Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1919-12-03
NEW YORK SOLVES
ALIEN PROBLEMS
Geographic Society Bulletin
Shows How City American
ICES Immigrant Citizens.

New York city, just now being
| criticized as a hotbed of alien agita-
ton, is cited by bulletin of the
! National Geographic Society for it's
tremendous service in absorbing our
Immigrant citizens
II the general concern about the
| alien menace leads to broader national
sympathy for those places which have
! borne the brunt of a national burden,
| 1t will not have been in vain, says
| the bulletin, which quotes from
communication by William Joseph
Showalter concerning New York's i'm
| migration problem as follows:
ANY story of New York begins with
| its people, and in it's vast aggregation
! of humanity there is a wealth of in
| terest.
Advises Study of New York.
Let those who have been pessi-
mystic about our immigration study
| New York. 1t seems unbelievable ;
but IL every resident whose parents
were born in America were to leave
| the city its standing as the second
| most populous center in the world
would not be affected In other
words, the number of immigrants and
| their children resident in New York
is almost equal to the combined popu-
| lations of Paris and Philadelphia and
greater than the combined populations
OF chicago and Berlin.
Three people out of every four in
alien flags or are the children Of the
| forei gn-born. But who that has
studied the situation can gainsay
New York's Americanism?
| ''The story of how the one-fourth
of the city's population that is of
native ancestry has Americanized the
three-fourths that is foreign in birth
or parentage is revealed in the
schools.
| "He who studies at first hand the
processes of Americanization and
citizen building finds work being
done which would stir the heart Of
the most Unconditional observer. He
realizes that all of what is called
New York's politics, stories of graft
| and the like, are but the froth and
foam which fieck the waves of the
! city's life, while beneath runs a deep
current of progress and public spirit,
| which takes form in carefully con-
deived and splendidly executed health
laws, in school system that has &C
complished wonders, in a water sys-
tenn surprising anything of its kind
on earth, and in a hundred and one
other ways not quite SO dramatic as
the printed stories of its politics and
graft, but none the less full of human
interest.
| Many Fail to Attend College.
| along with many other cities.
New York long since learned that a
vast majority of the children who
attend public schools do not go to
| college afterward. From that sug-
> eestion developed the idea of voca-
I tional education, which is now &C
| complishing wonders. Perhaps more
than any other one agency it is help
| ing to transform in heart and action
| the alien life of the metropolis into
mart and parcel of our body polite.
| The immigrants children are being
| fitted for that economic independence
| which comes with skilled hands in
stead of being sent forth from school
| with unframed hands and poorly
trained minds.
when one reflects that seven out
of every nine children of school age
in New York are of immigrant par
entaee. a situation is disclosed that
I might be termed startling, especially
| when it is remembered that the school
| army of Greater Gotham is so large
| that if it marched ten abreast in
| close formation the front rank would
sbe boarding a North river ferryboat
when the rear guard was crossing
the Schuylkill out of Philadelphia.
| "It is a staggering task which con-
| fronts the city in Americanizing such
huge numbers of youthful foreigners.
Indeed, did it not happen that New
! York is so rich-with assessed values
| greater than those of the next seven
| cities in America combined-it might
| we'll call upon the national govern
ment for aid. But with such wealth