From: Emily Green Balch, Our Slavic Fellow Citizens (New York: Charities Publication Committee, 1910).
[note: Balch was a sociologist]
… in the United States
assimilation is not quite without signs of difficulty and apprehension and
conflicting purposes – signs of dread and jealousy, on the part of Americans,
of the alien influences brought in by the streams of newcomers, and, on the
part of the immigrants, of jealousy of American influence and dread of
Americanizing pressure.
A Polish View
One comes sometimes with a
sense of shock to a realization of points of view strange to one’s own. Take,
for instance, a conversation that I once had with a Polish-American priest. I
had said something about “Americans,” that they were not apt to be interested
in Polish history, or something of the sort.
Instantly he was on fire.
“You mean English-Americans,”
he said. “You English constantly speak
as if you were the only Americans, or more American than others. The History of
the United States, published by Scribners, is written wholly from the English
point of view, and that is very common. Even such a great paper as the Chicago Tribune is written by men who are just
over from England, and who yet speak of foreigners when they mean any Americans
but English. For instance, in a recent bank failure they said that many
‘foreigners’ would lose, referring to German-Americans and others who had been
in the country for generations. A priest born in Baltimore of Italian parents,
speaking English and Italian equally naturally, will see priests, new come from
Ireland, promoted over him because he is a ‘foreigner.’”
I remarked that if I went to
Poland he would not consider me a Pole.
“No, that is different,” was
his reply. “America was empty, open to all comers alike. There is no reason for
the English to usurp the name of Americans. They should be called Yankees if
anything. That is the name of English-Americans. There is no such thing as
an American nation. Poles form a nation, but the United States is a
country, under one government, inhabited by representatives of different
nations. As to the future, I have, for my part, no idea what it will
bring. I do not think that there will
be amalgamation, one race composed of many.
The Poles, Bohemians and so forth, remain such, generation after
generation. Switzerland has been a republic for centuries, but never has
brought her people to use one language.
For myself, I do favor one language for the United States, either English or some other, to be used
by every one, but there is no reason why people should not also have another
language; that is an advantage, for it opens more avenues to Europe and
elsewhere.”
He was indignant at the
requirement of the naturalization law of 1906, making a knowledge of English a
condition of citizenship . . . “What are Americans?”
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The Second Generation American
A thousand more times to show
the separateness of the foreign life in our midst might be piled together, and
in the end they would all be as nothing against the irresistible influence through
which it comes about that the immigrants find themselves the parents of
American children. They are surprised,
they are proud, they are scandalized, they are stricken to the heart with
regret, -- whatever their emotions they are powerless. The change occurs in different ways among
the educated and the uneducated, but it occurs in either case.
The prestige of America and
the hatred of children for being different from their playmates is something
the parents cannot stand against. The
result is often grotesque. A graduate
at one of our women’s colleges, the daughter of cultivated Germans, told a
friend: “My father made me learn German and always was wanting me to read
it. I hated to have anything to do with
it. It seemed to me something
inferior. People in the West call a
thing ‘Dutch’ as a term of scorn. It was not till I was in college that I
realized what German literature and philosophy have meant in the world, and
that to be a German is not a thing to be ashamed of.” Less educated parents, or those using a language less important
than German, have a still more difficult task to hold the next generation. “I
ain’t no Hun, I’m an American,” expresses their reaction on the situation.
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Bad Example
. . . Unfortunately, . . . the immigrant generally begins at the
bottom. His helplessness makes him sought for as prey by sharpers and grafters;
it is all that the immigration officials can do to keep them off as he
lands. As soon as he leaves the
paternal care of Ellis Island they attack in force. Boarding-house runners, shady employment agents, sellers of
shoddy wares, extortionate hack drivers and expressmen beset his way. One hears all sorts of stories of abuses
from both Americans and Slavs – of bosses who take bribes to give employment .
. ., of ill usage at the hands of those who should be officers of justice, of
arrests for the sake of fees, of unjust fines, . . .
But it is not only direct
ill-treatment that is a peril; the economic pressure and low standards of our
lowest industrial strata are in themselves disastrous.
“My people do not live in America, they live underneath America. America
goes on over their heads. America does not begin till a man is a
workingman, till he is earning two dollars a day. A laborer cannot afford to be
an American.”
These words, which were said
to me by one of the wisest Slav leaders that I have ever met, have rung in my
mind during all the five years since he spoke them. Beginning at the bottom, “living not in America but underneath
America,” means living among the worst surroundings that the country has to
show, worse, often, than the public would tolerate, except that “only
foreigners” are affected. Yet to
foreigners they are doubly injurious because, coming as they often do, with low
home standards but susceptible, eager, and apt to take what they find as the
American idea of what ought to be, they are likely to accept and adopt as “all
right” whatever they tumble into.