THE ITALIAN CONTRIBUTION
 

CnAPTER XXVII.
 

CONCLUSIONS
GENERAL

l_This is a study in AMERICANISM, because the
people under surveillance are AMERICANS.

2—-This is not a study in immigration but rather an in¬
quiry into the "rate of synthetization" going on to¬
day among America's composite racial stocks, looked
at from the sociological standpoint of one of these
stocks, i. e. the ItaHan. In this study no ques¬
tion is raised as to whether the immigrant is
an asset or a liability; no examination of immigrant
institutions is attempted; no discursion is made into
any field of immigrant activity, organization, etc.,
excepting as these bear inextricably upon the hered¬
itary physical inheritances of the type under inves¬
tigation.

3—No ultimate definition of either "Americanism" or
of "Democracy" is attempted here.

4—It is asserted that the methodology for defining
"Americanism" and "Democracy" looked at from
their ethnico-sociological aspects must be thru (a)
on the one hand the detailed diagnosis of the "hu¬
man-nature-stuff" involved in such types of indi¬
viduals whom we have in this study labelled "Amer¬
icans of Italian extraction" (psychological) together
with similar studies of Americans of Jewish extrac¬
tion, of Irish extraction, of Russian extraction etc.;
(b) on the other hand the survey, classification and
categorization of the different types of institutions
and other tangible phenomena (sociological) that
are the products of the above "human-nature-stuff"
in the different social and economic stratifications
into which at many places, as all indications point,
our second generation of Americans of all extrac¬
tions is beginning to ramify; (c) the synthesis of
such detailed studies as relate to and affect the
evolving of types of mind and forms of social organ-