lack of respect
for those in authority makes upon the foreign-born mind. It is
difficult for the foreigner to square up the arrest and deportation of
a man who, through an incendiary address, seeks to overthrow
governmental authority, with the ignoring of an expression of exactly
the same sentiments by the editor of his next morning's newspaper. In
other words, the man who writes is immune, but the man who reads,
imbibes, and translates the editor's words into action is immediately
marked as a culprit, and America will not harbor him. But why harbor
the original cause? Is the man who speaks with type less dangerous
than he who speaks with his mouth or with a bomb?

At the most vital part of my life, when I was to become an American
citizen and exercise the right of suffrage, America fell entirely
short. It reached out not even the suggestion of a hand.

When the Presidential Conventions had been held in the year I reached
my legal majority, and I knew I could vote, I endeavored to find out
whether, being foreign-born, I was entitled to the suffrage. No one
could tell me; and not until I had visited six different municipal
departments, being referred from one to another, was it explained that,
through my father's naturalization, I became, automatically, as his
son, an American citizen. I decided to read up on the platforms of the
Republican and Democratic parties, but I could not secure copies
anywhere, although a week had passed since they had been adopted in
convention.

I was told the newspapers had printed them. It occurred to me there
must be many others besides myself who were anxious to secure the
platforms of the two parties in some more convenient form. With the
eye of necessity ever upon a chance to earn an honest penny, I went to
a newspaper office, cut out from its files the two platforms, had them
printed in a small pocket edition, sold one edition to the American
News Company and another to the News Company controlling the Elevated
Railroad bookstands in New York City, where they sold at ten cents
each. So great was the demand which I had only partially guessed, that
within three weeks I had sold such huge editions of the little books
that I had cleared over a thousand dollars.

But it seemed to me strange that it should depend on a foreign-born
American to supply an eager public with what should have been supplied
through the agency of the political parties or through some educational
source