DOCUMENT RESUME - ERIC · 2014-01-27 · DOCUMENT RESUME. SO 009 411. Krug, Mark The Melting of the Ethnics: Education of the Immigrants, 1880-1914. Perspectives in American. Education

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Krug, MarkThe Melting of the Ethnics: Education of theImmigrants, 1880-1914. Perspectives in AmericanEducation.Phi Delta Kappa, Bloomington, Ind.76128p.; For related documents, see SO 009 410-414Phi Delta Kappa, P.O. Box 789, Bloomington, Indiana47401 ($5.00 paperback, $4.00 for PDK members)

MF-$0.83 HC-$7.35 Plus Postage.*Acculturation; *neerican Culture; Biculturalism;Bilingual Education; Cultural Background; *CulturalPluralism; Educational Philosophy; ElementarySecondary Education; *Ethnic Groups; Ethnic Studies;*Immigrants; Italian Americans; Jews; MinorityGroups; Polish Americans; *Public Education;Sociocultural Patterns; Subculture

This book, one in a five-volume series dealing withperspectives in American education, discusses the education of ethnicgroups in the United States. The purpose of the series is to create abetter understanding of the education process and the relation ofeducation to human welfare. Chapter one discusses multiculturaleducation, examining the concept of the melting pot, the"Americanization" idea, and the theory of cultural pluralism. Chaptertwo relates the story of three major immigrant groups: Italians,Jews, and Poles. In chapter three ethnic loyalties and affiliationsare investigated. Chapter four examines the educational philosophy ofJane Addams, founder of Chicago's Hull House. Public schools and theupward mobility of immigrant children through them is the theme ofchapter five. Specifically examined are bilingual edncation programs,curriculum materials dealing with ethnic cultures, how publiceducation did or did not meet the needs of ethnic groups, and the"mainstream" American culture. The book contains a seleUedbibliography. (Author/RM)

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U S DEPARTMENT OF HEALTHEDUCATION & WELFARENATIONAL INSTITUTE OF

EDUCATION

F A. PI- I 1,./E PRO.f F FA :I,' ROM,,,

. C.L., OPINIONSI'II-F17, F,F 1 f V qr PRE, r,a, OFE c a' c.r. ,t4 c-IL V

tap? 41.;

THE MELTINGOF

THE ETHNICS:Education of the

Immigrants, 1880-1914By

Mark Krug

PHI DELTA KAPPAEducational FoundationBloomingtc,n, Indiana

3

Copyright 1976© The Phi Delta Kappa Educational Foundation

ISBN 0-87:367-409-x cloth0-87367-415-4 papk..;

LC# 75-26385

4

Perspectives in American Education

This book is one of a five-volume set publishedby Phi Delta Kappa as part of its national bicentennialyear prograni.

The other titles in the set are:

The Purposes of Education, by Stephen K. BaileyValues in Education, by Max i.,ernerAlternatives in Education, by Vernon Smith, Robert Barr, andDaniel BurkeWomen in Education, by Patricia C. Sexton

Introduction

The two hundredth am:: versary of the Americandeclaration ot separation from the government otEngland has stimulated millions of words of senti-ment, analysis, nostalgia, and expectation. Much ofthis verbal and pictorial outpouring has been a Idof patriotic breast-beating. Most of it has been rhetoric.

Several years ago the leadership of Phi Delta Kappaannounced its determination to offer a significantcontribution to the bicentennial celebration in a seriesof authoritative statements about major facets of Amer-ican education that would deserve the attention ofserious scholars in education, serve the needs ofneophytes in the profession, and survive as an impor-tant permanent contribution to the educational litera-ture.

The Board of Directors and staff of Phi Delta Kappa,the Board of Governors of the Phi Delta Kappa Educa-tional Foundation, and the Project '76 ImplementationCommittee all made important contributions to thecreation of the Bicentennial Activities Program, ofwhich this set of 1,00ks ;s only one of seven notableprojects. The entire program has been made possibleby the loyal contributions of dedicated Kappans whovolunteered as Minutemen, Patriots, and Bell Ringersaccording to the size of their donations and by thesupport of the Educational Foundation, based on thegenerous bequest of George Reavis. The purpose ofthe Foundation, as stated at its inception, is to contrib-

6ill

iv MELTING OF THE ETHNICS

ute to a better understanding of the educative processand the relation of education to human welfare. Thesefive volumes should serve that purpose well.

A number of persons should be recognized for theircontributiom; to the success of this enterprise. TheBoard of Governors of the Foundation, under theleadership of Gordon Swanson, persevered in the earlyplanning stages to insure that the effort would bemade. Other members of the board during this periodwere Edgar Dale, Bessie Gabbard, Arliss Roaden,Howard Soule, Bill Turney, and Ted Gordon, nowdeceased.

The Project '76 Implementation Committee, whichwrestled successfully with the myriad details of plan-ning, financing, and publicizing the seven activities,included David Clark, Jack Frymier, James Walden,Forbis Jordan, and Ted Gordon.

The Board of Directors of Phi Delta Kappa, 1976to 1978, include President Bill L. Turney, President-Elect Gerald Leischuck, Vice-Presidents William K.Poston, Rex K. Reckewey, and Ray Tobiason andDistrict Representatives Gerald L. Berry, Jerome G.Kopp, James York, Cecil K. Phillips, Don Park, PhilipG. Meissner, and Carrel Anderson.

The major contributors to this set of five perspectiveson American education are of course the authors. Theyhave foul-A time in busy professional schedules toproduce substantial and memorable manuscripts, bothscholarly and readable. They have things to say abouteducation that are worth saying, and they have saidtheni well. They have made a genuine contributionto the literature, helping to make a fitting contributionto the celebration of two hundred years of nationalfreedom. More importantly, they have articulated ideasso basic to the maintenance of that freedom that theyshould be read and heeded as valued guidelines forthe years ahead, hopefully at least another twohundred.

Lowell RoseExecutive SecretaryPhi Delta Kappa

7

Contents

PREFACE1MULTICULTURAL EDUCATION

The New EthnicsThe Concept of the Melting 'PotThe "Americanization" Idea"Unity in Diversity"

2THE NEW ETHNICITY AND THE STORY OFTHE MAJOR IMMIGRANT GROUPS

The Italian-AmericansThe JewsThe Poles

3VARIETIES OF ETHNIC LOYALTIES ANDAFFILIATIONS

"Jewishness""Polishness"The Italian-AmericansAmerican Jews and the White Ethnic Strategy

vii1

17

45

4JANE ADDAMS, HULL HOUSE, AND THEEDUCATION OF THE IMMIGRANTS 63

5PUBLIC SCHOOLS AND THE UPWARDMOBILITY OF IMMIGRANT CHILDREN

Bilingual Education ProgramsEthnic Cultures and the CurriculnmImmigrants and Public EducationThe "Mainstream" American Culture

79

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 105

INDEX 109

8

1

Multicultural Education

Sociologists writing in the 1940s and '50s about fu-ture trends in American society were sure that kerwas rapidly becoming a homogeneous society. They pre-dicted that in a few decades, the separate whitegroups would disappear by total assimilation in th, dorn-inant society. in 1945 W. Lloyd Warner and LeQ, solewrote in The Social Systems of American Ethnic Croups:

The. future of American ethnic groups seems to, belimited; it is likely that they will be quicklY absorbed.Paradoxically, the force uf American equalitanatlio,which attempts to make all men American and alike, aodthe force of our class order, Nvhich creates differericesamong ethnic peoples, have combined to dissolveethnic groups.

Talcott Parsons predicted the gradual disaPPearalice ofthe white ethnic groups. These minorities, he maintained,could not long endure as separate entities M 3 eeritral-ized and primary group; they must soon give way to theemerging technologically advanced society. Louis wirthconcluded that the ghettos created by the Jewish irn-migrants represented their desire to transplant the

9

2

t;'111"

oF THE ETHNICS

"shtetleol. ,.f.le to"'nEoropean 118 ih gotiSia and Poland)

,;avv, soine admirable00 the American (li"vbile

iyietto e,

second and thirdfotures in the life .oil.

generat'ui Ai n Jews Wouldof the .''' c)f., tk, sots certain that the

--1honrboo, Aroel."Cak , h

ive ollt Of the'r

loyalties and identity. ig41)

CiforSit E. t eir ethnic

'ef sfil Eth .

The 'N

It is evident, a%theer L ast - rter of the century,

that thew predictions have Prt)vellci.03) be false. Where

did these eminent sociologi5tsr Ro t? They did notgt eat X°0ges that were to

and could not f"resee theLike place in the decade or "." ai i'll their studies were

it,Illtri.,hersociety had contin-coolpleted. If the i-rendc "" t ai-,, :-_-Llet.:41.,01e, Parsons, and

tied as they WereNorth made their s't i'dies, Url. 71,ate white ethnic

indeed' 'have gradti. '1)`'` disappeared. But

,:jtonr)s unmfoaseen'is ove 411 ' as usual, and

t-he fallout from fteue noex developinrsnts hasDeet_vtirrt;

a new life ajor white ethnicandles ality t° tlIUsit r"

droups in America." first in importan_ and in 4110 is the civil rights

corofnunity. 4ctherevolution in the bl; partially success-

fol struggle of the blaek5 h.u. etii.-1 901itical and eco-

noroic rights, bolste, by clx,i. l ri 4'ltsi laws enacted by

Conwess and by larLe' espetla_sittirehA the 0 _stoic standards of

gcraetiaot nii:tr::et orl tiorliutiajot

federal money to

jarove the edu white ethnicN:ewoes, had a

largely blue-Dartieulatl'trli f

I ittns, e,,rbs, and Slovaks,roops. This was thec'oilar Poles,

Hungarians, ef the Spanish-and the rapidly cot)Thill t.;

g_ir°tios llitY)onded to the de---nts. Thesespeaking lin miVrn

wands for blackstudies, 190..111,:to te5I slogans of "Black

power and -Black is Beatiti:: cie dernands for more

attention to their and ,IsDiratilhb tions. Poles in

appreciation of the;=1-r isolue5 1.1-ki jInst,ri_

chicagn and \lilwaukee,

and for

10!alls ,,:ewark and New

tiaven took ,0 \ye__ biittons :

a greater

,11 ,,jairning "Polish is

Beautiful" and ,It'arilinloY' powr.. the

NRI:r,i,Tcli AL EDUCATION :3

cohesior lid loyalty of the Jews in America were greatlystrength!lacd by two traumatic events in their history,the killitn 1, by the Nazis of 6 million Jews and the cre-anon ()t. tit't, state of Israel.

Tht, rrowing political and economic instability andthe ritoi;"' discarding of many established social valuesand 441,, have eontributed to the search by the secondand thO' gerienttions of descendants of immigrants fortheir ot},1,,, roots and values. Many of them apparentlyfound ()::1Lfort, a sense of belonging, and greater securitytn. partit_si ),,ttalg in weddings, dances, and cultural or po-litical ovein' sponsored by their respective ethnic groups.

he 01(1 and stable customs and ways of their respectivennnoritv seem to provid; the needed anchor intheir grouPs

Ms4. Baroni, a leader of Italian-Americans andPresident :)t- the National Center for Urban EthnicStudies, _ells that public policy, as pursued by Con-gess federal government, neglects white ethnicgroups oograins. anned at saving the inner cities fromdecay clestruchon. In his view, the federal govern-ment ign'o'res the substandard housing and poor schoolsof .Poles, olians, Serbs, and Slovaks, who, because oftheir Inkk. ',`,;"onoinic status, have no choice but stay intheir in the inner cities. Baroni wrote that be-enclast,escause All:60n social problems were defined in thecontext Or noverty and vice, it was impossible to deal

issues in terms of distributing resources,wit Lhs"eialriguts,

1

leriviges among different groups. AndrewGreeley 'the National Center for Opinion Research,x'ho writt,' otensively on ethnicity and the white ethnicsobseryeo,

SHc is assumed that most ethnic groups ought tovanish ,,cot for Jews, blacks, Spanish-speaking Ameri-

AL i:ierican Indians) and since -it is also assumedic

et groups have no contribution to make, itis ho

,vorth learning anything about them. Italiansprovido- poles provide Polish jokes, and Irish pro-

4 THE NIELTING OF THE ETIINICS

vide corrupt Politicians. . . . they're all going to goaway too.

Greeley assails the forced assimilation of the immigrantsand pokes fan at the melting pot "in, tn." He argues thatmost blacks look upon revived et .nic awareness as awhite backlash because they fail to realize that the newethnic awarene;:s is due to the legitimization of culturalpluralism by the blacks.

Barbara Mikulski, a member of the Baltimore CityCouncil, pleads for the preservation of the ethnic neigh-borhoods with their churches, clubs, and taverns, andtheir spc..!ial sets of values. She argues that ethnic prideand consciousness could provide a richness that Americanow lack.F.

Baroni, Greeley, and NIikulski make a convincing caseabout the revival of ethnicity and ethnic awareness, buttheir discussion of a rationale for a degree of separate-ness of the white ethnic groups is made (lit ficult by theirconfusion in the use of the concepts of "melting pot,"assimilation," and "cultural pluralism," It is importantto trace the historical oriOns of these concepts becausethe indiscriminate and often erroneous use of these keyterms has obscured the important issue of the possibleeffect of revived ethnic feelings and loyalties on the fu-ture structure of the American society. For instance, inte-gration in housing patterns is not conducive to the survivalof ethnic values. Ethnicity as expressed in belonging to thesame clubs, organizations, churches, in separate religiousand language schools, and in restaurants demands a cer-tain degree of segregation. For the Amish in Pennsylvaniaand the Cajuns in Louisiana, the degree of self-segre-gation is great indeed. Ethnic-minded Jews, Poles,Greeks, Italians, and Lithuania:is, when they move fromtheir old inner-city neighborhoods usually find other en-claves in other parts of the city or in the suburbs. Inte-grated neighborhoods, arethe truth must be statedinimical to the survival of ethnic loyalties. This factraises the question of how to reconcile the legitimateaspirations of the ethnic groups to live their lives as they

12

Mum-CULTURAL EDUCATION

want to live them and to avoid further polarization inour already deeply divided and ahenated society Somesee the solution ni a -11CW pluralism." Before we try tounderstand this concept let's take a closer look at the-01d- pluralimn and other related concepts.

The Concept of the Melting PotIn Beyond the Melting Pot, published in 1957, Daniel P.

Moynihan and Nathan Glazer concluded after studyingseveral major ethnic wimps in New York that the melt-ing pot theory was not a total success because ethnicloyalties were experiencing a revival. That thesis hassince been supported by other authors. Andrew Greeleyin his Why Can't They Be Like Us?, Peter Schrag in TheDecline Of the WASP, Michael Novak in The Rise of thetrnmeltable Ethnics, while differing on some issues, allagree that the conception of United States as a homo-geneous society in Nvhich the separate inunigrant cul-tures have melted and have become absorbed into a pre-dominant culture is false.

Michael Novak has denounced the melting pot theory,whidi, in his view, forced the children and grandchil-dren ,f various immigrant groups to renounce their ethnicmores and values. Novak wrote that -growim.; -.1p inAmerica has been an assault upon my sense of worthi-ness.- In order to -make in the American society, hehad to denY his Slovak heritage and even to loosen histies to his family.

In hearings conducted by a tIouse Subcommittee onEducation considerillg the Ethnic Heritage Studies Bill,Nvhich became law in 1973, several spokesmen for w!iiteethnic groups repeatedly declared in their testimony thatthe -nwlting pot" concept was dead, and the tmtiremelting pot theory was a myth. They blamed the meltingpot idea for driving the se(2ond and third generations ofiminiwants to assimilation into the homogenized main-stream American culture and to the desertion of theirethnic roots and heritage. Dr. Leonard Fein of BrandeisUnivi-sity testified that in spite of all the pressure for a

la

6 THE MELTING OF THE ETHNICS

melted society,' America remains a collection of groups,and not individuals, no matter how much liberals mightwish it otherwise."

As we have said, some leaders of American Poles,Italians, Slovaks, Serbs, and others often use the term"Americanization" interchangeably with the concept ofthe melting pot. They equate the melting pot th...ory withthe pressure exerted on the immigrants and their childrenand grandchildren to conform to the dominant Anglo-Saxon American culture. "Americanization for the im-migrants from Southern and Eastern Europe," wroteMichael Novak, meant that they were -catechized, ca-joled and condescended to by guardians of good Anglo-Saxon attitudes, . . .- Former Congressman RoinanPucinski defined the problem in his testimony before thecommittee: -This country has to recognize that we areindividual human beings and this effort of trying tohomogenize us into a solid single mold, be it puritan,atheist, or Ai.glo-Saxon, or what have you, is a myth andif the country is falling apart at the seams today, it isonly because we have tried to deny ethnicity." Pucinskiseems to blame the -myth" of the melting pot for all theills that beset our society. The Rev. Jesse Jackson, an in-fluential black leader, has also denounced the meltingpot theory. -The whole notion of a melting pot," hestates, -is perverted imagery. It has antagonized whitepeople and black people because the melting pot is theintegration concept . . . that everybody will become onerace, a new race made up of the different people in theworld." The originators of the melting pot concept, ofcourse, never intended it to include the blacks in America.They were quite aware of the importance of the colorfactor. The theory envisaged the possible fusion of the"old" established American society and the waves ofwhite inunigrants who came to the United States at theturn of the twentieth century. Because of the differencein skin color, it did not and does not make much senseto talk about the melting pot theory in relation to blackchildren.

14

MULTI-CULTURAL EDUCATION

Spokesmen for Anglo-Saxon or Nordic superioritywho wrote at the turn of the century had little difficultyin distinguishing between the melting pot and American-ization theories as they applied to the immigrants. Lead-ing American educators did not want the immigrants'children to fuse with the children of older American,Anglo-Saxon families. They wanted the immigrants andtheir children to accept the Anglo-Saxon values andways of life and to forget their respective cultures.

A distinguished historian of American education andan educational leader of great influence, Ehvood P. Cub-berley advocated Lin intensive effort to Americanize thechildren of the inungrants. lie clearly understood thedifference between Americanization and the melting pot.The former he advocated, and the latter he rejected.

In his book, Changing Conceptions of Education.Cubberley wrote:

About 1882. the character of our immigration fromthe north of Europe' dropped off rather abruptly and inits place immiwation from the south and east of Europe,set in and soon developed into a great stream. After1880, southern Italians d Sicilians: people from allparts of that medley of races known as the Austro-Hun-garian Empire: Czechs, Moravians, Slovaks, Poles, Jews,Ruthenians, Croatians, Servians (sic), Dalmatians, Sloven-ians. Magyars, Roumanians, Austrians . . . began to comein great numbers.

The southern and eastern Europeans are a very dif-ferent type from the north Europeans who precededthem. Illiterate, docile, lacking in self-relia7,..c and ini-tiative and possessing none of the Anglo-1 itonic con-ceptions of law, order and government, their coming hasserved to dilute tremendously our national stock, and tocorrupt our civic life. .

Our task is to break up their groups or settlements,to assimilate and to amalgamate these people as part ofour American race. and to implant in their children, sofar as can be clone, the Anglo-Saxon conceptions ofrighteousness, law vnd order and popular government,and to awaken in them reverence for our democratic in-

1.5

8 TIIE MELTING OF THE ETHNICS

stitutions and for chose things in our national life whichwe as people hold to be of abiding worth.Reviews praised Cubberley's work, and few, if any,

challenged his xenophobic references to immigrants fromsouthern and eastern Europe or his notions about thedocility and the lack of initiative of the millions of Ital-ians, Poles, Greeks, and Jews Alio in fact adjusted them-selves to the American environment with relative ease.Cubberley was not asked to clarify his use of the termsour national stock" or -American race," or to prove his

assumption about the devotion of the Nordics to the"Anglo-Saxon conception of righteousness, law andorder." Even if the Hills, the Harrimans, the Rockefel-lers, and the Nlorgans were not "robber barons," theircareers were not marked by unwavering support ofAnglo-Saxon virtues.

Cubberky felt that the obligation of the public schoolsin areas of great immigrant concentrations was to as-sinnlate the children of the newcomers into the superior"American race." His view was generally accepted byschool administrators and teachers. On the whole, theyshared Cubberley's contempt for the cultures, values, andmores of the immigrants. Clearly, these influentialAmericans who dealt directly with the immigrants andtheir children did not believe in the inciting pot concept.They favored Americanizing or Anglo-Saxonizing of the

One of the most outspoken advocates of Americanizationand an oppment of the influence of ethnic factors on Ameri-can politics was Theodore Roosevelt. In a speech given in1910, which he entitled "Americanism," Roosevelt said:

There is no room in the country for hyphenated Ameri-canism. Our alkgiance must lw purely to tlw UnitedStates. For an American citizen to vote as a German-American, an lrish-American, or an Itahan-American is tobe a traitor to American institutions and those hyphenatedAmericans who terrorize politicians by threats of theforeign vote are engaged in treason to the American re-public.

MULTI-CULTURAL EDUCATION 9

Ethnic groups, Poles, Jews, Greeks, blacks, Chicanoshave paid no heed to Roosevelt's injunctions. They con-sider it to be within their rights as American citizens tosupport the ethnic causes which they espouse. As a rule,they are convinced that their particular Objectives inforeign policy which they pursue are consistent with thebest interests of the United States.

Of course, most immigrants, even those who weredetermined to preserve their ethnic identity and whocherished their group values, did find it desirable ornecessary to adjust to the American society and to theAmerican way of life.

In an essay in Ethnic Group Politics (edited by Barleyand Katz), Oscar Hand lin described "A subtle process ofadjustment [that] found each iimnigrant group driftingaway from the particularities of its heritage and reachingout toward a more general view of itself that would con-firm and strengthen its place in the whole society." Thereis ample evidence to indicate that in nearly all of theethnic immigrant woups many individuals wanted to be-come Americanized fully or in part as soon as possible.They wanted their children to speak English, to play base-ball, and to develop a taste for hamburgers. The traditionallarge-scale Fourth of July celebrations had no more en-thusiastic participants than many thousands of newly ar-rived Jew, Irish, Italians, Poles, and others.

Jane Addams, the founder and director of Hull Housein Chicago, had a more sophisticated and more perceptiveinsight as to the place and the needs of the immigrants,both adults and children, with whom she worked. She hada better appreciation of the actual working of the meltingpot theory than did Cubberley and the school superinten-dents of large city school systems. While her friend andassociate John Dewey showed little interest in the educa-tion of immigrant children, Jane Addams devoted a greatdeal of her time to the study of the problem. Miss Addams,living and working in the midst of the immigrant ghettos,developed a respect for her clients and for their respec-

10 "1 1E NIELTING OF THE ETHNICS

tive cultures. She tells in her autobiography that lovingand admiring Abraham Lincoln, as she did from her youth,she would always tell the immigrant children to be proudof their past and of their cultural heritage as Lincoln wasproud of his youth in Kentucky, Indiana, and on the Illinoisprairies. She deplored the forced isolation and alienationo: the immigrants. In her view, their withdrawal into theirenclaves was their response to the ridicule and contemptthat they suffered from infinowial elements of the domi-nant society. She deplored the fact that intense dislike ofthe immigrants made the children and grandchildren ofthe newcomers ashamed of their heritage, their parents,their culture, and their customs.

The residents and the staff at I lu ll House were obli-gated to do chores for the families of the immigrants, tohelp the sick and the infirm, to take care of the smallchildren while mothers were away, and even to preparebodies for burial. Jane Addams saw this service as bene-ficial to her staff because it gave them an opportunity toget to know and to appreciate the life and the culture ofthe immigrants. Americanization to Jane Addams did notmean Anglo-Saxonizing the immigrants. To be sure shehoped to acculturate the immigrants and their children tothe American society and its mainstream culture but shewas convinced that America as a nation was still in aprocess of dynamic change and that the immigrants hadmuch to contribute to the emergent and forming Americanculture. It is in tl,is sense that Jane Addams used andunderstood the -melting pot'' concept long before it be-came a widely used term.

The idea of America as a melting pot was first used byJohn de Crevecoeur who wrote in 1756, -1.1ere in Americaindividuals of all nations are melted into a new race ofmen.- That concert was elaborated upon by Israel Zang-will, a Briti writer who in 1908 wrote a play entitledThe Melting Pot. The play was produced on Broadway andmet with great success. In the play, the hero, a youngJewish violinist, an inunigrant from Russia, speaks theselines:

1 8

MULT1-CUIATRAL EDUCATION 11

America is God's Crucible. the great Melting Pot whereall the races of Europe are melting and reforming! Hereyou stand good folk, think I. when 1 see you at Ellis Island,here you stand, in your fifty groups, with your fifty lan-guages and histories, and your fifty blood hatreds andrivalries. But you won't be long like that, brothers, forthese are the fires of God you come tothese are the firesof God. A fig for your feuds and vendettas! Cc. man andFrenchmen, Irishmen and English, Jews and Russians, intotht. Crucible with you all! God is making the American.

There is little common ground between Zangwill's melt-ing pot theory and Cubberley's theory of Americanization,his assumption of the existclik:. of an American race, hisbelief in Anglo-Saxon superiority, or his advocacy of theuse of schools to Americanize children of the immi-grants, While Cubberley looked with contempt on the cul-tural heritage of the immigrants and demanded their as-sinfilation into the Anglo-Saxon dominant culture, Zangwillwelcomed the contributions of Italians, Poles, Jews, Rus-sians, Slovaks, and others. The melting pot theory assumedthat American culture was like a mighty river that grate-fully receives the variety of flows from the many tributaryrivers representing the various cultures of the immigrantgroups. According to Zangwill, the constant input of thetributaries changes and enriches the great river. The im-rnigrant are not forced to become Americans by deser-tion of '.Aeir cultures, but by the melting or adjusting oftheir cultural heritages to the dominant culture. This pro-cess would eventually produce a unique, superior race anda superior culture. "The real American," Zangwill wrote,"has not yet arrived. Ile is only in the Crucible. I tell youhe will be the fusion of all races, perhaps the comingsuperman."

The advocates of the melting pot theory deplored thehatreds and feuds that the immigrants brought with themfrom Europe and perpetuated in America, but they ac-knowledged that there was much good in their respectivecultures. They believed that the new, emerging Americanculture must be built not on the destruction of the cultural

1.1 THE NIELTING OF THE ETHNICS

values and mores of the various immigrant groups but ontheir fusion with the existing American civilization, whichitself was never purely Anglo-Saxon but a product of theinteraction of Anglo-Saxon elements with the French, theIrish, the Dutch, the American Indians, and the blacks.

The melting pot concept presupposes respect for thecultural heritage of the immigrants because it accepts theirintrinsic values and their potential contribution to the cul-tural melting process, which was and is taking place onAmerican soil. This process envisaged the emergence of anew American people from the crucible of American plural-istic society.

Finally, the melting pot theorists rejected the notion,expressed by Cubberley and other nativist spokesmen, ofthe sveriority of the Nordic, Anglo-Saxon race. In theburning fires of the nwlting pot, all races were equalallwere reshaped, and molded into a new entity. Readinessto sacrifice part of one's ethnic culture for the commongood was required, but in the process of creating a newnation, all cultures and all cultural strains were importantfactors.

The "Americanization" IdeaThe confusion between the terms "Americanization"

and the melting pot has recently become so widespreadthat it makes an intelligent discussion of ethnicity, ofethnic education or "multi-cultural" education difficult, ifnot impossible. Those who proclaim that the melting potidea was a myth or that it is dead obviously confuse thatidea with the theory of Americanization. They are ob-viously unaware that Zangwill's term, which was conse-quently refined and elaborated upon by sociologists into asocial theory, aroused strong opposition among the ad-vocates of outright Americanization of the immigrants.

In 1926, Henry Pratt Fairchild, one of the most dis-tinguished American sociologists of his time, published abook entitled The Melting Pot Mistake, which met withgreat critical acc!aim. Fairchild argued that while the racialmakeup of the American people would be hard to define,

2 0

NIULTI-CUIJURAL EDUCATION 13

an American nationality did exist, based on Nordic orAnglo-Saxon cultural values and mores. The American na-tion, according to Fairchild, was formed principally byimmigi-ants from England, Ireland, Germany, and theScandinavian countries. But -beginning about 1882,- hewrote, -the immigi-ation problem in the United States hasbecome increasingly a racial problem in two distinct ways,first by altering profoundly the Nordic predominance inthe American population, and second by introducing vari-ous new elements which are so different from any of theold ingredients that even small quantities are deeply sig-nificant.- These -new elements- consisted of Italians,Poles, and Jews, who were coming to the United Statesin large numbers. -The American people,- Fairchild ar-gued, -have since the revolution resisted any threat ofdilution by a widely different race and must continue todo so in the case of large-scale immigration. If they fail todo so, the American nation would face the beginning ofthe process of niongrelization.-

The -melting potidea, according to Fairchild,. was-slowly, insidiously, irresistably eating away the very heartof the United States. 'What was being melted in the greatMelting Pot, losing all form and synnnetry, all beauty andcharacter, all nobility and usefulness, was the Americannationality itself.-

What the immigrants had to be told, with great kind-ness and full consideration, according to Fairchild, wasthat they were welcome to the United States under thecondition that they would renounce their respective cul-tural values and embrace the dominant culture fl ged bythe predominantly Nordic American people since its in-dependence. The American public schools must be madethe effective tools of achieving this objective, at least asfar as the children of the immiwants were concerned. Andthis process must be accomplished as fast as possible.

Obviously, the melting pot concept and theory had adifferent meaning for Fairchild than it has for those whowrite on behalf of the white ethnic groups today.

However, for many immigrants in the '20s and '30s,

21.


or at least for those who wished to maintain their ethnicidentity, neither the Americanization concept, nor themelting pot theory were acceptable. That was particularlytrue cif some Jews, Poles, Italians, Slovaks, Greeks, Serbs,Croatians, and others. For many of them, Americanizationmeant forceful assimilation, the acceptance of a culturalgap, and often a rift between the older and the youngergeneration. The melting pot theory, while predicated onan attitude of respect for ethnic cultures, also envisionedas the end result of the process an emergence of a new,fused American culture. That fact presented a seriousdilemma for many segments of the ethnic groups. Jews,for instance, wished to remain a distinct ethnic and reli-gious group, but, like the Poles and Italians, they wantedto be and to be considered by the general community asfull-fledged members of the American society and theAmerican nation.

"Unity in Diversity"The theory of "cultural pluralism," developed princi-

pally by Horace NI. Kallen, offered the most attractivesolution to this dilemma. Accepting the existence of amainstream American culture, Kallen maintained that thedominant culture would benefit from coexistence and con-stant interaction with the cultures of the ethnic groups.Ka llen stressed that he was not advocating the multi-cultural antonomous pattern of the Austro-Hungarian Em-pire. On the contrary, he repeatedly used the term "unityin diversity." The various ethnic gxoups would accept andcherish the common elements of American cultural, poli-tical. and social mores as represented by the publicschools, but they would by their own efforts support sup-plemental education for their young to preserve theirethnic cultural awareness and values.

The recent re-emergence of strong ethnic loyalties ina number of white ethnic groups, the passage by Congressof the 197:3 Ethnic Heritage Studies Bill, make it neces-sary to clarify th,' terms and concepts used in the discus-sion of ethnic or nmlti-cultural studies to be introduced into

22

MULTI-CULTURAL EDUCATION

Our schools. It seems especially important to he clearabout the historical origin and the correct meamng "c the

schools, especially where parents and children detnand

NIeltNiconcepts and theories of Americanization, theand Cultural Pluralism.

spokesmen of the ethnic groups to deny, in 1916, tht, esis-

Ethnic studies have a place in the currie

their introduction. But it makes little

tence of a mainstream American culture. Nlonsignor CelloBaroni, a leader in the movement for the introduetk)n ofethnic studies in schools and universities, conunented inconnection with the passage by Congress of the I,, --tholeHeritage Studies Bill that the new "program Is .tilf- firstsignificant step taken by the federal government innizing the necessity for a pluralistic education irl orsociety." Father Baroni may be doing harm to Ins .eause.Instead of modestly asking that in those

centration of ethnic groups is large and cohesive,country, nmstly in a number of big cities, where th

areas 11) the

carthillye

prepared ethnic studies be introduced and e xpern4ritedwith, Nlonsignor Baroni assumes that America is, orcoming, a multi-ethnic society. It is easy to predict thatunless ethnic spokesmen adopt a more modest st4noe,

Congress. It seems essential to acknowledge there-funciNthe Ethnic Heritage Studies Bill will not be

existt,neeof a mainstream American culture, which, because themelting pot was basically successful, is not an lAngio-Saxon culture but an ir-rican culture. This Americanculture rests On the bedrock of Anglo-Saxon traditionsin language, law, and lore, but it has been greatlY nluch-fied and enriched by 'nfusions from many imiluRraptcultures. Today, that mainstream culture is so secure thatit can easily afford and woukl probably benefit froiil theendeavors of some ethnic groups to preserve theircultural heritage and values. But as Senator Iliewh__ti

Scheiker, of Pennsylvania, the author of the Ethnic 1etage Studies Bill stated on the floor of the Senate, theobjective of his bill was to unite and not to divide America.

}Callen's slogan, unity in diversity, is as important

rii \11,4 ()F THE ETHNICS

day as it Was fa multi-ethnic so,:Ortv , rs 11

trnerica is in the - Y'e'l,s of h -4),,,, is no evidence that

eiety. Neither is ,,l)roc. 'ereason the United

States may devel(!)ereonotko

that

or that bilin_°13 iot_vaild tl'ilet,Atistro-Hungarian Em-

for us the probjcTlalist?1_tplacultLetaturalism

may create

tzulittL;leir01111011y. aware AmericansQuebec. The tnankL.1)s

tin,4:ns of 13eigiumand Canadian

scill probablypage, cultural her.'nue ,ind vaIN to preserve their Ian,

the frame of referltage' 7 Ole11(\ but they Will do so in

in the eighty ye4r.ence °have (R,Ireiit diariges that occurred

great immigration'. that (,(4Ned since the period of

Ainerica, while Ill all().)t)tv,01 these decades,

separate minoritynetoti!,, Y,.; ,\l'it) t: the existence of

01 ggrOuW+, "'

, jation1

2

The New Ethnicity andthe Story of the Major

Immigrant Groups

Foryears, stressing ethnic separateness was

tnanYfrowneci in the American society. This was true inpolities i_Oliterature and arts, and particularly in schools.Native 11,.5 German, Yiddish, or Russian accents, or theItalian til':_e;e' of speech were ridiculed in humor magazinesand by e_"ng__dians Gn the stage and radio.

I ';its and their children were expected to learnto speak Te Arnerican language properly, to dress and be-have ace`r"ding to the established American patterns, andto cherisC-Arnerican institutions and established Americanheroes, ,_...ticularly. Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln.Often, riakid.'.,e Aniericans expected the immigrants to extollAmerica 'iv the best and greatest country in the world.Cnticistil as, the United States by an immigrant would usu-ally, evokTthe response, "If you don't like it here, whydon t you' back to where you came from?" Observingsome relatives and friends grow rich and influen-tial, tihgrgeairnts looked on America as a land of great

2 5


opportunity for economic and social advancement. Immi-grants, especially those who came from economically de-pressed countries of central and southern Europe, ac-knowledged and readily accepted the domination of theAnglo-Saxon Protestants in American business, politics,and society.

Gradually, however, since the rise of Hitler and Mus-solini, the dismemberment of the British Empire, and therise of free countries in Asia and Africa, a crisis of con-fidence developed in Western Europe and in America..Theassassination of President Kennedy, Vietnam, and growingcrime and economic instability contributed to disillusion-ment with the Anglo-Saxon or WASP leadership, theWASP ethic and culture.

The decline of the importance and influence of Anglo-Saxon elements in American political, economic, and sociallife has resulted in the increased cohesiveness and in-fluence of the white ethnic groups, which are overwhelm-ingly non-Protestant. The diminished status of the Anglo-Saxon Protestants has provided the opportunity for ethnicsto move into positions of importance in many areas ofpolitical and eco mic life of the country.

As a result o_ the increased militancy of white ethnicminorities, the old established supremacy of the Anglo-Saxon elements of the American society in politics, educa-tion, and literature (but not in the economy) is being seri-ously challenged. Professor Henry May devotes the firstpages of his book, The End of American Innocence, to adescription of a dinner given by Harper Brothers in NewYork, on March 3, 1912, in honor of William Dean Howells,the most prominent literary figure of the time. He washonored on his seventy-fifth birthday, and the guest speakerwas President William Hcward Taft. Among the 400 guestswere Ida Tarbell, Herbert Croly, Oswald Garrison Villard,Charles Francis Adams, Ogden Mills Reid, Alfred Mahan,the writer Winston Church:II, and James Branch Cabe 11.Letters were read from Thomas Hardy and Henry James.In his speech, Howells spoke of his acquaintance withNathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Artemus

2 6

THE NEW ETHNICITY 19

Ward, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Francis Parkrnan, WaltVhitman, Nlark Twain, ard others. The New York Timesnoted the next day: -Nearly everyone in the hall kneweveryone else.- And well they might, since this was anearly homogeneous Anglo-Saxon Protestant group. Abra-ham Cahan, the editor of the Yiddish Forward, and a well-known writer, must have felt quite ill at ease at this WASPgathering.

If in 1976, sixty-four years later, the publishing housethat sponsored the 1lowells dinner decided to invite 400writers and intellectuals to honor the memory of EdmundWilson, the recently departc distinguished critic andwriter, the list of the invited guests would undoubtedlyinclude James Dickey, John Updike, William Buckley, Jr.,Mary McCarthy, William Styron, Gore Vidal, Truman Ca-pote, but also Saul Bellow, Philip Roth, Bernard Malamud,Irving Kristol, Norman Niailer, Herman Wouk, Ralph Elli-son, and James Baldwin. Jason Epstein, the editor of theNew York Review of Books, would be on the guest list,as would Norman Podhoretz, the editor of the Commen-tary. Some spokesmen for ethnic groups would considerthe contrast between the two events significant enough tocite it as evidence of the decline of Anglo-Saxon Protest-ant domination. They uld express no regret at Thisdevelopment. In fact, the dear implication would be -goodriddance."

Dean Leonard Chrobot of Saint Mary's College, inOrchard Lake, Michigan, would probably see in the dinnera confirmation of his view that America is moving awayfrom the Anglo-Saxon pattern and becoming a multi-ethnicsociety. -American Chauvinism is dying," Father Cnrobotsaid in his testimony. -Yankee ethnocentrism, which be-lieves in the inherent superiority of its own group, andlooks with contempt on other cultures, must be finallyburied.- The comments of Chrobot on this complex issueare rather routine and superficial, but Michael Novak'scareful analysis in The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics ofthe deep schism and contradictions between the WASPethic and the structure of value and belief of the sons and

27

00 "HIE MEI:FING OF THE ETHNICS

grandsons of immigrants from central and southern Europe,deserves serious consideration. Almost painfully, but witha sense of profound relief, Novak confesses that he andhis fellow ethnics have a negative gut reaction to thefundamental tenets of what he defines as the Anglo-Saxon credo. They resent and reject the WASP ideal ofsuccess as a worthwhile goal of life and doubt the abilityof the American society to transform its members andespecially immigrants Mto better people deeply committedto individual and national progress. The ethnics, Novaktells us, do not want "to keep cool," and they resentthe Puritan preference for self-restraint over the freeexpression of emotions. Moral indignation at occasionalviolence. corruption, and other evidence of basic humanweaknesses is alien to them. In fact, Novak says that-Protestant-American myths of success and self-help re-quired the immigrants to change their con, ption of them-selves, their families and society." Ile is delighted that inthis age of militant ethnicity, the ethnics (and he joyfullyincludes himself) can finally throw off these restraints andbe them nselves.

Novak berates the American Catholic Church, which,in his view, is ruled by Irish bishops who have acceptedthe WASP values of order, cahn, and rationality and haveimposed on the ethnic groups a Catholic worship thatleaves the worshippers unfulfilled and resentful. The cen-tral European and the southern European immigrants andmany of their descendants believe, Novak tells us, in apagan Catholicism with its stress on religious processions,mystery ceremonies, and an unabashed worship of theMadonna. "The Irish are pagans like the Slays, the Ital-ians and the Creeks," according to Novak, "but paganswho have allowed their church to make Christianity anagent of order and cleanliness rather than an agent ofmystery. ghostlir fear, terror and passion, which at itsbest it was."

At first glance, there may be some attraction in thisplea for a more passionate. more meaningful religious ex-perience, but the "pagan" Catholiyism of pre-war Poland,

28

THE NEW ETHNICITY

Lithuania, Slovakia, and other places in Europe had itsdark arid bloody side, which Novak chooses to ignore. Alarge measure of superstition and an even larger measureof intolerance were built into this version of Catholic faith.

"Pagan" Catholicism in central and southern Europemade no distinction between nationality and religion, andCatholicism in many of the countries of central and south-ern Europe was the religion. It meant that all instructionin elementary schools and gynmasia (the high schools) be-gan with the recitation of the Lord's Prayer during whichthe non-Catholic boys and girls in class were required to.. -

stand at attention Mlle their Catholic peers stood withtheir hands folded a required stance. Obviously, tilt:non-Catholic children had a feeling of alienation. Novak'sapotheosis of that ancient, passionate but thoroughly in-tolerant Catholicism needs some thoughtful analysis.

The American Catholic Church has accepted many re-forms and is experiencing a profound upheaval, which onlyits communicants can judge and evaluate. But the CatholicChurch operating under the principle of separation ofchurch and state, in a country with a Protestant majority,can well be lauded and not condemned for stressing ra-tionality, self-restraint, and tolerance.

Novak's plea for a freer rein on emotions is not limitedto religion. It extends to other aspects of life: "The Anglo-Saxon fears.overpopulation and crowding Not so theItalian, the Slav, the Spaniard, the Greek. Southern andEastern Europeans have a far more 'pagan' attitude tolife." Even for those who have some reservations aboutthe Anglo-Saxons and their airs of superiority, the WASPethic looks surprisingly attractive when contrasted withthe "pagan Catholic ethic" of Novak and his allies. Atleast in the former, there is a chance of making it, inreasonable health and security, to a reasonably old age.Of course, Novak would argue, as he has, that non-WASPscan make it in our society only on the terms laid down bythe VASP-dominated society.

Virtually no word has a more sinister connotation inNovak's vocabulary than "Americanization." The same is

2 9


true of most of the vocal ethnic spokesmen. Novak merelyarticulates more clearly and more frankly the theme re-peated in speeches of many ethnic leaders, that to Poles,Slays, Serbs, Italians, and others, Americanization hasmeant that they were "catechized, cajoled and conde-scended to by quadrons of good Anglo-Saxon attitudes.. . . The entire experience of becoming American is sum-marized in the experience of being made to feel guilty."

Dr. Rudolph Vecoli, Professor of History at the Uni-versity of Minnesota and President of the American-ItalianHistorical Association, stated in his testimony before Con-gressman Pucinski's committee that Americanization, whichhe termed "forcible assimilation," was a dismal failure.Ile compared the effort to prepare the immigrants for thepassing of the naturalization examinations to the efforts ofthe Germans to Germanize the Poles or the efforts of theHungarians to Magyarize the Slovaks. "Americanization"is used by ethnic spokesmen a:, synonym for the "melt-ing pot idea," and is considered an effort to deprive theimmigrants and their descendants of their pride and knowl-edge of their ethnic roots and heritage.

Many of the political and the intellectual leaders ofthe ethnic groups are gleefully proclaiming the failure ofthe melting pot theory. The continued existence of theethnic groups and their militant reawakening are cited asdecisive proof of the demise of the melting pot myth.

Ethnic leaders proclaim, to the delight of their audi-ences, the end of the pre-eminence of the WASPs inAmerica. They paint a picture of the American society asstricken by a variety of afflictions, including the question-ing of long established moral values, the decline in pa-triotism, a growing disunity, and the alienation of theyoung. All these are allegedly the result of the misguidedemphasis on WASP values, of the suppression of ethnicdifferences, and of the attempt to "homogenize" America.The salvation is seen in a return to the ethnic roots.

The rise of often fierce ethnic loyalties among manymillions of descendants of immigrant groups is related totheir fears, dilemmas, and unfulfilled aspirations. These

3 0


differ from group to group but all of them can be under-stood only upon the background of the history and thenature of their original immigration into the United States.To look to history as a source of enlightenment for a com-plex contemporary societal phenomenon has not beenpopular in recent years. History and the teaching of historyhave been under intense attack. Many would have us be-lieve that Voltaire, a brilliant historian, was serious whenhe made his flippant remark: "History is the tricks we playon the dead."

Some social scientists argue that history has little ornothing to teach us about contemporary affairs, while thesocial sciences like sociology and political science addressthemselves to the solution of some of the most vexing con-temporary societal issues. The state of affairs in our coun-try and in the world today lends only limited support tothe assertion that history offers no help. Whatever thebroader ramifications of this dispute between the histor-ians and the social scientists may be, the present statusand the problems of the major white ethnic groups inAmerica cannot be understood without a long backwardlook at their respective histories. To a large extent, it isthe nature and the story of their original mass immigra-tions to America that determined their present status andeven their future.

The Italian-AmericansThe problems and dilemmas faced by Italian-Americans

today can be understood only by reference to the peculiarhistory of Italian immigration into the United States. Theimmip-ation from Italy came between 1880 and 1910. Inthat relatively short period of thirty years, 4.5 million Ital-ians came to America. They came almost exclusively fromsouthern Italy, mainly from the island of Sicily and fromthe regions of Abruzzi, Calabria, and Campania. In thecourse of history, Sicily was governed by Greeks, Cartha-ginians, Romans, Vandals, Arabs, Spaniards, Austrians,Frenchmen, and others. To survive, the Sicilian peasantshad to learn to hate, ignore, and outfox their rulers and to

31

THE MLTING OF THE ETHNICS

distrust all levels of authority. The only entities that mat-tered were the family and the village. Only in the love andsolidarity of the "famiglia" (the immediate family and allthe "blood" relatives) could one eke out a living and havea measure of security in a hostile environment. Beyondthe family was the loose association of the villages; be-yond that, all was enemy territory.

The Sicilian and other southern Italian immigrants toAmerica were overwhelmingly peasants, contadini, andartisans, artigiani, who came from the poorest regions ofItaly in order to escape poverty and exploitation. But un-like the millions of Jews who immigrated to the UnitedStates almost at the same time from the wretched villagesof Poland, Russia, Lithuania, and Hungary, the Italianpeasants loved their sun-baked villages, and many of themlonged to return. Some had no desire to settle in Americapermanently. They worked hard in the land of Columbus,saved as much nmney as they could and then returned totheir villages as "rich" Americans.

Between 1908 and 1916, several hundred thousandItalians returned to their native land. The publicity givento this exodus of Italians to the Old Country was greetedwith anger by the American press and public. The ridiculed"dagos," "wops," the "leftovers of Southern Italy," werenow accused of ingratitude to America, of exploiting theeconomic opportunity that this country gave them and tak-ing their newly acquired resources back to their countryof origin. The nativists and the xenophobes had addedammunition for their constant attacks on the "uncouth"and "uncivilized" immigrants.

The adjustment of this mass of southern Italians toAmerica would have been difficult even without the addedhandicaps of animosity and ridicule. They were mostlyilliterate workers who could only do unskilled labor. Theyworked hard and were paid little, building railroads andtoiling on construction jobs. Even those among them whowere skilled masons, bricklayers, and stonecutters wereexploited by the padrones, their own labor bosses. Thepadrone was a job contractor who recruited the workers

32

THE NEW ETHNICITY 2.5

and dealt with the American employers. Many of thepad rones were ruthless exploiters of their compatriots whileothers helped them to find their way in the new environ-ment.

Faced with these enormous difficulties in a strange andlargely hostile environment, the Italian immigrants madeevery effort to hold on to their old ways of life, to preservethe elaborate mores of the "la famiglia." To do that, theysettled in closely knit Italian neighborhoods, which theyconsidered essential to their spiritual comfort, peace ofmind, and even survival. In New York, they lived on Mul-berry Street, and on Tenth Avenue in a "Little Italy," inSt. Louis they settled in "Dago Hill," and in other citiestheir settlements were known as "Woptowns" and "Mac-aroni Hills." In 1887, the Chicago Herald complained ofthe "nasty and cheap living" in Chicago's Little Italy, inthe area bordered by Halstead, Polk, and 12th streets.

In these sealed off enclaves, Sicilian Italians guardedtheir complex system of family, social, and religious rela-tions developed over centuries of the turbulent history oftheir island. The solidarity of the family and strict familialloyalty were constantly stressed. The values and customsand the rigid "honor code" were used to preserve theirfamilies from disintegration and to resist the onslaught ofprecipitous assimilation of the young into the Anglo-Saxonculture and environment. To counteract the enormous pullof the American environment and the attraction of oppor-tunities for success and advancement in the outside world,Italian immigrant parents ridiculed the world of the Yankeesand often did all they legally could to limit the years ofschool attendance. Italian boys were encouraged to go towork as early as possible to add to the family's incomeand the girls were taken out of school at the end of thelegally mandated school attendance. Public schools wereconsidered by many Italian immigrant families as breedinggrounds of atheism and immorality.

The life of the immigrants centered around the familyand the church. While the men rema.ned cynical and dis-dainful of the clergy, as only devout Italians can be, for

3 3


the women and children the church was the center of theirlives. The church was important, but it was the largerfamily that was the source of comfort and security to im-migrants suffering from pangs of severe cllture shock.Sundays, particularly, were divided almost equally betweenchurch and family.

Nlario Puzo, in The Fortunate Pilgrim, a brilliant novelcentering on the life of the new Italian immigrant families,describes a New York street in "Little Italy" on a Sundayafternoon:

Tenth Avenue open all the way to the river at Twelfthwith no intervening wall to give shade, was lighter thanother avenues in the city and hotter during the day. Nowit was deserted. The enormous midday Sunday feast wouldlast to four o'clock, what with nuts and wine and tellingof family legends. Some people were visiting more fortun-ate relatives who had achieved success and moved to theirown homes on Long Island and New Jersey. Others usedthe day for attending funerals, weddings, christenings, ormost important of allbringing cheer and food to sick rela-tives in Bellevue.

But the process of assimilation to America, while slow, con-tinued relentlessly. Italians who moved to New Jersey andto Long Island, while remaining a separate ethnic group,were rapidly assimilating the mores and customs of thedominant American society. The same was true of manyItalians who moved to California, where they went intofruit and vegetable farming in the coastal and valley areas,settling in large numbers in Los Angeles and San Fran-cisco. Fishing, restaurants, and construction became vir-tual Italian monopolies in many parts of California. In SanFrancisco, Dorninico Ghirardelli was a famous chocolatemanufacturer and merchant, and Ghirardelli Square onSan Francisco's waterfront is today a magnificent arcadeof shops and restaurants. The most outstanding successstory of an Italian immigrant was that of Amadeo Pietro(known as A. P.) Giannini, a merchant and real estatebroker, who founded the Bank of America in the NorthBeach section, then San Francisco's "Little Italy." Today,

3

TIIE NEW ETH \win.

the Bank of America, has branches all over Californiaand is one of the largest banking firms in America.

Things were much more complex on the Eastern Sea-board and in the Middle West, especially in Chicago, wheremany Italian immigrants worked in the two great clothingfirms, Hart Schaffner and Marx and L. B. Kuppenheimer.It is to Chicago that the first connection between Italiansand crime activities can be traced. It is not surprising thatin the society of Sicilian immigrants who were despisedand ridiculed by the dominant society and who were forcedinto underpaid and unskilled jobs, a small minority turnedto crime as a route to economic and social advancement.The ethnic cohesion and group loyalty of the Sicilians,their traditional hostility and suspicion of all levels of gov-,.rnment and authority, helped gang leaders like JamesColossirno, John Torio, and Al Capone to conduct theircriminal operations. These activities were greatly facilitated

the corrupt conditions of Chicago politics. In fact, it..f.ist be said that some of the downtrodden immigrants,the people called "Dagos" and "Wops," felt a measure ofprick- in the swaggering "feudal baron of Cicero," AlCapone, who treated important political figures in Chicagowith contempt and who for many years was an untouch-able as far as the law was concerned. Time and again

ap:me was heard boasting that he "owned" the ChicagoHunibert S. Nelli wrote in Italians in Chicago that

Under the leaders'i4 of John Torio and his successor,Capone, Italians exerted a powerful economic and politicalinfluence in Chicago, and made a spectacular and notor-: )us entrance into the mainstream of city life. . . . Theirglittering successes and extravagant excesses, and the ex-tensive publicity accorded their actions by the press, di-verted public attention from the widespread but less sen-sational accomplishments of Chicago's law-abiding Italians.

For soinc boys in the "Little Italics" across the country,the crime syndicate offered an opportunity to gain someself-respect and achieve relative economic security. Thiswas especially true in Chicago, where criminal gangsabounded.

28 "HIE MELTING OF TIIE IIINICS

A high official in the Illinois state government, a re-spected Italian-American leader who grew up in Chicago's"Little Italy," related that "there were only two ways forthe boys in my neighborhood to get up the greasy pole ofsuccess. Either through hard work and education, whichtook longer or through service to the various crime 'fami-lies', which took less time and paid quick returns but wasdangerous. I took the road of education and honest work."And yet, he added, "I can easily be charged with havinglinks to the Syndicate. This is a ,ery tricky business. Ofcourse, I know crime syndicate figures. I played with themin the streets of the First Ward, went to the same churchand often dated the same girls. If I were to go to a weddingof a daughter of one of my boyhood pals. I may well becharged with having 'connections with the Mafia.' Aanylaw-P.biding Italian-Americans across the country are facedwith this dilemma.

The Jews'Ile contrast between the history of Italian and Jewish

nmss immigrations and the way in which this history hasshaped the respective destinies of Italian-Americans andJewish-Americans is geat indeed. Largely because of theirdifferent pasts, the Italian and Jewish communities inAmerica today face different problems and dilemmas. Ap-proximately in the same period of the great Italian im-migrations, 1880-1914. over 3 million Jews came to America,mostly from Russia, Poland, Lithuania, and Hungary.

Unlike the Italians, the Jews were not peasants. In fact,they were not allowed to own land in the countries of theirorigin. They came from cities and towns (shtetlech),where they had lived in ghettos or segregated and re-stricted areas. Governmental restrictions forced them tomake their livelihood as small merchants, peddlers, andartisans. But a respectable proportion of the Jewish im-migrants were doctors, engineers, writers, journalists,teachers, and students.

Unlike the Italians, even the masses of the poor anddestitute Jews were not illiterate. They spoke and read

3 6


Yiddish and Hebrew, and many Jewish intellectuals spoke,read, and wrote Russian, Polish, German, and English.Their flight from Russia and Poland was a flight not on!yfrom poverty but al.io i-rom religious persecution. .ifanyJewish intellectuals and students were socialists or Zion-ists, and they fled from political persecution of the Czaristpolice.

Unlike many Italian or Polish immigrants, the Jewscame to America to stay. They had no love and less nos-talgia for the cities and towns and villages of Russia andPoland where they lived as an oppressed and persecutedminority. The sad parting of the Jews from the mythicalvillage of Anatevka in Fiddler on the Roof is a theatricalhyperbole, not a historical truth. On the contrary, as theJews disembarked in New York, they wanted to forgettheir life and experiences in Europe as soon as possible,and they were determined to become American citizens asquickly as the law would allow.

Enrollment in the citizenship classes, which Leo Rostenmade famous in The Education of H°Y°114°A°N° K°A°P-°L°A°N, was one of the first steps taken by the Jewishimmip-ants upon their arrival. Among the Jews it was amitzvah, almost a religious good deed, to become a citizenand vote in the elections. Since they were basically literate,they had little difficulty in meeting the legal requirementsfor citizenship.

Unlike the Italians, the Jews did not regard America,with its unique ways of life, as a threat, and they experi-enced less cultural shock than the Italians or the Poles.To millions of Jewish immigrants, America was the landof their dreams and hopes. It was the hope of immigrationto America, where they often had relatives already resid-ing, that made the misery of their lives in the shtetlechof Russia and Poland bearable. They read the letters fromtheir American relatives with wonder and anticipation. Tobe sure, the reality of New York's crowded and dirty EastSide tenement houses was different from the New York oftheir dreams, but America still was a marvelous haven ofrefuge. It was for the Jews a land of freedom and oppor-

3 7

30 IIE MELTING OF THE ETHNICS

tunity, after centuries of wandering and oppression acrossEurope as a despised minority, doomed to suffering fortheir religious beliefs. Where else in 2,000 years of wan-derings had they heard at every public meeting that thiswas -the land of the free.-

The Jews were, of course, also somewhat bewilderedby the new American environment, especially in huge,bustling New York. But they had one great advantageover the Italians, the Poles, the Russians, and the Slovaks.They wek.e familiar with urban living, and they had cen-turies of experience of moving from one country to anotherand of having to adjust to new environments, new cultures,and nev.; governments. They had learned how to live amongRussians, Poles, Lithuanian's, and Hungarians, and how tostill remain a separate entity. They came from countrieswhere they were a minorit;., and they knew how to acceptthe advantages and disadvantages of this status. In theircountries of origin, the Jews, by their own decision and bythe will of the majority ol e population, were not Russians,Poles, Hungarians, or Lithuanians, but Jews. They neitherparticularly wanted nor were given the rights of citizenshipin the countries of their habitation. But the attitude of theJewish immigrants to the United States was entirely dif-ferent. Here all men were equal, at least, under the law,and here they were safe from political and religious per-secution.

To the Italians and the Poles, manifestations of xeno-phobia, of Anglo-Saxon nativism, were a shocking and de-meaning experience. For Jewish newcomers in America tobe called "kikes" or -sheenies- was old stuff. They hadseen much, much worse. In Russia, their worry was notinsulting remarks but pogroms. Unlike the Italians andthe Poles, Jews accumulated a great deal of know-how indealing with outside hostility or discrimination and wereready to cope with its relatively mild manifestations inAmerica. They became, in the course of time, expertsin survival in hostile environments. They knew how toignore occasional anti-Semitic or nativist propaganda andreveled in the atmosphere of freedom and in the almost

38

THE NEW ETIINKATY 31

unlimited opportunities offered by the new country. Theywelcomed the pluralistic. character of the American society,rejoiced in its often proclaimed egalitarianism, and cheer-fully disregarded or discounted the ridicule and hostilitythat they sometimes encountered. The contrast of how theywere treated in government offices, in post offices, incourts, on railroads, and in schools in Russia and inAmerica was startling and deeply gratifying.

Jewish immigrants were happy that the new countryadhered to the principle of separation of church and state.In Russia, where the Orthodox Church was virtually iden-tical with the state, and priests were government of-ficials, and in Poland w.here Polish nationalism and PolishRoman Catholicism were intrinsically bound together, Jewssuffe.red both as a national and as a religious minority.The contrast with America could not have been greater.The lack of officially sanctioned class distinction in Americamade upward social mobility much easier. The clear classdistinctions between the landed nobility and the peasantsin Russia and Poland, forced the Jews to act as middle-men between the two groups with the consequences of be-coming the scapegoats of both the big landowners and ofthe exploited peasants. This was especially true in times ofeconomic depression or of a political crisis.

In a short time, Jews became unabashed patriots andboosters df America. Jewish radicals, socialists, Bundists,and the Jewish communists, hated the inequalities of thecapitalist system, but they too loved America where theywere not shadowed by secret agents, where they were freeto speak and to write, and where they were not livingunder the threat of jail or exile. Jews, as their affluencewas growing, became convinced that America was truly aGoldene Medine, a Golden Land of freedom and oppor-tunity.

The editor of the Yiddish Daily Forward, AbrahamCahan explains the attraction of America to the Jewishimmigants in his novel, The Rise of David Levinsky. Dur-ing an evening concert in a resort in the Catskill moun-tains in upper New York State, a conductor of a small

3 9

32 TH N1ELFING OF THE ETHNICS

orchestra had a hard time rousing his audience, composedalmost completely of recent immigrants, from the stuporinduced by the heavy meal. Selections from Aida, frompopular Broadway hits, and from Jewish musicals all fellflat. The audience remained drowsy and apathetic. Indesperation, the band struck up The Star-Spangled Banner.Cahan writes,

The effect \vas overwhehning. 'Me few hundred dinersrose like one man. applauding. The children and many ofthe adults caught up the tune joyously. passionately. . . .

Men and women were offering thanksgiving to) the flagunder v, hidi they were eating this good dinner, wearingthese e.pensive clothes. There was the jingle of newly-acquiring (..1 11 ars in our applause. liut there was somethingelse in it as well. Many of those who were now payingtribute to) the Stars and Stripes were listening tol the tunewith grave . solemn mien. It was as if they were saying:"We are not persecuted under this flag. At last we havefound a home.-

The uniqueness of the Jewish experience as immigrantsto America bad its effect not only on the first generationbut also on the second and third generations of Jews.Many of second and third or even fourth generation ofAmerican Italians and Polish-Americans carry with tht.mthe memory, bequeathed to them by their parents andgrandparents, of the old days of suffering, of ridicule anddiscrimination. These accounts are still bound to rankleand to affect ethnic attitudes. By and large, that is nottrue of the present generation of American Jews. Its mem-bers remember the tales of steady progress and of theever-greater measure of economic success attained in theUnited States by their grandparents or parents. On thewhole, these are tales of hardships and hard work but itis also the story of years filled with progress and fulfilledhopes for a better life.

The key to the success of the Jewish immigrants waseducation. When Jewish parents themselves lacked generaleducation, or when their education was limited to Hebrewor Yiddish studies, they more than made up for it by their

40


zeal for the education of their chf dren. The desired goalwas not, as it was in most Italian families, a high schooldiploma, but a college degree. There is some truth in themyth that all Jewish mothers wanted their children to be-come doctors or lawyersand many did. Passion for learn-ing and a strong belief that education was the best roadto advancement were probably the most important charac-teristics of the massive Jewish immigration to America.

This appreciation for knowledge and dedication tolearning and study did not spring up suddenly on theAmerican soil. It developed directly from the long tradi-tion of the study of the Torah and the Talmud by gener-ations of young Jews in many lands of dispersion. Themost respected men in the shtetlech were not the rich menbut the scholars. No wonder that in America, where edu-cational opportunities were open to their children, thepublic schools were almost fanatically supported by Jewishparents. Schools and teachers always enjoyed the strongbacking of the Jewish community. Many young Jews inNew York, Chicago, and other big cities went into theteaching profession and, taking advantage of a merit sys-tem that provided for advancement through examinations,they quickly occupied positions of importance as principalsand district superintendents. Others graduated from freeuniversities like the City College of New York and wenton to become doctors, lawyers, professors, and business-men.

In contrast, few Italian children of the second genera-tion went to college. As we have seen, there was often noencouragement from the Italian familyon the contrary,many Italian immigrant parents pressured their children toleave the alien public school at the earliest legal age andget jobs to add to the f-!:nily's income. Many of these jobswere in the policP, fire, and sanitation departments of largecities, in the post offices, and in the electric and telephonecompanies. Italians seldom occupied top positions in indus-try or commerce and many remained in blue-collar jobs,particularly in the construction industry.

Of course, not all Jewish immigrants or their children

4 1

34 THE NIELTING OF THE ETHNICS

wen '. to colleges and to professions. Many found employ-ment in the clothing industry. "Jewish immigrants," writesMoses Rischin in The Promised City, "separated by reli-gious proscriptions, customs, language from the surround-ing city, found a place in the clothing industry, where theinitial shock of contact with a bewildering world wastempered by a familiar milieu." In time, the center of theclothing industry in New York became dominated by Jews.Jewish clothing workers were primarily responsible for thefounding of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of Americaand of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union.After an initial period of bitter strikes, collective bargainingand mediation of disputes became the established practicein the clothing industry and it was soon widely imitated inother industries. Significantly, since most of the owners ofthe clothing factories in New York and Chicago were Jews,as were most of the workers and almost all of the unionleaders, "the bosses" were subject to an effective pressurefrom the generally liberal Jewish community which sym-pathized with the demands of the ...orkers for a livingwage and better and safer working -or &.tions.

Today, there are few Jewish workers left ir the cloth-ing industry, although some of the leaders of the Amalga-mated and of the I.L.G.W. and of the hatters and fur work-ers unions, as well as many of the factory owners andclothing manufacturers, are Jews. In contrast to the Italiansand Poles. Jews moved o,,t from the blue-collar jobs withgreat rapidity.

The PolesThe pattern of Polish mass immigration to the United

States was significantly different from that of the Jewishand Italian irnmiwations, and these differences have alsoshaped the particular structure and the unique problemsfacing .American Poles today. The most significant fact toremember is that Poles who came to this country in largenumbers between the years 1880 and 1910 did not comefrom a free sovereign homeland. In fact, there was noPoland on the map of Europe after 1795. In 1795, after

4?


800 years of existence as an independent state, Polandwas a strong and distinct national entity. The Poles, whohad accepted Christianity in the ninth century, consideredthemselves the defenders of the Roman Catholic faith andan outpost of Western Christian civilization against the re-peated onslaughts of the Russians, the Turks, the Mongols,the Tartars, and other -heretic" invaders. Poles proudlyclaimed that Poland was a living "Christian Wall" againstthe conquest of Europe. Polish children were taught ontheir fathers' knees the story of the heroic contributions ofKing Jan Sobieski and his Polish army who helped defeatthe Turks in 1683 at the gates of Vienna. Poles also cher-ished the memory of their resistance to the repeated in-vasions by the Teutonic Knights who came from EastPrussia and the victories they attained in preserving theirindependence against the invading armies of Sweden andR ussia.

For centuries, Poland's powerful neighbors were de-termined not to allow the Poles to live as an independentpeople. Finally, in 1795, Russia occupied eastern Poland,Prussia took the western and northern lands, and thesouthern part of Poland was incorporated into Austria.From that time on, for 125 years, Poles were ruled bythree foreign powers. They regained their independencein 1918, when a free Poland was created by the termsof the Treaty of Versailles, based on the Wilsonian prin-ciple of self-determination of nations.

This long period of partition of Poland and the inces-sant struggle of Poles for independence, marked by.;reat uprisings and rebellions in 1831 and 1863, had alasting and profound influence on the Polish people.They became one of the most nationalistic and patrioticpeoples in Europe. "Fo the r)les, who had lost their in-dependence to foreign invaders and who were determinedto regain their freedom, love of country became almost anational obsession. The Polish poet, Adam Mickiewicz, putit well in verse in one of his poems: ''My fatherland, youare like health, only those who have lost you, can knowyour value." It was indeed a desperate struggle that the


Polish people waged against the might of Czarist Russia,the military machine of Prussia, and the immense powerof the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The occupying powersattempted in varying degrees to suppress the spirit ofPolish nationalism through forced Russification or German-ization, through bribery and political concessions, and of-ten by brutal force.

All these efforts failed. The Poles had no independentPolitical institutions, their military rebellions were sup-pressed, their sons died on foreign battlefields, in the vainhope of enlisting sympathy and military aid in the fightfor an independent Poland. But their dedication to the ideaof a free Poland never faltered. If anything, during thePeriod of foreign domination, the Poles became an evenmore united peopleunited by the will for independenceand united in one language and culture and M one religiousfaith. The Polish language became a precious and ef-feetive bond for Poles in all three sectors of occupation.To speak Polish, to write in Polish, to love the Polishlanguage became an almost religious commandment forall Poles. The patriotic poetry of the pl.:at Polish poets,Adam, Mickiewiez, Julius Slowacki, and the Messianic writ-Ings of Stanislaw Wyspianski became not only great liter-ature for educated Poles, but their most sacred treasureand a source of constant inspiration.

For the mass of poor and largely illiterate peasantswho formed the overwhelming majority of the population,the spirit of Polish nationalism was kept alive by the PolishCatholic Church. While the Catholic Church in Poland wasfaithful and obedient to Rome, it was primarily a PolishCatholic Church; it supported the fierce Polish nationalismant kept the devotion to the Polish language, Polish cus-toms, and Polish hopes and aspirations for independence.Priests delivered patriotic sermons in Polish, and religiousschools taught Polish language and literature, often in theface of -dire threats by the occupying authorities. As timewent on, the lines of demarcation between Polish nation-alism and Polish Catholicism became blurred and they re-

blurred until the present time.

4 4

THE NEW EFIINICITY 37

Several million Poles came to America during the periodof the occupation of their country by foreign powers, andthey brought with them both the spirit of fierce Polish na-tionalism and an unbounded devotion to the Polish CatholicChurch. In that, they differed from the Italians, who camefrom a free Italy, and especially from Sicilians who hadlittle comprehension or feeling for Italian nationalism andwho, while devout Catholics, viewed the Italian Churchand Italian priests with a great deal of suspicion, if notoutright cynicism. Obviously, the contrast with the Jews,who felt little if any allegiance to the countries of theirorigin, was even qeater. Polish nationalism and specialdevotion to the Catholic Church are still the most outstand-ing characteristics of those American Poles \vho have pre-served their ethnic identity. Polish nationalism, however,constitutes no conflict with their strong patriotic devoticlto the United States of America.

Poles have had significant ties with Anwrica sincecolonial times. Poles were in the Jamestown colony andtwo Polish Officers, Thaddeus Kosciuszko and CasimirPulaski. were heroes of the American Revolution. GeneralKosciuszko distinguished himself in the Battle of Saratogaand fortified \Vest Point which was General George Wash-ington's headquarters. Pulaski became a Brigadier Generalin the Revolutionary Army and died in a gallant cavalrycharge during the siege of Savannah.

But the mass of Polish immigration came, as we havein the last two decades of the 19th century and in the

period before World War I. It was overwhelmingly peasantal character. During that period of time over three millionPoles came to America, paralleling the massive Italian andJewish immigrations. While the special character of theseimmip.ation waves has influenced the nature of the Italian-American and Jewish-American communities, a case canbe made that the status, the image, and the problems ofthe contemporary Polish community, or of Po Ionia, asPoles call it, reflect the unique history of the originalPolish immigration in bolder and clearer relief. In com-parison with the Italians, the Jews, or the Irish, Poles have

4 5


made less economic and social progress in the Americanmilieu. The reason for this phenomenon has, of course,nothing to do with the innate abilities of Poles, but is re-lated to the point at which they started their journey tothe New World.

Polish immigrants were mostly peasants who came froman occupied country, and from a society which still prac-ticed a variation of feudal economy. Professor FlorianZnaniecki estimated that 60 percent of Polish immigrantswere landless peasants who eked out a bare living as hiredhands on large estates and 27 percent were small land-owners. Polish immigration included very few skilled work-ers or artisans. The mass of the Polish p.'asants who cameto the United States had no skills to survive in the indus-trialized and strange country to which they came. Theyspoke rudimentary, peasants Polish and were over-whelmingly illiterate both in their own language and inEnglish. Thus, unlike the Jewish immigrants and to someextent the Italian newcomers, most Poles were not ableto benefit in their adjustment period from reading thefew Polish newspapers in America. In addition, unlike theJews who were experienced international travelers, andunlike the Italians who benefitted front the love and gla-mor that American society has always accorded Italy,Poles came from a country which was in chains and whichwas unknown to Americans.

All that Poles had to offer America was their inordinatecapacity and willingness to do hard physical labor. Thiscontribution should have been accepted with gratitude bythe booming American economy and industry but in factPoles were shown little compassion and even less apprecia-tion. Bewildered in the new society Polish immigrantswere determined to adjust and to survive. To do this, theybecame laborers in the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Gary,in the automobile factories in Detroit, and in the stock-yards of Chicago. Some Poles who had experience in thecoal mines in Poland, and many others who did not, wentto work, under hard and dangerous conditions, in the coalfields of Pennsylvania.

4 6

THE NEW ETHNICITY :39

No work was too hard, too menial, too coarse, or toodangerous for the Poles. They had no choice and could notbe choosy about jobs if their families were to survive intheir new environment. This hard, demanding labor was asignal contribution of these millions of brawny and healthyimmigrants who without complaining or rebelling helpedto make America the industrial giant it is today. There wasvirtually no crime among the Poles; their young peopledid not consider illegal activities as one possible avenue foradvancement in the new, strange, and often hostile environ-ment. Crime was unthinkable in a Polish neighborhoodwhere the authority of the parents, of the priests, and ofthe police were highly respected, and where the emphasiswas on hard work, thrift, and savings. Sa0- banksabounded, and most Polish fraternal organizations were(and are) also insurance and savings institutions.

flow did America repay the contribution and the ex-emplary behavior of these Polish immigrants? In return,they did not receive a sense of welcome and appreciation.On the contrary, ridicule and scorn were heaped on theheads of these simple, uneducated folk who worked sixteenhours a day in dangi' ously insecure mines, mills, andstockyards, for pitifully small wages.

It is virtually impossible to exaggerate the severity ofthe cultural shock suffered by the mass of Polish peasantimmigrants. They ,.ame to this country not from the ad-vanced regions of Poland, around Warsaw, Poznan, andLodz, but from the least advanced regions of the high-lands in southern and eastern Poland. They came fromisolated, primitive villages; they had no interest and nopart in the management of their own af fairs and no voicein the political affairs of the region or of the nation.Politics were the exclusive domain of the aristocratic land-lords and of the country gentry. If they voted, they did soas the local priest or government official told them tovote. Even the rudiments of the democratic process wereunknown to them.

Alexander Hertz's Reflections on America includes a

4 7


perceptive analysis of the situation faced by Polish im-migrants:

The leap from the world of family and neighbor rela-tionships to the world of big-city, industrial civilization ofthe United States, was of a fantastic dimension. This wasnot only a change of place, of country and of a mode ofearning a living. It was something much greaterit was atransition from a way of life based on a very simple orderto a new order of life, which was fluid, very complex andwhich used the most advanced technology. One ought tothink very deeply about the dimensions of the psycholog-ical revolution, in order to evaluate properly the extent ofthe effort demanded of the immigrant if he were to stakeroots in the new soil.Much of what Hertz says applied also to other immi-

grant groups, but the difficulties confronted by the Polesin this period of transition were particularly great. Theywere much more severe than those experienced by the Irishimmigants, who spoke English and had considerablefamiliarity with Anglo-Saxon mores and institutions. Jew-ish immigants were overwhelmingly literate and were be-coming "Americanized" daily by the Yiddish newspapers,which devoted many pages to instructing them how tosurvive and to prosper in the new land. In addition, boththe Jewish and the Italian immigrations included artisansand intellectuals who provided a ready pool of potentialleaders and spokesmen. Poles had few of these advantages.

Children of Polish immigrants suffered in the publicschools the usual tribulations of the other immigrant stu-dents, but they had to cope with another handicaptheirunpronounceable names. Anglo-Saxon and Irish teachersresented the effort it took to pronounce these names cor-rectly and often suggested to a Stankiewicz or Wroblewskito tell his parents to change his name to -Stanley- orto -Warren." Polish children soon perceived directly, or byrepeated innuendo, that to get along in school you had toforget or to hide your Polish ties and identity. When theytold their Polish parents, who struggled in the occupiedPoland to keep their Polish language of their reluctance tospeak Polish and of their desire to shorten their names,


the reaction was often harsh and unyielding. No wonderthen, that among many second generation Poles there de-veloped a wowing feeling of inferiority. They often suf-fered from the hostility of their teachers to their culturalheritage and they were ashamed of their poor and illiter-ate parents, who, as they soon discovered, did not evenspeak a "good- or literate Polish.

The generation gap was real and painful, and it had itseffects on the psyche and the state of mind of AmericanPoles. The effects are still eviderit today. Professor EugeneKusielewicz, President of the Kosciuszko Foundation, main-tains that even the third generation of Poles "suffers fromthe same feeling of inferiority that is characteristic of therest of Polonia." This feeling of inferiority, he believes, isreinforced by the largely negative image that Poles presentto the rest of America. In support of his view, Kusielewiczcites a survey made by the Polis:-Arnerican writer WieslawKunicz, which found that Americans consider Polish-Americims to be "anti-Semites, narrow, simple-minded,clumsy, stupid, anti-liberal, reactionary . . . and vulgar."

Many Polish leaders dispute the views of Kusielewiczand Kuniczak and cite evidence indicating that manysecond and third generation Poles are interested in andare proud of their Polish identity and culture. The truthis probably that some young Polish-Americans are ashamedof their ethnic origin and others are proud of being Polish,while the attitude of the vast majority fluctuates some-where in between these two extremes.

Historically, it is not difficult to understand the originsof the "dumb Polack- syndrome. As we have said, Polishimmigrants were mostly illiterate, in Polish and in English.They had no skills and were doing menial work. They wereon the lowest rung in the pecking order of employees inthe mines, the steel mills, the stockyards, or small busi-ness establishments. It was often difficult for these laborersto follow the instructions of the foremen or of their bosses.Polish workers did not have the padrones who helped theItalian immigrants on construction or on railroad jobs.Consequently, they were thought to be unintelligent and

4 9:

49 TIIE NIELTING OF TILE ETHNICS

even slow-witted. Nobody seemed to care to get to knowthese newcomers, and the first impression lingered into thesecond and third generations, which include doctors, law-yers, engineers, and professors.

In recent years, American Poles have launched a longoverdue counter-offensive. They have branded their imagefalse and the "Polish jokes" as an unworthy and an un-American abomination. In a keynote address to the 1970National Convention of the Polish American Congress,president Aloysius Mazewski declared,

Our most urgent task is the presentation of Po lonia'simage in a historically and sociologically appraised frameof reference. It is not an easy task; its difficulties are deeplyrooted in the past neglect and ignorance of our oval worthin the mainstream of American life.

American Poles are now fighting back against their de-tractors and defamers. The Polish American Congress hasestablished a special Committee on Education and Cul-tural Affairs, which has demanded from the communica-tion media the elimination of "Polish jokes" and askedthem to present the contributions and the positive life-styles of the Polish community in America. So far, thiscampaign has only been partly successful.

There is little evidence to substantiate the widespreadassumption that American Poles are more racist than anyother group in America. Reliable polls of public opinionhave established that the Poles are in fact less anti-blackthan some segments of the white Protestant Anglo-Saxon.Like most of the problems faced by American Poles, thisquestion, too, relates to their low economic status. Poleslive in low-income neighborhoods in inner cities into whichblacks are trying to move to escape from the wretchedslums. The other area of confrontation is the job market.Both qoups compeic for semi-skilled jobs, and the pres-sure of the blacks for admission into craft unions createsfears among the Poles who are long-time members of theseunions. "The conflict between the Poles and the blacks isbasically neither racial nor ideologicalit is economic," saidJoseph Bialasiewich, the editor of Po Ionia, a Polish weekly


published in Chicago. Ile made this statement sitting inhis office, which was once located in the heart of the Polishcommunity in Chicago and which has now become an areawith a majority of blacks and Spanish-speaking people.Most Polish institutions in Chicago are located in the Mil-waukee and Division area, which has now largely beendeserted by their clients, the Polish homeowners. In De-troit, the blacks and the Poles have united their effortsto raise their economic status and to fight the city's blight.They have formed a Black-Polish Conference, which hasbeen effective in achieving better schools and better cityservices in the black and Polish areas of Detroit.

However, American Poles are convinced that the fed-eral government has concentrated on helping the Negroesto achieve equal rights and a higher standard of living tothe exclusion of their group, which is also in need of help.A resolution passed at the 1970 Convention of the Ameri-can Polish Congress said in part:

Be it resolved that the President of the United Statesbe commended for his recognition of the talent and abili-ties of the members of our Black community by the ap-pointment of a substantial number of members of this com-munity to respon:sible high salaried positions in our gov-ernment and we further urge the Administration to showequal recognition of the talents possessed by members ofour ethnic groups....The Poles want a share of attention to their economic

problems by the federal government. But what they wantmost is to be accorded a measure of the respect to whichtheir history and their contributions to America entitlethem.

51

3

Varieties ofEthnic Loyaltiesand Affiliations

A common problem facing all major white ethnic groupsis the difficulty of identifying the e1emeni2 and character-istics that keep them together. The degree of difficultydiffers from group to group. It is relatively easy to define

-Jewishness- of the Jewish group or the "Polishness-ot American Poles, but it is much harder to isolate the"Italianness- of the American Italians or the "Irishness-of the American Irish.

"Jewishness""Jewishness" seems relatively clear to Jews, but it does

present somewhat of a puzzle to non-Jews. Many find itdifficult to understand why Jews cling so stubbornly totheir separate existence as a people, even in circumstanceswhere their total assimilation may be possible. The adher-ence to the Old Testament and the rejection of the NewTestament was long thought to be the only reason for thesurvival of the Jewish people. In more modern times, someChristians find it peculiar that Jews who are not religious,

5 2


who declare themselves to be agnostics or atheists, thinkof themselves and are considered by others as Jews. Novaksuggested, with a great deal of insight, that Jews are ex-perts in hiding their deep attachment to their roots inorder to survive in alien societies. The reason for this de-veloped trait lies in the long history of the Jews. Whatunites them is a memory of their long, turbulent, and of-ten glorious past, a recogMtion of their interdependencein the lands of their dispersion, and shared goals and as-pirations for the future, chief among them being thesecurity of the State of Israel. "Jewishness" denotes alsoa strong belief in the basic goodness of man, in the worth.whileness of life on earth. coupled with a substantialclose of scepticism about an after life, and an unshakenbelief in the unlimited opportunities to improve the qualityof life for people everywhere. Tikkun Olamthe better-ment of the worldis an ancient tenet in Jewish mysticismand has been accepted by many Jews as a life's obliga-tion. Hence, the "Jewish heart," "Jewish idealism," and"Jewish liberalism."

The sources of Jewish liberalism extend to the earlyhistory of the Jewish people and are the consequences ofthe long experience of almost 2,000 years of sojoums inthe many lands of the Diaspora. Responsibility for theplight of the poor, the widows, and the orphans has beena part of the Jewish religion which stresses this worldliness.Since the promise of immortality and of a better life afterdeath play a relatively minor role in Jewish religious think-ing, the right of every person to a good life on this earth be-comes paramount. The injunction, in Deuteronomy 15,verse 7, reads:

If there be among you a poor man or one of the breth-ren within any of the gates in thy land which the LordGod giveth thee, thou shalt not harden thine heart, norshut thine hand from thy brother.

The Bible and the Talmud contain a series of welfare lawsincluding the cancellation of debts every seventh year,the reversion of the land to 4-he original owners every fiftyyears, and the setting aside by each landowner of a por-

53

ETHNIC LOYALTIES 47

tion of his land at harvest time for the poor. The needyof Israel have, on the basis of Biblical laws and the teach-ings of the Prophets, considered it their right to be takencare of by their community. Significantly, the word charityin Hebrew, Tzdakah, collies from the word Tzedek, whichmeans justice. Thus, the giving of charity was and is ex-pected of every Jew, and it became a virtual law for everyJewish conmmnity to take care of its poor and destitute.This attitude to charity accounts for the enormous sums ofmoney that American Jews contribute every year for hos-pitals, Jewish centers, schools, and theological seminariesand for the State of Israel.

The experience of the Jews during the centuries ofliving in many lands under many different regimes hastaught them that there is a direct correlation between ex-treme right-wing or extreme ieft-wing, military and reac-tionary governments and anti-Semitism and repression.Contrariwise, they usually lived in relative security andprospered in countries ruled by progressive, liberal gov-ernments. Czarist Russia, with its "Pale of Settlement,"the restricted area where Jews were allowed to live, withits rampant anti-Semitism, ritual blood murder trials, andpogroms became a classic example of how an unenlight-ened, despotic regime treated the Jews within its borders.Periods of relaxation in political repression, succeeded byhberal reforms like that following the 1905 Revolution inRussia always brought an improvement in the lot of theJews. The communist dictatorship of the Soviet Union provedto be as bad for the Jews as the reactionary regime ofCzars.

Jews suffered persecution from the "colonels" regimein pre-war Poland and were later mistreated by the com-munist governments of Goinulka and Gierik. On the otherhand, the French Revolution brought emancipation to theJews, and English Jews prospered under the benevolentconstitutional monarchy in modern England. The long ruleof Emperor Franz Joseph of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,a ruler whose power was limited by a government that in-cluded Austrians, Poles, and Hungarians, was fondly re-

54"

48 TIIE MELTING OF TIIE ETHNICS

membered by the large number of Jews who lived insouthern Poland, Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary,all of which were part of the empire. Generally speaking,dictatorships, military juntas, states that had an establishedreligion, and g cernments that were oblivious to the pov-erty and sufferings of the poor and the underprivileged,have proven to be bad risks for Jews. The same is and.%'as the case with the totalitarian states on the left. Thoselessons have not been forgotten by the Jews. fence theirspecial devotion to the United States of America and toliberalism.

The devotion of Jews to the State of Israel has a greatdeal to do with tlw Jewish past, with Jews' appraisalof their position in the world today, and with their aspira-tions for the future. The depth of the passionate devotionof American Jews to Israel is rarely understood by thegentile world. In essence, Jewish attachment to Palestineand to Jerusalem, the city of Zion and their former glory,has never weakened. The Nazi holocaust, which resultedin the mass murder of 6 million Jews (many of whomcould have been saved if there had been a country readyto take them), has convinced American Jews that theremust be an independent State of Israel ready and willingto serve as a haven of refuge for those Jews who wish tosettle there. Furthermore. most American Jews seem to beconvinced, rightly or wrongly, that the destruction ofIsrael would be detrimental, if not disastrous, to theirstatus in the United States. They are proud of the political,economic, and social progress made by Israel. and espe-cially of the courage and valor of the Israeli army. Theysee in the widely praised record of victories of the Israeliarmy at least a partial recompense for the humiliationsuffered when they helplessly watched Hitler's minionsslaughter 6 million of their brethren.

While many American Jews have only a vague knowl-edge of Jewish history and Jewish culture, they knowwhat their "Jewishness" means to them. If they sometimesfalter in that understanding, there is always the outsideworld ready to remind them that they are Jews. Unlike

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ETHNIC LOYALTIES 49

the Poles, the Italians, and other white ethnics, Jewishethnicity is not only a matter of choice; it is, in largemeasure, forced on the Jews by the society at large. EvenJews who become Christian Scientists or Unitarians arestill considered Jews by the general society.

"Polishness"To ethnically minded Poles, "Polishness" means Polish

patriotism, a deep devotion to the ideal of a free Poland.It includes a special affection and reverence 'or the Polishlanguage, which goes beyond the acknowledgement of itsusefulness as a language of communication and the lan-guage of their literature. Poles love their language, andthis is true even for many American Poles who do notspeak Polish, because it served them well as an instrumentof national survival. Poles still sing with deep emotionthese lines contained in a poem by Maria Konopnicka:"We shall not allow our language to be forgotten, we arethe Polish nation, the Polish people, a tribe descendedfrom the dynasty of Piast kings . . . we shall not be

"Polishness" includes a deep re ii t, for the CatholicChurch, or more accurately, fei the Polish Cati:'.)lic Church.To a Pole, Polish religious mstorns are p--t ry)t only ofhis Catholic faith but of his 13, dish Hnahtv. WEile ethnicgroups in America observe so; )e special c.istoms, most ofwhich they brought over from the ...wintry o f their origin, noethnic poup has made its custom nn:',:h a .dart of itscultural and reliWous ethos as the erica Polt--!s. Holi-day customs, particularly, ha become important charac-teristics of Polish culture and the "Polishness" of AmericanPoles. The observances of Polish reWous cus;orns havesometimes presented problems for he Polish churches inAmerica, especially the Christmas custom of blessing theOplatek, a thin, unleavened bread of flour and water,which is broken and eaten in a special family ceremony,and the blessing of the Easter food baskets. Irish bishops,who, as a rule, have jurisdiction over Polish parishes, haveoften considered these Polish religious customs as irrele-

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50 THE MELTING OF TIIE ETHNICS

N'ant paglm relics and have refused to sanction them. Theyhave also looked with disfavor on sermons delivered inPolish or on the teaching of the Polish language in paro-chial scl,ols. The Irish church hierarchy had as its goalthe establishment of a united Catholic Church in Americaand considered the demands of the Polish parishioners to benarrow and divisive. "Ours," James Cardinal Gibbons, ofBaltimore, said, "is the American Church, not Irish, Ger-man, Italian, or Polish, and we keep it American."

Cardinal Gibbons attitude had a great deal of logic be-hind it. The heads of the Catholic Church in America,faced with large-scale immigrations of Italian, German,Croatian, French Canadian, and Polish Catholics, consid-ered it imperative to minimize the differences in Catholicreligious schools and observances. They were determinedto establish a united and an Americanized Catholic Churchin the United States. But Polish-American historians andscholars are unsparing in condemning the Irish cardinalsand bishops for using their authority to force Polish priestsand nuns to de-Polonize their churches.

In Poles in American History and Tradition, ProfessorJoseph Wyrtwal writes,

But their (the Poles') effort to create autonomous relig-ious institutions where the humblest and the meanestwould receive a cordial welcome and a psychic pleasurethat was not found in Irish or German Catholic churches,was limited by the American Catholic hierarchy . . . the!rich bishops were determined to deprive the Poles of their

,guage and culture.Dr. Eugene Kusielewicz goes .'ven further: "The low statusof the Polish Americans is directly traceable to the factthat the Poles, unlike the Jews and the Ukrainians werenot allowed to control their own churches."

One of the most crucial dilemmas facing the AmericanPolish community and endangering its future is its inabilityor unwillingness to support academic institutions wherePolish language, culture, and scholarship would be at thecenter of concern. The largest and the most prestigiousPolish organization, the Polish National Alliance, which

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ETHNIC LOYALTIES 51

has over :300,000 members and which is also a wealthyinsurance company, supports one academic institution, theAlliance College in Cambridge Springs, Pennsylvania. Thisliberal arts college, which has an enrollment of about 600students, about half of them Polish Americans, offers theusual Bachelor of Arts and Science degrees, but studentsmay also major in Polish language, Polish arts, and Polishliterature. The college is in an almost constant financialcrisis, and the Alliance has had to increase its subsidiesalmost every year. One difficult problem is that the collegehas an enrollment substantially lower than its capacity.

The other large Polish organization, the Polish RomanCatholic Union, with a membership of over 160,000, sup-ports a small theological seminary, where Polish priestsare trained, and Saint Mary's College, a four-year liberalarts college. Both are located at Orchard Lake, Michigan.The total enrollment of both colleges is around 200. Re-cently, the institution has expanded to include a PolishCulture Center, which has published some scholarly mono-graphs and textbooks.

These efforts are commendable, but they cannot com-pare with the Notre Dames and the Fordhams of the Irishor with the Jewish Theological Seminary, Brandeis Uni-versity, Dropsie College, and the Hebrew Union Collegemaintained by the Jews. The budget of many of these in-stitutions, taken separately, exceed the total budget of allPolish academic institutions. Somehow, Polish leaders haveas yet been unable to initiate a program of vast culturalactivities for youth and adults that would decisively en-hance the image of the American Poles. In addition, theseinstitutions would provide an opportunity for many Polishscholars in America to pursue their studies in relativesecurity and in the public eye.

The Italian-AmericansHow do Italians perceive their own ethnic entity?

"Italianness- is not only a strange and unwieldy term incomparison to -Jewishness- and "Polishness," but it is also

58

TIIE MELTING OF THE ETIINICS

a concept which is difficult to define in terms of the lifeof the Italian-American community in America. What doesbeing an Italian mean to an Italian-American? It certainlydoes not nwan the same kind of fierce nationalist devo-tion to Italy as the Poles have to a free Poland or that theJews have to a sovereign and seetire Israel. At least, thisimpression is left from the reading of the Italian-Americanpress (both in Italian and in English) and from the pro-nouncements issued by the leading Italian-American orga-nizations. Of course, it can be argued that Italy is free,sovereign, and secure under the NAT() treaty, and Italian-Americans have no cause to be jittery about its future.Nttheless, while love for Italy and justified pride inItal,Ln culture, art, and literature are evident and increas-ing among the American-Italians, fierce Italian nationalismseems to be alien to their nature. In that they are notunlike their compatriots in Italy, who, while caught for abrief period in a chauvinistic frenzy of Mussolini, soontired of this aberration. The stress in the cultural work ofthe Italian-American organizations is on the study of Italianlanguage, art, and music.

A reporter for the New York Times wrote that Italiansof many walks of life, of the first, second, and third gen-eration, vary greatly in the degree of their identificationwith the Italian community. "The Italians in New York,"the reporter, Richard Severo, wrote, "do not agree aboutwho they are, what progres they have made, since thegreat migrations of half a century ago, and were theyshould be going. And yet this people, whose identity is sodifficult to define, has recently been thrust very muchinto the public eye." Severo recalled the mass picketingand demonstrations of New York Italians to protest theuse of the word Mafia by the F.B.I. and the communica-tions media arid the strong showing of Italians who aban-doned their usually Democratic voting pattern to supportGovernor Nelson Rockefeller and to elect the conservativeJames Buckley to the U.S. Senate for New York. In spiteof this evidence of ethnic cohesion, Severo quoted Dr. JohnA. B. Faggi, director of Columbia University's Casa Italiana:

5 i)

ETHNIC WYALTIES 53

They [the Italian Americans] are not a closely knitgroup in any sense . . . they take [pride] in being part ofthe great foinano-Italian civilization. . . . But mostly tlIt.yshare an overridMg sense of resp( )ility as Americancitizens and that, they are, notThe poet, John Ciardi, whose parents were immigrants,

predicted that "within another ten years, you won't evenbe able to classify the Italians as an ethnic group."

On the other hand. many Italian organizations claim arapid rowth in membershipthe Americans of Italian De-scent, based in New York, for example, and many of theorganizations comprising the Joint Civic Committee ofItalian-Americans in Chicago and similar organizations inother cities. Professor Luciano J. lorizza, a distinguishedAmerican-Italian historian, commented on Severo's articlein a letter to the New York Times (November 23, 1972,p. 17). He said that a growing number of scholars of Ital-ian descent in America are devoting their talents to an in-tensive stud). of the Italian community. More importantly,Professor lorizza noted that an "ever increasing number ofItalian-American college students are becoming inquisitiveabout their immigrant parents . . . beneath the exterior,fierce individualism generally posed by Italo-Americansis a sense of group consciousness recogmzed and nurturedby some leaders of the Italian masses."

Probably the most reliable assessro2nt of the state ofethnic awareness of Italian-Americans from a dis-tinguished scholar and author, Father Siivano Tomasi,director of the Center for Migr.. tion Studics on StatenIsland. Tomasi's studies hive- led him to conclude that theItalian-American community in America divides into threegroups, the "Italian Italians," who are the recent immi-grants who speak Italiw, almost exclusively, then come theItalian-Americans of Mulberry Street in New York and ofthe "Little Italies" in many big cities who have been inthis country for many years and whose feelings of ethnicidentity are strong arit who are active in the Italian-American organizations. Finally, there is the 'third groupcomprised of second and third generation Americans of

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54 THE MEIAING OF ThE ETHNICS

Italian descent, many of whom are college educated busi-nessmen and professionals. "This group," Father Tomasisaid, "are still proud of their heritage, perhaps, but [they]do not identify with Italian-American problems or organi-zations. They do not participate. Their ethnic awareness islimited to their food, to the arts, to the Italian-made moviesand sometimes to their history."

Father Paul J. Asciolla, editor of Fra Noi admitted that,

no 011( really knows hOW many Italian-Americanswhoidentify themselves as suchthere are in the Chicago metroarea Seeing the same faces at meetings and banquetsafter a long Iwriod of time causes many to wonder . . .

there is no one huge monolithic. determined Italian-Amer-awn community, united On common goals for the future.

have to face the fact that sonw people do notidentify with being Italian-Anwrican and they could carekss.. . . There is still however a sizeable number of peoplewho are true Iwhevers that are good Americans with anappreciation of their Italian and/or Italian-American Heri-tage....What Father Asciolla has said here about the Italian-

Americans is largely true of Polish-Americans, Jewish-Americans, Creek-Americans, and many other white ethnicminorities. This realistic appraisal of the size and the levelof ethnic identity puts a special obligation on the spokes-men of the ethnic groups to be much more careful and,yes, more modest about their claims and demands bothvis-ii-vis in their own communities and in reference to thegeneral community.

As yet, the increased interest in ethnic identity has nottranslated itself into financial support for Italian-Americancultural youth centers or American-Italian institutions ofhigher learning. In fact, Italian-Americans do not main-tain any institutions of higher learning in the UnitedStates. It seems that they are still adhering to the longtradition of southern Italians and look with suspicion oncivic activities as aimed to benefit and enrich some weedyindividuals. I lowever, in recent years, some progress canbe noted. A few courageous Italian priests have built an

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ETHNIC: LOYAIMES 55

Italian cultural center on the edge of Chinatown in LosAngeles, and the Chicago Italians maintain a splendidhome for the Italian aged, the Villa Scalabroni. Generally,howeverAmerican-Italians have yet to make adequateprovisions for cultural activities in their community.

The Italian-American conmumity still struggles with anold problemhow to dissociate itself from the tiny minorityof Italians who are prominent leaders of organized crimein America. For many years, nativists and assorted xeno-phobes perpetuated the myth that Italian immigrants hadan innate "criminal instinct," which drove them to crim-inal activities. No scientific evidence has ever been offeredto support these assertions. For years, following the large-scale Irish immigration, newspapers wrote about the Irishpropensity for crime. Hollywood produced many movieswith actors speaking with an Irish brogue, who playedIrish-American gangsters. Today, with the same recklessdisregard for scientific evidence, many racists are con-vinced that blacks are "natural" killers, muggers, andrapists.

Many Italian-American scholars and journalists havealso pointed out that crime was never an Italian monopoly.That, of course, is true. In Chicago, in the lawless 1920s,there operated, in addition to the Colossimo, Torio, andCapone gangs, the all Irish gangs of the O'Donnellbrothers, the powerful O'Banion gang, and the Polish gangof joe Saltis. But in the course of years, the Irish pros-pered and abandoned the rackets. They, in fact, becamethe cops who were fighting crime activities. Polish immi-grants never became attracted to crime activities to anyappreciable extent. The Polish Catholic Church was tooeffective to allow such straying from law and order. For avariety of reasons, Italians, almost all of Sicilian descent,remained prominent in organized crime in the big citiesacross the country. While at most, the number of Italian-Americans in the crime gangs is less than 6,000, thesecriminals taint the image of millions of hard working andlaw abiding Italian-Americans. A deep sense of unease andinsecurity sweeps the Italian community in America, when

6 2

5fi THE MELTING OF THE MINICS

a Senate Committee or another national investigative bodyholds hearings on organized crime and the suspected beadsof crime activities virtually all bearing Italian names areforced by subpoenas to testify, or at least to apnear. Thesame is true of newspaper stories, reporting the c ,ntinuousmurderous wars among some of the crime "far.ilies." Itmatters little to the general reading public whether Italian-American historians and sociologists are right or wrongwhen they present evidence to prove that the existence ofthe NI afia as a nationwide criminal conspiracy is a myth.Impressive evidence for this conclusion was recently pre-sented by Professor Francis lanni of Columbia University.The general reader may agree, but he considers it irrele-vant whether or not the various crime organizations in NewYork, Boston, and Chicago communicate and cooperatewith each othel. What is sigmificant to himand this as-pect presents a serious question for the image of theAmerican-Italiansis the fact that revelations about or-ganized crime consistently mention Italian names.

Accepting the point of view of several Italian-Americanscholars that a nationwide crime organization does notexist, a number of Italian-American organizations pres-sured the federal government to ban the use of the woid"Nlafia" from official releases. In July, 1970, AttorneyGeneral John Mitchell complied and sent a memorandumto law enforcement agencies banning the use of the words"Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" because, as he put it, theseterms offended the feelings of "decent Italian-Americans."The ef fect of this ban, predictably, has been negligible,because most of the newspapers and radio and televisionstations continue to refer to "Mafia figures," "Mafiosi,"etc.

The problem of how to dissociate the overwhelmingmajority of law-abiding Italian-Americans from the smallminority of criminals is still plaguing the Italian-Americancommunity. Americans must, as Father Asciolla wrote inthe Chicago Tribune, stop making the terms "Mafia" and"organized crime" synonymous and interchangeable withthe words "Italian-American." Equally troublesome is the

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ETHNIC LOYALTIES 57

dilemma of third-generation Italian-Americans, who, for avariety of reasons, wish to keep or return to their ethnicroots to define the meanings of their "Italianness." Pro-fessor Richard Gambino, writing in the New York Times,makes some interesting observations on the alternativesthat are facing young Italian-Americans:

They may opt for one of the several models that haveserved other ethnic woups. For example, they may chooseto cultivate their Italian culture, pursue personal careers,and fuse the two into an energetic and confident relation-shipwhich has been characteristic of the Jewish-Ameri-cans. They may also turn toward the church, revive andbuild upon its power base a political organization andmorale, as Irish-American did. Or, they may feel it neces-sary to form strictly nationalistic power blocs as .someblack Americans are doing.

A few observations on these alternatives may highlight thecomplexity in dealing with white ethnic groups. There islittle evidence to support Gambino's assertion that youngJews have successfully fused Jewish culture with theircareers in the general society. In fact, evidence seems toindicate that in spite of the millions of dollars invsted byAmerican Jews in religious and cultural schools and uni-versities, many young American Jews have become alien-ated from their culture and have found that the fusion be-tween their Jewish roots and the American environment isquite difficult to achieve.

American Jews and the White Ethnic StrategyThe newspaper columnist Dorothy Thomson once said

that the "Jews are like other peopleonly more so." Whatshe probably meant was that Jews face, as a group, thesame or similar problems as other groups, except that inthe case of the Jews, the issues and the dilemmas are, orseem to be not amenable to a simple definition, and solu-tions seem to be more difficult. This is the case when at-tempts are made to analyze the status and the future ofthe 5 or 5.5 million American Jews.

On the surface, the status of American Jews seems tobe very secure. Jews are the most affluent of all the white

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58 THE NIEUFINC OF THE ETHNICS

ethnic g oups. With the exception of small pockets ofpoverty, mainly in some sections of Brooklyn and the Bronx,Jews live in vell-to-do sections of the big cities and inmany upper-middle-class suburbs. In 1972, Professor Mar-vin V. Verbit, of Brooklyn College, conducted a study ofthe 25,000 Jews in North Jersey, which is typical offindings in Jewish communities in other big cities. The find-ings were based on demographic data gathered from 1,722households and interviews with 631 individuals.

The study disclosed that there are more professionals(doctors, lawyers, dentists, educators) in the Jewish Feder-ation of the North Jersey area than in any other singleoccupational category, and that about two-thirds of theworking Jews are salaried and one-third are self-employed.Twenty percent are owners or managers of businesses. Lessthan 4 percent of all employed Jews are unskilled laborers.College attendance of the young is almost universal. Thisdemogaphic data would not be much different in theJewish suburbs of Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, NewYork, or San Francisco.

It may be cautiously postulated that the general afflu-ence of the Jewish community is at the root of many ofthe problems and difficulties afflicting the American Jew-ish community. Paradoxically, this general affluence hasbeen the main cause of the loss of political influence ofthe Jews in both major parties. In Chicago, for instance,Jews who were concentrated in a number of areas like the24th Ward on the West Side have moved en masse to thesuburbs, where their political power has been diffused,especially in local and state elections. The time whenJewish political leaders like Colonel Jacob Arvey wereable to deliver a solid Jewish vote in a number of wardsto the Democratic city and county machine is long over.Consequently, Mayor Daley does not consider Jews a reli-able source of votes, and that has been reflected in fewerand fewer Jews being slated for important political jobs inthe city, Cook County, and the state. Only the relativelyunimportant positions of City Treasurer and Sheriff are

6 :3

ETHNIC IMALTIES 59

held by Jews; the real political power is shared by Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans, blacks, and Italians.

A similar situation prevails on the national scale. Jewshave lost influence in the Democratic Party, where theywielded a great deal of power in the days of F.D.R.'sNew Deal and during the presidencies of Harry Trumanand John F. Kennedy. They were an important part of theGrand Democratic Coalition, which included some Pro-testants, many Catholics, blacks, labor unions, and variouswhite ethnic minority goups. In this coalition, liberal Jewshad political power because they were concentrated inlarge cities and because they cast their votes in large num-bers for Democratic candidates. Now, as in Chicago, manyJews have moved to the suburbs, where their politicalpower is insignificant as contrasted with the usually largeRepublican vote usually 7ecorded in wealthy suburbs.

As we have seen, this new political reality and thestrained relations between the white ethnic groups and theblacks in the big cities have caused influential Jewishorganizations, like the American Jewish Committee, todevelop the so-called "ethnic strategy." This strategycalls for the initiation of a series of dialogues, and if pos-sible, of an alliance with the larger white ethnic groups toform a new coalition that would eventually develop a moremeaningful relationship with the black community. Thisnew cooperation with the Poles, the Italians, and otherwhite ethnics who often find themselves in bitter competi-tion with blacks in the areas of housing and school businghas of necessity brought a weakening, or at least a muting,of the long standing commitment of the major Jewish or-ganizations to the cause of civil rights. Consequently,Jewish-black relations are experiencing a period of strain.The report of a task force commissioned by the AmericanJewish Committee, headed by Morris Abrams as chair-man and Professor Seymour Martin Lipset of Harvard asconsultant, states that the rising extremism and militancyof the blacks has brought about a feeling of solidarity indefense of their neighborhoods and good schools of thewhite ethnic groups. The report continues,

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60 NIELTING OF

In their quest for solutions of these problems and for thedefense ot the rights of group.; other than blacks, theJews, the proto-ethnic group, also rediscovered ethnicity.Jewish leadership's awareness of these changes, and theneed to find coalition allies among the diverse groups indealing with the situation is reflected in the work of theNational Project On htlmic America.

The report of the task force, Group Life in America,put the issue succinctly:

Anabrican Jewry 1-ts been heavily liberal in its ideologyand organizational strategies. And organized liberalismhas cooperated closely with Jewry on issues of Jewishrights, anti-Semitisin, assistance to the State of Israel, andsupport for rights of other deprived minorities. The changein liberal foreign policy affects Israel. The dismay overthe irefficacy of applying traditional universalistic and in-tegrationist principles to the condition of the blacks chal-knges norms and intititnti4ms which Jews have long re-garded essential to their own security. And the Jews, con-fused by the same sense of inadequacy which upsets theliberals, are at crossroads. They are divided on what is tobe done, as they have not been since the rise of Nazism.The dilemma of disillusionment with liberalism and the

move to a more conservative stance is well stated by thetask force. The question whether the -white ethnic stra-tegy- pursued by the Jewish leaders is the right strategyis at least open to question. This strategy calls for the Jewsto be the mediators, the convenors, the middlemen be-tween the white ethnics and the blacks. To learn from thelessons of long Jewish history, Jews have never fared wellas :Iiiddlemen or conciliators between antagonistic andwarring sections of the population. Time and again, bothsides would turn on the mediators and make them the con-venient scapegoats ior tl-wir frustrations. Furthermore, it isan illusion, as we shal to look upon the white ethnicgroups as a united b,,( o population. In truth while thePoles. Lithuanians, tL' ..taLans, the Ukrainians, and theSerbs and the Croats and others are united in their griev-ances against the blacks, and against the general society(most of these grievances are not shared by Jews), their

ETHNIC 1,0YA1:11Es 61

mutual distrust, old feuds, and even hatreds among them-selves ale quite evident. It is, for instance, questionablewhether American Serbs fear and distrust Negroes morethan they fear and distrust American Croats or that Polescould indeed cooperate on common problems with theLithuanians.

There is evidence to suggest that while Jews, especiallytheir intellectual elite, have been jolted in their liberalism,primarily by the militancy of the blacks, by a danger tothe merit systems for advancement and promotion, in thebig-city school systems and universities and by the specterof the quota system. However, American Jews seem to beclinging to their traditional liberalism.

The Harris Poll results published on Octobtr 12, 1972,in the New York Times centered on the political attitudesof the Jews and the Italian-Americans. The results revealedthat while Italian-Americans have moved considerably tothe right, Jews have retained their adherence to liberalpositions.

Predictions about the success of the American Jewishcommunity in grappling with its dilemmas are virtuallyimpossible. All that one can say is that we are dealing herewith an old people, which has often proved its prophets ofdoom to be false prophets.

4

Jane Addams,Hull House, and the

Education of theImmigrants

Probably the best laboratory for the study of theprocess of adjustment, acculturation, or assimilation of theimmigrants and their children was the Hull House settle-ment houses in Chicago. And the most competent observerof this process was Jane Addams, who founded Hull Housein 1889 at the time when the tidal waves of immigrationfrom Europe to America were lready changing the com-position of the American society.

Hull House served the immigrantsparents, adults, andchildrenas an adult recreation and education center. Inthe broader sense, it was a school or a series of schoolsfor the young. The influence of jane Addams on publicschooling, both by the example of the programs offered atHull House and through her own efforts, was great andpervasive. Since that phase Gf Jane Addams' life has been

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64 TI1E MELTING OF TI1E ETHNICS

somewhat neglected, it is important to see how her viewsand activities contributed to the new conceptions of therole of the public schools and education in a society sochanged by the great influx of immigrants.

The bibliography on the life and work of Jane Addamsis varied and extensive. Several biographies were writtenby writers and historians, and her own works have beenrepublished many times and are still read widely. Onequestion that seems to have fascinated many writers con-cerns an analysis of the motives that caused her to dedi-cate her long life to Hull House. The question is importantand interesting, but the historians' preoccupation with thisissue seems to have distracted them from a detailed exam-ination of Jane Addams' educational philosophy and recordin the education of the immigrants and their children. Inthis generally neglected area in the history of Americaneducation, the ti,oughts and work of the founder of HullHouse deserve a great deal of space and attention.

Those who have paid some attention to her contribu-tions seem to have experienced some special difficulty indealing with the subject. They apparently found it dif-ficult to believe that a rich, WASP, ycyung lady from anupper-middle-class family, the daughter of a banker, amill owner, and a state senator could have learned tounderstand the plight of large numbers of immigrants inthe painful process of their adjustment to the Americansociety. The education of Jane Addams was typical of awell-born young American lady. It culminated in gradua-tion from the Rockford Seminary for Women, whichproudly called itself the -Mount Holyoke of the West.-The curriculum in the seminary included the study ofGreek, English literature, moral philosophy, history, somescience, and a great deal of religious training aimed atpreparing many of the ladies to become Christian mission-aries.

The home background and the education of JaneAddams caused some writers to suggest that she turned tosettlement work in the grimily Chicago neighborhood ofPolk and Ila !stead streets because she became bored with

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JANE ADDAMS AND HULL HOUSE 65

the life and the activities of her social milieu. One recentbiowapher wrote that after her graduation from collegeand after the customary grand tour of Europe, "she didnot have a goal or an occupation, or any thing useful todo." This undoubtedly is a true assessment of her predica-ment just prior to the opening of Hull House in 1889. Itmay well be that in the early period of her settlementwork, Hull House was for Jane Addams merely a philan-thropic endeavor. But, in a relatively short period of time,it became a cause to which she happily decided to devoteher entire life even to the exclusion of her personal interests.

Why and how did this change take place? It came,primarily, because sh( learned a great deal about the livesof the many thousands of Italians, Greeks, Jews, Irish, andBohemians who flocked to the many activities of HullHouse and concluded that she could and wanted to be ofassistance to them in the realization of their hopes andaspirations. Jane Addams developed a well-thought-outphilosophy about the best way to help the large waves ofimmigrants and their children to adjust to the new andstrange American environment. This philosophy was farmore perceptive than the simple and often xenophobicnotions of "Americanization" which were widely enter-tained by many of her prominent contemporaries. In thespirit of the time this was no small achievement.

Some writers have failed to perceive the substantialdifference between the views on immigration and the im-migrants of Jane Addams and those of the other leadersof the Reform and Progressive Movement. For instanceshe supported and admired Theodore Roosevelt, a leadingProgressive, but she vigorously opposed his extreme viewson the Americdnization of the immigrants. She also doesnot fit very well in the general interpretation of the -mo-tives of the Progressive leaders who in the view of one ofthe most brilliant historians of the period, Richard Hof-stadter, were menthers of the socially alienated groupswho turned to reform out of a sense of guilt because theylived in comparative luxury in the midst of the squalorof the cities.

7 1


It seemed natural to put Jane Addams in that group.She was alienated from her social milieu, and she wasrich and bored. Christopher Lasch correctly pointed outthat at the time of the founding of the Hull House she didnot feel guilty about the sorry lot of the workers and thepoor who were victims of industrialism. In Lasch's view,at that period of her life, she was rebelling against herfamily, and especially against her mother, who wanted herto lead a life of leisure as befitted her station in life. Shedid not feel, Lasch added, that she was making a sacrificeby helping the poor and the immigrants, and she did nothave a condescending attitude toward them. She wasdedicated to "bridging the chasm that industrialism hasopened between social classes." But the American peoplemade Jane Addams a saint, Lasch concluded, and she be-came a national mythand the myth of Jane Addamsserved to render her harmless as a social critic.

In the New Radicalism in America, Lasch is even moreskeptical about her effectiveness as a social worker andreformer. "The trouble was that Jane Addams was asking,in effect, that young people be adjusted to a social orderwhich by her own admission was cynically indifferent totheir welfare." The American industrial society was in hereyes guilty of oppressing and repressing the workers whoserved it, but according to Lasch she made no attempt tochange the system. Her only aim was to make it func-tion more smoothly. In fact, Lasch maintains, the educa-tif nal efforts of the head of Hull House were aimed atfostering the ideal of "social control" so well articulatedby her friend John Dewey.

Lasch's critique apparently was too mild for a memberof the p.oup of younger revnionist historians of Americaneducation, Paul Violas, who sees Jane Addams' view ofthe immigrants as paternalistic and her reforms not asliberal or enlightened but conservative, or even reactionary.Iler entire life's work .:.as dedicated, says Violas, to "anattempt to replace the social control implicit in the villagecommunity in the countries of origin of the immigrantItalians, Creeks and others with the controls more suit-

7 2


able to an urban environment." Violas charges that JaneAddams' "system of beliefs was based not on dedicationto individual freedom but on an advocacy of an organicsociety acting as a collective association."

Somehow, in Violas' view, these two commitments aremutually exclusive. Ignoring a great deal of what JaneAddams had written and done to combat the feeling of ali-enation and boredom on the part of individual workers,Violas insists that she saw individualism as a plague in theAmerican urbanized and industrialized society. This, hesays, was a repressive philosophy aimed at keeping theworkers from demanding mate ial changes and improve-ments in the American society.

Quoting single words like 'primitive," "illiterate,""clannish," "single," and others, all taken, without any in-dication of their context or reference, from her manybooks and essays, Violas concludes that she had contemptfor the immigrants. "The immigrant, for Jane Addams,presented a threat," Violas writes, "because his differentethnic background disrupted American cultural unity. Therelative ease, however, with which he could be strippedof his cultural foundations and reduced to the simplestelements of humanity enhanced his value as a buildingblock for her new community." Violas also charges herwith using Hull House to engage in a propaganda scheme,employing effective devices of mass psychology with thepurpose of defusing social conflicts. "Throughout her .!is-cussions of the recreational activities at Hull House,"Violas writes, "one finds rationale for social control throughthe manipulation of subconscious and non-rational im-pulses."

Michael Katz, a more careful revisionist historian ofAmerican education, in a thoughtful review of Roots ofCrisis in Harvard Educational Review took issue withViolas' contention. "Violas also suggests," Katz stated,"that het insistence on the importance of popularizingideas indicates she believed in the legitimacy and necessityof propaganda. But his quotations from her writings donot show anything of the sort."

7 3

68 THE :'v1ELTING OF THE ETHNICS

Katz objects to the absence of evidence to supportViolas' contention about Jane Addams' views on manipu-lation of public opinion. His objection applies equaP:v toViolas' conclusions about her views on the immigrant; andon the education of their children. Charitabiy, one can saythat Violas read the books a.nd articles of Jo Tie Addamsrather hastily, looldng only for confirmati:m of his pre-conceived ideas. His is not a serious or correct analysis ofher attitude to the immigrants or of her philosophy aboutthe acculturation of the immigrants. It also seems thatViolas knows little about the educational and recreationalactivities in Hull House.

While Christopher Lasch's essays on Jane Addams areperceptive and innovative, his conclusion that JaneAddams was a supporter of the so&ril status quo is, inthe light of her record and writings, off the mark. TheMayor of Chicago, the political bosses of the city, indus-trialists like George Pullman would have been astonishedto read that the head of Hull House was a "harmlesssocial critic." Among other things, the Mayor would haverelated the trouble Jane Addams caused him on the issueof garbage collection on the \Vest Side of Chicago andhow the garbage was collected after she was appointedGarbage Commissioner of her ward. In the Chicago ofthose days, this was no small achievement.

At the time of the founding of Hull House, Americawas already a nation of immigrants. Newcomers fromsouthern and eastern Europe were pouring into the coun-try, often at a rate of 40,000 per day. The 1890 Censusdisclosed that 20 million Americans were either foreignby birth or parentage, while 34 million were classed asnative white Americans. James Bryce expressed the ap-prehension of many leading Americans when he wrote in1888 in The American Commonwealth,

Within the last decade new swarms of European immi-grants have invaded America, drawn from their homes inthe eastern part of Central Europe. There seems to be adanger that if they continue to come in large numberthey may retain their low standards of decency and com-

7 4


fort, and menace the continuance among the working classgenerally of that far higher standard which has hithertoprevailed in all but a few spots in the country.

Josiah Strong echoed Bryce's sentiments arid wrote inThe Twentieth Century City that while America was indebtedto the immigrants "for developing its resources we cannotshut our eyes to the fact that the foreign population, as awhole, is depressing our a% erage in intelligence and mor-ality in the direction of the deadline of crime and ignorance."

Leaders in American society, writers, editors and think-ers, and many influential members of Congess shared theconvictions of Bryce and Strong that the immigrants hadlower morals, were less intelligent by far than the nativeAmericans, and had a predisposition to crime and to liv-ing in unsanitary conditions. Thus it was feared, they couldadversely influence, if not contaminate, the superior nativeAmerican population.

Jane Addams rejected these ideas about the immigrants.Unlike Bryce, Cubberley, Strong, and others, she had di-rect contact with the immigrants from eastern and south-ern Europe. In fact, she lived among them and with themand soon developed an affection and respect for them. InTwenty Years of Hull House, she described the area aroundI lull House.

Between Halstead Street and the river lived about tenthousand ItaliansNeapolitans, Sicilians, and Calabrians,with an occasional Lombard and Venetian. To the Southon Twelfth Street are many Cernums, and side streets aregiven almost entirely to Polish and Russian Jews. Stillfarther south, these Jewish colonies merge into a huge Bo-hemian colony, so vast that Chicago ranks as the thirdBohemian city in the world. To the northwest are manyCanadian-French, clannish in spite of their long residencein America. and to the north are Irish and first generationof Americans.

Jane Addams made great efforts to learn as much asshe could about the various groups of the immigrants. Shomet them daily in the classrooms, in the cafeteria, and inthc many meeting halls in the Hull House buildings. She

7 5

70 THE MELTING OF TIIE ETHNICS

was an able and a thorough student, and in a relativelyshort period of time she came to a number of conclusionsabout her clients. She firmly rejected the attitudes of su-periority and contempt toward the immigrants. Her heartoverflowed with sympathy for the hardships and the suf-ferings of the newcomers, mostly peasants, who were sud-denly and often savagely exposed to the ruthlessness ofthe American industrial system. She deplored the workingconditions in the sweatshops, the lack of minimum safetyprecautions, and the rampant evloitation in the huge tex-tile factory of Hart Schaffner and Marx, which was locatedon Chicago's West Side. Jane Addams was particularly ap-palled by the practice of "outside piece work," an arrange-ment by which contractors let families work at home onthe cutting and sewing of pants, suits, and dresses andpaid them by the number of finished garments. To eke outa meager living, some families, including small children,often worked sixteen hours per day.

But the founder of Hull House did not intend merely tostand by and wring her hands at the sorry lot of the immi-grants. She developed a two-fold program of action tocombat the exploitation and the deplorable conditions shewitnessed. First came the opening of Hull House to variousgroups in which heated debates about the grievances andthe rights of workers were discussed. One such club,"The Working Peoples' Social Science Club" was oftenattacked by leading businessmen, including supporters ofHull House, as promoting radical ideas. Jane Addams re-sponded by declaring that her settlement house maintainedan open door policy to all ideas. "I did not intend," shesaid, "to be subsidized by millionaires and neither did Ipropose to be bullied by working men." When the Pullmanstrike came, Jane Addams was critical of the division ofthe Chicago community along class lines. In a paper shepublished on the strike entitled "The Modern King Lear,"she maintained that George Pullman bore the major blamefor the strike because he expected the gratitude of theworkers in exchange for his paternalistic effort to organizetheir lives in the Pullman community. Pullman, she wrote,


gave the workers "sanitary houses and beautiful parksbut made no effort to find out their d-sires, and withoutany organization through which to give them social ex-pansion." He wanted his workers to live in decency andthrift, Jane Addams wrote, but he deprived them of theirright to order their own lives.

Another major effort was directed to alleviating theexploitation of the immigrants. She was successful in in-fluencing the state legislature to pass the first factory lawin Illinois, which provided for sanitary conditions in thesweatshops and set the minimum age for the employmentof children at 14. Disagreeing with the advocates of"Americanization," Jane Addams repeatedly protested thehostility that so many native Americans exhibited towardthe immigrants. Recognizing that the immigrants had arich caltural heritage and religious and literary values thatwere worth preserving, she was opposed to the pressureexerted by the public schools and the dominant society onthe children of the immigrants to repudiate the culture oftheir parents. "We were often distressed," she recalled,"by the children of immigrant parents who were ashamedof tI pit whence they were digged who repudiated thelangt.,,ge and the customs of their elders, and consideredthemselves successful as they were able to ignore the past."Unlike the leaders of the nativist, xenophobic movement,Jane Addams wanted the Poles, the Italians, the Bohem-ians, and other ethnic minorities, to preserve their culturalmores while adjusting to the new life in America. As-similation for the Italians and Bohemians, Jane Addarnsobserved, often meant disdain for their cultures and theworship of American materialism. To encourage respectfor the native cultures of immigrants, the management ofHull House frequently arranged for handicraft and art ex-hibits and dance and musical festivals in which eac;- im-migrant group r :rticipated. "I'n the delight of the 7f :',ns,Hull Hmise regularly arranged for mass meetingof Garibaldi and Mazzini. Greeks had their Ile!ienic meet-ings and festivals and Jewish intellectuals debated Jewishhistory, Zionism. and Socialism.

7 7

THE NIELTINC OF THE ETHNICS

Jane Addams, as we mentioned, insisted that her staffmembers work directly in the homes of the immigrants,often doing menial chores but primarily learnire_; theirvalues, customs, and mode of life. She hoped that Out-come would be mutual respect. "The number of people,"she wrote "thus informed is constantly increasing in ourAmerican Cities, and they may in time remove the re-proach of social neglect and indifference which has solong rested upon the citizens of the new m.orld."

Addams did not want to "Anglo-Saxonize" or American-ize the immigrants. On the contrary, long before sociologistslike Horace Kallen coined the phrase, she embraced "cul-tural pluralism" as the desired basic concept pertaining tothe American society. In this, as in many other of herideas on social issues and education, she was far ahead ofher time. Her insight into the need to acculturate but notto assimilate the immigrants was remarkable. There weremany classes at Hull House where immigrants were taughtEnglish to prenare them to take the required examinationon the U.S. Cmistitution in order to become citizens.There were also many courses on Ur ted States historyand government. These courses and lectures were designedto help the immigrants to understand and to adjust to theirnew country, but, at the same time, better to understandand appreciate their own cultures. But they were not theusual "Americanization" classes. She observed,

The aim of all the classes was not to set the iimnigrantsapart from their groups as "Americans" On the con-trary the aim was to connect him (the immigrant) withall sorts of people by his ability to understand them aswell as by his power to supplement their present sur-rounding with historic background. . . . In these classesthe inunigrants have struggled to express in their newlyacquired tongue some of those hopes and longings whichhad so much to do with their immigration.

Violas and other revisionist historians of education whohave suggested that Jane Addams shared in the generalhostility toward the immigrants and have charged thatshe manipulated them in order to defuse social conflicts,

7 8


would do well to go back and examine, with weater care,what she actually did and wrote in the several decadesof her Hull House activity.

Far from being a tool of the abrasive and agressivebusiness establishment of Chicago on whose financial sup-port she depended, Jane Addams came to the defense ofthe rights of the immigrant workers by founding the Im-migrant Protective League. When business owners beganto harass peddlers by having vagrant youths attack them,Jane Addams organized several ethnic Peddlers Associa-tions to impress upon the city and the police that they hadthe obligation to protect the Jewish, Italian, and Greekpeddlers. She insisted, in spite of a barrage of attacks fromthe press and the business community, that Hull Housepractice freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. The10,000 people who each week availed themselves of theclubroom, the Labor Museum, school rooms, Women'sClub buildings, boys club buildings, gymnasium, the musicschool, and the lecture halls, heard conservative speakers,liberal university professors, radical union organizers, rep-resentatives of business and manufacturing interests, So-cialists, Bundists, Zionists, Italian and Czech nationalists,and occasionally even advocates of nonviolent anarchism.Answering the critics who charged that she was turningher settlement into a hotbed of radicalism, Jane Addamsreplied that she hoped that the demonstration of how HullHouse practiced the American ideals of free&.n would in-crease the confidence of the immigrants in American in-stitutions and government. Her credo was simple, as sheexpressed it in Twenty Years of Hull House:

The Settlement recognizes the need of cooperation, bothwith the radical and the conservative and from the verynature of the case, the Settlement cannot limit its friendsto any political party or economic school.To question the patriotism of the immigrants, to -2cuse

them of "double loyalty," of harboring subversives andanarchists was a fashionable thing to do in the period ofgreat immigration. These accusations came from the press,the Congress, local, state, and federal law enforcement

7 9


officials, and from most of the patriotic organizations.Jane Addams never joined this super-patriotic xenophobichysteria. Instead, courageously and at great personal sac-rifice, she stated on many occasions that her direct ex-perience with the many thousands of immigrants convincedher that the immigrants, with few exceptions, -adoredAmerica." She called for restraint and fnirnesc hy thepolice, the courts, and the public in dealing with suspectedanarchists.

Jane Addams faced the greatest challenge on this issueduring the period of the -Red Scare" in the 1920s, fol-lowing the success of the Bolshevik Revolution. Underattack by the press, the D.A.R., and the American Legionfor not being "100% American," because of her advocacyof pacificism and internationalism, she repeatedly con-demned the wholesale arrests of leaders of various radicalimmigrant groups and associations and the suppression ofhundreds of foreign language periodicals on unprovedcharges of subversion. She regretted the "spirit of intol-erance which had spread over our time choking free sensi-bilities" and expressed concern that these excesses wouldfurther alienate the immigrants from American society."There is no doubt," she wrote in the second volume ofher autobiography, -that the immigrant population in theUnited States suffered from a sense of ostracism after thewar, which in spite of many difficulties, sorrows and de-spairs, they had never before encountered, in such a uni-versal fashion." In the face of the overwhelming cry in thepress and in Congress to limit immigration for centraland southern Europe, she opposed the "quota laws." Shetruly believed in the theory that constituted an amalgama-tion of the concepts of the melting pot and cultural plural-ism and was convinced that American democracy was notendangered by the tremendous influx of non-Nordic immi-grants. On the contrary, she firmly believed that Americawould emerge richer and stronger because of the infusionof the skills and talents brought by newcomers and becauseof its ability to make use of the contributions of the variousimmigrant groups.

80


She spoke and wrote in defense of the immigrants andmaintained that if some immigrants had a feeling of hostil-ity to America, it was a response to the animosity theyencountered and to the brazen attempts of some American-izers to deprecate their heritage. "Is the Universe friendly?"said Jane Addams, "is a question that people ask, but thisquestion never prec so hard upon the bewildered humancreature as it does upon a stranger in a strange land whenhis very mother tongue, his inherited customs and mores,his clothing, his food, are all subjected to ridicule andconsidered per se un-American, if not indeed dangerousand subversive of American institutions."

Slowly the feeling of sympathy for the immigrants be-came mingled in Jane Addams' mind with a sense of ap-preciation for their ability to rise rapidly in a basicallyhostile environment. She noted the many young Jews.Bohemians, and Creeks did well in colleges and becamedoctors, lawyers, and successful businessmen. Jane Addamswas an outspoken supporter and admirer of Sidney Hill-man, the leader of the Amalgamated Clothing Workersof America, who in 1915 settled a strike in the largestclothing factory in Chicago by a pact which provided fora high degree of cooperation between the employers andthe employees. Hillman stated publicly that the union wasinterested in the company making good profits because theworkers would benefit from its prosperity. Jane Addams, towhom the ideal of industrial and social peace was verydear, commented: "per1L.ps this great industrial experimentin Chicago founded upon an agreement between theworkers and the employers, was easier to bring aboutamong immigrants than it would have been among nativeborn."

Jane Addams developed a comprehensive philosophyof education with particular reference to the role of thepublic schools in the education of the children of the immigrants. She had need for such a philosophy becauseHull House was a huge educational institution servingthousands of adults, teenagers, 1,- children in clubs andformal classes. Throughout her l ane Addams was in-

8 1


terested in public education, and in 1905 she became amember of the Chicago Board of Education.

She set down her views on education and on school-ing in her largely overlooked book, Democracy and SocialEthics, which came out in 1902, eight years before thepublication of her famous autobiography. In her philos-ophy of education, Jane Addams was influenced by herfriend and co-worker John Dewey, but much of her edu-cational thinking was original. Unlike Dewey, who hardlyrecognized the problem and the complexity of educatingthe hundreds of thousands of children of immigrants, MissAddams was keenly aware of this complex dilemma. Inher views on democracy, Jane Addams shared the prag-matic outlook of Dewey and of her other dear friend,Henry James. She believed that the real test of a success-ful democracy is not its profession of a creed of thefreedom, dignity, and equality of men but the extent towhich it allows all its citizens to live in freedom, dignity,and equality. American society imist be educated to theideal of "industrial amelioration," or a peaceful co-exis-tence of the workers and the owners of industry. Such anamelioration can only come by a spirit of cooperationamong the workers, industry, society, and the government.

Accepting Dewey's position, Jane Addams postulatedthat the aim of schooling was to free the innate poworsand abilities of each child and "connect him" with the restof life. The pupil must be helped to see his productiveplace in the society. She was impatient with purely cog-nitive objectives of school curricula. "We are impatient,"she wrote, "with the schools which lay all stress on read-ing and writing, suspecting them to rest upon the assump-tion that the ordinary experience of life is worth little andthat all knowledge and interest must be brought to thechildren through the medium of books." Citing the exampleof the Italian colony in the Hull House neighborhood, JaneAddams observed that Italian parents take their childrer.especially boys, out of school at the age of thirteen orfourteen, and that these children, exposed to "bookish"education, were not prepared for the harsh reality of life

8 2

JANE ADDAMS AND Hai, HOUSE

as factory workers or aPPrentices. She noted that for theseItalian children, the family and the street constituted a fargreater influence than did the public schools. They learnedat home and on the street the skills and values that theyneeded to survive in a hostile society. Italian children hadlittle motivation for learning, and they often sbared theirParents' doubts whether schooling was a road to economicsuccess. The\ knew that many of those in their commun-ity who became af fluent had hardly any education.

To remedy this situation, Jane Addarns demanded thatPublic schools with a large Proportion of children of im-migrants cease to belittle their ethnic heritage and valuesand devote a great part of their curricula to teaching themeaning and the process of Production. Thus, she hoped,these future sxorkers sxould understand the meaning oftheif work and see its worth and significance for them-selves and for the society.

Children of the immigrants sxho were destined to gointo specialized, often dull, jobs, would be helped if theschools would teach them where their jobs fit and how im-dortant they were in the total operation of the faL4ory orthe shop.

If tilt shop constantly tendr, to make the working man aspecialist, then the Problem of the educator is clear: it is togive hiln what ma)/ be an offset from over-specializationof his daily .xork, to supply him with general informationand to insist he shall be a cultivated member of societywith a consciousness of his industrial and social value.

This may have been a naive approach because it as-sumed that the worker was interested in learning about thetotal operation of his factory and that that knowledgesxould help dim to bear the harddiips caused by low payand bad working conditions. Combating the boredom ofthe workers on the assembly lines is still the preoccupa-tion of many unions and employers today. In that area,too, Jane Addams was ahead c her time.

Her contemporaries have made Jane Addams, as Chris-topher Lasch observed, a saint and a national myth. Therecord seems to indicate that they were right on both counts.

8 3

5

Public Schools he

Upward mobilityof Immigrant Children

The Weat influx ,.,f immigrants from central, eastorn,ar,d southe.,-11 Enropc, wl-A-11 started about: 1880, per-p lexed and often frightened professional and lay leadersof big-city Public school system!: in American large cities.There "iimild be little f-urprise at this reaction. First, the

as unprecedented. School boards,iiip-ation wainfrel osufptehre

itnmtendentsof school systems in New York, Chi..

Plnladelphia, Boston, and other largcago,ith the task of educating many thousands of

e cities Were

';:nimigants of al.1 ages. These children knewRussian,

df rroennt endf

, Polish,no English. They spoke Italian, YiddishCzech, Serbiiin, or Croatian, had a variety of modes ofbehavior, and felt frightcned and bewildered in their new

nvironment. Many of their parents, especiallyAmericatnheeItalians, Poles, and Orthodox r

wouljdewpicions and largely negative attitude to Allanamong

that the school experier ..e

s had a sus_

fearingchildren frnin them. Devoutly religious, theya

rican schools,Nlieenraet ptili) reei

So THE NIELTING OF THE ETHNICS

henve that their hildren woukl become prey to atheismand immorality or develop an antagonistic attitude to theirnative tongue and the values and mores of their group.

The complexity of the task of dealing with this greatnumber of immigrant children ought not to be minimized.Some historians of education, and especially the leadersand the writers on -new ethnicity,- have shown littleunderstanding of the magnitude of this task. Michael No-vak, Ceno Baroni, and Barbara Mikulski who have writ-ten about the recent revival of ethnic awareness amongseveral innjor ethnic groups are unsparing in criticizingthe public schools for the effort to -Americanize- or to"melt- the children of the immigrants into the dominantAnglo-Saxon society. This seems to be a rather simplisticapproach to the 'Judy ot a complex social and educationalproblem.

Ethnic spokesmen assert that children of immigrantswere forced by their insensitive, if not hostile, teachers toturn their backs on file cultural values of their parents.Consequently, they seem to be determined that the chil-dren of recently arrived immigrant:: do not stiffer from thesame disath antage. Public school systems are asked to in-augurate bilMgual and multi-cultural programs. Somespokesmet, for Spanish-speaking minorities in large citiesargue that it is not enough to give the children of Mexicanand Puerto Rican paren'.. instm::tion in Spanish in thetransitional period ,:ntil they arc capable of making re;.:-sonable progress in English classes. 'Fbey advocate a fullybilingual and bicultural education in Spanish and Englishnot only for the Spanish innnigrant children but for all thechildren attending school with them.

Bilingua! Education Pr ctmsBilingual education as put into eficct in Chicago, New

York, Los Angeles, and Miami, is in essence biculturalethic.% 'ion. Lnder tlwse programs, students are to study thehistory, customs, and mores of Puerto Rico or Mexico orCuba. The curriculum guide for bilingual 1)ub-

8 5

THE SCHOOLS AND UPWARD MOBILITY 81

lished by the Chicago Board of Education lefines its ob-jectives as follows:

Bilingual education is a realistic approach to the educa-cational needs of thousands of boys and girls who mustacquire positive self-concepts and communication skills inorder to compete educationally, socially and economicallyas first-class citizens and full participants in teday's soci-ety. For the child who comes from a non-English speakingbackground, bilingual education can also help maintainfamily loyalty. Programs that recognize a child's languageand culture help to foster positive self-concepts in ayoungster. Rather than becoming alienated from the cul-tural ties of his family, he will learn to enjoy and valuediversity. The child who remains loyal to his family is morelikely to develop allegiance to his family, to his school andcountry.

Those listed an benefits for Spanish-speaking children,but the authors of the guide advocate bilingualism fornon-Spanish children who attend the same schools. Theysay:

Non-English speaking children are not the only ones whostand to profit from bilingual education programs. English-speaking children who live in a community in which asecond language is sp(:.:en will also have the opportunityto learn another language and become sensitive to an-other culture.

Sorne educators active in Spanish bilingual programs askthat the study of Spanish be made obligatory for whiteand black children attending school in Spar 'h-speakingneighborhoods, while others suggest that instruction inSpanish be voluntary.

The available evidence indicates that the leaders of theethnic immigrant groups tl-rlt cam to the United States inlarge numbers arom. cl 1906 did not advocate bilingual ormulti-cultural education. Even those who complained thatpublic schools were alienating the young generation fromtheir families wanted the schools to Americanize the im-migrant chil(lren. Polish, Jewish, Italian, and Greek inuni-

8 6


grant parents did not want. the lic chools to teachtheir children Polish, Yiddish, Italian, or Greek. Thosewho wanted their children to sp& :: tc 1,2nguage of theirgroup sent them to Polish, Jewish Italian, or Greek churchor synagogue schools. One can .gue that America mayhave not survived as a nation had these large ornigrautgroups, totaling many millions of people, succeede k... in per-suading the public schools to accept multi-lingual andmulti-cultural education fo' II the children in the "LittleIta lies," and in the Jewt,i, Serbian, Polish, and Greekghettos. Today bilingual education has considerable sup-port in the Spanish-speaking communities in Chicago, NewYork, El Paso, LDS Angeles, San Diego, and Miami andhas been put in operation by many boards of education.Similar programs for bilingual education introduced in 1900probably would have been rejected by the overwhelmingmajority of immigrants and would have met with unyield-ing resistance from the leaders of the public schools.

mhe reascus for the changed attitudes to multi-culturaleducation are complex but they can be sorted out. TheUnited States of America was for millions of white innni-grants a land of promise and opportunity, and to grasphis opportunity most of them were willing and eveneager to pay the price of acculturation or assimilation tothe dominant ctilture of their new society. Secondly, mostof the immigrants looked upon the public school with aweand respect as the institution whose task it was te Amer-icanize their children and give them the opportunity forsocial and economic advancement in the new country.'I'he extent to which the public school succeeded in assur-ing the upward mobilly of immigrant children is, ofcoline, subject to different interpretations. But the im-migrants' expectation) for the schooling of their childrenexplain w e .vas no demand for bilingual or multi-cultural edued

Many fo the acceptance by the leadersof t s,2nool eii twlay of the demands forbihngual and 1:uilt-c,:ltural educatioi. The prestige andthe withorit; the public school systems in New York,

S7

THE SCHOOLS \ 1.) 'N.% AIM MOBILITY 83

Chicago, Lo: 2les, and elsewhere are givlitly dimin-ished. Public ;Di officials are on the defensive, underattack fo, me- ' scholastic accomplishments, and lack oforder and ' meA few school leaders find it difficultto resist ,..., :ressure exerted by the Spanish, black, and

groupswhite ethnic but most superintendent:: of schoolsin large cities and many school board members are con-yinced that the American society and its mainstream cul-ture are so firmly rooted today, that bilingualism andmulti-eultural education would not Only not threaten butindeed may enrich the common American culture andstrengthen the aellieegtiance ) f. the minority groups to thetotal American

The united States will not become a multi-ethnic andmulti-cultural societ. Those who make such demands areunrealistic and impractical. On the wher hand, moremodest programs, for enriching the American cultural life,v Idol] finds itself under a severe challenge of changingvalues and conditions, by the study of cultural values andliterarY contributions of the cultures of the ethnic groupsmay well be an important contribution to the commoi.good.

Ethnic Cultimls and the CurriculumThe demaod for the inclusion of materials on ethnicity

and eLinic cultures in the school curriculum is usuallycoupled with atuzcks on the record of the public schoolsin educating the children of blacks and the immigrants.It is asserted that the public schools have failed #-() meetthe expectations of the immigrants because they did notassure the upward social mobility of their children.

David TYack excoriates the leaders of the publicschools in the few decades before ar!,. after 1S,00 for theinsensitive indoctrination of .1,e children the immigrantsith Aglo-Sason Values but the most sweeping indict-

ment )f the public schools was drawn up by Colin Greerin Great School Legend. Historians of American edu-cation, 7avs Greer. have Ilng asserted that American pub-lic schools made a great cyntribution to the building of

88.

84 TIl MELTINC OF THE ETHNICS

the A ,nerican nation. "the backarded,poor, the ragg

The schools tookill-Prepared khnic minorities who

crowded into the cities, educated and Americanized theminto the homogeneous productive middle class that isAmerica's strength and pride."' This, according to Greer,is a false legend. The myth of the Public school as an ef-fective instrument for upward social mclAlity, as a ladderto economic. progress and success for the poor, must bedebunked, says Greer, if only to bring the present-day ex-pectations of the blacks and Latinos for their childreninto line with reality. Manv people assume that publicS 10015 today fail to Provide effective education to theurban, black, and Latino Poor while the schools in thepast did just that for the white hnmigrant poor whomthey lifV.'d into the ranks of the middle class. Not so, saysGreer. The record shows, he contends, that public schoolsdid little or nothing for the children of the immigrants,and they cannot be expected to do much for the black,Spanish, and white poor children today.

To sul,port this pessimistic view of the pas- an(' hePresent, Greer asserts that the children of the iy-Imigrantsentered t:,_. tiblic schools poor and uneducated and leftthem unprepared to take advantage of the opportunitiespresei;ted by a rapidly growing industrial society. The evi-dence thai C-i.er usfh to support his revis: .1ist view areschool recs or' ,,,-':. al big-city school systems. Theserecords star!, :, .c,,rc. ;r1.5.!" zo r:reer, that the rate of failureand drop'lu ,4H,.),:w: 1-ft urban poor, mostly children ofthe imm*.r.-Tc7 ;-;c1 since 1900, was remarkablyhigh. "Thc 1 is,- -;:c--,1- Nkvites, -that the immigrantchildren dropped out in great -;-.-nbersto fall back on theuustoms and skills their familH. Drought with them trz

..,./...;,-ding to Greer, immigrant children vere d'oppingout in gTeat numbers because the schools failed to piovideOle, 1 with effective and meaningful education. This failurewas not accidental. Public schools were in the past, andare now, the creature.; and the servants of the Americanclass structure. The public schools were created by the

F


middle class to control, contain, and divert the lower classes;they exist to separate the successes and the failures alongclass lines. Public schools failed a great number of thechildren of the immigrants, Greer concludes, in order tofeed them into the unskilled labor market.

Greer accuses historians of education of perpetuatingthe "great legend" because they blindly accepted the no-tion that the pnblic schoo, has a sacrosanct place in the"democratic rhetoric of the nation" and they have mis-taken the "rhetoric of good intentions for historical reality."Among the misginded historians, Greer includes OscarHandlin, Lawrelcc Crernin, and Henry Steele Commager.He quotes with disapproval a statement by Commagerthat "no other people ever demanded so much of its schools.. . . N me was ever so well served by its schools and itseducators. . . . To the schools w nt the mor .erious respon-sibility of . . . inculcalL:g democracy, materialism and equal-itarianism.-

The data on the dropout rates in New York, Chicago,Philadelphia, Detroit, and Boston cited by Greer aic takenfrom school surveys made by different people using dif-ferent techniques and having different levels of con:.ence. More importantly, the figures cited do not supportGreer's (-inclusion that the schools were particularly unioc-cessful with the immigrant children, because the statisticscit- I make no differentiation between native-born childrenand/or the children of iimnigrants, r netw,7-en the childrenof the poor iid those of middle- or upper-class parents.

It is of .:onrse true that many children of the immi-grants droi out from school at the age of 11 or 12.We have testhnony to that effer2t in the writings ofAddams ai in the records of the variouF settlem,chomes in New York, Boston, arid other cities. Some dropi edout because of poor teachers and :7:relevant curricula butit is wrong for Greer to suggest that the sole responsibil-ity for thc', dropouts was ',.ith the schools. Jane Addamshas testifie, from firsthand ex -ierience that many parentsof the immigrants connected ith flull House took their

9 0

86 THE NIFI,TING OF THE ETHNICS

children, mostly boys, out of school at an early age so thatthey could supplement the family's income by working inshops. or factories. Pressure for education or lack of it inthe home of immigrants was often the decisive factor inwhether or not a child stayed in school. Many Italian andPolish parents, for example, distrusted the public school notbecause of lack of scholastic effectiveness but because theyfeared that the school experience would alienate theirchildren from their families, homes, and traditions. Therewas a particular concern that the girls would succumb tomore relaxed sexwd mores and -;ng shame to the families.The poverty with which tL unskilled Italian immigrantshad to cope often forced them to take the boys out ofschool because their earnings were needed to provide forthe large families.

A detailed and carefully conducted survey of dropoutsin the Cllicago ;,-;ublic schools and in the suburban schoolsin Cook County, Illinois, covering the 1973/74 school year,casts serious doubt on Greer's assumption that the rate ofdropouts is a reliable measure of ..he success or the fa. .reof schools. The Cook County school survey published inThe Chicago Tribune, disclosed at of 145,878 studentsenrolled during the 1973/74 school year in the Chicagophlic schoels, 21,456 dropped out. Out of 159,976 stu-dents attendihg schools in the Chicago suburbs, 5,279were dropouts. An inquiry into the reasons for leavingschool revealed that most of the dropouts, both in thecity and in the suburbs, left for -no appa:ent reason,"others left hm--- -of lack of interest," some left be-tause they wanted to work, a relatively few were expelled,and only a small proportion left because of uninterestingcurricui or poor teaching There is little reason to be-lieve that the basic underlying reasons for the high rate oischool dropouts in 1900 or 1910 or 1920 were differentthan they were in 1973. To base an indictment of publicschools as having failed to provide the children of the im-migrants with upward social mobility solely on the rate ofdropouts does not seem to have much validity.

9 i

THE SCHOOP., AND UPWARD N1OBILITY 87

Immigrants and Public EducationTo be snr,- the curriculum of the public schools at the

turn of the cyntury, at the height of the immigration waves,was often irrelevant to the interests and the needs of thestudents. John Dewey often charged that schools pro-vided a poor preparation for success in life, but this wasa general shortcoming from which all children and not onlythe children of the immigrants suffered. Many teachers wereineffec- .e and poorly prepared, but this, too, was the re-sult of the generally poor state of education and not a de-liberate arrangement, as Greer would have us believe, onthe part of the middle classes to provide inadequate educa-tion for the children of the immigrants and of the poor.Generally, schools wre not prepared to deal with the un-precedented influx of many tens of thousands of immigrantchildren. The problem was indeed of staggering propor-tions. In 1909, according to a report published by the U.S.Commissiqn of Immigration, 57.8 percent of the pupils at-tending schools in thirty-seven of the big cities were eitherforeign bort, or were children of immigrants. In New Yorkthe percentage was 71.5, and in Chicago 67.3.

If the United States were to survive and if the needs,the demands, and the hopes of the immigrants for theirchildren were to 1e met, and at least partially fulfillet:,public schools had to perform the difficult task of assan-ilating or acculturating and adjusting thcse children to theAmerican environment, the American culture, and to thenew society. The problem was complicated by the authori-tarian and inflexible character of most public schools atthe turn of the century. The following description of apublic school in New York in 1893, written by JosephRice who visited schools in thirty-six citiy.;, undoubtedlyfits many other schools in big popolation centers:

The typical New York City school is a hard un-sympathetic, suechanized drudges, a school into--hicl' the light of science has not yet entered. Its charac-Leristic feature is in the severity of its discipline, a di.-,d-pline of enforceo i!ence, immobility and mental passivity.

88 THE NIELFING OF TIIE ETHNICS

primary reading is as a rule so poor that the childrenare scarcely able to recognize ne,.- words at sight at theend of the second year. Even the third year reading ismiserable.

As we shall see there were sell( )ls in New York City wherethe picture was brighter.

Some teachers, by no means all, had little sympathyfor the alien immigrant children and were impatient tohave them shed their -foreignness" as soon as possible.Oscar Hand lin says in :he Upr)oted of such a teacher,-Casually she could twist the knife of ridictde in the sore-ness of their sensibilities; there was so inuci, in their ac-cents, appearance and manners that were open tomockery!" On the other hand, as we shall see, manyteachers helped and ent.Juraged immigrant childrenfar beyond the call of duty.

Many thousands of immigrant children, Jewish, Polish,Greek, Italian, Slo .'ak, whose parents encouraged them tolearn did well in the public schools. They learned Englishand went through 'he elementary schools into colleges andbecame successful doctors, lawyers, engineers, and busi-nessmen. NIary Antin, who came to this country fromRussia as a child with her immigant parents, wrote of hertcachers in the pul)!ic school in Chelsea, Massachusetts,with gratitudo and affection. They encouraged her to be-e me a writer and her book of reminiscences, The PromisedLand, became a best-seller and went through thirty-fourprintings. About her entrance into the public school Antinwrote:

The apex of my civic pride and personal contentmentwas reached on the bright September morning when I en-tered public school. The day I must always remember,ev4.91 if I live to be so old lat I cannot tell my name . .

for I was led to the school room, with its sunshine and theteacher's cheery smile....

Mary Antin and to many immigrant children as wellas to many of the older immigrants, America was liberat-ing experience, truly a land of promise and opportunit

"Father himsdf," Antin wrote, "conducted is to th::

93


school. He would not have delegated that mission to thePresident of the United States. He had awaited the days,vith impatience equal to mine, and the visions he saw ashe hurried us over the sun-flecked pavements transcendedall my dreams. Almost his first act on landing on Americansoil, three years before, had been his application for natur-alization. He had taken the remaining steps in the processwith eager promptness, and the earliest moment allowedby law he became a citizen, of the United States." "Thepublic school," Mary Antin conclude!, "has done its. hestfor us foreigners and for the c Lnti whe:,-) it orTde us intogood Americans."

A. R. Dugmore, a writer of some renown, visited in1903 a public school in New Yorl-, where almost all stu-dents were children of immigrants and liked what he saw.

The pupils are of different nat:malities or races thathave their separate quarters in the immediate neighbor-hood. The majority of the pupils are Swedeskustrians,Greeks, Russians, English, Irish, Scotch, Welsh, Rinnan-ians, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Canadians, Armenians,Germans, Chinese, and a very large number of Jews.

The most noticeable thing in the school is the perfectlyfriendly equality in which all these races mix; no prejud-ice is noticeable. . . . It is a hu-ge task that scimols of thiskind are doing, taking the nev low-clas.s fore4m boys ofmany nationalities and molding them into self-supportingand self-respecting citizens of the republic . . . these boysand girls of foreign parentage readily catch the simp'ideas of American idea.s of independence and individualwork and with them, social progress.

To Michael Novak on ...c other hand, the story of theimmigrants aild of their experiences in American schoolsis an unmitigated tale of woe, suffering, and discrimination.fle wrote -ycently in an article published in The Center

agazine: 'One of the greatest and most dramatic mi-grations of human F h-ought more than thirty rnil-lion immigrants to th_ . -ietween 1874 and 1924. De-spite the immense dramatic materials involved in this mi-gration, only ie major American film records it: Elia

9,4

90 TIIE N1EUEING OF THE ETEINICS

Kazan's America! America! That film ends with the arrivalof the hero in America. The tragic and costly experienceof Americanization has scarcely yet been touched. Howmany died; how many were morally and psychologicallydestroyed; how many still carry the marks of changingtheir names, of 'killing' their mother to:gue and renounc-ing their former identity, in order to )ecome 'new men'and 'new women, there are motifs of violence, self-mutilation, joy, aed irony. The inner history of this migra-tion must come to be understood if we are ever to under-stand th- aspirations and fears of some seventy millionAinericans."

Was Americanization a joyous experience as MaryAntin saw it or was it a tragedy as Michat 'ovak eval-uaics it now? Whose story are we to bat It ,.vouldseem that both views have some truth in them. No gener-alization about an immigration of 30 or 40 million peoplecould withstand a rigorous testing because the eviC .nce iscontradictory. For many immigrants the ! itin experiencewas true but for others Novak's account conformed toreality. The experiences of several of the immigrant groupsdiffered in accordfmce with their background and aspira-tions. What was true for the Greeks was not necessarilytrue for the Serbs and the Croat: There were some Jewswho did not look upon America as the promised landand not all of them became socially and economicallysuccessful and not all Slovaks, Poles, and Italians resentedthe melting process into the American cultural patterns.Some welcomed it and used it as an opportunity for ad-vancement and mp7)y of them are grateful to America forabsorbing and assimilating them.

We have said that public schools were generally of poorquality with low standards and antiquated curricula but :tmust a, :) be noted that the influx of immigrant childrenbrought important reforms which geatly facilitated theireducation and the adjustment of their parents to the newenvironment. Elwood Cubberley, had, as we have seen,little sympathy for the '.nmigrants but he advocated andsupported special programs to teach immigrant children

171E SCHOOLS AND UPWARD NIOBILITY 91

English more effectively. Ile used his great influence forthe .'stablishinent of evening schools for those immigrantadolescents who worked during the day. Ile stated, inPublic Education in the Un,:,-d Siafes, "Evening elemen-t:u y schools are chiefly usct6l, states enforcing a goodcompulsory education law in. r.oviding the foreign bornwith the elements of English c.,;Lation and in preparingwould be voters for citizenship."

Cubberley also came ou, 'or transforming the publicschools into community centers serving adults, in their ownneighborhoods, with a variety of courses. "We see now,"he wrote, "that our schools must at once take on anothernew function, that of providing special classes and rif:Thtschools, on an adequate scale that will induct the forrinborn into the use of English as his common speech, andprepare him for naturalization by training hith i thchistory and principles of our gmi:rntneut." In 1! 'redsof cities according to the records of the U.S. H.,- -itEducation, school how. 's were made to functio .n-inun'ty centers in the eveninv,s and hundreds .1f .ndsof immigrants took courses 1 English, Anierit.,and civics.

School systems in large cities, including Neti Yo-i-k City,Chicago, Boston, and many others introducer7 -rms andeducational innovations which greatly benef: -1 the im-migrant children. Some of thest reforms as a con-sequence of the general mood fo reforms in the Progres-sive Era, others were directly related to the efforts by layand professional school leaders to make the education ofimmiwant children more effective. Critics of the publicschools and some of the revisionist historians of educa-tion tend to distillsc these reforms and impro!..ements aspart of the crass or ruthless scheme to "Americanize"the children of the immigrants and to force upon them the

and values of the dominant tic fety. This judgmentsceills to be superficial and unfair. Of course, American-ization was a cherished objective but the tremenclinis andmany-faceted prowess made by the public school systemsin large cities in the period between 1890 and 1920 was

0 C.

9,1 THE NIELFING OF THE ETIINICS

b'ficial to immigrant and native children alike and to_the gneral society, as well. Furthermore, many reformshad nothing to do with the Americanization efforts. Theywere related largely to a inor, progressive and more hu-!mine conception of the role of education and of schoolingI. an ,

mo, ustrial and democratic society and resulted from

4 gentIjne concern for making schooling more effective forthe inanv thousands of immigrant children.

York City, many school reforms were initiatedI!. Maxwell who became Superintendent of

chools ill 1898. Maxwell's interest in the education offinnus4-anfrom .r.

t children may have stemmed, at least in part,the discrimination he himself suffered after his ar-

rival iti the L'r.ited States from Northern Ireland where hewas `1 teacher. Because he was a foreigner, he could notget a job for many years. After working for several years4s " tlewspaper man, he finally got a teaching position inJmolqyn. Maxwell built many new schools, especially in

areas of great concentration of immigrants, including theis (r).:'t;.eetr. East Side and the "Little Italy" around Mulberry

Most of the new schools were equipped withpaca)us plavgrounds, libraries, and gynmasia. They served

in tht, evenings as adult centers for adults. The schoolcurne ,tuum Nas greatly expanded to include instruction inPhYsic=a1 education, science, health and hygiene, sewing,andaecven in etiquette and manners. Since 1909, Maxwellddei a string of vocational schools which taught immi

grant%

o asmkidillsn.ative

children carpentry, plumbing, and otherartisa-

ls4king noteof the poverty in many immigrant slum

areabreak

of the city, the Board of Education instituted freefast aineeidllunch programs. To make the food more

Palatable1 ethnic foods, like Jewish kosher meals

and I talian pasta dishes were served in the city's Jewish4nu

,rLtalian areas.

Ahsenteeisinschool

and the dropout rate were very high in

tives where immigrant children abounded. It is indica-

c'f the genuine concern for the education of the im-n"gr4nts that since 1903, several laws were promulgated

9 7

THE tiCIR)OLti .AND ITWABD MOBILITY 93

to exteik! the compulsory attendance age limit and tocombat truancy. \lost significantly. special, so called "C"classes, were organized to provide intensive instruction in

English to older iinigrant children in order to enablethem to enter regular cla:ses in the shortest thne.

What happened in New York was largely duplicatedin Chiago, Philadelphia, Boston, and in smaller cities withiarge concentrations of immigrants. In Gary, Indiana, whereCroats, Poles, Serbs, I3oheinians, and Jews settled in largenumbers because of the co:entration of steel mills, thepuHic schools were headed by William Wirt, one of themost authoritarian, imaghIatix e, innovative, and controversialeducators in America. Wirt made no bones about his ob-jective of molding the children of the ;mmigrants intopatriotic, virtuous, and hard-working Americans. To ac-complish this objective, he built in Gary many school build-ings which were the showi)laces of school architecture inthe nation. Gary schools had splendid gynmasia with largeswimming pools and large auditoria equipped with theatrestclges and fine libraries. Regular public schools and themany vocational schools that were built under Wireskadership were open in the evenings and thousands ofchildren and parents used the sport facilities and rook ad-vantage of adult classes and letures. In order to providea closer link between school and home, teachers were re-quired to make regular visits to the homes of their pupils.

Wirt introduced a twelve-month school program on aplatoon basis. Students were in the schoolrooms only halfa day and spent the rest of the day in vocational shopsand other work centers. The "Gary Plan" was widely imi-tated throughout the country.

Wirt was an outspoken 4r.1vocate of a rapid process ofAmericanization r.)f the immigrant children. lie had littleregard for the ethnic cultures of the inanigrants. However,there is no record of a significant opposition to Wirt onthe issue of Anwricanization. On the contrary, Wirt seemedto have enjoyed a grea, measure of support from theparents, the press, the clergy, and from the Gary commun-ity at large, throughout his long tenure. Apparently, the

9 8

HE NIELI'INC ()F TI1P:

1110i-eth1Iic city of Gary believed that their public schoolswere good for their children.

Mary Antin's happy experience in the public schoolswas not unique. Another equally popular autobiography ofan innnigTant attests that some immigrants from easternEurope looked with favor On their melting experience. In192:3, the famous inventor and professor of electro-mechanics ,at Cohnnbia University, NIichael Pupin, pub-lished his memoirs under the title, From Immigrant toInventor. The book was widely acclaimed and wentthrough twenty-five editions. It was bought and read untilthe late 19-10s. Pupin immigrated to America from a Serbvillage in 187-1, at the age of nineteen. In a -:hapter en-titled The I lardships of a Green Horn,- Pupin describesthe hardships he suffered in working on farms and fac-tories in Delaware and New Jersey and New York, but healso relates tlw many kindnesses he received from totalstrangers. When he enrolled at Columbia College, Whilestill a factory worker, his professors were kind, understand-ing, and very encouraging. Ile was soon elected class presi-dent. -But when American college boys . . . elected forclass president- he wrote, "the penniless son of a Serbianpeasant village, because they admire his mental andphysical efforts to learn and to comply with Columbia'straditions, one can rest assured that the spirit of Americandemocracy was very much alive in those college boys.-Pupin "made it- and became a distinguished professorat Columbia. Ile, as he points out in his memoirs, re-tained his pride in the Serbian culture, language, and theSerbian Orthodox Church, while enthusiastically cherishinghis American citizenship. Nhchael Novak has testified thathis "making it- as a university professor was a painful(.xperience for him because he felt compelled to give upthe ties to his Slovak family and community. These con-tradictory accounts only affirm the fact that it is impos-sible and unwise to generalize about experiences of mil-lions of immigrants who came to the United States frominany countries and many different cultural religious back-grounds.

9 9

TILE SCHOOLS AND l'PWABD MOBILITY 95

AdmittedlyAmerican education was, at the turn of the20th century. almost exclusively dominated by men andwomen who believed that one of the important twl,s of thepublic schools was to help the children of immigrants toassimilate, as quickly and as painlessly as possible, into thecommon American culture.

Cubberley defined his objective in Mc Education inthe United States:

Our task is to assimilate or amalgamate these peopleas part of the American race, and to implant in theirchiklren, so far as can be done, the Anglo-Saxon concep-tion of righteousness, law, order, and popular government,and to awaken in them reverence for our democratic insti-tutions and for those things which we as people hold to beof abiding worth.

Commenting on this quote from Cubberley, ProfessorWidolph Vecoh of the University of Minnesota (in his testi-mony before the Pucinski Subcommittee) said: -It is clearth,tt Cubberley wished not to Americanize, hut to Anglo-Sa:conize the little immigrants." Granted that the tone ofsuperiority and the plea for indoctrination grates on ourears. one ought to ask whether the objectives as definedby Cubberley were faulty. Was it not necessary to teachthe thousands of children of Pa.'s, Italians, Serbs, Croa-tiarr, and Jews, whose parents, for good reasons, con-sidered the law, the police, and all government officials intheir cmintries of origin as tools of oppression and perse-cution, that law, police, and governmental authority weredifferent in America? And was it not necessary to give themsome u»derstanding of the nature and the operation of theArnerien democratic institutions?

The "Mainstream" American CultureAnd finally, was it desirable or even essential that the

immigrants arit. especially their children understand thecul'ural values and mores of the mainstream Americanculture? This question poses a problem that must be dis-cussed at some length. What was the mainstream American

100

TI \ I EI.TINC OF THE f.:TIIN :S

culture around the year I 900? Present-day spokesmen forthe white ethnic group refer rather contemptuously to thatculture as WASP or Anglo-Saxon. But is it indeed truethat the immigrants who came to New York, Chicago,Boston, and Los Angeks at ti. turn of the century en-countered the Pur:tan Calvinistic ethic and culture thatmake Novak so unhappy?

There are few studies of American culture and Ameri-can national character. The best research in that arca wasdone by the late Berkeley historian, David Potter. IIIboOk, People Of Plenty: Economic A!;undance and OwAmerican Character, published in 1954. Potter suggestedthat relative economic prosperity accounts for Americantraits like aggressiveness, and an affinity forcompetition. III a later essay, Potter asserted that both theA inirican culture and American character an. rooted inthe immigran origin of the American people. IIIC onlyiieoplc in All wrica who are true Americans, Potter af-firmed, are the Indians: all other Americaus are Mimi-,,rinits. Americans, in time, became united by importantcharacteristics and common values. Witliout these eolinnoncommitments and common respect for certain qualities ofcharwter, customs, and values, there could never havebeen an AMerican nationality.

It is partly fur this rew,on that Americans. although com-mitted to) the principle of freedom of thought, have never-theless placed such a ho.lvy emphasis upon the obligationto) accept certain undefined tenets or -Americanism.-

This profound observion ma y. help explain the fear thatgripped many native Americans when confronted withhuge innnigration waves of millions of foreiimers. Theysiiiiplv Wert' Ilot stir(' that America was yet a united na-tion, humid by common values mid able to withstand theinfluence of masses of people with different cultural valuesand mores. Thus, what appeared to the immigrants asAnglo-Saxon arrogance and a sense of superiority mayhave been in fact the manifestations of a feeling of in-security b,. a nation still in its formative state.

The antipathy and the ridicule that confronted some of

iiii; SC H 00 LS AND [7.,\ ABD moBILITy 97

the immigrants in the United States ought to be imt inperspective by a c:mnparison with the contemporary atti-tude of native populations in other countries toward aliensin their midst. In the last few decades, we have seen thelaw -abiding people of Great Britain in a veritable turmoilover the immigration of a few hundred thousand WestIndians and Pakistanis. Powerful voices warned that con-tinued immigration would undermine the English societyand subvert its values and institutions. Public opinionfinally forced the British government to severely limitirnm4vation. The law passed in Parliament had the over-whelming support of both major parties, the Conservativesand the Socialist Labor Party.

The 800,000 Algerians in France, most of whom camethere after World War II, have yet to be accepted by theFrench people. They are harassed, ridiculed, and perse-cut,Al by the police and by large segments of :he popula-tion. The several hundred thousands of Yugoslays, Italians,and Turks who are imported to \Vest Germany as tempor-ary wQrkers for jobs the Germans do not wish to do, arehel'd in open contempt by the German population. Inmany German cities, the immigrants are often jeered atand even beaten by hostile mobs. German political leadersvie with each other in declaring that the ingress of immi-grants must stop. Immigrant laborers in civilizedand Belgium find themselves in a similar predicament. Nogovernment in the European Common Market countrieswould dare to allow many of these foreigners to becomepermanent residents. Contrasted with this situation in theenlightened 1970s. the record of Ainera on the immigra-tion issue looks quite good.

What culture confronted the immigrants on the Ameri-can soil? Observers of the American scene, both foreignand native, who travelled extensively in the United Statesnever perceived the American mainstream culture as it

appears to Novak or Greeley. They did not see it as anAnglo-Saxon or British-American culture. On the contrary,they all saw in it uniquely American features closely tiedto the American experience in a new, vast country. Alexis

102

98 '111E NIEUFING OF 'HIE ETHNICS

de Tocqueville, the brilliant French aristocrat, observed in1836 that for the Americans "Liberty is not the chief ob-ject of their desires, equality is their idol. They make rapidand sudden efforts to obtain liberty, . . . but nothing cansatisfy them without equality, and they would rather perishthan lose it.- English writers Harriett Martineau andCharles Dickens, who traveled extensively in the UnitedStates, found little Anglo-Saxon or British in the charac-ter or the behavior of the Americans. In fact, Dickensheartily disliked almost everything he saw in America,especially its crude, impatient, and aggressive people,bent on preaching and practicing equalitarianism.

Frederick Jackson Turner concluded in his famous 1893essay, "The Significance of the Frontier in AmericanHistory,- that America's national character and cultureowed much less to the English heritage than to the con-ditions of living on the frontier. According to Turner, lifeon the frontier, which gradually shifted from the EasternSeaboard to the Far West, forced Americans to be self-reliant, inventive, practical, aggresjve, and mobile indi-vidualists. There was no other way for them to carve outa civilization from a wilderness in a hostile environment.Turner declared,

The American intellect owes its striking characteristics tothe frontier. That coarseness and strength, combined withacuteness and acquisitiveness; that practical turn of mind,quick to find expedients , . , that restless nervous energy;that dominant individualism . . . these are traits of thefrontier raits ealled out elsewhere because of the ex-istence Ol ;;,

Americans NvY7,.. ;;.-lividualists, as Turner saw them, butthey were al!, 'ormists, as de Tocqueville observed.In modern tem :1 by David Riesman in The LonelyCrowd, Arner,ns are either -inner-directed- or "other-directed." Using the frontier experience as a frame ofreference, there is no contradiction between these twocharacteristics. Americans in the seventeenth and eight-eenth centuries were mostly self-employed, living in rela-tive physical isolation, but they needed the help of their

1 0,-;

THE S(:11001 S ANI) VPWAIII) NIOIHLITY 99

neighbors in the face of natural disaster or hostile Indians.No wonder, then, that Americans are today both indi-vidualists and enthusiastic joiners of clubs and organiza-tions.

The discussion of the native American culture and ofthe American national character, as It was already formedby the time of the Great Migration, is pertinent to a con-sideration of the relationship between the native Ameri-can society and the immigrants and to the role of theschools in educating the children of the immigrants. Itwould seem that the mainstream culture that confrontedthe immigrants was not the Puritan, Anglo-Saxon culturebut an already melted American culture. The immigrmtsfound an American nation that exhibited and cherishedcharacter traits and values forged by the frontier experi-ence on the American soil. As Daniel Boorstin has shownin his works on American social history, American politicalinstitutions, the schools, and the courts were mainly theproduct of American experience, not imported from Eng-land or from Europe, but pragmatically formed to answerthe needs of Americans in their ,icAv land. No wonder,then, that many immigrants found this new American cul-ture so attractive and were eager to imitate and internal-ize the commonly cherished traits of the American char-acter.

In this light, the special love shown by the immigrantsfor American history and their worship of Washington andLincoln become readily understandable. The present-daywriters on ethnicity and the immigrant experience doviolence to historical truth when they write about coerciveefforts to mold the immigrants to conform to an Anglo-Saxon culture, which in fact the immigrants did not con-front because it did not exist.

To be sure, the process of assimilating the immigrantsand their children to the American culture was often crudeand insensitive. Members of the American education es-tablishment and the scLool superintendents in the bigcities, most of them of English stock, perceived it to betheir duty to make the public schools the most efficient

104

loo THE MELTING OF THE EIHNICS

instruments for transmission of American culture to nativeand immigrant children alike. All were to be taught toaccept the American system of values and ideas. Educa-tion for living in the American democratic society was thegoal of schooling, with the clear implication that thatsociety was far superior to the mode of living so clear tothe hearts of most imir igrant parents. Most educators andteachers profcindly believed in the sacred inission ofAmericanization and had an abiding faith in the ability ofthe American environment and of American education totransform human nature. The "refuse of Europe" was tobe bettered and ennobled by the infusion of Americanvalues and i leas.

Granting that the "Americanization" of hundreds ofthousands of children of immigrants was often a painfulexperience, the fact is that it was eminently successful.Even more important, it was nee,sary if a "nation of im-migrants" was to remain a nation with a common culture.public schools were the basic workshop of American de-Mocracy where ethnic and religious differences were de-emphasized, where children of many races began to lookupon themselves as Americans, and where they learned tolive together and to take advantage of the opportunitiesut. American freedom. Handlin, in Immigration as a Factorin American History, chastises some of the teachers for'gnoring ethnic sensibilities, but he emphasizes the role ofthe schools in providing the opportunity for upward mo-bility for the immigrants. However, Peter Schrag, in TheDecline of the WASP, complains that the immigrants hadto pay a price for their advancement. "If you wanted toadvance," he says, "you paid a price, changed your name,Junked your accent, named your children Lynn and Shelley,and you didn't mind their growing contempt for yourethnicity." All this is true, but millions of ethnics did notnlind paying the price of admission to American society.Many paid it with joy and gratitude.

Jewish grandparents and parents had an abiding lovefor the public schools because they opened new oppor-tunities for their children. The American public school, in

103

r H E S( ; H 00 LS l) I 'Il\V MOBILITy 101

which there Were no COInpulsory religious prayers andwhere Jewish chiklren were not an isolated and despisedminority, was incomparably better than the schools in

Poland, Russia, Serbia, I Iungary, or Slovenia. The short-ening of long, unpronounceable names, which wereoriginally imposed on Jewish families by hostile Russiancounty clerks, and the substituticn of English for Yiddish,was, in most cases readily accepted.

Nlost Jewish parents welcomed every outward evidencethat their children were becoming Americanized. A childwho asked for a baseball, a bat, and a glove broughtsmiles of pride and tears of joy to the eyes of his parents.It was a sign that he was becoming a "real" American.Surely, the rapid assimilation of the young, their abandon-ment of religious practices, the unwillingness to attendYiddish or I Iebrew afternoon schools, was painful to someparents, especially those who were orthodox. On balance,however, most Jews wanted to pay the price of admissionto the dominant society. They thought the price to be arew;onahle one for the opportunity to live in a countrywhere freedom and equality, while not universally practiced,were deeply ingrained constitutional principles.

The same was undoubtedly true of millions of Germansand Scandinavians and, with some exceptions, of millionsof Poles, Italians, Irish, and other immigrants who escapedfrom foreign or domestic oppression and from abject con-ditions of poverty. For the children of immigrants, theeducation they received in th,.). public schools representedthe gate to opportunity. The ;.mblic schools and the uni-versities fulfilled their assigned roles more than adequately.Those ethnic leaders who today deride the record of thepublic schools ought to remember that their parents andgrandparents valued the public schools as one of the mostimportant American institutions and demanded, often bythe use of corporal punishment, obedience and respect forthe teachers.

A balanced assessment of' the record of the publicschools will also have to include the recognition of thefact that it was precisely one of the values in the WASP

thi

10:2 THE NWI:FING OF THE ETHNICS

ethic that affirmed the freedom of the immigrant groupsto iractice their faith and to adhere to their values. Thisbasic principle in the American Creed made the preserva-tion of ethnic differences possible. To suggest, as ProfessorVecoli did, that Americanimtion was similar to the ruthlessattempt to Germanize the Poles, an attempt bolstered bylaws and governmental regulations, is a distortion of therecord of history. According to Oscar I landlin,

Americanization did not make an groups alike or destroytheir ethnic quality. Not only did traditions retain theirstrength but the very conditions of co-existence i1 a plr ral-istic society created the assumption that each man wouldadhere to the caith of his fathers.Many oups in the American society were unwilling to

pay the price and did not want to "make it" on WASPterms, but they suffered no great misfortune, and stillthrive. One million Cajuns in Louisiana still speak someFrench and adhere to their own cultural mores, and yetthey can boast of their growing economic and politicalpower. In 1971, a French-speaking Cajun was electedgovernor of the state. The same is true of the Chinese-Americans, the Amish, the Hassidim in Brooklyn, andothers. Of course, these groups preserved their separateidentity by imposing upon themselves a large degree ofisolation from the general society. This is a price thatmany other immip-ant groups were unwilling to pay.

On the whole, however, the process of assimilation of thelarge ethnic qoups, the Irish, the Poles, the Jews, and theItalians, has been quite successful. In spite of what theethnic leaders tell us, the melting pot is neither a deadmyth nor a failure. In fact, that theory worked remarkablywell, on the whole. It is estimated that the United Statesbetween the years 1880 and 1920, absorbed about 40 mil-lion immigrants, mainly from Ireland, Scandinavia, Ger-many, and central and southern Europe. Millions of chil-dren and grandchildren of these former Irishmen, Germans,Swedes, Poles, Italians, and others have indeed "melted."They consider themselves, and are considered by others,as 'just Americans." Some of them cut the ties to their

THE SCHOOLS AND ['MAW) NI( )1311.1TY 103

ethnic groups it) order to advance economically and so-cially in the dominant socioty, but many were attracted bythe rich American culture and heritage and felt no need tocherish old memories and loyalties. The descendants ofAmericans who came to the I Tnited States from colonialtimes and onward, and the descendants of the hundredsand thousands of pioneer., who settled the Western frontierareas have also, with some exceptions, shed any ties theyhad with their respectie ethnic communities. The heroesof the conquest of the West, Daniel Boone, David Bridger,Wyatt Earp, Judge Bean, Matt Dillon were Americans whoforgot or disregarded their ethnic origins. Accurate figureson white ethnic communities in the Unit ...c1 States are hardto come by, but even if we accept th exaggerated figureof 40 million white ethnics, and add to it 20 million blacksand 10 million Spanish-Americans, that still leaves ovet150 million people in America who have no particularethnic affiliation.

In addition, theee is an infinite variety of modes ofidentification of those who do have some ethnic loyalties.An ethnic 'dentification scale may start with a young mar-ried couple whose parents were born in Germany and whodo noi speak German, belong to no German-American or-ganization but like "sauerbraten," to Meir Kahane of theJewish Defense League, who has despaired of the Americansociety and urges a mass exodus of Jews from the UnitedStates to Israel. The varieties of ethnic identification be-tween those two extremes cannot even be catalogued.

Jews in America are American Jews; Italians areAmerican Italians; and Poles are American Poles. Thesame is true of other white ethnic groups. The "American"component is not easy to define, but ethnically consciousAmericans seem to be quite clear about their American-ism. They often make the point that loyalty to their ethnicgroup made them better and prouder Americans.

The public schools, the evening schools, and the, settle-ment houses played an important role in the absorptionof the millions of immigrants. Gunnar Myrdal, the Swedishsociologist, has devoted many years to the study of the

108

lat TH NIEL-FINc Qv TH ETIINK:s

American society. In a reent article in The Center Alaga-zinc, he made this sound ob :Nation on the role of thepublic schools in the period of large-scale immigration:

Throughout this long period, the immigrants came al-most entirely from the lower social and economic strata intheir home countries. All had to start from the bottom andwork themselves up, a process aided by the public schoolsystem. which, with all its defects, was a relatively efficientvehicle for social mobility. even it if took a generation ortwo tn climb the ladder.

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPI1Y 105

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Addams, Jane. Twenty Years of Hull House. New York: Macmil-lan Co., 1938.

Democracy and Social Ethics. Cambridgp. Mass.:Harvard University Press, 1902.

The Second Twenty Years at Hull House. NewYork: The Macmillan Company, 1930.

The American Jewish Committee. Group Life in America, A

Task Force Report. New York: The American Jewish Com-mittee, 1972.

Antin, Mary. The Promised Land. Boston: Houghton MifflinCo., 1911.

Bailey, Harry A.. Jr., and Katz, Ellis (eds.). Ethnic Group Politics.Columbus, Ohio: Charles Merrill Co., 1969.

Baroni, C. "Ethnicity and Public Policy," in M. Henk, S. M.Tomasi, and G. Baroni, (eds.). Pieces of a Dream. New York:Center for Migration Studies, 1972.

Blalock, 11. M., Jr. Toward a Theory of Minority-Group Rela-

tions. New York: Wiley, 1967.Cahankbraham. The Rise of David Levinsky. New York:

Harper and Row Publishing, 1960.Chandler, B. J., Stiles, Lindley, and Kitsus..f, John I. Education

in Urban Society. Dodd, Mead, 1962.Chicago Board of Education. A Comprehensive Design for Bi-

lingual Education. 2d ed. Chicago: Board of Education, 1973.

Cookknn, Grittell Marilyn, and Mack, Herb (eds.). City Life,1865-1900: Views of Urban America. New York: PraegerPublishers, 1973.

Cubberley, Elwood P. Changing Conceptions of Education. NewYork: Riverside Educational Mimeographs, 1909.

. Public Education in the United States. Boston:HouAton Mifflin Co., 1919.

Davis, Mlen F. American HeroineThe Life and Legend of JaneAddams. New York: Oxford University Press, 1973.

De Tocqueville, Alexis. Democracy in America. New York:Alfred A. Knopf, 1946.

1 1 0

106SELECTED BIBLIMRAPHY

Efh111(' I leritago Centers. Hearin,s before the General Sub-C"144iittee On Education of the Committee On Education and

"lent Priming ()Ifice. 1970'

Lab"r, House of Represcritatires. Washington, D.C.: Govern-

/. airchiki . Henry Pratt. Th(' Melting Pot Mistake. Boston: Little,

Franklin,Bro\\.n & C 6.o., 190

Hope. Pettigrew. Thomas E., Mark, Raymond W.l'illtlii

Writh. 1971:nicity in American Life. New York: Anti-Defamation League

Fuchs, 1,4wrence

rII. (ed.). American Ethnic Politics. New York:

and liOw. 1968"I lark,

Glazer. Nathan and Moynihan, Patrick. Beyond the Melting Pot.Camhridge, Nlass.: M.I.T. Press, 196:3.

Cordon,

Creek'Y..A 1

Milton. Assimilation in American Life. Ness' York: Ox-ford l'ress, 19(A.

Inures% NI. Wiql Can't The!t Be Like Us? New York:Am'briean lessisli Committee Institute of Human RelationsPress, 1969"

(11-eer. (:ohn. Tit, Great school Legend; A Revisionist Interpretation of American1972.

Education. New York: Basic Books,

Ilimndlin. Oscar.Ealgi(swood

l/iffs (a a Factor in American History.C N.J.: Prentice-I lall. 1959.

I 'arisen,, Marcus Lee. The Immigrant in American History. New)orts: I Iaq)et Tordi Books. 1940.

11'"Ivkir,I. W. Brett and Lorinkas, A. Robert, (eds.). The Ethnic,,,a(t.','1. in Ame mrican Politics, Colubus, Ohio: Charles MerrillrutniNhins4 1970.

---------------- The Uprooted. Boston: Little Brown and Company.1952.

flertz. A fleksjc Ameri-lexander. Reflections on America (Rekanskio, Paris: Institute Literacki, 19(36.

11041119a6tsn.' John, Strangers in the Land. New York: Atheneurn,

f lowe I', twing (ed.), The World of Blue Collar Workers. Newfork: r,Ylladrangle Books. 1..) 2.

Torizzo. J Luciano, and Nlondello, Salvatore. The Italian-Ameri-\ew York: Twayne Pubhshing Co., 1971.cams%

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPIIY 107

Karier, Clarence J., Violas, Paul, and Spring, Joel. Roots ofCrisis. Chicago: Rand NIcNally, 1973.

Ka lien, Horace NI. Cultural Pluralism and the American Idea.Philadelphia: l'niversity of Philadelphia Press, 1956.

Kusielewicz, Eugene. Reflections on the Cultural Conditions ofthe Polish-American Community. New York: Czas Publishing

1969.

Lasch, Christopher (ed.). The Social Thou,At of Jane Addams.Indianapolis: Bobbs Merrill Co., 1963.

The New R.-,dicalisw in America, 1889-1963. NewYork: Vintage Books, 1967.

Litt, Edgar. Ethnic Politics in America. Glenview, Ill.: ScottForesman, Co., 1970.

NI ann, Arthiir. Immigrants in American Life: Selected Readings.New York: lloughton Nlifflin, 1973.

Nel li, Humbert S. Italians in Chicago. New York: Oxford Uni-versity Press, 1970.

Novak, Michael. The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics. New York:Nlacmillan Co., 1971.

Parson, Talcott. Structure anc: Process in Modern Societies.Glencoe, The Free Press, 1960.

Pettigrew, T. F. Racially Separate Or Together? New York:N1cGraw-Ilill, 1971.

Pupin, Michael. From !mmigrant to Inventor. New York: CharlesScribner's Sons,

Polish American Congress, Inc. Po Ionia in the Seventies: NewChallenges. Chicago: Polish American Congress, 1972.

Potter, David NI. History and American Society. New York:Oxford University Press, 1973.

Puzo, Mario. The Fortunate Pilgrim. New York: Lancer Books,1964.

Rischin, Moses. The Promised City. New York: II .rper, TorchBooks, 1962.

Schrag, Peter. The Decline of the WASP. New York: Simonand Schuster, 1971.

Shannon, William V. The American Irish. New York: Macmillan,1967.

112

108 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

Thomas, William and Znaniecki, Florian. The Polish Peasantin Europe and in America. New York: Dove Publication,1958.

Tomasi, Silvan° NI., and Engel, Madeline 11. (eds.). The ItalianExperience in the United States. Staten Island. N.Y.: Centerfor Migration Studies, 1970.

Turner, Frederick J. The Frontier in American History. NewYork: 1Ienry Ilolt Co., 1920.

Warner, W. Lloyd, and Srole, Leo. The Social Systems of Amer-ican Ethnic Groups. (Yankee City Studies.) New Haven:Yale L'niversity Press, 1945.

Wirth, Louis. The Ghetto. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1928.

On Cities And Socia: Life. Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1964.

Wyrtwal, Joseph A. Poles in American History and Tradition.Detroit: Michigan Endurance Press, 1962.

Zangwill, Israel. The Melting Pot. New York: Macmillan Co.,1910.

3

Index

Abrams, Morris-5.;)acculturation (sec cultural assimuation)Adams, Charles Francis-18Addams, Jane-9-10, 6:3-77, 85Africa-18Aida-32Algeria-97Alliance College-51Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America-34, 75.America! A in erica !-90The American Commonwealth-68American Indians-3, 12, 96American-Italian Historical Assn---.1.2American Jewish Committee-59-6PAmerican Legion-74American Polish Congress Natl Convention-43

crican Revolution-37-Americanization--viii, 8-10, 12-14, 15, 21-22, 40, 72, 101-102;

vs. melting pot theory-6-7, 11; in education-7-9, 65, 72,80-82, 84, 90-93, 95, 100-101

Americans of Italian Descent-53Amish-4, 102-Anatcvka--29Anglo-Saxon American culture-American natl character-96,

98-100; "Americanization--8, 10, 13; cultural pluralism-14; Italian immigrants-25; Jane Addams-72; melting pottheory-6-7, 11-12; -new ethnieity"-18-22; Polish immi-grants-40, 42; public education-15, 80, 83, 96-97, 101-102

Antin, Mary-88-90, 94anti-Semiticism-30, 41, 47, 60Arab Empire (ancient)-23Armenia-89art-17, 51-52Arvey, Jacob-58Asciolla, Paul J.-54, 56

109

114

110 INDEX

Asia-18Austria-23, 89

Vienna-33Austrians-7Austro-Flungarian Empire-7, 14, 16, :36, 47

Baldwin, James-19Bank of America-26-27Baroni, Geno-3-4, 15. 80Bean, Judge Roy-103Belgium-16, 97Bellow, Saul-19Beyoml the Melting Pot-5Bialasiewich, Joseph-42Bible-46-47; Old Testament-45; Deuteronomy-46; Proph-

e15-47; New Testament-45Black Americans--Americanization"-9, 12; ethnic aware-

ness-2-3, 42-43, 55, 57, 103; multicultural education-83-84; political influence-59-61; public schoolsix

Black-Polish Conference-43Bohemian-Americans-65, 69, 71. 75, 93Bolshevik ReN olution-74Boone, Daniel--103Boorstin, Danie!-99Brandeis University-5, 51Bridger, David-103Britain-18, 47, 89, 97British-Americans-11, 13British Conservative Party-97British Parliament-97British Socialist Labor Party-97Brooklyn College-58Bryce, James-68-69Buckley, James-52Buckley, William Jr.-19Bundists-73

Cabe II, James Branch-18Cahan, Al)raham-19, 31-32Cajuns.- 4, 102California-26-27

Los Angeles-26, 80, 82-83, 96

11 5

INDEX 111

Chinatown-55San Diego-82San Francisco-26, 58

Ghirardell i Sq-26-Little Italv"-26North Beach-26

Canada-89; French-Canadians-50, 69Quebec-16

Capone, Al-27, 55Capote, Truman-19Carthaginians-23Catholic Church-25-26, 50, 57, 59; American Catholic

Church-20-21; German Catholic Church-50; Irish Catho-lic Church-20, 49-50; Italian Catholic Church-20, 37, 50;Polish Catholic Church-20, 31, :35-37, 49, 55

Center for Nligration Studies-53Center Magazine-89, 104Changing Conceptions of Educotion-7Chicago Herald-25Chicago Tribune-56, 86Chinese Americans-89, 102Christian Scientiss-49Christianity (see also indir. religions)-45Chrobot, Leonard-19Churchill, Winston-18Ciardi, John-53cities-educational pluralism-15; immif!rant public educa-

tion-65, 79-80, 84, 91, 99; inner-city neighborhoods-4;Italian immigrants-25-23, 53, 82, 92; Jewish immigrants-28, 30, 58; Polish immigrants-40, 42

City College of New York-33Colossimo, James-27, 55Columbia University-52, 56, 94Commager, Henry Steele-85Commentary-19Connecticut

New Haven-2Cosa Nostra-56Cremin, Lawrence-85Crevecoeur, John de-10crime-18, 27-28, 39, 55-1:3, 69Croatian-Americans-viii, 7, 14, 50, 60-61, 90, 9.3, 95

112 INDEX

Croatian langliage-79Cro ly ilerbert-18Cuhan-Americans (see a/No Spanish-speakin,* Aincricans1-8)Cuhherlev, Elwood 1'.-7-9, 11-12, 69, 90-91, 95cultural assimilation (see a/so -Ameri1anization")-4, 63, 68,

72, 82, T. 102cultural pluralism-yin, 4-5, 12, 14-16, 19. 31. 72, 74Czech-Americans-7. 73Czech language-79Czechosh)vakia-48

Daily Forward-19, :31Daley, Richard J.-58DA:Ninon-Americans-7Daughters of the American 11evo1ution-71Decline of the It lSJ. The-5, 100Delaware-9IDenwcracy and Social Ethics-76Dem(wratic Partv-52, 59Dewey, John-9, 66, 76. 871)iaspora-46Dickens, Charles-98Dickey, James-19Dillon, Nlatt-10:3Drops ic College-51Dugmore, 11,-89Dutch-Americans-12

Earp, Wyatt-103economic mobility of immigrants-ix, 18, 27, 43, 77, 82, 84,

90, 100education. inunigraut -63-77; adult cducatimi-92-93; bilingual

education-80-83; citizenship classes-29; curriculitin-83,85-87, 90-92; education Ilistory-6-1, 80, S:3-85; highereducation-15,33. 51, 5:3-54, 61, 88, 94, 101: Jane Addmns-64.-65, 72, 75; -multiculturaleducation-12, 14-15, 17,80-83; -new ctImicity--18; vocational-92-93

Educatitm of 11 ° Y0A10A 0N0 K0A 01,0L 0 ON, The_29

Ellison. Ralph-19Emerson, Ralph Waldo-18End of American Innocence, The-18English language-17, 38, 40-41, 72, 79, 91, 9:3

117

INDEX 113

Epstein, Jason-19equal itarianisin-1, :31, 98Ethnic Group Politics-9Ethnic Heritage Studies Bil! (197:3)-5, 14-15ethnicity (see also -Americanization- and melting pot theory)-

ethnic humor-17; "ethnic strategy"-59; immigrant cultur-al awareness-14, 17, 2:3, 45-515:3, 55; innnigrant educa-tion-83, 100; "militant ethnicity--20; "new ethnicity--viii, 18-19, 80; white ethnicity-viii-ix, 1-6, 13-14, 2:3, 45,54, 57-60, 83, 99, 103

Europe-Central-18, 20-21, 68, 74, 79, 102; Eastern-6-8, 21,68-69. 79, 94; Northern-7; Southern-6-8, 18, '10-21, 68-69,74, 79, 102; Western-18

European Counnon Nlarket-97

Faggi, Joho, A. 13.-52Fairchild, Henry Pratt-12-1:3famiglia-24-25,Fein, Leonard-5Fiddler on the Roof-29Florida

Miami-80, 82Fordham University-51Fortunate Pilgrim, The-26Fra No1-54France-23, 97Franz Joseph-47French-Americans-11-12French language-102French Revolution-47From Immigrant to forentor-94

Gambino, Richard-57Garibaldi, Giuseppi-71"Gary Plan--93Georgia

Savannah-37Germany-22, 97, 10:3German-Ainericans-8, 11, 1.3, 69, 89, 101-10:3Gerinan Catholic Church-50German language-29, 103ghettos-1-2, 9. 82

114 INDEX

Cliirarclilii Dominico-26Ainadeo Pietro-26

Gibbons, James -50Cierik, Edward-4'7Clazer, Nathan-5Comulka, Wladyslaw-47Cordon,Great School Legeui, 8:3

Creece-23Creek-Americans"Americanization--8-9, 14; ethnic aware-

nessviii, 4, 20-21, 54; 11n11 House-65-66, 71, 75; publiceducation-81-82, 88-90

Creek language-82Creelev, Andrew-3-5, 97Greer, Colinix, 8:3-85, 87Croup Life in America-60

Hand lin, Oscarvii, 9, 85, 88, 100, 102Hansen, Marcus Leeviiitardv, ThomasI8Harper BrothersI8-19Harriman family-8Hart Schaffner and Nlarx-27, 70Huruard Educational Review-67Harvard University-5911assidim-102Hawthorne, Nathanie1-18Hebrew language-29, :32, 47Hebrew Union College-51Hertz, Alexander-39-40Higham, JohnviiHill family-8Hillman, Sidney-75Hitler, Adolph-18, 48Hofstadter, Richard-65Holland (see also Dutch-Americans)----97Howells, Williani Dean-18-19Hull Houseis, 9-10, 63-77, 85Hungarian-Americans-2Hungary-22, 24, 28, 30, 48, 89, 101

lanni, Francis-56

110

INDEX 115

Illinois-10, 28, 58, 71Chicago-education-79-80, 82-83, 85-86, 91, 93, 96; Hull

House-ix, 9, 63, 68-70, 73; immigrant labor-75; immigrantpolitical influence-59; Italian immigrants-25, 27-28, 53,55-56; Jewish immigrants-33-34, 58; Polish immigrants-2, 38, 43First Ward-28Halstead St.-25, 64, 69-Little Italy--25, 28Polk St.-25, 64Twelfth St.-25, 69

Chicago Board of Education-76, 81Cook County-58, 86

Immigrant Protective League-73immigrants (see individual ethnic groups)Immigration as a Factor in American Histonj-100immigration history-vii-ix, 23-43India-97Indiana-10

Gary-38, 93-94Intl. Ladies Garment Workers Union-34lorizza, Luciano J.-53Irish-Americans-"Americanization--8, 11-13; crime-55; eth-

nic awareness-3, 45; Hull House-65, 69; Italian immi-grants-55, 57; Polish immigrants-37, 40, 51; politicalinfluence-59; public education-89, 101-102

Irish Catholic Church-20, 49-50"Irishness"-45Israel-3, 46-48, 52, 60, 103

:2rusalem-48Italian-Americans---"Americanization--6, 8-9, 11, 13-14; ethnic

awareness-2-4, 17, 21-22, 45, 51-57, 103; Hull House-65-66, 69, 73; immigration history-23-28; Jewish immi-grants-28-30, 32-34, 49; Polish immigrants-34, 37-38, 41;political influence-59-61; public education-71, 77, 79,81-82, 86, 88-90, 95, 101-102

Calabrians-69Lombards-69Neapolitans-69Sicilians-7, 69Venetians-69

Italian-Americans Joint Civic Committee-53

120

116 INDEX

Italian Catholic Church-20, :37, SOItalian language-52, 79. 82Thal ianness--45, 51-57Italians in Chicago-27Italy-7, 23, 52, 54, 97

Abruzzi-2:3Calabria-23Campania-2:3Sicily-23-25, 27. :37.

Jackson, Jesse-6James, Henry-18. 76Jefferson, T1iomas-17Jewish-Americans--Americanization--7-9. 13-14; ethnic

awarenessviii, 4, 45-49, .57, 103; ghettos-1-2, 28; HullHouse-65, 69, 75; immigration history-28-34; liberal-ism-46, 48, 60-61; Melting Pot, The-11; Polish immi-grants-34, 37-38, 40, 51; political influence-57-61

Jewish Defense League-103Jewish Federation-58Jewish Theological Seminary-51"Jewishness--45-49, 51Jews-3, 28-34, 45-50, 52Judaism-46

Ka llen, Horace NI.-14-15, 72Katz, NIichael-67-68Kazan, Elia-89-90Kahane, Nleir-103Kennedy, John F.-18, 59Kentucky-10Konopnicka, Nlaria-49Kosciuszko Foundation-41Kosciuszko, Thaddeus-37Kristol, Irving-19Kuniczak, Wies law-41L. B. Kuppenheimer-27Kusielewicz, Eugene-41, 50

laborcoal mines-38; education-85, 88, 92; Hull House-66,76-77; Italian immigrants-24; Jewish immigrants-33-34,58; Polish immigrants-38-42; steel industry-38; sweat-

1 2

INDEX 117

shops-70-71; unions-42, 59Lasch, Christopher-66, 68, 77Lincoln, Abraham-10, 17, 99Lipset, Seymour Nlartin-59literacy-24, 28-29, 36, :38, 40-41literature, ethnic-17-18, :36. 51-52Litlmania-24, 28, :30Litlmanian-Americims-4. 60-61Lithuanian Catholic Church-21-Little Italies--25-28, 53, 82, 92Lone ley Crowd, 11w-98Lord's Prayer-21Louisiana-4, 102

"NlacaroniNlafia-28, 52, 55Magyars-7N1ahan,Nlailer, Norman-19Malamud, Beniard-19Martineau, Ilarriett-98Nlaryland

Baltimore-50Baltimore City Coimcil-4

NlassachusettsBoston-56, 58, 79, 85, 91, 93, 96Chelsea-88

Maxwell, William 11.-92Nlay, Henry-18Nlazewski, Aloysius-42Nlazzini, Giuseppi-71N1cCarthy, Mary-19Melting Pot, The-10Melting Pot Mistake, The-12melting pot theory-vs. "Americanization--yiii, 6-10, 12-14;

immigrant ethnic awareness-4-5; 15; history of-10-12;Jane Addams-74; public education-80, 94, 102

Mexican-Americans-80Nlichigan

Detroit-38, 43, 85Orchard Lakc-19, 51

Mickiewicz, Adam-35, 36

122

118 INDEX

Mikulski, Barbara-4, 80Mimms, Edwin Jr.viiMissouri

St. Louis-25Mitchell, John-56Mongols-35Nloravian-Americans-7Morgan family-8Nloynihan, Daniel P.-5Nlussolini, Benito-18, 52Nlyrdal, Gunnar-103

Natl. Center for Opinion Research-3Natl. Center for Urban Ethnic Studies-3Natl. Project on Ethnic America-60NATO-52Nazi Party-3, 48, 60neighborhoods, ethnic-25, 40, 42Nel li, Humbert S.-27New Jersey-26, 58, 94

Newark-2New Radicalism in America-66New York-94

Catskill Nlountains-31Long Island-26New York CityItalian immigrants-25-26, 52-5.3, 56; Jewish

immigrants-29-30, :33-34, 58; melting pot theory-5, 10;-new ethnicity--18; public education-79-80, 82, 85, 87-89, 91-93, 96Broadwav-10Bronx-58Brooklyn-58, 92, 102Ellis Island-10'little Italy--25-26, 53Mulberry St.-25, 53, 92Staten Island-53

New York City Board of Education-92Saratoga-37West Pcint-37

New York Review of Books-19New York Times-19, 52-53, 57, 61Notre Dame University-51Novak, Michael-5-6, 19-22, 46, 80, 89-90, 94, 96-97

123

INDEX 119

padrone-24-25, 41pakistan-97Parkman, Francis-19Parsons, Talcott-1-2Peddlers Associations-73Pennsylvania-4, :38

Caml- Springs-51Philadelphia-58, 79, 85, 9:3Pittsburgh-38

People of Plenty: Economic Abundance mid the AmericanCharacter-96

Podhoretz, Norman-19pogroms-30Poland-2, 7-8, 24, 28-29, 31, :34-43, 47-52, 101

Lodz-39Pozan-39Warsaw-:39

Poles in American History and Tradithm-50Polish American Congress-42

National Convention-42Education and Cultural Affairs Committee-42

Polish-Americans--Ainericanization--6, 9, 11, 13-14; ethnicawareness-viii, 2-4, 45, 49-51, 103; Hull Honse-69; im-migration history.-34-43; Italian inlmigrants-52, 54-55;Jewish immigrants-29-30, 32-34, 49; political influence-59-61; public education-71, 79, 81-82, 86, 88-90, 9:3, 95,

101-102Polish Catholic Church-20, 31, 35-37, 49, 55Polish jokes-42Polish language-29, 36, 38, 41, 49-51, 79, 82Polish Natl. Alliance-50-51Polish Roman Catholic Union-51"Polishness"-45, 49-51politics-"Americanization--8, 99; immigrant ethnic aware-

ness-17-18, 27, 30, 39, 57-58; Progressive Nlovement-65,91; Reform :lovenient-65

Polonia-42"Po lonia--37, 41Potter, David-96poverty-84-86Promised Land, The-34, 88Protestant Churches-21, 59Prussia-35-36

120 INDEX

Public Education in the L'nited Statc.s-91. 95Pucinski, Roman-6, 22Puerto Rico-80Pulaski, Casimir-37Pullman, George-68, 70-71Pupin, N1ichael-94Puzo, Nlario-26

-Red Scare--74Reflections on America-39Reid, Ogden Mills-18religion (see illSo individual religions)immigrant ethnic

awareness-21. 45, 48-49; immigration history-25, 29-30,101; public education-79-80, 82, 100-101

Repuldican Party-59Rice, Joseph-87Riesmaii, David-98Rischin, N1oses-34Rise of David Ler insky, The-31Rise of tlie Umneltablf! Ethnics, The-5, 19Rockefeller family-8Rockefeller, Nelson-52Rockford Seminary for Women-64Roman Empire-23Roosevelt, Franklin D.- 59Roosevelt, Theodore---..-9, 65Roots of Crisis-61Rosten, Leo-29Roth, Philip-19Rumanian-Americans-7. 89Russia-2, 10, 24, 28-29, 31, 35-36, 47, 101

-Pale of Settlement--47Ukraine-50

Russian-Americans-10-11, 17, 30, 88Russian language-29, 79Russian Orthodox Church-311utherMw-Americans-7

Saint Mary's College-19, 51Scandinavian-Americans-13, 101-02Scheiker, Richard-15Schrag, Peter-5, 100

t.)1

INDEX 121

schook-adnnnistrators-viii. 8; European-21; evening-103;1)arochial-50, 82. 101; public-viii-ix, 7, 13, 75-77. 79-104;teaclwrs--viii, .8.10-41, 80. 85-88, 93. 100-01

Scottish-Americans-89Serbia-101Serbian-Americans-yin. 2-3, 6-7. 14, 22. 60-61, 82. 90, 93-95Serbian language-79Serbian Orthodox Church-94settlement houses (see also Hull 1-Iousi9-ix. 85, 103Severn, Richard-52-53shtelech-r), 28-29, 33-Significance of the Frontier in American Iiistory"-98Slavic-Americans-2-3, 6-7, 11, 14, 21-22, :30, 88, 90SInvaks-2Slavic Cathol;e Church-20-21Shwenia-48, 101Slowacki, Julius-36Sobieski, Jan-35social molnlity, inunip:rant-ix, 18, 27, .31, 82-84, 86, 90, 100,

104Social Systems of American Ethnic Gmaps, The-ISocialism-29, 71, 73Spain-2:3Spanish-speaking Americans-ix, 2-3, 9, 21, 4:3, 80, 83-84, 10.3Spanish language-81Srole. Leo-I-2Star-Spangled Banner-32Stowe, Harriet Beecher-19Strong, Josiah-69Styron, William-19Sweden-35Swedish-Americans-89

Taft, William Howard-18Talmud-33, 46Tarbell, Ida-18Tartars-35Teutonic Knights-35Texas

El Paso-82Thompson, Dorothy-57Tikkum Olam-46

113

INDEX

Tocqueville, Alexis de-97-98Tomasi, Silvano-53-54Torah-33Turin, John-27, 55Turkey-35, 97Turkish-AmericansviiiTurner, Frederick Jacksonvb, 98Twain, Nlark-19Twentieth Century City, The-69Twenty Years of Hull House-69, 73Tyack, David-83

Ukranian-Americans-60Unitarian Church-49United States Government-3, 56, 73

Congress-2-3, 14-15, 52, 69, 74House Education Subcommittee-5-6, 22, 95

Education Bureau-91Federal Bureau of kvesti.,,ation-52Immigration Commission-87

University of Minnesota-22, 95Updike, John-19Uprooted, The-88

Vandals-23Vecoli, Rudolph-22, 95, 102Verbit, Marvin V.-58Versailles Treaty-35Vidal, Gore-19Viet Nam-18Villa Scalabroni-55Villard, Oswald Garrison-18Violas, Paul-66-68, 72Virginia

Jamestown-37Voltaire-23

Ward, Artemus-18Warner, W. Lloyd-1-2Washington, George-17, 37, 99WASP (sec Anglo-Saxon)Welsh-Americans-89

1 2 7

INDEX 123

Whitman, Walt-19Why Can't They Be Like Us?-5Wilson, Edmund-19Wirt, William-93Wirth, Louis-1-2Wisconsin

Mikvaukee-2"Woptowns--25Working Peoples' Social Sciencc Club-70World War 1-37World War 11-97Wouk, 1-Ierman-19Wyrtwal, Joseph-50Wyspianski, Stanislaw-36

xenophobia-8, 24, 30, 55, 65, 71, 74

Yiddish-17, 29, 32, 40, 79, 82, 97, 101Yugoslavia-97

Zangwill, Israel-10-12Zionism-29, 71, 73Znaniecki, Florian-38