100 years ago in The Saratogian
Wednesday, March 19, 1919. “Americanization of the foreign element in this country — and I might also say the Americanization of ourselves — has become a national project,” an official of the federal interior department tells a Ballston Spa audience today.
D. F. Howe is the interior department’s regional director of Americanization, based in Albany. He’s in Ballston Spa to address a group of people who want to open a “community house” in the village to provide social and cultural services to the immigrant population.
Speaking at the High Street home of Mrs. Seth S. Whalen, Howe describes his “broad experience with the housing and general working conditions of working men of all nationalities” in the wartime ordnance department. He continues to work “along the same lines” in peacetime.
The immigrant population “is constantly growing and we must either absorb it, or be absorbed by it,” Howe says, “We must give them the benefit of our highest ideals, the teaching of our best teachers, or we must expect in coming generations to have them teaching us the worst of theirs.”
To illustrate the growth of immigrant communities, Howe points out that Polish-Americans now make up 4% of the total population of the United States, and 5% of the U.S. Army. “There is much that we may learn from the alien,” Howe continues. At the same time, “I may say that it is not only the foreign population that must be Americanized. To a large extent we must Americanize ourselves.”
What Howe means by the Americanization of Americans is unclear. As for foreigners, he recommends that “it would be advisable to have papers and books printed in foreign languages” in a Community House reading room.
“There are many thousands in this country who do not read English and it would be a great mistake to deprive them of all literature simply for that reason,” Howe says.
Community houses should be run by nonpartisan councils as diverse as the local population, including all nationalities and religions. For example, Howe cites a Community Fellowship League in Attleboro MA with “eight vice presidents each of a different nationality, and the recording secretary is a negro.”
Any community house project needs the support of the community as a whole, but Howe admits that it will take some convincing to get some people to support it.
“The average man will spend $100 or more to fix up his piazza or to paint his house but he will kick like a mule if he is asked to pay a dollar or even fifty cents in extra taxes to help improve the street upon which he lives.”