The foreign-born population of this country must be an Americanized
population――no other kind can fight the battles of America either in
war or peace. It must talk the language of its native-born fellow
citizens, it must possess American citizenship and American ideals.
It must stand firm by its oath of allegiance in word and deed and
must show that in very fact it has renounced allegiance to every
prince, potentate or foreign government. It must be maintained on an
American standard of living so as to prevent labor disturbances in
important plants and at critical times. None of these objects can be
secured as long as we have immigrant colonies, ghettos, and immigrant
sections, and above all they cannot be assured so long as we consider
the immigrant only as an industrial asset. The immigrant must not be
allowed to drift or to be put at the mercy of the exploiter. Our object
is not to imitate one of the older racial types, but to maintain a
new American type and then to secure loyalty to this type. We cannot
secure such loyalty unless we make this a country where men shall feel
that they have justice and also where they shall feel that they are
required to perform the duties imposed upon them. The policy of “Let
alone” which we have hitherto pursued is thoroughly vicious from two
standpoints. By this policy we have permitted the immigrants, and too
often the native-born laborers as well, to suffer injustice. Moreover,
by this policy we have failed to impress upon the immigrant and upon
the native-born as well that they are expected to do justice as well as
to receive justice, that they are expected to be heartily and actively
and single-mindedly loyal to the flag no less than to benefit by living
under it.
We cannot afford to continue to use hundreds of thousands of immigrants
merely as industrial assets while they remain social outcasts and
menaces any more than fifty years ago we could afford to keep the black
man merely as an industrial asset and not as a human being. We cannot
afford to build a big industrial plant and herd men and women about
it without care for their welfare. We cannot afford to permit squalid
overcrowding or the kind of living system which makes impossible the
decencies and necessities of life. We cannot afford the low wage rates
and the merely seasonal industries which mean the sacrifice of both
individual and family life and morals to the industrial machinery. We
cannot afford to leave American mines, munitions plants and general
resources in the hands of alien workmen, alien to America and even
likely to be made hostile to America by machinations such as have
recently been provided in the case of the two foreign embassies in
Washington. We cannot afford to run the risk of having in time of war
men working on our railways or working in our munition plants who would
in the name of duty to their own foreign countries bring destruction
to us. Recent events have shown us that incitements to sabotage and
strikes are in the view of at least two of the great foreign powers of
Europe within their definition of neutral practices. What would be done
to us in the name of war if these things are done to us in the name of
neutrality?
Justice Dowling in his speech has described the excellent fourth
degree of your order, of how in it you dwell upon duties rather than
rights, upon the great duties of patriotism and of national spirit.
It is a fine thing to have a society that holds up such a standard of
duty. I ask you to make a special effort to deal with Americanization,
the fusing into one nation, a nation necessarily different from all
other nations, of all who come to our shores. Pay heed to the three
principal essentials: (1) The need of a common language, with a minimum
amount of illiteracy; (2) the need of a common civil standard, similar
ideals, beliefs and customs symbolized by the oath of allegiance to
America; and (3) the need of a high standard of living, of reasonable
equality of opportunity and of social and industrial justice. In every
great crisis in our history, in the Revolution and in the Civil War,
and in the lesser crises, like the Spanish war, all factions and races
have been forgotten in the common spirit of Americanism. Protestant and
Catholic, men of English or of French, of Irish or of German descent
have joined with a single-minded purpose to secure for the country what
only can be achieved by the resultant union of all patriotic citizens.
You of this organization have done a great service by your insistence
that citizens should pay heed first of all to their duties. Hitherto
undue prominence has been given to the question of rights. Your
organization is a splendid engine for giving to the stranger within our
gates a high conception of American citizenship. Strive for unity. We
suffer at present from a lack of leadership in these matters.
Even in the matter of national defense there is such a labyrinth of
committees and counsels and advisors that there is a tendency on the
part of the average citizen to become confused and do nothing. I ask
you to help strike the note that shall unite our people. As a people
we must be united. If we are not united we shall slip into the gulf of
measureless disaster. We must be strong in purpose for our own defense
and bent on securing justice within our borders. If as a nation we are
split into warring camps, if we teach our citizens not to look upon one
another as brothers but as enemies divided by the hatred of creed for
creed or of those of one race against those of another race, surely
we shall fail and our great democratic experiment on this continent
will go down in crushing overthrow. I ask you here to-night and those
like you to take a foremost part in the movement――a young men’s
movement――for a greater and better America in the future.