Assistant Americans

Two years ago when Illinois' Democratic Governor Henry Horner advanced his feud with Chicago's Democratic Mayor Edward J. Kelly by a State law requiring the permanent registration of voters, many and loud were reformers' predictions of what the Chicago voting lists would reveal. Last week the Cook County Board of Election Commissioners, which has been investigating the lists for a year, made one highly interesting revelation: that 150,000 of the county's 2,000,000 enrolled voters are not U. S. citizens.

Board Member Harry A. Lipsky hastened to forestall criticism by affirming that the 150,000 "were perfectly honest in their belief that they were citizens, so there is no question of law violation." Principal classes of noncitizens turned up by the investigators were: 1) immigrants brought to the U. S. as children who incorrectly assumed that their parents had been naturalized; 2) those who were over 21 when their parents received their final papers; 3) women who married noncitizens before Sept. 22, 1922, and thus were not automatically naturalized when their husbands were; 4) veterans who thought War service made them citizens. But, innocent or not, Cook County's 150,000 assistant Americans in thus being deprived of their legal status, were liable to lose other prerogatives besides their votes, including passports for travel abroad, old-age, blind and mothers' pensions, WPA jobs.

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