The call of the North. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1923-1924, 1923-10-31


western European kind, only 2.7 pei
cent could not read and write wher
admitted to our gates, while the pro.
portion among the modern type OF
immigrants averaged 1878 per cent.
During the years from 1899 to 1909
when the flood came largely from
Southern and Eastern Europe, Of the
7,199,061 immigrants, IA years Of
age and over, 1,91s,s25 were illiterate
a otal of 26.7 per cent.
To give an exact, specific and ap.
palling illustration, the state of New
Jersey in 1920 had 127, 661 illiterates
of whom 1855 were foreign born
Returning to our recent immigra.
ton, the lowest percentage of I'LL.
teracy was among Scandinavians
that being only four-tenths of one
per cent. Next came the Scotch with
seven-tenths. The English ranked
third, their per cent being one anG
one-tenth. Other nationalities with
less than five per cent of illiterates
were Finnish, Bohemians, Welsh
Irish and Dutch. The French anG
Germans were slightly over five pc,
cent.
The highest percentage of litter.
acy was among Portuguese at 6S.2
Other nationalities were as follows:
Turkish, $50; South Italians, 54.2;
Syrians, SAL; Rutherianse, 81; Lith.
uanians, 4s.S; Bulgarians, 41.s; Dial.
nations, Alb; Russians 1876; Croa.
tians, 1854; Polish, 35.4; Rumanians
34!7; Greeks, 27; Hebrews, 25.7;
Slovaks, 24.3; and Armenians, PAL
The average for this new immigra.
tion was the figure have given-35.e
per cent.
That is staggering proportion
about three in ten among immigrants
as compared with less than one in
each hundred of native Americans
throughout most of the country.
All these alarming facts relate to
the very rudiments of education-the
common grade school kind.
In 1917, the literacy test was put
into our immigration laws. Improve
ment has resulted, but what had al
ready happened could not be thus un-
done. The densely ignorant who were
admitted before that date will remain
lifelong drag upon Americanism.
I submit that this nation should at
once take steps adequately, universal
ly, to provide for the education of her
children, both native and adopted. AS
I shall show in discussing the public
health, mental deficiency has become
so prevalent as to be positively menac-
ing. With hundreds of thousands
perhaps millions, it is now undeniably
matter of heredity. We must have
a compulsory educational system to
reach and uplift every future citizen.
1t must be publicly sponsored and
paid for without single parochial
exception. There should beA Cabinet
Department of Education, second to
none in its public Importance.
(2) Health. This is quite as fun
damental as education. Mental fit
ness for citizenship is not possible
without physical wholesomeness and
stamina. The two go together.
Failure in either field brings the in
evitable blight of social inadequates,
with an ever increasing measure of
both private and public burdens.
Mankind is afflicted with many dis
eases, but I speak now only of those
which are constitutional, inherent in
the blood, often incurable, and recog-
nized by scientists as causing the
almost complete incapacity of their
victims.
The most insidious of these groups
in their effect upon our citizenship
are the nervous and mental maladies
such as insanity, epilepsy, and, most
widespread and the least recognized
of all, mental deficiency.
Venereal diseases are repugnant
and terrible. They are often COM
municable to the innocent. They are
transmissable through heredity. They
impose indirect moral, mental and
physical penalties that no stretch of
the imagination can measure, because
finite wisdom cannot penetrate the
ages yet to come.
Consumption and cancer, alcoholism,
drug addiction and blindness these
also are great hereditary diseases we
should consider. They lower, and in
most cases destroy, the citizenship
potentialities of those afflicted; they
menace the healthy; they imperil our
future Americanism.
No other part of this study has so
depressed me. am trying to en-
compass generations in my picture,
because generations in a nation should
be as days to an individual. Viewing
our situation thus, 1 stand appalled,
at the gigantic evil powers of the
organic diseases that are slowly sap
ping the national strength. And the
part the recent immigrant has play
ed and is playing in this terrible
tragedy gives it primary pertinency
in that connection.
Do you know that among 2,754,0OO
conscripted men, between the ages of
1s and 80, the very cream of our
population, there were found 34s,O0O
Unbeatable diseases? Here among
the husbands of our daughters, the