The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The saloon-keeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation of his own business, and of other businesses--gambling, dance-halls, and prostitution--which stimulate drinking. If "blue" laws are on the statute-book, these interests may combine to seat in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer is a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy Germans and Bohemians are marshaled in the "United Societies," ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway the foreign-born vote not only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests. The foreign press is another means of misleading the naturalized voters. These newspapers--Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, Yiddish, etc.,--while they have no small influence with their readers, are poorly supported, and often in financial straits. Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party representing the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege gains another intrenching-tool. THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LIKE-MINDEDNESS If the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us? When a people has reached such a degree of political like-mindedness, that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is free to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yet passed the civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old straw--the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions--public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor, go to the foot of the docket, and public interests suffer. [Illustration: Y. M. C. A. Class of Slovenes in English Visiting a Session of the City Council of Cleveland] [Illustration: Class of Foreign-Born Women (Carinthians) at the Cleveland Hardware Co., Cleveland, O., Meeting for Instruction in English in the Factory, Twice a Week from 5 to 6:30]