Eagle River review. [volume] (Eagle River, Wis.) 1890-1927, 1921-05-20
FRIDAY, MAY 20, 1921
Americanski

willing to face the facts and apply the remedy, in
stead of playing with palliatives That remedy is
the stoppage of all immigration until we can get
the immediate problem in hand; and then it's rigid
limitation to selected individuals from those races
that are fitted biologcally for assimilation Ameri
canization is only secondarily social process; pri-
mary it is biological problem. 1t must begin in
Europe with wedding out Of those who will not
or cannot be Americanized.
For some years past we have not been Ameri-
canizing large part of our immigrants; they
have been Europeanizng u.s. We have been Teut-
onzed Slavicized, Orientalized mongrelized, terri
orized and sentimentaliZed. And We have been
getting the poorest and not the best Of those
races that we find it hardest to assmilate admira
BILE though many of these races are when they are
living in their own environment and developing
under their own institutions.
In recent novel voice from Greenwich Viii
lage was lifted up in protest against the way our
immigrants have of discarding their picturesque
native costumes when they come to America and
of adopting standardized dress. But that is
about all that large number of them do discard
when they leave Europe They cling tenaciously to
their habits of speech thought. living and. too
often Of filth. Anyone who will walk the streets
of New York and Chicago with open eyes and lis
tening ears will understand what is happening to
America, to Americans to American standards and
American ideals.
In spite of the evidence on every side senti-
mentalists still picture Uncle Sam as clever chef
who can take handful of foreign scraps, sprig
of Americanism and Glove of democracy, and
skillfuly blend the mess into something fine and
desirable Specifically Of course, America is do
ing much for these later-day immigrants, but it is
not making the major part of them into Americans.
change of air, of scene and of job cannot change
the fundamental facts of heredity and it is on these
that race is built. Race character is as fixed
fact as race color and it is modified snd changed
only through slow generations. In the half-breed,
the mestzo and the Eurasian the vices of the pure
bloods are usually accumulated and their virtues
subordinated. And the cross of European oppres-
sion with American liberty begets in too many
cases dangerous license of thought and action.
We are betraying America and our children
for thirty pieces of inflated currency Beneath all
the pleas advanced for unrestricted immigration
pleas that do credit alike to the softness of the
hearts and the heads of many of those who voice
them-there are two real reasons why we are let
ting the alien flood submerge America. The first
is the hoggishness of those men who hope to be-
come rich richer still by exploiting and exhaus-
ting our resources with cheap labor and who are
blind or Indifferent to the revolutionary pests that
they are importing with this infected stock and to
them In reaching for the last dollar they are jeop-
ardizing all that they have and quitting the future
of America. No man ever gets the last dollar. And
then there are those foreign groups who want to
see their races strengthened and ever more domin-
ant in American affairs, not as Americans but as
Germans, say, to pick the most recent demonstra-
ton of this ambition.
Some day America will wake up to the fact
that developement'' as it is being permitted and
encouraged is the great national curse instead of
great national blessing. 1t is providing the next
generation with good cause for cursing. For we
are fatuously strengthing the evee here and there
with few sandbags of Americanization while we
complacently watch the whole river rush through
mile-wide crevasse.
Americans were not fused into one breed in
the melting pot-in the factories and the sluIns.
They were one breed though from many countries
made one people by their viking adventurng across
the seas and their long fight together in the Wild
erness. They were bound into brotherhood by their
common aspiration for a home, church, and a
government that would express their right to have
and to hold what they made by their labor; to wor-
ship as they pleased; and to govern themselves as
a sovereign people, Neither the divine right of
kings nor the divine right of the proletariat came
over with the old stock. The same kind of brains
that once held the first idea now proclaims the
ond. The trouble with our Americanization pro-
gram is that large part of our recent immigrants
can never become Americans. They will always be
Amercanski- Americans with n-American
ideas and ideals. THE SATURDAY EVENING Posi-.