Americanization; Civics; Immigrants -- United States; Naturalization -- United States; Noncitizens -- United States
The population of Grand Rapids, about 112,500 by the census of 1910,
by the spring of 1918 had grown to approximately 132,000. This would
afford a potential male vote of upward of 26,000; so that at the
primary election that March, considerably less than half of the
possible vote was polled. At the election in August, 1918, this was
increased to nearly 70 per cent, and to 80 per cent in November.
In 1919, however, the women came into the picture, and the efforts
of the Americanization Society[171] were redoubled to bring the
women out, first to register and then to vote. The report of the
secretary of the society (made at the annual meeting in January,
1920) states that on February 15th, the last registration day before
the March primary, 22,700 women had registered. And on March 20th,
the last registration day before the election of April 7th, women
had registered to a total of 26,500--an astounding proportion of the
possible total of women citizens of voting age in a population of
132,000. It looks very much like 100 per cent!
The last two columns in the table above show the totals including the
women voters, and the striking increase between the March primary and
the April election in 1919. With a possible total vote of upward of
50,000 we have the results of the Americanization Society’s work as
showing in the actual personal presence at the polls of at least 75
per cent of the voters of all racial groups. The vote cast on March
5, 1919, was 28,705, composed, it is said, of about half men and half
women. At the election on April 7th, nearly 38,000 votes were cast,
and it is estimated that from 7,000 to 10,000 voters were turned away
from the polling places because of inadequate election facilities. A
fairly impressive exhibit of the response of American citizenship
to an appeal to American, nonpartisan, _civic interest_, in a large
cosmopolitan city, regardless of racial complexion. Indeed, without
meaning to stress the point unduly, it may be remarked in passing
that the very few precincts which in any election failed to show a
substantial increase over the vote at the previous election, are
in every instance those in which the population is described as
predominantly of the native born.
That it was the appeal to civic interest and duty, and nothing
else, which in largest measure produced this result may be seen,
for instance, in a comparison of the registration of women in Grand
Rapids with that at the same time (February, 1919) in other Michigan
cities in which there was no such intensive campaign to get the women
out to the registration places:
TABLE XLVII
PER CENT OF WOMEN REGISTERED IN THIRTEEN MICHIGAN CITIES
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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