y for the quick
and easy mastery of English. But Americanization is a different
proposition. Trotzky, when he lived in East New York, could speak and
write English fluently, but he was not an American. He had neither
understanding of, nor sympathy with American institutions; and, so,
instead of setting himself to remedy the abuses in our industrial and
political life as a good American citizen would remedy them he became
an anarchist and envisioned to himself a millennium of destruction that
involved the good as well as the evil.

"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 fe