Robert E. Park "Controlling Through Alliance"

Robert E. Park

“Controlling Through Alliance”

Robert E. Park was a socialist who came up with a strategy employ to control the immigrant press in the United States in the late teens and 1920's.

                                             
Example of a Norwegian publication in 1916. Immigrant newspapers provided immigrants with news from their county that American press overlooked. It also specialized periodicals that focused on topics such as religion, trades, unions, cultural organizations, fraternal societies, and Particular ethnic groups. 
    

Quote 1. "The desire of native Americans to control the foreign-language press has a logical basis, aside from our instinctive distrust of anything foreign and unintelligible."

I believe Park was mainstream Progressive who feared for the masses of the lower class, as a result anything they composed in America was unnecessary and useless for Americans. Instead of accepting the idea of the melting pot, where American and share and build with immigrant ideas of customs, Park tries to limit them.

Quote 2.  "In order, however to reach the immigrant, it is necessary to have not merely an  organizations, but an organ."


Immigrants were considered pieces of a whole.

Quote 3. "Still, foreign-language papers are bound to be more patriotic and more considerate of American business interests if they are fed than if they are starved, and this, in fact, is the basis upon which manufactures and business men are being invited to contribute to the advertising and promotion funds of the council."

Park is making Americans seem as the victims of the press, and aggressively threatens foreign-press to abide to American customs by being more patriotic. For many generations, this was the reason my many immigrants changed their last names, or downplayed their heritages,   to just be considered equal in the "Land of the Free."