THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
acquaintance with the English language will always be, to a limited extent, of course, a speaking acquaintance, but not a reading acquaintance. It is not the existence of German newspapers that will keep them from reading English newspapers, but it is their inability to read English. German immigrants of education will read English newspapers, but many of them will read German newspapers too, because they find in them things of interest which the English papers do not give them. The young people, as a rule, learn English very quickly and in many instances turn to English journals for their daily reading. On the whole it may be said that the German newspapers rank with the English papers of the same class, according to their environments and their financial resources. Their tone is throughout clean and wholesome. The sensational “yellow” class is almost wholly unknown among them.
The charge that the existence of the German-American press promotes the use of the German language in this country and thus impedes the development of a healthy American patriotism among the population concerned, can be entertained only by those who do not know the German-Americans. I speak from a large personal experience when I say that their love of their new home and their devotion to this republic does not at all depend upon their knowledge of the English language. When not long after my first arrival on American soil I spent some time in the interior of Pennsylvania, I became acquainted there with farmers and inhabitants of little country towns, belonging to the class called “Pennsylvania Dutch,” who, although their ancestors had come to this country generations ago, did not speak English but conversed only in their Pennsylvania Dutch dialect and read only newspapers published partly in German, partly in “Pennsyl-
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