the Italian father; out to the wheat fields west
Peggy Van Braam, “in the Philadelphia Times” : “To Study the ‘Future Citizen’; An Italian priest investigates the problem of the Latin Immigrant”
The Kansas City Times (February 11, 1910) : 10 : link
Grace Van Braam Gray was profiled by A. C. Haeselbarth in The Editor and Publisher (October 11, 1913) : 2568.
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paragraphs are numbered to ease reference and proofing.
- Concurring, although unconsciously, with Zangwill’s poetic idea that America is God’s crucible, ready to melt away all difference of race in making the “citizens of tomorrow,” the Rev. Dr. Giovanni Preziosi has come to this country from Rome to study the problem of the Italian immigrant, and report upon conditions to the Italian government.
- All the prejudices and possibilities these emotional Latin people of the South are understood by him. and he declare that there are unlimited possibilities for their development to this country.
- Himself a deep student of political and social science, he represents the new era of progress, and has arranged to start a branch of the Italian Immmigration Society in this city, in order to look after the Italians who arrive and are filling the congested districts of tne cities with their eager foreign voices and frightened faces.
- “It is this congestion,” says Doctor Preziosi, “that is doing the harm. It not only hampers their own development, but it hampers the state and municipal authorities who are endeavoring to do away with these conditions in the tenement districts.
- “It also prevents healthful environment. For who can give them clean and healthy surroundings as long as they huddle in colonies by themselves?”
- Doctor Preziosi is the accredited representative of the Italian Colonial Institute which was formed to improve the social conditions of Italians emigrating to this and other countries, and which advances the plan of equal distribution of the immigrants as the quickest way to accomplish their ends.
- That the great “melting pot” of our country must in time mold all nations into its own pattern, is the theory ot this reverend Italian father. Just as it is the theory of Israel Zangwill.
- The Immigrant problem is, he declares, the problem of the future ot America. Their development and their health mean the development and health of the future American generations. For this reason, as well as because of a great desire to see his people going forward, instead of looking backward into the past in their own land, he is urging the movement to send the incoming immigrants out to the wheat fields west of the Mississippi.
- Giovanni Preziosi (1881-1945)
“defrocked in 1911, he remained a lifelong adherent of conservative Catholicism,” and a remarkable career as an anti-semite
wikipedia : link - Israel Zangwill (1864-1926), once Zionist, later territorialist
wikipedia : link
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