The Czechoslovak Review/Volume 4/American or "Americanized"

by Šárka B. Hrbková

American or “Americanized”

By Prof. ŠÁRKA B. HRBKOVA.

(Copyright 1920).

We remember hearing somewhere once upon a time the story of a certain Irish captain who, in ordering uniforms for his company, to save time, had the tallest man and also the shortest accurately measured, divided the sum of the measurements by two and thus, expeditiously arriving at an average (?), ordered uniforms for the entire company. It is unnecessary to add that, as a result, not a suit fitted and great was the rage of the captain to find that his men absolutely would not fit into the uniforms he had devised for them.

It is inconceivable to the army of “Americanizers” who are abroad in the land “seeking whom they may devour”, why the “alien” (anyone who speaks another language instead of English or even in addition to English is so classified by the professional “Americanizer”) refuses to be melted and moulded instantly into the pattern all duly described in the handbook issued by the particular organization said “Americanizer” is representing.

To-day practically every national organization in the United States—religious, social, industrial, economic and political—has incorporated an Americanization department in its sphere of activities. Their combined funds to be spent for “Americanization programs” run up into tens of millions. Then there are hundreds of other organizations of state or local significance which have undertaken the same ambitious program.

Out of this feverish and fanatical rush of first aiders to the injured it cannot be said that any one organization has clearly defined a national ideal of what is really meant by Americanism. In all fairness to the leading men and women in the above named organizations it must be said that some of them actually have in mind an ideal of what they would like to attain as far as the immigrant element is concerned. Unfortunately, however, their assistants, sub-assistants and minor “field-workers”—those who come into actual contact with the individual immigrant have, as a rule, a most chaotic and hazy notion of the “quod erat demonstrandum”, and their flounderings only serve to roil the waters all the more.

As a matter of fact “Americanization” does not mean the same thing to any two organizations engaged in their self-appointed tasks. To certain of them, it means merely the naturalization and attainment of citizenship by the foreigner. To others, it means the acceptance of a certain veneer or brand of religion along with the “dose”. Some have a broad conception inclusive of every virtue under the sun. Another class, chiefly those heading large industrial establishments, regards Americanization as a fight on radicalism and bolshevism and often linked with it are quasi-foreign or so-called inter-racial organizations which purport to be friendly to the foreignborn in advising them, in highly paid advertisements in the foreign language press, not to take part in strikes or protests against economic injustice, though the latter term is never so used, for obvious reasons.

The “57—Varieties” of Americanization programs proposed by national, state or local organizations in more or less incoherent or general terms which sound big and inflatedly Fourth-of-Julyish involve the expenditure of millions of good American dollars. From such an investment one should reasonably expect some results. The outward visible signs of the immense outlay consist of probably 50,000 jobs for as many persons who two years ago had never heard of “Americanization” and didn’t know nor care a tinker’s dam about the immigrant, or his troubles or our problem in having him in the United States. But to-day—avaunt! they are are full-fledged “Americanizers” and glibly discuss at Mrs. Astorbilt’s luncheon or at a prayer meeting of the Pink Teatotallers how they are implanting “American ideals” in the lowly foreigner and his more lowly wife.

One is reminded of the “special course” advertisements which assure the reader of a return of loads of money after taking and “no previous knowledge of the subject necessary”. The analogy is not at all far fetched. The summer sessions of practically every university, college and normal school in the United States last year offered “special courses in Americanization” and innumerable institutions are this year offering similar courses. Whence came this horde of “expert authorities on Americanization” who to-day by their own honest confession know all there is to know on the subject, but yesterday were not wise enough to utter a single word of warning to a waiting multitude of the dangers lurking in the imigrant masses? Did they spring Minerva-like, all equipped with this special intelligence, from the brain of some modern Only Original Americanizer? The naiveness of this erudite group of Americanizers is characterized in the example of one of them, a professor in a certain western university who not long after advertising a series of extensive lectures on “The Causes of the War” and “European Peoples” asked the writer if the Bohemian people and the Hungarians were not one and the same. When told of their vastly different origin, the Czechs or Bohemians being Indo-European and the Hungarians or Magyars of Ural-Altaic or Mongolian stock, this authority (?) on the “causes of the war” exclaimed, “Oh yes, yes. I made a mistake. The Bohemians are the same as the Germans, aren’t they?” One can’t help saying “What’s the use?” when university professors, posing as authorities, continue benighted. Nor can one wonder that the mass of the people know so little of those they are bent on “Americanizing” when a representative of the highest “intelligentsia” of the state has such an addled understanding of the whole situation.

Americans are quick at adaptation—too quick some times one meditates—and readily adjust themselves to the needs of the moment. In a sense Americans are opportunists, if not always for pecuniary reasons, then for their real desire to be of service. But unfortunately all the Minute Men who sprang to the “aid of their country” when the wave of Americanization first began to sweep over the country were not actuated by purely patriotic zeal or armed with the weapons of real understanding. A member of the California Commission on Immigration and Housing which, by the way, very emphatically eschews the use of the word “Americanization” in connection with its very real services, which are only incidentally patriotic and never offensively or too obviously of that character, said recently: “The trouble is that every one who has failed at everything else thinks he’s exactly cut out to do “Americanization work”. It is a fact that one of the men appointed as a regional director of Americanization with about eight states under his direction confessed to the writer that he had no idea what Americanization was nor had ever had dealings with the foreignborn, let alone devoting even an hour’s study to their needs or problems. Yet he jumped at the chance to be “Regional Director of Americanization” and would as soon have thought of cutting off his own nose as to refuse the appointment. No American ever admits his lack of fitness for a job. Versatility or the assumption of it is a truly American character. That the bluff succeeds frequently does not make it any the less a bluff.

Not only are these hundreds of Americanizers to a great degree guiltless of any knowledge of immigrant backgrounds, but many do not even have a broad American knowledge of United States conditions into which they blithely undertake to fit the foreigner.

The persistent confusion exists in the popular mind that no one can be an American who does not readily understand, read, and speak the English language. Senator Kenyon’s bill (S. R. 3315-entitled “Americanization of Aliens”) provides for the expenditure of $12,500,000 annually after June 30, 1920 and for “the compulsory teaching of English to illiterates and those unable to speak, read or write the English language.”

Senator Lane in his report to the President says: “Twenty-five percent of the 1,600,000 men between 21 and 31 years of age who were first drafted into the Army could not read nor write our language, and tens of thousands could not speak it nor understand it. To them the daily paper telling what Von Hindenburg was doing was a blur. To them the appeals of Hoover came by word of mouth, if at all. To them the messages of their commander in chief were as so much blank paper. To them the word of mother or sweetheart came filtering in through other eyes that had to read their letter.”

While the Secretary’s pity for some of the foreignborn may not be amiss, it certainly cannot aply to those who could speak, read or write some other language than English. It is absurd to suppose that because many of the men were ignorant of English, “the daily paper telling what Von Hindenburg was doing was a blur.” Thousands of those men were diligently reading in another tongue, to be sure, eevry move made in the theatre of war. They knew, moreover, the very territory over which the armies were moving and had a far more vital interest in the success of the Allied Armies than many of the native born in this country could ever conjure up. Else why did tens of thousands of Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Jugoslav, (Croatians, Slovenes, Serbians,) Italians and others enlist in the United States Army and not wait for the draft? It is an actual fact that Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Colfax County, Nebraska, and other typical communities, were not compelled to excercise the draft because of the large number of enlistment on the part of young men of Czech stock. Among the first 500 enlistments in the United States Army in Chicago it is reported that over twenty-five per cent were men of Czechoslovak blood.

The largest single Red Cross Chapter in Cleveland, Ohio, consisted of over 500 Czech women many of whom could not speak English, but they understood what it was to be an American, for they felt and thought and acted the American part and were in perfect sympathy with the spirit of our land.

A most enlightening commentary on the response of the various nationalities in the United States to the Liberty Loan is shown in a report of the Treasury Department on “The Foreign Element in the Third Liberty Loan”. This is based on a report of the Foreign Language Division of the Federal Reserve Districts. It shows that the total amount subscribed by Americans of foreign descent is $741,437,000 representing forty one and one half percent of the total number of subscribers in the entire country. The huge sum was subscribed by 7,061,305 individuals of foreign groups. The Czechs, while representing only one and seven tenth percent of the general foreign population bought nearly twelve per cent of all the bonds bought by persons of foreign descent or seven times as much as was their proportionate quota. In precise figures, the Czechs, consisting of 539,392 invividuals and composing one and seven tenths per cent of the foreignborn population of the United States, purchased $31,750,550.00 worth of bonds.

It is quite pertinent, too, to point to the fact that during the months of January and February of the present year the Czechoslovak Division of the Foreign Language Information Service of the American Red Cross has received 379 calls from Czechoslovaks who served in the United States Army. Those men, writing in their native language, make apeals ranging from questions on War Risk Insurance, Income Tax, lessons in English and in United States Citizenship, Naturalization papers, backpay, re-employment, location of relatives to questions on Health and calls for Liberty Bonds and War Savings Stamps which they had paid for in camp but had not yet received.

None of these men could write English or read it understandingly if at all, but all of them were informed on matters pertaining to the United States Government, especially to the War and Treasury Departments and were refreshingly loyal and staunch in their praise and support of the United States Government. Many of them had fought a desperate fight to be allowed to serve the United States during the war, for at first our American Government was disposed to regard all individuals who came from Central Europe as enemy aliens, an intolerable situation which would never have obtained had our government been informed of the anti-Hapsburg history of the Czechoslavs.

The Lincoln (Neb.) Star in this respect says, in its issue of April 7, 1918: “There is perhaps no class which has entered into the war against Germany as wholeheartedly and vigorously as the Americans of Bohemian descent. They have been leaders in responding to the call to colors, in the purchase of liberty bonds and in aiding the Red Cross. The University Bohemian “Komenský" club, typical of the spirit of all Bohemians in Nebraska, sold more Liberty Bonds than any other university organization and the club was the first to pledge money to the Red Triangle. Even before the United States had formally declared war, the Bohemian societies in this country sent out literature to its members urging them to support finacially the American government in case war was declared.

The sacredness of democracy is uppermost in the heart of the Bohemian. American of Bohemian stock shares with the love of democracy in this country a kindred love for democracy in Bohemia. Prussianism has no more bitter enemy than the Bohemian. There is today an army of 16,000 Czechs fighting in France. When the kaiser’s brutal arm has been bended and the liberty of humanity assured the world will find that Bohemia has done more than its share.”

The indiscriminate “bunching” of all foreignborn peoples with the disloyal element among the Germans has aroused the resentment of the great groups of non-German and non-Magyar origin who unhesitatingly and faithfully supported the United States government, when it most needed that moral and substantial backing.

Somehow the public has lost sight of the fact that it was not the Slav or Italic element in our population that betrayed the United States cause, but that it was members of the Teutonic and Hungarian groups who failed in their support of the American cause. Moreover the “traitors” in our time of stress were not foreigners unacquainted with English, but English speaking American citizens of Teuton origin.

Nevertheless a perfect frenzy of attacks on all foreign speaking peoples set in and state legislatures proceeded to enact laws and local organizations at once began practicing a highly Prussianized treatment of all the foreign speaking population.

During the war it was fully understandable that measures would be taken to suppress an enemy language, but the extension of the prohibition to the languages spoken by our allies in the world struggle is establishing a precedent unheard of even in Berlin. A prominent Iowa lawyer in discussing the drastic measures of Governor Harding writes: “We of Czechoslovak blood were good enough for America during the war to support the government with our lives and our fortunes, but before the struggle overseas is fairly won, we are ignobly classed with our enemies and the language in which we all did faithful American propaganda service is suppressed.” A woman who worked indefatigably for American War relief in Nebraska states “Nebraskans refuse to differentiate between the friendly and the enemy nations. This morning my aged mother who has knitted industriously for the Red Cross throughout the war, but who can speak only the Bohemian language, was roughly treated by some extremists of native birth for using the Czech (Bohemian) language in speaking over the telephone to me.”

The Siman language law passed early in 1919 by the Legislature of Nebraska while aimed ostensibly at the German parochial schools wiped out temporarily instruction in every language except English. A decision of the Supreme Court handed down in December 1919 is to the effect that all instruction in public, parochial and denominational schools must be given in the English language up to and including the eighth grade, but permits people who send their children to the American public schools to provide for them foreign language instruction in Saturday, Sunday or vacation schools outside of public school hours. This decision saves the day for Nebraska which thus provides its rising generation with a thorough education in the English language, but does not deprive it of the advantage and opportunity of instruction in other languages as well.

Another piece of legislation signed January, 20, 1920, by the Governor of Oregon which may yet prove sadly retroactive was the act making it unlawful to print, publish, circulate, display, sell or offer for sale any newspaper and periodical in any language other than the English, unless the same contains a literal translation thereof in the English language of the same type and as conspicuously displayed, and providing a penalty therefor of imprisonment in the county jail not to exceed six months or by fine not exceeding five hundred dollars ($500), or by both such imprisonment and fine.”

Is Oregon to be a state abjuring the knowledge by which its citizens could profit through other than English sources? Are we really developing into an exclusive one-language people?

That the Czechoslovaks regard the acquirement of the English language as not only desirable, but a necessary patriotic duty is evident from the thousands of expressions on the subject. Such representative men of Europe as Charles Pelant writes “The Czechoslovaks must be regarded as a nation whose second language is English. We must have English taught in all our schools.”

It may surprise many “Americanizers” to know that the most effective, in fact the only “Americanization” efforts made among the Czechs long before the recent hysteria had seized on the native born, were the results of the work of the Czechs themselves. No American took any interest in them except at election times, so forthwith they themselves set about learning the first step in the proces of becoming Americans. No fewer than thirty-five (35) English books—interpreters, grammars and dictionaries have been written and published by Czechs and almost an equal number of works on how to attain American citizenship. The Czechs and latterly the Slovak newspapers and periodicals have published series of lessons on the American Constitution and on Civics in general and have for years devoted columns to articles on the Americanism of leaders like Washington, Franklin, Lincoln and Wilson. Practically every masterpiece of American literature—both prose and poetry—has been translated into Czech language and widely circulated in the justified belief that the truest knowledge of the nation of Americans can come through intimate acquaintance with its literature.

It is noteworthy, too, that the Czechoslovak press in the United States published in 1919 alone upwards of 520 releases from United States Government Departments issued by the Czechoslovak Bureau of the Foreign Language Governmental Information Service and have cooperated wholeheartedly in every effort to provide its readers with authentic and dependable information about the activities of government agencies. The official organs of large Czech and Slovak organizations constantly urge their readers to learn English and to take an active part in all community activities. Practically every one of them now has from one to ten pages devoted to informational articles in the English language. Most of these organizations open their lodge meetings by singing “America.”

The spirit of America finds an echo in the heart of every Czechoslovak and in them it will find an intelligent and patriotic citizenry. It is the practice of certain Americans and not the principle of Americanism that is objectionable to the residents of foreign stock. It is all very beautiful for the nativeborn to rant in high sounding phrases of the principles of freedom, equality and justice which our country supports, but it is rather disillusioning to read in the news columns of every paper article after article telling of political graft and crookedness, business profiteering and industrial wrongs. The effect of the chauvinistic editorial is refuted by the proof of actual daily occurrences and experiences.

The “Denní Hlasatel” of Chicago pertinently remarks: “It seems to us highly necessary that Americanization should begin at home, among those who so loudly demand the Americanization of foreigners, among capitalists and those who are their wiling and blind instruments, whether they sit in the seats of legislative assemblies, or at editorial desks or stand in pulpits. Everyone must own that the conscienceless profiteer cannot be a good American, for he is a bad man. To us a good man and a good American, have come to be a synonymous conception. When everyone who has in his heart a desire for the welfare of this land, will work to bring about these conceptions, then, Americanization will be accomplished rapidly to the satisfaction and joy of all good people regardless of what origin.”

The attempt to distract attention from the real point in the industrial issue by confounding it with the problem of the foreigner and making it appear he is the disturbing element is a trick perceived early in the game by others as well as socialist publications. The St. Louiské Listy published at St. Louis, Mo., in an editorial entitled “What Do We Mean by Americanism”, after statistically proving that the majority of leaders in the strikes are fullblooded native born Americans, asserts that “hardly had the foreign born element become accustomed to American standards and demanded better pay and better living conditions, when the employers imported a new supply of foreigners who were not yet Americanized”. In the recent steel strike, the Steel Company imported negroes, Greeks and Mexicans who were willing to work under conditions which the strikers regarded as intolerable. . . . . We naturally desire to have every citizen of this land sympathize with American ideals, but we do not see how American ideals can be separated from American standards of living. And if the immigrant population is to accept American institutions, it must unquestionably be given a wage making it possible for them to live like American citizens. . . . . . . . As far as we are concerned if ‘Americanism’ signifies anything, it should signify justice, freedom and genuine liberty. We advocate with all our strength the “Americanization” of our foreignborn population by educational methods and protective methods and protective legislation, but we doubt that anyone will be convinced he is in “the land of the free and the home of the brave”, when he is denied the right of vote or that he is justly dealt with, when a wage commensurate with decent living is denied him. Americanism based on the Declaration of Independence in the American constitution will find a response in every intelligent and faithful citizen and there will be no difficulty whatever with the immigrant, when the American standard of living will go hand in hand with the American form of just, lawful government. But the word “Americanization” must not be used to conceal tyranny, militarism and industrial persecution. Americanization is in truth necessary in this land but it is the selfish plutocratic class that needs it most.”

The excellent schooling facilities in Bohemia which are justly a cause for pride to the Czechs have given the members of that group unusual oportunities for social fourteen years of age who knocked at our expansion. Among the immigrants over gates, in the last score of years, the Czechs have an average of only a small fraction over one per cent illiterates as against the Germans with about six per cent of illiterates, Magyars and North Italians with twelve per cent.

Since 1899 or in the last 20 years, 141,669 Czechs and 480,286 Slovaks have immigrated to America. The majority of the Czechs belong to the older and settled immigrants, for they go chiefly to the agricultural states. They have become citizens, bear their burden of the responsibilities of the communities where they live equally with the native born. Admiration for the free institutions of this government have ever characterized them and because they are inveterate readers and active in community work they have kept abreast of the spirit of the times. But they cannot understand why, after being Americans, for a generation or more, they are now to be “Americanized.”

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