The De-Englishing of the United States

Feilding Star, Volume XII, Issue 143, 26 May 1891, Page 2

The De-Englishing of the United States

♦ . There is a brief, interesting, and suggestiye article in the Forum in America by Kodney Welch on "The Farmers' Changed Condition," the object of which • is to urge the Goyernment to preserve the constantly diminishing class once known • and honoured as country gentlemen, The operation of economio laws, he main- * tains, has created a class' of absentee landlords, and is filling up the land with a foreign ignorant peasantry. The following passage may well" be taken to " heart by those who regard the new world as the natural inheritance of the Englishspeaking folk. The result of this, is the formation of a distinct peasant class, such as is found m Bavaria and Bohemia. In -entire counti sin Illinois and Wisconsin the English - language is scarcely ever head outside of the large towns. Church services are coni ducted m a foreign tongue, and instruction is given in it in the sohools. The intellectual condition of the people who oocupy farms there is not above that of the lowest class of labourers in our large cities. The townships they inhabit seem like detached portions of central Europe pud down near the- centre' of the new r world. Nominally these men may be r citizens, for town 'politicians have had * them- passed -through the- naturalisation • -'' inili; but they know little and care leb« v about the institutions of the 'country.— « Review t>f Be view*. I -'