--- title: Improvement Era description: Monthly periodical of the Mormon church, 1897 onward. This library holds the issues of November 1897 to December 1930. authors: - Hafen, LeRoy collections: - periodicals tags: - magazine - improvement-era periodical: Improvement Era volume: 20 number: 9 published: 1917-07 publisher: Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Associations publisher_place: Salt Lake City language: en type: magazine reference: 'LeRoy Hafen, "The Making of an American," *Improvement Era* 20, no. 9 (July 1917): 818–819.' source: url: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2009unse transcription: Transcribed from the Internet Archive scan of each issue (the item for each issue is named in the issue's own source); unnumbered advertising leaves are omitted, printed page numbers are kept as page markers. identifier: improvementera2009unse start_page: 818 end_page: 819 rights: status: public-domain basis: US publication 1930 or earlier (published 1917-07) source: https://archive.org/details/improvementera2009unse publication_year: 1917 note: The Internet Archive item metadata carries a blanket "© Copyright by Intellectual Reserve, Inc." notice. The library owner judged it inapplicable because this issue was published in 1917, before 1931; a scan-level notice does not restore copyright. --- # The Making of an American The Making of an American' *?rpi "H/T_l_* ~£ A ~~ ~~* 99 By LeRoy Hafen I speak today of a term that is comparatively new in the his- tory of the world. It is an elastic symbol capable of a wealth of meaning. Its definition has not yet been fully written. The part thus far completed is glorious. It is written with a free, bold hand. The scroll upon which it is written has not been blotted. The eraser has never been used. The hand that has written is still writing, and over half of the space alloted re- mains to be filled. The hand I speak of is not the hand of one statesman nor of one man of letters. It is more massive, more complex, and more sure. That hand is composed of the manhood that freed, founded, and fosters this great nation. Yes, the manhood of this nation is writing the definition of the term "American." It is up to us and to succeeding generations to finish the writing. We can make the term mean what we want it to mean. Fellow citizens, we want the term American to signify the fullest and most perfect type of manhood the human race can attain. The making of that ideal American is up to us. It is our opportunity and our destiny. However, it is not the work of a day, but rather the mission of our age. There must be a continuance of the patriotic spirit of '76, with its love of freedom and democracy. We must preserve in all its grandeur the family life as the initial and most funda- mental step in the making of an American. The system of free popular education must be perpetuated and enlarged, and the curriculum fitted to the needs of growing Americans. We must retain the sturdiness of the frontiersmen and acquire the broad- ening effects of a liberal education. Our immigrants must be more thoroughly assimilated and schooled in our ideals. The American type of today is a blend of various national- ities. In the making of an American let us incorporate the lib- erty of the Englishman, the sturdiness of the Scandinavian, the artistic sense of the French, and the efficiency of the German. In our great melting pot let us fuse together the various metals that come to us into an amalgum superior to any of the original ores; and that supreme product of the blast and crucible, God will call an American. No one can be a true American who does not know his "THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN" 819 country's glorious past. It is good to celebrate the anniversary of the promulgation of the Declaration of Independence. It is invigorating to hear and think of the achievements of the fath- ers of our Republic. The reading of the Declaration of Inde- pendence with its glow of freedom and equality of man sends a thrill through the American blood. The daring of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, and the heroic persistence of Valley Forge speak to us with mighty force. The shout of Paul Revere rouses men to their duty. The bursts of patriotism from Patrick Henry, and the now silent voice of the liberty bell, speak alike to the generations that inherit their legacy. It seems that this country was divinely selected as the cradle of liberty and of representative government. As early as 1765 the patriot James Otis said, "The flame of liberty is extinguished in Greece and in Rome, but the light of its glowing embers is still bright and strong on the shores of America." This nation was indeed, as Abraham Lincoln said at Gettysburg, "conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are cre- ated equal." With all our just pride in the achievements of the past we must remember that the past is useless unless it functions for fur- ther progress. Noble ancestors are valuable when they stimulate us to live lives worthy of them. Edward Bulwer Lytton has well said : "Let the past perish, let it sleep forever over the crumbling temples and desolate tombs, if it cannot afford us, from its degraved secrets, a guide for the future. It is nothing to know what we have been, unless it is with a desire of knowing what we ought to be. Our ancestors are mere dust and ashes save when they speak to our posterity; and then their voices resound not from the earth below, but from the heaven above. There is an elo- quen in memory because it is a nurse of hope. There is a sanctity in the past, because of the chronicles it retains, chronicles of the progress of man- kind, stepping stones in civilization, in liberty, and in knowledge. Our fatb. ers forbid us to recede, they teach us what is our rightful heritage, they bid us reclaim, they bid us augment that heritage, preserve their virtue, and avoid their errors. These are the true uses of the past. Like some sacred edifice it is a tomb upon which to rear a temple." We must look to the past, and then with renewed energy we shall look to the present and future. The thought of our ances- tors and of our posterity is a stimulus that gives us courage and hope. Problems as great as ever faced our nation are facing us to- day. Under the American banner has already been written free- dom, opportunity, representative government, and equality of men. We have yet to write industrial freedom of the laboring classes, minimum of vice and crime, solution of the immigration and negro problems, a more perfect democracy, and permanent