History of the Indiana democracy, 1816-1916, Part 67

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1104

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"A report from Washington explains that pork-grabbing is in disfavor. The re- cent election was disastrous to many of the nation's most notorious 'pork' congress- men. They fell by the wayside in spite of the plunder they had taken home to their districts. The public showed that it does not endorse looting the treasury for any purpose.

"Too much credit can not be given to for- mer Senator Taggart for the stand he took against the 'pork' abuses. Extravagance had been accepted in Congress as illogical and wasteful, but a traditional if not neces-

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sary evil. Many saw the truth, no doubt, but Senator Taggart had the courage of his convictions.

"The denunciation of 'pork' and waste, delivered by Senator Taggart, uncovered the utter defenselessness of the system. He turned on the light and showed the petti- ness of the whole business, and how it has been utilized to strengthen political fences at the expense of the public treasury.

"It took courage to do what Senator Tag- gart did, in the face of records of many col- leagues in Congress. But he had the nerve and he made such a thorough job of the ex- posure that he probably has crippled the 'pork' grabber for all time. The people never again will applaud a member whose claim to recognition is based on the waste- ful appropriations he has been able to put through for his district or State."

Now that an organized effort is to be made to Americanize the millions of aliens in this country, it is in order to inquire why efforts in that direction were not be- gun long ago, during the years that im- migration by the million was at its height. All political parties are censurable for neglect of duty in this particular. For years and years the chief, if not sole, ob- ject of party leaders has been to secure votes instead of Americanizing aliens. The indifference regarding this matter has been sharply condemned by men who have given it close attention and earnest thought. Chief among these is Dr. Wil- liam Norman Guthrie, New York divine and educator. In an address delivered at the convention of the Ohio Federation of Woman's Clubs this gentleman vigorously assailed the educational and social system of the United States as the cause of hy- phenism. "If you would make a good American of the immigrant, and especial- ly of the immigrant's children, you should teach him in the schools the traditions and the history of his own country in his own language, and at the same time teach him American history in the language of this country." This, he asserted, was, in his opinion, the best plan for bringing the

foreigner to realize the advantages of citizenship on this side of the water.

"When you teach the immigrant that to be a good citizen of the United States he must at once become a traitor to his native country, you are teaching him to have but little respect for the country of his adop- tion," declared Dr. Guthrie. "The cus- toms, the habits, the traditions of the immigrant must be assimilated with those of the United States, if the immi- grant is to become a real American," said the speaker. "If he must be a Polish- American, a French-American, a German- American, or any other kind of an Ameri- ican, let him with love for the folk-nature of his own land be, above all other things, a real American in his citizenship here. These things can be taught not by making him desert the ideals-the customs of the land of his nativity, but by assisting him to preserve them and at the same time teaching him love for the ideals of this country." Dr. Guthrie's address undoubt- edly was one of the strongest heard during the convention. It was absolutely free from partisanship or reflection on the peo- ples of any country. He has given special study to his subject, that of "Americani- zation." At the present time he is located in New York in charge of the church of St. Mark's-in-the-Bowerie, where he conducts classes for children of foreign parentage along the lines suggested in his address here. He is well known in Ohio and was for nine years located in Cincinnati. "Ques- tions of the nature covered in my address," declared Dr. Guthrie when interviewed, "are not solved because of the very simple fact we never really face the issue. There are no real Americans in this country, but there are all sorts of citizens who have sprung from different nationalities and who have never known the traditions of the land of their parents. If there is a man in this country three generations re- moved from the land of his parents, who would take up arms against the United

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States in behalf of the ruler of that foreign power, it is because that man's antecedents have not been aided in assimilating the folk nature of the foreign country, taught in its own language, and at the same time given lessons in American history in the language of this country. Assimilation through thorough education is the only means by which good Americans may be made of the foreign elements. Your teach- ers, your neighbor or yourself can not turn up your noses at the custom of a Pole or of any other man of foreign birth and then expect to gain that man's respect for America. Our best citizens do not come from the cultured classes of Europe for they will not assimilate with American cus- toms. They must come from those of the humble walks of life and who can be taught through assimilation. America was made by the Almighty for the assimilation of the races of the old world. Its location, its mountain ranges and its climate surely seem to make it so. Every foreigner ex- cept those from the British Isles comes to the United States at a disadvantage and that one disadvantage the one of language. He is shunted off to himself, he is not given his chance; he retains the love of his own country, its customs and even its citizen- ship if it has any." *

* *

"America is not given to solve the prob- lem of the enemy alien until she solves the problem of the friendly alien." This was the statement made by Miss Frances A. Kellor, assistant to the chairman of the na- tional Americanization committee and for- merly chief of the division of aliens of the resource mobilization bureau of the New York state adjutant-general's office. Miss Kellor was positive in her declaration that if the United States wanted to avoid a re- currence of the East St. Louis riots, or the labor troubles which resulted in the de- portation of the I. W. W. sympathizers from Bisbee, Ariz., then the nation would have to make a great effort to bring the friendly aliens into closer touch with

America's standard of living. The alien, she said, was always the lowest paid, did the dirtiest work, and was the worst treated of all laboring classes, and hence was always ready to listen to the seduc- tive call of any person who wished to make trouble. She related several experiences which came under her notice personally while she was in the state adjutant gener- al's office, a position she accepted at the request of Governor Whitman, showing the great risk incurred from a manufacturer's going blithely along with no thought as to what his alien workmen were doing or what they were thinking. What the coun- try needs, according to Miss Kellor, is a central bureau of aliens in Washington to handle the whole question. "The most ef- fective tool in the hands of the hostile resi- dent of America is industrial unrest," said Miss Kellor. "The basis of this unrest is the maladjustment of the friendly immi- grant to conditions of life in America. Take the recent labor troubles in this country, the race riots in East St. Louis, where strikes on the part of alien workmen were followed by the importation of Negroes to take their places. In the zinc and lead mines of Missouri note the attacks by Americans on alien laborers. Look at the disturbances in the Arizona copper mines. It will be remarked that in practically all instances the leaders have been the I. W. W., and the I. W. W. are mostly aliens."

Whether Patriotism in the United States is decaying is dispassionately discussed in Harper's Magazine for June by William Roscoe Thayer :

"There are, of course, radicals who, in this age of dissolution, hold that patriot- ism, like religion and like the rest of the most sacred family ties, is a worn-out ideal, a pretty but fatuous survival of a supersti- tious stage in human development. They argue, too, that because morals vary in different lands, morality is 'a mere ques- tion of latitude,' and therefore, that it may be disregarded. They had no part in shap- ing the laws, religious or social, which have

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been handed down and still govern public affairs and private conduct; why, then, should they heed them? With these and similar pleas they justify their egotism. In truth, however, the man or woman who reasons thus is the most pitiable of human beings. Not to feel that you are part of a community is really to be unhuman ; for the animals have this feeling by instinct, and in ants and bees it produces results which rival those of the highest type of men. To be shut up in the prison of your own self, without even a peephole through which you can look out upon others or communicate with them ; to pass your time in such solitary confinement, unsustained by any fellow feeling, unstirred by any motive except the gratification of selfish desires, is a form of punishment more cruel than any devised by medieval tortures. In general, persons who announce, often somewhat boastfully, that they have dis- carded patriotism-as if by so doing they proved their superior intelligence-do not philosophize. They pursue their own ease and comfort. Most of their days, until an emergency comes, they give little thought to the country, which remains an abstrac- tion for them except when it calls on them to pay taxes. They grumble if the local government allows the streets, or the water supply, or the policing, to run down; but even then they do not take the trouble to go to the polls and vote for a better mayor. If they are in business they probably regard the national government as a vast purveyor of benefits for those citizens who know how to get them. They usually take no more thought of what the country does for them than little children take of the means by which their parents supply them with food and clothes. Children pay back in affection, but the unpatriotic egotists feel neither gratitude nor affection; instead of being thankful for what they have, they complain that it is so little."

On the Negro question a good deal is pre- sented on preceding pages of this volume, all of which will be adjudged germane to a clear understanding of the problem with which the nation was obliged to wrestle at various stages of our country's history. We are far from being through with certain phases of these problems. What is of spe-

cial interest regarding the same is suc- cinctly and clearly set forth by one of Ohio's foremost journalists, George F. Burba, for many years chief editorial writ- er for the Dayton News, and now officiat- ing in a similar capacity on the Columbus Evening Dispatch. Mr. Burba served as secretary to Governor James M. Cox dur- ing the latter's first term as chief execu- tive of the Buckeye commonwealth. The present situation is thus discussed by Mr. Burba :

"There isn't going to be another war between the North and the South on ac- count of the Negro. There will be no more armies of the blue and the gray op- posing each other because of the colored man. But there is 'bad blood' brewing on his account, just the same, and the South- ern newspapers are saying 'harsh things' about us on account of the same fellow that caused the argument in 1861-which argument continued through four bloody years and disagreeable ones.

"The trouble is simple enough. North- ern men have lately invaded the South and induced thousands of Negroes to come North-to work. The Southerners have just awakened to the fact that the South needs these same colored laborers, and the papers have set up a howl about it. They are claiming that it isn't fair to have these Northern men invading the South inducing the colored folks to go North.

"But it is a business proposition. It is never pleasant to have your 'help' leave you. All of us have experienced that un- pleasantness. But the fellow who has a day's labor to sell is in the same condition as the fellow who has a bale of cotton to sell, and we note that our Southern friends who have cotton to sell try to find the best market for it. So they ought not to blame the colored man who has a day's labor to sell for also seeking the best market for the labor.

"We shall not argue whether it is better for the colored man to leave the South. There is a good deal to be said on both sides of that question. But the fact is that the citizens of this country are free to seek the best market for their labor, and to go to those communities where they be- lieve they can secure the best wages or the best working conditions. So the only thing

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the South can consistently do to meet the competition of the North in the matter of inducements to the Negro is to pay as good wages and to furnish as good working con- ditions as the Northern employer. That would settle the whole question."

Thoroughly sound are the views ex- pressed by E. E. Rittenhouse, president of the Life Extension Institute, relative to American Responsibility for Alien Igno- rance of Our Ideals :

"During the fourteen years preceding the outbreak of the present war the flight of Europeans to the United States num- bered 13,255,207. For any lack of knowl- edge among these newcomers of our insti- tutions and ideals and the higher purposes of our government the American people are largely responsible. We made no effort to instruct them as to their obligations and duties as residents or citizens of our coun- try. We turned them loose to learn the meaning of Americanism in the hard school of experience. We choked the 'melt- ing pot.' Large numbers of them have failed to fuse.

"The public schools will take care of the children, but we need an educational plan, a special school of citizenship, for foreign adults.

"The duty of teaching these newcomers what their public responsibilities are seems imperative. Loyalty to the law in time of peace and to the nation in time of war can be expected from the majority of our foreign population, but the unfused and disloyal few need attention before damage is done and discredit brought upon the worthy." * *

Commenting on the thoughtless accusa- tions and strictures of a contemporary on the East St. Louis bloody conflict between whites and blacks, Charles G. Sefrit, the foremost Republican journalist of South- ern Indiana, gave forceful expression to his views on the race problem in these im- pressive sentences :

"The Germans, of course, had no more to do with the East St. Louis uprising than they had with the lynching of members of the Mafia at New Orleans years ago, or the riots at Homestead, the sanguinary battles at Paterson, the great railroad

strike in Chicago and the bloody duels be- tween the striking miners and the constab- ulary of Colorado and Idaho.

"Deplorable as it is, all the theorizing in the world will not adjust the condition in this country which arises from racial antagonisms that exist between the whites of the population and the blacks. We may argue until we are black in the face and preach the beauties of the universal broth- erhood of man, regardless of color, until our tongues are paralyzed in the effort, but the plain, bare, unmistakable fact remains that the bias among the white men is so firmly fixed that the intermingling of the whites and the blacks in industrial equality is an impossible accomplishment.

"The United States has no more serious internal problem than this racial an- tagonism. The solution of it is one of the political mysteries that time alone can un- veil. There may be found a way. Who points this out will take rank in the his- tory of the Republic with Washington and Lincoln. The solution may come from the Negroes themselves, from one of their race, great and strong enough to take up the work begun by Booker T. Washington; some Negro power, foresight and influence, who can induce his people to confine their energies to that sure salvation for them, the tilling of the soil, in which honorable and thrifty pursuit they would be unmo- lested in their quest of independence."

* *

Here is a thought that is well worth be- ing taken into account when the forms of government are under consideration : "Un- limited power is the ideal thing when it is in safe hands. The despotism of heaven is the one absolutely perfect government. An earthly despotism would be the abso- lutely perfect earthly government, if the conditions were the same, namely, the despot the most perfect individual of the human race, and his lease of life perpetual. But as a perishable perfect man must die, and leave his despotism in the hands of an imperfect successor, an earthly despotism is not merely a bad form of government, it is the worst possible."-Mark Twain.

* *

About as valuable a contribution to cur- rent comment as to "What Shall We Do

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With the Negro?" is the following from the homes, either personally or through the pen of that sturdy champion of humani- laundry which we send to them. tarianism, the Rev. Charles Stelzle:

"Movement of negroes from the South to take the places of white men in big in- dustrial enterprises has already borne fruit in the East St. Louis race riot.

"With the departure of the immigrant population to the seat of war in Europe, there remained only the Negro to exploit and he has been coming in a steady stream to Northern cities.

"By bringing the black man into compe- tition with the white man, employers of labor have raised a social problem as diffi- cult to meet as any by which our country is confronted.

"Booker T. Washington once said, 'I can not hold any man in the gutter without staying in the gutter myself.'

"And Washington was right. As a mat- ter of self-protection, it behooves us to care for the Negro. If we keep the Negro in the gutter, we shall be compelled to stay there with him.

"Without discussing the race question in any way, let us look at a few outstand- ing facts in regard to our treatment of the Negro.

"We compel him to live in the worst sec- tions of our towns and cities, often without drainage or sewerage or garbage service, with scarcely any of the sanitary condi- tions in house or yard or street which whites consider an absolute necessity.

"We drive the worst forms of immor- ality into the Negro quarters and then curse the Negro because of his moral weak- ness. If there is to be a red light district in town, it is dumped into the area into which we also dump the Negro popula- tion.

"It would be a comparatively easy mat- ter to produce statistics which indicate that the Negro is the worst criminal in the world, but how can he help becoming such ? We subject him to the severest tests of our city life-physical, moral and political- and then cynically declare the 'nigger' is no good anyway.

"But there is another side to this ques- tion. The negroes who live under these unsanitary conditions are our laundresses, nurses and cooks. If there is contagious disease in their own homes-and there is much of it-they are sure to bring it to our

"There is one big fact we have got to reckon with-the Negro came to the United States against his will and he is going to stay here. He will not return to Africa to establish a Liberian republic, as some people have fondly wished.

"After bringing the Negro to this coun- try, for 250 years we systematically ex- punged from the Negro race the best quali- ties which fit a man for citizenship in a democracy.

"It is now simply a question as to wheth- er he is to be a 'good' Negro or a 'bad' Negro, and the answer to this question de- pends as much upon the whites as it does upon the blacks.

"Let us give the Negro a square deal. Neither race hatred nor mawkish senti- mentality will settle this delicate question. The South can not settle it alone and the North can not do the work of the South. The North and the South, the city and the country, must attack the situation together, for this is a national problem."

* *

Substantial reasons why the people of all Europe, outside the realm of ambitious war lords and incorrigible militarists, are yearning for peace and prayerfully look- ing forward to a cessation of carnage and devastation, may be found in this sugges- tive summing up of the results of bloody war by the Berliner Tageblatt:

"War loans of $87,000,000,000; loss in dead and wounded, 24,000,000 men; killed, 7,000,000 men ; crippled for life, 5,000,000 men; loss through decrease of birth rate in all belligerent countries, 9,000,000 men. ."The gold production of the world dur- ing the last five hundred years amounted to $15,000,000,000, or less than one-fifth of the cost of the awful world war. In $5 gold pieces the $87,000,000,000 raised in war loans would form a belt that could be wound around the earth nine times.

"The funeral cortege of the 7,000,000 men killed would reach from Paris to Vladivostok, if one hearse followed the other.

"When the war began, the combined pub- lic debt of all European States was a little over $25,000,000,000, and now it is $112,- 000,000,000. The British merchant fleet in 1914 represented a value of about $950,-

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000,000. That is less than the annual in- terest England now has to pay for her war debt. Before the war Germany exported goods to the amount of $113,000,000 per year to the British colonies. By cutting off this export England can eventually reim- burse herself for her losses, but this will take more than two hundred years.

"Germany, with the amount spent by her for the war, could have bought all the cot- ton fields, the copper mines and the whole petroleum industry of the United States and still would have had several billion dol- lars left over.

"Russia, with her war expenses, might have covered her immense territories with a net of railways as close as that of Bel- gium; and France, whose losses in men are larger than the entire male population of Alsace-Lorraine, could have bought all the Portugese and Dutch colonies with the money she sacrificed for the war.

"With the enormous wealth destroyed by the war, Europe might have been made a paradise on earth instead of a howling wilderness. There is no doubt that the aw- ful struggle would have been avoided if the nations had any idea of its enormity when it started."

Among students of government there is substantial agreement that the more elec- tive officers there are in municipalities and states, the less real democracy exists. This statement, evoked by the huge number of candidates to be voted on at our biennial election, is made on the highest Democratic authority. In his "Constitutional Govern- ment in the United States," Woodrow Wil- son writes:

"All the peculiarities of party govern- ment in the United States are due to the infinite multiplication of elective offices. * *

* The people have, under our con- stitution and statutes, been assigned the power of filling innumerable elective of- fices; they are incapable of wielding that power because they have neither the time nor the necessary means of co-operative action ; the power has therefore been taken away from them, not by law, but by cir- cumstances, and handed over to those who have the time and the inclination to supply the necessary organization ; and the system of election has been transformed into a system of practically irresponsible ap-

pointment to office by private party man- agers. * * * We must decrease the number and complexity of the things the voter has to do; concentrate his attention upon a few men whom he can make respon- sible, a few objects upon which he can easily center his purpose; make parties his instruments and not his masters by an ut- ter simplification of the things he is ex- pected to look to."

That is evidently good common sense. Woodrow Wilson, in addition to being President of the United States, is presi- dent of the Short Ballot League, the aim of which is to reduce the amazing multi- plicity of elective officers. The framers of Indiana's first constitution had this point in mind when they provided that the people should vote for only two State offi- cers-Governor and Lieutenant-Governor. For thirty-five years the people of Indi- ana were entirely content with this ar- rangement. When, under the new consti- tution, the list of elective State officers was enlarged by adding a few more, it was not done in response to popular clamor, but rather to conform to the notion that the Legislature should be absolved from the task of choosing Secretary, Auditor and Treasurer of State.

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History of the Indiana democracy, 1816-1916, Part 67

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926 Publication date: 1917 Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 1104

Author: Stoll, John B., 1843-1926
Publication date: 1917
Publisher: Indianapolis : Indiana Democratic Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 1104