Topic 24
 CHILDREN OF THE CRUCIBLE

THERE must be radical changes in our immigration laws and in our treatment of the immigrant once he is admitted.  The "melting pot" has not proven a failure.  It has been overloaded and it has not had proper attention.  We have been too careless in admitting immigrants and we have not done our full duty by them.

"The fault is ours as much as theirs and the troubles we are now having are a consequence."

Colonel Roosevelt was speaking of the famous appeal, "Children of the Crucible," issued in September, 1917, at a time when pacifists, pro Germans, defeatists and propagandists of other types, all aiming to slow up our prosecution of the war, were making substantial progress among the newly arrived and the children of those who had arrived not much earlier.

"Jack," he asked by way of introducing the subject, "you are of immigrant stock, are you not?"

"Sure," said I; "I might be described as being of an early Cunard family."

"Quite so.  Then I wonder if you would object to my putting your name to an appeal to the foreign born and their children born here to get together under the flag and smash these agitators who are using them to play Germany's game? The idea is to have it issue in the name of men of all races and creeds."

"I'll sign anything you stand for," I said.

" I thought you would.  We will have a host of real names on it, that should carry some weight.  What we want is that everybody who can will get in and behind the Vigilantes — that anti-pacifist group of writers, artists, and other patriotic citizens who are real 'children of the crucible' and as such have a right to expect a hearing from their kind."

"There is an opportunity for real work there," I said.  " Between the anti-English agitators among the Irish and agitators of all sorts on the East Side, a nasty situation has been created that may spell serious trouble."

"That is exactly true.  It may well develop serious trouble just as it is now an embarrassment to those of us who wish to see this war speeded up.  It is part of the price we must pay for lax immigration laws and our failure — our cowardice, if you wish — in declining to adopt reasonable restrictions.  Nothing has happened or is likely to happen that we did not have a right to expect.

"It has, however, been impossible to make our people see this or to make the friends of the immigrant see that, by keeping too open a door, we were doing no real kindness to the mass of immigrants already here.  Even so broad and enlightened a man as Straus (Oscar) could not be made to see that.  He would not consent to restrictions that would limit the flow here from Russia.  In common with less enlightened and selfish persons he thought the situation would care for itself.

"Now it has not, and in consequence we find the East Side to be the most pro-German section of the United States, not even excepting Milwaukee.  East-Siders will deny that, but you and I know it to be the fact that these poor people are being, have been, exploited beyond measure by those who have not our country's interests at heart, who are, in fact, the enemies of our country.

"This is as much our fault as theirs, first, because of our failure to enact and enforce reasonable laws for the admission of the immigrant and to keep out the undesirable, and second, because by neglecting the immigrants we have given them fertile ground in which to sow their damnable doctrines.  What they sow, we will have to reap.

" More than the immediate effect on the war, we must realize that in their resentment the American people may set up an anti-alien wave that will work untold hardship on everybody — those not of alien birth or blood, but on the whole mass; for it does not make for common comfort or safety to have any considerable element in the community proscribed by the others.  Of course, the immediate sufferers will be the immigrants.  But those of alien stock not immigrants will feel it.  Resentment of this Irish agitation if it comes will probably not affect you seriously, for your position is secure, but you will feel it and your boy, when he gets out to make his way, will feel it.  Make no mistake about that.

" Only the other day I was speaking with a Jewish friend about this East-Side situation.  He regrets it as we do, but he did not seem to see where he and his are sure to be hurt if these agitators succeed, as they seem bent on doing, in making the term Jew synonymous for pacifism, pro-Germanism, socialism.  He said, and said very truly, that the Jewish people should not as a whole be blamed for the prominence of Jewish names in this sort of thing.  What he did not see is that prejudice and bigotry never discriminate.  If the bigot ever paused to discriminate, he would cease to be a bigot.

"I wish to see nothing like race proscription in this country, but we ought to be frank with ourselves and recognize that under the surface there is considerable anti-Semitic feeling.  I believe it was you who told me the Frank case in Georgia was, in its final stages, a demonstration of it."

"That was the conclusion Charley (Charles Willis) Thompson and I were forced to accept," I said

"Thompson's a shrewd fellow and a mighty good one," the Colonel went on.  "If he said that was the state of affairs, I’d take his word for it.

"Now that was in Georgia.  If I remember rightly some of the oldest families in Georgia are Jewish — one of Oglethorpe's trustees was a Jew, whose family is still prominent in affairs of that State.  It is one of the last places one would naturally look for that sort of thing.  Yet the seeds must have been under the surface.

"Our Jewish friends share with us who are non-Jewish responsibility for any success these creatures may make among the newer Jewish people in this country.  Like the rest of us, they have assumed that once in, the immigrant would be automatically taken care of by our admirable institutions and have neglected him and left him to his own resources.  What has been the consequence? The immigrant has been and is being exploited.  First it was the sweatshop.  That is largely done away with.  Now it is by these political agitators — the Berkmans, Goldmans, and I know not who, including some persons with American names and some claim to social position.

"What we should have done, what we must do, is see to it that the immigrant is taken in hand and given a square deal.  We must see to it that a real effort is made to Americanize him — he should have the opportunity to become Americanized.  He should be given an opportunity, should be compelled to learn the English language, and if at the end of a stated period he has failed to do so, he should be sent back to the place from which he came.  He must not be left to the agitator and the demagogue to exploit.

"It is foolish to imagine that the immigrant will automatically and of his own will be converted into an American by his mere presence among us, so long as he comes here in masses, and settles down among his own kind, as ignorant of our ways, our customs, and our institutions as he is.

" Nor is it right to criticize the immigrant because he forms what we call 'foreign' colonies in our cities.  It is natural that he should seek his kind.  He does exactly what Americans do when they go abroad and settle in London, Paris, Berlin.  Do they scatter? They do not.  They form colonies just as distinct as do the Russian Jew, the Greek, the Armenian, the Irish, or the Germans, or, if you please, the Chinese; they seek their kind.  We should see to it that their kind becomes our kind.  We won't do it by calling them names, we won't do it by maltreating them, and we won't do it by neglecting them.

"Of course, while the war lasts we will have no immigration to speak of.  Automatically the war has restricted it.  For a time after the war ends there may be, probably will be, little immigration.

" Immigration, however, will be one of our reconstruction problems.  It will have to be handled in a big way, but with the idea that America comes first, and that the time has arrived when we must and will be more particular as to whom we admit into our house, bearing always in mind that we owe it to the alien as well as to ourselves to see to it that he has ample opportunity of becoming a real American.

"All Americans, of whatever stock, should take the position toward the country from which they sprang that Washington and his associates took toward England.  They were English, but they did not hesitate to fight England.  Against them were the Tories, the first pacifists the country knew.  They were against fighting England just as the man of German blood, who is not with us, is against fighting Germany, and of a piece with the Irishman whose hatred of England is greater than his love for America.

" To be sure, only a part of these people are on the wrong course.  They are trying to mislead the rest.  Some are honest, but misguided.  Some are palpably dishonest.  The effect is the same in each instance.  It must be our job to curb them, and in the future so conduct ourselves toward the immigrant that others of their kind that may arise later will have less fertile fields to work in."

Shortly after " Children of the Crucible" appeared.  The first name appended to it was that of Theodore Roosevelt.