Here, the title question “Wouldn’t We All Cross the Border?” implies the answer “Yes.” We can look for the same idea in the text and check whether it seems to be the main one. The third paragraph describes why the author would cross the border and then generalizes to claim that others would do the same. At the start of the last paragraph, the writer declares that “ …most of us, under desperate circumstances, would cross the border without permission and feel no moral qualms about doing so.” Note that this is a claim of fact about what people would do and how they would feel about it.

When we review the other sections, we find several other claims of policy. Introductions set expectations, and here, the first paragraph alludes to public debates on immigration policy. It suggests that it may not be right to stop people from coming into America, and it may not be wrong to cross the border, even illegally. These early references to what is right suggest that the argument aims to do more than describe how people might feel under different circumstances. The argument is going to weigh in on what border policy should be. The second paragraph confirms this sense as it builds up to the still vague sentence, “ Surely there are ways to regulate the border without criminalizing people who are driven by need and good intentions.”

In the last paragraph, we learn what these ways might involve. Three different claims of policy emerge:

1. “… We must recognize this crossing as an ethical, reasonable act.”
2. “How can either a wall or a detention center be on the side of justice?” (The implication, of course, is that they cannot be.)
3. “ We must find a policy that treats migrants as we would want to be treated–with empathy, respect, and offers of help.”

The phrase “empathy, respect, and offers of help” sounds important, but we should note that the rest of the argument isn’t about how to help migrants. However, the idea that we should respond more positively to migrants has recurred throughout. The idea that migrants are not in the wrong–that they are not criminals–is clearly key, and so is the idea that we should change border policy accordingly.

Here is one way, then, to combine those last two ideas into a summary of the overall claim of the argument:

Give Women a Chance in the Air, Pleads Amelia Earhart

Eternal Bogie of “Feminine Nerves” Long Since Dispelled, Asserts Famous Airwoman, and Fair Sex Entitled to More Opportunity in the Sky.
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BY EVE GARRETTE GRADY.

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C., SEPTEMBER 22, 1929.

ARE women being discriminated against in aviation? Is society pushing men forward and holding women back in the great modern conquest of the air? Miss Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly the Atlantic and perhaps best qualified to speak authoritatively in behalf of her sex, says emphatically that they are. Despite the fact that women are rapidly overcoming the inbred timidities which civilization has imposed upon them, despite their widespread interest in flying and the future it holds for them, they are still bound by the chains of artificial difference between the sexes. She says, “Women can qualify in the air as in any other sport. Their influence and approval are vital to the success of commercial aviation. Women and girls write to me by the thousands to learn the truth about aviation and what women’s chances are. There is nothing in woman’s make-up which would make her inferior to a man as an air pilot. The only barrier to her swift success is her lack of opportunity to receive proper training.

“Society has imposed unjust distinctions in the education of the sexes. Regardless of a woman’s natural inclinations and talents, she has been assigned summarily to certain prescribed courses of study in public and private schools. Sewing and domestic science are made compulsory for schoolgirls whose propensities are wholly in the direction of things mechanical. Women have an abysmal ignorance of mechanics and engineering through no fault of their own. However, the importance which mechanical labor-saving devices have assumed in the average American home is beginning to open the eyes of even the most helplessly feminine woman. She is beginning to realize that to keep in tune with the march of modem progress she must have some very definite mechanical knowledge.”

“She realizes that it is important to her comfort, her efficiency as a worker and a buyer that she learn what makes the wheels go round. It is my firm belief that the woman’s interest in aviation—backed by the strong opinions of an air-minded generation of school-girls—will bring this question of unfair and unjust discrimination between the sexes as regards education with reference to vocational aptitude directly into the open and definitely burn away fallacious barriers.”

Miss Earhart strode up and down the office, her hands boyishly thrust deep in the pockets of her trim tweed suit. I had found her at the trophy-cluttered desk of her publisher, George Palmer Putnam, performing one of the duties of a celebrity and an author, reading huge piles of fan mail.

The aviatrix is tall and slender and wears clothes with distinction. She has the unaffected simplicity of a real person and a disarming, friendly smile. She prefers a coat of tan and a few freckles to rouge and lipstick. One hates to be banal, particularly since her praises have been sung from coast to coast, but it must be set down as my firm conviction that no description of Amelia Earhart is adequate without the statement that she represents that which we like to think of as best and truest in our women. In other words, America’s “first woman flyer” is the real thing.

“Commercial aviation is a bustling industry, but at present it is making little or no effort to enable women to secure the training and experience required of an Industrial pilot on
one of the regular airways,” she said. “The Army and Navy training schools, which are among the best, are, of course, closed to women. Some of the large transportation companies conduct their own schools for pilots. They are excellent, but there, too, women are barred.

“Sooner or later the big air lines must enlist women’s intelligent co-operation, because without them aviation cannot hope for success. One has only to study the history of the automobile industry to recognize the truth of what I am saying.”

“Twenty years ago the idea that woman could learn to drive automobiles was considered preposterous. The eternal bogies, feminine nerves and physical weakness, were advanced
as final and conclusive arguments when all others failed. And strangely enough, today, in the face of superlative proof to the contrary, one sees these same threadbare, bromidic arguments solemnly dusted off and brought forth again to be used against woman aviators.” Miss Earhart smiled. “I doubt if men will ever believe that there is no such thing as feminine nerves as opposed to nerves of the masculine variety. Yet, If anything, virtually all of woman’s experience and training has been of the sort to give her nerves of iron. No man could endure for a half hour what is just part of a day’s work to a woman—cooking a dinner with one hand, rocking a cradle with the other, at the same time keeping a watchful eye on sonny and sister, who are probably very much underfoot. Certainly, the performance of young business women in our great cities is a daily tribute to their ability to thrive under the tension of noise, big business and high-pressure work.”

Miss Earhart has noted a growing interest in aviation on the part of sportswomen throughout America. “The woman who likes to play a good game of golf or enjoys riding to the hounds has found flying one of the most enthralling of all sports. Now that manufacturers are marketing little sport planes with light engines—particularly easy for a woman to handle—aviation country clubs are springing up everywhere. It is only a question of time until woman golf teams will adopt travel by air from one country club to another for competitive matches as a matter of course. It should prove to be a highly advantageous mode of traveling for tournament players, because it is diverting and relieves the player of a great deal of the last-minute tension and nervousness which transportation by train or automobile aggravates.”

“Since the opening of the Transcontinental Air Transport Service, traveling by plane has begun to have a tremendous vogue among women. The cleanliness of traveling by plane
instantly appeals to them —no dirt, no cinders, no mussy, disheveled clothes. Women are innately fastidious, you know. They are also attracted by the friendliness of air traveling. Plane passengers consider that they have a common bond of experience. They waive the customary formalities of the more earthy means of transportation, it all becomes much more interesting; at least, the women think so.”

“The fact that air transportation is the swiftest is also beginning to have as much weight with women as with men. A number of smart women on the West coast find that by slipping off to New York by airplane, they not only steal a march by being the first to appear with the news of the latest Fall fashions, but the novelty of being an ‘air shopper’ has its practical advantages. Of course, movie people who are obliged almost to commute from coast to coast consider the transcontinental air service an answer to their prayers.”

“Many women feel, and quite rightly, that they are advancing world progress by confining their efforts to aviation’s fringes. Although many of them have never been in an airplane
—many say they wouldn’t be paid to enter one—still they are turning their hands to the task of making landing fields more attractive—most of them are extremely barren, If not actually unsightly—and, what is more important, working out air-road marks for flyers. It is nice when one is flying 100 miles an hour over strange country to know the names of the different towns and cities over which one hovers. A number of women’s clubs have done excellent work in this respect I cannot praise too highly one club where the women themselves got out and painted the name of their town on one of its buildings in huge bright letters as a guide and greeting to flyers.”

“I think there is no doubt about the average schoolgirl being air-minded. I receive so many letters from girls of 15 who bewail the fact that they are obliged to bootleg their airplane rides because their parents forbid them to go up. Although I cannot exactly commend it, their conduct shows a very definite trend. Many of them say they want to make aviation their ‘life work.’ All are anxious and willing to study to prepare themselves to be expert flyers. Still, I regret to say, they are being retarded, held back. But the pendulum is swinging. Women are determined to be an integral part of aviation. Speed the day when the announcement is made of the first aviation training school ‘exclusively for girls.’”

Born in Atchison, Kansas, Amelia Earhart lived there until she reached high school age. When the United States entered the World War she was at Ogontz School, in the
suburbs of Philadelphia. Her sympathies were aroused by seeing four soldiers on crutches while she was visiting her sister in Toronto. She dropped school and started training under
the Canadian Red Cross. Her first assignment was at Spadina Military Hospital. At the end of her hospital career Miss Earhart Joined her father and mother in Los Angeles. It was in California that she first became actively Interested in aviation. In 1920 she established the woman’s record for altitude. She holds the first international pilot’s license issued to a woman.
After some time in California, Miss Earhart decided to return to the East. She sold her plane for a ear. After a Summer at Harvard, she joined her sister in teaching and doing settlement work in Boston. Her Interest was soon reawakened in aviation and she became a member of the Boston chapter of the National Aeronautical Association and was ultimately made vice president. After her return from the transatlantic trip she was made president—the first woman president of a body of the N. A. A.

Until her epoch-making flight. Miss Earhart continued as a worker at Dennison House, Boston’s second oldest settlement. At present, Miss Earhart lives in New York. That is, when she is not flying about the country as assistant to the general traffic manager of Transcontinental Air Transport, with which organization Col. Charles A. Lindbergh is also associated. She is also aviation editor of a monthly magazine.

It is characteristic of her that in her book, “20 Hrs. 40 Min.” which tells the Intimate story of her flight across the Atlantic in the Friendship, that she should say time and time again throughout the narrative that the entire credit of the magnificent exploit should go to
Wilmer Stultz and Louis Gordon, the men who piloted her.

Not long ago, Miss Earhart explored the bottom of the ocean off Block Island as a deep-sea diver. The first time she went down her diving suit leaked, but, nothing daunted, she
made another try the next day. When she came up, after being down more than 20 minutes, she said: “It is nothing at all. Plenty of women have been deeper and stayed longer.”

(Copyright, 1929.)

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