UC-NRLF 
 
 Confession 
 
 of a 
 
 Hmcrican 
 
 Cbtoarb S- 
 terner- 
 
 i 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS 
 
5 
 
 0<a X 
 
 
The Confession 
 of a 
 
 Hyphenated American 
 
BY EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 THE CONFESSION OF A HYPHENATED 
 AMERICAN 
 
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The Confession 
 
 of a 
 
 Hyphenated American 
 
 By 
 EDWARD A. STEINER 
 
 Author of "From Alien to Citizen" etc. 
 
 NEW YORK CHICAGO TORONTO 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 LONDON AND EDINBURGH 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Copyright, 1916, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 A Lecture delivered under the 
 Auspices of The League for Polit- 
 ical Education, New York City 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
The Confession of a 
 Hyphenated American 
 
 DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, 
 who was as much metaphysician 
 as physician, declared that every 
 man has a blind spot. If he were living 
 in these war-clouded days he would say 
 if he were capable of reasoning at a time 
 when the whole world has gone mad 
 that every man has a seeing spot, and 
 that all the rest of him is blind. He might 
 declare a large portion of humanity stone- 
 blind ; for even the wisest and the fairest 
 among us are in that happy frame of 
 mind in which we believe that we alone 
 have retained vision, now that the world 
 has gone back to the " Tohu Vawohu " 
 which reigned before the Creator said : 
 " Let there be light." 
 
 Living as we are, at a time when we 
 have lost faith in one another's intellectual 
 [5] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 integrity, it is as difficult to speak clearly 
 and dispassionately as it is to listen pa- 
 tiently. Both processes become doubly 
 difficult, if the speaker belongs to that 
 class of citizens upon whom a famous 
 phrase-maker has bestowed the now 
 malodorous title, " Hyphenated Ameri- 
 cans." 
 
 The word "hyphenated " has led a very 
 honourable and innocent existence in the 
 ample bosom of Webster's dictionary ever 
 since that volume became the longer cate- 
 chism of a large portion of the English- 
 speaking world ; and, according to that 
 authority, it means " something which is 
 united by hyphens." The hyphen itself, 
 which boasts of Greek lineage, means, in 
 that classic language, " under one, into 
 one, or together." Even where it is used 
 to separate two words it indicates that 
 they belong together, although they have 
 a distinct origin. Evidently the afore- 
 mentioned phrase-maker permitted his 
 mood to influence his definition of the 
 hyphen, with the result that the short, 
 very innocent and proper dash has by 
 [6] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 brooding over it become an elongated, 
 damnable damn. So that which had the 
 same significance as the ring at a wed- 
 ding ceremony has suddenly become the 
 symbol of divorce, and is being given the 
 same place in the sphere of patriotism 
 that adultery has in married life. 
 
 CONFESSING THE HYPHEN 
 I am in the enviable position, denied 
 most of my kind, in which, before my 
 peers, I can present my cause ; and I 
 plead guilty to the charge of being a 
 hyphenated American according to Web- 
 ster not according to Roosevelt. I am 
 proud of the fact and happy in it, just as 
 proud and happy as I am in being a mar- 
 ried man, rather than a divorced man. 
 That I was born in another country, 
 subject of a monarch, I was, for certain 
 well-established reasons, unable to avoid. 
 To my credit be it stated that as soon 
 as I discovered my deplorable condition I 
 sought to make amends in the only way 
 I knew : the way taken by millions be- 
 fore and after me emigrating to a coun- 
 
 [7] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 try which was generous enough to admit 
 us all. 
 
 Not only did that country admit us to 
 her shores, she did not bar our way into 
 her " Holy of Holies." Thus we were 
 bound to her so closely that we became 
 " hyphenated " before we knew it, wedded 
 to her " for better and for worse, for richer 
 and for poorer " ; married to her as swiftly 
 as marriages take place in this country, 
 where everything is frightfully acceler- 
 ated. 
 
 We were bound to her with a sense of 
 loyalty and devotion which the native- 
 born American cannot always feel. What 
 she has done for us is sufficient to bind us 
 to her "till death us do part," no matter 
 what she may have done or not have done 
 in these unhappy days, in which every 
 one of us has spoken harshly, judged 
 partially and condemned hastily. The 
 time will come and that very soon, when 
 all of us, remembering the wild words we 
 have let loose, the ill we have approved 
 and the good we have condemned, will 
 smite our breasts, saying: " Mea culpa" 
 
 [8] 
 
OP A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 Again speaking for myself, I had quite 
 forgotten that I possessed even the in- 
 nocent hyphen, as interpreted by Web- 
 ster, not by Roosevelt. There was not 
 a drop of American blood in my veins 
 when I landed in New York scarcely 
 thirty years ago. Yet I can say to-day 
 without a bit of cant, which I always 
 detest, and which is doubly detestable in 
 these trying days, that if you drained 
 every drop of my blood and I am will- 
 ing to give the last drop, if needed, if 
 thus my words might be proved you 
 would find in my veins American blood 
 only. 
 
 I regarded myself so thoroughly an 
 American that I forgot the very names 
 of the ships on which I chronically mi- 
 grated and remembered only one of 
 them, which it seemed had brought me 
 here the Mayflower. Whenever I re- 
 turned to the land of my birth it was like 
 going to a foreign country. When I 
 stood before the Emperor's palace in the 
 city of Vienna, with no great patriotic 
 emotions stirring in my breast, I could 
 [9] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 hear the questioning voice of the poet 
 ringing accusingly in my ears : 
 
 " Lives there a man with soul so dead 
 Who never to himself hath said, 
 ' This is my own, my native land ' ? " 
 
 and I had to admit that I was the miser- 
 able wretch whose existence he doubted. 
 When my face was turned Westward, 
 and the odours of the steerage filled my 
 nostrils, then indeed I knew that I was 
 going home, and the Alpine horn from 
 the mountains, snow-crowned and glori- 
 ous, had no such welcoming sound as 
 the fog-horn from the low dunes at Sandy 
 Hook. 
 
 OTHERS OF MY KIND 
 How often I have stood among thou- 
 sands of my kind, on the great ships, 
 those wombs out of which millions of us 
 were born, full-grown, into this new land. 
 Men and women were there, going back 
 to their native land from which they 
 thought themselves as yet unweaned. 
 
 [10] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMERICA!? 
 
 Many of them, more successful than I, 
 were returning with small fortunes which 
 they intended to spend in the towns and 
 villages where they were born and where 
 they expected to die. They soon discov- 
 ered, however, that they were pilgrims 
 and sojourners in the land of their birth 
 and again they were seeking another 
 country, " even an Heavenly " ; or, to use 
 the language of the street, they wanted 
 to get back to " God's Country." 
 
 I have been a chronic immigrant, fol- 
 lowing so frequently the trail worn by 
 millions of weary feet across this conti- 
 nent that it has become a sort of " White 
 Way" for me, straighter than that on 
 Broadway, and not so dangerous. I 
 have visited every foreign colony be- 
 tween Angel Gate on the Pacific and 
 Hell Gate on the Atlantic ; and while I 
 have found the mother tongue surviving 
 in mutilated form among the older gen- 
 eration, and discovered that the most 
 loyal part of our anatomy, the stomach, 
 still craves the " leeks and garlics " of 
 the Homeland, I have also found the 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 Spirit of America brooding over these 
 aliens, wooing them and winning them, 
 while but very few do not finally yield it 
 full allegiance. 
 
 I have guided many distinguished for 
 eign guests who came here to study the 
 strange ways of this country which they 
 had called " the Dollar Land." If they 
 were discerning, and some of them were, 
 they discovered that this country is held 
 together by a finer metal than gold and 
 by a nobler symbol than the eagle of our 
 coinage. 
 
 They found that although there have 
 come here in the last twenty years some 
 thirteen millions of aliens, broken bits, 
 torn patches of all nationalities and races, 
 we are being knitted to one another as a 
 nation. At no time in our history has the 
 sense of nationality been stronger, and 
 never before were we more truly the 
 United States of America than now. 
 
 These students of our national life were 
 amazed and confounded as they observed 
 the change in the expression, bearing and 
 deportment of the peoples whom they 
 
 [12] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 knew in the Old World as sullen, rebel- 
 lious, suspicious and incapable of cohesion. 
 The Slovaks among our immigrants I 
 have studied most intimately, both in 
 their native country and in those hard and 
 dangerous occupations which have fallen 
 to their lot here, in the mining camps and 
 steel mills. Although among the latest 
 comers, and, on account of their political 
 history, the most unripe people for Ameri- 
 canization, they passed the following res- 
 olution at a recent convention : 
 
 " Enjoying the blessings of political and civil 
 liberty, under the beneficent provisions of the 
 United States constitution, which blessings were 
 freely bestowed upon us by the generosity of the 
 American people who, by admitting us to their 
 land, opened wide to us the doors of opportunity 
 and allowed us to share with them the fruits of the 
 labours of their forefathers, dearly bought with 
 their fortunes and their lives, so that we can pur- 
 sue happiness, the great, inalienable right of every 
 man, better in this land of our adoption than in 
 the land of our birth ; 
 
 "We, the citizens and residents of the United 
 States of Slovak birth, can the more keenly feel 
 the plight of our brethren across the seas and hear 
 
 [13] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 the agonizing cries of those millions of our kin 
 who are still groaning under the oppression of in- 
 human laws and the tyranny of a selfish, privileged 
 class, and 
 
 " Well knowing that the American heart always 
 beats in sympathy with the oppressed nations of 
 the earth and always has been willing to lend to 
 such oppressed peoples its moral and even mate- 
 rial support, 
 
 "The Slovak League of America, a federation 
 of the Slovak organizations and newspapers of this 
 country, dedicates this Memorandum to the Ameri- 
 can People." 
 
 Not long ago I spoke at the Ford Hall 
 Forum in Boston, where democracy can 
 be seen in the making under the guidance 
 of that superb American, George W. 
 Coleman. It is the most heterogeneous 
 audience I ever address, the majority 
 being Russian Jews, temperamentally the 
 most difficult material I know for this ex- 
 periment. I have seen them at the great 
 Zionistic Congress at Basle and they 
 were like a seething, boiling mass, un- 
 manageable and dangerous. Theodore 
 Herzl, that kingly Jew, a master of as- 
 semblies, was incapable of controlling 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 them. I have heard him say : " They 
 are impossible, they will kill me ! " 
 
 If his spirit could have hovered over 
 that audience in Ford Hall he would have 
 said that a miracle had been wrought 
 among his people ; for at Ford Hall they 
 not only yield themselves to the speaker's 
 fervent speech, but in the discussion fol- 
 lowing they show that their fiery individ- 
 ualism has been subdued if not conquered. 
 They are making themselves ready to 
 play their part in an orderly democracy. 
 
 It is, of course, well known that before 
 the war those institutions among the 
 older groups which depended upon the 
 maintenance of the mother tongue, lan- 
 guished and were ready to die. The 
 newspaper, the church, the theater, if sup- 
 ported at all, relied entirely upon the 
 newcomers, even the first generation, 
 after a time, being weaned from them. 
 This swift process was ruthless, destroying 
 much that was best in the immigrant's 
 inheritance, and frequently not putting 
 anything of value in its place. It separa- 
 ted families, destroyed parental authority, 
 
 [15] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 crushed out the fine flavours of tradition, 
 and left the raw, human material a prey 
 to the low, the coarse and the vulgar. 
 We who had the shaping of it in our 
 hands saved our skirts from the contami- 
 nating touch, talking much about the im- 
 migrant problem but doing little to solve 
 it in the one way in which it could be 
 solved. 
 
 Wherever the idealistic American man 
 or woman heard the call to service, and, 
 thank God, many of them heard it there 
 they wrought some such miracle as I 
 have seen performed in Ford Hall Forum. 
 
 Go among the settlements generously 
 scattered through your great cities, and 
 you will find a hunger for ideals, a thirst 
 for the best things, and a passion for 
 brotherly relationship, hard to satisfy even 
 by that noble army of men and women 
 who have become the High Priests of our 
 national spirit, ministering in the name of 
 our common country. 
 
 I said that I had forgotten I had a 
 hyphen, and it is true. If I thought of it 
 at all, it appeared to me like the lobes 
 [16] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMERICAN 
 
 and glands and other now useless im- 
 pedimenta which I, in common with other 
 human beings, have inherited from my 
 ancestors of varied species, who knew 
 how to use them. That these useless 
 parts may become inflamed and dan- 
 gerous, those of us know who have had 
 the case diagnosed by a physician who 
 knew not only what ailed us, but also 
 knew the size of our bank account. The 
 difficulty is not with the hyphen, but 
 with the inflamed hyphen ; and because 
 it has become a somewhat contagious 
 disease manifesting itself in different 
 ways, I shall, after enumerating them, 
 discuss the various remedies proposed, 
 and offer a cure which I believe would 
 be effective. 
 
 THE ATLANTIC OCEAN HYPHEN 
 One hyphen is the Atlantic Ocean 
 hyphen ; and that I discovered in the first 
 cabin, not in the steerage. Sometimes I 
 do travel in the cabin, my objection to it 
 being not constitutional, but financial. 
 On one of those rare occasions I had 
 
 [17] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 the good fortune to have as a fellow pas- 
 senger a real, live countess. Naturally 
 she would not speak to me, because she 
 had ancestors and I had none. Once 
 she did graciously bridge the gulf be- 
 tween us, and that under the stress of a 
 great storm. She asked me whether I 
 thought the storm was going to be seri- 
 ous or not ; common danger makes for 
 at least temporary democracy. When 
 she was assured that there was no 
 danger, she relapsed into dignified and 
 proper aristocratic silence. She had one 
 child and a number of pedigreed dogs, 
 all of them kept from the contaminating 
 touch of mere Americans. I knew her 
 father by sight and by reputation ; he was 
 a very celebrated man who fought and 
 
 bled others on Wall Street, and 
 
 he had purchased a title as well as 
 various and sundry ancestors for his 
 daughter. This was the first case of the 
 inflamed hyphen which I discovered ; and 
 I can assure you it was a hopeless one. 
 
 It was in that cabin and not in the 
 steerage that I had to fight real battles 
 [18] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 for the United States, for its democracy 
 and inherent high ideals. The real, 
 hyphenated Americans whose hyphen 
 signified dual loyalty, badly diluted at 
 that, I found in Charlottenburgh, Dresden 
 and Munich, in Paris and the Riviera, 
 among those Americans who had ex- 
 patriated themselves for cultural or finan- 
 cial reasons. Their patriotism showed 
 itself in eating turkey on Thanksgiving 
 Day, or habitually using a certain brand 
 of soap which is supposed to be ninety- 
 nine per cent, pure, still leaving one per 
 cent, for patriotism. 
 
 I found widows of American soldiers 
 drawing pensions and repudiating our 
 democracy while they spent their money 
 in the gracious, if faint, shadow of 
 royalty ; and near- widows whose incomes 
 were derived from the toil of American 
 workmen, yet who believed so thoroughly 
 in preparedness that they never were 
 without military escort. 
 
 I have seen the children of our mer- 
 chant princes in English and Swiss 
 schools passing through educational 
 ['9] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 processes which were designed to sweat 
 out of them their American blood ; while 
 in their father's shops and mills, foreign- 
 born men and women were sweated, to 
 get the dollars with which to pay for 
 those sons' foreign education. 
 
 I have seen rivers of gold poured into 
 the pockets of the Prince of Monaco ; 
 stacks of gold, good, plain, pure United 
 States coin, offered upon the green altar 
 of his highness by men and women who 
 thought it disloyal for our immigrants to 
 send their honest savings, mere crumbs 
 from rich men's tables, to the same old, 
 poverty-stricken world. 
 
 One of the many effects of the Euro- 
 pean war upon our country is that these 
 "Hyphenated Americans" have had to 
 return to the United States and that 
 many of them had to come, even as 
 their grandfathers came, in the steerage. 
 Then, I hope, they realized what it meant 
 to have a country ; a country which, al- 
 though imperfect in many things, is one in 
 which the individual may help it strive for 
 perfection, and consciously strive for it. 
 
 [20] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMERICAN 
 
 I wish I might have met in that steer- 
 age of our peerage, those whom I met but 
 a few years prior to that in the cabin of 
 the steamer Cincinnati, That business 
 man, who told me that he came to Broad- 
 way from the middle West, with five dol- 
 lars in his pocket, a Bible his mother 
 gave him, and not much else. He had 
 toured through Germany, France and 
 England in his own car, and was bitter 
 about our imperfections, our corrupt poli- 
 tics which he had never helped to make 
 clean ; he gloried in the perfection and 
 completeness of that Europe through 
 which he had glided in his eight cylinder 
 machine. I should like to have seen him 
 in the steerage and heard him tell how he 
 and his wife had to make their way 
 through that perfect Europe when the 
 war broke out. It would have been 
 worth a great deal to have seen them 
 walk across the Dutch border and make 
 a run for the crowded ship to take them 
 back to the country for which he had only 
 one use as a place in which to make 
 money. 
 
 [21] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 I have always regretted that I was not 
 in Europe when the war broke out, just 
 because I would have had a chance to 
 come back in the steerage when it was 
 crowded by Americans. If I had been 
 in that steerage I would have rejoiced to 
 see them glad for once, as supremely 
 glad as any emigrants, when they passed 
 under the shadow of the Goddess of 
 Liberty. 
 
 The real treason against the demo- 
 cratic ideals of America has been com- 
 mitted not on the East Side of New York 
 but on the West Side. I find more real 
 patriotism on Fifth Street than I find on 
 Fifth Avenue ; and if " government by 
 the people, of the people, and for the 
 people " perishes from the earth it will 
 perish from the exclusive suburb, down, 
 and not from the inclusive Ghetto, up. 
 
 We who, by the grace of God, have 
 been delivered from the tyranny of mon- 
 archies are not among those who return 
 to the Old World to exchange our for- 
 tunes for baronetcies ; we do not covet 
 the condescending smiles of the nobility ; 
 
 [22] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 nor are we among those who prate about 
 the failure oi democracy. We are pro- 
 foundly grateful for this inheritance of 
 government " of the people," and if we 
 are dissatisfied, it is because that govern- 
 ment is not sufficiently " by the people " 
 or " for the people." 
 
 The most hopeful material for the reali- 
 zation of our democratic ideals is the 
 immigrant, and not the American emi- 
 grant ; and the biggest hyphen I know 
 is the Atlantic Ocean, which so many 
 wealthy, native Americans have put be- 
 tween themselves and their United States, 
 to which they have now returned, not 
 from inclination but from necessity. 
 
 THE IMPOUNDED HYPHEN 
 Besides this Atlantic Ocean hyphen of 
 which we have been temporarily cured 
 by the war, we have to face the stern fact 
 that there is among the newer immigrants 
 a large group which Prof. Edward A. Ross 
 appropriately calls the " impounded im- 
 migrants." 
 
 Certain organizations have naturally 
 
 [23] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 resisted the process of Americanization. 
 This is especially true of the churches in 
 which nationality and religion are either 
 identical, or so related to one another 
 because of common historic experiences, 
 as to make them indistinguishable to 
 their adherents. The Greek Orthodox 
 Churches, which are always nationalistic, 
 have most to fear, but are the least ca- 
 pable of resisting the forces at work. 
 
 The Roman Catholic Churches have 
 been able to impound successfully one or 
 two Slavic groups, but effectively only in 
 agricultural colonies. Even there certain 
 tendencies among them have resisted 
 complete subjugation. Among the Poles 
 there is considerable schism which, from 
 the religious standpoint, has little to com- 
 mend it ; but is an indication of the fact 
 that there are forces working towards 
 liberation if not towards Americanization. 
 
 It is rather interesting and disquieting 
 to find that the most persistent impounded 
 hyphen is found among certain Protestant 
 Churches. They are supported by their 
 governments which maintain close super- 
 
OP A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 vision over them. Because of the historic 
 relation of these churches to similar Amer- 
 ican bodies, this supervision has proved 
 rather ineffective, and wherever such fel- 
 lowship has been established, the process 
 of Americanization could not be resisted. 
 
 It would be easy to grow too optimistic 
 as to the future of the impounded immi- 
 grants by believing that, through the in- 
 filtration of American ideals, these groups 
 would be set free to develop in harmony 
 with their new environment. One or two 
 generations are bound to grow up poorly 
 acquainted with the language, the ideals, 
 and the principles of the country destined 
 to be their home and that of their children 
 with the result that they and this coun- 
 try alike will be the sufferers. 
 
 It is also easy to foresee that if Europe 
 should continue to be in a state of national 
 ferment, and there is nothing to indicate 
 that it will not, the reaction will be felt by 
 these impounded groups, and the churches 
 which guard their souls will, with equal 
 zeal, guard their hyphens. 
 
 We have as yet no effective remedy 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 against this impounded hyphen, because 
 by the establishment of parochial schools 
 access to the child has been denied us. 
 Some way will have to be found, however, 
 a way which on one side will guard the 
 religious sensibilities of our fellow citi- 
 zens and on the other side open a way 
 for the child to enter into its new national 
 inheritance. 
 
 THE POLITICAL HYPHEN 
 In addition to the impounded hyphen, 
 for which we seem to have no effective 
 cure, our country is visited periodically 
 by the political hyphen ; an inflammatory 
 epidemic of the hyphen at election time. 
 The seat of the contagion has always 
 been in the bosom of one or the other of 
 our political parties, and is spread largely 
 by office-seekers. Having mixed liberal 
 quantities of illy prepared tables of sta- 
 tistics, and the names of national heroes 
 which they cannot pronounce correctly, 
 with racial and national virtues, the whole 
 is fed to groups of ignorant foreigners 
 who are taught the one privilege of de- 
 
 [26] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 mocracy, to vote and to vote as often 
 as possible. 
 
 May I ask in all fairness and I do wish 
 to be fair who is responsible for these 
 Hebrew-Republican, these Lithuanian- 
 Democratic and other hyphenated clubs 
 which were and are so frequently used 
 and misused for personal and party ends ? 
 
 May I also ask of the men who have 
 been loud in their condemnation of the 
 hyphen, and to whom we owe the ill 
 odour attached to it, whether they are 
 entirely guiltless? 
 
 May I ask who it was who went to our 
 Little Hungary and ate " gulyas" to the 
 glory of the United States? And who 
 partook of frankfurters, frequently im- 
 ported, sometimes domesticated, and 
 always hyphenated, to prove how much 
 they loved the Germans ? 
 
 I may be doing these people an in- 
 justice. Perhaps they ate "gulyas " and 
 frankfurters just because they were 
 hungry ; perhaps they went to Little 
 Hungary to see the sights ; perhaps they 
 appointed certain Little Hungarians and 
 
 [27] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 Little Italians to office because they, 
 above all others, were fitted for it. 
 
 Certain it is that one cannot over- 
 estimate the wrong done to our national 
 ideals by those Americans who have thus 
 emphasized the hyphen and gloried in 
 it ; who have rewarded it by petty offices 
 and have stimulated its growth. They 
 have appealed only to the most ignorant 
 and the most degraded of the immigrants 
 and have thus done damage to our de- 
 mocracy in its most vulnerable point. 
 
 My own introduction into this sphere 
 of the political hyphen may be illuminat- 
 ing if any illumination upon this subject 
 is needed. 
 
 During one of my journeys " On the 
 Trail of the Immigrant " I attached my- 
 self to a group of Poles, who were in that 
 confused mental stage of the recently 
 arrived immigrant which we designate as 
 " green." 
 
 We had returned to our boarding- 
 house which, like most of its class in that 
 industrial state, furnished more beer than 
 board. While we were sitting about, 
 
 [28] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 after our frugal supper, a group of 
 American men entered, so well groomed 
 and prosperous-looking as to arouse our 
 respect if not our envy. The most dis- 
 tinguished among them was introduced 
 to the barkeeper, who brought him to 
 our group. The distinguished American 
 shook hands all around, telling us that 
 he was a particular friend of the Poles, 
 and that as a token of that friendship he 
 had asked the saloon-keeper to fill us up. 
 
 Evidently he knew nothing about the 
 Poles, nor how much it takes to fill them 
 up ; for they drank till daybreak, when 
 they fell into a drunken stupor from 
 which they were aroused to be marched 
 to the ballot box. 
 
 I marched with them to that altar of 
 our civic liberty which I was eager to 
 see. I could smell it before I saw it, and 
 Polish- Americans cast their ballot for the 
 friend of Poland and the enemy of the 
 United States, after they had been but 
 two months in this country. 
 
 I have told this story in a number 
 of towns in that state, and each claimed 
 
 [29] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 that the identical procedure had taken 
 place there. When I finally told it in 
 the very city where I knew that par- 
 ticular treason against the ballot box had 
 occurred, I asked the audience what they 
 did to the man who had thus betrayed 
 them. Instantly the reply came from the 
 floor, " We sent him to the United States 
 Senate." That Senator is dead. " Peace 
 to his ashes " and more ashes to his 
 peace. 
 
 There are but few well-known poli- 
 ticians who have not been guilty of cater- 
 ing to the hyphen in a more or less 
 damaging way ; and the most guilty 
 among them are those who have taken 
 up the slogan and cry : " Hyphenated 
 American ! " with the same expressions of 
 fear as if they were shouting : " Mad 
 dog!" 
 
 There are members of Congress, candi- 
 dates for our highest offices, mayors of 
 our large cities, and politicians great and 
 small, who drag forth the hyphenated 
 American for his country's condemna- 
 tion in the same spirit with which the 
 [30] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEKICAN 
 
 Pharisees dragged a woman taken in 
 adultery, before Jesus of Nazareth. I ask 
 them in the light of their own guilty con- 
 sciences, who will be the first man to cast 
 a stone ? 
 
 Now that the hyphen is in such bad 
 repute I trust that it will be entirely 
 severed from party names and political 
 slogans ; for if there is one place where 
 we have no use for the hyphen, and 
 never had any, it is at the ballot box. If 
 the war has cured us of the Atlantic hy- 
 phen, and if it cures us of the political 
 hyphen, then " God be thankit " that some 
 good has come out of this mass of ill. 
 
 THE SYMPATHETIC HYPHEN 
 Unfortunately, the war is the direct 
 cause of the fourth kind of hyphen, and 
 that I call the sympathetic hyphen. 
 
 It is the nature of war to arouse sym- 
 pathy with one's own people and antip- 
 athy to their foes ; and both these feel- 
 ings have been stimulated in an unusual 
 degree by the present conflict, unprec- 
 edented in extent and intensity. 
 
 [313 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 When the damage done by this war 
 shall finally be estimated, the greatest 
 loss will be found, not in the national 
 treasure wasted, nor in the burden of 
 taxes to be carried by unborn genera- 
 tions, predestined to live even nearer the 
 hunger line than the generation they suc- 
 ceed ; not in the ruin of priceless works 
 of art, those precious bequests to all hu- 
 manity ; not even in the loss of human 
 life, which cannot be counted by mere 
 figures. The overwhelming loss will be 
 that of the ideal of internationalism, 
 whose realization seemed so near that we 
 believed we needed but to stretch out 
 our hands to touch it and make it real. 
 
 Those of us who believed in it believe 
 in it still ; but we realize that those forces 
 which worked for it worked just as much 
 against it; that commerce, science, in- 
 vention, and all other factors which we 
 so joyously hailed and so confidently 
 acclaimed as progress, hindered as much 
 as helped. 
 
 When we begin the slow task of re- 
 covering what has been lost, we may 
 
 [32] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMERICAN 
 
 have to begin with the eighteenth cen- 
 tury, rather than with the nineteenth and 
 early twentieth, the age of great disillu- 
 sionment. It may not be too much to 
 say that humanity has lost at least a cen- 
 tury in its march upward from the brute, 
 and that it may take another century to 
 dig away this avalanche of hate. 
 
 That we should suffer in the great 
 European disaster we might have 
 known ; but that we should believe 
 our national unity to be threatened, 
 that in this broadcast sowing of hate so 
 much of it should fall upon our shores, 
 take root and grow as swiftly as the 
 palm tree of the Hindu fakir, none of 
 us foresaw. It was perfectly natural, 
 however, that those who cherished the 
 ideals and memories of the Homeland 
 should, under this calumny of hate, de- 
 fend it both unwisely and irrationally ; 
 for at a time like this when " wisdom is 
 more precious than rubies," the fact that 
 man is a rational being is open to doubt. 
 
 Who are we to complain ? We, in 
 whom the English and French hyphens 
 [33] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 are supposed to have been atrophied long 
 ago, until suddenly they swelled to dan- 
 gerous proportions ? 
 
 Every man who has taken a decisive 
 stand in this war justifies it by the blood 
 of his ancestors, and every diluted drop 
 of blood inherited from some fighting 
 progenitor has multiplied suddenly and 
 infected the whole body, till most of us 
 feel ourselves to be fighting Scotch High- 
 landers or Anglo-Saxons, or worse, sav- 
 age cavemen, rather than the twentieth 
 century Americans we ought to be. 
 
 Moreover, this kind of hyphen we have 
 always had with us. To be an Irish- 
 American has been equal to a patent of 
 nobility, and great was the reward of 
 those who marched on St. Patrick's Day 
 under the green flag, which on that oc- 
 casion was more in evidence than the 
 stars and stripes. 
 
 Have not the Irish kept alive in us the 
 hate of England ? Have they not influ- 
 enced, if not controlled, Congress in its 
 relations to the mother country ? Have 
 the Irish not plotted and planned with 
 
 [34] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAK 
 
 our knowledge and our money towards 
 the freeing of Ireland from the yoke of 
 the oppressor? Have they not broken 
 our laws to help their land ? 
 
 What would happen in New York to- 
 day if England and Ireland were at war, 
 and the United States were to favour Eng- 
 land and ship munitions of war to shoot 
 down the Irish? Do you know what 
 would happen ? There is no doubt about 
 it. You know and I know. 
 
 There would be war, fierce war, upon 
 our streets; for while the Irish are no 
 militarists like the Germans, they are 
 riotous fighters, which the Germans are 
 not; and every Irishman, were he red- 
 headed or not, would fight for Erin. I 
 am neither indicting the Irish nor apolo- 
 gizing for the Germans ; I am merely 
 giving you good cause to be grateful that 
 the Germans are usually not red-headed 
 and never Irish. 
 
 The sporadic lawlessness of some Ger- 
 mans, their interference with our national 
 neutrality, greatly exaggerated by a preju- 
 diced press, are trifling, in comparison 
 
 [35] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 with the lawlessness of the Irish, bent 
 upon gaining their national or local po- 
 litical ends. 
 
 If you remember that there are about 
 eleven million Germans and so-called 
 German-Americans in this country, that 
 there has been no riot or bloodshed, that 
 the violent language used was used by 
 the few and that the actual lawbreak- 
 ing was done by fewer still, you may be 
 convinced that the Germans were, and 
 are, and will prove to be, loyal American 
 citizens. They may not agree with our 
 national policy ; but in that they often 
 have strong support from many influen- 
 tial Americans. If they have spoken ill 
 of President Wilson to the point of disre- 
 spect, and have heaped undeserved cal- 
 umny upon him, they have merely fol- 
 lowed the example set them by the press 
 in general, and by certain influential 
 Americans in particular. 
 
 Moreover this is the first time our Ger- 
 man American citizens have had a really 
 worthy cause for collective endeavour. 
 Too many of them have resolved and 
 
 [36] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 fought and voted for the high purpose of 
 retaining their beer mugs, and gloried in 
 the liberty of the stomach. It was not 
 loyalty to the Kaiser but to the Kaiserhof 
 in which they gloried ; and it was often 
 the Bismarck bar around which they 
 rallied, rather than the Bismarck ideals. 
 
 If the Germans in America desire to 
 perpetuate German culture, they must 
 discipline themselves by yielding unques- 
 tioning obedience to law, and prove that 
 they are capable of governing themselves 
 and others efficiently. If they bring into 
 our city and national governments their 
 practical idealism and thoroughness, we 
 certainly ought not to complain ; for we 
 are not so rich in these qualities that 
 there is danger of a surplus. 
 
 If, however, the Germans try to estab- 
 lish a Little Germany in the United States, 
 and separate themselves and their chil- 
 dren from our common language and na- 
 tional interests, they will suffer by it as 
 much as we ; for we cannot be a nation, 
 a great United States, if we are divided 
 among ourselves. So much every intelli- 
 
 [37] 
 
THE COtfFESSIOtf 
 
 gent man ought to know, for the strength 
 of the German Empire lies in its unity, 
 and that unity was achieved by con- 
 formity to the Prussian ideal. Where 
 conformity was not yielded voluntarily it 
 was imposed by force, and where that 
 force was opposed, the opposition was 
 treated as one of the worst crimes against 
 the state. 
 
 In this respect the United States has 
 been remarkably lenient, and, to my 
 mind, wisely so ; for people are rarely 
 assimilated by force. That method is 
 cruel, uncertain, and too costly. If it had 
 been used in this country, we would have 
 achieved much less than we have, and 
 Congress might have been divided upon 
 national or linguistic lines, which in the 
 end would have been disastrous to the 
 unity that is one of the chief character- 
 istics of this nation. 
 
 I am somewhat more fortunate than 
 many of my hyphenated and unhyphen- 
 ated fellow citizens, in not having allowed 
 myself to be swept along by the prevail- 
 ing mob spirit which has divided the 
 
 [38] 
 
\ 
 
 OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 country into two hostile camps. I have 
 remained sane because I had no faith 
 in diplomatic papers, whether they were 
 called white, or pink or blue. I know 
 that by their very nature they are all 
 more or less black. I have remembered 
 the characterization of a diplomat by 
 the German writer and satirist, Borne, 
 who said : " Ein Diplomat muss drei 
 Sprachen sprechen : Franzdsisch sprechen, 
 nichts sprechen und Lugen sprechen'' Of 
 the three languages which he says a 
 diplomat must speak, "liigen" is the 
 most in evidence in these papers. 
 
 HYPHENATED PATRIOTISM 
 My sympathies from the first were 
 pro- American ; not only because I love 
 America above every country in the 
 world, but because it seems to me that to 
 be pro-American is the nearest which 
 humanity has as yet come to being pro- 
 human. 
 
 I have nothing but loathing for this 
 "foul and unthinkable war," for I have 
 lived where it was bred, and I have 
 [39] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 watched the dastardly and damnable 
 process. A generation of men was be- 
 gotten and trained, to be fodder for 
 cannon and to walk joyously into that 
 hell. There was aroused in them the 
 very noblest emotion of which the human 
 heart is capable, and then it was poisoned 
 by hate, to be used for the base purpose 
 of human slaughter. 
 
 I refuse to be patriotic in the European 
 sense which means to believe every- 
 thing bad about other nations and 
 nothing but good about your own, and 
 to hate with desperate hatred the people 
 living yonder, where they have painted 
 another colour on the custom house 
 barrier. 
 
 If to be an American, a real American, 
 and a patriot, is merely that same thing, 
 then frankly I am neither an American 
 nor a patriot ; for in America I have been 
 emancipated from the patriotism of hate. 
 I have found that here men work to- 
 gether harmoniously for the common 
 good and the glory of a great country, 
 though their historic roots lie buried in 
 
 [40] 
 
OP A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 different lands and colonies, among peo- 
 ple with different religious and social 
 ideals, living in states which have con- 
 flicting economic interests, speaking di- 
 verse languages and expressing their 
 faith in God through different creeds. 
 
 Heie two nations exist upon the same 
 continent, one of which has its political 
 affiliation across the sea ; yet no line of 
 fortresses divides, to create fear, and no 
 battle-ships float menacingly along its 
 inland seas. 
 
 All these facts and the faith into which 
 I was born again in this country, a faith 
 which has neither political nor racial 
 boundary, and whose Founder called 
 Himself the Son of Man, have made me 
 an American, which is, or ought to be, 
 something radically different from being 
 a European. 
 
 While I have been emancipated from 
 the patriotism of hate, I have had my 
 love of country increased, because I re- 
 gard it as a country worth living for and 
 even, if need be, worth dying for. 
 
 I must confess that it is not easy to 
 
 [41] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 keep faith in America these days, when 
 it seems at times that we are not a bit 
 better than the country from which I 
 have alienated myself, and from whose 
 monarch I have forsworn allegiance. 
 
 The reading of the metropolitan press 
 and the weak echoes of the press of the 
 country have often caused my faith to 
 waver. It has seemed to me that a 
 war-broth was being brewed in editorial 
 sanctums, and poured down the throats 
 of the public ; a hellish broth, com- 
 pounded of greed, political opportunism, 
 and prejudice. The noteworthy excep- 
 tions merely serve the well-known pur- 
 pose. The press has been and is a 
 telescope rather than a mirror, holding 
 up to the public the large or small end 
 as best serves its purpose. 
 
 I am not speaking merely of the papers 
 printed in the English language ; the 
 German press, with a few exceptions, has 
 been just as bad, just as un-American, 
 and not infrequently treasonable. There 
 is one particular sheet printed in New 
 York City which gives me a feeling akin 
 
 [42] 
 
OP A HYPHENATED AMERICAN 
 
 to madness every time I see it, and I tear 
 it to pieces and trample upon it in my 
 wrath. 
 
 The reading of war books either in 
 prose or verse does not conduce to 
 change my opinion, and going to church 
 in these latter days has not helped in- 
 crease my faith in the religion of the 
 Nazarene. In fact, if much of what I 
 have heard from the pulpit is Chris- 
 tianity, then my place is with anarchists 
 and atheists in their curbstone church. 
 If I believed that the press of to-day re- 
 flects the American spirit, I should per- 
 force be driven from a country which I 
 love with a lover's passion, but could not 
 then respect. 
 
 It is not easy to keep one's poise in 
 these days, when, if one does not con- 
 demn Germany in toto, his friends call 
 him pro-German, and if one ventures to 
 criticize and censure Germany, his fellow- 
 countrymen look upon him as a traitor. 
 
 If it had not been so obviously ridicu- 
 lous, it would have been difficult to be 
 civil the other day when I was told by 
 [43] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 my hostess that she was sure there were 
 German spies in Northern Maine all sum- 
 mer. She saw them prowling about in 
 the woods during the day, and they spent 
 their nights writing reports to their gov- 
 ernment. Doubtless those " spies " were 
 taking a census of the pine stumps, and 
 mapping out the route for a German in- 
 vasion by way of Northern Maine ! 
 
 I wonder if you can picture just what 
 happens on the inside of a man who is 
 told in the home of a professor in one of 
 America's foremost universities that an 
 entire German army corps is already in 
 the United States, merely waiting for 
 word from the Fatherland to commit the 
 same butchery which was committed 
 in Belgium. The seemingly intelligent 
 woman who made this remark, and 
 whose statement went unchallenged, 
 looked askance at me, not sure but that 
 underneath my rather tightly fitting 
 afternoon coat I wore a Prussian Uhlan's 
 uniform. 
 
 How would you feel if at every turn 
 you were suspected of being one of the 
 
 [44] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMERICAN 
 
 Kaiser's spies, and were told that Har- 
 vard University is full of them? Can 
 you imagine hearing this from a Harvard 
 student, who is sure that one of these 
 spies rooms above him ? 
 
 The ridicule heaped upon Henry Ford 
 and his Peace Party, the scorn with which 
 the word pacifist is pronounced, as if it 
 were synonymous with traitor, make me 
 think that I have misinterpreted or mis- 
 understood the Spirit of America, and 
 that this country is, after all, only a piece 
 of the Old World separated by the At- 
 lantic Ocean and not by higher ideals. 
 
 It is difficult not to yield to the pull of 
 the hyphen just at this time, when we 
 need to give our country an undivided 
 loyalty. 
 
 Here, though, is the hyphen, no matter 
 how it came, and who is to blame ? The 
 French, English, Irish and German 
 hyphen. We are all harking back and 
 not looking forward ; we are all being 
 swayed by the editorial pages rather than 
 by the pages of the New Testament; 
 there is blood on the horizon, and it is in 
 
 [45] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 our nostrils. Even as dogs, who are 
 trained to guard sheep and to give their 
 lives for them, begin to eat them as soon 
 as they smell their blood, so we feel the 
 passion of primitive man; the mouldy 
 odour of the cave is upon us, and we have 
 fallen back several thousand years. 
 
 I am not afraid of war ; not afraid that 
 house and home, reared in the joy of 
 love and labour, may be destroyed. 
 
 I am not afraid of dying: I should 
 rather be riddled by bullets than eaten 
 by cancer. I should sooner perish by a 
 submarine than from Bright' s disease. 
 
 I do fear, frankly fear, killing and des- 
 troying. Most of all, I am afraid of de- 
 molishing the structure we have reared 
 here ; a rare commonwealth made up of 
 the flotsam and jetsam of the world, 
 which has drifted in through the longer 
 and shorter years. We are a nation a 
 great nation a united nation, although 
 composed of the most diverse materials. 
 
 Men talk of our democracy's being a 
 failure. If it had achieved nothing more 
 than the making of the United States, 
 [46] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 faulty but great, defective but united, 
 democracy would be justified ; for no 
 monarchy has ever succeeded in so diffi- 
 cult and dangerous an experiment. 
 
 What shall we do about it ? 
 
 The great cry is for preparedness. It 
 has been shouted from the housetops, it 
 fills the public press and the pulpit until 
 the word fairly reeks from its two ele- 
 ments : fear and hate. 
 
 I have no objection to preparedness ; 
 but I do object to the attending hysteria, 
 which may accomplish the very opposite of 
 what is desired, and weaken rather than 
 strengthen the nation. Guns and battle- 
 ships can be bought for money ; but fidel- 
 ity and devotion cannot be gained by 
 breeding suspicion of those who happen 
 to have been born in another country. 
 
 I plead guilty to being one of those 
 "mollycoddles" and "college sissies" 
 held up to the ridicule of the populace. I 
 do not believe in war ; not until every re- 
 source to settle the difficulty without it 
 has been exhausted. If, however, war 
 should come and the vital interests of the 
 
 [47] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 nation be attacked, if this government 
 were in danger of perishing from the 
 earth, I and my son would stand some- 
 where in the line, just as countless " hy- 
 phenated Americans " and their children 
 would, even if we had to face our own 
 brothers, who came to do the brutal bid- 
 ding of their monarchs. 
 
 I am sure of myself under any circum- 
 stances. I am not so sure of the millions, 
 if we question their loyalty and suspect 
 their motives because in this desperate 
 struggle their sympathies are with the 
 mother country, rather than with its ene- 
 mies. 
 
 What shall we do then with these 
 millions of "Hyphenated Americans"? 
 What about the hyphen ? 
 
 THE REMEDIES 
 
 Three remedies are proposed. One of 
 them by Colonel Roosevelt, who, if he 
 was rightly quoted (which is open to 
 doubt), said : " To hell with the hyphen." 
 
 It is a very drastic remedy which, as 
 the Colonel knows, has been mentioned 
 
 [48] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEBICAN 
 
 once or twice in connection with the still 
 unsolved problem which he himself repre- 
 sents. 
 
 I have always strenuously opposed any 
 such stringent measure, for I had a great 
 deal of respect and admiration for the 
 Colonel. Then, too, I have some regard 
 for the poor, unregenerate souls in tor- 
 ment. 
 
 No, the time when anathemas were 
 effective has passed long ago; for men 
 discovered that most evils prospered by 
 cursing them, and that so, much of good 
 was destroyed. Since the phrase was 
 coined, and this particular, strenuous 
 method of doing away with it was pro- 
 posed, we who were born in one country 
 and born again in another, are beginning 
 to question our innermost experiences. 
 
 We are wondering whether we have 
 not thrown away our birthright, and 
 whether we ought not to defend and per- 
 petuate this hyphen. We, who always 
 interpreted it as binding us to America, 
 are beginning to wonder whether it should 
 not bind us to the mother country instead. 
 [49] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 It has aroused this questioning mood, 
 and the man who is congratulating him- 
 self upon coining the happy (?) phrase, may 
 find its persistent use in connection with 
 the elongated dash, disastrous. 
 
 It may undo all that has been done 
 throughout the generous years in which 
 we voluntarily yielded ourselves to the 
 forces and processes which made us into 
 what we and our children were proud to 
 call ourselves Americans. 
 
 Others have proposed that because the 
 Germans have not become pro-English, 
 which seems to them equivalent to their 
 not having become Americans, we must 
 adopt a national policy which will bring 
 about the desired result. 
 
 In the editorial columns of one of our 
 national weeklies there appeared re- 
 cently a complaint because the Univer- 
 sity of Wisconsin had sent out circulars 
 announcing, in German, a short course 
 for farmers. The inference was that this 
 was un-American, and that we would be 
 better off if these farmers remained poor 
 farmers, rather than to be made good 
 
 [50] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 ones through the aid of their mother 
 tongue. 
 
 This means a drift towards the very 
 methods employed in Europe ; a sort of 
 " Sprachen-kampf" which has made the 
 Poles of Germany more Polish, and the 
 Danes of Schleswig-Holstein more Danish. 
 This method has made of the Austro- 
 Hungarian monarchy a Babel, in which 
 the builders, whose tongues have been 
 confounded, threw bricks at each other 
 rather than keep on building. 
 
 In my judgment we have succeeded 
 in keeping America a country of English 
 speech just because we have not insisted 
 upon it. If there had been governmental 
 pressure brought to bear upon the im- 
 migrant's use of English we would have 
 fallen heir to the confusion of Babel, and 
 to the never ending language problems of 
 many of the countries of Europe. 
 
 Just because we have not objected to 
 religion's being preached in the tongue in 
 which men were born, the second genera- 
 tion demanded to hear it in English. 
 
 We have permitted the Poles to build 
 
 [51] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 a Polish college which will languish, and 
 ultimately pass away, just as the purely 
 German colleges have languished and 
 died. The one thing we need to make 
 the hyphen permanent, or, worse still, 
 make this a country of warring hyphens, 
 is to demand through pressure that noth- 
 ing but the English language shall be 
 taught and spoken here. 
 
 I am not sure that we can, or that we 
 ought, to accelerate Americanization. 
 Thus far it has been a contagion with 
 no artificial stimulus. When we shall 
 say : " Go to, we will Americanize you," 
 there will be organized effort to resist us, 
 and the resistance will grow with our in- 
 sistence. 
 
 We have, I am sure, lost many oppor- 
 tunities to interpret America to the im- 
 migrant, especially to the adult. He does 
 not come in contact with any of our 
 national institutions except the saloon 
 and the police court. If he does become 
 a citizen he usually attains to that high 
 and holy privilege through the venal 
 politician. 
 
 [52] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEBlCAN 
 
 The whole process of naturalization, 
 which has received some attention in 
 these later years, needs to be further re- 
 vised and improved ; especially by dignify- 
 ing it and by making the applicant realize 
 that it is a privilege which he may forfeit 
 if he does not perform its duties con- 
 scientiously. 
 
 I am not sure that the attempt to ac- 
 celerate naturalization, by making the 
 process easier, may not end in cheapen- 
 ing it still further. I believe that every 
 man who wishes to become a citizen 
 ought to be willing to take pains and 
 make sacrifices, if necessary, to gain that 
 end. 
 
 Citizenship is too valuable a possession 
 to be thrown at people, and it is a mis- 
 taken notion to believe that because a 
 man has taken out his naturalization 
 papers he is necessarily a patriot. In 
 fact, we know that the two are not iden- 
 tical, and I can easily imagine myself lov- 
 ing this country and being ready to sacri- 
 fice myself for it, even had I not the 
 sometimes doubtful privilege of voting. 
 [53] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 We should apply a test more searching 
 than the mere answering of a few ques- 
 tions which may be learned by rote. No 
 man should be allowed to become a citizen 
 unless his conduct, during five years' 
 residence in this country, has proved that 
 he is already an American in spirit ; that 
 he knows the meaning of liberty and has 
 not abused it ; and that he is capable of 
 cooperating with others in realizing that 
 freedom. 
 
 He ought to be able to prove that he 
 has left behind him Europe's racial, 
 religious and national animosities and 
 prejudices. He ought not to become a 
 child of this democracy, and, as often 
 happens, an added care, until he has 
 proved that he knows its meaning and 
 has lived up to it. 
 
 These rigid tests might be difficult to 
 apply, but certainly I should be greatly op- 
 posed to any cheapening of the process. 
 The exploited immigrant is very poor 
 material for good citizenship, whether 
 that exploitation has been made by the 
 shrewder and earlier comers among his 
 [54] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEKICAN 
 
 own, which is frequently the case, by 
 heartless corporations, or by petty of- 
 ficials who are supposed to protect him. 
 
 Our satellite cities, crude, huge, spring- 
 ing up to-day and ready to perish to- 
 morrow, are poor places in which to 
 train men for citizenship. The hovels 
 in which the immigrants live, or are per- 
 mitted to live, the vulgarity and brutality 
 of the life which surrounds them, are 
 also poor places for the training of future 
 American citizens from whom we expect 
 self-respect, respect for others, and power [ 
 to control themselves and others. 
 
 The greatest enemy of the immigrant 
 is the saloon ; and if he could not obtain 
 liquor, it would prove one of the greatest 
 blessings to him and to the community in 
 which he lives. 
 
 It is more necessary to prohibit the 
 sale of liquor to certain groups of immi- 
 grants than to the Indians : for the most 
 docile and law-abiding among them are 
 turned into fiends by its use. It has 
 been one of the most potent agencies in 
 despoiling and corrupting them. 
 
 [55] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 A rigid insistence upon economic and 
 social justice, and the assurance that the 
 state looks upon them as something 
 more than animated machines, to be 
 used and abused at the owners' will, 
 would bind these millions in gratitude to 
 the country of which they now know 
 little or nothing, except when they are 
 punished for breaking its laws. 
 
 I have strongly urged, but thus far in 
 vain, that every ship which carries emi- 
 grants should have on board a United 
 States officer who would use the time 
 of transit to instruct the people coming 
 to us. They should be told of their 
 privileges and their duties, the nature of 
 our government and the part they may 
 ultimately have in it. 
 
 I have often acted voluntarily in such a 
 capacity, and have found that by the aid 
 of immigrants who are returning to us, 
 such instruction can be effectively given. 
 
 Much of the preliminary work of in- 
 spection could thus be done. I know 
 there are difficulties in the way, but they 
 are not insurmountable. 
 
 [56] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMERICAN 
 
 The immigrant receiving station should 
 not be merely a heartless machine for 
 sifting this human material. The gov- 
 ernment ought to do something more for 
 these people than put a chalk mark upon 
 their coats, or open the gate of a strange 
 and new country without a word of ad- 
 vice or warning. 
 
 Our national holidays might gain new 
 significance for us if in some public man- 
 ner we would share them with these new- 
 comers for whom festivals have always 
 had great religious and national mean- 
 ing. 
 
 The machinery of electing our public 
 servants might be made elevating rather 
 than degrading to the new sharers of the 
 great privileges of our democracy. 
 
 I have the utmost faith in the power 
 of a good example, and firmly believe 
 that we must develop a finer type of na- 
 tive American citizen. 
 
 Consider the attitude of the average 
 American towards the government of his 
 city or country, the low tone of our dis- 
 cussion of public issues, the ridicule 
 [57] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 which we heap upon our officials from 
 which even the chief magistrate is not 
 spared ; the personal and partisan self- 
 ishness so strongly in evidence even in 
 this most critical moment of our national 
 life. Need we then wonder if every hy- 
 phenated citizen does not manifest the 
 gracious unselfishness of a George Wash- 
 ington or the sacrificial devotion of an 
 Abraham Lincoln? 
 
 At least one American writer shows 
 ignorance regarding the immigrant's 
 character by calling him ungrateful. 
 
 Among all his shortcomings this is the 
 least, and among his virtues it is the 
 greatest, as every one knows who has 
 sensed the soul of these grateful people. 
 
 There are among them those who 
 bitterly assail our social order, with its 
 glaring injustice to the many. They 
 criticize our laws which protect property 
 to the neglect of person, which is infi- 
 nitely more sacred. They are merely 
 doing in their crude way what is being 
 done every day in our colleges in a 
 somewhat more refined but more incisive 
 
 [58] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 way. The difference is that the agitator 
 prints his protest in pamphlets and 
 binds them in red ; while the professor 
 writes a volume which he calls a text- 
 book. 
 
 No, they are not an ungrateful people. 
 It is true that one of them has said, in 
 public print, that when the war is over 
 the Germans will return to the Fatherland 
 en masse, because all they sought here was 
 economic betterment. There may be an 
 exodus of some Germans. In fact every 
 German who has ceased to be a loyal 
 American, who has no confidence in her 
 institutions, who has no faith in her ideals, 
 ought to return, for he would be a menace 
 to those of us who remain and who will 
 find it difficult enough to be trusted at a 
 time when we shall be eager to prove our 
 love and loyalty to our adopted country. 
 
 The larger number which will expatriate 
 itself from this country will be certain 
 Americans returning to their chateaux in 
 France, their pensions and villas in Italy, 
 and their spas and cursaals in Germany. 
 All these are now deserted, nearly bank- 
 [59] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 nipt, and will be glad when the Americans 
 return. 
 
 The problem will not be to keep the 
 immigrants who are here from going 
 back ; the real problem will be, how, 
 wisely to regulate the inflow which is 
 bound to come when the war ceases. 
 
 We, the " Hyphenated Americans," will 
 stay, because we need this country, be- 
 cause humanity needs it and its institu- 
 tions, now as never before. We wish to 
 help it become such a country as it ought 
 to be, kept from Europe's plagues, and 
 healed from its diseases. We wish to 
 live and work so that we shall have the 
 right to call it our country. We ought 
 to have the same right to it as had those 
 of our kin who followed your rivers, 
 the Mohawk, the Ohio and the Missis- 
 sippi ; drawing their plows through your 
 marshes, defying fever and pestilence, 
 laying the foundations of your national 
 wealth, and shedding their blood upon 
 your battle-fields. 
 
 We want this to become our country, 
 through the labour of the men who mine 
 [60] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEBICAN 
 
 your coal, who dig and melt your ore; 
 and by the sacrifices of those who die in 
 the heart of the mine and are slain at the 
 mouth of the pit. 
 
 These brave millions working so coura- 
 geously are ours and yours ; the pioneers 
 of a new epoch, the creators of a new era. 
 It is for you to say what the coming days 
 are to mean to them, and to you, and to 
 the country which they love in spite of its 
 sins against them. 
 
 What will you do with them ? It is for 
 you to say. You may break them over 
 the wheels of what you proudly call prog- 
 ress. You may starve them into the sub- 
 missive serfdom out of which they have 
 escaped. You may make them ashamed 
 of their heritage, lodged in brain and 
 heart, or you may make cowards of them 
 and compel them to bow before your flag, 
 as a symbol of authority ; but they will 
 not be Americans. 
 
 The only way I know in which to make 
 Americans of them, members of a free 
 commonwealth, is to treat them like hu- , 
 man beings. 
 
 [61] 
 
THE CONFESSION 
 
 Treat them as you would the child born 
 late into your own family as one of you ; 
 have confidence in them, even in these 
 days, when their loyalty may be waver- 
 ing, and when in their confusion they do 
 not know where to turn. 
 
 This is a time of heart-searching for us 
 who have accepted America's sanctuary, 
 and also for those born in this land of the 
 free. To the native American there comes 
 a call to curb his individualism without 
 sacrificing his individuality ; to quicken 
 his patriotic impulses without dulling his 
 feeling for humanity. It is an insistent 
 call to prepare for war, and a still more in- 
 sistent call to prepare for peace ; a deep, 
 down-reaching peace, a high, uplifting 
 peace. 
 
 For us, so-called " Hyphenated Ameri- 
 cans," this period is one to severely test 
 our loyalty to this country which has be- 
 come ours by the grace of its people. 
 They are a generous people, who mean 
 to be just, a people whom we know to be 
 far better than they appear to us now, 
 and to whom we are bound for all time. 
 
 [62] 
 
OF A HYPHENATED AMEEICAN 
 
 In our heart of hearts we love this 
 country more than Germany, or Austria 
 or England or France ; we love it above 
 the holy names of Jerusalem or Rome 
 The Sanctuary of Humanity America. 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
 [63] 
 
RETURN TO the circulation desk of any 
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 FEB 1 4 1992 
 
 MAR 2 1995 
 
 JUN 031998 
 
N9 594292 
 
 E184 
 
 Steiner, E.A. Al 
 The confession of S8 
 a hyphenated American* 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 DAVIS