Hall High School - Hall Light Yearbook (Spring Valley, IL)

Page 30 text:

Americanisms, “That’s good enough,” and “That will do” are to be heard everywhere. We don’t seem to care how we do our work, just so it “gets by.” Rightly did Theodore Roosevelt say that the curse of our nation is its lack of thoroughness. Can we reasonably expect painstaking, thorough work from our foreign born citizens if everywhere we are setting them an example of shiftless inefficiency? As distinctly bad as are these first two faults, we have yet another which probably causes greater adverse reaction on the part of the foreigner than the first two taken together. The American people have too little respect for law and authority. Too often our laws are regarded as restrictions which if cleverly evaded need not bother us a great deal. Too often the policeman is a person to be feared, an enemy. Why are we so reluctant to realize that laws are made to protect us, not to tyranize over us, that policemen are the safe-guards of our life and our property, not bitter foes! The foreigner comes to us eager to accept our ideas and our ways, and this is what we teach him! We fall short of the foreigner’s dream in yet another way. We tolerate slums, we allow our foreigners to have their first introduction into American life in these detestable tenements. The living conditions in these places are unspeakable; they cannot but create toughs and bad citizens. Jacob Riis speaking of the slums declares, “Half the tenement-house population is always moving, and to the children the word “home” has no meaning. Good citizenship hangs upon the rescue of the home imperilled by the slum. With the home gone, which made life worth living, what were liberty worth ? With the home preserved, we may look forward without fear.” Americans need to recognize the value of this statement, to realize that the slums cannot produce real Americans—that at best they are naught but hot beds of disaster. Then too, consider the matter of education. We are making entirely too little effort to teach our foreigners the native language—our native traditions and ideals. How can we expect the foreigner to acquire this knowledge? By instinct? Surely not. And yet too often he is allowed to shift for himself. Especially is this true of the older people. Groping about in the dark trying vainly to understand this new world into which he has been thrust, small wonder that he prefers to congregate in crowded sections of the city with people of his. kind. If this is true, whose fault is that that American cities today are confronted with the problem of China-town, of Russian quarters, of Little Italy? “To the American,” quotes Edward Bok, “These particulars in which his country falls short with the foreign born are perhaps not so evident; they may even seem not so very important. But to the foreign born they are distinct lacks; they form serious handicaps, which in many cases are never surmounted; they are a menace to that Americanization which it today more than ever our f ondest dream and which TWENTY-FOUR

Page 29 text:

LEST WE FORGET (The Valedictory by Della Guerrini) America, to the foreigner as he views it from across the intervening ocean, is a land of the ideal, a land of dreams, truly a wonder world. He beholds in America a monument of hope, of opportunity, of free and unobstructed success, of liberty, justice and equality—a land where all enjoy civil and religious liberty, universal education, and the right to participate in all affairs of government. To him, America appears a paradise on earth, a heaven where all dreams come true. Small wonder then that he craves admittance to this land of his heart’s desire. Year after year he hoards his meager store of hard earned coins until at last he is enabled to reach his land of dreams. But what a rude awakening awaits him here! In the face of stern cold reality, the dream which he brought with him soon fades, becoming fainter and yet more faint. A stupendous, a shameful waste of splendid energy, enthusiasm and idealism results—energy and enthusiasm, and idealism which our country needs and should not be slow to evaluate properly. It is for us Americans to awake and to realize the seriousness of this loss. Let us rejoice that the foreigner has dreamed his dreams of our country; let us take pride in the fact that he has pictured America to be so supremely ideal, but let us also realize our faults. Let us pause long enough in our busy round of countless activities to take stock of our shortcomings. In just what respects are we falling short of the foreigner’s dream? In the first place we are wasters; we lack thrift. The American people are the most extravagant on the face of this earth. The more a man earns, the more he spends. Only spasmodic attempts are made to save. Families live up every penny of their incomes, and then when financial reverses come, they run heavily into debt. All of us complain about the high cost of living, and that, even while we are throwing into our garbage pails enough food to supply an average peasant family of Europe—bread that has been allowed to mold through carelessness, cooked vegetables worse than useless becaues the amount has not been properly calculated. The trouble with us is that we have too much of everything. We say, “What’s the use of being economical? There is plenty more.” And then we wonder that the second or third generation of foreign born citizens lose the splendid virtue of thrift which was their parents’. Perhaps our next most apparent fault is our lack of thoroughness in everything we do. Emphasis is placed on how much work one can do, rather than upon how well the work is done. The two infernal TWENTY-THREE

Page 31 text:

we now realize more keenly than before is our most vital need, not only for the foreigner, but for the American as well. There are thousands of American-born who need Americanization just as much as do the foreign-born. No law, no lip-service, no effort, however well in-tentioned, will amount to anything worth while in inculcating the true American spirit in our foreign-born citizens, until we ourselves feel and believe and practice in our own lives what we are teaching to others.” Americans, you who are willing to do more than lip-service for your country, let us consider seriously these faults which have been imputed to us by foreigners within our gates, foreigners of keenest insight such as Jacob Riis, Edward Steiner, and Edward Bok, men who have cared enough about our country to become one of us, men who have had sufficient affection for our country to scorn platitudinous praises, and have preferred rather to deplore the fact that we are falling far short of our potential possibilities. They have realized that we are failing the foreigner in many ways; they are trying to make us appreciate the fact that unless we can live up to the dream of the foreigner, our future American citizen, we shall lose much that is of incalcuable value. Fellow Americans, let us heed their pleas, let us burst the swollen bubble of our pride and realize that it is with humility we should say with Kipling in his great Recessional— “For frantic boast and foolish word— Thy mercy on thy people, Lord!” HALL HIGH ’Tis fine to see all other schools, And travel up and down, Throughout their shining corridors And class-rooms of renown; To admire their grounds, and students, Their athletes, straight and tall, But now I think I’ve seen enough— Let me travel back to Hall. 0 it’s Hall again, Hall again, Hall Township High for me; My heart turns back to good old Hall, And there I long to be. —Carl Blum. TWENTY-FIVE