LEWIS B. AVERY 195 the work of directly affecting all the civic, social, and political changes necessary in society. But it first of all teaches the working classes the power of combination. Thenceforward it disciplines them, leads them to perform tasks that are possible, and permits the members of any of its affiliated bodies to attempt any form of social experiment which does not imperil the organization as a whole. The spirit of combination has the immediate effects of self-confidence for the democratic elements in the unions, of growth in the loyalty of workingman for workingman, of constant progressive achievement not confined to restricted limits. It is therefore a motive power continuously and variously applicable as the masses move forward and upward in their individual and collective development. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. What statement in the first paragraph reminds you of an oft-quoted phrase used by Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address? 2. What are the main arguments for and against labor unions? 3. What evidence do you find in this selection that Mr.Gompers represents the more conservative element among labor leaders? A NEW HEAVEN* LEWIS B. AVERY I noted an Americanization lesson in home economics the other day. It was a neighborhood in which the parents were largely of foreign birth and where homes needed new and better ideals of home-keeping. We had installed no neighborhood school there. How should the real lesson in home-keeping be gotten over to the girls? The teacher was equal to the need. Miss *From School and Society of October 11, 1919. Brown's little home was selected-a four-room cottage of most modest but immaculate furnishing. She was asked to help in giving this lesson in home-keeping and entered into the plan with joy. A committee of some ten girls was selected to visit and report to the class on home-keeping standards. The selection of the committee was so made as to include some of those who would most need the visit. The sights in this modest home were new to some of these girls. Finished floors and rugs and carpets were examined and discussed with intense interest and costs ascertained. The plainest and cleanest of curtains were on the windows and were carefully inspected as to plan of construction and material. One girl was delighted to have the chance to push the electric light button for the first time and see the lights flash out. A number saw their first vacuum cleaner and operated it. One confided her verdict to her teacher in a whisper-"When I grow up and get married I am going to have a bedroom just like this one." It was impossible to keep the report till the class got together to hear it. It had been given in a dozen enthusiastic conversations before its final formal submission. No equipment set up as a demonstration by the school could so enter the lives of these girls as this little home that has become their ideal, because seemingly at some time attainable. Said one girl, "If I should work and save for four years after I finish school I could furnish a house like this." This was after the cost of things had been discussed. In the ideals of the children lie any hope we may cherish for a better to-morrow. Moreover, the child is the gateway to the homes and the hearts of the parents the world over. The child is one of the great avenues to the Americanization of parents, and as such is used too little by teachers. The teacher too generally feels relieved if she may draw the line at the school door, but a group of great-souled teachers is responding · to the call for Americanization, teachers of talent and power, devoted to this great end-the redemption of our foreign-speaking peoples, the assimilation of our new Americans-the uniting of the America of the past with the America that is to be. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. How can the boys in your school be taught a similar lesson in Americanization? 2. Why was Miss Brown's home selected for the lesson? CITIZENS OF TO-MORROW* E. A. HANLEY What is the spirit of true Americanism? It is the spirit of the Pilgrims in New England, of the Baptists in Rhode Island, of the Quakers in Pennsylvania, of the Catholic settlers in Maryland, and the Huguenots in South Carolina. It is the spirit of Washington and Lincoln. America stands for more than a dollar sign. She represents the fairest ideals and some of the noblest sacrifices of any nation on the face of the earth. She represents opportunity for God and man. It was by a flash of genius that the gifted authoress Mary Antin, in telling the story of her coming to America and her experience here, called it "The Promised Land." All that Judea was to the Jews and the Jews to the world, America may be to us and we may be to our fellow-men. What we need supremely and what we must have to *From Proceedings Indiana State Teachers' Association, October, save us from the peril of our material greatness and to fulfill our mission to the world, is justice and brotherhood. With public spirit and coöperation ruling in civic and industrial relations, America may symbolize her mission to the world by the Goddess of Liberty holding aloft her torch to guide pilgrim exiles from the ends of the earth. True Americanism is nothing less than the spirit of love and service working in the heart of this great nation. This can be done indirectly through the teaching of history, but it would seem that definite instruction must be given in the nature of society and the process of government. The fundamentals of economies, sanitation and political science are not beyond the comprehension of the youth in our high schools. If we are to make our public education a training school for citizenship, the fundamental principles of these subjects could not wholly be omitted. QUESTIONS AND EXERCISES 1. Who were the Huguenots? 2. What is the dollar sign? How was it derived? 3. What is the Goddess of Liberty? THE WORKING OF THE The people of this country have had three supreme questions to settle within the last hundred and thirty years: first, the question of independence of Great Britain; secondly, the question of forming a firm federal union; and thirdly, the question of maintaining that union at whatever cost of blood and treasure. In the *From American Contributions to Civilization. The Century Company. Reprinted by permission. Copyright, 1907, CHARLES W. ELIOT 199 decision of these questions, four generations of men took active part. The first two questions were settled by a population mainly English; but when the third was decided, the foreign admixture was already considerable. That graver or more far-reaching political problems could be presented to any people, it is impossible to imagine. Everybody can now see that in each case the only wise decision was arrived at by the multitude, in spite of difficulties and dangers which many contemporary statesmen and publicists of our own and other lands thought insuperable. It is quite the fashion to laud to the skies the second of these three great achievements of the American democracy; but the creation of the federal union, regarded as a wise determination of a multitude of voters, was certainly not more remarkable than the other two. No government-tyranny or oligarchy, despotic or constitutional-could possibly have made wiser decisions or executed them more resolutely, as the event has proved in each of the three cases mentioned. It is said that democracy is fighting against the best determined and most peremptory of biological laws, namely, the law of heredity, with which law the social structure of monarchical and oligarchical states is in strict conformity. This criticism fails to recognize the distinction between artificial privileges transmissible without regard to inherited virtues or powers, and inheritable virtues or powers transmissible without regard to hereditary privileges. Artificial privileges will be abolished by a democracy; natural, inheritable virtues or powers are as surely transmissible under a democracy as under any other form of government. Families can be made just as enduring in a democratic as in an oligarchic state, if family permanence be desired |