Americanization in Connecticut - The Dark Side

Americanization Nationally

As the war began, the Wilson administration took steps to shore up public opinion and national unity. Americanization work was central to this effort. President Wilson addressed this issue in addressing Congress concerning the upcoming war. Wilson said:

There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out. The hand of our power should close over them at once.

The work of Americanization thus went beyond efforts to engage with the foreign-born and to assimilate them into American society. Concern that some foreign-born would affirmatively be opposed to America’s policies and positions led to concerted efforts to identify such individuals and deal with them appropriately.

Connecticut

And so it was in Connecticut. From the very beginning of the war effort and throughout the war, Governor Holcomb was concerned over the possibility of seditious acts. Thus, while one purpose of the comprehensive census undertaken early in 1917 was to identify all resources available for the war effort, Holcomb also viewed the census as an opportunity to gather intelligence about the foreign-born population.

Recognition of the dual tasks facing the Council’s Committee on Foreign Born Population – to address the role of the foreign born during the war crisis and the longer term process of patriotic education – is found in its Statement of Purpose:   

To promote among the foreign born a better understanding of and appreciation of America, its opportunities, its history, its ideals and its call to citizenship, and to service particularly in the present crisis, to combat all influences and tendencies of an unpatriotic, seditious or treasonable nature and to make clear the destruction between liberty and license.

Moreover, in the same April 25, 1918 proclamation that starting July 1 of that year, instruction in all Connecticut schools would be in English only, Governor Holcomb also ordered that “no alien enemy shall be employed as teacher or instructor in our public or private schools.”

Holcomb’s attitude towards immigrant loyalty was affected by the knowledge that approximately 54 percent of the nation’s arms and munitions were being produced in Connecticut. And he was no doubt influenced as will by a series of suspicious fires, in Hartford, New Britain and other cities, in the early months of 1917, as well as by inflammatory newspaper reporting of these incidents. Bruce Fraser, who served as Executive Director of the Connecticut Humanities Council for over a quarter of a century, said that these fires “marked the beginning in Connecticut of a strikingly rapid slide from complacency to near hysteria ….”, evidenced by apprehensive citizens’ letters flooding into Holcomb’s office.(Bruce Fraser, Yankees at War, page 102)

Council of Defense's War Bulletin No. 2 (Russian)

Following President Wilson’s war message to Congress, the Connecticut Council’s Department of Publicity distributed a series of pamphlets primarily addressed to the foreign born. War Bulletin No. 1, “Suggestions and Requirements for Enemy Aliens”, which was printed in English, Polish, Italian, German, Russian, Lithuanian and Hungarian, outlined federal regulations regarding sedition, possession of firearms, travel restrictions, etc. War Bulletin No. 2, “Information for Citizens and Aliens,” which was printed in the same languages defined treason, conspiracy, and sedition and described the penalties for these acts.