borhood. Almost every sort of reformer, who would bring to the foreign-speaking district a sense of the need for voting for a different sort of alderman, for example, lives in another part of town, represents another stratum of society, comes into no sort of natural touch with his foreign-born fellow citizen. But the latter knows the district leader-last winter he got a job, a little coal, a bed in a hospital for his wife; his boy was let off by the police after a piece of reckless mischief; or there was some other human favor; and all the return he is asked to make cheap enough, to be sure is that on election day he shall vote as the district leader who helped him in his need asks him to vote. What difference does it make to him? Show him a difference, convince him that something real, something that he can understand, is involved, and he will respond. But nobody shows him. "Uptown," whence comes the reformer whom he does not know, and whose motives he has no substantial reason to respect, does not understand his life or its problems; does not even live in the ward. The district leader does. He is his neighbor, and he sees him almost every day.

Then, too, the political organization meets him on the social side, provides a club, which in the intervals between elections gives entertainments, has pool tables, provides cigars; used to provide liquor. A spirit of fellowship grows up; the new foreign-born voter gains acquaintance at the natural point of contact between his daily life and the politics into which he is being introduced. The result is obvious.

POLITICAL ASPECTS OF SOCIAL CLUBS

The spontaneous groups of foreign-speaking people of nearly every race, which have sprung up everywhere in response to the varied needs of the strangers within

our gates-social, insurance, musical, athletic, etc.— necessarily and naturally take on political aspects. As President Wilson said once, "politics is human nature"; there is nothing sinister about this fact. It is wholesome that groups of folk, coming together spontaneously about a nucleus of common interest, should consider together and act together, in regard to such public matters as they think concern them. The only thing that is really dangerous in a republic is stolid indifference; it is on that that corruption and injustice feed.

In the matter of helping their fellow countrymen to secure naturalization, these organizations perform a service of value and importance both to the alien and to the country. Many of these racial societies devote much attention to old-country politics, and form nests of propaganda and even more concrete activity whose effects are felt not so much in this country as "back home." And when, as in the case of Ireland, Poland, Italy, and so on, the issues of foreign politics are made the bone of contention in American political contests, these German-American, Italian-American, PolishAmerican societies may become exceedingly active in our own affairs, and project lines of division which may greatly complicate the politician's task, and sometimes stand him upon his head: 1

It is not too much to say that the power of Tammany Hall in politics, and that of every other important political organization in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or elsewhere-including those dominant in rural districts-grows out of intimate association with the people in their daily lives, and could grow out of nothing else. "Power and patronage," says

1 These activities are well summarized by John Daniels in his Americanization Study volume entitled America via the Neighborhood, New York, Harper & Brothers, 1920, p. 383 et seq.

Professor Munro, "provide a cycle hard to break." True; but "power and patronage" is only a phrase. Behind it lies the fact that the politician gains and holds his power because he deserves it; through his organization of the machinery, always "on the job,' through which human beings, with wives and children to feed, clothe and shelter, get the means to do it. The small, unskilled job in the employ of the city, or of business which can be helped or harmed by political or official action, is the coin-current through which the politician controls-so far as he does control-the rank and file of the foreign-born voters. This, and the small and larger personal human favors that he is in a position to render.

Here, with the first economic "toe-hold" that the immigrant gets in America, begins his introduction to our life and to our politics.

POLITICS A GREAT AMERICANIZING FORCE

Politics, local politics-the ordinary interest of the ordinary citizen; the day's work and the day's life, are great Americanizing forces, and they are working every minute. The immigrant generally, especially he of the so-called "new immigration," comes here without much if any experience in public affairs. All the life of all the generations from which he comes has been passed without real participation; government in the old country went on over his head, in a rarefied stratum which he never entered and of which he knew little. That is one reason why, on the average, it takes more than ten years for him to come to the point of asking for citizenship.

Of late some of the very people who declared that the immigrant comes here with only "sordid motives" have favored pressure upon him to become a citizen

by means of refusing him employment unless he does become one. The great increase in declarations of intention during the past three or four years has been due almost entirely to the restrictions adopted formally or informally all over the country confining employment, even in privately owned industries, to those who have at least taken out "first papers." Even in the Bureau of Naturalization there was for a time more than a tendency to pursue this policy of forcing citizenship upon aliens. It was abandoned because no government can kidnap the subjects or citizens of another without getting into difficulty. There is still a good deal of confusion of thought about this matter. The importance of it lies in the fact-obvious to any right thought about it—that we want for our new citizens only those who come of their own accord and free will. We want, moreover, only those who are rightminded. The effort to stamp out the use of every mother tongue but one, to obliterate all affection for the old home in Scandinavia, Bavaria, Dalmatia, Bohemia, not only is futile; we do not want for our fellow citizens the kind of people who can turn their back without a qualm upon the memories of childhood.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne'er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned

From wandering on a foreign strand?

What sort of an American could be made out of one able in any circumstances-worst of all under repressive compulsion-to turn his back upon the tongue, the traditions, and the associations of his fathers? We are not such ourselves, and in our sane minds we do not want those who join us to be such. The process of

real assimilation is a process slow in its nature, reaching not forms and words, but sentiments of the highest and most subtle kind.

You cannot beat love of country into any worthwhile person with a club-or with a law.