Americans by Choice

This would be pretty drastic, and almost put the husband in the same position that the wife is in now—making his citizenship dependent upon her fitness! The trouble is not that the wives of the naturalized males are ignorant or unfit, but that they are automatically made into voters regardless of their fitness. Why penalize the man? Why not devise a way of enfranchising him, if fit, while withholding the ballot from her, if unfit?

OPINIONS OF NATURALIZING JUDGES

The judges see it more directly. The Americanization Study addressed a questionnaire to all of the naturalizing judges, containing two questions on this subject:

It is impossible to tabulate the answers, because of the many cases in which the judges advance qualifications preventing their replies from being classed as categorical; but generally it may be said that of 333 replies to the first question, 204, or nearly two-thirds, are in the affirmative, 104 are in the, negative, and 25 are noncommittal, uncertain, or so qualified as to represent doubt.

To the second question, of 364 replies, 220, again not quite two-thirds, are in the affirmative, 127, or almost exactly one-third, in the negative, and 17 noncommittal. Curiously enough, many of those who answer “Yes” to the first question answer “No” to the second, and a large number would condition their affirmative to both questions upon the woman’s permanent domicile in this country. Of those who vote “No” on the second point many express the sentiment:

A somewhat conspicuous fact is that, generally speaking, the judges of the East and South are opposed to any change in the law to admit women on their individual responsibility or to save citizenship for American women marrying immigrants, while those of the West generally favor both—especially the former proposal.

A Federal judge in Maryland dwells upon the physical fact, that the children are a joint product, even though husband and wife are separate individuals. And he seems to think that both of the questions imply the opening of large danger, in respect of the enforcement of Chinese and Japanese exclusion, though he does not say why or how such a peril would arise.

From a Texas judge and many others come warnings that such a policy would give rise to endless domestic friction. An Alabama judge would cut round this by permitting the woman’s declaration of her desire to be or remain an American citizen, notwithstanding the alienage of her husband, to naturalize her minor children.

The general trend of opinion among the judges is to the effect that the institution of woman suffrage has abolished the old idea that the wife must accept her politics from her husband. As one Nebraska judge puts it:

650,000 “DERIVATIVE VOTERS” EXTANT

The logic of the situation in which we find ourselves seems inexorable. Whatever the theory upon which a woman takes the nationality of her husband, the fact is that once she has been naturalized and become available as a voter, she is potentially as much a force for good or ill politically as he. However much pains may have been taken to ascertain and certify his fitness, she comes in substantially without examination, without any of the precautions which are at least presumed to protect the ballot box from unfit or unworthy approach.

The Commissioner of Naturalization reported[153] at the end of the year 1918–19, that, during the thirteen years since the enactment of the law of 1906, the total number of certificates of naturalization issued had been 1,079,459. If it be correct to assume that 60 or more women are swept into citizenship with every 100 certificates, this would mean that during those thirteen years something like 650,000 individuals, available as voters wherever woman suffrage prevails (subject to the five-year-residence limitation in certain states), have been automatically made citizens regardless of any fitness or volition of their own. And this says nothing of the additional future voters added through the automatic naturalization of children. In his previous report Commissioner Campbell said:[154]

LARGELY AN IGNORANT VOTE

We are dealing now, however, chiefly with the question of the married women, mothers and housewives, who are or now have been herded into the mass of voting citizens without volition or substantial interest or appreciation on their part. The children, particularly those under sixteen, may be left to the process of the schools and their general absorption into the life of the streets and the contacts of social life which quickly teach them not only the English language, but some sense of what it means to be American. In no appreciable degree are the adult women subjected to this Americanizing process.

In the vast majority of cases, the potential vote thus added is an uninformed and often ignorant vote. Its characteristics are well summarized in a memorandum prepared by Miss Cornelia Marvin, State Librarian of Oregon, in the course of which she says:

Still remains, regardless of any steps which may be taken in the future, a great mass of woman citizenry, to be reached by some process of education at least designed to awaken these potential voters to a sense of their privileges and their obligations. How may this be done?

POLITICAL INDIFFERENCE NOT PECULIAR TO FOREIGN BORN

Their mere indifference to politics hardly can be urged against them. Our own people are notorious sinners in this respect. The Commissioner of Naturalization repeats ancient history when he says:[155]

But these voters were men. Nearly all of the statistics on which generalizations have been based deal with “foreign-born males of voting age.” The statistics of over 26,000 naturalization petitions gathered by the Americanization Study deal almost exclusively with men, save as they show that every ten certificates bring into citizenship more than six married women and more than three minors. With the ratification of the Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution, these six or more married women acquire the ballot. In many states they had it long before that. What about them?

MANY WERE CALLED, BUT FEW RESPONDED

With enthusiasm entirely commendable, the Naturalization Bureau describes its efforts to arouse in the foreign-born seekers after citizenship an interest in the opportunity before them, by notifying each candidate, declarant, or final petitioner, of the school privileges available for him. In the report of the Bureau for 1916, the Commissioner says:[156]

Well, this is all very fine as rhetoric and the expression of pious wishes. But what comes of it in reality? An elaborate table in the report for 1919[157] shows that in the fiscal year ended June 30th the names of 108,395 wives of candidates were furnished to the school authorities in cities and towns showing a total population of nearly 35,000,000 people with a “foreign-born white male of voting age” population of more than 4,400,000. And on the next page are tabulated reports of 166 school superintendents as to classes for foreign-born persons in English and citizenship, showing:

Every bit of it valuable, no doubt. Presumably, also, the complete figures would present a much larger total, but, as an exhibit of goods, it is hardly up to the promises of the show window!

FOREIGN-BORN WOMEN WITHOUT POLITICAL EXPERIENCE

The fact is that the married women of foreign birth, who are made citizens by the naturalization of their husbands, have had, as a whole, not the slightest practical interest in any stage of the business. In the old country from which they came they had, as a rule, no participation in government; the traditions of the society in which the majority of them grew up relegated women to domestic employments, made them subordinate to their husbands in every phase of public life; they have been slow to learn the language here, and the proposal that they go to school in order to fit themselves for a function about which they know nothing and care less meets with little enthusiasm on their part—as the statistics of the Naturalization Bureau plainly show.

The intelligent woman’s advent to politics always has been dreaded by the professional politician. He felt it in his bones that she might not have the political superstitions and docility that have been exhibited by the average male voter; she might ask questions and display initiative; she might remember with an eye to reprisals the things that politicians, legislators, and executives have done to the interests of women in ages past. He grew eloquent about the “place of woman in the home,” the demoralizing atmosphere of the polling place, and so on. And, as for the foreign-born woman, he knew, first, that the foreign-born husband as a rule was opposed to having his wife and daughters meddling in such matters, and second, that all she would do, anyway, would be to duplicate the vote of her husband or father.

THEY ARE GOOD MATERIAL

As has been said, very few of the foreign-born women, made citizens and voters by the naturalization of men, thus far have displayed much interest in politics. Where there has been participation by them, what has been their attitude? There is not much testimony on the subject, but what there is is largely to identical effect.

Miss Jane Addams, whose long and intimate acquaintance with foreign-born women, through her protracted residence in Hull House, Chicago, entitles her to speak with peculiar authority, describes a typical experience at a polling place in the Hull House neighborhood, which is populated almost entirely by immigrant families:

Mrs. Emma Smith Devoe, President of the National Council of Women Voters,[158] describes the foreign-born woman citizen as taking in governmental affairs, as soon as she realizes that she is a voter, a most serious and conscientious interest, “making almost a religious duty of it.” The women, she says “are particularly impressed with the sacredness of the ballot, and they always vote for the betterment of humanity as they see it.”

Senator Helen Ring Robinson of Colorado remarking that “the Italian women frequently do not vote, while the Pole always votes and takes a keen interest in local politics,” says:[160]

Miss Edith Knight Holmes, editor of the Woman’s Department of the Portland Oregonian, wrote that:

Of course, this is special pleading, and it is easy to exaggerate. Over against it might well be told that ancient story of the housemaid who was said to favor woman suffrage on the ground that it would augment the family income:

The fact is, abundantly verified, that the foreign-born woman, when she votes at all, brings to the function a deep sense of solemnity; it is new to her to participate in government; she has not acquired from the streets a cynical contempt for the ballot, as her husband and sons are likely to have done. The effect of government upon her home and her children is a more desperate matter to her, and it will take long to demoralize her attitude on the subject.

But the fact is, also, that foreign-born women have not in any large measure awakened to the opportunity. Their devotion to their homes has taken on no public or political aspect. They are confined to those homes, not only by tradition, ignorance of American life and the English language, and the inertia of their existence, but even more by overwork and by the unremitting detail of family duty and care. They have hardly heard of their new and increasing privileges, and generally regard them, when they do hear of them, as only a new burden, unfamiliar and to be ignored if not resented. It is only in the home, and by a realization of its direct and inevitable effect upon the home, her home, that any interest in or enthusiasm about political action can reach her.

HOW THE WOMEN CAN BE REACHED

There would seem to be four ways in which the foreign-born woman citizen can be reached with effort to interest her in the political aspect of her citizenship:

1. The normal, direct attack of the political organizations, and voluntary efforts, organized and unorganized, of public-spirited citizens or others interested in “getting out the vote.” Generally speaking, the politicians have scarcely as yet discovered the voting power of the foreign-born woman citizen—especially such as do not speak the English language. The vote and political influence of the foreign-born woman have been negligible everywhere—except possibly in a few places where they have been rallied in a local-option election. One investigator reports two or three towns in Illinois where a “wet” result was attributed to the vote of foreign-born women. Other reports would indicate that the foreign-born woman, like her English-speaking sisters, have tended to favor the abolition of the saloon with its resulting (or, anyway, expected) reduction of home-coming drunkenness and deductions from the pay envelope.

In districts where politically active social settlements and similar organizations are influential, and in states which have had woman suffrage the longest, there is a considerable appearance of foreign-born women at the polls. But they are relatively few in numbers, and consist of younger women from the more radical parties, from those racial groups which display the keenest and most aggressive social intelligence, such as the Bohemians, and from such as in their own countries have had some experience with some measure of woman suffrage, such as the Swedes and Finns. There is quite as much tendency among foreign-born women as among native-born—perhaps considerably more—to follow the husband’s lead in politics and to duplicate his vote. In general, the political organizations have as yet made little effort to capitalize the “derivative vote.” The mass of it stays at home.

2. The campaign of the public schools, with or without the inspiration of the Naturalization Bureau, to induce the foreign-born woman to avail herself of formal educational work in the schools. As we have seen, she does not, to any appreciable extent, respond to this campaign. Social settlements, even attributing great influence to them—though as a matter of fact few of them exert any political influence whatever—are relatively few and far between; churches, as such, and other institutions of the same general kind, cannot be counted as substantially effective in this direction. The foreign-born woman goes to church in large numbers, but she does not get there any great impulse to interest herself in community affairs. She goes back to her babies and her washtub.

It is in her home, in the intervals between domestic duties and within arm’s length of the cradle and the kitchen table where she feeds her children, that she must be reached with this inspiration and instruction, if in any large measure she is to be reached at all. This brings us to

3. The Home Teacher. The movement in favor of the creation of a teaching force, employed by the public and organically a part of the public-school system, to go into the neighborhoods and into the homes and carry instruction in English, common-school branches, and the elements of civics, follows logically from the treatment of the foreign-born woman citizen as an individual, and from the fact that she must be dealt with in or close to her home. Classes grouped within a small section of a neighborhood, intensively instructed by teachers who realize the difficulties and limitations of their pupils, take on the aspect of social occasions, help to arouse a neighborhood spirit, encourage mutual acquaintance, and most effectively instruct those whom it is desired to reach. A movement of this kind, spreading over the country and backed by the public as such, follows the natural line of least resistance and tackles the problem where it really lives.

4. The direct and indirect influence of the children upon the mother. This is the best of all. And, while we are exciting ourselves about the ignorance and indifference of the foreign-born woman, and bemoaning her possible influence upon her children, it is well for us to remember that these children are in the American public schools, talking the English language, absorbing whatever there may be of “Americanism” in the social atmosphere about them, in daily sight of the Stars and Stripes, singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” gaining enthusiasm for and pride in our country, and, what is most important, taking home daily to their foreign-born parents the direct and indirect influences of what they are learning, seeing, and feeling. The extent of this leavening process is impossible to estimate, but undoubtedly it is enormous.

A SPECIFIC EXAMPLE—IT WORKS

Perhaps the most striking and unmistakable exhibit of this process is to be found in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, where the work of the Americanization Society presents concrete and visible results. The work in process there since the fall of 1918 is susceptible of definite and even statistical study. It has produced effects upon elections which can be stated in figures, and results in homes upon concretely discoverable human beings about which there can be no question. It is socially physiological, so to speak; working in a normal way in consonance with known political methods and customs, along the rational lines of least resistance—making use of the natural, spontaneous life of the people in their ordinary social and political relationships and in their homes.

A battle with machine politics over a matter of local administration, especially as affecting the treatment of the poor, convinced those interested in the unselfish conduct of the city’s business that the way to win, and the only way, was to appeal to the people direct and get them to vote. There was no fear as to how they would vote, but the effort was not addressed to that aspect of the question. The slogans speak for themselves!

Tags were the weapons directly used, and they had a profound effect. Committees of women, drawn from mothers’ clubs, women’s clubs, parents’ associations, etc., gave out the tags at the polls, asked the voters to wear them, and pinned them on when they could. The only way to get a tag was to vote; everybody who voted found it to his interest to wear one; and those who didn’t have tags wished they had. For the tag said:

The effectiveness of these tactics in arousing not only sentimental enthusiasm, but that kind of practical personal action at and in the ballot box which decides elections, is convincingly attested by the great increase in the registration and in the total vote.[161]

The essential purpose of the job was to get to the polls every individual entitled to vote; but incidentally, or perhaps better to say, fundamentally, to train the rising generation as to their privilege and duty of participation in public affairs, and to accelerate the naturalization and Americanization of the alien. In order to accomplish the first of these last two purposes, the campaign was carried into the public schools; in order to accomplish the second, great stress was laid upon naturalization. There were three other slogans:

This meant embarrassment for the untagged, and when the school children began to plague the untagged adult males it became unendurable. Woe to that father who came home at night without a tag! The family was disgraced in the eyes of the children. He was nagged, not about how he voted, but about why he didn’t vote at all!

Meanwhile, woman suffrage was established in Michigan, and the women came in for their share of the bombardment. A great campaign was begun to make the women realize their political responsibilities. It bore fruit in the registration of 26,000 women for the election in April, 1919; in one day 1,500 women registered. For the primary election in March the tag system got out 28,700 votes, and it was estimated that a blizzard raging on that day prevented at least 3,000 more. At the April election all the candidates recommended by the Citizens’ League were elected, although the tag system involved no pressure as to particular candidates or causes. There were thirteen different matters to be voted upon, and the result showed notable discrimination in the voting—by 37,000 voters, while from 5,000 to 7,000 votes could not be cast because of inadequacy of the polling facilities.

WHAT THE CHILDREN DID

The children were a vital factor in the campaign. After the elections they were asked to collect tags and bring them to school. Out of 29,000 tags given out at one election, they brought back more than 17,000. After the next election they brought back 27,000 out of 37,000. Flags were given as prizes to the schools showing the highest totals.

In the schools—and all schools were enlisted, parochial and private as well as public schools—the children wrote letters, and later little essays, describing their experiences, telling why it was important to vote, and what the issues were. The response was instantaneous, enthusiastic; and it requires no special imagination to infer the effect in individual homes, not only in compelling American citizens to vote, but in virtually forcing alien fathers and mothers to avoid embarrassment at their own firesides by expediting their efforts to gain citizenship.

Space is not available for extensive quotation of the children’s essays; but their general tenor, and the reflex influence of their spirit upon the homes, may be imagined from such excerpts as these:

There is plenty of direct testimony as to the effect of this enterprise in the home, not only of the American citizens, but of the aliens. Thousands of mothers who otherwise might have remained prisoners to indifference and drudgery have been fairly driven out into the liberation of social contacts and into a broader life of interest in all the things that make for responsible citizenship by the interest of their children.

It is in their homes that the foreign-born women must be reached with inspiration and enlightenment as to their part in the process of self-government and the privileges, duties, and responsibilities—and activities—which are essential to anything worthy to be called American citizenship.

XI

THE FOREIGN-BORN VOTER IN ACTION

There is not and never has been in the United States anything that could be segregated as the “labor vote,” although such a thing has been the dream of many labor leaders, the bugaboo—or rather the ignis fatuus—of politicians of many parties, and a permanently legendary figure in the popular speech. The absence of such a vote is the principle reason for the political futility of most of the efforts of the Socialist parties.

Time and again, since the beginning of our existence as a nation, efforts—some of them with a measure of success promising or menacing according to one’s sympathy and point of view—have been made to get united political action on the part of citizens who worked with their hands as supposedly distinguished from those who worked with their brains. The effort never has come to other than temporary local success; although it may be conceded that, in some measure, the issues upon which the efforts were predicated afterward came to be those upon which the great parties fought out their battles; or, more likely, came slowly to substantial acceptance through economic development or sometimes as the direct fruit of campaign agitation.

The reasons for this failure to precipitate and organize the mythical “labor vote” are many and diverse, but certain of them are essential and fairly evident:

First, the fact that in this country social and industrial conditions have hitherto been, and probably for an indefinite period will continue to be, such as to emphasize individualism. It is true, despite any denials or theories, that industry, initiative, enterprise, always have won, still win, and will continue to win advancement above the herd. The top is still open for those who can win to it by their own inherent qualities. There has been here, there is now, no permanent industrial or social caste classification to circumscribe ambition and create either a persisting intellectual leadership of “labor” or a stable body of hand-workers susceptible of political coherence or direction. All efforts to crystallize “class consciousness” for political action have failed, and probably will continue to fail as long as the social bars are down so that individuals can pass freely from one class to another.

Second, the immensity of our territory and the great diversity of interests and issues in the forefront of public attention in one section and another. Seldom, if ever, have the conditions which might have solidified any class been sufficiently widespread or synchronous to serve the purpose of united political sentiment or action. Add to this the fact that politicians of both the great parties, more or less intentionally, have managed always to frame the issues so as to encourage this diversity.

Third, the deliberate and long-standing policy of the most influential of the general leaders of the labor organizations—Mr. Samuel Gompers for the most conspicuous example—of keeping those organizations free from the entanglements and distractions of party politics, definitely preventing their acting as a political unit; by intention confining their activities to the industrial, the economic field. This alone, without regard to the fact that the higher-grade unions (using that expression solely with reference to skill) seldom see their interests to be common, so far as the ballot box is concerned. The radical agitation for the establishment of “One Big Union,” to include all classes of laborers as distinguished from capitalists, while it contemplates chiefly the exercise of industrial and economic power, includes the intention to concentrate political power as well.

Fourth, and most important, the fact that “labor,” in the sense in which most politicians, and virtually all of the public, use the term, means chiefly the unskilled workers who contribute muscle to industry. These are to a great extent unorganized, without any conscious unity of interest or purpose; their approach to both industry and political action is as individuals—individuals of more or less shifting residence and comparatively little feeling of political responsibility. Moreover, it is a matter of common knowledge that the great industrial concerns have fostered the existence of masses of unskilled labor, in excess of the actual needs of industry, in order to maintain an “overstocked” labor supply, for the purpose of constant wage-competition to keep down costs. This competition has the inevitable effect of discouraging united action of any kind. And, still further, we have found[162] that the unskilled laborer of foreign birth, on the average, is not available for political activity because he is not naturalized.

This body of the unskilled, industrially indispensable, but politically unassimilated, inarticulate, and unwholesome, consists almost entirely now, and must consist increasingly, of immigrants. Like any other mass of material in an organism, potentially digestible and useful but actually undigested and in the circumstances indigestible, it has clogged the process of assimilation and is infecting the body politic with dangerous toxins. The wonder is that we have got along with it so well. One of the reasons may be the very fact that its influences are not in the ordinary sense political.

Foreigners: the word is used advisedly. For out of the welter of prejudice and misinformation surrounding the subject has emerged clearly the fact that by the time the alien man reaches the point of applying for citizenship and the political power that goes with it, he has been in this country upward of ten years, has advanced materially in social and economic status, and the process of assimilation is far on its way, if not substantially complete. In a majority of cases, he has passed out of the category of what is usually known as “common labor.”

DIVIDED BY RACIAL TRADITIONS

Another thing, conspicuous here as in no other country where “labor” might be regarded as directly a political factor, is the fact that even had these thousands of men been individually available for prompt assimilation, or manageable in their groups as material for political manipulation, they have constituted such a hodge-podge of conflicting racial and national antecedents, prejudices, and inhibitions that any coherent political action by them always has been out of the question. Scandinavian and Slav, Austrian and Italian, British and German, Greek and Turk; Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile—to say nothing of those smaller clan, village, and even family feuds, often of long-forgotten origin, within the racial groups ... at every turn some hoary animosity, born, perhaps, centuries ago out of historic or obscure conflicts of which the average native-born American maybe never heard in his life, has kept and doubtless long will continue to keep these racial groups apart and practically preclude any possibility of getting them to work together. The events and political by-products of the World War have only further confused and intensified these causes of disunion.

The Socialists alone, of all the considerable political parties, have tried to unite “labor” (chiefly meaning unskilled labor) by efforts to convince all the racial groups of a common political interest superior to any racial interest. They have almost completely failed.

Politicians, large and small, have been to some extent aware of this diversity of traditions and interests among the racial groups, based upon ancient or current controversies in old countries; but their approach to the subject always has been pragmatical and opportunistic, and usually unintelligent without real information about or understanding of the explosive matters with which they were meddling, or any but temporary or local concern about the consequences. The Fiume controversy, interesting both Italians and Jugo-Slavs; the Irish situation; the war between the Poles and the Bolsheviki in Russia; and conspicuously the whole stupendous question of the League of Nations—all are fine examples of international and interracial conflicts and emergencies of which American politicians of both parties have taken advantage for their own purposes without regard to consequences to the welfare of the world—or of their own country, for that matter.

ALIENS NOT WITHOUT POLITICAL INFLUENCE

As we have seen, the foreign born who become citizens, and as such are eligible to participate in our political processes, do so on the average only after a residence in this country of more than ten years. Also, notwithstanding the legend to the contrary, there appears to be no material distinction of race in their interest in our politics or their desire to become citizens. But it would be a cardinal mistake to suppose that the great mass of the unnaturalized foreign born, who have no votes themselves, represent no political influence. Neighborhood sentiment is a very great force in politics. The politician pays special heed to the wishes of voters; but he is exceedingly mindful of the desires, enthusiasms, and hatreds of those in his district who are audible all the year round. This is all the more true when he is of the same racial origin as the bulk of the population that surrounds him in a “Little Italy,” a “Little Hungary,” a “New Bohemia,” or a “Ghetto.”

THERE IS NO “FOREIGN VOTE”

What we have said of the mythical “labor vote” is equally true of the mythical “foreign vote.” Under circumstances of tense feeling between Italians and Jugo-Slavs, between Irish and English-born, between Swedes and Norwegians, the vote of Italian-born citizens and those of Serbian antecedents cannot be corralled together for a candidate of either racial origin, or for a ticket representing sympathy or tolerance for either, and so on down the lines; but no politician ever has been able to unite in one political movement all the heterogeneous mass that could, by any stretch of words, be called the “foreign vote.” There is no “foreign vote,” any more than there is a “labor vote.”

The wholesale enfranchisement of women, native and foreign-born citizens alike, under the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, brings into the situation a new and confusing factor, about which it would be perilous to prophesy. Foreign-born women, largely ignorant of everything that we are accustomed to regard as “American,” subject to all of the influences and limitations involved in the word “foreign,” are swept by our naturalization laws helter-skelter into citizenship by the mere fact of their marriage or filial relation to a naturalized man, without any restrictions as to length of residence or personal fitness. And now the constitutional amendment has armed them with the ballot, with the potential capacity not only to strengthen, but to offset and nullify, the vote of the intelligent; not only to offset and nullify, but to double the political power of the ignorant, the misled, and the corrupt. Fortunately, however, as we have pointed out elsewhere, this is a potential rather than an actual peril. The foreign-born woman is, and will continue to be, very slow in assuming the power for mischief, or for good, which we have thrust upon her.[163]

OLD EVILS ABOLISHED

There was a day in American political history when, especially in the great cities along the Atlantic seaboard, the immigrant, in many cases the newly landed immigrant, was herded to the ballot box, sometimes without even the empty formality of naturalization, to cast an open ballot thrust into his hand by his padrone or some one else of his race who saw to it that he got his pay, usually in cash, but sometimes in the form of a job. Such practices, while they survive sporadically in out-of-the-way mining regions or the like where supervision of elections is lax or lacking, are no longer in vogue.

The naturalization law of 1906, faithfully executed by the Naturalization Bureau, has completely abolished the old naturalization frauds and abuses, and the increasingly effective protection surrounding the ballot box, with the substitution of official ballots for the old voting ticket or open ballot, with more or less of the nonpartisan, alphabetical arrangement of candidates known as the “Australian” ballot, has made direct corruption, vote buying, not only perilous as a form of crime, but relatively useless because of the difficulty of knowing whether the goods are delivered. There is still bribery, but more and more it takes the form of payment for voting at all, of continued tenure of jobs within the gift or control of politicians and other oblique and indirect forms of remuneration.

It would be possible to occupy much space in this volume with a history of bygone days, when naturalization was a farce and a scandal, and the ignorant immigrant vote a real factor in American politics. As early as 1835, this was a source of alarm to the native Americans, the emotion being intensified and complicated by the religious sectarianism which was a large factor in the nativistic Know-Nothing movement. Congress was memorialized about