In the matter of helping their fellow countrymen to secure naturalization, these organizations perform a service of value and importance both to the alien and to the country. Many of these racial societies devote much attention to old-country politics, and form nests of propaganda and even more concrete activity whose effects are felt not so much in this country as “back home.” And when, as in the case of Ireland, Poland, Italy, and so on, the issues of foreign politics are made the bone of contention in American political contests, these German-American, Italian-American, Polish-American societies may become exceedingly active in our own affairs, and project lines of division which may greatly complicate the politician’s task, and sometimes stand him upon his head.[13] It is not too much to say that the power of Tammany Hall in politics, and that of every other important political organization in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or elsewhere--including those dominant in rural districts--grows out of intimate association with the people _in their daily lives_, and could grow out of nothing else. “Power and patronage,” says Professor Munro, “provide a cycle hard to break.” True; but “power and patronage” is only a phrase. Behind it lies the fact that the politician gains and holds his power because he deserves it; through his organization of the machinery, always “on the job,” through which human beings, with wives and children to feed, clothe and shelter, get the means to do it. The small, unskilled job in the employ of the city, or of business which can be helped or harmed by political or official action, is the coin-current through which the politician controls--so far as he does control--the rank and file of the foreign-born voters. This, and the small and larger personal human favors that he is in a position to render. Here, with the first economic “toe-hold” that the immigrant gets in America, begins his introduction to our life and to our politics. POLITICS A GREAT AMERICANIZING FORCE Politics, local politics--the ordinary interest of the ordinary citizen; the day’s work and the day’s life, are great Americanizing forces, and they are working every minute. The immigrant generally, especially he of the so-called “new immigration,” comes here without much if any experience in public affairs. All the life of all the generations from which he comes has been passed without real participation; government in the old country went on over his head, in a rarefied stratum which he never entered and of which he knew little. That is one reason why, on the average, it takes more than ten years for him to come to the point of asking for citizenship.