There is no science of race assimilation. No nation has had a sufficiently free opportunity with many diverse races to establish its enduring princip… - Frances Kellor

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 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.

For this reason neighborhoods should be American and a combination of the best of all the races that live in them. It is here that the school can become the conference center and the council chamber. It is the one American institution to be found in every town free, neutral, and powerful. During the daytime it has the children who can interpret it; during the evening it may have the parents who need it for their community expression. From the schoolhouse come the beliefs that living conditions should be decent, that laws should be enforced for all alike, that there should be no racial discriminations. From participation in neighborhood activities and in governing their own communities, the immigrant will grow into the larger responsibilities of State and nation. In order that American political ideals should be understood by him, they must be lived within his consciousness, in the small radius of his neighborhood, and in that way he must see exemplified whatever American literature, art, music, and science have to give.