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source: Safe Citizenship , or ISSUES
OF THE DAY
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Advantages and Responsibilities of
an American Citizen -I. Advantages.-Our age is indeed a golden age. We are favored as no other people. Our advantages greatly surpass those of the citizen of any other nation of the world. This is clearly seen in our natural facilities, our delight in scientific research, the increased intelligence and quickening of the public mind, the diffusion and popularizing of knowledge through the press, as well as the demand for even a greater dissemination of knowledge among all classes.
2. Responsibilities.-These advantages bring with them corresponding responsibilities. Bound to allegiance on the one hand and entitled to protection on the other,the American citizen is of necessity compelled to inform himself on the principles of government, the progress and development of the nation, including the living issues of the day. Our nation is what we as citizens make it. The citizen can make its future as the full blown Howler of which the present is but the opening bud, or by a selfish neglect of duties he may permit imminent and threatening dangers to thwart the growth, if not to overthrow, the nation whose possibilities were never equaled. Safe citizenship demands a careful study of our country and its people,our government and all the questions of vital interest constantly pressing to the front. He who will not inform himself upon the living issues of the day and interest himself in these subjects so essential to national life, does not deserve the name of citizen, and by his very ignorance and selfishness becomes in fact, if not in intention, an enemy of his own nation. We rightfully boast of the grandeur of our nation, of the achievements of the past, of a promising future, but we cannot make too emphatic the fact that great as are the advantages and possibilities, the dangers are correspondingly great and awful will be the calamity if the citizen fails to realize his responsibility as a member of the body politic.
"England expects every man to do his duty," said Nelson on the eve of a great battle. Our nation can expect nothing less of every individual citizen in the coming conflict with ignorance and vice. Given these conditions in which the citizen realizes his responsibilities and our future is no longer in the scale of doubt.
Duties of an American Citizen.
r. Political Rights.-Every American or foreign-born citizen of the United States has certain political privileges and inalienable rights. In order to sustain a good government every man should exercise his political rights to the best of his knowledge. As every citizen is protected by the government he should not shrink from his duty in giving to the state certain protection whenever he may be called upon to do so. We need better citizenship, more education, and a better knowledge of our system of government. Every man should be able to vote intelligently.
z. Your Duty.-It is your duty as an American citizen to obey the laws, even if they are, in your belief, unjust or unwise. General Grant once shrewdly said that the best way to procure the repeal of an unjust or unwise law was to rigorously enforce it. It is your right to expose the folly or injustice of a law, to demand its repeal, and to try to get a majority to repeal it. But while it remains a law, you are to obey it.
3. Voting at the Polls.-It is the duty of every American citizen to exercise his right to vote at all the primaries and all the elections to which he is eligible. The American people are too indifferent in nominating and supporting men for office. To put up a ticket is too frequently left to a lot of "bummer' politicians, and the masses vote the ticket because it is gotten up by the " bummers " of their party. When selfish and unprincipled politicians control the election, incompetent and unworthy men are put up and.elected to office. Indifference on the part of the people is the curse of American politics. Every citizen should go to the caucuses or primaries and insist upon the nomination of good men, and if incompetent or unworthy men are nominated refuse to support them. Every good citizen should support the best man for the office, regardless of politics, when it becomes a question of fitness, and refuse to vote for a man whom he knows to be unworthy and unqualified to fill the office for which he has been nominated. It is a dangerous thing to vote for a man simply because he has been nominated by a certain party. Let merit and ability be the claim for office.
4. Prompt Execution of the Laws.-It is your duty to insist upon the prompt execution of the laws, to be ready even at much personal inconvenience, to aid in their enforcement, if you are called upon by proper officers; and to resent with indignation- every sign of lawlessness and violence, and require its vigorous suppression. For instance, if a riot should break out in a city where you are living, you are not to go out of town until it subsides, but you are to hasten to offer your support to the authorities, and to require their prompt and decisive action to restore order
5 Grand or Petit.-It is your duty-if you are a voter -to serve, when called on, as a grand or petit juror; and this at even great inconvenience.
6. Act Generally with Some Political Party.-It is your duty to act generally with some political party and to exert your influence upon its leaders to induce the nomination of capable and honest men for office. And it is your duty, if your party nominates a bad man, to vote against him and thus keep the public and general good before your eyes, and set an example of true public spirit before your fellows.
7. Watch the Conduct of Public Officers.-It is your duty to watch the conduct of public officers, to see that they perform their duties and observe their constitutional limitations and if they do not, then it is your duty to help to expose them and at the election to punish them. For it is only by such vigilance that a nation can preserve its liberties unimpaired. These are your political duties, which you cannot neglect or abjure without disgrace to yourself and harm to the country.
8. Party Government.-As party government is inevitable and necessary in a free country, it is the duty of every citizen to attend the primary meetings of the party with which he acts. If honest and intelligent men neglect the primaries, they thereby hand the control of their party over to bad men. It is important to the welfare of the country that all the political parties shall be controlled by wise and honest men; for a corrupt or debased minority can offer but a feeble opposition to the majority, and in reality helps to strengthen and to an:mate the majority whereas a powerful, honest and intelligent minority compels the majority to govern carefully and honestly. The demoralization of the party which is in the minority may thus, as you see, bring calamities on a country.
Political Training for the Citizen.
I. Duty of Citizens.-Since any male citizen of suitable age may become a legislator or an officeholder, while every citizen has an appreciable influence upon the political life of his neighborhood, it is evident that every citizen of the United States ought to have some intelligent comprehension not only of the essential features of our own government, national, state and local or municipal, but also of the fundamental principles of political rights, political economy and political science.
z. Citizens from Two Sources.-We get our supply of new citizens from two sources-immigration and the growing up of American children. We are all keenly alive to the dangers that threaten our government when ignorant and immoral foreigners are made citizens by hundreds and thousands. Our United States laws are explicit in requiring evidence of fitness for citizenship before naturalization papers are granted. " It shall be made to appear to the satisfaction of the court admitting such alien, (a) that he has resided in the United States at least five years, (b) and that during that time he has behaved as a man of good moral character, (c) attached to the principles of the constitution of the United States, (d) and well disposed to the peace and good order of the same." That is the law,
Making Citizens of Foreigners.-How safe we should be from the pernicious effect of much ignorance and vicious anarchism which now trouble us if committees of good citizens had attended at our courts of naturalization and had forced home upon the consciousness of all officers of the law who have power to grant naturalization papers, the will of the people, that this wise law be obeyed! But in practice these provisions of the law are a dead letter, as any one knows who has sat for a few hours in any of our large cities and has seen the purely mechanical method of making American citizens out of foreigners-ignorant, reckless, too often manifestly immoral and besotted. The process is " mechanical," because it is usually conducted in the interest of one or the other of the party " machines." By its agents the machine brings these undeserving candidates to the court and pays their way through, that it may " vote them " afterward. The shame and the danger to our government are manifest.
4. Obligations of State and School.-But the great majority of our citizens come to us not from the immigrant steamships, but from the public schools! What are our schools doing to provide the United States with citizens intelligent enough upon matters political and patriotic enough to secure the permanent success of our form of government "by the people, for the people?"
5. Obligation of the State.-The obligation of the state to maintain the school we hear often enough emphasized. But what of the obligation of the school to support the state by using all right means to train good citizens as frankly recognized and as fairly met ? In our school system, is there a large enough place made for those studies which promote intelligent patriotism, voluntary obedience to law, and public spirited interest in public affairs?
6. Germany's Admirable Plan.-In Germany it became a fundamental maxim of state policy a century ago "what you would have come out in the life of a nation you must put into the schools and the universities." The wonderful vigor of the national life of Germany in these last decades is directly traceable to her observance of this law of self preservation applied by the state to Germany's educational system, in which patriotism is steadily and systematically inculcated, and in the fitting of young men for the proper discharge of public duties has an important place.
7. Patriotism -the Strength of a Nation.-Of our forms of government, as of everything else that is precious in life it is true that "if we would preserve it we must love it." And intelligent study of the underlying principles of government will stimulate a just pride in our own form of government and will furnish a rational basis and a sure support for that loyal spirit of true patriotism which is the strength of a nation.
8. The Principles of Good Citizenship.-All colleges which deserve the name now furnish full instruction in such themes. But important as is the influence of liberally educated men upon the life of America, it is but a small percentage of our voters who in their school studies reach the college course, or even the high school. It is most important that all citizens, girls and boys alike in all our schools should have elementary instruction in the principles of good citizenship. It is the mothers of our boys and the early school life of our boys that largely determine the life bias toward good citizenship or bad citizenship for the great mass of our voters.
9. Value of Good Mothers.-An intelligent, public-spirited mother is almost by necessity the mother of patriotic sons and daughters. Given good mothers in this respect and good sons follow. To the ambitious mother who asked the witty English divine "how she could make sure that her son should one day become a bishop," he replied, " first get him born right." This goes to the root of the matter. And the next step, that we may have as many boys as possible early trained in the principles and the spirit of good citizenship, is to see that mothers, sisters and teachers are intelligently awake to the responsibility of residence among a self-governing people. The girls and the women of our country should be (as we believe many of them are) intelligent patriots, with clear knowledge and sound convictions upon matters of public interest in the state.
IO. School Life of the Boy.-In his school life the conditions are so essentially different from those of his home life that the boy virtually begins his social life when he enters school. At home in the family love self-denial was the law. In the school, as in the state, consideration of justice, of equity, of impartiality, must have the first place. .' What relations with others, my equals,are possible for me?" is the question the schoolboy is practically answering, day by day, whether or not he puts it into words. The way he carries himself among his schoolmates, the standards of honor and of behavior which he accepts and helps to form will go with him through life. The school by its tone and spirit, as well as by its studies, determines in no slight degree the nature of those relations with his fellows-relations just and harmonious, or selfish and discordant-which are to make or mar his life as man and citizen.
Responsibility of the Teacher.-Teachers with whom rests the responsibility of fixing these standards in school life, will not train their pupils intelligently for the duties and responsibilities of citizenship unless they have themselves given time and attention and loving thought to the principles of sound government and to the demands which popular government, if it succeeds, must constantly make upon the citizen for moral thoughtfulness, self-control and public spirit. The study of the history of our country, with emphasis upon shining examples of patriotism and disinterested goodness; patriotic songs in the school room; patriotic selections for reading and declamation, these help to form the true spirit and tone in the school. But more than this is needed.
12. Begin to Teach the Citizen Early.-There should be in all our schools (and in a " grade " not so far advanced that most children leave school before they reach it) simple clear, convincing teaching of the elementary principles of government; of the purpose and design of law end government; of the ultimate foundation of all government upon justice, equity, righteousness, upon the moral law, and of the supreme authority of that law over majorities as well as minorities, however " free " the form of government may be Every young citizen should early be taught that a majority has a right to do what it pleases only when it pleases to do what is right. Even in his early school days every future citizen should learn to feel the solemn responsibility which rests upon every citizen of a free state to govern himself thoughtfully, voluntarily and strictly.
13. Duty of Americans.-But whatever may be done or left undone by our schools, let Americans see to it that in the great system of public schools which is so closely connected with our national life there be early introduced, "steadily pursued and strongly emphasized, such studies as tend directly to make moral, intelligent, loyal citizens, who understand and love not only their rights but also their duties as citizens of the United States. Our highest interests depend upon this. Then only can government by the people be carried on with safety to the people. If as is universally conceded, "Salus populi lex supreme,"-"The welfare of the people is the highest law"-then it is wisdom to direct the peaceful policy of national education so as to hold sacred this maxim in moments of crises and manifest danger to the state.
The Young Statesman's opportunities.
I. Political Advantages.-What our country at the present time most needs is more thoroughly honest,competent and educated young men. Our legislatures are made up of men entirely unfit to make laws for the state. Our congressmen seem to lose sight of the principles of patriotism and statesmanship, in their partisan struggle for supremacy and power. In every department of government, both legislative and executive, there is not only room, but a serious need for a higher ideal of statesmanship. Every young man should fit himself not only to become a good citizen who can vote intelligently, but he should prepare himself to assume the responsibilities of office. It is uncertain when he may be called upon to serve the people in some higher capacity than private citizenship. This country is rich in both political and financial opportunities Every young man should become familiar with its past history as well as with the political questions of the day.
2. America is Another Name for Opportunity.-Its whole history appears like a last effort of the Divine Providence on behalf of the human race. To have the age, in which so much has been done, brought to the intellectual conception of mankind as " new and exceptional," was a fine literary effort. But, above all these things to have it once and forever realized, not only by the people here themselves, but by the world that "America was another name for Opportunity," imparted a comprehensive sweep and scope to the idea of how mankind might be benefited by this gift, in this age. It was a message specially designed, not only to stimulate the people of the continent itself, but to notify and guide the rest of the world to an appreciation of the chances of success that awaited them here.