause they came here, because they have lived here,
ley asked little for themselves, only a fair chance
work. They gave in a greater measure than they
ceived. They did not bring along any parasites
im the slums of the European cities. They were
san limbed and honest-minded people largely from
the rural sections of the old world countries. Thank
God they at that time in America were not measuring
the incoming immigrants by any literacy test, or
America would have been minus the strongest, purest
and best blood and the noblest virtues in the Ameri­
can fiber today which have come to us through these
earlier immigrants.
*
*
♦ ■
When the European city dwellers began emigrat­
ing to America they brought with them the undesir­
ables. These undesirables did not come to seek work
and a chance out in the open American country. They
sought the American city, where they began to pol­
lute the purer strain and lower the American standard
of moral and living conditions. In our later efforts
to restrict admissibility of undesirables we set up a
“Literacy test law” and made educational, rather than
physical and moral qualifications the basis for immi­
grant admissibility.
The chief motive back of the literacy test law was
naturally a desire to cut down the illiteracy in
America which, according to the census statistics,
was constantly increasing, instead of being dimin­
ished, on account of the immigration into America
of peasant people from Europe who had received no
schooling in their native country. This was very
natural and in the absence of a system of adult im­
migrant education—the practical solution of the
problem—which could have been expediently and at
a proportionately low cost handled through the pub­
lic schools throughout our country and made possible
through government and state aid, congress instead
adopted the policy of preventing the immigration of
Europe’s uneducated people by setting up the literacy