7. Active assistance to State and local affiliated associations in securing needed legislation and in promoting the interests of such associations and the welfare of their members in accordance with the charter and by-laws of this association. 8. Equal salaries for equal service to all teachers of equivalent training, experience, and success; and the promotion of sympathetic cooperation between school authorities and teachers by utilizing under recognized authority and responsible leadership suggestions and advice based upon classroom experience.

9. Cooperation with other organizations and with men and women of intelligence and vision everywhere who recognize that only through education can be solved many of the serious problems confronting our Nation.

10. The National Education Association is committed to a program of service-service to the teachers, service to the profession, service to the Nation. Its supreme purpose is the welfare of the childhood of America.

NATIONAL EDUCATION ASSOCIATION,
Washington, D. C.

Miss WILLIAMS. The next speaker on the program is well prepared to present her own subject. She has been a member of the Council of National Defense; chairman of the committee on Americanization of the National American Woman's Suffrage Association; chairman of the citizenship committee of the National League of Women Voters; chairman of the Americanization department of the Republican State committee, women's division. She now holds the chairmanship of the council of women and children in industry, the State board of labor and industries in Massachusetts. She is chairman of the Americanization division of the Massachusetts League of Women Voters; a member of the legislative committee of the General Federation of Women's Clubs, and vice chairman of the national committee for a department of education. This committee is composed of more than 100 prominent men and women in American life not definitely connected with education, but working for the improvement of public education in this country.

I have the pleasure of presenting Mrs. Frederick P. Bagley, of Massachusetts.

STATEMENT OF MRS. FREDERICK P. BAGLEY, OF BOSTON, MASS.

Mrs. BAGLEY. Mr. Dallinger and members of the committee, I am very glad, indeed, to have this opportunity of meeting you. I have read over the list of your names many times, during the last two months particularly, and I have wondered how you stood on this bill, and wished that I might have the opportunity of meeting you face to face and of knowing you.

The reason that I have had occasion to read this over so often is that I am the chairman of a subcommittee on women's organizations of the national committee for a department of education, and my job for several years has been a sort of clearing house for women's organizations for information on this bill, and when anybody did not know exactly whom else to apply to for information on this or that on this bill they have written to Mrs. Bagley; and that is the reason that I have had letters from every State represented here, and I have had them day by day coming into my home at the rate of more than a dozen, certainly, a day. That is the reason why I am very glad, indeed, to have this opportunity of meeting you.

I want to say in the first place that I fully appreciate the importance of proposing any further extension of legislation or of expense at this time. We are still a war-burdened people. I realize that, and

I think that we have got to think not once or twice, but many times, before we take any steps forward. But I think it is true, is it not, that constantly we have to make a choice between the less important and the more important, and the reason I am here for this bill is that I think it is of such great importance that the lesser, more academic reasons must be laid aside.

Now, my first reason that I am for this bill is on account of the great extent of our country. We have over 100,000,000 people from every race under the sun, and we cover 3,000,000 square miles of territory.

The other thing is that we have never realized until lately, and most of us do not realize it yet, our educational situation. I shall never forget how shocked I was at the discovery that while Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Finland have practically no illiteracy whatever, less than 1 per cent, and Noway, Sweden, Scotland, England, and Ireland have only a little more, the United States has 6 per cent of illiteracy.

Secretary Lane estimated the annual loss to the United States from illiteracy at $826,000,000 a year. This was after careful calculation, when he was in the Department of the Interior.

The Director of the Bureau of Mines states that the removal of illiteracy among miners, who are mostly foreigners, would save annually 1,000 lives and 150,000 injuries. One-half of all the industrial accidents are due to inability to understand danger warnings. True economy certainly would suggest that a step forward in the banishment of illiteracy is of the greatest importance.

You will be told also about our school system; I had always supposed, and boasted when I have been in other countries, that every child in the United States had a fair chance for an education in this country. That is the boast of our public schools. But now what do we find? We find that in nearly every State in the Union there are thousands of children of school age who have practically no educational opportunity, and from the Federal census we learn that in 1920 1,400,000 children of school age did not attend a school of any type from September until January.

My subject for you is Americanization. In 1920 there were 16,784,299 people in the United States, one or both of whose parents were foreign born. There are millions who can not read or write in any language, or speak the English tongue. You know, and I know, by actual observation, that in every American city there are other foreign cities, great segregated districts, where no word of English is spoken, and where every nationality leads the life and carries on the traditions of the home country, as far from our American life as if they had never taken a ship across the Atlantic. According to the plan of the bill, Americanization is not going to be always a problem in this country. It plans, if I read its provisions correctly, to wipe this out in about 10 years.

Now, you are asking all the time, why not let the States do it? I am going to answer that so far as Americanization is concerned, just cross that question right off the list, because already the Federal Government is doing it. Think of the immigrant emerging from the steerage and landing on our shores. It is the Federal Government which gives him his certificate of arrival and opens the gate of the

receiving station through which he emerges to America. When he wishes to become a citizen, his first papers are given him by the Federal authorities under the Department of Labor. Somewhere between the time when he has his first papers and the time when he has his second papers, he must do two things; he must learn English and he must learn something about our Constitution and about our Government and our history. Here is where the Federal Government has already called for the assistance of the State, and we have now the system which is under the Department of Labor, in which the States and the Federal Government are working together, the Federal Government directing the citizenship work, and the public school system carrying on the work..

You say, "If this is all established, why then the Sterling-Reed bill?" The reason is that we have got the plan, but we have not got the means or the material for carrying it out. It is just as if I said, "Why, here, I have a plan for a house; I have been to an architect and I have the plans," and then I feel perfectly contented and felt satisfied, although I had not bought any brick or timber, and had not any workmen, and had not any money with which to build. Now, I have not got a house, have I?

I want to take this question a little concretely to my own State of Massachusetts. Here we have been having a drive for a number of years, and I am proud and happy to say that I have been a part of it and have done the best I could to help it along. In that State we have a total population of 3,852,000. Roughly speaking, two-thirds of our population is either foreign- born of of foreign-born parentage. Our American people, our natives, are only one-third of the total. We have out of these millions, 30,000 foreign born now learning English in our public schools. Up to 1918 we had only 3,000, but we have been making a tremendous drive, and we have worked up to that. But on the citizenship end, out of 450,000 aliens that we have in the State of Massachusetts, we have only 1,061 in the public schools learning citizenship and the necessary things to become naturalized.

Mr. HOLADAY. I did not get that last statement. How many did you say you have there?

Mrs. BAGLEY. We have 450,000 aliens in Massachusetts, and we have about 30,000 in the schools learning English; but we have only a little over 1,000 who are studying citizenship under the system established by the Government, which is true of public schools. The day before I left I talked with Doctor Mahoney, who is the head of our Americanization service in Massachusetts and who has just published, under the Department of the Interior, a bulletin on Americanization, and he tells me that there are only six or seven States that are doing anything at all, practcially along this line, and only here and there in the United States one with as good work as we are doing in Massachusetts.

Mr. DOUGHTON. I understood the speaker to say that they have now 30,000 foreign-born children

Mrs. BAGLEY. Not children.

Mr. FENN. These are mostly adults that you are speaking of, are they not?

Mrs. BAGLEY. Americanization does not concern children. Americanization concerns those who are over 14 years old.

Mr. DOUGHTON. They are not attending the same schools, then, that your home-born people attend; they are attending separate schools?

Mrs. BAGLEY. Oh, no; our foreign born-that is the beauty of it; they all go to the same schools.

Mr. FENN. The adults attend the same schools also?

Mrs. BAGLEY. The adults attend schools of a different type. Sometimes they go to the evening schools; but Doctor Mahoney in his bulletin shows that our best schools are not evening schools; they are Saturday schools, and they are schools gathered in different ways, but they are not the old-fashioned evening schools.

Mr. DOUGHTON. Are these evening schools supported by the State, or are they private schools?

Doctor STRAYER. The evening schools are supported by the State. The schools I am talking about are all supported by the State.

Mr. FENN. Are not some of your private schools supported by the municipalities?

Doctor STRAYER. Yes; some of them are. The reason that we have shot forward so in our work in Massachusetts is because we have a new law which offers to reimburse, for any municipality, half of what is spent for Americanization, and it is so that the State is paying half and the place itself is spending half.

Mr. HOLADAY. May I ask what this Americanization work consists of, outside of and different from the ordinary school work? Mrs. BAGLEY. In the first place, we have to teach the foreign born English, and that is a very difficult thing to do. You may think it is an easy thing to do, and we used to think that it was, and we used to think that any old antiquated teacher that was not good enough to teach anybody else, was good enough to teach the foreign born the English language. We now know that was a complete failure, and we are now developing the same type of teaching English that you yourselves would have now if you were going to learn French. It is the conversational method. That is a part of it.

Then the other part is to know certain things about the Constitution and about our history, and what we are trying to do is to decide upon what we shall expect of a foreign-born man; how much we shall expect him to know about our country, and our form of Government. Mr. HOLADAY. In this serious situation that you have, have you ever considered the question of restricting immigration or stopping it entirely for a period of time?

Mrs. BAGLEY. That is another question, and of course there is no one of us who has not considered it. I suppose I can not speak for Massachusetts at all, I can only speak for myself, but I hope there may be restriction of immigration.

What

Mr. FENN. There is a restriction of immigration now. effect has the restrictive immigration bill passed at the last Congress had in restricting the number of these foreign-born people who desire education in Massachusetts? Has that been taken into consideration at all?

Mrs. BAGLEY. Yes.

Mr. FENN. I see these figures are given here; I see there is an appropriation of $7,500,000 for Americanization.

Mrs. BAGLEY. Yes.

Mr. FENN. On what is that figure based, that $7,500,000?

Mrs. BAGLEY. You must remember that our population stays foreign born generation after generation.

Mr. FENN. Yes; but it was being added to year after year before the restrictive immigration bill was passed. I live in a State that has as large a foreign-born population as yours has, perhaps more in proportion to the size of the population of the State. What I wanted to ask you is, what is this figure of $7,500,000 for Americanization based on?

Mrs. BAGLEY. I understand your question now. That is based on the number of foreign born in the State, and they allow, I think, 55.5 cents for foreign-born person for education-for Americanization. Mr. FENN. When these foreign born are educated, the necessity for further appropriation ceases, does it not?

Mrs. BAGLEY. Yes; and the Americanization problem in our State would, if we could have the allotment, work out in about 10 years, and we would not have any, and we would not have any appropriation for it-would not need it.

MI. FENN. Yes.

Mrs. BAGLEY. This is different from the other provisions of the bill. Mr. HOLADAY. This is based on the supposition that no more would come in?

Mrs. BAGLEY. Well, no; not wholly. That is based on the supposition that by that time we would have done the greater part, the bulk, of our big work, and would have things so organized that the State could take care of what few came in from then on. Now, I want to give you one or two more things.

Mr. REED. I want to ask you one question. I assume that your observations have been the same as my own. I have been intensely interested in Americanization in large industrial towns for the last seven or eight years and perhaps longer. Is it not a fact from your observation that the adult foreigner is absolutely hungry for and aspires to get an education if you furnish the facilities?

Mrs. BAGLEY. There is absolutely no question about it?

Mr. REED. That he desires to learn our language and our ideals and to be an American?

Mrs. BAGLEY. Yes; and everything helps him. If he knows the language he is worth more, he can earn more; and not only that, but he is shut out from certain lines of occupation if he is not an American citizen. And I want to go one step further than that, and say that even these little foreign-born mothers that you think do not want to know English, they do want to know English. I know that, because I went out and recruited right out of the tenement houses. women who did not speak English and did not write, and were really what you might call illiterate, I got them together, and I have never known such appreciation. They came and brought their babies. They held their babies in one arm and learned to write with the other; they stuck right by all through the year. There is no question whatever that the foreign-born people want to know English.

Mr. BACON. It requires more, though, than a knowledge of the English language, to make a good citizen, does it not?

Mrs. BAGLEY. It requires more than that, and of course it is going to be a very difficult thing to prepare those women for citizenship. That is a big work, and it has not yet been fully developed. It is one of the great opportunities, I think, of the organizations of this