Page Twenty
JANUARY, 1925
Cather’s views, but enough has been cited to prove
the case against her and her friendly interpreters.
THE UNITED AMERICAN
actively engaged everywhere in bringing America
intelligently into the hearts and homes of the foreign-
bom. As The United American is an exponent of in
telligent and constructive Americanization, it feels
duty bound to recognize the interpreters’ challenge
and copy their views for the benefit of all “over-
zealous advocates of STEREOTYPED citizenship.”
Now let us have a look at Willa’s learned and
highly commended views given in answer to a question
if she did not think that the immigrant population
was making valuable contributions here:
Contribute? What shall they contribute? They are not
peddlers with something to sell; they are not gypsies. They
have come here to live in the sense that they lived in the old
world, and if they were let alone their lives might turn into
the beautiful ways of their homeland. But they are not let
alone. Social workers, missionaries —call them what you
will — go after them, hound them, pursue them and devote
their days and nights toward the great task of turning there
into stupid replicas of smug American types. This passion
for Americanizing everything and everybody is a deadly
disease with us. We do it the way we build houses. Speed
uniformity, dispatch, nothing else matters.
It wasn’t so many years ago. When I was a child, all
our neighbors were foreigners. Nobody paid any attention
to them outside of the attention they wanted. We let them
alone. Work was assigned them and they made good house
workers and splendid craftsmen. They furnished their houses
as they had in the countries from which they came. Beauty
was there and charm. Nobody investigated them and nobody
regarded them as laboratory specimens. Everybody had a
sort of protective air toward them, nobody interfered with them.
A ‘foreigner’ was a person foreign to our manners and custom
of living, not possible prey for reform. Nobody cheated the
foreigner, and a man lost everything in the esteem of the
community when he was discovered in a crime of false barter.
It was very much better that way. I hate this poking into
personal affairs by social workers and I know the people hate
it, too. ... I know there is much to be said for it, but never
theless I hate it.
Miss Cather’s opinion is too antediluvian to add
to beyond what her friends of the Interpreter have
said. Everybody on “this side” of the fence under
stand her ideas perfectly. Her cast-and-class ideas
could not permit her to speak otherwise. These
picturesque foreigners in their national costumes,
splendid servants and craftsmen, why should they
be urged to qualify as Americans and look for that
greater compensation of life and living that comes
through learning and progress?
Sure, it would lend color to the omniumgatherum
of peoples whom we have let into America if we
painted their colony-fences in their national colors,
encouraged the use of their respective national cos
tumes, customs and speech, we might even charge
tourists an admission price to enter each colony en
closure and earn enough money to run our govern
ment, aside from the continuous joy we would ex
perience in constantly listening to this edifying poly
glot. We could mention any number of benefits which,
if summed up, would represent the satisfying outlook
of an (in) glorious national (in)security. We have
worried along so nicely in the past, thinking the in
scription on our big American dollar “In God We
Trust” was enough for us, trusting to luck and hoping
that the “other fellows” were thinking the same, that
there ought not to be any need now for changing
mental or physical scenery.
We might go on ad infinitum enlarging upon Miss
A LITTLE OLD LAND
Anon.
A little old land with a funny old way
Of shining tomorrow and raining today;
A little old land with a little green heart
And a bloom for the hills and a beam for the mart;
But over its meadows and down in the sea
This little old land seems a good land to me!
A little old land with a song for the morning,
And lots of good green for the fair fields adorning;
A peak and a valley, a glen and a stream,
And little to lean o’er our lips while we dream;
Sombre and cloudy when that seems the best,
But a good land for toil and a good land for rest!
A little old land, with a bright sky one minute,
And then the soft rain with a sweet balsam in it;
A little old land with the rill and the river
And love with the roses to fill up its quiver;
Bird-song and rose-bloom, and all the way over
The blue skies of love and the white lanes o’ clover.
No man can remain in complete control of a situation if he,
as a presiding officer, attempts to ridicule his audience or any
member of his audience. This is an axiomatic rule which many
men have disregarded to their cost. Never be sarcastic in
dealing with an audience while you are presiding. There
is only one of you; your audience is many, and you are certain
to get the worst of the controversy if you lose the good will
of your audience. — Justice Taft.
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