One of the striking manifestations of this new recognition of our dangerous situation is the change of front of those who are opposed to the restriction of immigration. The stock answer to the warnings of the restrictionists used to be the assertion that assimilation was taking place with perfectly satisfactory rapidity and completeness. America was the great "melting-pot" of the nations, out of which was to flow--was, in fact, actually flowing--a new and better type of man, purged of all slag and dross. As conclusive proofs of this claim, were advanced all those superficial adaptations to new surroundings which the immigrant and his children make with so much display and gusto. The assimilating power of the American People was asserted to be unlimited, and if there were any hitches in the process, they could all be remedied by distribution. How suddenly has this elaborate erection of analogies, metaphors, and pseudo-arguments been shown up for the flimsy camouflage that it really was! Miss Grace Abbott, the avowed champion of the immigrant, is forced to admit that "unity of religion, unity of race, unity of ideals, do not exist in the United States. We are many nationalities scattered across a continent." Miss Frances Kellor writes a book on _Straight America_, in which she confesses the failure of assimilation in the past, and turns to universal military service as a last resort. Mrs. Mary Antin remains discreetly silent, and Mr. Isaac A. Hourwich is less in the public eye than formerly.
But even yet the opponents of restriction are not willing to submit to the logic of the situation, and instead of admitting the present need of true restriction, come forward with a new substitute. This substitute goes by the general name of "Americanization," and is urged upon us as the appropriate and adequate remedy for the ills which none can longer deny. The essence of this movement is that those who embody the true American ideas and ideals--a group seldom named or definitely described, but usually vaguely referred to as "we"--should bend all their energies toward the assimilation of our foreign population, and should seek by artificial and purposive expedients to accomplish that cultural transmutation for which the natural and unconscious relationships of the immigrant have proved wholly inadequate. And it must be freely granted that many of the specific proposals of the "Americanizers" are intrinsically meritorious and worthy of adoption. When it is suggested that our foreign populations ought to be better housed, fed, clothed, educated and amused, we all rise in assent--provided he will do his share toward it; yet in self-defence we must do more than ours. When we are urged to assist the immigrant to learn the English language and familiarize himself with the political history and government of this nation, our common sense gives ready response. The gross absurdity of the movement lies in the assumption that any or all of these things, good as they are, constitute assimilation, or will, in the natural course of their accomplishment, produce assimilation. Who will undertake to show that those persons of foreign birth who, in the last three and a half years, have most flagrantly violated their obligations to the country of their adoption, are on the whole less well educated, less familiar with the English language, less prosperous, or even less versed in American institutions, than those who have remained loyal at heart, or at least in conduct? By all means let us have as small a proportion of our people as possible who cannot read and write, who do not understand the English language, who treat their women according to the code of mediaeval semi-barbarism, and who are content with living conditions something lower than what we consider proper for domestic animals. But let us not imagine that those who have freed themselves from these anomalies are therefore true Americans.