excluded the immigrants, that they would promote a "program that would absorb them [i.e. the immigrants] into the life of America"! In this case, immigrant organizations were ignored deliberately and frankly. More often they are ignored through ignorance of their existence. Usually they are ignored. But there is no more basic factor in the situation of the immigrant in America than these very organizations of his own. They are his creations. They represent his traditions, standards, ideals. They embody his group efforts to adjust himself and get on in America. They are the media through which, if only they are understood and utilized, the immigrant may most naturally and effectually be incorporated in the common life of his adopted country. If the immigrant is to have his mind free to get a foothold in America, he must feel "at home" as soon as possible. He must have sympathy, understanding, encouragement, and friendly help in many ways. He must have some recognized place in a human group and not be merely an isolated atom knocked about in a strange world. All these vital needs are satisfied in the colony, and, for most newly arrived immigrants, nowhere else. Furthermore, if the immigrant is to escape demoralization by the sudden and complete change from his former life, he must have, during the adjustment to his new environment, some moral support and control, of a kind which he will recognize and understand. This function the colony performs. There are the immigrant's fellow countrymen who are familiar with his former habits and standards. They share his life experience and point of view. They uphold him in loyalty to inherited standards, which, unless better ones are substituted, are his moral anchors and safeguards. They condemn him for recreancy to these standards. They interpret to him, in terms which he can understand, the different standards of America, and help him to absorb them gradually and substantially. The colony is thus a neighborhood in the truest and most human sense of the term, whose function is to serve as the normal medium for the immigrant's induction into the life of America. Time will permit only the barest mention of the different kinds of immigrant organizations within the colony. The little mutual insurance or benefit society is the basic and most prevalent type. It is the germ plasm out of which most of the others naturally grow. These others fall into two overlapping classes-the cultural and the adaptive. The cultural societies are those which are formed to conserve the immigrants' native inherited culture. Of these the largest and most important is the immigrant church. After that come foreign language schools and libraries (not meaning parochial schools), maintained not to compete with our public schools, but supplementing them and designed to preserve among the children a knowledge of the ancestral native language and literature. Then there are athletic, gymnastic, singing, orchestral, and dramatic societies, and a generally cultural type of which the Turn-Verein is the best example. All these societies are patterned after Old World models. The adaptive societies, on the other hand, are types which are unknown to the immigrant in his native land, and which represent his immediate and conscious effort to adjust himself to American conditions. They include charity and health organizations, and others still are civic and political. Most immigrants belong to one such society at least; many belong to several. They are therefore of the very structure and essence of the immigrant community life. To attempt community organization involving the immigrant without including and taking due account of these societies is about as reasonable and successful a proceeding as that of a surgeon who should attempt to deal with the human body without taking account of its tissues. 1 America via the Neighborhood, chap. iv, pp. 96-98. Real community organization, as has been said, is that which naturally comes about, which actually exists. In point of such organizations, these various immigrant societies are gradually becoming co-ordinated with the surrounding community. This process is taking place quietly, gradually, rather unconsciously, not by artificial forcing; it develops through the common interests which these societies have with the rest of the community. One measurably successful enterprise tending to promote community organization is the Americanization League of Syracuse, New York. This was first organized as a committee on which leaders of every immigrant group in that city was invited to serve. This representative committee co-operated with each social group in forming branches, since when the branches have elected delegates to the central committee. The program carried out has included classes in English and naturalization, a naturalization contest, and largely attended public meetings at which each racial group interpreted its own backgrounds and culture. Says the president: After two or three years' experience with this group plan, Syracuse is convinced that it is founded on sound pedagogical and political principles. The reservoir of new power has been discovered. Firsthand knowledge of the problems has taken the place of speculation. The initiative of our foreign-born people has been awakened. Americanization has followed the natural lines of group feeling. A real partnership between foreign born and native born has been established. The foreign born have become an integral factor in the movement and the trust imposed in them has been fully justified. It is another manifestation of the incalculable power of democracy. This sort of community organization is therefore not only reasonable and possible, but practicable and actually in operation. These are its principal merits-the merits of fact. But as two special reasons why community organizers may to the advantage of themselves and America put themselves in line with this law of the immigrant gravitation, so to speak, may be urged in conclusion: When the 1920 census was taken, the number of foreign born people in the United States had reached the vast total of 13,000,000. The great majority of these immigrants are found in colony or community neighborhoods of their own. Even assuming that the Americanization of these immigrants could be accomplished by working directly upon each individual, it is manifest that the agencies and resources required to perform such a gigantic task are not available. It follows that if these foreign-born millions are to be Americanized on an adequate scale, the individual immigrant must be reached indirectly, through the medium of his neighborhood group. In other words, Americanization must proceed by extensive as well as intensive methods. Americanizing influences must be brought to bear, not upon the individual alone, but upon the immigrant group as a whole. If this can be done successfully, thousands will be affected in the time that direct individual attempts would reach only a scattered few hundred." That is the quantitative reason. The other is the qualitative. America should not be content with, and indeed could not accomplish, even if she would, the molding of these millions of immigrants to her own image only. She will be greatly the loser if she does not also incorporate in her national life the best in their tradi lture, aspirations, and ideals, the best which these racial groups have to offer. butions can best be conserved and introduced into our common life through of the immigrant societies. So, instead of neglecting them or tr as foreign, we may far more wisely learn to know them, link them can organizations, and add their good gifts to our national comm ■ Ibid., chap. ix, pp. 314-15. Ibid., chap. i, p. 23. TRAINING OF AMERICAN WORKERS FOR SUCCESSFUL Aimée Sears, American International College, Springfield, Massachusetts In my classroom work with young women of various nationalities, some born on this side of the water, some in lands across the sea, it is seldom that we use the word "American" without first defining it. I have found it a very necessary thing to do in order to avoid misunderstanding. Especially should we have common understanding of the word as used in discussing such a question as we have before us. The intent of this paper is to give special consideration to those workers who are Americans not only by birth, but by inheritance from that Anglo-Saxon stock that has most largely influenced the molding into their present form, of our standards, our manners and customs, our ideals. Also, we should have common understanding of what may be considered "success" in our work with immigrants. Shall it be measured by the number of families that have been assisted, by the number of men persuaded to become naturalized, by the number of women gotten into English classes, by the number of foreign juvenile court cases expeditiously handled? I think we must search beyond numbers for the most essential elements in success. The immigrant as a human being, fundamentally like unto ourselves, must be taken into consideration as an active partner in the undertaking. American workers must get a new viewpoint on this question if they would gain the co-operation of the immigrant in achieving social harmony, born of a common understanding and appreciation of American standards and ideals. An attitude that implies that all the changing must be done by the immigrant can neither inspire his imagination or stimulate great enthusiasm. The alien comes to us with not only a language that is unintelligible to the average American, but with a complete set of standards, customs, and habits that are ofttimes quite beyond an Anglo-Saxon comprehension. Because of his strangeness, his differentness, we do not so easily recognize him as a human personality, essentially like ourselves, in spite of all his differentness. Not long ago I asked the foreign young people in my class to write for me briefly where in their experience they had found Americans to have failed to meet the need of the immigrant. The answers of more than half the class of twenty-eight (ten different nationalities) were, in substance, “Americans have a feeling of superiority to us and so they do not take the trouble to understand us." Not only must we be willing to see the immigrant's viewpoint but we must be willing to consider it on a basis of equality with him and I believe this is one of the hardest things in the world for the average American to do. In order to be able to consider with the immigrant his needs the American worker must know him, must know not the immigrant alone, but the racial group, of which he is so intimately a part. We who have lived in so different a social environment can scarcely realize the significance of the close knit community life with which the immigrant becomes identified almost immediately upon his arrival in America. This dominant group life is something that must be worked through, for it binds him to it with innumerable ties of traditional and social heritage which cannot be ignored. So often the American social worker fails to gain the complete confidence of her people because of too little respect for age-old customs brought from a fatherland where a social environment has given the observance of them a peculiar significance. ERS FR hich we have named success will come only to him who is ready to study the with reference to the so different experiences that have made him what he nnot hope to understand him or be understood by him unless we make our hrough the medium of his social heritage, the value and significance of which es must learn to understand and appreciate. Nor can we stop with a knowlcial characteristics and backgrounds. In this day of rapidly developing tic consciousness, the wise American worker bent on success will not confess ice of racial history. lastly, I know from personal experience that the American worker with a ob finds too little time to cultivate the immigrant as friend and neighbor, to in order to get acquainted and maintain friendly relations. More necessary, vious forms of service must fill the worker's days. Yet the result of such visiting between understanding Americans and immigrants, ofttimes lonely, humanely responsive to a sincerity and genuineness of interest that has no ulteother than just friendliness, is bound to be the development of a community g that will show itself in a willingness to accept new ideals and new standards olly natural result of such intercourse. iefly, then, my conclusions are: first, that no matter how excellent the education Lining of the American who would work successfully with immigrants, a knowltechnique alone can never take the place of an intimate knowledge of his needs pacities sympathetically interpreted in the light of his traditional and social ges, his racial characteristics and his racial background, and a lively appreciation intimate relationship between the immigrant's life in his native land and his American life. Second, that the very fact of superior education and culture may ae but one more of the invisible barriers, so patent but so little realized, unless the ican worker is able and willing to get the immigrant's viewpoint, and to consider a basis of equality. Of all things, the immigrant resents most, perhaps, a patronattitude from Americans who are obviously in a position of advantage. Under e circumstances, he is easily put on the defensive by attempts to control his affairs, ake from him a measure of that precious independence he has sacrificed much to in in coming to America. The American worker must be ready to demonstrate a ʼn born of inner conviction in the immigrant's ability to do things for himself and in willingness to co-operate in the attainment of a common goal under the stimulus such a faith in him. He needs a demonstration of such faith to recreate in him a se of personality; to give him a renewed self-respect, both of which have been serisly impaired by his change from the Old World environment to the New. In the new vironment his language, his dress, his customs, his manner of living, even his most ecious ideals, all of which gave him character and standing in his native land, have ade him in America but an object of distrust, often of ridicule. This was the thought the mind of the student who wrote: The American people I have met always have an idea that the foreign people do not know anything out civilization. They think we are ignorant just because we cannot speak the American language, ad because we do things differently. Many of us have lived much better in Europe than we are able to here and just because we were born outside of America doesn't mean that we've never had any education ntil we came here. Third, it is essential that the American worker should know, not only the individual mmigrant, but the racial group of which he is a part. Such knowledge of the native 484 language as the worker can secure will be of the greatest value, not wholly as a means I urge that you demand from our schools of social work more courses of study that shall recognize the need of a very specialized training for work with immigrants; I urge that you do your part in creating a public opinion that shall make impossible the gatling gun method of Americanization which not only defeats the end in view but brings to shame American's once proud boast of being a land of refuge for the oppressed. THE TRAINING AND USE OF NATIONALITY WORKERS Virginia N. Murray, Travelers' Aid, New York In order to intelligently approach the subject of training of nationality workers, we shall want to consider quite briefly and quite generally the philosophy, some of the circumstances and factors, more or less complex, which enter into the immigrant's decision to leave his own country and with which he has to reckon upon his arrival here. Conditions surrounding both emigration and immigration are not at present normal and certainly have not been for the years since the war if we consider the pre-war status as normal. At all times, however, all emigration represents some crisis in the life of the emigrant and his attitude upon coming to America is frequently determined by the type of experience at home which led him to decide to come. There may have been an economic crisis; there may have been a refugee situation, political or otherwise, or it may have been a fugitive problem-one can think of any number of crises in the life of the immigrant at home, particularly in recent years. Details of these conditions have been considered in other sessions of this Conference and need not be discussed here, except to emphasize the fact that the nature of the crisis is a determining factor in the attitude of the immigrant upon arrival. A general understanding of some of these attitudes is to be found in the book by Park and Miller, Old World Traits Transplanted, and gives a comprehensive general picture of the philosophy behind emigration. The factor of attitude is of fundamental importance in any plan for work with the immigrant. Nearly all immigrants have idealized America. They have usually had glowing pictures of it and are quite too often disillusioned by conditions they find here. They find all sorts of unexpected and inconsistent situations and particularly with regard to housing and industrial systems. |