Origins:
Theodore Roosevelt was about to finish his first two-year term as
governor of the state of New York when the Republican Party chose him as
its candidate for vice president in the 1900 national election. The
Republicans were victorious at the ballot box that year, but Roosevelt
held the vice-presidency for less than a year before he was elevated to the White House upon the assassination of President William McKinley on 14 September
1901, thereby becoming the youngest person ever to hold the office of
President of the United States. Roosevelt was elected to a full term as
president in 1904, and among his many notable achievements was his
selection as a Nobel Peace Prize Laureate for his part in the
negotiations leading to the Treaty of Portsmouth that ended the Russo-Japanese War in 1905.
Although Roosevelt did not hold public office again after leaving the
presidency in 1909 (his efforts to regain the White House as a third
party candidate in 1912 proving unsuccessful), he remained active in the
public political sphere. In the waning years of his life, as World War I
raged in Europe and America entered the conflict on the side of the
Allies, he frequently spoke of his belief that immigrants taking up
residence in the U.S. should assimilate into American society as quickly
as possible, learn the English language, eschew hyphenated national
identities (e.g., “Italian-American”) and declare their primary national
allegiance to the United States of America.
On 1 February 1916, for example, Roosevelt advocated measures for
strengthening and ensuring the “loyalty” of American immigrants:
Theodore Roosevelt, speaking at a luncheon given yesterday by Mrs. Vincent
Astor for the National Americanization Committee in the Astor Court
Building, declared that one of the reasons why many German-Americans
have shown greater love for their native land that for their adopted
country is that the German system demands greater loyalty than is
demanded in this country, and a greater contribution to the common
welfare. “And all of you know I am free from a taint of neutrality,” he
added, “so I can say this without suspicion.”
The encouragement of better housing conditions and a compulsion to
learn the English language, Colonel Roosevelt said, would help the
process of Americanization.
“We cannot make the Americanization movement a success,” Colonel
Roosevelt said, “unless we approach it from the economic standpoint. It
is true that governmentally Germany is an autocracy. But there has been a
great deal more industrial freedom there than many of our old
industrial communities. The German Government says we expect you to work
out good results, to get together with the laborer, and yourselves
decide what you are going to pay to the doctors who are to pass upon the
health of the employes, and the amount of damages any employe merits.
The Government insists upon a great amount of self-government by the
people themselves.
“I feel that by insistence upon proper housing conditions we shall
indirectly approach this. I want to see the immigrant know that he has
got to spend a certain amount of his money in decent housing; that he
will not be allowed to live on $2.50 per month board basis.
“Let us say to the immigrant not that we hope he will learn English,
but that he has got to learn it. Let the immigrant who does not learn it
go back. He has got to consider the interest of the United States or he
should not stay here. He must be made to see that his opportunities in
this country depend upon his knowing English and observing American
standards. The employer cannot be permitted to regard him only as an
industrial asset.
“We must in every way possible encourage the immigrant to rise, help
him up, give him a chance to help himself. If we try to carry him he may
well prove not well worth carrying. We must in turn insist upon his
showing the same standard of fealty to this country and to join with us
in raising the level of our common American citizenship.
“If I could I would have the kind of restriction which would not
allow any immigrant to come here unless I was content that his
grandchildren would be fellow-citizens of my grandchildren. They will
not be so if he lives in a boarding house at $2.50 per month with ten
other boarders and contracts tuberculosis and contributes to the next
generation a body of citizens inferior not only morally and spiritually
but also physically.”1
A few months later, Roosevelt expanded on this theme in a series of Memorial Day speeches he delivered in St. Louis:
Moral treason to the United States was charged by Mr. Roosevelt, in an
address delivered before the City Club, against German-Americans who
seek to make their governmental representatives act in the interests of
Germany rather than this country. He characterized the German-American
Alliance as “an anti-American alliance,” but added that he believed that
its members “not only do not represent but scandalously misrepresent”
the great majority of real Americans of German origin.
Using the motto “America for Americans” for all Americans, whether
they were born here or abroad, the former President declared that “the
salvation of our people lies in having a nationalized and unified
America, ready for the tremendous tasks of both war and peace.”
“I appeal to all our citizens,” the colonel said, “no matter from
what land their forefathers came, to keep this ever in mind, and to shun
with scorn and contempt the sinister intriguers and mischiefmakers who
would seek to divide them along lines of creed, or birthplace or of
national origin.”
Col. Roosevelt said he came to St. Louis to speak on Americanism — to
speak of and condemn the use of the hyphen “whenever it represents an
effort to form political parties along racial lines or to bring pressure
to bear on parties and politicians, not for American purposes, but in
the interest of some group of voters of a certain national origin or of
the country from which they or their fathers came.”
He was equally against the native American of the wrong kind and for
the immigrant of the right kind, the former President declared, but the
immigrant who did not become in good faith an American “is out of place”
in the United States. He said each nation should be judged by its
conduct and that the United States should oppose encroachment on its own
rights, whether Germany, England, France or Russia be guilty of
misconduct.
“The effort to keep our citizenship divided against itself,” the
colonel continued, “by the use of the hyphen and along the lines of
national origin is certain to a breed of spirit of bitterness and
prejudice and dislike between great bodies of our citizens. If some
citizens band together as German-Americans or Irish-Americans, then
after a while others are certain to band together as English-Americans
or Scandinavian-Americans, and every such banding together, every
attempt to make for political purposes a German-American alliance or a
Scandinavian-American alliance, means down at the bottom an effort
against the interest of straight-out American citizenship, an effort to
bring into our nation the bitter Old World rivalries amd jealousies and
hatreds.”2
In a Fourth of July speech in 1917, Roosevelt urged the adoption of
linguistic uniformity, including a requirement that all foreign-language
newspapers published in the U.S. should also include English
translations:
Touching on the matter of language, Col. Roosevelt declared that “We
must have in this country but one flag, and for the speech of the people
but one language, the English language. During the present war all
newspapers published in German, or in the speech of any of our foes,
should be required to publish, side by side with the foreign text,
columns in English containing the exact translation of everything said
in the foreign language. Ultimately this should be done with all
newspapers published in foreign languages in this country.”3
Likewise, on 27 May 1918, Roosevelt urged in a speech at Des Moines,
Iowa, that English be the sole language of instruction used in American
schools:
English as the sole language for schools, newspapers and other usage in
this country was urged by Theodore Roosevelt in an address here tonight
under the direction of the National Security League.
[…]
In voicing his approval of the recent proclamation by Gov. Harding, ordering that English be the only medium of instruction in public or private schools in Iowa, Col. Roosevelt said:
“This is a nation — not a polyglot boarding house. There is not room in the country for any 50-50 American, nor can there be but one loyalty — to the Stars and Stripes.”4
The comments quoted at this head of the page are more in the same
vein; excerpts not from (as claimed in the accompanying text) a
statement made by Theodore Roosevelt in 1907 (while he was still
President), but from a letter written shortly before his death in
January 1919, just a few months after the armistice that ended the
fighting in World War I:
NEW YORK, Jan. 6. — What was the last public statement by Col. Roosevelt
was read last night at an “All-American concert” here under the
auspices of the American Defense society, of which he was honorary
president.
“I cannot be with you and so all I can do is to wish you Godspeed,”
it read. “There may be no sagging back in the fight for Americanism
merely because the war is over.
“There are plenty of persons who have already made the assertion that
they believe the American people have a short memory and that they
intend to revive all the foreign associations which more directly
interfere with the complete Americanization of our people. Our principle
in this matter should be absolutely simple.
“In the first place we should insist that if the immigrant who comes
here does in good faith become an American and assimilates himself to
us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with every one else, for it
is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed or
birthplace or origin. But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in
very fact an American and nothing but an American.
“If he tries to keep segregated with men of his own origin and
separated from the rest of America, then he isn’t doing his part as an
American.
“We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes
the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization
just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are
hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English
language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out
as Americans, and American nationality, and not as dwellers in a
polyglot boarding house; and we have room for but one soul [sic]
loyalty, and that is loyalty to the American people.”5
A copy of this letter, obtained from the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, can be viewed here.
Last updated: 23 September 2015
the Court Record with or without a lawyer.)
But!
