The native-born American has set up some very important and flourishing institutions to perpetuate the ideals of Americanism and to preserve the things dear to him. These have come also to be regarded as the institutions for Americanizing the immigrant. If they Americanize our native-born youth, why not our foreign-born peoples? The native American has adapted them to his own needs and assumes that they will do for every one. Will they, without any further attention on his part? The public school comes first. It is the first aid to the nation. It also represents a fundamental principle and obligation in American civilization. Of the 13,000,000 men and women born in other lands, 3,000,000 of them were unable to speak English, according to the 1910 census, and only 38,000 were enrolled in our public schools to learn it. Many important communities, in such important industrial states as Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut, where the population is at least one half immigrant, do not maintain _any_ classes whatever where English can be learned. Even where night schools exist, they are likely to be conducted in an experimental or detached way--as a benevolent “extension” of the public educational system rather than as a legitimate, highly important, and necessary part of public policy. In a city in which 75 per cent of the population is either foreign born or of foreign parentage, the president of the board of education said this year: “More night schools for foreigners--well, I don’t know. I am highly interested in the technical night high schools. _If_ there is any money left after these are fully organized, I will see that it goes into classes for English to foreigners.” But there never _is_ anything left. On that basis we shall get nowhere. If the alien is to be taught English in this country only after every form of education life is “fully organized”--he will by that time have reached the point where he either cannot or will not be taught. When will America learn that teaching immigrants English and requiring them to learn it is a fundamental necessity, a condition of national vitality? The Bureau of Naturalization is publishing a statement that during the past year 600 cities have conducted, initiated, or largely extended night-school instruction for aliens. With the usual optimism we point with pride to what America is doing with the native-American taxpayer’s money. Do we not want to know how effective it is? In how many of these 600 cities has this night-school work been put on a basis adequate to the numbers of the foreign-born population? In how many of the 600 has a really adequate system of instruction been worked out--adapted to the needs, trades, shifts, hours of the men, providing for proper classification, textbooks, teachers with vigor and understanding? How long have the terms been and did the immigrants attend?