t is "Americanization." It is in
many ways an ideal movement. It fully satisfies the passion of the
comfortable classes for uplift, and is a Godsend to the candidate who
wants something to grow fervent about in lieu of a frank facing of
fundamental issues of politics and industry. Above all,
Americanization work gives one the righteous feeling of a defender of
the faith. The epidemic faddist character of much Americanization work
was pointedly stated in a recent article by Simon J. Lubin and
Christina Krysto in "The Survey." They said:

"Every social organization, every religious society, every large
industry, every woman's club has been busy for months mapping out its
own particular program. The study of Americanization has been used to
stimulate interest in organizations which were dying a natural death;
Americanization has been used as a pretext for sudden improvements in
industrial management when the attitude of labor has made sudden
improvements imperative; Americanization has been used to give
employment to social workers out of jobs."

This article further points out the inevitability of innumerable
perversions of Americanization in such an orgy of organization. The
article says on this point:

"Every political party has its hangers-on who, consciously or
unconsciously, discredit the fine principles of that party by their
erroneous expounding of these. Every new phase in industrial progress
has its profiteers--men who capitalize the advanced ideas of their
field for their own interest, regardless of the harm which they bring
to the whole by their methods. Every scientific discovery has its
charlatans who mix enough of the truth with their lies to undermine the
whole truth when their lies become known. Every religion has its false
messiahs, and many a man has been made an unbeliever because he has
followed these too easily and been disappointed too grievously."

It should be said that the profiteers, charlatans, and false messiahs
of Americanization are not, in the main, men and women of bad
intentions so much as they are men and women of half-ideas of
fractional and incomplete conceptions of Americanization. The title of
false messiahs fits them better than either profiteers or charlatans,
for false messiahs are usually profoundly sincere, although profoundly
misguided.

No straight-thinking person disputes the need of a fundamentally sound
program of Americanization, a vast collective effort to