exclusively the foreign language newspapers. Overcrowded slums, temporary shacks whose filthiness had become permanent, the twelve-hour day and the seven-day week, working and living conditions that were unsanitary and destructive of moral living, the open saloon-these were the leading factors that had been "Americanizing" many European immigrants.

The foreign-born from Eastern Asia present special problems. Seventy years after their first advent, they remain, as a rule, unfitted into the mosaic of American life. In our Chinese legislation, we have publicly stamped skilled and unskilled Chinese, irrespective of their personal character and potentiality, as unworthy persons in freedom's land. We have seemed to want them only for their economic value. Because excellent methods have been outlined for protecting us from a flood of Chinese immigrants, and for treating China in this matter as a self-respecting nation, our racial and wholesale condemnation of the Chinese puts us in an essentially unAmerican light before the new Chinese Republic. China is still in the swaddling clothes of democracy and is beholding with wondering eyes America's interpretation of democracy in her dealing with Chinese immigrants.

The Japanese in our country, with a few exceptions, are an unAmerican portion of our population. Not only were they not being Americanized, but their mother country was being alienated by our treatment of the fundamental issues until the developing exigencies of the European War caused the

dissatisfactions temporarily to be laid aside. California, justly desirous of protè cting herself against a large Japanese immigration, passed a land law in 1913 which put immigrants from Japan-a nation of recognized standing among the nations of the world, and in the war against Germany to become one of America's allies—upon a plane of forbidden land-ownership, while it left aliens from fifth-rate nations, such as Turkey, upon the higher level of permissible land-ownership. Our Americanization program must provide valid national solutions of the questions arising out of Japanese immigration.

Another racial problem in the United States has recently developed sinister aspects. Mexicans, representing in general a low economic, social, and political level, have been brought into our country in large numbers to meet unskilled labor needs in the Southwestern States: California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas. Many are transient; but growing numbers are settling permanently in the United States. No large-scale movement is on foot to help either group of Mexicans to understand us or to adopt our higher mode of living. The Mexican immigrants are relatively an uneducated class who are not learning to love our country. On occasion, they even become suspicious of our ways and motives. Because of the proximity of their homeland and of the delicate international relations between Mexico and the United States, the scope of our sympathetic Americanization vision must be extended to include the Mexican immigrant.

The hour has struck for a clear, concrete under

standing of Americar traits and for an educational movement which wi'i interpret America's ideals in deeds as well as words to every inhabitant of our country, from youthful to aged, and from native to foreign-born. The time has come for an Americanization program that will transform the polygot, heterogeneous elements of the nation into a Unified as well as a United States.

America must know herself; she must take stock of her human resources, losses, and gains; she must plan her future. But in making her human inventory and in determining consciously her destiny, she must beware of the footsteps of Prussian autocracy. She must transform her imperfect democracy, not into another strong nation-state after the manner of Prussian leadership, but into a perfected democracy dedicated to the task of pushing forward the principles of democracy throughout the world.

Genuine Americanism emanates, not from a profiteering, "patrioteering" type of nationalism, but from an understanding of all the multifarious and dissident racial and individual elements in our nation, and from a loyalty to the nation which is open, public-spirited, progressive, and planetary. Americanization is the process of enabling all inhabitants of America to live democratically with each other and with the world.

CHAPTER II

AMERICAN TRAITS: LIBERTY AND SELF-RELIANCE

An Americanization program cannot be promulgated until common agreement is reached in regard to the meaning of American traits. The "fifty-seven varieties" of Americanism must be analyzed; their constructive elements must be unified; the rest must be discarded. We, the current makers of Americanism, need to become thoroughly grounded in its history and nature. The four groups of American traits which will be presented in this chapter and the three chapters which immediately follow are these: (1) liberty and self-reliance; (2) union and cooperation; (3) democracy and the square deal; and (4) internationalism and brotherhood.

Liberty and self-reliance have constituted the most striking aspects of American life and character. It was these traits which dominated the 120 men who braved the sailing vessel perils of an unknown Atlantic and took up settlement in 1608 on the James River, courageously facing malaria, Indian hostility, gaunt famine, and rampant death. Since the migration of the Virginia colonists was motivated in part by the desire to seek the reported fabulous wealth and the new lands of America, the liberty-loving spirit did not come politically to the front until 1618 when the Virginians secured the

right to elect their own legislative assembly and thus to establish representative government in America. The initial representative assembly in America, chosen by the free colonists of Virginia, convened on July 30, 1619-the same year in which twenty-one Negro slaves were introduced into Virginia.

The migration of the Pilgrims was primarily the outgrowth of the desire for moral and religious liberty. The Americanism of the "Mayflower" covenanters sprang from an indomitable desire for liberty-liberty to establish a new form of worship. It was from a church that the Pilgrims started on the long journey to America. From the church to the harbor of Delft Haven the procession was led by John Robinson, who carried an open Bible on his hands and who read the following Divine injunction: "Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee; and I will make of thee a great nation; and in thee shall all the families of the earth be blessed."

The Pilgrims and Puritans alike sought religious liberty. Out of this search grew the constitutional provision that religious beliefs shall prevent no one from governmental preferment. According to the first amendment to the Constitution, Congress is forbidden to make any law prohibiting the free exercise of any religion or prohibiting the establishment of any religion. Thus, religious liberty was guaranteed.

In his Farewell Address, Washington designated religion and morality as necessary corner stones for