THE GERMAN-AMERICAN.

Northern Advocate, 21 April 1915, Page 2

THE GERMAN-AMERICAN.

A DECLINING INFLUENCE.

THIRD GENERATION PLAIN

AMERICAN

There are some 18,000,000 of citizens in the United States who ary known as German-Americans (says the New York correspondent of an English exchange). , The Press of this picturesque country refers to them as "the hyphenated ones"' They are all sorts and conditions. The large majority are men and women of the second generation of German immigrants who came to the United States to escape the rigours of the very militarism which their sons now uphold so vigorously. It is a curious mix-up. The second generation, cited above, has produced a third generation which, in its turn, is emphatically anti-German. Thus you may meet in the street Mr Schlappenhauer, of Hoboken, New Jersey, whose father was born at Breslau, and he will tell you, with forefinger dangerously near your eye by way of emphasis, that "We must be careful j about our neutrality. Germany is right. .1 hope she will beat those piratical Britishers. They made the war, and we German-Americans will not permit the President," etc. Then, ten minutes later you meet young Schlappenhauer, of the third generation, and he will say, "Aw, the old man is bughouse (dotty) on that German subject. I'm American I am, and I want to see that old Kaiser get it in the neck good and hard.'' TWO GENERATIONS. That is the tragedy of the hyphenated ones. They cannot run more than two generations, after which their progeny becomes absorbed into the great American maelstrom. They cling to their German names, but are careful to explain at every turn that they are not Germans, either in sympathy or nationality. The great flood of immigration to the United States! ceased . a-quarter of a century ago, Germany began to give up agriculture for manufacture, and thus we may ex- 1 pect in another 25 years the final flickering out of the German-Ameri-can as an entity. At the present time, however, they exert a powerful influence, particularly in the Middle West, in great towns like Cincinnati, St. Louis, Chicago, Omaha, and Milwaukee. Fo»----instance, St. Louis and Milwaukee are preponderantly German in sentiment. Milwaukee has a population of something like half a million inhabitants Quite two-thirds of these are hyphenAnother large slice is slay. The American, of English descent comes limping far -,in the rear. Ths Germans began to pour into the Middle West in the fifties. They stopped coming in the eighties. WEAKENING POWER Up to the latter time Cincinnati, St. Louis, and Milwaukee/were like German towns. Every one spoke German. If you went into a shop in Milwaukee' 30 years ago the chaaces were that you were first addressed in German. • So, too, in the tramcars and in public places. There were several daily papers printed exclusively mi German, and they had large circulations, exerting a powerful influence on politics. They upheld German nationalism, preacned German ideas, l fostered German literature' Underlying it all was the commercial idea, for it was to the interest of these papers to keep the German language inviolate against the time when the new generations shonM b3Come ; wholly Americanised. . That, time is coming. They speak English now in Milwaukee and St. Louis. The third generation is actually ashamed of being "Dutch." It rejects the German -newjspapers, which dwindle in circulation from year to year. The more the grip of the Kaiser is relaxed the more energetic is the campaign for "Deutschthum" on . the part of the.German newspapers, and to this feeling of weakening power must be ascribed. the viqlence of such persons as 'Congressman Bartholdt, of St. Louis, and Mr Hermann Ridder, the proprietor of the New York "Staats Zeitung." REAL NEUTRALITY. Mr Ridder himself is a second generation hyphenate. He inherited the paper founded by a revolutionary refugee of 1848, one Oswald Offenderfer, who profited immensely from the German influx of that time, made a great success of his paper, aud died a millionaire. The "Staats Zeitung" is no longer the \power it was, but Herr Dernburg and Count John Bernstorff have whipped it baclr into the limelight, and to-day it is the leader of the millions of citizens woo live on memories of their fathers' tales, and fondly believe that they are upholding the ideals of '48 for which '" the Germans fought and from which they fled to a free country.

The descendants of those Germans who came to America before the revolution of '48—and there are thousands of them—take no interest whatever in the new cabal. They are not hyphenated. Thus, I have just met a man with a German name whose fore fathers came to America five generations ago, and he repeated what has now become a national phrase. He said: : "I'm neutral, as every American should be. I'm so neutral that I don't .care a damn who licks the Kaiser." C.R.B.