The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., September 01, 1925, Page 15, Image 15

SEPTEMBER 1925
Page Fifteen
THE UNITED AMERICAN
stands the immigrant of to-day, as we see him at
Ellis Island—just a job-hunter from afar, even as you
and I, when we emerged from school or college, were
job-hunters from our own doorsteps close by. The only
differences are those of age and heredity and geography.
And even as did you and I in days agone, the immigrant
aims high in the beginning, and in the end takes
what he can get. After all, a job is a job, be it
higher or lower than the first aim. And a meal is
a meal, with due meed of gratitude to the boss who
makes the meal possible.
It is by that very token that the immigrant of to­
day picks the American from whom he will take his
first sharp-cut lessons in Americanization. Just
because he is the job-hunter, he puts first among all
the Americans—instinctively and instantly—the man
who gives him his job in these United States. That
man is the alien’s benefactor, his boss, his best friend
and his biggest American. That man is his type, his
tin god. That man is one in ten of us who becomes
the alien’s teacher, chosen and cherished by the alien
himself—an involuntary leader, who represents all the
rest of us Americans in what America means to these
thousands of foreigners who come, and come, and stay.
A partner in a precious process, that man is you.
♦
♦
♦
Yes, here or there, sooner or later, the alien- comes
to you. Think a moment! Are all your employees
and dependents, at work and at home, even to the
least, native-born Americans? All of them? Or is
there somewhere one foreigner, if no more, whose
bread and butter depend, in some nearby way, upon
you? If there be such, there is in his jacket a pathos
of observant devotion to yourself that perhaps you
have never quite realized nor even suspected. Yet it
is there.
And I wonder what you are doing about it—you
who are the first American, in the eyes of this immi­
grant, just because you are his boss. Perhaps you
have already done something about it. Or perhaps
not, since you did not know that this foreigner had
picked you out to be his teacher and his beau ideal
of Americanism. Perhaps nobody came along and
told you about that—about your being, willy-nilly, the
hand-picked light to lead this new arrival in the
national family. Well, if you please, that is what I
have come along to tell you about myself. This word
from Ellis Island is to tell you that you are elected—
you are IT—be you man or woman, or be the foreign­
er’s tie to you ever so remote. Moreover, it is a
permanent position that you occupy. Your pupil looks
to you not only during his first five days in America,
but during his first five years here, and perchance
even his first fifty years here. You are certainly
in for it!
To strike right out then, how about teaching your
pupil to speak, read and write good English? Or is
that too obvious to merit mention? All right! Ellis
Island suggestions are only pepper-pot castings, any­
how. One throw may not reach you; another may.
But I know right well that there are American
employers, men and women, in mine, mill, factory,
office and home, who are not lifting a finger to-day to
teach their alien employees, upon whom they depend,
the very language of their country. This first throw
is for those particular gentry, and it is a straight throw.
It is true that the foreign children go to our
splendid schools, and learn English there. It is true,
also, that we have English-teaching night schools for
the foreign adults; but it is just as true that the
attendance at those night schools is but a fraction of
what it might be. It is not easy for an alien to learn
English after a hard day’s work, and—what is even
harder—after thirty or forty years of one foreign
tongue and none else. It is easier to relapse into the
foreign colony, of an evening, and seize what joy of
life there is immediately at hand. So, in language,
the children grow up quite by themselves. And so
they come to look down upon their foreign fathers
and mothers who cannot speak English, to make fun
of them, to break away from them. It is an oM
story—as sad as it is familiar—but it is a story that
is still going on today.
Yet there is a way. I know of men of substance
and sympathy who are making the most careful efforts
to teach their alien employees English, not after hours
but in hours, as part of the day’s work. They do it
in hours because it pays to have their employees know
our language. There are dividends in the contentment
that comes with a readier understanding of America’s
problems, ways and habits of thought. There are
quick dividends in the alien’s independence of foreign
agitators—that invariable first fruit of his comprehen­
sion of our medium of American communication. There
are ultimate dividends in his settled gratitude toward
the boss who treats him not only as a tool, but also as
a human being. These dividends are not there for
the asking. The alien, as well as the boss, knows
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