Page Sixteen
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THE UNITED AMERICAN
that while the learning of English is play for his
children, it is tedious, elusive labor for the alien father
and mother. Neither he nor she can just learn it
out of a book. There are, and must be, infinite devices
to catch, hold and develop a successful attention. It
is a game of artful patience on both sides, but the
dividends are there, at the end of it.
So, in our scattered homes, from one coast to the
other, there are American women who are helping
the alien woman in this her first step towards Ameri
canization. It is not merely a man’s game. Within
the American home, and even beyond it in the alien’s
home, this keystone work of language is being wrought
by women who find the same dividends in domestic
intelligence and loyalty that their husbands find in
industrial contentment and appreciation. The thing
pays.
The other day I sat next to another poor devil in
a barber’s chair. In the third chair a pretty young
thing was having her hair bobbed as it never had
been bobbed before. Great chunks of it fell heavily
to the floor. My masculine neighbor parted with
lesser and lighter chunks. In my case the parting
could hardly be described as a matter of chunks. It
all depends upon the supply. But the three of us were
alike in our imprisonment, in the lightning play of
shears about our polls and in the deluge of tonsorial
conversation that fell upon us as we sat. Suddenly
the talk took a lateral turn. The intermediate barber,
shears poised aloft, was addressing my own executioner,
over the half-shorn heads of Smith and me, awaiting
patiently the end of this armistice. Beyond us, the
war was still on. The bobbed chunks still fell, with
thuds that were definitely not dull. The pretty young
thing was impassive.
“You ought to read that new Italian paper,” said
the intermediate barber. “It’s the best yet.”
“Bah!” replied my executioner expectantly.
“It’s the best of ’em all—now take the pictures—”
“Bah! I read the old one.”
“Say, ain’t you makin’ no progress? Ain’t you
up-to-date Italian, same as me? Huh?”
Beyond us the bobbing suddenly ceased. The third
and last pair of shears poised aloft. The armistice
was complete. Smith turned his head furtively—not
toward me.
“Say, when did you fellers come over here?”
demanded the third barber.
“Four years ago,” barked the intermediate barber.
“Five years ago—me!” My executioner swelled
slightly, shears pointed downward. I shifted, warily,
“Ye-es—and only two years—me,” mimicked the
third barber. “But I learn English first little bit,
in Ee-ta-lee—like that—and now I read Babe Ruth
in big American paper—you read Mussolini, little paper
—-I have beautiful customer—you have...”
*
♦
*
The third barber halted in his scorn, in sudden
dismay. The pretty young thing turned her bobbed
head and looked Smith square in the eye. With a
slight convulsion Smith snapped his poor dome back
into place.
“For Heaven’s sake, go ahead,” I muttered to the
executioner. And for five solid minutes, for the time
is recorded history, three pairs of barber’s shears
SEPTEMBER 1925
clipped in silence—almost, for surely there were sounds
from the third chair. They might almost have been
giggles. And once Smith sighed. But aloft there
was silence, sweet silence.
So much for language. That is the first essential.
The alien who can not speak our tongue is helpless;
and his Americanization is hopeless.
After language comes the law—the rules of the
American game. To know the rules is *to play the
game. Not to know them, means one foul after an
other, with all the penalties that attach to fouls. The
old saw that “ignorance of the law execuses nobody”
is a hard rule to enforce against our foreign new
comers, from the moment they set foot on shore, and
yet that rule is the first and the soundest of all.
Of course I do not mean that you, who may be a
bit curious about this particular pepper-pot casting,
should transform all your alien employees into lawyers.
Save the mark! We have enough of those fellows
already. Nor are your aliens to become even sea
lawyers, or stationhouse lawyers, or yet constitutional
lawyers. But surely they should be brought to know
the fundamentals of the ordinary rules of conduct and
contract that are administered every day in the year
by our magistrates, justices of the peace and petty
judges all over the land. The minute the alien goes
down the gang-plank he walks into the center of that
body of law that engages our minor courts—that
constitutes the rudiments of the rules of the American
game. And it is only a matter of a few minutes or
a few days before the alien trips over one of these
elementary rules.
♦
♦
♦
That I know, because I was once a magistrate
myself. It is a safe guess that two out of every!
three defendants who came before me were recently
arrived foreigners. Some of them knew our la ns
very well indeed, and were punished accordingly; but
to most of them the whole thing was a hopless maze
of “don’ts”—a chestnut burr of statutory prickles,
conceived in the complexities of modern civilization and
born of the ambitions of a swarm of nervous American
law-makers annually intent upon regulating the lives
of all the rest of us.
No wonder the poor foreigner needs teaching here!
If he does not learn fast his very liberty—in our “land
of liberty”—may be snuffed out overnight just because
nobody would teach him the rules of the game. It
will pay his boss, his beau ideal, his picked American
teacher, to teach him something of those rules. The
humble law of right and wrong has grown some amazing
shoots in this statutory hothouse that so hems us in
today. Where Moses contented himself with but ten
rules we insist upon a thousand—and then we have
begun the list.
To put the case bluntly, it pays an employer to
keep his alien employee out of jail. Beyond that, it
pays to keep him clear of penalties less notable bu<t
equally damaging to the value of an eight-hour day.
And, beyond that, it pays to train the foreigner into
an understanding of at least the most rigorous of our
rules, because it makes him a better workman, a
better subject for ultimate citizenship, and a better
American by sheer reason of the gratitude he bears
a boss who helps him as well as pays him. It pays