Weekly journal-miner., 1919-11-26

good Americanism than a dozen so,
 cieties.
 Did you ever think what this wild
 clamor for the teaching of American.
 ism means? It means that for long
 time back a lot of us have been
 mighty poor Americans, and that
 from the time foreigner landed ir
 America and began watching us he
 saw us doing things that were not good for our country and not the sort of Americanism that we could wish
 our incoming citizens to learn and i follow.
 It isn't in high places and in b:g
 things that this has done the most
 harm but in everyday life everywhere
 because from top to bottom and III
 every place very few of us have
 thought it up to us to live the ki1d
 of Americanism we would ike to
 have our foreign born citizens copy
 and enlarge upon.
 We haven't been the inventors of
 graft in public life and fraud in poli- tics by good many thousand years; but I suspect that we have laughed
 at it more and taken it just as a joke
 and a matter of course more than
 any other nation. In fact 1 have an
 idea we have made a joke of |. so long that we have never meant a
 tenth of the funny things we have said
 But how was the man who was a stranger among us to know that ir- dividually lot of us wouldn't sell our votes at any price; that we really tried to vote for the best man-and that we didn't believe for a minute that the government was rotten through and through?
 All my own life I have heard the men of intelligence and good stand ing say that politics was a dirty game; something that no decent man could afford to get into-and such mess that it wasn't any use for any one to try to clean it up. Now I knew they really didn't believe that at heart-that any one of them would do his best to make things better but how was a foreigner among us to know that it wasn't our real feeling? How was he to become a citizen with a heart full of pride and hope ill the good of his new government if we who were born under the government and helped to make it said such things of it?
 There's the weak point in our clamor for "Americanism," for red blooded Americanism" as the news papers love to put it-that we have not been teaching it to ourselves and putting it into our daily lives for a hundred years back. How have we the face now to talk about what it will do for our foreign born citizens when we have never tried 1t on our selves? Suppose that from the min ute foreigner landed in America he heard and saw us all boosting for America, living for the honor of minding our business so that America would be the better be- cause of us-if we did that he would just soak up the best sort of Amer icanism out of the very air, and there would be no need to teach it because everybody was living it already.
 l wonder if you know what hap pens to the average foreign man when he lands in America? No mat ter what dreams he may have had i about the greatness of America and ] -he opportunities in America for him to be finer sort of man he begins to lose them one by one.
 If he is poor man and has 10 take ! ] job anywhere he can get it the first f English words he IS likely to hear are 'cuss worlds" he will learn them be- fore he learns anything else because he hears them all the timc He will | earn too, that if you bring a bottle 3f whiskey to the boss he will favor Cu Oh lliC JUL, Ol llldl II you $>lNG SO 1 and so a part of your wages he will | get you a better job; and mighty soon he will hear that if you get citizens papers and can vote, the Big Boss will tell you which man to vote for or the job will be gone.
 So the dreams of better govern nent and of a better way to live go pit by bit; and we naive Americans nave not tried to keep them from go- ng-but now we want to teach the which we would no; practice ourselves to these people rom other lands
 But all this doesn't touch you: l wonder if it doesn't? Suppose a per ion of foreign birth worked for you or a year-what would he have earned from you in that year? Would { have been to joke about the gov .rnment? To talk as f nobody we're good or honest? Would your contri- button to his knowledge of English lave been 'cuss words" and coarse tories: Some years ago l taught in | mission night school in an Arizona own. The pupils were all working nen of foreign birth seeking to learn 1uglish. What they had already