Frances Kellor Quotes

There are accepted definitions of Americanism. There is none of Americanization. The reason is not hard to find. There is in America a national impulse called Americanization, which was understood as a war necessity before it had developed in time of peace. It acquired a generalization before it had become specific. It was subjected to organization and committed to the achievement of results before it was a branch of knowledge fairly evolved and reduced to practice.

There is but one way to Americanize for each and every American to understand the ideals of America and to be able to interpret them in every act of his daily life. But this alone is not enough. Groups of men, from the humblest unit to the greatest political entity in the country, must be able to do this in combination ; and there must be agreement. There are certain things that men go all over the world to find. Where those things exist men stay ; when they fail men leave. These things are basic. They are opportunities to better conditions, to be equal to other men, to have the right to be heard, freedom of thought, worship, and speech, and to enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It is for this that men desert their home countries, and it is for this that they may desert America if their native lands in Europe offer the same great adventure and reward.

Admittedly America has not fully succeeded. The absence of definition, of principles, and of methods of Americanization shows her success thus far to have been rather a happy accident, an outcome which cannot be expected in a more exacting future. Has it been regarded as a war necessity to be dealt with expeditiously and then dropped, or will it become a science, thereby progressing from emotion to reason, from impulse to logic, and from chaos to order? With the war ended, there is danger that we will turn aside to new interests, unless a foundation of science can be laid and a philosophy evolved.

The most moving appeal from the greatest of orators, the most beautifully written declaration of rights, the finest interpretation of American ideals by any living American finds the immigrant unresponsive if he has suffered injustice, if he has been denied a hearing, or if he has failed to see realized in the land of his dreams the things for which he left his native land. He forgives the man who has wronged him; he never forgets the government that has failed him. The law which was passed in one of the States prohibiting an alien from owning a dog, the enforcement of which resulted in deception and lying, has done much to imperil the immigrant's faith in the justice of American ideals. It reached his heart and his home, and he has never understood a country whose highest authority the court sanctioned such discriminations.

When the country first tried in 1915 to Americanize its foreign-born people, Americanization was thought of quite simply as the task of bringing native and foreign-born Americans together, and it was believed that the rest would take, care of itself. It was thought that if all of us could talk together in a common language unity would be assured, and that if all were citizens under one flag no force could separate them. Then the war came, intensifying the native nationalistic sense of every race in the world. We found alien enemies in spirit among the native-born children of the foreign-born in America; we found old stirrings in the hearts of men, even when they were naturalized citizens, and a desire to take part in the world struggle, not as Americans, but as Jugo-Slavs or Czecho-Slovaks. We found belts and stockings stuffed with gold to be taken home, when peace should be declared, by men who will go back to work out their destinies in a land they thought never to see again. We found strong racial groups in America split into factions and bitterly arraigned against one another. We found races opposing one another because of prejudices and hatreds born hundreds of years ago thousands of miles away. We awoke to the fact that old-world physical and psychological characteristics persisted under American clothes and manners, and that native economic conditions and political institutions and the influences of early cultural life were enduring forces to be reckoned with in assimilation. We discovered that while a common language and citizenship may be portals to a new nation, men do not necessarily enter thereby, nor do they assume more than an outer likeness when they pass through.

In America, where many peoples are held together largely by their sense of opportunities and their hope of reward, the subject is of the gravest concern. The attitude and reactions of the native-born American who believes in Americanization, and the one who does not, with all shades of opinion and of feeling lying between the two extremes, are to be considered. There is the man who comes here to stay and the one who in- tends to return. There is the racial solidarist bent upon reestablishing his own race here with as few changes as possible. There is the race which hates another, and for its own independent reasons tries to block its progress in the new land. We have to reckon with a situation created by men who are representatives of powerful foreign corporations, who will spend their lives here, make their homes here, and who never intend to become part of America. There are leaders who manipulate their people in the interest of the country of their origin, as well as those genuinely interested in serving America. In addition, there are factions in each race having no desire to unite with one another; there are races opposed to healing their own differences of centuries ago ; and there are groups passionately devoted to their own culture and ideals, to which in their opinion nothing can compare.

Beyond the slogans of "a common language and a common citizenship" a program of Americanization has not been accepted. America, the greatest immigration country in the world, has no national domestic policy whatsoever and no organization as a government for dealing with race assimilation, its most delicate and fundamental problem. Americans like to think hi a crude way of this country as a melting pot, with peasants from Ellis Island going in at the top and citizens in American clothes going out at the bottom. We now know there has been little real change accomplished, and we are beginning to wonder whether the new arrival needs as much change as we thought he did to become one of us.

Americanization is the process, then, of guaranteeing these fundamental requisites to each man, native and foreign-born alike, and just in proportion as the English language and citizenship interpret these requisites, they are Americanization agencies. The failure of Americanization in the past years is identical with the failure of these guarantees. It is in the home, the shop, the neighborhood, the church, and the court that Americanization is wrought, and the mutual relations of races in America as expressed in them will give the eternal principles of race assimilation that we seek. Today these basic points are disregarded and it is thought that committees and community councils piled high upon one another will do the work. The chief value of most of such organizations is in educating the native-born American; there is abundant evidence that the foreign-born adult is not greatly drawn to this country as a result of them.

Let us face the inevitable truth. There can be no Americanization from the top down or in the mass. It will not come from the court that grants a citizenship certificate; nor from the school that teaches English; nor from the speakers that talk patriotism; nor from the patriotic society that prints platitudes. It will come from basic conditions being right, and none is more vital than industrial relations. It will live as we shorten the distance between the Constitution and the shop. It will be believed in as we square every act in the shops of America with every utterance in public print.

Americanization, which is the achievement of identity of economic interest, is the granting to men of a fair share of the returns of their labor, with sufficient leisure to use these returns. It is the satisfaction of the impulse to create things for use and for beauty rather than for profit alone. It is the establishment of just relationships and equitable dealing with all men of all races, including respect and consideration. It is a share in the management of business, giving men enduring incentives and a permanent interest and voice in determining their own working conditions.

We disagree about who should be Americanized. The immigrant, working in some of the industries, and set apart from American life, thinks the native-born needs it most; the American, visiting the crowded quarters of his city, thinks the immigrant needs it more; and there is as yet no common meeting ground of men's minds upon whom to Americanize and especially upon how to go about it. Despite the great contributive value of the Liberty Loan, the Red Cross, the war camp communities, the Councils of Defense, and other activities that are helping to unite the many peoples, the fusion of a youthful race with those wise races of the old world, which have withstood many an enthusiasm and many a peril, cannot be achieved by a popular movement or by sporadic specialized campaigns. Without specific knowledge of points of differentiation and without sympathetic points of contact, anything like real fusion becomes impossible.

The sources of authority in America are the final interpreters of Americanism. These are the legislature and the court. Every other Americanization achievement stands or falls finally according to the way equity is maintained among men. The administration of justice is the determining factor in men's lives, whether they turn to or from America. It is for the court to make clear the difference between liberty and license, and at the same time assure to each man alike the right to free speech. Let inequalities appear and Americanization is defeated. It is for the court to impose duties while it makes clear the opportunities, and to see that duties and privileges are alike the heritage of all free men. Free education is placed at the disposal of all people in America, but it is the duty of all to maintain and extend its benefits. It is well to set the immigrant in the pursuit of liberty and happiness when he lands here, but without safeguards against exploitation he can scarcely be blamed if he concludes that such liberty is a delusion of American minds.

Americanization having its roots in political ideals cannot be achieved so long as these ideals, as interpreted by the sources of authority in America, mean one thing for the native-born and another thing for the foreign-born; one thing for men and another for women; one thing for employers and another for employees; one thing for the rich and another for the poor; one thing in one State and another thing in an adjoining State. No American who hopes for national unity can spend too much time insisting upon the most painstaking interpretation of the guarantees of American law, even though it takes him into such technical matters as interpreter service, cost of appeals, discriminatory laws, and race prejudices. Every support of a sound Americanism is strong or weak according as justice is done or not done.

There is no science of race assimilation. No nation has had a sufficiently free opportunity with many diverse races to establish its enduring principles and certain procedure. America has this opportunity in her thirty-five different races speaking fifty-four languages, of whom 13,000,000 are foreign-born. One third of her total population has its roots in other soils and in diverse cultures. She has the laboratory for the experiment in her wide expanse of territory, much of it still unsettled; in the elasticity of her institutions ; and in the still formative state of her cultural life.

America must be voluntarily chosen by its new citizens, or it will not represent their aspirations or satisfy their needs. The greater the freedom given for creative impulse and variation in expression, the richer will be the resultant American life. And in the future American ideals will have to be both more exalted and more practical than in the past, and its life will have to square more generally with them, because the lands from which these peoples come will be free from the yoke of oppression. Democracy being free for the world, they may then realize in many lands the dreams which to them once made America the only land where such dreams could come true.