Page Eight
THE UNITED AMERICAN
APRIL 1925
Becoming an American
By A. C. STRANGE, Superintendent, City Schools of Astoria
A FEW DAYS ago I sat in my office and listened
to a United States government examiner ques
tioning applicants for citizenship, with the aim of
finding out how well prepared they were for that
which they were seeking. I have been led to believe
by this experience that I should go back again to our
great Declaration of Independence for a little further
study. With that thought in mind I wish to call your
attention to the following six grievances which the
colonists held and about which they complained in the
Declaration.
(1) Taxation without representation.
People have always complained about their taxes.
They complain today that they are too high or that
they are unequally levied. Such charges have always
been made and probably always will be. The same
people who spend money freely for all kinds of luxuries
complain bitterly about the money they spend for the
support of their government. And so one of the chief
grievances of the colonists had to do with their taxes.
Their complaint, however, was not so much that the
taxes were too heavy; they showed no unwillingness
to contribute to the support of their governments. On
the contrary, what they complained about was the
levying of taxes by a legislative body, the English
Parliament, in which they hadi no representation. Eng
lishmen- had for several centuries claimed the right to
vote their own taxes as one of their most sacred rights,
and the men of America, despite their removal to the
colonies, held that they v/ere still English citizens with
all the rights and privileges of Englishmen. So you
see the whole struggle was not over taxes, which, as
a matter of fact, were low, but over a principle of
government and, like other fundamental ideas of
government, we find it taking a bloody war to settle
the dispute. When the colonists had won the right to
settle this matter in their own way and were building
for themselves a Constitution, to secure this principle
to their country for all time, they placed the tax levy
ing power in tho^e legislative bodies which are nearest
the people, that is in the houses of representatives, the
county courts, the city councils, etc. In this manner,
they planned to retain most nearly in their own hands
the right to vote taxes.
(2) A second complaint was about the making
or vetoing of laws.
Many laws were being made for the English citi
zens of America by a legislative body, the English
Parliament, in which they were not represented. Had
they been given the membership in that body which
they so much wished, this grievance would have
been removed! and it is wholly probable that there
never would have been a Declaration of Independence.
This representation, however, the English government
had, up until the year 1776, been unwilling to grant.
Hence the colonists felt that they were unjustly
treated. Furthermore, the King of England, George
III, the first of the German kings to take any particu
lar interest in England, had made up his mind to be
come a real ruler of English dominions. Hence he
claimed a right which had seldom been used in the
past, the right to veto all laws passed for the govern
ment of the colonists, even those enacted by their own
law-making bodies. Had he used this power seldom and
(discreetly, it is probably that no trouble would have
arisen, but he vetoed many measures the colonists
held to be of vital importance to them. Thus the
grievance was constantly being strengthened and the
colonists made it one of their chief complaints against
the English government in the Declaration. So this,
too, became a principle of government and when the
Constitution was written the makers provided that
there should be one house, the house of representatives,
in which all voters should have direct representation,
and furthermore that a veto by any executive could
be over-ruled by a two-thirds vote of both branches
of the legislature.
(3) A third grievance was the quartering of
soldiers in the homes of the colonists.
England had no permanent barracks in America at
the time. Because of trouble with the Indians in the
Ohio Valley, she had found it necessary to station here
large numbers of soldiers. The English government
required that the people of the colonies should pay the
expenses of supporting this standing army and that
the people of communities where the soldiers were
stationed should, if called on, provide them with sleep
ing quarters. Altho these things were strongly objected
to, their greatest complaint grew out of the fact that
many of these soldiers were mercenaries ; that is, men
from other countries hired as soldiers. The stationing
of these hired soldiers, all speaking a foreign tongue,
in private homes caused a great deal of dissatisfaction
and became one of the greatest grievances against the
English government. This, too, became a fundamental
principle in the new government. So when they wrote
the Constitution it was expressly forbidden that troops
should ever be quartered in any private home.
(4) Another grievance grew out of the Naviga
tion Laws restricting trade.
¡These laws had been enacted long before the reign
of George III. However, they were never enforced and
the colonists built up a very large trade with certain
European countries and the West Indies. When George
III, became king, in his desire to be a real ruler, he de
manded the enforcement of these laws. Hence, England
levied heavy duties and required that certain products
should be shipped to England even if they were sold in
some other colony or some other country. From Eng
land they were re-shipped to their destination, thus
causing a heavy burden of freight expense on the
traders of the colonies, making it difficult for them to
compete with the English traders. Such burdensome re
strictions seriously handicapped the colonists in their
competition for the business of the world. They natur
ally felt that the mother country should help them
rather than hinder them, and there grew up a strong
resentment. Probably nothing the English Parliament
did contributed more to produce the resentment neces-
( Continued on Page Thirteen)