.

I now tried to find out what a vote actually meant. It must be
recalled that I was only twenty-one years old, with scant education,
and with no civic agency offering me the information I was seeking. I
went to the headquarters of each of the political parties and put my
query. I was regarded with puzzled looks.

"What does it mean to vote?" asked one chairman. "Why, on Election Day
you go up to the ballot-box and put your ballot in, and that's all
there is to it."

But I knew very well that that was not all there was to it, and was
determined to find out the significance of the franchise. I met with
dense ignorance on every hand. I went to the Brooklyn Library, and was
frankly told by the librarian that he did not know of a book that would
tell me what I wanted to know. This was in 1884.

As the campaign increased in intensity, I found myself a desired person
in the eyes of the local campaign managers, but not one of them could
tell me the significance and meaning of the privilege I was for the
first time to exercise.

Finally, I spent an evening with Seth Low, and, of course, got the
desired information.

But fancy the quest I had been compelled to make to acquire the simple
information that should have been placed in my hands or made readily
accessible to me. And how many foreign-born would take equal pains to
ascertain what I was determined to find out?

Surely America fell short here at the moment most sacred to me: that of
my first vote!

Is it any easier to-day for the foreign citizen to acquire this
information when he approaches his first vote? I wonder! Not that I
do not believe there are agencies for this purpose. You know there
are, and so do I. But how about the foreign-born? Does he know it?
Is it not perhaps like the owner of the bulldog who assured the friend
calling on him that it never attacked friends of the family? "Yes,"
said the friend, "that's all right. You know and I know that I am a
friend of the family; but does the dog know?"

Is it to-day made known to the foreign-born, about to exercise his
privilege of suffrage for the first time, where he can be told what
that privilege means: is the means to know made readily accessible to
him: is it, in fact, as it should be, brought to him?

It was not to me; is it to him?

One fundamental trouble with the present desire for Americanization is
that the American is anxious to Americanize two classes--if he is a
reformer,