NATIONAL UNITY
Military Preparedness.
Industrial Mobilization.
Universal Service.
Americanization.
International Duty.
The decision America is called upon to make to-day is whether America
shall emerge from this world-wide struggle as a nation of many peoples
or whether it will imperil its very existence by remaining half native,
half alien; half free and half slave to foreign influences.
We are in the midst of a bitter contest in which the forces for
weakness are contending with those for strength in terms of
fortifications, battleships, and guns amidst the sordid influences
of appropriations, sectional selfishness, and party campaign
considerations.
_Preparedness means_ something more than a larger army and navy. It
means also having a united America back of that army and navy.
Shall we get nothing except the material standards of preparedness from
the mighty struggle in Europe, where nations are contending for the
preservation of the liberties and security we now enjoy?
What will it avail this nation to build battleships and a merchant
marine, if we do not at the same time create a nation-wide loyalty that
will prevent explosions wrecking their holds?
Shall we strengthen our coast defenses and leave our transportation
lines, upon which they depend, to be manned by unskilled workmen
whom Americans have not shown how to love America, and in whom dual
allegiance still persists? Shall we conserve our resources in mines,
quarries, and fields and build more factories and man them with
discontented workmen who will see American defenses only in terms of
profit and advantage?
Shall we have citizens’ training camps and train to higher efficiency
only those already filled with patriotism, or shall we in these same
camps bring new and old citizens together and bring up the ranks in
discipline and efficiency for a better America?
Can we become a really strong nation if Americanization is for
native-born men and women only, while we do nothing for the millions of
foreign-born men and women who constitute our reserve strength?
These and many other similar questions must be included in any adequate
program of defense, and yet in no council of government or of citizens
have they been given the consideration their importance demands. The
great immediate task before us is mobilization and Americanization,
the welding of the many races and classes in this country into one
enduring, steadfast, efficient nation.
The things that make for preparedness in peace or war, that make
France and Germany the two leading contestants in the present war, are
as much social and economic, as military preparedness. We shall not
attain this until we have Americanized our foreign-born residents and
many of our American-born as well. We cannot do this by legislation
or proclamation, but only by the patriotic action of each and every
resident in America disciplined for national service.
Some one has brought to America a remarkable series of moving pictures
called “Britain Prepared.” The conspicuous thing about them is that
the emphasis is put upon the training of men, the kind of training we
find in the gymnasium and in sports and among boy scouts. Guns and
battleships and horses are there, to be sure, but they are always being
_mastered by men_. Somehow in our defense propaganda during the past
year we have missed this dominant note. We talk about an increased army
and navy and aëroplanes and coast defenses, but we always get the sense
of guns and machines and mechanics and never the sense of their mastery.
The defense bills in Congress this winter are marked by the same fatal
presumption--that defense is entirely a matter of physical preparedness
and that it is to be brought about chiefly by legislation and
appropriations. We are apparently looking only to the immediate and
obvious and popular kind of preparedness and have not yet begun upon
the real problem of preparedness which involves long, slow, patient
consideration of many intricate matters vital to any adequate national
defense of America.
I believe that the work of the agitator and propagandist in arousing
America is about done. The hundreds of volunteer, happy-go-lucky,
hit-and-miss organizations throughout the country that have divided
public attention with Congress have accomplished their task. We are
entering upon the serious business of investigation, organization, and
administration. We are ready for a policy, a program, and a leader. We
are ready to act as a nation and not as the spokesman for any section
or race.
A thoroughgoing policy of national preparedness to insure national
unity and action cannot comprise less than five main divisions,
all proceeding together toward a common goal. They are military
preparedness, industrial mobilization, universal service,
Americanization, and international duty.
Military defense has centered chiefly upon the army and navy and has
dealt largely with numbers and appropriations. The pending measures
can hardly be said to represent a policy. The conflicting provisions
scarcely constitute a program.
Let us see how we have approached this subject: Under the guise of
a first and immediate defense step we are urged to provide for a
tunnel through the Rocky Mountains; for a road connecting two forts in
Georgia; for rifle clubs, the Federal government to supply the rifles;
for a national aviation corps school; for volunteer training camps for
high school students; for the purchase of the Chesapeake & Delaware
Canal; for a naval or a military academy in this or that particular
state; for a “multiroad highway”; for a marvelous continental army on
a voluntary plan, whereby 88,000 men are to enlist for six months, a
second 88,000 within sixty days, and so on “as long as in the opinion
of the President this procedure is necessary to public welfare.” This
last bill well illustrates the detached point of view we have adopted
toward the defense issue--an army of _volunteers_, _i.e._ whoever see
fit, is to be raised overnight, and another army two months later and
so on, so long as the President thinks there is any danger. Then this
volunteer force is to dissolve into civilian life, and we are all to
rest easy again until the next scare comes--when we shall again leave
it to the most adventurous or the most conscientious among us to make
up a hasty miscellaneous _volunteer_ force to defend our homes and our
liberty.
There is the usual supply of academic bills providing for commissions
to investigate this or that aspect of defense. No doubt accurate
information and therefore investigation on many points is necessary,
but--the commission is too often a death chamber. By one bill a joint
committee of the House and Senate is instructed as one of a series
of academic charges to “investigate the advisability of universal
service.” The problem has come upon the horizon, so to speak, and in a
leisurely and philosophical way we get out our field glasses to observe
it.
We have been doing too many sums in our defense propaganda. How many
men in the army, how many millions of dollars for the navy,--all of
these important,--but when an adequate plan is worked out for training
_every_ man and woman, according to his or her capacity, the numbers
will take care of themselves. Until we are all “volunteers” we can
dispense with mathematics.
The defense legislation of the year is evidence of heartbreaking
national failure. The collection of sectional, personal, sometimes
obviously dishonest, and, at best, ill-considered bills, evidences
a graver charge than the political “expediencies” to which we are
well enough accustomed. They are a testimony to the faithlessness of
legislators in the highest places of the land, a miserable failure in
patriotism, and that they have gone on so many months unchallenged is
another proof of the supine patience, flabbiness, and stupidity of the
average American citizen.
What should we have done? We had ample warning when Congress
adjourned in 1915 that we would face the issue of preparedness as a
vital compelling matter in 1916. Instead of depending upon separate
and often conflicting reports from various departments and staff
officers, the party in power should have had in hand in December--when
Congress reassembled--the outline of a national policy, substantiated
by certified facts, along which a series of bills could have been
drafted to meet the needs at all points, and to avoid duplications at
any point. Then the reserves of the majority party should have begun
their own nation-wide campaign to carry their program. Failing this,
the minority party in Congress had its opportunity. Such a plan would
have rallied all the citizenship force for defense in support of its
program and would have avoided the conflicts that now wage throughout
the land. This program broadly conceived would have commanded the
most comprehensive information in the country; not only from the
Interstate Commerce Commission on transportation; from the Federal
trade commission on industrial capacities and reserves; from the Public
Health Service on port conditions; from the Federal reserve board on
credit; from the Department of Labor on conserving men and stabilizing
labor and Americanizing aliens, but it would have had the coöperation
of such organizations as the American Federation of Labor and the
United States Chamber of Commerce. The best thought of the country
would have been crystallized, and instead of the prevailing chaos
we would have a program free from partisan or sectional influences.
Instead of haggling over the number of men, and where to get the money,
and resurrecting letters from files to prove responsibility, we would
be reapportioning our army posts on the basis of national defense,
instead of on the basis of a civil war; we would be locating our
munition plants in safe places; we would be building model ammunition
plants, we would have an aviation corps and training schools worthy of
the name--and Villa would not have raided Texas.
We are about where we started so far as actual accomplishment is
concerned. I think but little of writing a statute and appropriating
money until we see who is to spend the money and where. Nine tenths of
the achievement for success lies in the organization and administration
which follows the passing of laws. We are in the Congressional
eleventh hour still agitating for a council to gather the necessary
information, and propose a plan, which the Cabinet officers should
have had in hand and operation jointly months ago. The whole situation
has become so muddled that there is no one non-partisan, scientific,
accurate, efficient, dependable source to which one can go and obtain
the information necessary to formulate a policy or outline a program,
and we have not yet established our first line of defense in an
unassailable position.
The mobilization of industry is as important as the mobilization of
men. The enlisted men must be taken from offices and shops and we must
still maintain our output in products, get it to the places it is
needed, when it is needed, and in prime condition. Soldiers without
supplies and arms are useless; as are civilians behind the line.
The business of industry is to meet the demands and opportunities of
foreign markets and to supply the needs of America; to transport men
and supplies upon short notice on a large scale.
The work of industrial preparedness is not the primary task of
government--it is the obligation of every plant in America, every
leader at the head of it, every workman within it.
America has capital, resources, inventions, and leadership. It is short
of average men to meet its industrial as well as citizenship needs. The
country needs to keep every able-bodied man in America by making him an
efficient, loyal citizen and by giving him, not a job, but a stake in
the industry and a home stake in the country.
First of all in mobilizing industries we need an inventory so the
government may know the location and capacity of its plants and
who mans them; what the investment is and whether there are any
international strings tied to the business and of what kind. It
needs to know its present capacity, what it makes best, and how far
its capacity can be increased, if need be. It needs to know how its
products are transported and marketed; whether army supplies have ever
been made and what agreements might be entered into. After twenty
months of the war, the schedule for such an inventory has been
formulated by a volunteer committee and paid for with private funds!
This is the Industrial Preparedness Committee of the Naval Consulting
Board, of which Mr. Howard Coffin is chairman. It proposes first to
take an inventory of the resources of 30,000 industries, each to be
covered by an engineer. This in itself is a magnificent educational
measure. It will make these engineers and industries think about a
great many questions they have not faced before. This Committee has
secured the coöperation of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the
World, of which Mr. Herbert Houston is president. This insures the
most widespread and accurate publicity of work and results, free from
any political manipulation. It also insures a highly intelligent
and forceful education of the public, free from self-interest or
organization interest. The unfortunate thing is that this inventory
comes too late for Congress to make any real use of the results unless
it stays in session very late. It is also not yet clear just how these
results will be related to other important fields or whether the
Secretary of the Navy will bury them somewhere. The essential thing,
however, is that we have a wholly satisfactory industrial preparedness
program under way in the hands of men the country trusts for ability,
integrity, efficiency, and knows to be without self-interest.
So far as I am aware we are not dealing with the conservation
of resources in any such way, as this inventory applies only to
manufacturing. I believe the different Federal departments have been
called upon to make some such survey and report, but its results seem
not to have found their way into action nor to have the coöperation of
practical business men. Agricultural organization also we consider of
little interest in defense, even though the land feeds the nation.
Undoubtedly a most important factor in our national defense is
transportation. The President has recommended an inquiry into railroad
rates and regulation, but the resolution introduced does not seem to go
beyond the subject of rates. It does not seem to include a study of the
railroad situation by a competent staff that would be prepared to take
over and operate the railroads for military purposes if the necessity
arose; it does not imply that we might need a railway construction
corps for use in a military zone, taking the places of the aliens now
employed on this work. It does not indicate that there is need for our
army officers and leading railway officers to get together in times of
peace in order to prevent friction in time of war. It does not indicate
that there is need of approved regulations which should be formulated
now so they could be put into operation immediately should occasion
arise. There is no indication that it might be well to provide a way by
which operating men should become army officers in time of war and thus
have the handling of supplies under an efficient military direction.
The country is fortunate in having a competent committee appointed by
the American Railway Association, Mr. Fairfax Harrison, president of
the Southern Railway Co., Mr. W. G. Besler, president Central R. R. of
N. J., R. H. Aishton, vice president, Chicago & Northwestern R. R.,
Chicago, Ill., and A. W. Thompson, general manager of the Baltimore &
Ohio R. R.
The work of this Committee has not yet been definitely related to
the Federal departments which could make most use of its experience,
knowledge, and ability. It is ready to devote itself to this question
along such important lines as the following among many others:
First, a distinct understanding between the War Department and the
railroads should be arrived at concerning the tariffs for military
traffic, freight, passenger, and baggage, in order that there may be
no confusion whatever on these points when the time comes to move
large bodies.
Second, the simplification of the settlement of railway accounts in
consequence of such agreements.
Third, complete and competent agreement in regard to the
classification and traffic on impedimenta accompanying troops so as
to deliver the burden of the paper work that ordinarily nowadays is
essential to the shipment of such bodies and impedimenta.
Fourth, the physical operations of the railroads in carrying supplies
to mobilization points, concentration points, and embarkation points,
must be coördinated and regulated. The necessity of having a uniform
method and a complete understanding between the Department and the
railroads is of course obvious.
Fifth, a clear arrangement should be had with the proper officials of
the railways in regard to provisions for spurs, switches, side tracks,
and all facilities for handling troops and supplies on reaching
mobilization points and concentration points and embarkation points or
the base of operations.
“There should be some means of bringing together railroad men,
including the freight and passenger traffic departments, the
construction and operating branches of the railroads, in close
consultation with the officers of the army whose function it is to
provide for the transportation of troops and supplies. There should
be provision made for a reserve corps, not only of railroad men,
but of all that class of civilians whose services could be used
advantageously in the army in a directing capacity--railroad men
of every description, whether belonging to the operating branch
or the accounting branch, the passenger or freight department, or
the construction branch. Automobile experts of every class would
be in very great demand. We have a paper organization which would
exactly fit the accomplishments of men of that character. Men having
exceptional knowledge of the handling and distribution of great
quantities of supplies would be invaluable. Men recruited from all
the industries of peace should form such a reserve corps as would be
available for immediate service upon mobilization.”
The weakest point in industrial preparedness is the question of labor
supply. We deal with resources and transportation on the assumption
that our supply of men is adequate and all sufficient in training
and efficiency. This is by no means the case, and in order to cover
this defect, the Immigration Committee of the United States Chamber
of Commerce is making an inventory of the labor supply and its
conservation. It began its work with a questionnaire upon the probable
immigration after the war. With the coöperation of the railways it
received 934 replies, representing about 20,000 rail and steamship
agents, based upon their inquiries among some 2,000,000 foreign-born
peoples in this country. The questions covered were the following:
_A._ Are those of foreign birth or parentage in this country saving
money at the present time with a view to bringing their European
relatives and friends to this country after the War?
_B._ Does the personal correspondence which they are receiving from
Europe indicate that there will be any considerable movement to this
country after the War is over, and what, so far as you can get the
information, do the estimates indicate as to the volume?
_C._ Will such immigration as does come consist of people who have
been working on farms, or of those from the factories?
_D._ After the War is over, will there be any considerable emigration
from this country to Europe of those going back to live permanently
there?
_E._ How great will be the movement of those going back to Europe
temporarily after the War to look after their relatives, or through
sentiment to view the destruction of their early homes, _et cetera_,
and who will return to this country after a short visit?
The Committee is now following this with a schedule to industries
covering the source of the labor supply, labor turn-over, methods of
employment, promotions, transfers, and voluntary lay-offs, insurance,
and other methods in use to conserve the labor of the country.
It includes inquiries into the living conditions, as housing and
sanitation, and into citizenship and knowledge of English.
From the data already at hand, it has begun holding a series of
conferences with industrial leaders throughout the country, looking
toward the conserving of men, keeping immigrants in America, and
stabilizing the labor market. It is essential, however, that the fields
of production, transportation, conservation of resources and of the
labor supply be brought together and a national policy be worked out
as the result of the combined effort. It is important that this whole
field be related to universal service and military preparedness. Let us
illustrate the nature of the interdependence.
In any system of universal service there needs to be some plan of
industrial adjustment, as to time, payments, and releases from work,
so that the burden will not fall too heavily upon special industries
at critical times of output. The efficiency records of plants make
the selection of good officers easier. There needs to be a careful
handling of skilled labor in order that it may not be withdrawn too
heavily at vital points. Even our voluntary civilian training camps
are being filled with coöperation of industry, which is arranging
vacations, paying wages during the training period, and urging its
men, by competition and in other ways, to attend. No military system
can operate successfully without understanding effort on the part of
production and transportation men. The pursuit of Villa showed the
absence of this, and to date it seems to be largely a moral victory.
When we have this information along many lines, industry is not
mobilized. We have but secured the knowledge to begin the real task.
The mobilization of industry for America’s defense cannot stop with the
plant. Is the employer’s responsibility ended with the eight-hour day
and an increase in wages? The best-equipped plant in the world will
not give us strong, able, efficient men unless they live decently,
have the right kind of recreation, and get a home stake in the country
to defend. There are minimum standards in the matters of numbers,
separation of sexes, family privacy, sanitation, and cleanliness
which no American workman can fall below and be a loyal citizen fit
for defense. It is part of the mobilization of industry to see that
conditions do not prevail which give American defense men unable or
unwilling to defend it.
Industrial preparedness means a knowledge and system by which skilled
workmen at strategic points in industry, supplies, and traffic shall
not enlist, but will be released at the greatest point of efficiency.
Telegraph companies for instance do not encourage their men to enlist,
but are fitting them for signal men in time of need!
We have in all of our preparedness activity failed to grasp the
point that there can be no industrial preparedness without the
nationalization of business. An inventory of resources and the
utilization of the full power of each plant is only possible when
all men coöperate for a mutual end and not when they compete for
contracts. The employer who cares nothing about the labor market so
long as he has plenty of men does little to stabilize that market or
regularize employment or distribute men advantageously, and yet in the
final analysis defense comes back to efficient, loyal, individual men
doing their full duty at some inconspicuous post all over the country.
The nationalization of business is not a matter of legislation, or
of regulation, or of coercion. It is the duty and obligation of each
responsible person in industry--all working together on a national
coöperative basis instead of on a local, sectional, competitive basis.
It means a new spirit abroad in business--patriotic Nationalism.
We have come to regard universal service, with a period of compulsory
training in a military camp, as a measure of military defense only.
We seem to think it means only learning how to shoot and acquiring
a thirst for blood. I believe it has a great civic value hitherto
disregarded. We have two things to acquire from the training camp:
individual proficiency and team work, and a national spirit and point
of view.
The American factory and the American city have failed as a melting
pot.--The dog tent may succeed. It may become the best school of
practical civics there is--a place where all Americans can meet
together for the common good of America.
It may restore the balance to our triumvirate of the Declaration of
Independence--Liberty, opportunity, and obligation. We have demanded
and used the first two--we have neglected the third.
The civilian training-camp movement, which started at Plattsburg and
is now continued at Fort Oglethorpe, is the biggest civic movement in
America, and when crystallized along the lines of the Swiss system,
will become the dynamo for national progress in America. There can be
no question but that America is desperately in need of some national
civic movement which is in its interest alone and which represents
nothing but itself.
America is full of undisciplined, native-born young men and has
besides a large transfusion of still raw foreigners. It could not
bestow any greater favor upon its young men than to give all of them
the benefits of military methods of drilling and education. It would
“set them up” physically; they would acquire a knowledge of hygiene,
sanitation, prevention of disease, etc., and they would also learn, to
their great advantage, obedience, promptness, precision, regularity
of habits, abstinence, economy, avoidance of waste, and respect for
authority, all of which would make them more competent for their daily
tasks--whatever they may be. Germany perhaps furnishes the best example
of a well-governed people, but what the world needs is to govern
itself, just as the best men are the men who exercise self-control.
Many of our young men, in their desire to remain “independent,” are
inefficient, unreliable, and irresponsible; they are disobedient,
headstrong, or rebellious under authority; they are discourteous,
careless of obligations, and indifferent to broken promises. The
average boy is prompt with excuses and self-justification under
discipline--and this has been seen most conspicuously in our nation’s
attitude in the present war.
Inevitably all of this leads to slovenly work; to indifferent
citizenship; to play in which entertainment, not participation, is the
rule; and to a shifting of responsibility in all walks of life. In the
supplementing of individual by social ideals; in the transition from
individual to social conscience; in the great change from personal to
social control of many individual affairs, we have somehow lost the
finer traits of character and those ancient Christian virtues which
make for strong nations as well as for strong men.
I believe the training camp is unparalleled in its power to develop
social consciousness and social control, and to show men the means
by which they can work together for a common end. America needs
sportsmanship in the best sense of the word, and the training camp can
give it. America needs the abolition of its foolish class lines, now
drawn in industry and in society; emphasized among races and by creeds,
and nowhere worse than in the army itself. There is no place for it
in the training camp. American industry has failed to Americanize the
foreign-born citizens through its pay envelope; the training camp may
succeed through the dog tent.
In our idea of universal service we should not stop with the training
camp. There are hundreds of thousands of men and women, with a desire
to serve, that cannot go to the training camp. We have throughout the
country to-day a splendid expression of the desire to serve.
I believe that every citizen of this republic, male or female, and
of any age after childhood, should have a regular scheme of duties,
a regular enlistment for service of a definite nature suited to his
or her status of capacity, which he must be prepared to render upon
demand, _and which he or she must keep in training to deliver_. To work
out the plans for such service for men and women alike, whether in
motor corps, red cross camps, health service, or in many other ways,
may well be the charge of citizens’ defense organizations, but they
should be related to the civilian training camp to maintain standards
and methods and unity.
The defense organizations, some fifty of national name and scope,
are missing their great opportunity. They are getting people to
sign pledge cards focusing attention, as it should be focused, on
legislation and party programs. But they are not lining up the
citizenship of the country in definite citizenship service. And by
their lack of coöperation and lack of actual information about one
another’s activities, they are further splitting up and sectionalizing
sentiment where the real necessity is to collect and focus it. All
over the country, in this place or that, groups of citizens are trying
in a promising way to form definite, practical, little associations
for training and defense. Aside from the training-camp movement now
so hopefully developed, business men are joining together to try to
settle upon uniform ways of coöperating with training camps and the
national guard by making it possible for their employees to profit
by these and to render national service in this way. People that own
motors or own or control motor trucks are getting together to see
how they could work out the transportation service which experts
agree would be an absolute necessity in case of war in this country.
Rifle clubs are being formed, business men are training one night a
week in armories, women are forming red cross branches with definite
courses of instruction in many cities, schoolboys are being sent to
camps, suburbanites are organizing to breed police and army dogs, city
tradesmen are organizing parades.
But as a whole the civilian defense movement is confused and
incoherent, not nationally coördinated, having no national guidance
or even suggestion. If the various defense organizations were to get
together in a spirit of coöperation, they could gather up and unite
these sporadic citizens’ movements all over the country, give them
standards of organization and accomplishment, start movements in
different states which are as yet practically untouched by defense
sentiment. Just as the Industrial Preparedness Committee of the Naval
Consulting Board is working out the mobilization of industry throughout
the country down to the last practical detail, so the preparedness
organizations in combination could work out the mobilization of
civilian resources and activities throughout the country. In some way
all of these efforts should be brought into relation with each other
under control and direction and discipline. They should be associated
with the training camps and recognized as volunteer corps and be given
the standing necessary to perfect their organization and administer
their control. We have passed the stage of propaganda; we now need
organization and administration of volunteer efforts if we are not to
waste the precious patriotism and enthusiasm for Americanism throughout
the country.
Americanization is basic preparedness. It is fundamental and enduring.
The first question is how to nationalize our native-born American
into doing his duty in the military training camp, in his industry,
in his town, at the polls, with the welfare of the nation in his
mind, and national service as his purpose. No system of laws, no plan
of administration will do this--it is a problem for leaders, for
education, for the spirit of the youth of America to grapple with.
The reason so many public monuments, promisingly begun in America,
fall through or dwindle, is because it is so difficult, so well-nigh
impossible without constantly renewed stimulants, to keep individuals
firm and enthusiastic in a social and national point of view. The
defense movement has illustrated on a broader scale the same thing
that has been illustrated in this country many times before--the
American religion of individualism in arrogant array against a critical
national need. Only two things--a rediscovery of a stern sense of
duty among American youth; and a recovery of that stern idealism that
persistently exacts of men a social responsibility, a consideration
of a _first_ claim beyond the claim of family, personal success,
career--can establish American citizenship on a sound basis. With the
native American these things are, as I have said, a _rediscovery_. The
tradition exists and was incorporated in the very principles of our
foundation.
With the immigrants, it is different. They come to us, mostly adults,
with certain specific needs and tendencies, and here we need to
assume a constructive and painstaking task--that of interpreting the
principles of Americanism and the obligations as well as the privileges
of American citizenship to the men we invite to come here to do
American work, and permit to be a large percentage of the population of
many American industrial towns.
Immigration is a great force in American life. It is not, as has often
hitherto been regarded, a labor subject or a health subject. It is
primarily a citizenship subject, to be administered along the broad
lines of nationalism and the future best interests of all America. It
is properly an interior subject, and all of our dealings with it should
proceed from a consideration of conditions in America. We admit or
reject people because of the effect on America; we distribute them to
avoid congestion, misery, and bad conditions in cities and to develop
America; we educate them for citizenship in America; we protect them,
looking again toward a better citizenship. We can never have a real
policy of dealing with our immigrant people, from the time they arrive
until they become citizens, so long as officials remain as they are,
unless the administration of existing laws, the drafting of new laws,
gathering of necessary information, and formulation of broad policies,
rest with some one department. Somehow we must treat this matter as
a citizenship and not as a labor matter. It is useless to preach to
the employer that he cease to regard the immigrant as a cog in his
machinery when the government puts this stamp upon him when it admits
him. We now have a probationary period of five years for citizenship.
We can well use that as the period for applying our immigration policy
which shall begin with his admission, exclusion, and deportation within
that period--the deportation clause being extended to conform to the
citizenship standard.
What does Americanization mean in national defense?
_It means putting the American flag_ above all others, abolishing dual
citizenship, and pledging _open_ allegiance to America.
_It means American citizenship for every alien within our borders_,
or deportation and closing our doors to political scouts and birds
of passage. We can no longer endure as a “polyglot boarding house.”
Citizenship will give us an intelligent body of voters, for it
will mark the end of the “voting the hunkies” by ward bosses. This
desecration of American citizenship cannot exist side by side with an
aggressive effort on the part of the public schools of the country to
instruct the foreign born, adults as well as children, in the real
meaning of citizenship. It means, finally, economic stability. The
thousands of immigrants that become “birds of passage” and return
to their own country because they have never been able to make any
American contact except through their pay envelope will be enabled
really to settle their homes, their affections, and their earnings
in America, increasing the prosperity of the immigrant family here,
cementing its bonds with this country, and also contributing to the
prestige and prosperity of the American nation.
_It means one language for all America and the elimination of
illiteracy._ Confusion of tongues and ignorance of American
institutions and opportunities are foes of efficient preparedness.
This means the end of “Little Italys,” “Little Hungaries,” and the end
of filthy, remote foreign villages on the outskirts of our towns and
cities, inhabited by foreign-speaking men and women with no way of
learning American standards of living and American customs, and with
no way to protest against standards of living which in many cases they
do not “lower” at all, but which they accept only because they are too
ignorant to protest when the conditions are forced upon them. There
are to-day thousands of communities where decent living conditions do
not and cannot prevail. Our war contracts are starting boom towns that
are a menace to our very civilization and a source of danger in time
of war. It means a higher level of intelligence, the wiping out of
illiteracy, and the establishment of the rule of the English language
and of a common citizenship.
_It means the abolition of class prejudices and of racial hatreds and
of the_ intolerance of the old stock for new stock, which stand in the
way of United America.
_It means one American standard_ of living. As we cannot have a double
standard of morality, we cannot have a double standard of living. We
can no longer sacrifice the preservation of this country to industrial
necessities. So long as our industrial communities are made up of large
groups of un-Americanized immigrants, without the English language,
without an understanding of American conditions, too helpless to bring
their grievances to the attention of their employers, too ignorant
to understand or trust compromises, if compromises are offered, too
ignorant to force them in legitimate ways if they are not offered,
able to understand only the radical agitators addressing them in their
own language--just so long will the industrial history of America be
blotted by Ludlows, Lawrences, and Wheatlands. The road to American
citizenship, to the English language, and an understanding of American
social and political ideals is the road to industrial peace.
_It means the Americanization of women._ Now women automatically become
citizens with their fathers and husbands, although in some states they
vote. The best Americanization agency is the home. We can only reach
foreign-born women in their homes, and we must go to them. They are
now isolated, forgotten, ignored, and constitute the greatest single
backward factor in the progress of citizenship among women.
It means, lastly, not America first and safety first, which are
sectional and selfish banners under which no man can fight his best,
but liberty, justice, honor, and right first.
This is no small task. The figures for 1910 tell us that America
has about thirty-three million foreign-born people and persons of
foreign-born parentage. One third have, therefore, in our immediate
environment foreign traditions and standards. The problem is to keep
the best of these and make them serve America. No nation in the
civilized world would think itself “prepared” with such an internal
situation, and yet we officially ignore it.
These intricate, delicate, interlocking questions, mostly unsolved in
any national way, are found in education, savings and investments,
standards of living, and in all of the other fields before us. They
are as important and as difficult as those we are solving in military
defenses and industrial mobilization. They are the problems of
nationalism--the things that make the immigrant man a good citizen,
workman, or soldier. They must be considered in any movement for a
unified America. They have always been approached by our government
from some sectional, local, or isolated point of view. They have never
been approached from the national point of view. The 42 volumes of
the Federal Immigration Commission are silent on a national policy
other than the negative one of exclusion. They deal exhaustively with
conditions in industry, in philanthropy, but nowhere do they lead us to
a policy of a program for America that meets its present requirements.
We shall never attain this united America back of our firing line,
in our shops, in our cities, in our schools, on our great arteries
of communications and supply, by the most intelligent policy, by the
wisest of laws, by the fairest enforcement of law, unless each and
every American resident does his share--and realizes that a prepared
America at every point comes back to him and to him alone.
We shall not accomplish preparedness through Americanization without
organization. We have the beginnings of many excellent movements of
Americanization, in much the same state as our army and navy. Each
bureau interested in some phase of the subjects carries on its work,
drafts bills, and enforces laws. We are as wholly lacking in policy,
program, and leadership as in any other phase of preparedness. We do
not yet recognize as a nation that _Americanization_ is fundamental
_preparedness_ and should be vitally related to military and industrial
preparedness and to universal service.
No policy of preparedness can be complete without a strong sense
of international duty and a willingness to defend it as loyally as
American institutions. We are emerging from the haze of what we should
have done to preserve international law. We have before us some
pertinent problems which will test this new-found honor.
We owe it to ourselves, in our new treaties and new relations
arising after the war, to have a thorough understanding in regard to
citizenship so the protection of the American flag will follow every
citizen, native and foreign born, to every country in the world under
whatever conditions.
We owe it to the people who come to our shores asking admission _that
all of the regulations of aliens should be in our national admission
law and not hidden in state and local laws preventing their earning a
living and becoming good citizens. This whole law should be based upon
America’s welfare and capacity for making these men and women good
citizens_. We do not want them unless they are willing to join with us
for defense of American liberty.
When we have a common policy which all America understands and
believes; a program to which every American can give efficient and
loyal service; and leaders that Americans can and will follow, then we
shall be a prepared nation,--standing again as we stood one hundred
and forty years ago: for justice and right and liberty.
“And in support of these truths
we mutually pledge to each other
our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
Printed in the United States of America.
The following pages contain advertisements of a few of the Macmillan
books on kindred subjects
OUR NATIONAL PROBLEMS
Americanization
BY ROYAL DIXON
_$0.50_
What are we doing to Americanize the alien? How can we make sure
that he will emerge from the melting-pot willing to support and
to contribute to our institutions? These are the questions which
Mr. Dixon asks and to which he offers a clear and simple answer,
broad and practical in vision. His suggestions are more than merely
constructively patriotic--they are stirringly hopeful.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
The Heritage of Tyre
BY WILLIAM BROWN MELONEY
_$0.50_
The first, direct, uncompromising demand for a new American mercantile
marine. Mr. Meloney points out the opportunity that is now ours, the
opportunity to recover our lost sea prestige and to set our flag
waving again in every great port of the world. Not only is this
merchant marine needed by our commerce--it is absolutely necessary
and indispensable to the support of a truly adequate navy. The United
States must be a vassal on the seas no longer.
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
Their True Faith and Allegiance
BY GUSTAVUS OHLINGER
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY OWEN WISTER
_$0.50_
A fair, impartial discussion of German propaganda in America describing
the methods in use and the results achieved.
“For the sake of the facts that it gathers, this book should be read
not once, but two or three times, by all Americans who believe in
Union, in Lincoln, and in Liberty--worth keeping in mind and dwelling
upon, not merely to-day, but during many to-morrows. It bears upon the
future of our national health.”--_Owen Wister._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
The Forks of the Road
BY WASHINGTON GLADDEN
_$0.50_
Awarded the prize offered by the Church Peace Union for the best essay
on war and peace.
A powerful indictment of war which calls upon the political and
religious forces of our country to give up preparedness programs and
to follow a policy that will make for the prevalence of peace. Never
has Dr. Gladden written with such fervor and inspiration; his book
goes straight to the heart of our national problem; without cant or
sentimentalism, he shows the course true Americanism must take.
“A wise and noble essay.”--_Independent._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York
“Not since Mercier, Archbishop of Malines, gave his now famous
pastoral letter to the world has more eloquence and truth been
compressed into so small a space.”
The Pentecost of Calamity
BY OWEN WISTER
_Boards, $.50_
“One of the most striking and moving utterances.... Let all Americans
read it.”--_The Congregationalist._
“It is written with sustained charm and freshness of insight.”--_New
York Times._
“It is a flaming thing, itself a tongue of Pentecost.”--_Boston
Advertiser._
“Mr. Wister’s artistic power at its best.”--_Philadelphia Ledger._
“A strong book which sets out to be just a passionate plea to America
to find its own soul.”--_Rabbi Stephen S. Wise._
“In ‘The Pentecost of Calamity’ Owen Wister sees and speaks as a
prophet. With rare spiritual insight and sympathy he penetrates to the
real meaning of the world tragedy under whose shadow we are living. I
am glad we have an American writer able to speak the voiceless longing
of an awakened world.”--_Rev. Charles A. Eaton, Pastor of the Madison
Avenue Baptist Church._
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Publisher 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York