tant facts? Would Spencer's theory of the economy of mental attention apply here?

41. Argumentation.-An argumentative oral composition is more difficult for the average student than an expository or narrative one.

Determine what is the proposition being argued. A term cannot be argued. The proposition must be in the form of a complete, clear sentence. It may or may not be stated in sentence form in the magazine article. If it is not given thus, see if you can phrase a single proposition sentence that will embrace the entire argument. When you have found the proposition, then determine the main points, or contentions, on the writer's side of the question, and the support, or proof, he gives each point. Likewise, if he gives the contentions on the opposite side, get these points and his refutation of them. When you have fixed in mind the proposition and the points supporting the author's side, and the points on the opposite side with their refutation-then you may feel at ease, for you are ready to proceed on solid ground. These main points constitute your mental outline.

In your introductory sentences it is best to state the proposition. You may give the contentions on both sides of the question, but in most cases it is undesirable to do so. On account of the prejudice of your audience, it is advisable first to set forth the facts, and then lead up to the conclusions (your main points) as they arise from these facts. Another objection to giving your main points in the introduction is

that your talk will have the appearance of a formal argument. (For sources from which to get argumentative oral compositions, see the list of magazines in Sec. 40, a.)

Argumentation

1. The Original Article

DOES AMERICANIZATION AMERICANIZE ?*
BY GINO SPERANZA

I

"I have a solemn vow registered in heaven that I will preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." These words, spoken by President Lincoln at a critical moment in the life of the Republic, are, in substance, what the alien repeats when admitted to American citizenship. Imagine, however, what must have been their significance to Abraham Lincoln, and what, at best, they possibly can mean to tens of thousands of "new Americans" when reciting them in the oath of allegiance which makes them our fellow citizens! And yet we wonder why things are not all as they should be to-day, and why we should be obliged to ask ourselves again, as we did half a century ago, how it is that "an instructed and equal people, with freedom in every form, with a government yielding to the touch of a popular will so readily, ever would come to the trial of force against it."

*Reprinted by special permission of the Editors of the Atlantic Monthly; from the Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 125, page 263.

Of the causes behind the existing unrest this paper will attempt to deal with only one phase-our attitude and policy toward the immigrant as a potential citizen, premising the statement that such attitude and policy have labored under one fundamental error: the failure to distinguish clearly and consistently between the human rights of immigrants and their political rights, between our human duties toward them and our political duties toward our commonwealth. To their human rights and to our human duties toward them we shall refer here only incidentally, dwelling instead upon the study of a policy which has tended, and tends, to grant political rights to a very large number of aliens wholly unprepared for American life, and utterly unqualified for participation in the government.

As we look back, we see that three methods or processes have found favor among us at various times as means of converting the alien into an American: naturalization, assimilation, and Americanization. The first, which once was supposed to possess a sort of special sanctifying grace per se, has sunk back in public opinion to its purely legalistic function; the second has been relegated with the melting-pot to the top shelves of social laboratories; while the third is now the object of a nation-wide "drive."

There is something both stirring and touching in the almost religious belief that many Americans held regarding naturalization in the early days of immigration to this country: they honestly and sincerely

relied upon it as an almost instant solvent for changing a German or a Swede into an American; they looked upon it, in their intense patriotism, as a rite with well-nigh sacramental and mystically spiritual effects.

With the decline of the belief in naturalization as an infallible process of transformation, there came into favor, as a spiritual aid to the former, the less legalistic process of assimilation. The method sounded logical and was picturesque and attractive. We all fell under its sway more or less, especially the social workers and the schools of philanthropy. It was, on the whole, a useful movement, not only because it showed the essential inadequacy of naturalization, but especially because it made us realize very vividly the human rights of the alien in our midst and our indifference to such rights..

The war, which passed like a steamroller over numberless favorite and popular theories, served also to show the limitations of assimilation as we had attempted to develop it and the strength of alien nationalism, even-and indeed especially--in what we had hopefully considered safe and "desirable" North European stock.

II

The ancient problem being still with us, and looming large on the background of present-day labor unrest, American optimism promptly has come to the rescue with a new and sure remedy-Americanization.

It is part of our enthusiastic idealism, part of our "habit of practical performance," to wish to correct every trouble and right every wrong quickly; and, in order to do it quickly, we often refuse to see any subtle and intimate complexity in the problems which confront us, but cheerfully and rather naively "simplify" them and reduce them to "essentials," which can be, as it were, surgically treated with ease and precision.

But there are problems and processes so obscure and complex in their causes, so slow, intricate, and subtle in their development and ramifications, as to be refractory to any simplification and impossible of any accelerated or swift solution. One of these is Americanization, which, like every essential and effective change of nationality, involves two distinct processes and two vital decisions in a man's life: a divesting one's self of a deep-rooted patrimony of ideas, sentiments, traditions, and interests, and an honest and whole-hearted acceptance of, and a participation in, an entirely new set of ideas, sentiments, traditions, and interests.

In order to grasp the difficulties in the way of real, and, therefore, of the only worth-while Americanization, let us consider the processes involved in the reversal of such conversion. Think how suspicious we are of any instance of de-Americanization; how suspect, for instance, to the popular mind is the Anglicization, not only of a Waldorf Astor, but even of a Henry James, and, generally, how taboo is the