“Americanization is more than a mere matter of language.  It involves stripping the immigrant of much of what he has inherited from the centuries.  He is the finished product of those centuries.  His speech, his manner, his dress, his ideas along social and political and industrial lines have been fashioned upon the distaff of time.  He lands upon American soil and at once there is a strangeness in the atmosphere that awes him, it is a new world in truth and the newness of it repels him and drives him back upon himself.  The faintest link between the new world and the old is a Godsend to him.  It gives him courage, it robs him of that feeling of aloneness.  It tells him that after all, maybe he is wanted.  In other words it creates an atmosphere of sympathy and understanding.  Now any educator can tell you that this very atmosphere of sympathy is of the very essence of the class room, it’s a condition of education, and Americanization is an education in nationalism.

“And here is where the revolutionary idea of Americanization falls down.  Are you going to prove to the immigrant in one lesson that he is all wrong?  Are you going to undo with a single jerk what it has taken centuries to do?  Are you going to take this man and by a sort of patronizing coercion, yank him out himself and leave him, high and dry—­nowhere?  Or are you going to give him a reasonable time to learn the things of the new world, time to be influenced by the new environment?  It took centuries to make him just what he is.  Can’t you spare him one generation to shed the crust of those centuries?  Can’t you be satisfied with making him the solid groundwork of the citizenship of his children?

“Do we favor Americanization?  By revolution, no; by evolution, yes.  The lasting kind of Americanization comes, not through a quick jerk, but through a long pull.  First make the immigrant feel at home.  Let him get his feet on the ground.  Let him get rid of his suspicions and his distrust and his shyness by finding out the links that bind the new order with the old, the things that make for the broader kind of brotherhood.  Don’t rush him; lay emphasis upon the things that are common; from them he’ll learn confidence, and confidence is a great big step in the transforming of an European immigrant into an American citizen.”