The Coconino sun., 1919-10-24
HOME ECONOMICS IN RELATION TO
 CHARACTERIZATION
(By Mrs. Bentel, before the Flagstaff
 Woman's Club.)

WOmanS CIuD.
 By way of introduction, l will say that the problem of the immigrant would prove less difficult of solution, if some one would clearly set forth its nature. After reading much that has been written upon this subject, from many points of view, can not avoid the conviction that most writers upon the subject do not consider the full character of the problem they discuss. This problem of the immi- grant is not simple one, it is a social, a civic and an economic prob lem all in one, and it's full apprecia- tion on our part involves an under standing of all these factors.
 It is not permissible for me to dis cuss in detail any of the general feat ures of the question of the immigrant and his Americanization. I will, how ever, take a little time for brief enumeration of some of the facts upon which my phase of this subject is necessarily based.
 First, then, let me call attention to fact which is not always kept in mind in discussions of this nature, viz, the changing character of our immi- grafton. It is fact that up to the year 1882 practically our entire immi- grafton came from Great Britain, Scandinavia and Germany. The num- bers of the swarthy peoples from the warmer regions were so small as to be negligible. Now, this so-called "old immigration" that came from northern and western Europe, brought to us the kind of people that have made America all that we fondly i'm agine and believe her to be; in fact, these people were really our ances- tors. But, about 1882 their numbers began to decrease with remarkable rapidity, and other people, so-called "new immigration" began to arrive in overwhelming numbers. The list of these is very large, including Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Persians, Austri- ans, Montenegrans, Bulgarians, Span iards, Greeks, Syrians, Turks, and many others of like character. By 1902, immigrants of this class out numbered the old superior immigrants about 8 to 1; and by 1907 there were four to one.
 As nearly as l can figure out from available estimates, we are at the present time receiving only about 15 per cent of our immigration from northern and western Europe. Mex ico, South America and eastern Asia furnish us about 10 per cent, and the main volume--about 75 per cent--is from southeastern Europe and west ern Asia. Here, then, are some facts which should be kept clearly in mind in our discussions of Americanization Our new Americans are very hetero- genious in character, and the great majority of them come from the re- gions that do not produce desirable material for American citizenship.
 So it becomes obvious, as result of the study of the foregoing facts, that the Americanization of the for eigner can not refer to any definite process. In using this expression, the question naturally arises, What for eigner do you mean" for certainly no one simple process can be applied to the making over of such a hopeless mixture of humanity. Each group furnishes some special problem which requires independent solution.
 Dutch, Scandinavians, Belgians, and Danes present scarcely any prob lem. Probably the worst that can be said against them is that they settle in communities, tend to retain their own language and do not become as- simulated in the way that we desire. But they present only minor prob lem in our campaign of Americaniza- tion, for they are not menace to our institutions.
 Formerly we welcomed the Ger mans, for whom we had unbounded but the war forced upon our attention their tendency to a di- vided allegiance, which we now agree will be intolerable and is not to be in the future. We will have no more German-Americans in our republic. But the war has also brought out the fact that the Germans were not our only hyphenates; and again I feel safe in saying that the American people will tolerate no more American citizens with the name of some other country preceding the name American as qualifying ad- jective.
 At the present moment we have the