walked about the streets of the city or gave attention to their bruised
faces. Their dreams of freedom and equal rights must have seemed a
mockery. They must have felt that they had been lured into a trap by
some agency of cruelty and injustice. After such an experience they must
have been unspeakably homesick for their native land.

="Melting pot."=--Their primary trouble arose from the fact that they
had not yet achieved democracy, but had only a hazy theoretical
conception of its true meaning. Nor did the conductor give them any
assistance. On the contrary he pushed them farther away into the realm
of theory, and rendered them less susceptible to the influence of the
feeling for democracy. Before these foreigners can become thoroughly
assimilated they must know this feeling by experience; and until this
experience is theirs they cannot live comfortably or harmoniously in our
democracy. To do this effectively is one of the large tasks that
confront the American school and society as a whole. If we fail here,
the glory of democracy will be dimmed. All Americans share equally in
the responsibility of this task. The school, of course, must assume its
full share of this responsibility if it would fully deserve the name of
melting pot.

=Learning democracy.=--Meeting this responsibility worthily is not the
simple thing that many seem to conceive it to be. If it were, then any
discussion appertaining to the teaching of democracy would be
superfluous. This subject of democracy is, in fact, the most difficult
subject with which the school has to do, and by far the most important.
Its supreme importance is due to the fact that all the pupils expect to
live in a democracy, and, unless they learn democracy, life cannot
attain to its maximum of agreeableness for them nor can they make the
largest possible contributions to the well-being of society. It has been