The Coconino sun., 1918-05-17
WHAT'S WRONG WITH AMERICA
 AND WHY

The following editoral from the Saturday Evening Post, under the caption of '"The Scum of the Melting Pot" deserves the earnest considera- tion of every true, thinking American;
 American carelessness, cussedness and politics are responsible for the in ternal situation that has caused so much anxiety during the past year. In the heat and stir of preparation the scum has risen to the top.
 "As America has turned her face toward the enemy every dirty cur in the country has snapped at her heels. We have found that enemy intrenched in America as well as in France sapping in our schools, undermining in our press, burrowing in our muni- cipal and state governments-snipi whenever a back has been turned. ''It looks bad, but it is only scum, and beneath it Americanism is coming to the boiling point. We are in the healthy condition of knowing what the trouble is. We have been too free with America-giving everythinp and demanding nothing. We have had happy -go-lucky, don't-care theory that nobody need worry about what the un- assimilated foreigner did or thought; that everything would come out right in the end; that there was some magic in our air that would transform the lazy, the weak. the vicious, into hard working, honest, desirable American citizens. We have considered the "rights" of every nationality in the world except our own.
 "The immigrant who comes to America to become an American and who works at that job should be well come; but of late years too many of another kind have settled here. Pow erful influences have been at work against their Americanization in the old way. Free entry and opportunity have been given not only to the hon. est, sturdy immigrant with sincere admiration for our country and the will to work and become a loyal American, but to the fellow who had only the will to work us and against us. The foreign agitator has been welcomed and told to go ahead and agitate, even when he blackguarded our country and lied to the ignorant and credulous about our government The professional troublemaker has been permitted to go ahead and make trouble. Almost any scoundrel in Europe who fancied a trip to our shores has had fair field and plenty of favor over here--because "this is a free country and the refuge of the op- pressed" It has been the refuge of the oppressed, but it has also been the haven of lot of rascals who have abused our hospitality and besmirched our institutions, not only from the soap box but from the forum.
 "The final blame for these condi- tions rests at the door of naturalized and native-born American politicians | and demagogues, who,o to gain and keep office, have basely appealed to sectional and race prejudice, to pas sion, ignorance and discontent. They have made possible the perpetuation of a babel of tongues, a segregation of races, growing class prejudice in this country. They have exalted the hyphen until it has become a badge of honor; they have groveled to every vote except the American vote. It is about time to show them what the solid Americanism of this country can do to them at the polls.
 Added to all these forces. selfish, grating, sinister, we have the class appeal--the easiest of all with the uneducated or half-educated foreigner who has been class-ridden all his life, without the opportunity that he has over here to become member of any class for which his brains and his will to work qualify him. As the appeal to discontent, to class, is the easiest, so it offers the best field for the dema- gogue. the grafter, the cheap "intel- lectual" lime-lighter. Its apostles, linen with soft hands and hard faces" or with hard hands and soft faces, are everywhere just now-among labor, bidding it take advantage of the na-