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umph of his Southern ideas. Despite his adolescent interest in the Congressional Record, he had no early ambition for a Congressional career. Necessity, not ambition, pushed him into his present eminence. It was the necessity that has inspired so many Southerners-the determination of the white element to prevail over the black.

HIS FIGHT ON NEGRO DOMINATION

This struggle assumed a peculiar phase in Mr. Kitchin's district. In the latter 'nineties a faction known locally as the "fusionists" dominated public affairs-and, what was more to the point, filled all the public offices. A combination of Republicans, Populists, and Negroes occupied every position that paid a salary, and even sent a Negro to Congress. Negroes uninterruptedly represented the district from 1880 to 1900. Mr. Claude Kitchin became the leader in a great Caucasian uprising against this coterie. He had already graduated from Wake Forest College, had acquired a comfortable law practice, had married, and started to rear a large family. His ambition was to become, not a political head-liner, but the leader of the Bar in his section, a goal toward which he had already made good progress. His own success, the prominence of his family, the decency and sobriety of his life, his fighting qualities, and the holy enthusiasm he had for white supremacy soon made him the active campaigner in this struggle. The attempt succeeded. Negro domination ended for all time. As already said, there were three Negroes to two white men in the district; that Mr. Kitchin succeeded showed that his methods must at least have been slightly extra-legal. A mathematical count of noses would clearly have left him on the wrong side of the ledger. More than pure mathematics, therefore, decided the election. The present leader of the majority spent part of his time stump speaking, and part nimbly eluding the sheriff, whose pockets were packed with warrants for his arrest. When the campaign ended Mr. Kitchin one day found himself serenely sitting as prisoner in court charged with intimidating voters. The judge, a white Republican, held in his hand a copy of the

Washington Post. This gave the harrowing details of a spirited meeting between Mr. Kitchin and the white Republican teacher of a Negro school. Mr. Kitchin, the correspondent related, had called upon this gentleman in the interest of maintaining public order. The pedagogue's activities were making exceedingly bad blood between white men and black. As a consequence, there was a general fear that race riots might break out on election day. Mr. Mr. Kitchin now informed the learned gentleman that the Democrats would hold him personally responsible for any disturbance. If the Negroes broke loose, the man responsible for their uprising, said Mr. Kitchin-nodding at the school teacher-would probably be lynched. That he might forestall any chance of such blame and such punishment falling upon himself, therefore, Mr. Kitchin advised the school teacher to leave town. The latter took the hint and safely deposited his person in Raleigh until the crisis had passed. This episode, told in great detail in the Washington paper, had led to Mr. Kitchin's arrest-and to his position in the prisoner's pen. It was all a plot of political enemies, of course; still, circumstantial evidence was not lacking.

"Is that a true account of what happened?" asked the unfriendly judge, passing down the newspaper.

"Not quite," replied the culprit. "It says that I met the teacher in 'his house.' Just insert the word 'school' between 'his' and 'house' and the story is as true as gospel. It fills two columns in the newspaper, but that's the only mistake the reporter made."

A QUIET CONGRESSMAN

Nothing in the way of punishment, of course, was visited upon Mr. Kitchin for a little thing like this; the episode in the court room had only one tangible result, and that was to send him to Congress, of which ultimately he was to become the most powerful member. His popularity be came so great that it was unnecessary to make any canvass. Mr. Kitchin spent the campaign in his office at his law books, not deigning even to make a single speech His victory ended the hyphenated Negro

From

Republican régime in his section. 901 Mr. Kitchin has himself represented Halifax County in Washington.

A GENIAL PERSONALITY

This episode might convey the idea that Mr. Kitchin is a Congressman of the rough-shod school. This is not the case. Geniality has impressed Congress as his most important trait. Far from being a noisy talker, the open chamber has really heard little of him. Any one seeking light on Mr. Kitchin's mentality and opinions will get little from a search through the Congressional Record. A few set speeches there are, especially on the tariff, Kitchin's favorite topic; but the amazing revelation is that a man could reach so high a position and yet speak so little. Champ Clark has said that Mr. Kitchin is one of the greatest debaters in Congress; others have paid tribute to his knowledge of public questions, to his cavalrylike prowess in discussion, and to his wit. Most people attribute his failure to speak more frequently to modesty. Mr. Kitchin himself says that he has been affected with a kind of stage fright. Thus he declares that on many occasions he has had the inspiration to get up; many times has he felt himself possessed of information that would have clarified the situation; but fear glued him to his seat. Whenever he has spoken, however, he has had good audiences; his speeches have abounded in facts, logic, and a good natured raillery that has given him the dangerous reputation of being a humorist. With the exception of a speech on Roosevelt-which, in 1904, circulated nearly a million copies the Record contains little to substantiate these statements. Mr. Kitchin assailed President Roosevelt because he had once described Jefferson Davis as a traitor, because, in his "Life of Benton," he had said that "through the Southern character there ran a streak of coarse and brutal barbarism," because he had written disrespectfully of many of his predecessors, and because, among other things, his published writings contained equivocal remarks on lynching that certainly seemed at variance with Colonel Roosevelt's subsequent denunciations of that practice.

For the larger part Mr. Kitchin, oratorically speaking, restrained himself; he was more distinguished as a "cloak room debater" and exercised his influence on legislation in committee. His honesty, intelligence, and sincerity stood uppermost. He did not betray a legislative vice that especially affects his state-a hunger for the Pork Barrel, or, as he calls it, the "Po'k Bar'l." He once voted against a public building bill that granted a post office in his own district. Halifax County contains plenty of creeks, but Mr. Kitchin cannot be prevailed upon to get appropriations to develop them. In this he appears at excellent advantage when compared to his senatorial compeer, Mr. Simmons, who is one of the most diligent pursuers of local appropriations in Congress. Lumber is one of the greatest industries of North Carolina; it testifies to Mr. Kitchin's sincerity that his few speeches were an argument for putting this local industry on the free list. All but two of North Carolina's representatives, of whom Kitchin was one, voted against free lumber.

A DISCIPLE OF BRYAN

Excellent as Mr. Kitchin's record has been, the fact remains that only the peculiarities of the American system have made him the majority leader in the House. He went on Ways and Means in 1911; the retirement or promotion of his Democratic associates have left him the ranking member. No country in which a real parliamentary system exists could present the spectacle we now have at Washington: that of a leader of the dominant forces in the popular branch at variance with the head of the Administration. The change from Underwood to Kitchin is more than a change from a pseudoSoutherner to one of the unadulterated breed; it is a change from an anti-Bryan leader to one who distinctly represents that wing of the party. Mr. Underwood and Mr. Bryan were scarcely on speaking terms. Mr. Bryan had denounced Mr. Underwood as a tool of the Steel Trust of Wall Street; Mr. Underwood had stood up in Congress and called Mr. Bryan a liar, practically in so many words. Temperamentally and by conviction the two men.

disliked and distrusted each other. Mr. Kitchin, on the other hand, has always been a Bryan man. He hates liquor, gambling, and other prevailing vices as ferociously as Bryan does himself. Like Bryan, he is a Prohibitionist, though he does not believe in making this a national issue. More startling still, at the present juncture of affairs, Mr. Kitchin has Mr. Bryan's pacifist enthusiasms. He is, like Mr. Bryan, greatly devoted to arbitration. Like Mr. Bryan, he has been against increasing the Army and Navy.

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HIS VIEWS ON PREPAREDNESS

So far as the break between Mr. Bryan and the President is concerned, Mr. Kitchin now stands on the President's side. He thinks Bryan made a mistake in resigning and that the President adopted the proper attitude toward Germany. However, he does believe or does at this writing that Mr. Wilson has made a great mistake in yielding to the "militarists." An army of 100,000, Mr. Kitchin believes, is large enough for defensive purposes, though he has no particular hostility to volunteer Continentals." But the proposed increase in the Navy rouses his wrath. It is largely the work, he says, of the munition traffickers and the jingoes. On the Navy Mr. Kitchin asserts that he is especially well informed. He has studied it minutely for many years; he served for a time on the Navy committee. This great question has occupied all his thought in the last few months. It has so preyed upon his mind that he has literally lost a great deal of sleep. It is clearly one of those matters of conscience upon which he feels that he must disagree with his chief. The American people, he says, have been deceived. Congressional agitators and interested persons have persuaded the Nation that it is infinitely weaker than it is. In particular we have been led astray about Germany. Mr. Kitchin declares that the American Navy, as at present constituted, is greatly superior to Germany's, and expresses his willingness to prove his statement at any time. The attempt to demonstrate that we are weaker is, he says, a huge conspiracy engineered by people who are guided by unworthy motives. This campaign

has misled the President as well as the people. Mr. Kitchin declares that he is not opposed to an adequate Navy; he is even willing to build against any country except England; but he says that in reality we already stand second. This view explains the circumstance that, while the President's programme for defense was filling the papers, Mr. Kitchin, the spokesman of the Administration in Congress, was giving out interviews opposing it.

HIS INDEPENDENCE OF THE PRESIDENT

This is the question that makes Mr. Kitchin's personality and ideas so important. Mr. Wilson, more than any of his predecessors, has stood for the party leadership of the Executive. This is no new conception with him; it is the idea he preached as a college professor and which he successfully practised as governor of New Jersey. Many Democratic Congressmen have not tamely accepted it. They still have old-fashioned ideas about the separation of executive and legislative functions and the independence of Congress. President Wilson's habit of addressing Congress at Speaker Clark's desk and his custom of "sending for" recalcitrants to discuss legislation have somewhat irritated these men. Mr. Kitchin naturally belongs to this class. He greatly admires Mr. Wilson; "he is one of our six greatest Presidents," he says; although he sat in the chamber in close association with Champ Clark and Oscar Underwood he championed Mr. Wilson's cause at Baltimore from the first. The last session, however, found Mr. Kitchin asserting his independence of the White House. Although the heir-apparent to the leadership, he opposed several of the biggest Wilson policies. He was against repealing the Panama tolls provision, against the Shipping Bill, against the war tax. Mr Burleson, for the Administration, had to dance attendance on Mr. Kitchin, in an attempt to swing him into the Administra tion's camp. Shall we have a Democratic leader fighting a Democratic President this winter? Mr. Wilson and Mr. Kitchin Washington says, have discussed this ques tion in friendly terms, and clearly understand each other. There are certain ques

tions, Mr. Kitchin says, that are matters of principle with him. Upon these he will insist on maintaining his convictions. On all others he will give the President the benefit of the doubt. He accepts the Presidential leadership up to a certain point. That point, he thinks, is defined by the party platform. The President is the leader, even over Congress, so far as carrying out the party will, as expressed in the platform, is concerned. When it comes to new

issues, however, his leadership is not so certain. But Mr. Kitchin is willing to accept the Wilson leadership even in these matters, unless they involve a question which is with him a clear matter of conscience.

These conflicting ideas do not augur well for Democratic harmony. The likelihood, however, is that little will be heard of them after Congress assembles. If Mr. Kitchin opposes, we may be sure of one thingthat he does so from worthy motives.

ARE AMERICANS MORE GERMAN
THAN ENGLISH?

AND ARE GERMAN-AMERICANS MORE GERMAN THAN AMERICAN?-HOW THE
TENACIOUS GERMAN CULTURe (not kultur) has been stEADILY GIVING

WAY TO THE AMERICANIZING INFLUENCE OF THE LIFE AROUND

THE GERMAN IMMIGRANTS IN THE UNITED STATES

BY

JAMES MIDDLETON

I am not deceived as to the balance of opinion among the foreign-born citizens of the United States, but I am in a hurry to have an opportunity to have a line-up and let the men who are thinking first of other countries stand on one side-biblically, it should be the left-and all those that are for America, first, last, and all the time, on the other side. ... I would a great deal rather be beaten than ostracized. I would a great deal rather endure any sort of physical hardship if I might have the affection of my fellow-men. We constantly discipline our fellow-citizens by having an opinion about them. That is the sort of discipline we ought now to administer to everybody who is not to the very core of bis beart an American.-Woodrow Wilson.

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americans. When I refer to byphenated Americans I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all. . . . For an American citizen to vote as a GermanAmerican, an Irish-American, or an English-American is to be a traitor to American institutions, and those hyphenated Americans who terrorize American politicians by threat of the foreign vote are engaged in treason to the American Republic.-Theodore Roosevelt.

P

ROBABLY no question occupies the American mind to-day more than that of the German-American. Americans are seriously asking whether the hyphen performs a purely descriptive function or whether it stands for disloyalty and possible disunion. Is the GermanAmerican a German or an American?

Native patriots refuse to believe that he can be both. In case of difficulties with Germany would his sympathies go to his adopted country or to his Fatherland?

Judged simply on the basis of numbers, the question assumes serious proportions. If our citizens of Germanic origin should solidify into a compact and hostile organization, they could make a formidable

showing. German contributions to our population are very large, though no one knows just how many Germans, or GermanAmericans, or people of immediate or remote German origin now enjoy American citizenship. The materials for an exact statement do not exist. What, first of all, is a German-American? Students of immigration statistics use this term with considerable elasticity. Many limit it merely to American citizens born in Germany; others stretch it to include native Americans one or both of whose parents started life on the other side; still others apply it generally to all Americans who possess a trace of Germanic origin. On this last basis Charles M. Schwab, Henry C. Frick, John Wanamaker, and Charles T. Yerkes, all descendants of the Palatinate Germans who settled in Pennsylvania long before the Revolutionary War-the famous "Pennsylvania Dutch"-are German-Americans. According to the leading writer of this class, Prof. Emil Mannhardt, we have been laboring under a huge delusion concerning the racial origins of this nation. The dominant trait, most people believe, is British. Not at all, says Professor Mannhardt; the American people are primarily Germanic. He finds that, of the 100,000,000 who make up the American people to-day, about 27,000,000 trace their origin to Germany, whereas only 23,000,000 find their racial roots in the British Isles. Despite the fact that the national traits and general modes of thinking and speaking and of social life are English, this country, in its racial origin, according to Professor Mannhardt, is an outpost of the German Empire.

It is hardly necessary to examine this. estimate in detail. The great German statistician, Richard Böckh, has reviewed and disproved Mannhardt's work.

In

1775, Professor Böckh finds, there were 225,000 Germans and their descendants in the American colonies. Between 5,000,000 and 6,000,000 landed here in the nineteenth century. Using the familiar methods of statisticians, Professor Böckh calculates that there are probably 18,000,000 men, women, and children in the United States who can lay claim to German origin, either in whole or in part. There are

several millions whose veins contain nothing but German blood and there are many millions more in whom it is considerably diluted. On the same basis, Professor Böckh finds that America shelters 20,000,000 English and nearly 14,000,000 Scotch and Irish people. Americans whose ancestors spoke English, that is, number about 34,000,000; Americans one or more of whose ancestors spoke German, 18,000ooo. Any one who studies American immigration figures discovers one surprising fact: that is the large part that England and Scotland played in the immigration of the nineteenth century. Current discussions and agitations make few references to this subject. When we think of immigration, we think of ships packed tightly with Germans, Irish, Swedes, Italians, and, in latter days, with Jews and Slavs. In the eighteenth century our population was overwhelmingly Anglo-Saxon in character; that the immigration of the nineteenth century made great additions is a fact we seldom recognize. Yet the Englishmen and Scotchmen who landed here were about as numerous as the Irish, far more numerous than the Scandinavians and Italians, and made a fair second to the Germans. In that period 5,000,000 Germans came, 3,800,000 Irish, 3,000,000 English and Scotch, 1,400,000 Scandinavians, and about 1,000,000 Italians. In addition we received 1,000,000 immigrants from Canada; if we add these to the arrivals from England and Scotland, we have a total of 4,000,000 against 3,800,000 Irish and 5,000,000 Germans. English-speaking immigrants numbered nearly 8,000,000 against 5,000,000 who spoke German. If we add to these the descendants of 4,000,000 English-speaking natives who occupied the Atlantic Coast in Washington's time-and these "native Americans" of a hundred years ago had exceedingly large families-we have reasons enough for the persistence in the United States of the English tongue, English laws, customs, and "culture."

Still, in the larger sense-that larger sense which regards Englishmen themselves as Teutonic-America is a Germanic nation. With the start which the Germanic element has gained, there seems

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