The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., September 01, 1925, Page 17, Image 17

SEPTEMBER 1925
THE UNITED AMERIGAN
because men that I know are doing it to-day. And they
say it pays.
Is it a far cry from this to a general consideration of
the life of the alien as he actually leads it here ir}
America? The language that affords him power or
communication is one thing. And American “don’ts”
is another. Both are essentials in the sum of the new
knowledge that is making an American of him. Biff
the life that he leads—at work, at play, at home—is
the most important consideration of all.
The life that he leads! Well, that is an easy thing
to say, but a hard thing to cover. It would takd
volumes to cover a tenth part of its varied aspects,
and then we could never be sure we had really gone
a tenth of the distance! Who is there who yet knows
the tenth of the actual, unsaid life of another? Which
of us has yet so finger-gripped this business of the
life of others that he can say, “that much is sure—
that much I know!” We may all guess. We do guess
constantly. From anxious friendship to common
gossip, we run the whole gamut of guessing, every
day of our lives. But who of us really knows? And,
least of all, who of us knows the life of the stranger
within our gates? Strange to us in his life, stranger
still in his unaccustomed new life, what manner of
man is he, this new-comer from afar, in the inner
effects of our American life upon his foreign sensi­
bilities, joys and sufferings? And his women and his
children? Just how do they all “get it”—this new
American game? Away inside, behind and beyond
the surface ripples of their laughter and tears, how
do they “get” us?
We may only peck at it here and there, tn be
sure. We shall never really know very much of the
inside of it. But we may be dead certain of one thing,
and that is—whatever the inside story be—it is, nine
parts in ten, a matter of our own making—dead,
necessary tools—but American life is exactly what
we ourselves have made it; and it is American life
and none other that the alien leads when he lives in
America.
Of course, it is not all American, all at once, this
life of the newly arrived alien. There are the strings
of red peppers; the songs*, stories and dances of other
lands; the diminishing echoes of foreign customs,
foreign habits good and bad, foreign loyalties and
foreign affections, foreign dress that is “different,”
foreign food that is oily or fishy or “funny.” And there
are whole foreign colonies here among us, with foreign
talk, papers and points of view. We have enough and
too much of that last sort of thing right now, for the
good of our national unity and future self-preservation.
But, after all, the injury of these coagulated colonies
to the American blood-stream is still under control
and, let us hope, will gradually diminish. When it
comes to the lesser and more pleasing incidents of our
continuing foreign influx, these more innocent echoes
of peoples who are “different” need no control at all.
They grow fainter, die away, disappear—often un­
fortunately, I think—with the march of the minutes
themselves. Puff! They are gone! And we are squarely
back on the board ground of a distinctly American
life that envelops, effaces and survives any and all
of these firefly glints of foreign life that come dancing
in from Ellis Island every day in the year. Sooner or
Page Seventeen
later, inevitably and inexorably, it is American life as
we have developed it that the alien must lead, as long
as he lives in America.
Take first a typical New York tenement. We did
that—not the alien. Or a tenement in any other Ameri­
can town. We did that too. But it is the alien who
mostly lives in those tenements, because we failed ..to,
equip ourselves with city-governing personnel that
was able and inclined to make impossible such housing
abortions as these rookeries that disgrace every
populous spot in America. We did all that. We even
let in so many aliens in a rush—instead of regulating
this overseas recruiting—that it paid American land­
lords to rear those tenements and then sweat the last
cent out of the aliens who must preforce pack into
them just because there were no other American roofs
to be had. We did all that. Today those tenements
still stand, packed with aliens and punctuated with
rent raises. And yet we insist upon immediate Ameri­
can loyalty from the arrived alien! What must, he
he think of us!
Or let us go farther afield—actually into the fields.
I know of a gravel pit in a prairie state that is owned
by an American farmer. That farmer is honest with
the kind of honesty that will lose a fortune and grin,
rather than lose one per cent of the self-respect that
enables him to look the world square in the eye and
tell it to go to the devil. And this farmer was poor.
But his gravel pit was rich, waiting only to be
worked. And the county supervisors wanted the
gravel out of that pit for a needed nearby county road.
So there was shortly an offer, and a bargain, and
then—a hitch. Something had halted the transaction.
There were hints, then insinuations, then guarded inti­
mations—from a “friend” of the supervisors, to the
farmer. Then the farmer put on his hat one night
and walked, unexpected, into a meeting of the county
supervisors.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I know that if I say the
word, you will pay me more for that gravel than it is
worth. I know that the difference between the value
of the gravel and what you pay me is the graft that
I have got to pay back to you. And I know that if
you don’t get that graft, you won’t buy the gravel in
my pit. Instead of that you’ll go to the foreigner
who owns, a pit ten miles away, who has poorer gravel,
but who will do business. With the haul and all;
you’ll pay for his gravel twice what you’d pay foij
mine. That comes out of the pockets of the tax-paying
farmers of this county. You’ll take it out, too, to get
yours. And you’re all Americans—everybody in the
transaction except the foreigner who takes this tip
from you on the American brand of honesty.”
The supervisors, silent till now, began to hem and
haw and shift, and the supervising faces were some­
thing more than ugly.
“Now, wait till I’m through!” shouted the farmer,
as he banged his hat on the table. “Wait a minute!
I know what' you’re going to say, for one of you has
said it already. You’re going to tell me that if I
don’t shut up and come across you’ll turn your whole
rotten political machine against me, ruin me, and run
me out of the county, yes? Am I right? All right..
Now here’s what I came over here tonight to tell
you. And that’s this: I won’t sell you my gravel