It was seen that the influence of the Bureau for the betterment of citizenship could be extended to every hamlet in the United States through the expansion and extension of the naturalization laws. This plan proposed the organization of the public schools, with the Bureau of Naturalization, into an active unit for the development of American ideals of citizenship in the student body; the assembling together, on stated occasions, in the different metropolitan and other centers, of naturalized citizens and candidates for citizenship; the conduct of patriotic exercises, including addresses, the singing of national anthems, and a conferring of citizenship.[88] But it was not until the period covered by the 1915 report that the Bureau began to be greatly engrossed with this policy. In that report, which directed attention to the growing interest of naturalizing judges and others in the mental training of aliens for citizenship, and their co-operation with the Bureau “in arousing the interest of the public,” and thus operating upon the local school authorities to establish courses of training in English and in civics for alien residents who purpose to become citizens, the Commissioner himself utters a caution about the scope of business: It has been pointed out to the state authorities that the government cannot undertake, even if it were one of its appropriate functions, to institute and operate training schools in good citizenship; that the making of a citizen of the United States is also the making of a citizen of the state in which the petitioner resides; and the results of such action are more immediate and more frequent in their effects upon state than upon Federal interests. At that time the work of the Bureau force consisted chiefly of sending to the school authorities lists of aliens residing in their respective districts who had filed declarations of intention and petitions for naturalization, with intent that they should secure the attendance of such aliens upon public-school courses of training in good citizenship. The Commissioner pointed out that The extent and character of this course of mental training must depend upon the enlightenment of the school authorities which experience alone can give.[89] From this time on, however, the Commissioner’s reports are characterized by an increasing emphasis upon the educational aspect of the Bureau’s work, the things to which it had formerly devoted itself diminishing in emphasis; while, at the same time, both in the reports and in activities not therein disclosed, the Bureau was seeking wide extension of its scope and powers, although its normal work was suffering from the shorthandedness of which it had complained ever since the Bureau was established. EXTRA RESPONSIBILITIES SELF-SOUGHT