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Updated: June 4, 2025
His position on the main question involved was already sufficiently understood; for in his elsewhere quoted letter of May 17, 1859, he had declared himself against the adoption by Illinois, or any other place where he had a right to oppose it, of the recent Massachusetts constitutional provision restricting foreign-born citizens in the right of suffrage.
It is obvious that suffrage was open to white but barred to negro illiterates. Apparently the only whites debarred under this clause were the illiterate and indigent sons of foreign-born fathers. North Carolina adopted a new suffrage article in 1900 which is much simpler than those just described.
A special analysis of 1915 vital statistics for certain states, in the World Almanac for 1918, shows that foreign-born mothers gave birth to nearly 62 per cent of the children born in Connecticut, nearly 58 per cent in Massachusetts, nearly 33 per cent in Michigan, nearly 58 per cent in Rhode Island, more than 43 per cent in New Hampshire, more than 54 per cent in New York and more than 38 per cent in Pennsylvania.
Foreign-born citizens are not eligible, though this restriction did not include such as were citizens of the United States at the time when the Constitution was adopted. The candidate must have reached the age of thirty-five, and must have been fourteen years a resident of the United States.
But into the best that the foreign-born can retain, America can graft such a wealth of inspiration, so high a national idealism, so great an opportunity for the highest endeavor, as to make him the fortunate man of the earth to-day. He can go where he will; no traditions hamper him; no limitations are set except those within himself.
"And so we have come, even as the foreign-born God tells us, a man and his wife, to believe the Jesus way." Foh-Kyung spoke in a low voice, but his face smiled. Dong-Yung smiled, too, at his open, triumphant declarations. She said over his words to herself, under her breath, so that she would remember them surely when she wanted to call them back to whisper to her heart in the dark of some night.
It may be that the foreign-born, as in my own case, must hold on to some of the ideals and ideas of the land of his birth; it may be that he must develop and mould his character by overcoming the habits resulting from national shortcomings.
Is it any wonder, then, that in this, one of the essentials in life and in all success, America fell short with me, as it is continuing to fall short with every foreign-born who comes to its shores? As a Dutch boy, one of the cardinal truths taught me was that whatever was worth doing was worth doing well: that next to honesty come thoroughness as a factor in success.
But I am not referring to the exceptional instance here and there. I merely ask of the American, interested as he is or should be in the Americanization of the strangers within his gates, how far the public school system, as a whole, urban and rural, adapts itself, with any true efficiency, to the foreign-born child.
In Lynn, Mass., a town chosen for illustration because of the large percentage of factory operatives, it was found that but seven per cent of those arrested were from this class; and this is true of all points where the foreign-born element is not largely in the majority.
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