The American Spirit in the Writings of Americans of Foreign Birth
General
The American Spirit in the Writings of Americans of Foreign Birth
American literature; Americanization; Noncitizens -- United States
When we reached the end of the road where we were all admonished to
change cars and not forget our parcels, the officer graciously allowed
me to make an experiment. The men were freed from their shackles, and
I told them that a high and mighty official was watching them and that
the best marksman of the group would find favor in his sight. They
were then in turn given the Winchester rifle, which they handled as if
it were a pickaxe. They did not know how to load it, and after it was
loaded for them and I asked them to fire, they fell upon their knees
and begged to be permitted to show their prowess with a stiletto, the
use of which they understood. Within twenty-four hours additional
testimony was furnished, which proved beyond doubt that the Italians
were not implicated in the crime with which they were charged.
I felt deeply grateful to the man who permitted me to intervene in
their behalf; but what would have happened if by chance, or the power
we call Providence, I had not been thrown into the sphere of their
suffering? Undoubtedly they would have been convicted of murder and
paid the penalty for a crime which they never committed.
Not only is ignorance of our laws and language a fruitful cause of
the delinquency of immigrants and their children, but the venality of
police officials, the condition of our courts and prisons, not only
fail to inspire respect, but contribute much to the development of
those criminal tendencies with which nature has, to a degree, endowed
all men....
Fortunately, I left the county jail with no thirst for blood; but with
a fiercer passion to right the wrongs under which men suffer, and that,
I think, was my one purpose in life when the prison door closed behind
me.
INDUSTRIALISM AND THE IMMIGRANT
We talk much about the American home, which is even yet the basis of
national well-being, although many of its functions are abrogated. The
home still determines the good or ill of the child, and through him the
good or ill of the nation. Yet we permit millions of people to work,
with no chance to make a real home.
Children there will be, Nature sees to that; but what kind of children
can be begotten in our slums?
The slums in America are as much a national disgrace as they are a
national menace. The gunmen of New York were bred in hovels which even
the home-making genius of the Jewish people could not turn into homes,
or make fit for the training of children to decent living.
You who go slumming to see the sights, and turn up your sensitive noses
at the bad smells, and your eyes to heaven, thanking God that you
“are not as other men,” must not forget that the vast majority of our
foreign-born workers are compelled to live as they do by economic and
social forces, which they cannot control.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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