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: By an eleven-year-old boy, fifth grade: The men and women who are citizens of the United States are regular voters; if they are not, they should be.... If all the people voted, we should have a clean city. If your mother has to do all the dishes, you can say, “Why, mother, I can do the dishes while you go and vote.” Your father may have to rake the yard. Why not rake the yard yourself and let your father go and vote? Then the children and their parents will be good citizens. By a girl in the sixth grade: The American government is governed by the people by means of voting. If people do not vote it is their fault that we have poor officials.... The anarchist and the other people who ignore our government are both destroying it, only the anarchist destroys it violently and the people who ignore it, slowly. Some aliens come here to enjoy all our privileges without becoming citizens. They save their money and go back to their old country. But some aliens appreciate our government, and are now of the best citizens we have.... Join hands with the American government. Mother, do not let Dad do it alone! 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