"THE HUMAN MELTING POT"

NZ Truth, Issue 978, 23 August 1924, Page 12

"THE HUMAN MELTING POT"

Race-Coi nousness m

America

Libraries' Educational Work.

Uncle Sam has sometimes boasted of his power to assimilate European whites and his refusal to assimilate yellows. Apparently he is not too happy, either m the diet that he accepts or the diet that he refuses. The segregated units of negroes, and those of negrcd blood, live m a sort of insular aloofness. But m many parts of New York, and m other big centres of population, the line between the white racial divisions is almost equally defined. Jew, Italian, Slay, etc., occur m regular strata; and it will be long before these differences will be wiped out by the process known as Americanisation. ' ■ Amerieanisation envisages a continent inhabited by one people. But hundreds ' of thousands of Latin, Slavic, and Hebrew Europeans, and their American- born issue, know only the particular quarter of New York m. which they have been dumped down, and where they reproduce Little Italy, or, a new Czechia, or some other sort of racial hegemony. Their Americanisation is far from complete. Their assimilation has hardly begun. It is claimed . that the American children's libraries are -accomplishing more Americanisation .than eve - the primary schools. And it is here that Miss Joyce Baillie, daughter of the Wellington City Council's chief librarian (Mr. Herbert Baillie), comes into the story. Picture a young girl from New Zealand — almost a? one-color country; m fact, almost a one-race country — finding herself on the staff of a children's section of a library m New York, a city with four or five times New Zealand's total population, a. city, "owned by the Jews, run by the Irish, and populated from all the world." In the libraries an effort is made to direct the thought of the aliens (or those who ha.ye sprung from what was alien stock) on American lines. New Yorkers, says Miss Baillie, seldom leave New York, and some of them never leave their own little quarter of it. The greater the concentration of people, the more localised are its humbler fractions. Their localisation of scope and view is so intense that some children m the tenement areas have never 'seen a cottage home, .and know the- countryside only from books and pictures. They are so shut m by big [ buildings that they have never seen much greater, (and world famous) buildings only' a few blocks distant. Kipling, Empire-poet, has written: "What 'do they know of England who only England know?" And what do they know of the United States (a land-mass of continental dimensions, inhabited by well over a hundred millions) who only know a narrow walledin quarter of New York? So these children go to the libraries to hunt squirrels, admire birds, and climb trees — m thought. The librarian tries to Americanise them, and discovers incidentally how rooted they are m their race-consciousness. The New Zealand girl was impressed with the loyalty of the Jew to Jewry. There is a co-operation of Jew and Irishman; but they are twain. The Jews' Saturday Sabbath (with their Sunday activities) helps to, make New York .appear, to be a seven-days-a-week place. - Miss Baillie gained library experience m Cleveland (Ohio), as well as m New York. Cleveland, the great iron and steel centre, provided opportunity of studying Slavic peoples. The Slavic children are. much slower than the Jewish children. The latter are a bit too wide awake. The attitude that would ordinarily be adopted towards New Zealand children cannot bfc ap-. plied to either the Jewish or the Southern and Eastern European peoples. Care must be exercised m the angle of approach. , v America's half -assimilated children hardly seem to comprehend the spirit of the British Empire. They look for the revenue instinct that obtained under George 111. before it was cured by the American War of Independence. "Why does England want you New Zealanders if you don't pay England taxation?" a well-informed Jewish girl asked the New Zealandpr. The answer evidently missed the mark, because the next question was: "Why do the New Zealanders want England if they don't get/anything out of it?" America teaches much m library method, particularly as regards work among children. To the possibilities m this direction New Zealand; is not properly awake. And* the Capital City is not showing the way. Its library space is too congested to permit any launching out even m directions of proved value.