Chapter XIX: Section 2169: (not a | | | | | | (3)

These demands upon this service and the offices of the clerks
of courts are so great that the government is being severely
criticized for not providing facilities for both the discharged
soldiers and civilian foreign born to take steps toward procuring
their American citizenship to which they are justly entitled.

A GREAT COMPOSITE RECORD OF LOYALTY

Mr. Raymond F. Crist, then Director of Citizenship in the Bureau of Naturalization, pays a well-deserved tribute to the loyalty and the sacrifices of the foreign born, and points to the enhanced responsibility laid upon us by the service these men gave. In his report to the Commissioner of Naturalization,[148] “Concerning Americanization Activities,” Mr. Crist says, in part:

The names upon the roll of honor of the nation that were cabled
back by the American Expeditionary Forces in France give emphatic
testimony to the loyalty of the foreign born. The names on the
rolls represent all European nationalities. So strongly in evidence
were these names that they might well have been the rosters of
the dead and wounded of any or all the European countries. The
percentage of distinctly non-Anglo-Saxon names was exceedingly
high. These lists still give mute testimony to the fact that the
immigrant and the immigrant’s sons have laid down their lives for
the land of their adoption. When the final records are computed
they will undoubtedly show the presence in the military forces
of our nation of the full quota of those of foreign birth.
Their presence in our military and naval forces has worked a
transformation with them. It has created an after-war debt and
obligation upon the United States. The alien-born soldier has
returned to America an educated and transformed individual. He is
an American in all the senses.

Without intention to cavil or quibble about what Mr. Crist says--for what he says is essentially true--it is needful to remember that neither the stress of emotion under which these mass ceremonies at the camps were conducted, nor the act and fact of naturalization itself, nor yet, in any substantial way, the experiences in the army, could make new creatures of these men. They were afterward--they are now, especially in the chill reaction from the exuberance of that excited period--what they were before--“just folks”--good, bad, and indifferent, like the rest of us.

But there is this difference in what it means to them: They were _welcomed_ into citizenship without the heart-breaking, gnat-straining suspicion through which, in normal times, they would have had to go if they went at all. And no politician urged or herded them into voting status and power at any stage of it. For their American citizenship and share in the common sovereignty they are under obligation to nobody. They bought what they got, as it were, with their own blood.

What intellectual preparation or textbook schooling, what weary treading of red-tape labyrinth, what minute inspection by government functionary in zealous search for undotted or uncrossed letters in a seven-year-old document, would better test or attest an alien’s capacity for citizenship, or make his induction safer for Democracy?

Anyway, these men--those not dead on foreign fields as their first, and last, service to the flag--have gone back to their communities with a new status, and, we may hope, with a new sense of their relation to and responsibility for the nation’s welfare. It remains to be seen what use they and the rest of us will make of these new things.

X

THE FOREIGN-BORN WOMAN, HER HOME AND HER CHILDREN, IN AMERICAN POLITICS

The foreign-born woman plays directly in American politics a part somewhat, but not much, more important than that played by snakes in the zoölogy of Ireland. There are several reasons for this besides the fact that hitherto she has shared the legal disabilities common to her sex in the American political scheme--which fact, by itself, has now been largely mitigated by the final ratification of the Nineteenth (Woman Suffrage) Amendment to the Constitution of the United States; though even that applies only to the ballot, and has not removed either the legal or the general traditional limitations and inequities under which women, in most parts of the country, still abide. So far as the ballot is concerned, the American woman, native or naturalized, is now acknowledged to be an individual person.

But the foreign-born woman, if married, is subject to a substantial limitation. She has citizenship only if her husband has it; she derives it, not by virtue of any act or wish or character of her own, but by strict inference from that of her husband. However much she may desire to become an American citizen, she cannot do so unless her husband chooses to become one; however desirable in her own right or fitness, the unfitness of her husband, or his rejection for any other reason, _ipso facto_ excludes _her_. And, _per contra_, however much she might desire to remain a subject or citizen of the country of her birth or former residence, the naturalization of her husband, with or without her consent, even with or without her knowledge, _ipso facto_ inflicts American citizenship upon her. True, this is technically subject to the provision of the law requiring that she must herself be eligible for citizenship; but, as has been stated elsewhere in this volume,[149] there is disagreement among the authorities as to whether this proviso was intended by Congress to apply only to women of those Oriental races, which are ineligible _per se_, or is applicable generally to the individual woman; also, there has been some attempt to hold that the wife is not naturalized by the naturalization of her husband if she continues to reside in the old country. Some judges will not naturalize a man if his wife remains abroad. Generally speaking, however, the construction is that the wife, whoever and wherever she may be, comes into American citizenship willy-nilly with the acceptance of her husband.

More than that, a woman born and residing in another country becomes an American citizen by her marriage with one; the clergyman, or other official, who pronounces them man and wife attests also an automatic and instantaneous change of jurisdiction and allegiance. It works equally the other way about--an American woman, marrying an alien in this country, in the house in which she was born and has lived for twenty years, forthwith, and regardless of any wish of hers in the matter, becomes _instanter_ in the eyes of American law--and generally of international law as well--a citizen or subject of the sovereignty to which her alien husband owes allegiance. It is conceivable, as is elsewhere remarked, that her act in marrying an alien might deprive her of any citizenship at all, since no country can actually confer upon any person citizenship in another. This, however, is academic, since practically everywhere it is fundamental in the law that a married woman’s citizenship goes with that of her husband.

REGARDLESS OF QUALIFICATIONS

By this means she may become a citizen, regardless of her age or minority or moral character, without having resided in this country five years, or any other length of time; without any inquiry as to physical or mental qualification; without taking any oath of allegiance; without necessarily being, or even claiming to be, “well disposed to the peace and good order of the United States” or “attached to the principles of the Constitution.” Coming to this country as an American citizen, she cannot be rejected or deported because of any views she may entertain on any subject, or any conduct on her part, however immoral or otherwise prejudicial it may be deemed. She is a citizen of the United States, entitled to all the rights, privileges, and immunities attached to that exalted state. There has been more than one case in which a woman, about to be deported as immoral, has been able to avoid deportation by marrying a citizen.

UNMARRIED WOMEN HAVE MALE RIGHTS

The unmarried foreign-born woman or widow stands, as far as citizenship is concerned, upon her own feet, and becomes a citizen under the same conditions, and upon the same terms, as if she were a man. She must be of one of the races admissible under the law, must have resided in the United States or within its jurisdiction continuously for the five years next preceding her application, and at least two and not more than seven years before that application must have filed her declaration of intention; she must (unless a dumb person) be able to speak (and, if the court sees fit to require it, also to read and even to write) the English language; she must present her two citizen witnesses, and must satisfy the court that she is not an anarchist or a believer in polygamy, and that she is in all respects fit to become a citizen of the United States, attached to the principles of the Constitution thereof, “and well disposed to the good order and happiness of the same.” She must abjure any former allegiance and renounce any title of nobility which she may have borne.

If she be a widow with children, she must list them in her application, and such of them as are minors will gain their new citizenship with hers. But in order to gain citizenship with her they must be under twenty-one years of age when she is naturalized, and must become residents of this country before they are twenty-one. The child is not a citizen until he becomes a resident.

DANGERS OF “DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP”

The subject of “derivative citizenship” is one that has been much and deservedly on the mind of the Naturalization Bureau, especially since the aspects of citizenship brought to the front by the war came into wider attention. In his report to the Commissioner of Naturalization for the year ending June 30, 1919, Raymond F. Crist, as Director of Citizenship, points out that on the whole the male applicants for citizenship

... are men who have had such opportunities to acquire knowledge
of our language and of our institutions of government, and to
adopt American customs, as their environments permitted. They
have not been passing their lives within the four walls of their
homes; they have had a much greater opportunity for contact with
the American public than the foreign-born women. The husband may
have gone to the public schools of his community and acquired a
practical equipment not only of our language, but of such character
as is attained through what is usually called a “common-school
education.” Because he has acquired these qualifications for
American citizenship he may be admitted. His admission to
citizenship confers a like right upon his wife to exercise the
franchise to-day in those states where suffrage is universal.
To-morrow, when that right is acquired by all, the conferring of
citizenship upon the wife will also enfranchise her.

The man has to pass an increasingly rigid examination; he is _personally_ put through a severe inspection of his antecedents, his character, his personal opinions. His wife becomes a citizen without any examination whatever. The most meticulously particular court, the most painstaking naturalization examiner, cannot prevent her becoming a citizen and a voter without excluding the husband, who may, on his own account, be exceptionally desirable.

The Director of Citizenship goes on to say:

Generally the foreign-born women reside in an atmosphere and an
environment wholly foreign. They have no opportunity, as a rule,
to come into any sort of contact with American thought. They
are as though they had never left their European homelands and
were still in their native cities and towns. However much their
condition of ignorance of our language, customs, or governmental
institutions may be in evidence, they are, nevertheless, clothed
with full American citizenship upon the naturalization of their
husbands. There are approximately 2,000,000 women who will receive
citizenship through the naturalization of their husbands within
the next few years, and the addition of such a large number of
citizens who know nothing whatsoever of their responsibilities
presents a grave problem, and one which should be given the most
attentive consideration by the legislative body. It would seem
to be advisable to have some restrictive measure provided in the
admission to citizenship that would condition the admission of
a married man to the responsibilities of citizenship upon the
qualifying of his wife.

The vital importance of this question of “derivative citizenship” is clear in the statistics gathered by the Americanization Study for the fiscal year 1913-14. Of the 26,284 naturalization petitions covered by that analysis, only 154, or .6 of 1 per cent, were those of women. But more than two-thirds (68.5 per cent) were married, from which it is evident that, in the large majority of these cases, foreign-born women were swept into citizenship by the naturalization of the husband. For less than one in ten of them were married to women born in the United States. And even these American-born women had lost their citizenship through marriage to aliens, regaining it only when their foreign-born husbands became citizens.

CHILDREN OF ALIENS HERE AMERICAN BORN

These statistics bring out also another extremely interesting, and to most people surprising, fact; that is, that the children of our foreign-born citizens largely were born in this country and are therefore, in their own right, American citizens. Probably most persons think of the foreign-born population as coming to this country with a horde of foreign-born children. This appears to be contrary to the facts. As can be seen in Table 56, in the Appendix, four out of five of the petitioners studied had children, and nearly three-quarters of them had native-born children only. One-fifth had foreign-born children only, and the rest had both foreign and native-born. The total number of foreign-born children under twenty-one years of age was 4,843.

“DERIVATIVE CITIZENSHIP” ALMOST EQUALS THE DIRECT

The thing that appears plain and highly significant in these figures is the fact that every 100 certificates of naturalization granted carried into citizenship on the average of 93 _other persons_, of whom 62 were women, virtually regardless of their own qualifications, and 31 boys and girls under twenty-one years of age. The number of unmarried women and widows was altogether negligible. And these 62 women were virtually all foreign born, the proportion of those men having native-born wives, who were thus restored to their birthright citizenship, being only 9.1 per cent. (It should be remarked, however, that the proportion of petitioners having native-born wives varies greatly--from less than 4 per cent in one court to more than 30 per cent in three of the smaller courts.)

Hitherto, no information whatever has been available as to the number of persons carried into citizenship by the naturalization of the father. Assuming, as probably it is safe to do so, that the ratio has generally been maintained in the past, the totals of “derivative citizenship” become portentous. In 1910, the census reported 6,646,817 foreign-born white males over twenty-one years of age. Of these, not quite one-half (3,034,117, or 45.6 per cent) were naturalized. It is not safe to assume that all of the remainder were unnaturalized, because it is not clear that the enumerators were careful to report as naturalized those who, though foreign born, had been automatically carried into citizenship by their father’s naturalization before they were twenty-one. Possibly a part of the relatively large number of cases (11.7 per cent) in which citizenship was not reported may be accounted for by ignorance or doubt as to the status of the father.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE WAS WIDESPREAD

However that may be, it is sufficiently evident that a vast number of mothers, actual or potential, have been accorded full and irrevocable citizenship, and the voting power involved, through the naturalization of their husbands. Of these, the proportion of those to whom it really meant anything, or means anything yet, is small. The danger, as far as the ballot was concerned, was and is inconsiderable. Yet it was potentially large, in a good-sized part of the country. Prior to the ratification of the Woman Suffrage Amendment women already had full or partial suffrage in most of the states, as will be seen in the following table:

TABLE XXXV

YEARS IN WHICH FULL AND PARTIAL SUFFRAGE WAS GRANTED TO WOMEN IN
EACH STATE

====================================================================
FULL | PARTIAL | SCHOOL AND TAX
---------------+------+---------------+------+---------------+------
State | Date | State | Date | State | Date
---------------+------+---------------+------+---------------+------
Wyoming | 1869 | Illinois | 1913 | New Jersey | 1827
Colorado | 1893 | North Dakota | 1917 | Connecticut | 1893
Idaho | 1896 | Nebraska | 1917 | Delaware | 1898
Utah | 1896 | Indiana | 1917 | New Mexico | 1910
Washington | 1910 | Rhode Island | 1917 | |
California | 1911 | Arkansas | 1917 | |
Arizona | 1912 | Vermont | 1917 | |
Kansas | 1912 | Texas | 1918 | |
Oregon | 1912 | Wisconsin | 1919 | |
Alaska | 1913 | Minnesota | 1919 | |
Montana | 1914 | Missouri | 1919 | |
Nevada | 1914 | Maine | 1919 | |
New York | 1917 | Iowa | 1919 | |
Michigan | 1918 | Ohio | 1919 | |
South Dakota | 1918 | | | |
Oklahoma | 1918 | | | |
====================================================================

The ratification of the Suffrage Amendment makes every woman a voter for all purposes, subject only to the provision in the Constitution or statutes of such states as prescribe for those foreign born a residence qualification, as in the cases of New York and Rhode Island. The latter state, for example, provides “that no woman citizen of foreign birth shall be entitled to vote unless she has resided in the United States five years.”

It is to be remembered that the question of citizenship involved many considerations besides the right to vote; it is an exceedingly intricate and important subject, including title to property, the parental relation, etc. It would seem to lie within the powers of individual states to govern by statute the qualifications of voters, by means of a residence or educational standard, personal oath of allegiance, or what not. The only thing they cannot now do under the Constitution of the United States, so far as women are concerned, is to exclude any citizen from the ballot box by reason of sex.[150] But only Congress can grant full citizenship to the foreign-born married woman regardless of that of her husband, and to make such citizenship optional with the wife would occasion much confusion in international law, as well as in domestic matters. It is relatively simple from the point of view of lay ethics and common sense; but by no means so simple as it looks.

APPLICANTS CAME AS YOUNG MARRIED MEN

The elaborate statistics compiled by the Americanization Study from examination of more than 26,000 petitions for naturalization seem to indicate that the great majority of immigrants who subsequently seek citizenship are young married men, accompanied by foreign-born wives; but their children are born in the United States, and are therefore citizens by right of birth. These men do not file their petition for citizenship, in the average case, until they have been in this country more than ten years. In the meantime, their children, who presumably do not wait to be born until their parents have become American citizens, live in homes presided over by alien parents who still cling to the thought, traditions, and customs of the old country; what these children get of the American atmosphere they get in the public schools and in the streets. And it probably is fair to infer, as many students have inferred, that a large measure of the breakdown of home control and discipline, showing in the greater percentage of delinquency among young people of the second generation, is due to this exotic condition of the homes; to the fact that the children are acquiring an American life of their own without the old restraints; they have lost--never had, indeed--something they would have had in old-country homes, and have gained nothing to take its place because the homes are still “foreign.” The children quickly learn “the ropes” of American life; they feel themselves superior to their parents in this respect, and this inevitably undermines the parental authority.[151]

THE MOTHER MUST BE “AMERICANIZED”

The mother is the keystone of the home. Some way must be found to take her into the American life. The citizenship which she gains willy-nilly through the naturalization of her husband, even after she has lived here for ten years, bears no necessary relation to her life or character. As Mr. Crist in the Naturalization Bureau’s report for 1919 implies, she is confined within the four walls of her home, chained to her household routine; and nothing in the ritual or system of naturalization calls upon her to be American in any respect.

The position, reactions, and influences of the foreign-born woman in American social life--any aspect of it, domestic, industrial, political--cannot be intelligently understood or discussed unless and until we cease to think of her as in any sense a peculiar animal, or even a human being different in any fundamental way from other human beings. She lived her life in the old country, grew up from childhood, married, came to this country, bore her children here or before she came here, conducts her home, and participates or fails to participate in all the activities of life, under exactly the same kind of motives and impulses, and with essentially the same kind of results, as would be the case with an American woman with the same antecedents, education, resources, in the same circumstances.

She has, however, an additional handicap, and it is of the utmost importance to bear this handicap in mind in the consideration not only of her place in the general problem of the assimilation of the foreign-born population, but of her possibilities and influence as a potential voter, helping to decide by her ballot the great questions which in America are supposed to be settled at the ballot box.

Consider the native-born woman, of the old stock, as she has actually functioned in the widening field of political activity opening to her with the spread of woman suffrage. It is no wonder, but it is true, that the mass of women thus enfranchised have shown the results of the long-standing belief that “the place of woman is in the home.” She has had no reason for learning, and little opportunity to learn, the things pertaining to political life; she has not understood its problems, grasped the significance of its slogans, or brought her mind to bear upon its significances.

Slowly, very slowly, there has grown up a group, larger and larger in numbers, but still very small in proportion, active and intelligent in the movement for enfranchisement, developing rapidly--perhaps even more rapidly than would have been the case with men--in the intellectual grasp of the subjects involved. But the mass of the American-born, English-speaking women of the country have remained what they were before--devoted mothers, quiet, homekeeping housewives, not only content to leave these matters to their husbands and sons, but more or less bored by “politics” and on the whole somewhat resentful toward the effort to enlist them in the turmoil. A large proportion of them have been, in fact, relatively oblivious to the whole business.

MUST LEARN POLITICS BY POLITICAL ACTIVITY

It is the activity in the political function that both awakens interest and inspires intelligence. Why should a woman, brought up in the old, restricted, domestic tradition, forthwith become a vital, vigorous, political force merely because the ballot is put into her hands? Those who have been in the long fight for suffrage have been thinking, talking, agitating, and when finally their effort came to success they were ready for the new responsibilities and activities; indeed, they often have gone beyond the desire for mere participation in the routine of the layman’s place in ordinary party politics, and have shown distinct tendencies toward not only independence, but what the old-timers would call radicalism, to say nothing of going farther into the ranks of the avowed radicals. A large number of these were active and vociferous in the Progressive party in 1912, and in subsequent years. But the vast bulk of their sisters viewed all this askance or with relative indifference, and indifference decreasing slowly but steadily with the lapse of time. In those states which have had woman suffrage the longest and most completely, the interest and participation of the average native-born woman has been the most general and the most intelligent.

This is, and undoubtedly will continue to be, the case with the foreign-born woman. She will emerge from the status of a household drudge, subject to the taboos of tradition, the circumscribing effects of residence in a foreign land, and the various other kinds of narrowness in her life, just so rapidly and by just so much as she is made aware that it is to her interest to do so, is impelled by influences from without herself, and is taught by political activity itself to realize its practicability and value in the concrete things of her life.

Thus far, only one or two of the foreign racial groups have, as such, exhibited any material response to the political opportunities opening before their women. The outstanding group is that of the Bohemians, who for many years have been, comparatively speaking, awake to both opportunity and duty. They have long been more articulate politically than any others, earlier participating in the movement for woman suffrage, and passing on in the more radical directions. Next have come the Scandinavians, excepting the Swedes, who seem to have been more subject to the old Teutonic conservatism about the “place of woman.”

Generally speaking, and as might be expected under the circumscribing influences of all kinds, the foreign-born woman has epitomized all the spiritual, intellectual, social, and political traditions and heritages with which immigrants come to America. The children, the husband, the working uncles and male cousins, all mix immediately with the civilization of the street, the factory, the shop. They have to learn English with all possible promptness in order “to get along.” They hear the political patter of the street corner, they listen to the soap-box orator, they have to have some sort of relations with the politicians in order to do business of any kind.

But the woman is shut in by the four walls of her home. If she lives, as she mostly does, at the top of long flights of tenement-house stairs, she is too weary to venture out where she may hear of the wider things and doings of the world. She has no clothing in which to go more than a stone’s throw from her door. The routine of her life is pretty much that of a prison.

FEW WOMEN SEEK NATURALIZATION

Or, if she be unmarried, the conditions are little better so far as concerns encouragement to be interested in political affairs. It is only potentially that she is a factor in the political future of the country. The fact that the statistical analysis of the Americanization Study of more than 26,000 naturalization petitions filed in twenty-nine courts in the fiscal year 1913-14 showed only 154 women petitioners indicates that the unmarried foreign-born woman does not excite herself on the subject of the ballot. The real problem of the foreign-born woman, so far as her equipment as a voter is concerned, has reference almost entirely to the vast number of women who are carried into citizenship and potential voting power by the naturalization of their husbands. This is a serious matter.

The Naturalization Bureau makes much of its effort to enlist the interest of the women, by calling their attention to the educational opportunities in the vicinity of their homes; it may be conceded that this has had beneficial results in general, and has been vastly better than the former policy of ignoring the newly made woman citizen; but even giving full value to the claims made by various persons as to the increased interest and response of the wives of naturalized men, the total of actual accomplishment, as against the total of available foreign women is negligible. The plain fact of the matter is that the foreign-born women, naturalized by the act of their husbands in the proportion of more than sixty women to one hundred men, pay just as much attention to the business and to their new opportunities, as might be expected in the circumstances.

During the war it was even the subject of resentment, on the part of the wives of alien enemies, that they were thus forced into American citizenship regardless of their wishes or sympathies. In many instances of the so-called “military naturalization,” elsewhere described,[152] in which the husband had been taken regardless of his personal sympathies, and had become, while in uniform, a citizen under the provisions of the law which waived all questions of length of residence, and to a great extent the other qualifications which would have been insisted upon in ordinary times, the wife was a rampant enemy, aggravated by the conscription of her man--and often also of her grown sons--yet she became automatically a citizen of the United States, regardless of length of residence, without being required even to go through the empty form of an oath of allegiance. Forthwith she was absolved from the necessity of registering as an alien enemy; forthwith she became for all purposes as much an American citizen and as much a voter potentially as any Daughter of the American Revolution!

SOME COURTS NOTICE THE WIVES

Some of the courts--the number of such is steadily increasing--have taken judicial notice of this extraordinary situation, and scrutinize with substantial care the qualifications of the wife. Many of them refuse to naturalize a man whose wife still resides in the old country. In his report to the Commissioner of Naturalization for the fiscal year 1918-19 Mr. Crist, as Director of Citizenship, dwells upon this matter, quoting especially an order issued May 27, 1919, by Judge Gustav Anderson in the Circuit Court for Baker County, Oregon, which goes about as far as the court can go under existing law. The text of the order, so far as this aspect of the question goes, is as follows:

It appearing to the court that ... when married men become citizens
their wives become so also by virtue of the marriage relation, and
that it is therefore important that when a married man becomes a
citizen his wife should also be qualified for the like duties of
citizenship: it is therefore

_Ordered_ that ... such applicant who is a married man is hereby
directed to inform his wife of the foregoing provisions and to
qualify with him for such citizenship, and that, unless for
sufficient cause shown to the court it is otherwise ordered, the
wife of each married man shall attend court with her husband at
the time of the final hearing upon his petition for admission to
citizenship of the United States.

Judge George G. Bingham, in the Circuit Court for Marion County, Oregon, previously, in September, 1918, had issued a similar order, in which he directed that if the petitioner be married he should be accompanied by his wife not only in applying to the school authorities for assistance in preparation, but also in his attendance upon the court.

Similar action in other courts is referred to by Mr. Crist in the same report:

In one judicial district, comprising eight courts of New York
State, the Supreme Court has required that the wife of the
petitioner appear in court with the petitioner at the time of the
final hearing. In other places the question has been considered
and various steps taken. The reports show that some judges have
required a rather complete knowledge of our language and form of
government. Some of the tests have been such as merely to show that
the wife could speak English, knew the name of the President and
the number of years of his term of office, and other elementary
details. Continuances of cases have occurred where dense ignorance
of the English language is demonstrated by simple questions, such
as, “Where do you live?” and, “How many children have you?” Upon
failure to comprehend these questions the conferring of citizenship
has been deferred to a later period.

Of course, in considering the question of the appearance of the
wife some difficulties have been encountered. In numbers of cases
sickness of either the wife or the children, domestic duties at
the hour of the hearing, the necessity for bringing small children
into court or leaving them in the custody of others, represent some
of the difficulties to the easy observance of this requirement
of the courts. In the opinion of one of the judges it is well to
have the women appear in court, if for no other reason than that
it takes them out of their homes and gives them some idea of what
our government in actual operation means. After their experiences
under these circumstances, even though it be accompanied by some
sense of nervousness, the consensus of opinion appears to be that
such a requirement is not only wholesome in its effect, but quite
necessary.

OBSTACLES OF DISTANCE AND EXPENSE

The Director of Citizenship does not mention one of the most serious difficulties in the way of a general practice of this kind, operating in sparsely settled districts; that is, the matter of expense. When a man has to transport himself and his two witnesses anywhere from twenty to two hundred miles, pay not only their cost of transportation, but usually their wages for time lost, to say nothing of his own loss of wages or time, or anything paid as extra compensation to the witnesses, and this _twice within the space of some ninety days_, the necessity of adding the cost of taking also his wife becomes serious if not prohibitive. And in most cases, in city or country alike, a young mother is so tied down by the routine of domestic duties, care of infants, etc., that a considerable absence from home is flatly impossible. If, in addition to this, she has no interest in the matter, or is frankly hostile, it is likely to mean that she will not go to court, and her husband’s petition may be denied for “want of prosecution.”

The Naturalization Bureau and the courts have done all they can under existing law to bring to bear upon the foreign-born woman who will be made a citizen by the naturalization of her husband the influences tending to awaken in her a sense of her opportunity, privileges, and obligations. Strictly speaking, the court has no lawful right to summon a woman from her domestic duties to be a party to her husband’s naturalization. The spirit of the law of substantially all countries from time immemorial has been to regard the citizenship of a woman as merely incidental to that of her husband. There was little or no necessity or reason for her to play any part in the business as an individual. She became American with her man, just as his goods and chattels did. No political activity or responsibility on her part was implied. And she, if she were an American by birth, or a widow Americanized by the citizenship of her deceased husband, would lose her citizenship instanter upon her marriage with an alien here or elsewhere.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE OPENS A NEW ERA

Woman suffrage entirely alters the situation. Now she becomes, at least potentially, a political factor in her own right as an individual. No longer may her fitness, or her probable action as a voter, be in any way assumed from that of her husband. He becomes a citizen by a process presumed to search out his qualifications, and after preparation designed to perfect them. The law has provided hitherto no process by which hers may be adequately ascertained. Yet her vote, her political action in any respect, may aggravate the evil embodied in his by duplicating it; may cancel all the public benefit embodied in his by her opposing action.

Whatever may have been said in the past, it is hard to find any argument adequate on the whole for continuing this antediluvian principle and process. Every adult individual should come into or stay out of voting rights on his own merits, and not otherwise. It may well be argued that even minors as young as sixteen years should not come into citizenship by the act of their parents, so far as concerns their becoming voters at twenty-one, without act of their own.

The voice of naturalizing judges all over the country, who have expressed themselves on this subject, is preponderantly in favor of a radical change in policy. The Naturalization Bureau does not go so far, but stresses what it regards as the need of an educational test of the wife as a condition precedent to the naturalization of the husband. In his report for year ending June 30, 1919, to the Commissioner of Naturalization, Mr. Crist says:

It would seem to be advisable to have some restrictive measure
provided in the admission to citizenship that would condition the
admission of a married man to the responsibilities of citizenship
upon the qualifying of his wife.... Since the local educational
authorities are both willing and anxious to afford these women, as
well as their husbands, every educational facility and opportunity,
a requirement of an educational nature would not seem to be unjust.

This would be pretty drastic, and almost put the husband in the same position that the wife is in now--making _his_ citizenship dependent upon _her_ fitness! The trouble is not that the wives of the naturalized males are ignorant or unfit, but that they are automatically made into voters regardless of their fitness. Why penalize the man? Why not devise a way of enfranchising him, if fit, while withholding the ballot from her, if unfit?

OPINIONS OF NATURALIZING JUDGES

The judges see it more directly. The Americanization Study addressed a questionnaire to all of the naturalizing judges, containing two questions on this subject:

_First_--Would you favor legislation to permit the naturalization
of a married woman in her own name, if personally acceptable,
regardless of the alienage of her husband, or his failure to obtain
or refusal to seek naturalization?

_Second_--Would you favor reserving to a native-born American
woman, if she desired it, the American citizenship which, under the
present law, she sacrifices by marriage to a foreigner?

It is impossible to tabulate the answers, because of the many cases in which the judges advance qualifications preventing their replies from being classed as categorical; but generally it may be said that of 333 replies to the first question, 204, or nearly two-thirds, are in the affirmative, 104 are in the, negative, and 25 are noncommittal, uncertain, or so qualified as to represent doubt.

To the second question, of 364 replies, 220, again not quite two-thirds, are in the affirmative, 127, or almost exactly one-third, in the negative, and 17 noncommittal. Curiously enough, many of those who answer “Yes” to the first question answer “No” to the second, and a large number would condition their affirmative to both questions upon the woman’s permanent domicile in this country. Of those who vote “No” on the second point many express the sentiment:

If an American woman isn’t satisfied to marry an American man, let
her lose her citizenship.

A somewhat conspicuous fact is that, generally speaking, the judges of the East and South are opposed to any change in the law to admit women on their individual responsibility or to save citizenship for American women marrying immigrants, while those of the West generally favor both--especially the former proposal.

“The law looks upon a married couple as _one_,” says a New Jersey
judge, “and I do not think it would be good public policy to split
their nationality.”

“It would introduce great confusion in certain parts of the law,”
objects a Federal judge in New England.

“We favor no such pussy-willow policy,” answers one Ohio judge,
who, by the way, would require “twenty-one years’ continuous
residence,” admit at all “only heads of families with children,”
and generally “make it harder for foreigners to become naturalized.”

“Few men,” objects a judge in Indiana, “would feel right toward
either the government or his wife (_sic_). Few men have reached
that stage of mind where he would be satisfied with such
preference.”

“With the husband of one nationality, and the wife of another, what
would be the nationality of the children?” demands a New Jersey
judge. “What laws would govern the taking of personal property or
the inheritance of real estate? A citizen married woman might have
an alien enemy husband!”

A Federal judge in Maryland dwells upon the physical fact, that the children are a joint product, even though husband and wife are separate individuals. And he seems to think that both of the questions imply the opening of large danger, in respect of the enforcement of Chinese and Japanese exclusion, though he does not say why or how such a peril would arise.

From a Texas judge and many others come warnings that such a policy would give rise to endless domestic friction. An Alabama judge would cut round this by permitting the woman’s declaration of her desire to be or remain an American citizen, notwithstanding the alienage of her husband, to naturalize her minor children.

The general trend of opinion among the judges is to the effect that the institution of woman suffrage has abolished the old idea that the wife must accept her politics from her husband. As one Nebraska judge puts it:

It is an outrage that the status of the wife should be influenced
by that of the husband. A man and wife are two; we long since
departed from the theory that they are one.

650,000 “DERIVATIVE VOTERS” EXTANT

The logic of the situation in which we find ourselves seems inexorable. Whatever the theory upon which a woman takes the nationality of her husband, the fact is that once she has been naturalized and become available as a voter, she is potentially as much a force for good or ill politically as he. However much pains may have been taken to ascertain and certify his fitness, she comes in substantially without examination, without any of the precautions which are at least presumed to protect the ballot box from unfit or unworthy approach.

The Commissioner of Naturalization reported[153] at the end of the year 1918-19, that, during the thirteen years since the enactment of the law of 1906, the total number of certificates of naturalization issued had been 1,079,459. If it be correct to assume that 60 or more women are swept into citizenship with every 100 certificates, this would mean that during those thirteen years something like 650,000 individuals, available as voters wherever woman suffrage prevails (subject to the five-year-residence limitation in certain states), have been automatically made citizens regardless of any fitness or volition of their own. And this says nothing of the additional future voters added through the automatic naturalization of children. In his previous report Commissioner Campbell said:[154]

Since 1906 there have been 861,819 who have been admitted to
citizenship upon direct application, and an equal number of
wives and children have derived citizenship from the act of the
petitioner. Following this average through, and the average has
been higher down to and including the last fiscal year, it will be
seen that about 1,250,000 have had the title conferred upon them
without justifying the nation in any belief that its ability for
self-government has been increased thereby.

LARGELY AN IGNORANT VOTE

We are dealing now, however, chiefly with the question of the married women, mothers and housewives, who are or now have been herded into the mass of voting citizens without volition or substantial interest or appreciation on their part. The children, particularly those under sixteen, may be left to the process of the schools and their general absorption into the life of the streets and the contacts of social life which quickly teach them not only the English language, but some sense of what it means to be American. In no appreciable degree are the adult women subjected to this Americanizing process.

In the vast majority of cases, the potential vote thus added is an uninformed and often ignorant vote. Its characteristics are well summarized in a memorandum prepared by Miss Cornelia Marvin, State Librarian of Oregon, in the course of which she says:

Women are left behind in intelligence by the fathers and children.
They do not learn English, they do not keep up with the other
members of their families who are constantly in touch with
Americans, and there is frequently the tragedy of the mother of
the family who cannot read English and cannot understand the
conversation in English which goes on about her. She is a “back
number,” and as such cannot be an effective citizen.

Women may, and undoubtedly will be, voted in herds, quite
ignorantly, and so will be a menace--if they vote at all. This
cannot be prevented entirely by naturalization, but a woman who has
gone through the naturalization ceremony, who has prepared herself
for the examination, and who has taken the oath of allegiance, will
not be so easy a subject for the unscrupulous.

It is dangerous in war times to have alien enemies who are unknown
as such. During the last year or two there have been cases of
people who were enemies to our country, who swore that they were
naturalized against their wills by the acts of their husbands; that
they never had any desire to become American citizens.

It is inconvenient at present for women not to have their own
certificates of naturalization, as, at the time of registering
for election, and in some other cases, it is necessary to present
evidence of citizenship, and the woman must present her husband’s
certificate of naturalization. The Bureau of Naturalization
proposes that a woman may receive an honorary certificate chiefly
to remedy this.

Not being required to go through the naturalization ceremony
the women miss the opportunity for education, and we miss the
opportunity to stimulate and educate them through the preparation
for the examination, and through the ceremony.

If women should become naturalized through their own acts, they
will prepare for the examination, and they will undoubtedly urge
on backward husbands. Often it would be a great advantage to have
the wife studying for the examination at the same time, as she
ordinarily has more leisure than the husband who, after a hard
working day, needs the stimulus of his wife’s interest in order to
apply himself to the history and laws necessary for him to acquire
before his appearance in court.

Possibly [Miss Marvin adds], if we open the opportunity to foreign
women through the naturalization process, the time will come when
American-born women, arriving at the age when they may vote, will
take the oath and will go through some dignified ceremony which
will impress upon them their responsibility as citizens.

Still remains, regardless of any steps which may be taken in the future, a great mass of woman citizenry, to be reached by some process of education at least designed to awaken these potential voters to a sense of their privileges and their obligations. How may this be done?

POLITICAL INDIFFERENCE NOT PECULIAR TO FOREIGN BORN

Their mere indifference to politics hardly can be urged against them. Our own people are notorious sinners in this respect. The Commissioner of Naturalization repeats ancient history when he says:[155]

Surveys have been made from time to time to ascertain the
participation in the various rights of American citizenship by
native, and foreign-born citizens. In one large city a survey
showed that of the first seven prominent business men approached
none had registered. Of the 80 preachers who were requested to
state whether they had voted or registered, 12 had registered and
6 of them had voted. Among the foreign-born citizens and newly
naturalized 97 had registered and voted.

But these voters were men. Nearly all of the statistics on which generalizations have been based deal with “foreign-born males of voting age.” The statistics of over 26,000 naturalization petitions gathered by the Americanization Study deal almost exclusively with men, save as they show that every ten certificates bring into citizenship more than six married women and more than three minors. With the ratification of the Suffrage Amendment to the Constitution, these six or more married women acquire the ballot. In many states they had it long before that. What about them?

MANY WERE CALLED, BUT FEW RESPONDED

With enthusiasm entirely commendable, the Naturalization Bureau describes its efforts to arouse in the foreign-born seekers after citizenship an interest in the opportunity before them, by notifying each candidate, declarant, or final petitioner, of the school privileges available for him. In the report of the Bureau for 1916, the Commissioner says:[156]

During the year, for the purpose of including the wife in this
citizenship-betterment campaign by the public schools, the bureau
wrote a special letter personally addressed to the wives of 49,094
petitioners and declarants, telling them of the advantages which
would result from their attendance upon the public schools. The
name of each wife was also sent, upon an individual card, to the
public school in the community where the candidate lived. This
inclusion of the wife in the scope of this activity was to enable
her to get some conception of the meaning of an American home and
aid her in establishing it for her family.... Intense interest is
manifested upon the part of these wives and mothers, as in many
instances they bring their babies to the schoolroom and while they
sleep the mothers devote their time to learning to read, speak,
and write our tongue in addition to receiving instruction in the
more domestic subjects. In order to insure extending this influence
to the wife of every declarant the bureau, with the approval of
the department of labor, changed the form of the declaration of
intention so as to require the inclusion of the name of the wife
therein, no provision having been made for her name in the form as
originally prepared. Approximately a quarter of a million women
of foreign allegiance will be thus brought within the province of
the Bureau of Naturalization through the filing of declarations of
intention and petitions for naturalization by their husbands.

Well, this is all very fine as rhetoric and the expression of pious wishes. But what comes of it in reality? An elaborate table in the report for 1919[157] shows that in the fiscal year ended June 30th the names of 108,395 wives of candidates were furnished to the school authorities in cities and towns showing a total population of nearly 35,000,000 people with a “foreign-born white male of voting age” population of more than 4,400,000. And on the next page are tabulated reports of 166 school superintendents as to classes for foreign-born persons in English and citizenship, showing:

TABLE XXXVI

MAXIMUM ENROLLMENT IN CITIZENSHIP AND ENGLISH CLASSES IN THE UNITED
STATES IN 1919

===========================================
Men | 11,854
Women | 2,733
Unclassified | 1,287
----------------------------+----------
Total | 15,874
===========================================

Every bit of it valuable, no doubt. Presumably, also, the complete figures would present a much larger total, but, as an exhibit of goods, it is hardly up to the promises of the show window!

FOREIGN-BORN WOMEN WITHOUT POLITICAL EXPERIENCE

The fact is that the married women of foreign birth, who are made citizens by the naturalization of their husbands, have had, as a whole, not the slightest practical interest in any stage of the business. In the old country from which they came they had, as a rule, no participation in government; the traditions of the society in which the majority of them grew up relegated women to domestic employments, made them subordinate to their husbands in every phase of public life; they have been slow to learn the language here, and the proposal that they go to school in order to fit themselves for a function about which they know nothing and care less meets with little enthusiasm on their part--as the statistics of the Naturalization Bureau plainly show.

The intelligent woman’s advent to politics always has been dreaded by the professional politician. He felt it in his bones that she might not have the political superstitions and docility that have been exhibited by the average male voter; she might ask questions and display initiative; she might remember with an eye to reprisals the things that politicians, legislators, and executives have done to the interests of women in ages past. He grew eloquent about the “place of woman in the home,” the demoralizing atmosphere of the polling place, and so on. And, as for the foreign-born woman, he knew, first, that the foreign-born husband as a rule was opposed to having his wife and daughters meddling in such matters, and second, that all she would do, anyway, would be to duplicate the vote of her husband or father.

THEY ARE GOOD MATERIAL

As has been said, very few of the foreign-born women, made citizens and voters by the naturalization of men, thus far have displayed much interest in politics. Where there has been participation by them, what has been their attitude? There is not much testimony on the subject, but what there is is largely to identical effect.