To Study The Immigrant on a Large Scale
The Survey
THE Carnegie Corporation has appointed a committee to study the agencies and processes that affect the fusion of native and foreign-born Americans. Without wishing to take part in the controversy whether further restrictions on immigration are or are not advisable, the corporation desires, it says, as one of its contributions to the war service of the nation, to help in clarifying the problems of Americanization involving those foreign-born who already have made the United States their home, and, if possible, to advance recommendations towards the solution of those problems.
An advisory committee consisting of Theodore Roosevelt, Prof. John Graham Brooks, of Cambridge, and John M. Glenn, director of the Russell Sage Foundation, has been appointed, and Allen T. Burns, director of the Survey Committee of the Cleveland Foundation, has been put in charge of the investigation.
The preliminary program of inquiry divides the general subject into ten sections, for each of which a specialist of national influence in his field will, it is said, be appointed chief investigator. These ten, with the director, will make up the committee of inquiry. The divisions are: schooling of immigrant (adult and juvenile) ; the press and the theater; adjustment of homes and family life; legal protection and correction; care of health; naturalization and political experience; industrial and-economic amalgamation ; treatment of immigrant heritages ; neighborhood agencies and organizations; rural developments. The purpose is to learn in each field the most effective methods.
While it is not expected that the chief investigators will be able to give more than part of their time to these investigations, they will be aided by field workers who will spend some time in each of twelve communities selected for the significance of their developments in a given field. A comparative study of the methods and results will be conducted in the various cities. It is expected that the field work will take about a year.
The Corporation interprets the word Americanization for the purpose of this inquiry in a wide sense, embracing not only efforts to bring the immigrant under the influence of accepted standards of life and conduct, but also those to preserve such native standards as contribute to the welfare of the commonwealth, but are apt to be lost by faulty adjustment to new environmental conditions.
The need for such a study must have been apparent to many of those who attended the recent Americanization conference held by the Department of the Interior in Washington. Its intentions coincide with the sympathetic speech of Secretary Franklin K. Lane, who emphasized the constructive educational task and—in contrast with many thoughtless and sensational charges made by other speakers at the conference against foreign-born citizens—insisted that what was needed was "a determination to deal in a catholic and sympathetic spirit with those who can be led to follow in the way of this nation." The conference, which included more than a dozen governors, appointed a committee to present to Congress a program calling for cooperation by the federal government. state and local communities, and industries employing large numbers of non-English-speaking foreign-born-persons in an intensive and immediate program of Americanization through education.
