“No, not America for the Americans, if it be such Americans! Rather let those who have been willing slaves FEEL THE WHIP AND THE SHACKLES until they learn that justice and peace and righteousness within our borders are not to be, except as the fruit of their love, their labor, and their eternal vigilance. [Applause.] “No, not America for Americans, but America for American ideas and institutions! And welcome be he, whether of our own land or any other, who, seeing what God has destined this fair land to be as leader of the nations, seeing it as its early Founders saw it, shall give heart and brain and hand to purifying and redeeming it, lest indeed it be the land of ‘Broken Promise.’ “I have nothing to say against foreigners as foreigners, but I look into our criminal reports and find by a careful search that the proportion of criminals to the foreign population is just about twice that to the native. I learn that among our foreigners we find about two thirds of our brewers, distillers, and liquor-sellers, and among these varied nationalities, who have sustained the breaking up of old ties and transplanting to utterly new conditions, a far greater tendency to insanity than among the native stock. I see that the causes which tend to immigration will in all probability continue, and the influx into our great cities, especially your own favorably situated one, advance indefinitely. Therefore, it has seemed to me that of all places in this land Chicago was the best one in which to begin a concerted action for the Americanization of its foreigners and for promoting the GOOD CITIZENSHIP of all its citizens whether native or foreign. It seems to me we must do this in self-preservation. “In Boston, as you know, where we have had to learn some sad lessons from our careless indifference in regard to municipal matters, we have begun to arouse ourselves and have established a Society for Promoting Good Citizenship whose object is to further in all thinking people, mothers, voters, teachers, and students, a higher ideal of citizenship and an active, unpartisan effort for its realization. “This work is done in various ways: by free lectures given by prominent citizens, by suggestions for study in schools and colleges, and by the encouragement of a deeper interest in the community in the study of history, civil government, and political economy. The society is yet in its infancy, and has thus far produced little perceptible effect; but, in addition to the well-known Old South work in history, it shows a step in the right direction. “Long before it was started it had been MY DREAM to see something of a similar tendency established in every large city in our land, and it is because I wish to suggest to you certain measures which have in view the attainment of good citizenship in your midst that I am here to-night.