JUNE 1925
THE UNITED AMERICAN
into the foreign sections as residents, to live as neigh
bors of the best kind with those who appreciate and
will respond to the advances made or opportunities
offered. In many cities, this has long been done by
social workers in settlement houses, doing incidentally
and continuously, often, more real Americanization
work than the teachers professionally engaged in such.
Of course, most of the teachers, being busy in the
day schools, too, have little time or strength to do
much of the needed social work, though some is done
through the medium of occasional class parties. The
plea is not for additional work by the already over
burdened teachers, but rather for a recognition of the
fact that genuine “neighborization” is as necessary a
part of the program of genuine Americanization as are
the classes for teaching the language, history, and
government of the country to which we ask the new
citizens to pledge allegiance.
And surely none know better than the thousands
of teachers who have themselves moved into strange
communities, what it means to be accepted as wage
earners merely, as a necessary part of the community’s
daily life and yet ignored socially, either as to any
interest being evinced in providing pleasant living con
ditions or recreational opportunities for leisure hours
being offered. Even as teachers, in self-defense, con
sciously and formally or otherwise, organize into
cliques and harden their hearts to the obvious needs
of a community in which they are not made to feel at
home, so do the foreign-born tend to narrower con
ceptions of civic duties and social responsibilities in a
place whose social life they do not share. Most
teachers, however, are within easy reach, compared to
strangers from foreign lands, of communities where
they do count socially for something more than the
work for which they are paid in money, adequately or
otherwise; and so, knowing from experience what is
on the other side of the social wall behind which the
native residents entrench themselves, do not accept the
husk for the kernel, are not in danger of becoming
satisfied with the possession of mere things, from silk
stockings to automobiles, and of ultimately missing the
real meaning of American life at its best, as do so
many of those who come from other shores, “even unto
the second and third generation.”
Therefore, let us aim definitely, by example and
precept, at inciting the native bom to be neighborly
with any of the foreign-born in their vicinity, as well
as to promote the founding of clubs of mixed nation
alities, always including some of the “good old Ameri
can stock,” meeting in the very best of our modern,
finely equipped public buildings or, perhaps, in some
former American homestead left stranded in a mill
district, which might be saved from the fate of making
way for more crowded tenements or chain stores, by
being endowed as an American Home Club that should
serve as a living model of the kindly hospitality and
safe-guarding influences typical of the best American
home life.
Page Twenty-seven
sary for a government to take every reasonable
measure and to use the utmost of its power to pro
tect its citizens; but government has not performed
its highest function if it concerns itself only with the
outer aspects of crime.
One of the primal duties of government is to
encourage citizenship, which is done by a process of
education. Young people are trained for the trades
and the professions, but little systematic training is
given them for fulfilling their duties as citizens.
A thought or a series of thoughts is back of every
deed. Yet in dealing with crime so much attention
is paid to the external acts that we apparently forget
to give sufficient attention to the thought habits that
make criminal acts possible.
Habits of thought that are destructive in tendency
or that lead to acts of lawlessness are not changed
process of transmutation is not rapid or easy of
perceptibly by suppression, but they may be trans
muted or directed into constructive channels. The
accomplishment, but it is worth a great deal more
time and effort than usually are given to it.
Not only the young but those of mature years
can be educated to think in terms of citizenship.
Such thinking carries with it a respect for law that
is impossible to a mind that is untrained in that direc
tion. When the citizens of any country shall have
formed the habit of thinking for and of their govern
ment, there no longer will be a crime menace.
Such thinking is in accord with the teaching of
Jesus Christ, in whom the governmental officials could
find no fault.
A Store
As Famous for Its
Hospitality
As It Is for
Merchandise and
Service
TRAINING CITIZENS TO THINK
(The Christian Businessman)
IV HAT IS CALLED the menace of crime cannot
** be abolished solely by the attempted suppres
sion of acts of violence. It is not only wise but neces-
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