Give the kids some books, because prisons are getting pricey. Cat's Questions!

Diego Rivera, Pan-American Unity

• Both Ripley and Bourne assert that there is an understood ascendancy of Anglo-Saxon "native born" Americans over that of the European immigrants entering the United States at the turn of the 20th century. There is a blatant negation of the inherent value of the cultures which these immigrants represent insofar as what they could add to the existing Anglo culture of the US, but instead stresses their value for how they can work toward growing a healthy and intelligent servant class of individuals. Yet, Bourne understands that there is a sort of sensational American surface culture in which the immigrants tend to cling. In which ways does he think that the sensational culture at the time tend to deteriorate the Anglo ideal, and how is it that the growth of this sensational culture by the large immigrant community further deteriorate the existing dominant culture of the US at the turn of the century?
• Ripley's article repeatedly makes use of dendrological metaphors in relation to the immigrant class. (Hewing wood, graft {here graft has both horticultural and political dual meanings} and greed, all sorts of references to the relative fruitfulness of women.) Given that the idea of relocating and settling permanently somewhere is often referred to as "setting down roots," in which ways do you think Ripley's article is suggesting that the Americans do that very thing? How could the notion of "the family tree" be related to both the article and the metaphor?
• There is a notion in both articles of a sort of radical racial purity among the Anglo-Saxon majority of the US. Conversely, as Ripley suggests, there is a plurality of cultures and racial intermixing prevalent among immigrant communities in the United States. How does this separation of cultures propagate the very problems Bourne and Ripley are addressing? (a culture of excessively sensational mediums, decreased birth rate, criminal activities, etc.)  

Cat Tan