Catholic Problems in Western Canada
G >> George Thomas Daly >> Catholic Problems in Western CanadaNow, it is known to every respectable sociologist in America that our
recent Eastern European immigrants, including the Russians, are just as
peaceable and law-abiding people as native Americans or native American
ancestry. This is a fact about which there is not the slightest doubt
in the mind of any competently informed person. It has been repeatedly
established by careful studies made by the United States Bureau of the
Census; by various State boards and by highly qualified private
foundations.
Furthermore, the most honest, thrifty, industrious, upright,
God-fearing and conservative portion of our foreign population is
precisely that portion which has clung most stubbornly to its native
ways of life and has been least influenced by American customs. Our
immigrants upon changing their foreign languages, customs, beliefs and
ideals upon becoming "Americanized," deteriorate profoundly in moral
character; deteriorate to a degree that shows itself in the criminal
statistics.
It is very fortunate for the moral welfare of millions of our foreign
population that the present furore for "Americanization" is destined to
fail in its object. Its failure is in its own nature. The fundamental
social virtues, honesty, industry, thrift, truthfulness and the rest,
are the same for all societies on the same general level of
development. They are not promoted by the custom of saluting any
particular flag nor advanced by the ability to read any particular
Constitution.
The very complete and profound change of character implied by the
phrase: "The Americanization of the Foreigner" can be wisely and safely
accomplished only if spread out over at least three generations, while
four or five would be better. Every year less than three generations,
that the progress is hastened, means moral and spiritual breakdown for
thousands--means domestic tragedy and congested criminal calendars.
There is only one foreigner who is really a menace to American society.
He is the foreigner who is in rapid process of "Americanization." The
danger point is the foreign-born child and the American-born child of
foreign parents.
The danger from these classes is real and serious, perhaps the most
serious presented in the whole range of immigration questions. Here
again we have very reliable statistics which leave no room for
reasonable doubt. America needs protection, needs it urgently, against
the foreigner of the second generation, particularly against the
youthful foreigner who goes through our Public school system. The
father who stubbornly refuses to learn English or to adopt American
ways is commonly a man of admirable moral character. The son, often
quite as American as young men of our old stock, is equally commonly a
youth of vicious and unprincipled character.
Public opinion in this matter is grievously at fault. There is danger
to American institutions, and that danger is real, but it is just the
opposite of what is popularly feared. The danger lies precisely in the
process of Americanization itself, particularly in the endeavor to
hasten that process. If, as is commonly maintained, the present need
in America is peace and safety, security and conservatism, then the
Americanization of the foreigner should be slowed down in every way
possible. No encouragement should at this time be offered to the
foreigner to abandon his native language or religion or to change his
ethical or cultural standards.
On the other hand, every possible assistance should be given to Roman
and Greek Catholic priests, Orthodox rabbis and other such leaders in
maintaining and strengthening the traditional loyalties of their
various groups. Our Mohammedans--no negligible element in recent
immigration--should be encouraged to build mosques, to read the Koran
and to obey the various other requirements of their faith. Our public
libraries should provide themselves more liberally with books in
foreign languages. Foreign language lectures and speakers of all sorts
should be much encouraged. By such means and only by such means can
the spirit of unrest and disquiet be stilled and the spirit of
conservatism and contentment with the status quo be developed among our
foreign population.
It is a most curious popular misconception that peace and quietness and
respect for law and order can be developed in the foreigner by suddenly
and violently disturbing his mental life. Changing a man's language,
upsetting his moral and social conventions, altering his inherited
traditions of conduct, unsettling his ancestral faith--these are the
very best means possible for making him a disbeliever in all
established institutions, including those of the United States. Yet
this is precisely what "Americanization" aims to do with the best
intentions.
Let us take a specific illustration. It may perhaps be theoretically
desirable to bring our new immigrant to a realization of the crudity
and superstition of his Eastern Orthodox faith, and to be a lively
recognition of the superiority of American Protestantism. Practically,
it can be seldom done and the reason is simple. When a person has been
brought to realize the faults, imperfections, and limitations of a
traditional system of belief in religion, government or what not, he
inevitably applies his new critical attitude towards whatever system of
belief is offered to him as a substitute for the one he has been
encouraged to cast aside.
Most commonly the alternative system, being human, has serious faults,
imperfections and limitations of its own, which are easily enough
discoverable. The net result of very much conscientious missionary
work in America is that the foreigner ceases to believe his traditional
faith, refuses allegiance to any American substitute and becomes an
infidel agnostic or atheist. The same thing is just as common in the
realms of social, ethical and political faith as in that of religious
belief.
Respect for Government and law is not a natural instinct. It is an
artificial attitude slowly built up in the individual by all sorts of
direct and indirect social pressure. The breakdown of old habits of
thought in any one of the great departments of social activity very
rapidly affects the other phases of conduct. The whole moral life of
the individual tends to become unsettled. Nothing is held firmly
except the selfish determination to obtain material wealth. Ideas and
ideals which stand in the way of this are cast aside. The Americanized
foreigner possesses all the native Americans' ruthless greed without
possessing his social, ethical, religious, or political idealism.
No man can learn a language perfectly who learns it deliberately, and
social ideals are harder to learn than language. They can never be
learned naturally and completely except when they are learned so
gradually and imperceptibly that the process is unrecognized and
largely unconscious. This can never be possible in the case of the
foreign born, and is only very partially attainable in the case of the
children foreign born. Its complete realization is possible only in
the case of children born and reared in an entirely American
environment. That is to say it cannot be accomplished before the third
generation at the earliest, and often not then.
II. THE FAD OF AMERICANIZATION
_By Glenn Frank in the "Century Magazine," June, 1920_.
We are a nation of confirmed uplifters. We are never happy except when
we are reforming something or saving somebody. It doesn't matter
greatly whom we are saving or what we are reforming; the game is the
thing. This uplift urge expresses itself in the "movement" mania, the
endemic home of which is United States. The American cannot live by
bread alone; he must have committees, clubs, constitutions, by-laws,
platforms, and resolutions. These things, the machinery of uplift are
his meat and wine. The American society women takes to "social
service" and the American business man to "public work" as a bird takes
to the air or a hound to the trail. It is in the blood.
Just now the most popular social sport is "Americanization." It is in
many ways an ideal movement. It fully satisfies the passion of the
comfortable classes for uplift, and is a Godsend to the candidate who
wants something to grow fervent about in lieu of a frank facing of
fundamental issues of politics and industry. Above all,
Americanization work gives one the righteous feeling of a defender of
the faith. The epidemic faddist character of much Americanization work
was pointedly stated in a recent article by Simon J. Lubin and
Christina Krysto in "The Survey." They said:
"Every social organization, every religious society, every large
industry, every woman's club has been busy for months mapping out its
own particular program. The study of Americanization has been used to
stimulate interest in organizations which were dying a natural death;
Americanization has been used as a pretext for sudden improvements in
industrial management when the attitude of labor has made sudden
improvements imperative; Americanization has been used to give
employment to social workers out of jobs."
This article further points out the inevitability of innumerable
perversions of Americanization in such an orgy of organization. The
article says on this point:
"Every political party has its hangers-on who, consciously or
unconsciously, discredit the fine principles of that party by their
erroneous expounding of these. Every new phase in industrial progress
has its profiteers--men who capitalize the advanced ideas of their
field for their own interest, regardless of the harm which they bring
to the whole by their methods. Every scientific discovery has its
charlatans who mix enough of the truth with their lies to undermine the
whole truth when their lies become known. Every religion has its false
messiahs, and many a man has been made an unbeliever because he has
followed these too easily and been disappointed too grievously."
It should be said that the profiteers, charlatans, and false messiahs
of Americanization are not, in the main, men and women of bad
intentions so much as they are men and women of half-ideas of
fractional and incomplete conceptions of Americanization. The title of
false messiahs fits them better than either profiteers or charlatans,
for false messiahs are usually profoundly sincere, although profoundly
misguided.
No straight-thinking person disputes the need of a fundamentally sound
program of Americanization, a vast collective effort toward the
stimulation and spread of sane principles of national life among all
sorts and conditions of men and women who make up our population. But
anything and everything that goes by the name of Americanization is not
necessarily an effective move in that direction. There is slowly
growing up a body of incisive criticism dealing with the current
epidemic of Americanization work that is sweeping the country on the
wings of clever catch-words and generous emotions. It may be of
interest and value to attempt an analysis and statement of the main
points of that body of criticism. Here are a few plainly valid
criticisms.
First, it is psychologically bad to approach Americanization work
through a _super-organized and much-trumpeted movement, because such a
policy warns the foreigner in advance that a crowd of superior_ persons
have set out to improve him. That is generally resented. The fact is
that hardly a thing has been proposed as desirable in an
Americanization program that is not the duty or function of some
existing institution of our country, the church, the school, the
industry, the press. Education, hygiene, and a decent inter-class
courtesy are necessary features of any sound Americanization program,
but they can be more effectively applied by calling them what they are
and promoting them in normal ways than by branding them Americanization
and cursing them with the blight of paternalistic uplift.
But it is probably useless to quarrel with a long established national
habit. It is a habit of ours to create a new organization for every
new task. Not only does that practice have the drawbacks just
mentioned, but it robs our established institutions of the habit of
doing creative work, leaves our established institutions as homes of
the routine and the regular. There is a fundamental difference between
England and the United States in this matter. In England the few men
who have caught an idea or envisioned a need, do not, as a regular
practice, create a new propagandist organization instanter, but in most
cases set quietly to work to get the machinery of established
institutions going on the task. An increasing number of clear-minded
folk are becoming convinced that Americanization would proceed much
faster and more soundly through the increase efficiency of the existing
machinery of school and church and press and industry, without any
fanfare of trumpets, than through any propagandist "drive" for
uplifting the foreigner.
Second, it is a _fallacy_ to suppose that Americanization _is a process
needed by the foreigners only_. Much Americanization work proceeds
upon the assumption that what is needed is to make the foreigner "like
us." The fact is that Americanization is sorely needed by many of
"us," Americanization does not mean merely getting an immigrant ready
for his citizenship-papers. It means the continuous fostering of the
American spirit of liberty, justice, and equality of opportunity in
every man and woman and institution and policy. Americanization should
be looked upon as the inspiring goal of both native born and foreign
born, not as a missionary enterprise among the foreign born alone. To
single out the foreign born as the exclusive objects of an
Americanization effort is organized tactlessness. If, on the other
hand, the foreign born feel that they are being invited to join with
the native born in a vast collective effort to build a better nation in
which liberty, justice, and equality of opportunity shall increasingly
prevail, they will go out of their way to acquire the English language,
a knowledge of our institutions and ways, and all the instruments
necessary to the task of collaborating with us in the improvement of
the republic.
Third, serious danger lies in the _over-simplification of the_ problem
of Americanization by propagandist organizations. We are in constant
danger from too simple analysis of problems and too simple as the
epigrams that grow up about it. Panaceas usually touch only a part of
a problem. It is interesting to watch various types of minds approach
the problems of Americanization in committee discussion. Here are a
few simple solutions that the writer has heard from time to time:
Teach the foreigner to stick to the job and produce. We need to teach
the foreigner that Americanism means patriotic production for the
relief of the world's present peace-time plight, just as it meant
patriotic production for the necessities of war-time. A great drive
for industrial patriotism is the supreme need.
Teach the foreigner to respect our forms of government. Make the
foreigner understand that we have settled the question of government
forms and that criticism is disloyalty. We must discourage the
practice of biting the hand that feeds.
Teach the foreigner the English language. There is no room in this
country for more than one language. Alien intrigue could be killed if
we turned the United States into a country of one language.
Make every foreigner take out citizenship-papers within a specified
time or deport him.
Now, it is inevitable that when Americanization is made a popular
"drive" by a vast propagandist organization that the army of men and
women of one idea, apostles of simplicist solutions, will flock into
the ranks of the propagandists. Even when the official program of the
organization is well rounded, the army of simple-solutionists will do
irreparable damage in their work as servants of the movement.
The problem cannot be dismissed by preaching to the foreigner that he
should stick to the job and produce. The problem of maximum production
has a thousand ramifications that run throughout the whole industrial
problem. The preaching of industrial patriotism is a waste of breath
unless it goes hand in hand with a far-reaching liberal program of
industrial justice and efficiency. The industrial program is more
important than the industrial preaching. Put the program into effect
and the preaching of loyalty to the job may be unnecessary.
Far from being Americanism, it is fundamentally anti-American to urge
an uncritical deification of any form of government. Americanism
involves an invitation to continuous constructive criticism in behalf
of a bettering of our machinery of government. It is no solution of
the foreign-born problem to preach loyalty to the _status quo_. We
shall get further by saying to the foreigner, "We are engaged in a
great democratic experiment on this continent. We have settled a few
principles in our minds. We believe in popular rule through political
action, but as to details we are on a search for improvement. We ask
you to learn our language and our institutions and then give us the
benefit of your best thought on ways and means for the improvement of
our machinery for democratic government. The bars are down for the
frankest criticism from men and women who have the democratic patience
to trust their proposals to peaceful procedure."
Learning the English language is only a means to an end. It is too
frequently made an end in itself. There is no more virtue in talking
English than in talking Hottentot. We shall not get far by the mere
exaltation of a language. The only lasting results we shall achieve
will be through the making of participation in this national democratic
experiment of ours so attractive to the foreigner that he will burn
with the desire to master our tongue, that he may better play his part
and appreciate his privilege. A man can plot the downfall of the
republic in English as easily as in an alien tongue.
Nor is there magic in the legal assumption of citizenship. It is the
man behind the papers that counts. If anything, we have made
citizenship too easy a privilege in the past.
Now, all this is said not to suggest that there is no room or need for
special consideration of the Americanization problem by groups of
public minded citizens. It is not intended to suggest that
Americanization may not properly be made the subject of considerable
propaganda. This comment has indulged in rather severe and unqualified
strictures upon the Americanization "drive" in the hope of capturing
attention for three manifest dangers that may prove the undoing of the
real Americanization work that cries aloud for administration. These
three dangers are; first, the danger of making the Americanization
movement so plainly a conventional uplift movement that the foreigner
will resent what he might, with a more tactful approach, request;
second, the danger that, by thinking of Americanization as something
needed by the foreigner alone, we shall miss the opportunity of making
Americanization a vast national effort of self-education in the nature
and application of the principles of liberty justice, and equality of
opportunity that, theoretically at least, comprise the American idea;
and third, the danger that the propagandist's passion for simple
solutions will further postpone the day of a broad and well-balanced
program of national development.
We do not want "Americanism" to degenerate into a mere "protective
coloration" for politicians who want to hide their reaction and their
lack of ideas.
III. AMERICANIZATION WORK MUST PROCEED SLOWLY
_By Rev. D. P. Tighe, "Detroit News," Aug. 23, 1919_.
There are two methods of Americanizing the immigrant, says Fr. D. P.
Tighe in the August number of the Catholic Light. One of them is
_revolutionary_, the other _evolutionary_. To Americanize means to
take the immigrant and remake him. Teaching him to write and speak the
language of the country is a mere detail of the process. One cannot be
awake to the industrial and social needs of the country without
co-operating in every movement calculated to discourage the diversity
of language, and to give to the foreigner every facility for the quick
and easy mastery of English. But Americanization is a different
proposition. Trotzky, when he lived in East New York, could speak and
write English fluently, but he was not an American. He had neither
understanding of, nor sympathy with American institutions; and, so,
instead of setting himself to remedy the abuses in our industrial and
political life as a good American citizen would remedy them he became
an anarchist and envisioned to himself a millennium of destruction that
involved the good as well as the evil.
"Americanization is more than a mere matter of language. It involves
stripping the immigrant of much of what he has inherited from the
centuries. He is the finished product of those centuries. His speech,
his manner, his dress, his ideas along social and political and
industrial lines have been fashioned upon the distaff of time. He
lands upon American soil and at once there is a strangeness in the
atmosphere that awes him, it is a new world in truth and the newness of
it repels him and drives him back upon himself. The faintest link
between the new world and the old is a Godsend to him. It gives him
courage, it robs him of that feeling of aloneness. It tells him that
after all, maybe he is wanted. In other words it creates an atmosphere
of sympathy and understanding. Now any educator can tell you that this
very atmosphere of sympathy is of the very essence of the class room,
it's a condition of education, and Americanization is an education in
nationalism.
"And here is where the revolutionary idea of Americanization falls
down. Are you going to prove to the immigrant in one lesson that he is
all wrong? Are you going to undo with a single jerk what it has taken
centuries to do? Are you going to take this man and by a sort of
patronizing coercion, yank him out himself and leave him, high and
dry--nowhere? Or are you going to give him a reasonable time to learn
the things of the new world, time to be influenced by the new
environment? It took centuries to make him just what he is. Can't you
spare him one generation to shed the crust of those centuries? Can't
you be satisfied with making him the solid groundwork of the
citizenship of his children?
"_Do we favor Americanization_? By _revolution, no_; by _evolution,
yes_. The lasting kind of Americanization comes, not through a quick
jerk, but through a long pull. First make the immigrant feel at home.
Let him get his feet on the ground. Let him get rid of his suspicions
and his distrust and his shyness by finding out the links that bind the
new order with the old, the things that make for the broader kind of
brotherhood. Don't rush him; lay emphasis upon the things that are
common; from them he'll learn confidence, and confidence is a great big
step in the transforming of an European immigrant into an American
citizen."