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Editor’s note: Please view the two citizen’s booklets Make America Your Country as Well as Your Home, printed 100 years ago, as they are truly wonderful to read. First Papers and Second Papers
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By Sandy Szwarc
© Szwarc 2025
Many years ago, the dying wish of an elderly man was that his 1923 citizenship book be remembered by future generations. This little 25-page book (pictured above) was titled Make America Your Country as Well as Your Home
It explained what every immigrant during the turn of the last century eagerly undertook in order to legally become a naturalized citizen of the United States. Most importantly, it described what it meant to be “a true American.”
Like generations of early immigrants who came here and helped build this great nation, he was extremely proud of being an American citizen. As he grew older, he also felt an urgency to preserve what it meant to be an American because he saw the spirit of America and American patriotism fading away.
This little book is unlike any citizenship study or test found today. It depicts American patriotism 100 years ago and how people from different homelands, cultures, and traditions came together wanting to become one people. They hoped to become “true Americans.”
These new immigrants were advised to immerse themselves in America’s culture − its literature, art, music, museums, libraries, the stories of older Americans, the nation’s history, and natural wonders. The spirit of America must grow in your heart and mind, it told them.
“It must become a part of your soul.”
The advice began with an extensive reading list to help these coming citizens understand “the great men of America and the Country they helped to build up.”2 Through reading and studying these books, it said, they would learn “to love America.”
Among the facts these immigrants were told they must know included:
- Nothing about you can be in question. You cannot become a citizen if you are a polygamist, criminal, insane, or an anarchist.
- “English is the language of our country.” You must learn to speak, read and write English. The Court will not give you citizen papers if you cannot understand the English language. “Go to evening school; it is free.”
- You must learn and understand the Constitution of the United States. It is the Highest Law of the Land. It tells us how we are governed.
It is doubtful that many Americans today have read those books that were recommended to the early immigrants who wanted to become an American.* Nor can many Americans today cite the U.S. Presidents, the U.S. population, the States and capitals, and sing the Star-Spangled Banner and America.
In fact, this growing failure in civic literacy has been shown in repeated surveys of Americans. In October, 2018, a poll by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation found that only 36% of all American adults could pass a basic multiple-choice citizenship test. While three-quarters of seniors passed, only 19% of adults under 45 years old could pass, with a lenient grade of 60%.
Five years later, a national survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation in 2023 found equally alarming results. Over 70% of registered voters failed. Most Americans knew little of American history or the simplest of topics like the three branches of government, the number of Supreme Court judges, or where bills became laws.
What made this citizenship book special is that it recognized that being an American was more than knowing facts and figures. As it said:
“If you will follow this advice, if you will let yourself into the spirit of America, you will be surprised how quickly you will act like an American, be proud of your country and do your full duty to it. As you begin to get this spirit, you will begin to give something to America− you will begin to take your part in making America a greater nation.”
Early Americans felt in their hearts a responsibility to give back and work to make this country greater and greater, following the examples of the brave men and women who’d founded this nation in order to ensure the freedoms and rights all citizens shared.
In exemplifying a “true American,” the book gave fourteen adages from Benjamin Franklin, beginning with “God helps them that help themselves.” As Franklin said, a true American had a duty to hold a strong work ethic, use their talents for good, learn continually, take initiative and work hard, take personal responsibility, wrong no one, love life, and live honest and decent lives.
How was the “True American” defined?
What defined an American citizen in past generations is incomparable to today. It is the starkest illustration of how deeply America has fallen and how much has been lost…and what we have to restore if we hope to make America great again.
“The true American believes in Liberty, Equality, Justice, Humanity. The true American does not believe that Liberty means the right to do anything he likes. He knows that Liberty caries with it a sense of Duty.”
To generations of early immigrants, the “true American:”
- Believes that all men are created free and equal. There are no classes in America.
- His heart and hand go out to help the helpless.
- He respects women and the home.
- He believes in freedom of religion, free speech, and free press as the foundation of the land.
- “Work, be happy, spend a little and save a little.”
- He believes in equality of opportunity; “believes in his own ability, but holds that the other fellow is as good as he and should have the same chance to life and happiness.”
- He has self respect. He supports himself and his family and conducts himself as a free man should. He strives to own a home.
- He is alert and enterprising. No work is too hard for him during working hours. “He works with a will, and wholeheartedly… What he begins, he finishes.”
- He is upright and honest.
- “The true American is a patriotic American.”
Immigrating to America was associated with a yearning to become an American; a promise to learn the history of the Founding Fathers, to learn English, and to understand the country’s documents that ensure freedoms and liberties for all; a pledge to be a good and upright citizen, to work hard, be self-supporting and not look for a hand out; a sense of duty and commitment to give back to the country and be part of making it a greater nation; a desire to love America and make it your home; and finally, being a patriotic American.
Many of these ideals feel unrecognizable today.
America really was born of ideas unlike any other country on earth: that all men were created equal and given rights by God that no man could take away from them. America was a unique new concept, achieved through hard fought battles. Early immigrants overcame hardships, discrimination, tyranny, and adversity to get here. They came looking for economic opportunities, individual liberty, or religious freedoms and found them all made possible in the founding documents.
Immigrants brought their own rich traditions and treasured ancestries, while embracing the special values found only in America, to come together in a new national identity. Patriotic assimilation is what bonded them together to become one. They no longer identified themselves as French, Mexican, Italian, German, African, or a collection of separate and divided ethnic groups… but all one people: Americans.
They also welcomed America’s founding principle of equal treatment under the law for everyone: no discrimination, no privileged or ruling class, no victims or oppressors. The idea of giving groups special privileges or benefits was viewed as repulsive, unacceptable, and un-American.
They came from all walks of life, different cultures, languages, and abilities but were united with one thing in common: a love for America. That love brought each citizen to contribute their part into building the country and making it continually greater and more exceptional.
Today, patriotism, loving America, and feeling proud of our country and what it once stood for has been redefined into something dark, cynical, evil, racist, sexist, and unjust.
How did we get to this point?
This series reveals that it was a concerted, planned and purposeful effort that began over a century ago.
In tracing this evolution, we’ll begin by doing a little time traveling in Part Two.
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