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 reported153 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 1919157 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: