have hitherto been, and probably for an indefinite period will
continue to be, such as to emphasize individualism. It is true,
despite any denials or theories, that industry, initiative,
enterprise, always have won, still win, and will continue to win
advancement above the herd. The top is still open for those who can
win to it by their own inherent qualities. There has been here, there
is now, no permanent industrial or social caste classification to
circumscribe ambition and create either a persisting intellectual
leadership of “labor” or a stable body of hand-workers susceptible
of political coherence or direction. All efforts to crystallize
“class consciousness” for political action have failed, and probably
will continue to fail as long as the social bars are down so that
individuals can pass freely from one class to another.

Second, the immensity of our territory and the great diversity of
interests and issues in the forefront of public attention in one
section and another. Seldom, if ever, have the conditions which might
have solidified any class been sufficiently widespread or synchronous
to serve the purpose of united political sentiment or action. Add to
this the fact that politicians of both the great parties, more or
less intentionally, have managed always to frame the issues so as to
encourage this diversity.

Third, the deliberate and long-standing policy of the most
influential of the general leaders of the labor organizations--Mr.
Samuel Gompers for the most conspicuous example--of keeping those
organizations free from the entanglements and distractions of party
politics, definitely preventing their acting as a political unit; by
intention confining their activities to the industrial, the economic
field. This alone, without regard to the fact that the higher-grade
unions (using that expression solely with reference to skill) seldom
see their interests to be common, so far as the ballot box is
concerned. The radical agitation for the establishment of “One Big
Union,” to include all classes of laborers as distinguished from
capitalists, while it contemplates chiefly the exercise of industrial
and economic power, includes the intention to concentrate political
power as well.

Fourth, and most important, the fact that “labor,” in the sense in
which most politicians, and virtually all of the public, use the
term, means chiefly the _unskilled_ workers who contribute _muscle_
to industry. These are to a great extent unorganized, without any
conscious unity of interest or purpose; their approach to both
industry and political action is as individuals--individuals of
more or less shifting residence and comparatively little feeling
of political responsibility. Moreover, it is a matter of common
knowledge that the great industrial concerns have fostered the
existence of masses of unskilled labor, in excess of the actual needs
of industry, in order to maintain an “overstocked” labor supply,
for the purpose of constant wage-competition to keep down costs.
This competition has the inevitable effect of discouraging united
action of any kind. And, still further, we have found[162] that the
unskilled laborer of foreign birth, on the average, is not available
for political activity because he is not naturalized.

This body of the unskilled, industrially indispensable, but
politically unassimilated, inarticulate, and unwholesome,
consists almost entirely now, and must consist increasingly,
of immigrants. Like any other mass of material in an organism,
potentially digestible and useful but actually undigested and in
the circumstances indigestible, it has clogged the process of
assimilation and is infecting the body politic with dangerous toxins.
The wonder is that we have got along with it so well. One of the
reasons may be the very fact that its influences are not in the
ordinary sense _political_.

Foreigners: the word is used advisedly. For out of the welter of
prejudice and misinformation surrounding the subject has emerged
clearly the fact that by the time the alien _man_ reaches the point
of applying for citizenship and the political power that goes with
it, he has been in this country _upward of ten years_, has advanced
materially in social and economic status, and the process of
assimilation is far on its way, if not substantially complete. In
a majority of cases, he has passed out of the category of what is
usually known as “common labor.”

DIVIDED BY RACIAL TRADITIONS

Another thing, conspicuous here as in no other country where “labor”
might be regarded as directly a political factor, is the fact that
even had these thousands of men been individually available for
prompt assimilation, or manageable in their groups as material for
political manipulation, they have constituted such a hodge-podge
of conflicting racial and national antecedents, prejudices, and
inhibitions that any coherent political action by them always has
been out of the question. Scandinavian and Slav, Austrian and
Italian, British and German, Greek and Turk; Protestant and Catholic,
Jew and Gentile--to say nothing of those smaller clan, village,
and even family feuds, often of long-forgotten origin, within the
racial groups ... at every turn some hoary animosity, born, perhaps,
centuries ago out of historic or obscure conflicts of which the
average native-born American maybe never heard in his life, has kept
and doubtless long will continue to keep these racial groups apart
and practically preclude any possibility of getting them to work
together. The events and political by-products of the World War have
only further confused and intensified these causes of disunion.

The Socialists alone, of all the considerable political parties, have
tried to unite “labor” (chiefly meaning unskilled labor) by efforts
to convince all the racial groups of a common political interest
superior to any racial interest. They have almost completely failed.

Politicians, large and small, have been to some extent aware of
this diversity of traditions and interests among the racial groups,
based upon ancient or current controversies in old countries; but
their approach to the subject always has been pragmatical and
opportunistic, and usually unintelligent without real information
about or understanding of the explosive matters with which they
were meddling, or any but temporary or local concern about the
consequences. The Fiume controversy, interesting both Italians and
Jugo-Slavs; the Irish situation; the war between the Poles and the
Bolsheviki in Russia; and conspicuously the whole stupendous question
of the League of Nations--all are fine examples of international and
interracial conflicts and emergencies of which American politicians
of both parties have taken advantage for their own purposes without
regard to consequences to the welfare of the world--or of their own
country, for that matter.

ALIENS NOT WITHOUT POLITICAL INFLUENCE

As we have seen, the foreign born who become citizens, and as such
are eligible to participate in our political processes, do so on
the average only after a residence in this country of more than
ten years. Also, notwithstanding the legend to the contrary, there
appears to be no material distinction of race in their interest in
our politics or their desire to become citizens. But it would be a
cardinal mistake to suppose that the great mass of the unnaturalized
foreign born, who have no votes themselves, represent no political
influence. Neighborhood sentiment is a very great force in politics.
The politician pays special heed to the wishes of voters; but he
is exceedingly mindful of the desires, enthusiasms, and hatreds of
those in his district who are audible all the year round. This is
all the more true when he is of the same racial origin as the bulk
of the population that surrounds him in a “Little Italy,” a “Little
Hungary,” a “New Bohemia,” or a “Ghetto.”

THERE IS NO “FOREIGN VOTE”

What we have said of the mythical “labor vote” is equally true of
the mythical “foreign vote.” Under circumstances of tense feeling
between Italians and Jugo-Slavs, between Irish and English-born,
between Swedes and Norwegians, the vote of Italian-born citizens
and those of Serbian antecedents cannot be corralled together for
a candidate of either racial origin, or for a ticket representing
sympathy or tolerance for either, and so on down the lines; but no
politician ever has been able to unite in one political movement all
the heterogeneous mass that could, by any stretch of words, be called
the “foreign vote.” There is no “foreign vote,” any more than there
is a “labor vote.”

The wholesale enfranchisement of women, native and foreign-born
citizens alike, under the Nineteenth Amendment to the Constitution
of the United States, brings into the situation a new and confusing
factor, about which it would be perilous to prophesy. Foreign-born
women, largely ignorant of everything that we are accustomed
to regard as “American,” subject to all of the influences and
limitations involved in the word “foreign,” are swept by our
naturalization laws helter-skelter into citizenship by the mere fact
of their marriage or filial relation to a naturalized man, without
any restrictions as to length of residence or personal fitness. And
now the constitutional amendment has armed them with the ballot, with
the potential capacity not only to strengthen, but to offset and
nullify, the vote of the intelligent; not only to offset and nullify,
but to double the political power of the ignorant, the misled, and
the corrupt. Fortunately, however, as we have pointed out elsewhere,
this is a potential rather than an actual peril. The foreign-born
woman is, and will continue to be, very slow in assuming the power
for mischief, or for good, which we have thrust upon her.[163]

OLD EVILS ABOLISHED

There was a day in American political history when, especially in
the great cities along the Atlantic seaboard, the immigrant, in many
cases the newly landed immigrant, was herded to the ballot box,
sometimes without even the empty formality of naturalization, to cast
an open ballot thrust into his hand by his padrone or some one else
of his race who saw to it that he got his pay, usually in cash, but
sometimes in the form of a job. Such practices, while they survive
sporadically in out-of-the-way mining regions or the like where
supervision of elections is lax or lacking, are no longer in vogue.

The naturalization law of 1906, faithfully executed by the
Naturalization Bureau, has completely abolished the old
naturalization frauds and abuses, and the increasingly effective
protection surrounding the ballot box, with the substitution of
official ballots for the old voting ticket or open ballot, with more
or less of the nonpartisan, alphabetical arrangement of candidates
known as the “Australian” ballot, has made direct corruption, vote
buying, not only perilous as a form of crime, but relatively useless
because of the difficulty of knowing whether the goods are delivered.
There is still bribery, but more and more it takes the form of
payment for voting at all, of continued tenure of jobs within the
gift or control of politicians and other oblique and indirect forms
of remuneration.

It would be possible to occupy much space in this volume with a
history of bygone days, when naturalization was a farce and a
scandal, and the ignorant immigrant vote a real factor in American
politics. As early as 1835, this was a source of alarm to the native
Americans, the emotion being intensified and complicated by the
religious sectarianism which was a large factor in the nativistic
Know-Nothing movement. Congress was memorialized about

  ... the ease with which foreigners of doubtful morals and hostile
  political principles acquired the right to vote, and pointed to
  this as a source of real danger to the country. The petitioners saw
  with great concern the influx of Roman Catholics. To such persons,
  as men, they had no dislike. To their religion, as a religion, they
  had no objection. But against their political opinions, interwoven
  with their religious belief, they asked legislation.[164]

In those days the “New Immigration,” though the distinction
between “old” and “new” now current had not been created, was more
particularly of Irish and German--both races now generally regarded
as of the “old,” the more desirable kind!

Ostrogorski, in his _Democracy and the Party System in the United
States_, says:[165]

  Owing to the facilities offered by the American naturalization
  laws, the immigrants began to enjoy the rights of citizenship after
  a short period of residence. Ignorant, with no political education,
  these new members of the Commonwealth took service at once in the
  party organization, and blindly followed the word of command.
  Coming from countries the inhabitants of which were languishing in
  wretchedness and degradation, as in Ireland, or gasping under the
  vexatious regime of police-ridden and grandmotherly governments,
  as in Germany with its _Polezei-Staat_, the immigrants could not
  resist the seduction of the word “democrat,” and joined the ranks
  of the Democratic organization wholesale, bound hand and foot.

Ostrogorski took his view from the situation in New York City, as
many other writers have done; overlooking the fact that to a great
extent the new voter, both native and foreign-born, has usually and
naturally followed first the political partisan preference of his
father and his racial associates, and second, the trend of party
success. The dominating party machine in any city naturally has the
prestige of success, and its ability to deliver patronage, large
and small, draws those to whom a job is the vitally important thing
in life. In New York City the power of the ignorant vote always has
been a great source of strength to Tammany, which happens to be
Democratic; in Philadelphia the same thing may be said of the local
organization, which happens to be Republican.

CORRUPTION WAS NOT AN IMPORTATION

It is a common impression that the backbone of political corruption
lies in the so-called “foreign vote.” Ostrogorski paid his respects
to that idea. Said he:[166]

  The most shameless venality is often met with in the country
  districts, particularly in the states of the Atlantic seaboard;
  nay, even in New England, inhabited by the descendants of the
  Puritans. Votes are sold there openly, like an article of commerce;
  there is a regular market quotation for them. And it is not only
  needy people Who make a traffic of their votes, but well-to-do
  farmers, of American stock, pious folk who always go to church on
  Sunday. If the farmer’s son is an elector and dwells under the
  paternal roof the father receives the price of his vote and that of
  their help, who is under a sort of moral obligation to vote for the
  same candidate as his master. A good many would not take a bribe
  from the party which they regard as hostile; they keep faith with
  their own party, but they, none the less, demand money for their
  vote, in the form of an indemnity for their trouble, for loss of
  time, for traveling expenses. In some country districts a quarter
  or a third of the electors make money out of their votes.

HOME-GROWN IN ADAMS COUNTY, OHIO!

Once at least in our political history we had an opportunity to
see Ostrogorski’s assertion convincingly illustrated, and legally
attested by “judicial notice” of a competent court, in the case
of Adams County, Ohio, where, a decade ago, in 1910, one brave
local judge, by the name of A. Z. Blair, haled before him a whole
countryside of farmers, and disfranchised for confessed corruption
pretty much the whole population. Here was exactly the situation
described by Ostrogorski--“votes sold openly, like an article of
commerce,” ... “a regular market quotation,” ... “well-to-do farmers,
of American stock,” ... “a third of the electors make money out of
their votes.” By stress of a special grand jury Judge Blair brought
out complete and all but universal confessions, and imposed fines and
disfranchisement upon the majority of voters in a whole rural county.

  It is instructive [said the _Outlook_ in its editorial comment]
  to note that this slump of citizenship has not occurred among
  foreigners or negroes, nor in the slums of cities, but in a purely
  rural population, and among voters of native American stock.[167]

WHO IS THE BUYER OF VOTES?

Incidentally it may be remarked that in all this business of
election bribery, which in past years has been all but omnipresent
in American politics, the emphasis is laid upon those, American or
foreign-born, who _sell_ their votes. Even if it were true that the
purchasable voter was chiefly the voter of alien race, _every sale
implies a purchase_. Before any voter can sell his vote, somebody
must be prepared to buy it. The seat of corruption lies, not in the
venal voter alone, but also in the system that gathers money for the
purpose of buying him. And that system, from the very beginning, has
been devised and engineered by the American politician, and those
behind him in American business life who desire to control elections
and the people’s representative selected therein, for their own
“business” ends. It would not be difficult to point to elections of
very great importance in America--even Presidential elections--in
which the vote of great states was swayed one way or the other by the
margin represented by the out-and-out purchase of votes at so much
per head. Nor would any person above the age of six years seriously
debate the question of the native-American origin of the people who
incited and paid for the corruption.

William S. Bennet, then a member of Congress from New York City, and
of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, put his
finger exactly on the center of this question when he said:[168]

  Much of our trouble in the past has sprung from the belief among
  newly made citizens, justified by far too much evidence, that we
  ourselves have regarded elections as contentions to be decided
  not at all by argument, persuasion, or reason, but by trickery,
  treachery, bribery, perjury, assault, forgery, deceit and even
  murder.... The new and impressionable citizen of even but twenty
  years ago had held out to him at election inducements to all that
  was worst in his character. If he held our elections and our
  institutions lightly, we had ourselves to blame for it.... Man
  moves much along lines of least resistance, and the stranger adapts
  himself to conditions as he finds them. Make your elections riotous
  and corrupt, and your new-made, foreign-born citizen riots and
  sells his vote with the native-born....

  The new citizen has neither political inheritance, prejudice, nor
  scars of conflict. He votes always in the present, sometimes for
  the future, but never in the past. Being poor, it is quite true
  that when there is corruption, he is among those approached. Being
  ambitious, the lure of minor place sometimes weighs with him more
  than principle.

Mr. Bennet, on the same occasion, emphasized the fact that a sharp
distinction must be drawn between the mass of immigrants constituting
the bulk of the foreign population, especially in the cities, and the
small portion thereof actually participating in political activities:

  It should be carefully borne in mind that in no great city is
  the naturalized voter a newly arrived immigrant.... In cities
  the newly made voter is a resident in this country certainly for
  five, and usually for more, years, before he votes even for the
  first time. Candidates in foreign-speaking localities frequently
  address audiences the majority of whom, either by age or alienage,
  are unable to vote.... The 644,000 electors who had a right to
  participate in our recent election were, thus, either native-born
  or having five years or more of residence. Of the 644,000 who
  registered about 590,000 voted. These divided their votes roughly
  as follows: Gaynor, Tammany and Democrat, 250,000; Bannard,
  Republican and Fusion, 175,000; Hearst, 150,000. Four years ago,
  the vote was, Tammany, 226,000; Hearst, 224,000; Republican,
  137,000. Therefore this year both the Tammany and Republican
  candidates gained at the expense of Hearst. The exact significance
  of this is immaterial and accounted for readily by a variety of
  causes. The important fact remains that 150,000 voters, without
  particular leadership or organization, left the party ranks and
  voted for an individual of their choice.

There is no substantial support, either in any careful study of
elections as a whole or in particular, or in the experience of those
who have lived close to the political processes of our country, for
the widespread impression that the foreign-born voter is more given
to or victim of political corruption than any other class.

ATTEMPTS TO FIND THE “FOREIGN VOTE”

It is exceedingly difficult to identify the part played in any
particular election, or in elections generally, by foreign-born
voters. Political leaders and others who make analyses of election
returns have their theories and prepossessions, and find in figures
what they want to find, to defend policies, support theories, and
sustain positions generally. In the presidential election of 1920,
this was especially evident. Those who supported the Republican
ticket and platform and those who supported the Democratic; those
violently opposed to the League of Nations and those devotedly in
favor of it--alike found in the election returns, manipulated to
suit their views, sustenance for argument as to the part played in
the result by this, that, and the other racial group or political
faction. Even the Socialists, whose basic theory is the most
definitely declared of all political theories, find in a growing vote
evidences of wide acceptance of their doctrines; in its shrinkage
merely the desertion of mere protestors or sentimentalists who
really do not understand Socialism at all! Personal prejudice and
predilection exhibit themselves notoriously in political figuring.
The process usually consists of more or less gratuitous assumptions,
from which one may prove statistically--whatever he wants to prove.

An exceptional instance of an attempt to analyze an election without
preliminary bias appears in a study of “The Political Mind of
Foreign-born Americans,” contributed by Dr. Abram Lipsky to _Popular
Science Monthly_ several years ago,[169] in which he undertook by
analysis of the election returns from a number of Assembly Districts
in Greater New York, predominantly of a certain racial complexion, to
infer the attitude of those racial groups on certain subjects. But it
is clear that the inferences, however they may have been justified
by the figures from this election, were based upon questionable
assumptions. Still more important, it is altogether fallacious to
assume that in another election, wherein the issues were stated
differently or the general political atmosphere was different, these
very districts, these very individual voters of whatever race, might
not vote quite otherwise. A state of mind among the Italian-born
voters, provoked, for example, by their understanding of the attitude
of Mr. Wilson on the subject of Fiume, might produce Republican
votes in one election; whereas a year later, in an election in
which their interests at home or abroad were believed by them to be
otherwise affected, their votes might be overwhelmingly Democratic.

One of the questions which Doctor Lipsky undertook to answer from the
election figures was whether the voters in the selected districts
“read the Hearst papers regularly.” He inferred his answer from
the vote cast in those districts for the candidates which happened
to be favored by the newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst.
But the basic assumption was fallacious, overlooking entirely the
notorious fact that repeatedly elections in New York City have been
won in spite of the opposition, or lost in spite of the support,
of virtually the entire newspaper press of the city. As logically
might one assume from any election that the vote, pro or contra, on
any subject represented the circulation of some particular group of
newspapers whose views the election indorsed.

Nearer the probabilities, but still subject to the same kind of
discount, is Doctor Lipsky’s generalization as to the showing of one
election on the subject of the attitude of certain racial groups as
regards Tammany Hall and Socialism. This analysis is not without a
certain degree of general significance.

Doctor Lipsky’s conclusion that “native-born Americans of American
parents are opposed to Tammany government” is based upon a comparison
of figures from districts predominantly of native Americans, in the
elections for governor in 1910 and for mayor of New York in 1913, his
primary assumption being that the candidacy of Judge Edward E. McCall
for mayor embodied “Tammany” pure and simple, while that of John A.
Dix for governor did not make “Tammany” a state issue. From this
point of view Doctor Lipsky interprets the fact that the percentage
of votes for McCall in those districts was strikingly lower than
those for Dix in the state election of three years before:

TABLE XXXVII

  PER CENT OF NEW YORK CITY VOTE CAST FOR MCCALL IN 1913 AND DIX IN
  1910 BY VOTERS OF NATIVE PARENTS

  ======================================================
                      |  PER CENT |          |
    ASSEMBLY DISTRICT | OF NATIVE |   1913   |    1910
                      |  PARENTS  |  MCCALL  |    DIX
  --------------------+-----------+----------+-----------
  15th Manhattan      |   45.3    |   33.7   |    58.1
  19th    “           |   40.0    |   33.2   |    52.3
  25th    “           |   44.1    |   35.3   |    48.4
  27th    “           |   51.5    |   37.6   |    55.8
   4th Queens         |   41.3    |   31.1   |    46.2
  17th Brooklyn       |   45.6    |   24.7   |    43.6
  11th    “           |   38.0    |   34.9   |    50.5
  18th                |   39.0    |   28.3   |    46.3
   5th                |   38.1    |   25.3   |    44.1
  10th    “           |   38.6    |   36.6   |    53.3
  ======================================================

But the Russians and Austrians also said “No” to Tammany, as Doctor
Lipsky reads the figures:

TABLE XXXVIII

  PER CENT OF NEW YORK CITY VOTE CAST FOR MCCALL IN 1913 AND DIX IN
  1910 BY RUSSIANS AND AUSTRIANS

  ============================================================
                 |RUSSIANS|AUSTRIANS|  BOTH  |        |
     ASSEMBLY    |  PER   |   PER   |   PER  |  1913  |  1910
     DISTRICT    |  CENT  |  CENT   |  CENT  | MCCALL |   DIX
  ---------------+--------+---------+--------+--------+-------
   8th Manhattan |  54.4  |   14.2  |  68.6  |  40.2  |  52.3
   6th    “      |  30.4  |   30.8  |  61.2  |  22.8  |  40.0
   4th    “      |  35.6  |   25.2  |  60.2  |  51.1  |  61.7
  26th    “      |  34.6  |    6.7  |  41.3  |  30.0  |  41.0
   2d     “      |  35.6  |    1.4  |  37.0  |  57.6  |  67.5
  10th    “      |  22.3  |   12.5  |  34.8  |  29.3  |  52.2
  31st    “      |  12.9  |    4.9  |  17.8  |  24.1  |  44.7
  21st Brooklyn  |  31.2  |    5.9  |  37.1  |  27.1  |  48.6
  23d     “      |  33.3  |    3.9  |  37.2  |  25.7  |  40.9
  14th    “      |  16.1  |    5.9  |  22.0  |  46.6  |  61.5
  22d     “      |  13.0  |    3.0  |  16.0  |  24.3  |  38.5
  ============================================================

The Irish voted for Tammany, as usual:

TABLE XXXIX

  PER CENT OF NEW YORK CITY VOTE CAST FOR MCCALL IN 1913 AND DIX IN
  1910 BY THE IRISH

  ===============================================
   ASSEMBLY DISTRICT | PER CENT |  1913  |  1910
                     | OF IRISH | MCCALL |   DIX
  -------------------+----------+--------+-------
  13th Manhattan     |   16.4   |  61.0  |  58.1
  16th    “          |   14.0   |  51.7  |  61.4
  11th    “          |   12.2   |  55.6  |  60.5
  14th    “          |   12.4   |  54.7  |  61.2
   5th    “          |   11.2   |  64.4  |  67.6
  ===============================================

Allowance must be made here for some falling off of the vote in a
municipal as compared with a state election; but a still greater
allowance must be made for the fact that “Tammany” was indeed a
state issue--Dix was distinctly charged by the opposition with
being Tammany’s candidate, and there were, as always, confusing and
inestimable factors of a subtle kind--such, for instance, as the fact
that McCall had an Irish name, and Dix didn’t; or that the name “John
A. Dix” had a sound historically familiar--even if not one regularly
American-born person in a hundred could remember who the historic
“John A. Dix” was!

Some years the Germans are supposed to have supported Tammany; this
particular time Doctor Lipsky seems to find that they did not--in
districts in which Germans made up a considerable percentage of the
population. (See Table XL.)

Think what you will of the Italians’ attitude toward Tammany; you
can stress the fact that the vote for McCall was so much below that
of three years before for Dix, or you can philosophize about the
fact that it was no greater! Doctor Lipsky’s inference that, on
the whole, they supported Tammany is based on the figures from six
districts. (See Table XLI.)

TABLE XL

  PER CENT OF NEW YORK CITY VOTE CAST FOR MCCALL IN 1913 AND DIX IN
  1910 BY GERMANS

  ==================================================
    ASSEMBLY DISTRICT |  PER CENT  |  1913  |  1910
                      | OF GERMANS | MCCALL |   DIX
  --------------------+------------+--------+-------
   3d  Queens         |    21.4    |  31.1  |  49.8
  20th Brooklyn       |    20.2    |  26.8  |  41.8
  19th    “           |    13.6    |  31.9  |  48.3
  23d     “           |    11.2    |  34.6  |  49.4
   1st Queens         |    11.1    |  41.4  |  55.2
  22d  Manhattan      |    21.2    |  38.4  |  50.2
  ==================================================

TABLE XLI

  PER CENT OF NEW YORK CITY VOTE CAST FOR MCCALL IN 1913 AND DIX IN
  1910 BY THE ITALIANS

  ====================================================
     ASSEMBLY DISTRICT |  PER CENT   |  1913  |  1910
                       | OF ITALIANS | MCCALL |   DIX
  ---------------------+-------------+--------+-------
   3d  Manhattan       |    30.3     |  67.6  |  77.7
   1st    “            |    25.2     |  59.6  |  67.8
  28th    “            |    26.8     |  42.6  |  55.8
   3d  Brooklyn        |    23.2     |  63.7  |  73.1
   2d  Manhattan       |    18.5     |  57.6  |  67.4
  ====================================================

“We are able,” says Doctor Lipsky, “to say that a decided ‘no’ was
given to Tammany by native Americans of native parents, and by the
Russians and Germans; a decided ‘Yes’ was given by the Italian and
Irish.”

The thing that stands out in these figures, whatever else may be
said, would seem to be the fact that, like the native Americans of
native parentage, the voters of foreign racial antecedents changed
their support with changing circumstances and influences. The
conventional view of the foreign-born voter is that he votes in
herds, as he is told to vote, and that in New York City Tammany does
the herding. Well, in the mayoralty election of 1913, judging by
these figures, it is evident that Tammany’s “herding” was not wholly
successful with those “new-immigration” voters classed as Russians
and Austrians! All sorts of factors, local and general, fundamental
and temporary, almost Wholly incalculable, enter into elections, and
one is free to analyze and interpret to suit himself.

On the subject of the “political mind of the foreign-born voter” as
regards Socialism, Doctor Lipsky presents some interesting figures
from ten assembly districts in which the Socialist candidate for
mayor in 1913 received over 10 per cent of the total vote.

TABLE XLII

  PER CENT OF SOCIALISTIC VOTE IN NEW YORK CITY IN 1910 AND 1913 BY
  NATIONALITY

  =====================================================================
                |  SOCIALIST  |NATIVE|      |      |     |      |
     ASSEMBLY   |    VOTE     |  OF  |      |      |     |      |
     DISTRICT   +------+------+NATIVE|AUSTR-|GERMAN|IRISH| ITAL-| RUSS-
                | 1910 | 1913 |PAREN-| IAN  |      |     | IAN  |  IAN
                |      |      | TAGE |      |      |     |      |
  --------------+------+------+------+------+------+-----+------+------
  21st Brooklyn | 12.4 | 16.1 | 12.6 |  5.9 |  4.1 | ... |  9.1 | 31.2
  23d     “     | 12.5 | 15.8 | 19.6 |  3.9 |  2.2 | 1.6 |  4.6 | 33.3
  19th    “     | 11.0 | 12.8 | 12.6 |   .8 | 13.6 | ... |  9.9 | 11.9
   4th Manhattan| 12.6 | 11.9 |  7.0 | 25.2 |   .4 | 1.1 |  2.5 | 35.6
  26th    “     | 10.2 | 11.8 |  7.1 |  6.7 |  4.6 | 3.8 |  1.4 | 34.6
   8th    “     | 14.6 | 11.7 |  2.5 | 14.2 |   .7 | ... |  4.1 | 54.4
  22d     “     | 13.1 | 11.7 | 10.6 |  4.6 | 21.2 | 5.3 |  1.6 |  3.6
   6th    “     | 10.0 | 11.2 |  2.4 | 30.8 |  1.1 |  .7 |   .7 | 30.4
  24th    “     | 10.4 | 11.2 | 11.1 |  3.9 |  4.3 | 6.2 | 11.1 | 20.6
  10th    “     | 11.1 | 10.8 |  5.9 | 12.5 |  4.7 | ... | 13.9 | 22.3
  =====================================================================

“Our conclusion therefore is,” says Doctor Lipsky, “that the bulk of
the Socialist vote is derived from the foreign Jewish element, and
to a less degree from the Germans.”

Perhaps, but one may not ignore, for instance, the fact that in
the district of these containing the largest percentage of native
Americans of native parentage, the Socialist vote for Governor in
1910 was 12.5 per cent of the whole; or that in the one in which the
Russian and Austrian percentage was very small and the German larger
than in any other of the districts selected, the Socialist vote was
about 13 per cent. We shall see later in this chapter the importance
of the German factor in the Socialist party.

All such analyses of particular elections, we may say again, are
interesting and in a measure instructive; but generalizations
are exceedingly perilous and greatly conditioned by personal
preconceptions, special temporary and local forces and circumstances,
and the purposes of the statistician for the time being--for all of
which the candid student will, and must, make heavy discounts.

RESPONSE TO PROGRESSIVE IDEAS

Coming to the question of the Progressive party’s campaign in 1912,
Doctor Lipsky says, in part:

  One of two facts in the election of 1912 ... are extremely
  suggestive even though they do not cover the whole ground. In that
  election Roosevelt ran ahead of Wilson in only four districts of
  the city. One was the 23d of Manhattan, in which Taft also ran
  ahead of Wilson--a strong Republican district. The other three
  were the 6th, the 8th, and the 26th, the three districts in which
  the Russians and Austrians constitute the great majority of the
  electorate.

So there you are--make what you will of it. Why should the very
districts in which we found heavy percentages of Russians and
Austrians, and a relatively heavy Socialist vote, produce a
preponderant vote for Roosevelt and the Progressive platform? Is
there, after all, a common factor, overlooked--or anyway not dwelt
upon--by Doctor Lipsky, to account for what otherwise might seem
inexplicable? Here again one may philosophize to suit himself, but it
is worth while to consider one phase of the matter too often ignored
in discussions of the motives and impulses behind the radical vote.

William S. Bennet, previously quoted in the same address, dwelt upon
this matter in speaking of the influence of Mr. Hearst:[170]

  Mr. Hearst’s vote among the foreign born was great, and, more
  than the other two candidates combined [speaking of an election
  in which Mr. Hearst was himself a candidate], he attracted that
  vote. It becomes important to analyze Mr. Hearst’s appeal. Much
  of it we find to have been on right lines. We cannot quarrel,
  because of those views, with a candidate who asks votes because he
  has fought against railroad rebates, corporation exactions, and
  fraudulent elections. Under New York City conditions we cannot
  quarrel with one who advocates the building of immediate transit
  facilities with city money. It was also rather begging the question
  to assert that Mr. Hearst exaggerated his efforts and usefulness
  in relation to those matters. The personal and temperamental
  fitness of a candidate is always an element to be considered,
  and in Mr. Hearst’s case it was, though more in private than in
  public discussion. His record as a persistent absentee during his
  congressional service and the legitimate argument from it that he
  would be a negligent mayor, cost Mr. Hearst more votes among those
  friendly to him among the foreign born than he probably imagines.

  Mr. Hearst never made an appeal for support on the ground that
  it would be of any personal assistance to himself. His appeal
  was frequently to the self-interest of the individual, and quite
  generally to his highest interest as a citizen in the welfare
  of the whole body politic. He favored policies because, in his
  expressed judgment, they were right, not because they might be
  immediately successful; and opposed others because wrong, though by
  many deemed expedient.

The point to be noted, then, is that in the propaganda of the
Socialists, of the Progressive party, of Mr. Hearst, there was much
stress upon and slogans about the common welfare, the improvement of
social conditions, the square deal, honest politics and government,
human brotherhood. The note never was outwardly selfish or
materialistic. Always, in the main, it was idealism--whatever may
have been the private motives actually underlying in any particular
case.

It is the common experience of those who have worked with the
foreign-born voter that he usually is responsive to this kind of
appeal. Is it not really a tribute to ourselves, as well as an index
of his own idea of what “America” stands for, that he acts at the
ballot box as if he would like to see these things incarnated in the
life of his adopted country?

Mr. Bennet went on to say that “we learn, certainly, concerning our
most recent citizens, from the Hearst vote”:

  1. They are independent voters.

  2. They are not constrained to remain in the party in power
  nationally.

  3. Nor do they remain with a party simply because it is usually
  dominant locally.

  4. They are not afraid to sacrifice immediate possible benefit by
  attaching themselves to a lesser party and temporary movement.

  5. They are moved by appeals to good citizenship.

  6. They are quite certain to range themselves on the right side of
  a question of morals.

  7. A certain proportion of them are moved by direct appeals, based
  on alleged class distinctions.

  8. The thinly veiled policy of license advanced by the Tammany
  candidate did not draw them from Mr. Hearst, though he vigorously
  condemned license and its advocacy.

And Mr. Bennet added, “these things have been proved concerning the
immigrant. Without going into specifications, which are, however,
well understood locally, these things are _not_ proved”:

  1. That he always votes for a fellow countryman or a coreligionist.

  2. That he can be invariably stampeded by a race or religious issue.

  3. That he votes blindly.

SOME RESULTS FROM CLEVELAND

It is impossible to forecast the working out in our politics of the
passions aroused by the World War among the various racial groups by
the relations and enmities of their respective fatherlands in that
vast turmoil, and the effects of the behavior of native-American
elements toward particular races, and even toward “foreigners”
generally. It is evident that for any intelligent understanding of
what, in the long run and under approximately normal conditions, are
the political attitudes and activities, we must derive our facts
largely from an earlier period--at least antedating the armistice
and the bitter conflicts growing out of the Peace Treaty and the
partisanship characterizing the controversy about the League of
Nations which so greatly confused the issues in the presidential
election of 1920.

A series of elections in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, in the period
between 1911 and 1918 seemed to offer opportunities for study of a
number of large racial groups under reasonably normal conditions.
It is not claimed that this Study was conclusive in its results
or fully scientific in its method; but it certainly produced a
significant exhibit of facts, and in general confirmed what is
known to everyone who ever has worked With or candidly observed at
first hand the part played by the foreign-born voter in American
politics--namely, that he is in no important respect different from
the native-born; that he is swayed by the same motives and emotions,
and is not essentially different in respect of responsiveness to
appeals to his civic pride.

The first step was to select for study a group of election precincts
including as large a proportion as possible of the various
nationalities, and for comparison another group of districts which
would show the action of native-born voters. Ten of the latter
were selected, including populations both relatively wealthy and
relatively poor, and both habitually Republican and habitually
Democratic. For foreign-born racial groups the following were
selected as most important: Czechs, Magyars, Poles, Jugo-Slavs,
Italians, and Jews. Owing to the scattered nature of the racial
distribution, it was impossible to find a large number of districts
predominantly of any particular race; but it was possible to
segregate three for each of these races, and four for one, for
comparison with them of the native born; so that 29 precincts were
studied, as follows:

TABLE XLIII

  DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONALITY IN TWENTY-NINE PRECINCTS IN CLEVELAND

  ====================================================
          Native born                       |  10
          Czech                             |   3
          Magyar                            |   3
          Polish                            |   3
          Jugo-Slav                         |   3
          Italian                           |   4
          Jewish                            |   3
          ----------------------------------+------
               Total                        |  29
  ====================================================

Eight elections were covered by the inquiry, comparing the votes for:

  Mayor         1911--Baker _vs._ Hogen.
  Mayor         1913--Baker _vs._ Davis.
  Mayor         1915--Witt, Davis, Ruthenberg.
  Mayor         1917--Stinchcomb, Davis, Ruthenberg.
  President     1916--Wilson, Hughes, Debs.
  Governor      1916--Cox _vs._ Willis.
  Governor      1918--Cox _vs._ Willis.
  Congressman   1918--Candidates differing in different districts.

The returns were examined also for indications as to attitudes about
woman suffrage and the question of no-license and prohibition, in
elections between 1912 and 1918.

Of the native-born precincts, so called, five indicated almost
straight Democratic tendencies; three were consistently Republican;
and two were of varying complexion as between the two great parties.
It should be remembered that the prevailing general complexion of the
city of Cleveland in recent years, and regardless of the “landslide”
of 1920, has been Democratic. Therefore the districts selected to
show the tendencies of the native born were fairly representative of
the situation.

The first election, 1911, was a straight partisan contest between Mr.
Baker, a Democrat, and Mr. Hogen, a Republican. In 1913, the city
tried, for the first time, its municipal nonpartisan ballot; but in
that year the old political parties were as powerful as ever. In the
election of 1915, Mr. Baker was not a candidate, but Peter Witt, long
associated with Mayor Tom L. Johnson, was the Democratic candidate.
This election exhibits circumstances and results significant not only
of the attitude of the foreign-born voter and his responsiveness to
political cross-currents, but of the extreme difficulty of isolating
particular factors as especially influential upon these voters.

Mr. Witt had just completed four years of service as Street Railway
Commissioner, and among the business and professional classes of
the town had won a rather reluctant recognition for efficiency, the
reluctance being largely due to the fact that in days when he was
campaigning for Tom Johnson he had been regarded as ultra-radical.
But his opponent in this campaign had no recognized record of
administrative capacity, and the Republicans themselves acknowledged
some doubt as to his ability, compared with the known ability of
Witt, to fulfill the duties of the mayoralty. Both candidates
were regarded without opposition by the “wet” element, though Mr.
Davis was perhaps more circumspect in his utterances on the liquor
question. The campaign did not touch the questions involved in the
European War until the very end, when, on the Sunday before election,
some supporter of Davis published and widely circulated among the
Bohemians (Czechs), Russians, and Italians a pamphlet in which Witt
was bitterly accused of being pro-German.

Now the results of the election in the wards dominated by those
nationalities might rationally be held to show a pronounced effect of
that propaganda, but it was no secret, the old “aristocratic” wards
were presumably as keen about pro-Germanism as those inhabited by
voters of alien origin, and there, if anywhere, would be the seat
of the prejudice against Witt on the ground of alleged radicalism.
Why, then, did the native-born conservatives waive their prejudices
against Witt, the supposed radical, and overlook the charges of
pro-Germanism? And why did the foreign born, who are conventionally
expected to be radical, suddenly turn and vote against the only
candidate who was accused of being radical? Why did Mr. Witt gain
nothing in the heavily German wards (as in fact he did gain nothing)
from his German name, his remote German ancestry, and the accusation
of pro-Germanism? It was further noted at the time that among the
Russian Jews the attack upon Witt turned many normally Democratic
votes to the Davis Republican candidate. Why?

The following tables show what happened in the precincts studied:

TABLE XLIV

  DISTRIBUTION OF DEMOCRATIC AND REPUBLICAN VOTES IN CLEVELAND IN
  1913 AND 1915 AMONG CERTAIN RACIAL GROUPS

  ========================================================
                      | NUMBER OF VOTES | NUMBER OF VOTES
                      +--------+--------+--------+--------
      PRECINCTS       |       1913      |       1915
                      +--------+--------+--------+--------
                      | Baker  |  Davis |  Witt  |  Davis
  --------------------+--------+--------+--------+--------
  Native born         |   945  | 1,091  | 1,039  |   925
  Czech               |   343  |   223  |   275  |   373
  Magyar              |   207  |   204  |   302  |   204
  Polish              |   263  |   208  |   205  |   473
  Jugo-Slav           |   283  |   135  |   279  |   137
  Italian             |   239  |   282  |   136  |   394
  Jewish              |   260  |   256  |   273  |   212
  ========================================================

The three elections following--the presidential in 1916, the
mayoralty election in 1917, and the governorship election in
1918--exhibit no tendencies attributable either to the war or to
any special causes from which one may generalize anything with
regard to the political activities and attitudes of the foreign-born
voters which would distinguish them from the native-born. In 1912
Wilson carried Polish, Magyar, and Czech precincts. In 1916 he
repeated--this presumably not because of any aspect of the war, but
because those precincts are normally Democratic.

The Cleveland nonpartisan ballot provides for three choices. One of
the objections urged against the nonpartisan ballot has been that the
second and third choices would be used only by the more intelligent
voter; that the less intelligent would vote for but one. In the
elections studied in which this three-choice system was used, 20 per
cent of the native born expressed second choices; the foreign born
followed in this order:

TABLE XLV

  PER CENT OF CERTAIN RACES EXERCISING SECOND AND THIRD CHOICES

  =====================================================
                           |SECOND CHOICE| THIRD CHOICE
            RACE           |   PER CENT  |   PER CENT
  -------------------------+-------------+-------------
  Native born              |      20     |      7
  Jugo-Slav                |      18     |      7
  Jews                     |      14     |      5
  Italians                 |      12     |      7
  Magyars and Bohemians    |      10     |      7
  Polish                   |       7     |      3
  =====================================================

A smaller per cent exercises third choice, but three foreign-born
groups equaled the native born with 7 per cent. The Jews with 5 per
cent, Magyars with 4 per cent, Polish with 3 per cent, were the
lowest.

While there is little in these figures to justify generalization,
it may be said that, on the whole, the voters presumably more
intelligent are in practice rather afraid of the second- and
third-choice business because they recognize some danger that in
expressing a second choice they may, in the final count, negative
their first choice; therefore there is a marked tendency among
the politically sophisticated to vote only a first choice. At all
events, no substantial distinction can be drawn from any available
statistics between native and foreign born, as such, with regard to
their intelligence or their tendencies in the use of such a device.

When one comes to consider what might be called the _human_ aspects
of politics, these elections in Cleveland show, what elections
everywhere show, interesting but in no way surprising facts. One
is that the voters of any race tend to support a candidate of that
race, or a man well known as friendly to its members. Mr. Davis was
exceedingly well known and popular among the Bohemians, who are both
numerically strong and racially influential in Cleveland. In the
first election studied, that of 1911, Mr. Baker, a Democrat, carried
the three Bohemian (Czech) precincts by substantial pluralities as
against Mr. Hogen. His total vote in these precincts aggregated 445
to Hogen’s 183. But in 1913 Mr. Davis carried one of the precincts.
And over against this fact is the consideration that in 1913 Baker
was generally much weaker as a candidate than in 1911--for reasons
having no appreciable racial bearing. In 1915, as shown in the table
above, there was a heavy swing in the three Bohemian districts in
favor of Davis, the Republican candidate.

Under the head of _human_ tendencies one may consider the question
of the immigrants’ attitude toward prohibition. The reaction is just
what would be expected from voters of foreign extraction. The Magyars
(Hungarians), normally Democratic, swung greatly enhanced Democratic
pluralities when that party was recognized as opposed to prohibition.
And the old-country attitudes about the position of woman showed
clearly in the vote on woman suffrage, as they all voted against the
“dry” proposals and candidates.

In the earlier days in Cleveland the Italians were led by a very
influential Italian who was a Republican, and until recent years
the Italian vote was preponderantly Republican. Now, however, the
Cleveland politicians will tell you that this preponderance has
passed; the Italians are said to be fairly evenly divided. But in any
particular election the Italian vote may sway this way or that, under
the influence of temporary factors that swing elections everywhere.
In one Italian precinct, in four municipal elections, the Republican
candidate was preferred in every case. Hughes had a small plurality
over Wilson. But in two state elections the Democrats won--admittedly
because the Republican candidate was regarded as “dry.”

Again the human factor--take the Jews. One of the Cleveland precincts
studied is made up of an overwhelming majority of the more prosperous
class of Jewish people. The other two are located in the Ghetto of
the city. There is no similarity in the political trends of the two
parts of the city. The wealthier Jews vote as a rule for Democrat or
Republican. In 1917 the Socialist candidate for mayor carried both of
the poorer districts. But do the Jews move away from the Socialist
districts because they are opposed to Socialism, or do they turn from
Socialism when they become more prosperous?

Persistent in most of the studies of this subject is the fallacy of
assuming or attempting to find some constant factor attaching either
to this or that particular race, or to the state of being foreign
born or of foreign antecedents. The Jugo-Slavs in Cleveland are said,
and appear to be shown in the statistics above, to be preponderantly
Democratic. In 1916 Wilson received in the three Jugo-Slav precincts
more than 70 per cent of the total vote. But, aside from the fact
that Socialism is or has been at times politically strong among the
Jugo-Slavs, we have no data to show how Jugo-Slavs voted in districts
where they are in the minority; we do not know why they voted for
Wilson in 1916, or how many of them did so vote. The 70 per cent
above referred to included large numbers of voters in those precincts
who were of other racial complexion, and the individual ballot in no
instance discloses the inner mind of the voter.

“CIVIC INTEREST” IN GRAND RAPIDS

When we come down to the larger question, of the response of voters
of foreign birth and origin to constructive efforts to interest
them in civic matters, we are on surer ground. Given a sufficiently
comprehensive survey, we can tell whether the “foreign wards” of
a city are apathetic toward movements which they can recognize as
embodying concrete things close to their own lives, and meaning a
forward step in public administration. The testimony of all sorts
of workers among the foreign born is unanimous on this point.
The foreign-born voters are more responsive to things of this
kind than the native-born. Possibly this is because their more
recent introduction into American life makes them more naïve, less
blasé--what you will as to the reason, the fact remains the same.

It so happens that we have a peculiarly apt and informing exhibit
of this in the city of Grand Rapids, Michigan, in statistics of
five elections involving questions of municipal import, and showing
in most striking fashion the results of a sustained effort, not to
influence votes this way or that, but to impress citizens with the
importance of voting at all. The following tables show the total
vote cast in the three wards of the city of Grand Rapids at these
elections:

TABLE XLVI

  VOTE CAST IN PRECINCTS OF VARYING RACIAL MAKE-UP IN THREE WARDS OF
  GRAND RAPIDS, 1918, 1919

                               First Ward
  ==================================================================
  PRECINCT|       RACIAL      |MARCH |AUGUST|NOVEMBER|MARCH | APRIL
          |     COMPLEXION    | 1918 | 1918 |  1918  | 1919 |  1919
  --------+-------------------+------+------+--------+------+-------
   1st    | Lithuanian        |   95 |  144 |    178 |  222 |   316
   2d     | Dutch             |  267 |  402 |    443 |  483 |   601
   3d     | Polish            |  359 |  608 |    672 |  721 | 1,105
   4th    | American          |  197 |  311 |    347 |  358 |   593
   5th    | American          |  334 |  508 |    555 |  757 | 1,063
   6th    | Polish            |  239 |  386 |    407 |  532 |   764
   7th    | Polish            |  305 |  464 |    541 |  729 |   946
   8th    | American          |  213 |  338 |    386 |  536 |   719
   9th    | German            |  210 |  349 |    419 |  535 |   752
  10th    | Mixed             |  296 |  425 |    455 |  682 |   909
  11th    | Mixed             |  263 |  427 |    484 |  643 |   899
  12th    | American          |  260 |  403 |    461 |  685 |   940
  --------+-------------------+------+------+--------+------+-------

                              Second Ward
  --------+-------------------+------+------+--------+------+-------
   1st    | American          |  270 |  438 |    499 |  682 |   907
   2d     | American          |  251 |  322 |    423 |  557 |   796
   3d     | American          |  360 |  519 |    549 |  738 |   885
   4th    | American          |  227 |  393 |    434 |  475 |   658
   5th    | Polish            |  166 |  227 |    291 |  363 |   467
   6th    | Polish            |  277 |  449 |    514 |  721 |   952
   7th    | American          |  292 |  407 |    496 |  837 |   881
   8th    | American          |  206 |  300 |    375 |  574 |   732
   9th    | American          |  129 |  245 |    324 |  238 |   434
  10th    | Dutch             |  314 |  451 |    546 | 1,002| 1,139
  11th    | Dutch             |  240 |  373 |    418 |  594 |   726
  12th    | American          |  231 |  399 |    476 |  783 |   931
  13th    | American          |  409 |  588 |    671 | 1,063| 1,297
  14th    | American          |  331 |  457 |    544 | 1,085| 1,229
  15th    | Italian and Syrian|  291 |  486 |    618 | 1,168| 1,357
  16th    | Italian and Syrian|   89 |  155 |    187 |  187 |   285
  17th    | Italian and Syrian|  115 |  164 |    209 |  253 |   326
  --------+-------------------+------+------+--------+------+-------

                               Third Ward
  --------+-------------------+------+------+--------+------+-------
   1st    | Italian and Syrian|  178 |  247 |    328 |  379 |   540
   2d     | Italian and Syrian|   98 |  135 |    258 |  263 |   440
   3d     | American          |  318 |  551 |    680 | 1,004| 1,298
   4th    | American          |  354 |  546 |    619 |  980 | 1,203
   5th    | American          |  422 |  613 |    681 |  861 | 1,019
   6th    | American          |  241 |  380 |    433 |  674 |   848
   7th    | Dutch             |  292 |  480 |    511 |  628 |   952
   8th    | American          |  346 |  555 |    631 |  818 | 1,165
   9th    | American          |  255 |  416 |    509 |  720 |   979
  10th    | American          |  266 |  470 |    547 |  771 | 1,114
  11th    | American          |  188 |  360 |    450 |  516 |   812
  12th    | Dutch             |  291 |  488 |    578 |  717 |   986
  13th    | Dutch             |  218 |  367 |    413 |  463 |   658
  14th    | American          |  224 |  404 |    490 |  677 |   909
  15th    | American          |  124 |  224 |    272 |  417 |   604
  16th    | American          |  194 |  387 |    442 |  594 |   847
  --------+-------------------+------+------+--------+------+-------
          |   Totals          |11,245|17,820|  20,774|28,705|37,983
  ==================================================================

The population of Grand Rapids, about 112,500 by the census of 1910,
by the spring of 1918 had grown to approximately 132,000. This would
afford a potential male vote of upward of 26,000; so that at the
primary election that March, considerably less than half of the
possible vote was polled. At the election in August, 1918, this was
increased to nearly 70 per cent, and to 80 per cent in November.

In 1919, however, the women came into the picture, and the efforts
of the Americanization Society[171] were redoubled to bring the
women out, first to register and then to vote. The report of the
secretary of the society (made at the annual meeting in January,
1920) states that on February 15th, the last registration day before
the March primary, 22,700 women had registered. And on March 20th,
the last registration day before the election of April 7th, women
had registered to a total of 26,500--an astounding proportion of the
possible total of women citizens of voting age in a population of
132,000. It looks very much like 100 per cent!

The last two columns in the table above show the totals including the
women voters, and the striking increase between the March primary and
the April election in 1919. With a possible total vote of upward of
50,000 we have the results of the Americanization Society’s work as
showing in the actual personal presence at the polls of at least 75
per cent of the voters of all racial groups. The vote cast on March
5, 1919, was 28,705, composed, it is said, of about half men and half
women. At the election on April 7th, nearly 38,000 votes were cast,
and it is estimated that from 7,000 to 10,000 voters were turned away
from the polling places because of inadequate election facilities. A
fairly impressive exhibit of the response of American citizenship
to an appeal to American, nonpartisan, _civic interest_, in a large
cosmopolitan city, regardless of racial complexion. Indeed, without
meaning to stress the point unduly, it may be remarked in passing
that the very few precincts which in any election failed to show a
substantial increase over the vote at the previous election, are
in every instance those in which the population is described as
predominantly of the native born.

That it was the appeal to civic interest and duty, and nothing
else, which in largest measure produced this result may be seen,
for instance, in a comparison of the registration of women in Grand
Rapids with that at the same time (February, 1919) in other Michigan
cities in which there was no such intensive campaign to get the women
out to the registration places:

TABLE XLVII

  PER CENT OF WOMEN REGISTERED IN THIRTEEN MICHIGAN CITIES

  ============================================================
          CITIES         | POPULATION|   WOMEN   | PER CENT OF
                         |           | REGISTERED| POPULATION
  -----------------------+-----------+-----------+------------
  Grand Rapids           |   132,000 |    22,700 |    17.0
  Saginaw                |    65,000 |     8,509 |    13.0
  Benton Harbor          |    12,000 |     1,506 |    12.5
  Traverse City          |    12,000 |     1,388 |    11.6
  Jackson                |    50,000 |     5,388 |    10.8
  Muskegon               |    42,000 |     4,500 |    10.7
  Bay City               |    50,000 |     6,290 |    10.6
  Port Huron             |    25,000 |     2,706 |    10.1
  Flint                  |    70,000 |     6,906 |     9.9
  Kalamazoo              |    50,166 |     4,308 |     8.6
  Detroit                |   986,699 |    65,040 |     6.5
  Lansing                |    55,000 |     3,000 |     6.3
  Cadillac               |    10,000 |       513 |     5.1
  -----------------------+-----------+-----------+------------
      Totals and average | 1,591,865 |   135,344 |     8.5
  ============================================================

Even then, however, the Grand Rapids movement was spreading to other
Michigan cities; some of the results of that influence may well be
visible in the larger percentages shown by some of these cities.
Since then, indeed, the movement has become state-wide; and the
results already visible show notably the same facts and tendencies so
strikingly exhibited in the case of Grand Rapids, where it began.

MUNICIPAL VOTERS’ LEAGUE OF CHICAGO

The most conspicuously successful effort to mobilize all the
resources of a great city behind the general movement for honesty and
efficiency in city government is undoubtedly the Municipal Voters’
League of Chicago. Its record of accomplishment is too long and too
brilliant to permit any serious discouragement from the fact that
immediately following the war there appeared to be a setback and
reaction in Chicago’s local elections. For the time being there
seems to be everywhere a recession in nearly all forms of social
idealism. That is the inevitable result of the moral overstrain that
accompanies war. Much work must be done over again, but, at the
worst, it must be recognized that the tide of advance during the past
quarter-century left marks which will not be forgotten; standards
of social welfare and responsibility which, in the long run, will
continue to stand as a minimum of progress.

Another thing: Into Chicago has come, during the past few years, a
vast population of negroes from the South, among whom never anywhere
has a particle of work been done tending to teach them the smallest
thing about political responsibility or civic pride. In the election
of April, 1919, when William Hale Thompson was re-elected mayor of
Chicago, despite the opposition of all the constructive elements
in the city, a good deal more than half of Thompson’s plurality
was gained in the Second Ward, which is _the_ negro ward of the
city. It would be misleading to generalize from the results in the
foreign wards, because the issues were greatly confused by the war
and accusations of pro-Germanism against Thompson. Even so, Thompson
in that election carried only one of the heavily German wards. In
some of the wards, dominated by native-born voters, he won because,
in spite of his alleged pro-Germanism, he was the candidate of
the dyed-in-the-wool, stand-pat Republicans. The issue of decent
government, by which one would test the constructive influence of any
group of voters, was swamped in a wave of passion. So for any general
judgment of the response of racial groups, or of the foreign-born
voters as a whole, we must consider the whole experience of the
Municipal Voters’ League during its effort of twenty-five years to
raise the quality of character and public service in the city’s board
of aldermen.

The genius of this organization of public-spirited volunteers lies in
its reliance wholly upon _publicity of the records of candidates_.
These records, carefully investigated, with full opportunity for the
candidates or their friends to bring forward any facts or arguments
in their behalf, were published in the newspapers and spread
broadcast by means of pamphlets. The influence has been enormous and
accelerating. In the early days the main stress was laid upon mere
personal character--candidates must not be thieves; increasingly
during succeeding years the test came to be that of _capacity_ as
well as character. The war reactions and results have not destroyed,
but only interrupted, this magnificent work.

How did the foreign-born voter respond to this effort and propaganda?
The answer to this question, as found all through the twenty-odd
years before the entrance of the United States into the war, is
one of the most heartening things in American politics. But this
statement must be taken with discrimination, and subject to certain
qualifications. The League has had its hardest fights, and produced
the least results, in those wards where solid blocks of immigrants
of some one racial complexion encouraged a racial isolation; or
where great masses of population were under the domination of some
reactionary political or religious leadership, having some interest
in maintaining a subservient representation in the City Hall. In
the centers of poverty, where political strength is maintained by
leaders of the old type through control of day-labor jobs, gifts
of coal, shoes, and other forms of charity, it is difficult to
interest a population to whom even a vision of clean streets is of
importance secondary to to-day’s experience of empty stomachs. In a
general way it may be said that the degree of response to movements
like the Municipal Voters’ League is roughly commensurate with the
degree of material prosperity. As the immigrant gains in quality and
wage-return of his job, acquaintance with American essentials, and
comfort of material surroundings, he gains interest in the ethical
aspect of community life.

But the uplifting influence of a campaign like that of the League
penetrates even into the most obdurate regions. The Seventeenth
Ward of Chicago was long the scene of one of the hardest fights of
the League. Through the hard work of Prof. Graham Taylor and the
group of good citizens centering in and about the Chicago-Commons
social settlement, the work came to great success--and held it--as
long as the population was characteristically Scandinavian, German,
Scotch, and Irish. In recent years, however, these people gradually
moved out of the ward, and it came to be heavily Polish, under the
domination of a reactionary control of the Polish Catholic Church.
This element always has been hard to influence, and its priests are
active directly in politics. Nevertheless, in a recent aldermanic
campaign, a Polish Catholic alderman running for re-election told at
a public meeting how his daughter came home from school crying, with
a newspaper in her hand, demanding to know what her father had done
to justify the newspapers in saying he had a bad record--his record
set forth in cold type by the Municipal Voters’ League. This alderman
at that meeting declared that he had been receiving patronage for his
vote in the council, that he was going to drop that, try hereafter to
serve the best interests of his ward, and make a record of which his
children could be proud.

The Italians as a whole, in Chicago as in many other places, have
been more united in their action than most other racial groups,
and under their ancient habits of padrone leadership have shown
a tendency to accept boss rule, though the Italian voter as an
individual is no more amenable to corrupt influences than voters of
any other race.

Over the whole history of the League’s activity it has been true that
the races most responsive to its appeal are the Scandinavian, German,
Irish, and Bohemian. Given a candidate of any race, other things
being equal, the voters of that race will support him; as between two
competing outsiders, the voters of these races have been more than
willing to heed disinterested appeals from the point of view of good
government. Some of the best aldermen during the past twenty years in
Chicago have been Germans. The late Alderman Beilfuss, Republican,
a native of Germany and an excellent official, was re-elected time
after time in the Fifteenth Ward; but as the Scandinavians and
Germans--especially Lutheran Germans--moved away and the scale of
prosperity in the ward’s population deteriorated, his pluralities
diminished, and in the year before his death he won by a narrow
margin.

In the predominantly Bohemian Twelfth Ward aldermanic candidates
recommended by the League were elected almost without exception for
many years, regardless of political alignment. In that ward, from
1904 to 1909, inclusive, the Republican Bohemian and the Democratic
German candidates, both indorsed by the League, alternated in winning
elections, the pluralities running from 3,400 on one side to 3,100 on
the other--in a ward casting a total of perhaps 15,000 votes a shift
of 6,500. When Mayor Thompson, Republican, in 1915, carried the ward
by nearly 4,000, Alderman Kerner, a Bohemian Democrat of excellent
record, carried it in the same election by 3,350. In other words,
there was a politically independent swing of nearly one-half of the
15,000 votes cast in the election.

The Irish voters generally pay close attention to what the League
says. In the spring campaign of 1919, the League’s condemnation of
a Democratic Irish alderman in the Thirtieth Ward furnished his
opponent, whom the League recommended, with enough ammunition to
defeat him for renomination, whereupon an Irish Republican, a former
alderman with a good record, who received the final indorsement
of the League, turned in and beat the Democratic nominee. In the
Thirteenth Ward, largely Irish, which Mayor Thompson, Republican,
lost in 1919 by more than 4,000, a Democratic alderman condemned by
the League was defeated by a native-born Republican whom the League
indorsed, by more than 1,800 votes.

SOME OTHER INSTANCES

Dr. Charles W. Eliot told the Good Government Conference at
Cincinnati in 1909 of an incident in Massachusetts which reflected
the interest of foreign-born voters in political questions on their
merits regardless of racial or religious considerations:

  A few years ago, largely through the efforts of a single citizen,
  the Massachusetts Legislature changed the number of the school
  committee of Boston from twenty-four to five--in itself a
  prodigious improvement. Now, Boston is the home of three Roman
  Catholic races, the Irish, the French Canadians, and the Italians.
  The Italians have lately come in large numbers, and many of them
  are from southern Italy and not from northern Italy. What did the
  voters of Boston do in electing a school committee of five at
  large? The election was not by wards, but at large. They elected
  at the very first election--and have maintained the composition of
  the committee as then determined ever since--two Catholics, two
  Protestants, and one Jew, and the Jew has lately been the chairman
  of the committee. Now is not that creditable to the Roman Catholic
  majority in the city of Boston? They have a clear majority.
  Moreover, does it not tell us something encouraging about the
  manner in which voters of foreign birth will use the power of the
  vote in our country?

A. C. Pleydell of New York, on the same occasion, contributed a
testimony of the same general character:

  In New Jersey a large settlement of Italians in a small country
  township until lately have been the prey of the political leaders,
  who are just as corrupt as in the city. A gentleman whom I know
  who is, I believe, of a different political faith, moved out there
  some years ago and began to take an interest in the local life of
  the community. He started to clean up the school board and get
  decent schoolhouses. There were sixty or seventy Italian children
  at that little village school. The village has a population of
  only a few hundred. This man got subscriptions from these poor
  people, a little help from the outside, and contributed something
  himself. For two or three years they have had neighborhood meetings
  without regard to party, which these foreigners attended. One of
  the finest and most inspiring sights I have ever seen was at the
  school festival held in that little hall, largely filled by these
  foreigners.... These foreigners, under the leadership of this one
  man, have formed a good-government organization that has spread to
  neighboring townships.... He uses for its motto, “Put the circles
  on the square,” the square being the township and the circles being
  little group organizations. They have broken up the political ring
  in that township to-day by independent voting and nominations;
  ... as a result of this work in that township the movement has
  spread into another township which has been more corrupt, although
  inhabited almost altogether by native Americans. At the last
  election the people in that other township took an inspiration from
  the work that had been done by the foreign Italian population, and
  cleaned up their township....

  There is just as much democracy in those people as we have, and we
  do not want to lose sight of the fact that they are human beings
  just like everybody else. I am the son of an immigrant from another
  part of Europe. The immigrants from the southern part have just as
  much ambition as the immigrants from the northern part.

I. M. Wise of Cincinnati in the same discussion said:

  We have had a very fine example of the independence of the foreign
  voter during the last few years in Cincinnati. We had a movement
  started for the purpose of electing a prosecutor, and we found,
  after investigating the returns of the election, that the victory
  was due almost entirely to the foreign vote. But we had another
  example some years ago when there was a movement to sell the
  Cincinnati Southern Railway. This measure was defeated by a small
  majority, due entirely to the German citizens who usually show more
  independence than the other foreign citizens.

William Bennett Munro, in his _Government of American Cities_,[172]
discussing the reasons for the political misleading of the
foreign-born voter by corrupt leadership, points out that “the
discreet and sober use of the ballot is something not to be learned
in a day or even in a generation,” and that “it is not a matter for
surprise, then, if alien-born voters have often proved easy prey to
the sophistry and cajolery of claptrap politicians.” He says, further:

  We have the testimony of seasoned campaigners that the alien-born
  voter is inclined to think for himself if he has the opportunity;
  but too often he does not secure even that small amount of fair
  information which is necessary to furnish food for thought. As
  a rule, practically all he gets concerning the facts of the
  municipal situation comes to him in such form that it leads to one
  conclusion only.... Experience has proved that he cannot always be
  stampeded by appeals to class prejudice, or delivered blindly to
  some political faction. Given a fair chance, he is, according to
  authoritative testimony, a voter of at least normal independence.

Considering the bewilderment with which thousands of old-stock
native-born voters confront the complications of our Federal, state,
and local governments, and the complexity of our inordinately
long official ballots, it is small wonder that, like them, the
foreign-born voter, even after many years’ residence in this country,
follow shibboleths and leaders who to them represent a certain
definiteness and clarity of purpose and action. This is especially
true when the whole subject of governmental reform and efficiency
comes to them in the guise of relatively arid abstractions in
which they do not see their own interests, and by the voice of men
living in far distant parts of the community, who do not understand
their intimate problems, or speak the language of their daily
lives. In almost every instance in which the issue was made clear
and intelligible to them, the foreign-born voters of almost every
nationality have responded in surprising fashion.

XII

THE FOREIGN BORN IN RADICAL MOVEMENTS

It would require an exhaustive investigation, beyond the space limits
and the scope of this volume, to describe the part which the foreign
born have played in the various radical movements marking the history
of the United States. Of course, there is a sense in which anarchism,
philosophical or violent, works toward a “political” end. The attempt
to abolish all government and establish individual free will as the
only law, is in that sense political. From that point of view one
must discuss the influence of primitive Christianity, the teachings
of such philosophers as Herbert Spencer, Tolstoy, Emerson, Thoreau,
and a host of others in all countries. We confine ourselves here
to the activities of the foreign born as they affect our ordinary
political machinery and processes, participating or willfully failing
to participate at the ballot box, or at least directly influencing
political activities and policies.

We have to consider briefly the immigrant’s participation in these
forms of activity: (a) Political Socialism. (b) Populism--lately
embodied in the Nonpartisan League. (c) The Land Question--agitation,
for example, for the so-called Single Tax. (d) Antipolitical
organizations, as exemplified in the I. W. W., Communist party, etc.

It is a curious fact that radical movements in any country habitually
are attributed to the foreign born. Bismarck assured the Germans that
Socialism could not take permanent root in Germany because it was of
English origin; while Gladstone declared that the “Social Democratic”
doctrines could not abide in England because they were imported from
Germany. It is common in this country and elsewhere to assert that
Socialism is a movement inspired and carried on by Jews. There is no
sound basis for this or kindred assertions. Socialism, and radicalism
generally, are of no particular geographical or racial origin. Among
a really prosperous and contented people radicalism is an academic
affair; the common man is not interested. It is only when social
and economic conditions produce extremes of wealth and poverty, and
when primary discontent with the basis and atmosphere of daily life
is widespread, that political radicalism of any kind attracts any
but the fireside debaters. In the last analysis the only real and
effective agitator is injustice. The Socialist movement appeared in
Japan only after modern industrialism and the factory system had
reached a stage of development creating a psychological soil in which
it could grow.

Socialism appeared in America early in the nineteenth century, but
it did not assume any political significance until the country had
become rather industrial than agricultural. It did not originate
among the foreign born, nor were its early protagonists of alien
birth.

Long before the influence of Marx appeared in statements of
Socialistic theory in this country, or any other, the essentials of
Socialism were published and discussed on both sides of the Atlantic.
When Karl Marx was a little boy Robert Owen reprinted in England a
Socialist pamphlet by an American workingman. About the same time
one Thomas Cooper of Columbia, South Carolina, published a book
containing all that is essential of Socialist doctrine. And O. A.
Brownson, editor of the Boston _Quarterly Review_, was preaching
the inevitability of a class war, the abolition of the wage system,
and the necessity of the “triumph of the proletariat.” In 1829, when
Marx was eleven years old, Thomas Skidmore, R. L. Jennings, and L.
Byllesby exercised a marked influence with the preaching of what
would even now be recognized as “straight Socialism.” There was
no influence of Marx or any other immigrant in the substantially
Socialistic--and collectivist--teachings of such men as Horace
Greeley, George Ripley, Charles A. Dana, Parke Godwin, Higginson,
Channing, Margaret Fuller, Hawthorne, James Russell Lowell.

Socialism, in fact, is a spontaneous human reaction to individualist
capitalism. In that hour when the grouping of privately owned wealth,
in the hands and under the control of combined owners as partners or
in the form of corporations, was made necessary by the increasing
intricacy and expensiveness of machinery and the application
thereto of steam power--the institution, in short, of the factory
system--Socialism--the theory of the collective ownership of the
means of production--became the inevitable reaction in the minds of
persons and classes dissatisfied with the workings of the process.
Naturally, these persons would be chiefly of the class of those who
had nothing to contribute except their bare hands and brains--the
proletariat. Bear in mind that we are not here discussing the merits
of the theory.

What Marx did was to elaborate and systematize the theory. And he
did something else. The earlier preachers of Socialism were largely
idealists, most of them of the Christian faith, who appealed to the
sense of brotherhood, talked in terms of the Sermon on the Mount
and the Kingdom of God. Later came, notably in the writings of
Marx, the reduction of the whole business to materialist terms;
the disappearance of all sentimentalism and religious terminology
from the propaganda. Logically it is a short step to the atheistic
extremes of merciless dictatorship by minority and the harsh
suppression of opposition, exemplified in the rule of the so-called
Bolsheviki.

This is very important, because it affords the psychological
background against which to see the reason why materialistic
Socialism has to so great an extent failed to hold the allegiance
of the naturally idealistic, church-bred, native American, and has
so largely come to be a movement supported by the foreign born.
For, whatever may be said about Socialism as not peculiarly of
foreign origin, it nevertheless is a fact that in this country, in
its aggressive political aspect, Socialism is preponderantly of
foreign-born personnel, and to a large extent, though by no means
exclusively, German and Jewish. It is impossible to present reliable
statistics as to the number or racial distribution of Socialists,
because, in the first place, there are thousands of persons of all
races entertaining Socialistic ideas and theories who do not call
themselves Socialists. The vote of the Socialist political parties
includes large proportions of votes due to reasons other than
Socialist views; the Socialist parties have in the past contained
thousands of members who were not voters. Furthermore, there is no
census or tabulation of Socialists that can be relied upon.

THE SOCIALIST PRESS

Some significance might be attached to the relative circulation
of the Socialist daily press, which is largely foreign-speaking.
There appear to be but two daily Socialist newspapers published
in English--the Milwaukee _Leader_, claiming a circulation of
37,000, and the New York _Call_, credited with about 15,000. The
potential circulation of these papers, and even more those in foreign
languages, no doubt is much larger than this, the difficulties of
distribution due in part to lack of capital, but still more to
mailing restrictions inflicted during the war, preventing their
free circulation. There are, or until a recent date were, at least
thirteen Socialist papers published in foreign languages--one
Bohemian, four Finnish, three German, one Hungarian, one Yiddish, one
Lithuanian, one Polish, and one Russian. According to the _American
Labor Year Book_ of 1916, nine of these foreign-language dailies
approximated a total circulation of 302,000. Against these dailies,
however, must be placed many Socialist and Socialistic periodicals,
weekly and monthly, published in English. One source of information
on this subject asserted that “those who have definitely accepted the
Socialist philosophy of life read the Socialist daily newspapers.”
This is hardly supported by the facts. For obvious reasons, the
Socialist dailies are not very satisfactory sources of news
information, and many convinced Socialists do not read them--perhaps
cannot get them--but rely for their Socialist reading upon
periodicals appearing at longer intervals. This would appear from
the circulation of such papers in English as the _Appeal to Reason_,
published at Girard, Kansas, which claims a circulation of 529,132,
and the _National Rip-Saw_, published at St. Louis, which claims
200,000. To what extent these papers represent deeply convinced
Socialists, and those holding more or less mildly Socialistic views,
it is impossible to say.

DUES-PAYING SOCIALIST MEMBERS

According to the _Appeal Almanac_ for 1916, the dues-paying members
of the Socialist party from 1903 to 1915 totaled:

TABLE XLVIII

  NUMBER OF SOCIALISTS PAYING DUES EACH YEAR, FROM 1903 TO 1915

  ==========================================================
         1903                              |     15,975
         1904                              |     20,763
         1905                              |     23,327
         1906                              |     26,784
         1907                              |     29,270
         1908                              |     41,751
         1909                              |     41,479
         1910                              |     58,011
         1911                              |     84,716
         1912                              |    113,371
         1913                              |     95,401
         1914                              |     93,579
         1915                              |     79,374
  ==========================================================

The year 1912 was the year of the Roosevelt Progressive revolt
against the Republican party; it may be that thousands of voters of
radical or liberal tendency who resented the Republican attitude,
but could not follow Mr. Roosevelt, or swung farther than the
Progressive party was willing to go, went into the Socialist party.
But it seems quite evident that the heavy slump between 1914 and
1915, when the figure dropped from 93,579 to 79,374, was due to the
reactions of the war, and in particular to the increasing resentment
of native Americans against the attitude of the party leaders which
culminated in the platform adopted by the party organization at St.
Louis--antiwar, and by most ordinary folk, including thousands of
perfectly good Socialists, deemed not only pacifistic, but definitely
pro-German. That situation alone drove a rift down through the
Socialist ranks, and certainly made it legitimate henceforth--for the
present, anyway--to regard the Socialist party, as constituted, as an
organization distinctively of foreign stock and foreign born.

RACIAL GROUPS OF SOCIALISTS

Owing to the polyglot character of the Socialist movement, it became
necessary to organize language groups. This movement was well under
way in the years immediately preceding the war. The German Language
Federation, which was formed in December, 1912, at Newcastle,
Pennsylvania, at the end of the third year claimed a dues-paying
membership of 4,577.[173] The Finnish Socialist Federation was
credited with 10,616 in 1916. The French Language Federation reported
497 members in December, 1915. The Hungarian Language Federation
claimed membership “well above 1,500.” The Italian Socialist
Federation reported “about 1,000 members in good standing.” The
Jewish Socialist Federation was stated to have “about 5,000 members.”
The Lithuanian Socialist Federation stated that it had “a little over
2,000 members.” The South-Slavic Socialist Federation claimed about
2,000. The Scandinavian Federation gave its membership as 1,161, of
whom 265 were women. There were recognized also organizations of
Poles, Slovaks, Japanese, etc.

The Finnish _Kalenteri_ for 1918 gave a list of racial groups of
Socialists in the United States in this order of relative strength.
It is a striking fact that the Americans lead, but it must be
remembered that for their statistical purposes a naturalized citizen
may be as good an American as one native-born of old stock. (See
Table XLIX.)

TABLE XLIX

  RANKS OF RACE GROUPS IN RELATIVE SOCIALIST STRENGTH

  =================================================
        Rank                     |    Race
  -------------------------------+-----------------
        1                        |  Americans
        2                        |  Finns
        3                        |  Germans
        4                        |  Jews
        5                        |  Slavs
        6                        |  Lithuanians
        7                        |  Scandinavians
        8                        |  Czechs
        9                        |  Hungarians
       10                        |  Italians
       11                        |  Letts
       12                        |  Slovaks
  =================================================

This is well enough for rough purposes, but it is too loose for
generalization as to racial tendencies. “Jews” might be of almost any
nationality, and “Slavs” might cover natives of almost any of the
countries east of the Carpathians and the Adriatic.

The foreign-language groups of the Socialist party in 1916 had an
aggregate membership of over 29,000, and if we accept the estimate
of the National Executive Secretary of the party, of 94,140, as the
dues-paying membership during the first four months of that year, it
would appear that 31 per cent of all dues-paying members of the party
were foreign-born persons, either not citizens or so unfamiliar with
English as to prefer to belong to a foreign-speaking branch of their
political party.

There are two ways of looking at all this. One is to assume that, but
for the war and the disorganization which it threw into the Socialist
party’s ranks, including a virtual decision to confine membership to
voters, there would have grown up a large political body of aliens,
of unknown and probably menacing potentiality. The other is to
recognize that, with the foreign-speaking organizations as a starting
point, the immigrant would have been brought directly and early into
an active interest in American politics, personal participation in
the study of its affairs, and susceptibility far greater than it is
common to acknowledge to the appeal of reason and experience in the
solution of political questions. The present writer believes that to
a considerable extent the fluctuations in the Socialist vote are due
to changes of mind about Socialism _on the part of individual voters
of all races_.

THE SOCIALIST VOTE

Previous to the organization of the Socialist party, the Socialist
political activity in this country was in the custody of the old
Socialist-Labor party. Its vote, as listed by the _Appeal Almanac_
for 1916, developed as follows:

TABLE L

  SOCIALIST VOTE FOR PRESIDENT FROM 1888 TO 1898

  ========================================================
          1888                              |   2,068
          1890                              |  13,704
          1892                              |  21,512
          1894                              |  30,020
          1896                              |  36,275
          1898                              |  82,204
  ========================================================

After 1898 the vote of this party declined rapidly until, in 1914,
its candidate polled only 21,827 votes.

On the whole, the best index of Socialist political strength is the
vote recorded in the ballot box. A tabulation of the vote of the
Socialist party in the presidential elections since and including
that of 1900 is therefore germane. (See Table LI.)

TABLE LI

  THE SOCIALIST VOTE FOR PRESIDENT BY STATES FROM 1900 TO 1920{1}

  ========================================================================
                |   1900 |   1904  |   1908  |   1912  |   1916  |   1920
       STATE    |   DEBS |   DEBS  |   DEBS  |   DEBS  |  BENSON |   DEBS
  --------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
  Alabama       |    928 |     853 |   1,399 |   3,029 |   1,925 |   2,369
  Arizona       |    ... |     ... |     ... |   3,163 |   3,174 |     125
  Arkansas      |     27 |   1,816 |   5,842 |   8,153 |   6,999 |   5,111
  California    |  7,572 |  29,533 |  28,659 |  79,201 |  43,259 |  64,076
  Colorado      |    684 |   4,304 |   7,974 |  16,418 |  10,049 |  8,046
  Connecticut   |  1,029 |   4,543 |   5,113 |  10,056 |   5,179 |  10,355
  Delaware      |     57 |     146 |     239 |     556 |     480 |   1,002
  Florida       |    603 |   2,337 |   3,747 |   4,806 |   5,353 |   5,189
  Georgia       |    ... |     197 |     584 |   1,026 |     967 |     465
  Idaho         |    ... |   4,954 |   6,400 |  11,960 |   8,066 |      38
  Illinois      |  9,687 |  69,225 |  34,711 |  81,278 |  61,394 |  74,747
  Indiana       |  2,374 |  12,013 |  13,476 |  39,931 |  21,855 |  24,703
  Iowa          |  2,742 |  14,847 |   8,287 |  16,967 |  10,976 |  16,981
  Kansas        |  1,605 |  15,849 |  12,420 |  26,779 |  24,685 |  15,510
  Kentucky      |    770 |   3,602 |   4,185 |  11,647 |   4,734 |   6,409
  Louisiana     |    ... |     995 |   2,538 |   5,249 |     292 |     ...
  Maine         |    878 |   2,106 |   1,758 |   2,541 |   2,177 |   2,214
  Maryland      |    908 |   2,247 |   2,323 |   3,996 |   2,674 |   8,876
  Massachusetts |  9,716 |  13,604 |  10,781 |  12,616 |  11,058 |  32,265
  Michigan      |  2,826 |   9,042 |  11,586 |  23,211 |  16,120 |  28,947
  Minnesota     |  3,065 |  11,692 |  14,527 |  27,505 |  20,117 |  56,106
  Mississippi   |    ... |     393 |     978 |   2,061 |   1,484 |   1,639
  Missouri      |  6,128 |  13,009 |  15,431 |  28,466 |  14,612 |  20,242
  Montana       |    708 |   5,676 |   5,855 |  10,885 |   9,564 |     ...
  Nebraska      |    823 |   7,412 |   3,524 |  10,174 |   7,141 |   9,600
  Nevada        |    ... |     925 |   2,103 |   3,313 |   3,065 |   1,864
  New Hampshire |    790 |   1,090 |   1,299 |   1,980 |   1,318 |   1,235
  New Jersey    |  4,221 |   9,588 |  10,249 |  15,900 |  10,462 |  27,217
  New Mexico    |    ... |     ... |     ... |   2,859 |   1,999 |       2
  New York      | 12,869 |  36,883 |  38,451 |  63,381 |  45,944 | 203,400
  North Carolina|    ... |     124 |     345 |     117 |     490 |     446
  North Dakota  |    518 |   2,017 |   2,421 |   6,966 |     ... |   8,283
  Ohio          |  4,847 |  36,260 |  33,795 |  90,144 |  38,092 |  57,147
  Oklahoma      |    ... |     ... |  21,779 |  41,674 |  45,190 |  25,638
  Oregon        |  1,494 |   7,619 |   7,339 |  13,343 |   9,711 |   9,801
  Pennsylvania  |  4,831 |  21,863 |  33,913 |  80,915 |  45,637 |  70,021
  Rhode Island  |    ... |     956 |   1,365 |   2,049 |   1,914 |   4,351
  South Carolina|    ... |      22 |     101 |     164 |     135 |      28
  South Dakota  |    169 |   3,138 |   2,846 |   4,662 |   3,760 |     ...
  Tennessee     |    413 |   1,354 |   1,870 |   3,492 |   2,542 |   2,239
  Texas         |  1,846 |   2,791 |   7,870 |  24,896 |  18,963 |   8,194
  Utah          |    717 |   5,767 |   4,890 |   9,023 |   4,460 |   3,159
  Vermont       |    371 |     844 |     ... |     928 |     798 |      25
  Virginia      |    145 |     218 |     255 |     820 |   1,060 |     807
  Washington    |  2,006 |  10,023 |  14,177 |  40,134 |  22,800 |   8,913
  West Virginia |    268 |   1,574 |   3,679 |  15,336 |   6,140 |   5,618
  Wisconsin     |  7,048 |  28,220 |  28,164 |  33,481 |  27,846 |  80,635
  Wyoming       |    ... |     ... |   1,715 |   2,760 |   1,453 |   1,234
  --------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
     Total      | 96,116 | 402,321 | 420,973 | 897,011 | 585,113 | 915,302
  --------------+--------+---------+---------+---------+---------+--------
  Total Socialist vote{2}| 408,230 | 424,488 | 901,062 |     ... |     ...
  Socialist-Labor vote{2}|  33,546 |  14,021 |  30,344 |     ... |     ...
  ========================================================================

  [note 1: _World Almanac_, 1920.]

  [note 2: _Appeal Almanac_, 1916.]

This table is compiled from the _World Almanac_. The column for 1920,
in particular, may be suspected of serious inaccuracy in detail. The
figures for Idaho, for example, would appear to be absurd, in view
of nearly 12,000 in 1912 and more than 8,000 in 1916. The _Appeal
Almanac_ for 1916 gives larger totals, and adds a surviving vote of
the Socialist-Labor party. The _World Almanac_ for 1921 adds a note
regarding the 1920 election:

  The total for the Socialist-Labor ticket approximated 20,896, but
  it is to be said that in a number of the states the Socialist-Labor
  electors were called Independent Labor, or Independent, or
  Industrial Labor, so that the true total is considerably above that
  named above.

In general, the table affords a sufficient basis for general
comparisons and judgment as to tendency.

GERMAN INFLUENCE IN SOCIALISM

Since the declaration of the St. Louis convention of the Socialists
in 1917, which most outsiders and a large proportion of the Socialist
rank and file regarded as not only consistently antiwar, but actually
pro-German, it has been the fashion for Socialists of other than
German leanings to minimize the German influence in the development
of political Socialism in the United States. From the point of
view of the loyally American or pro-Ally Socialists, of whom there
are many thousands, it would no doubt be pleasing to clear it of
the German atmosphere; but, unfortunately, the facts make such a
proceeding difficult.

A great impulse was given to Socialism in this country by the
German Socialists who were driven out of Germany forty years ago by
Bismarck’s anti-Socialist legislation. They were men of a high degree
of intelligence, largely mechanics of skill at their trades. They
brought to America the Marxian orthodoxy, and stamped With their
German rigidity of thought a movement which up to that time had been
more or less a sentimental thing. Let us examine some figures which
would seem to be significant.

The German-language press in this country has been largely confined
to nine states. To the total circulation of the German-language press
in the United States, their circulation in these nine states bears
percentage ratio as follows:

TABLE LII

  PER CENT CIRCULATION OF THE GERMAN PRESS IN NINE STATES

  =======================================================
                                         | CIRCULATION{1}
                   STATE                 +---------------
                                         |   PER CENT
  ---------------------------------------+---------------
  New York   }                           |
  New Jersey }                           |     19.4
  Wisconsin                              |     15.4
  Illinois                               |     12.5
  Ohio                                   |     10.9
  Nebraska                               |      7.6
  Pennsylvania                           |      6.9
  Missouri                               |      6.2
  Minnesota                              |      5.8
  ---------------------------------------+---------------
        Total                            |     84.7
  =======================================================

  [note 1: The circulation figures are based upon reports given in
  Ayer’s _American Newspaper Annual and Directory_ for 1916. The
  influence of the war emotions and the rising cost of news-print
  paper, and other factors would make later figures misleading as
  to the general situation. Where Ayer’s fails to give circulation
  it is conservatively estimated. New York and New Jersey are
  combined because the German papers in New York were largely read
  in the preponderantly German towns along the New Jersey bank of
  the Hudson River.]

It would thus appear that the German-language papers published in
these nine states claimed a circulation of nearly 85 per cent of
the total circulation of German-language papers in the whole United
States. It is obvious, therefore, that in these nine states one
would look for the bulk of the unassimilated immigrants of German
birth. The census of 1910 sustains this expectation, for of the total
of 2,501,333 German-born residents of the United States, 1,737,827,
or 69.5 per cent, lived in the nine states.

What percentage of the Socialist vote is found in those nine states?
We cannot answer this question as to the vote for the candidates of
the Socialist-Labor party prior to 1900; but the vote for Socialist
candidates subsequent to that gives us illuminating percentages.

In the table made up from the _World Almanac_ for 1921 is the vote of
the Socialist (or Social-Democratic) party in presidential elections
since and including 1900. Note the percentage of that vote cast in
the nine states named.

TABLE LIII

  SOCIALIST VOTE FOR PRESIDENTS IN NINE STATES, FROM 1900 TO 1916

  ===============================================================
                                |                |  PER CENT OF
                                |      TOTAL     | SOCIALIST VOTE
               YEAR             |    SOCIALIST   |  IN THE NINE
                                |       VOTE     |    STATES
  ------------------------------+----------------+---------------
  1900                          |      96,116    |      55.6
  1904                          |     402,321    |      58.2
  1908                          |     420,973    |      50.5
  1912                          |     897,011    |      48.0
  1916                          |     585,113    |      45.8
  ===============================================================

It appears, then, that these nine states--New York and New Jersey,
containing the large cities of Greater New York, Jersey City,
and Newark; Wisconsin, containing the great German population of
Milwaukee; Illinois, containing Chicago; Ohio, containing Cleveland
and Cincinnati; Nebraska, containing Omaha; Pennsylvania, containing
Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Missouri, containing St. Louis and
Kansas City; Minnesota, containing Minneapolis and St. Paul; to say
nothing of the smaller cities and rural districts, largely inhabited
by immigrants of German birth--have contained more than half of
the voting strength of the Socialist parties. Some discount must
be allowed for the fact that these large cities contain also large
numbers of foreign-born voters of other races; but even a generous
discount for this fact does not nullify the predominance of the
German element in the Socialist voting strength. These nine states
account also for about half of the dues-paying membership in the
Socialist party; according to the _American Socialist_ of January 23,
1916, there were 44,132, or 47 per cent, of the total of dues-paying
membership of the party, in 1914, and 38,194, or 48 per cent, in
1915, in the nine states.

JEWS IN SOCIALISM

It is also true that the active propaganda of political Socialism
has increasingly attracted young Jews of foreign extraction. It
appeals to them in two ways. There is a tremendous fund of idealism
in the Jewish mind. For ages they have been taught to dream of an
earthly millennium, in which the freedom denied them by the world
everywhere would be attained, and the social ideals set forth by
their prophets in their Scripture could be effectuated. Also, they
have been bred to interminable discussion of abstractions and
theoretical relationships regardless of the practical things of
social life from which they were excluded by rigorous governmental
restrictions and the race prejudice under which they have suffered,
especially in Russia. It was to be expected that with the freedom of
movement and expression which they have enjoyed in America, together
with the tense economic and industrial conditions under which they
labor here, they would respond to the propaganda of Socialism with
its idealistic background, its promise of an economic millennium, and
its _minutiæ_ of theory and inexhaustible material for debate. There
are no reliable statistics--little data of any kind--on which to base
an estimate of the number or activity of Jews of any or all national
extraction in the Socialist movement; nevertheless, it is a matter of
common knowledge that they are both numerous and aggressive in its
councils and its propaganda.

EFFECT OF THE WAR ON SOCIALISM

What might have been the development of political Socialism in the
United States had there been no war in Europe it is impossible to
say. To what extent the Germanization, not only of the Socialist
party, but of large elements of politics in the old parties, might
have gone on, it is impossible to say. The reactions of the war
spirit, and of the variants of sympathy among the racial groups,
produced profound effects. They were marked in the Socialist
movement, tending to drive into the “left” or extreme radical wing,
and even out of the party into the nonpolitical and antipolitical
movements, many of the foreign-born Socialists who during past
years have been trying to make the Socialist parties and the labor
organizations of various sorts more and more radical, less and less
patient toward political methods and measures. Inevitably these
ultraradicals took on, or were regarded as taking on, the aspect
of opposition to the cause of the Allies, to the participation of
the United States in the war--to out-and-out pro-Germanism. That
this pro-Germanism among the ultraradicals was not imaginary may
be illustrated by one episode reported by an investigator for the
Americanization Study:

  In 1915, in the capacity of a field investigator of the conditions
  of unskilled labor for the United States Commission on Industrial
  Relations, I happened to visit Port Arthur in the eastern part
  of Texas, where a Standard Oil refinery is located. There was
  some labor excitement. A young German, 22 or 23 years of age, who
  had come to this country when a small boy and who was one of the
  local leaders of the I. W. W., addressed a meeting. In attacking
  all capitalists of all countries he also spoke of the war which,
  according to him, was started and prosecuted by the czars, kaisers,
  kings, and capitalists of all countries at the expense of the
  working classes, etc., etc..

  After the meeting I interviewed a number of local labor leaders.
  The youthful orator was sitting on a lumber pile a few feet from
  me. Oil barges were passing back and forth on the canal, carrying
  oil from the refinery to a large British tanker in the harbor. The
  boy intently watched the barges, and exclaimed, as if to himself,
  in a low tone of disgust and desperation:

  “Hm! Britain gets all the oil; Germany--nothing!”

  All his reasoning, based upon international class solidarity, had
  given way to his patriotic German heart!

There was, further, the inevitable influence of the fact that the
German Social Democracy has, on the whole, been more close-knit, more
effective in propaganda, and the German Socialist literature, from
Marx down, more widespread in its distribution, than the propaganda
in any other language. Even now, the Germans and pro-Germans in the
Socialist ranks habitually declare that the war was ended by the
German Social Democrats through a revolt against the Kaiser.

The native-born Americans, English, and other English-speaking
Socialists, most of whom had been in sympathy with the cause of
the Allies, revolted against the pacifist, antiwar, and pro-German
element in the Socialist party, and the turmoil shook the
organization to its foundation. The end of this is not yet; but one
big result in the Socialist party itself has been to reinforce the
influence of the moderate element and to some extent to drive the
extremists into the so-called Communist parties and the I. W. W.,
which, whatever else may be said of them, do not exercise themselves
directly about political affairs.

To the deep rift in the Socialist ranks on this account may be
attributed in large part the failure of the Socialists to live up
to their expectations and promises in the presidential election of
1920. It is far too soon to speculate with any confidence upon what
may be the course of political Socialism in the United States in the
years immediately before us when the emotions excited by the war die
down, the hysterical opposition to immigrants as such fades out, and
economic and industrial forces are permitted to operate “normally”
in their effects upon the motives of the working people and their
expression of those motives through their ballots.

THE SINGLE-TAX AND AGRARIAN MOVEMENTS

At the root of all the radical movements in the United States lies,
actually or potentially, an unsatisfied land hunger, a feeling
that somehow the opportunity to have access to a standing on God’s
footstool is circumscribed by man-made restrictions and injustice.
It is to be remembered that the great majority of immigrants to this
country are peasants, whose whole life and social background have
reference to making, or being prevented from making, a living from
the soil. Even the Russian and other Jews, who, generally speaking,
have little or no actual experience of agriculture, come here with
a vision of a land where there is satisfaction for their deepest
longings, and at the bottom lies the longing to own a piece of the
face of the earth as a basis for subsistence. Generally speaking,
the first disillusionment that many a modern immigrant experiences
is in the fact that he cannot step from the ship into the ownership
of land out of which to dig his living. It is a short step from that
state of mind into one of general discontent with the difficulty of
finding the opportunity which, he had been told, waited for him in
the United States at every street corner and crossroad.

In the earlier days, when industrialism was younger in this country
and immigrants could pass more easily into agriculture and into
access to actual land, there was a wider and quicker interest on the
part of the immigrant in the land question as such. Probably that
is why he responded more than he does now to such movements as the
individualist single-tax agitation precipitated by Henry George. In
recent years, when his opportunities for employment came to be more
and more restricted to the cities and to great industrial plants and
mines, the appeal of the Socialist agitation seemed more applicable
to his situation. Furthermore, the single-tax movement represents, on
the whole, an earlier stage in the development of radical theory.

The same might be said of Greenbackism, Populism, and the present-day
Nonpartisan League movement. All three of these movements find the
body of their rank and file among the small farmers, small producers,
and the dissatisfied lower grades of the merchandising class, who
feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are getting the worst of it in
the development of law, taxation, finance, monopoly, or what not.
The contented foreign born, or the contented anybody else, does not
participate in or respond to radical agitation or movements for
drastic reform. There are thousands of foreign-born members in the
Nonpartisan League, but they are in it not as foreign born of any
race, but as farmers who think they are not getting a square deal.

The farmers of the Northwest, who make up the bulk of the Nonpartisan
League, are not at present amenable to Socialist doctrine. The
foreign born among them are largely Scandinavian and old-stock
Germans who have won their way to ownership of land and a measure of
personal prosperity. They might stand for the expropriation of the
powerful Eastern capitalist, but they are not willing to consider the
confiscation of their own hard-earned farms. Peter Alexander Speek,
in his monograph on “The Single Tax and the Labor Movement,”[174]
puts it well:

  It may be said that the Socialists understood the labor movement,
  its meaning and nature, better than did the Single-taxers. But
  what the Socialists failed in was this, that their philosophy,
  emphasizing as it did the social side of human life, was not
  acceptable to the majority of American wage-earners, who, though
  wage conscious and organized as a separate class, still were not
  yet class conscious--wage-earners among whom the individualistic
  spirit and a desire to become independent small producers prevailed.

Even so early there was visible a racial line of demarkation. The
Irish never have taken kindly to Socialism. Preponderantly of the
Roman Catholic faith, they were impervious to the implications of the
Socialist doctrines as affecting religion and marriage, and nothing
in their experience tended to modify their interest in the ownership
of land. Mr. Speek says:

  It is necessary to mention the fact that nationality of the members
  of the party (the United Labor party) also played its role in the
  conflict. The majority of the Irish element lined up with the
  Single Tax faction, the majority of the German element with the
  Socialist.

  This division by nationalities was itself quite comprehensive.
  The Germans have always had a strong communal sentiment and social
  viewpoint upon human life, both being inherited from the centuries
  long gone by. Furthermore, many of them, before they came to
  America, were industrial wage earners in Germany--the homeland of
  Marxian Socialism.

  The majority of the Irish immigrants had been formerly land tenants
  in Ireland. They had an individualistic viewpoint, and were devoted
  Catholics. Hence their lining up with Henry George, as a land
  reformer and agitator for the Irish cause in Ireland, and with
  McGlynn, as a Catholic priest.

A large proportion of the farmers of the Northwest are Scandinavians.
They are of a naturally conservative type, they have been successful
in establishing themselves as individual property owners, and
the property owner does not as a rule afford good material for
the Socialist seed-sowing. You may regard the propaganda of the
Nonpartisan League, for example, as radical and in a general way
“Socialistic,” but it does not satisfy the Socialist.

The importance of this consideration is fundamental. There are great
areas, even whole states, in the Northwest particularly, where the
saturation of the foreign born is so complete that the foreign-born
and second-generation folk themselves _are_ the state. As one
newspaper man in St. Paul put it:

  It is not a question of “we” and “they”; _they_ are the whole
  thing. In Minnesota there is no “Scandinavian problem”--_they_
  are _us_. In a large measure they have become the best kind of
  Americans; others have not advanced beyond the grade of the
  ordinary American, but they are the people and the government,
  and the comparative handful of Yankees cannot pretend to draw a
  line around them and set them apart as “foreigners.” They are the
  voters, the legislature, the producers, the farmers, the merchants,
  and they represent all of us at Washington.

On the other hand, there has been a tendency in the Northwest, as
elsewhere, for little racial groups to center in special localities.
There are whole towns in Minnesota which are virtually entirely
German; others are entirely Bohemian. There is one community which is
entirely Belgian. This is partly due to the fact that many sections
were settled by colonies sent forth as a part of church missionary
effort, especially by the Lutherans and Catholics.

Out of this situation the war suddenly crystallized a real American
sentiment and enthusiasm. There was much shocking injustice and mob
hysteria in those parts, and many accusations of disloyalty; but the
fact that emerges upon any candid investigation is that these folk
of various foreign races gave a good account of themselves in every
form of war participation, whether in the furnishing of volunteers or
otherwise. North Dakota, a hotbed of Nonpartisan League sentiment,
and a preponderantly foreign-born population, nearly doubled its
Liberty Bond allotments and exceeded its quotas in contributions to
the Red Cross and the war-chest funds.

THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE

In December, 1918, Oliver S. Morris, editor of the National
Magazine of the Nonpartisan League, gave to an investigator of the
Americanization Study an analysis of approximate membership of the
League. (See Table LIV.)

TABLE LIV

  MEMBERSHIP OF THE NONPARTISAN LEAGUE BY STATES IN DECEMBER, 1918

  =================================
    Minnesota           |  50,000
    North Dakota        |  45,000
    South Dakota        |  25,000
    Montana             |  25,000
    Idaho               |  20,000
                        | -------
                        | 165,000
    Washington }        |
    Wisconsin  }        |
    Nebraska   }        |
    Iowa       }        |
    Kansas     }        |  40,000
    Oklahoma   }        |
    Texas      }        |
    Colorado   }        |
                        | -------
                        | 205,000
  =================================

The membership has shifted this way and that ever since, and the
experience of the Nonpartisan League government in North Dakota is a
matter of history; but the fact that stands out is that this large
membership did not either accomplish or attempt anything which the
radical Socialist would accept as revolutionary. The Nonpartisan
League movement is a true agrarian movement, on the whole a movement
of property owners _to benefit themselves as such_, to insure their
own hold upon the land they have acquired and the processes of
storage, exchange, and marketing upon which their prosperity depends.
John M. Gillette, professor of sociology in the University of North
Dakota, distinguishes clearly between its underlying spirit and
purpose and those of the revolutionary Socialists:[175]

  The Nonpartisan League ... aims at economic and social reforms
  through political action; the Bolshevists aim at social reforms
  through economic action. The League does not seek to disfranchise
  other classes than farmers; Bolshevism disfranchises all other
  classes than the proletariat.... The League is essentially
  an organization of farmers, the preponderant majority of the
  electorate in such states as North Dakota owning the bulk of the
  wealth of the commonwealth, for the improvement of economic and
  general welfare conditions by recourse to political action.... It
  is destroying no fundamental institution, but is reshaping and
  redirecting certain ones to make them more amenable to the public
  will.

Without any attempt to assess either the righteousness or the wisdom
of the League methods or program, intelligent understanding of its
relation to the spirit and purpose of political Socialism, and of
the reaction to each on the part of various racial groups among the
foreign born, requires that the distinction be carefully kept in
mind. The foreign born who participate in the Nonpartisan League
are not only _citizens of the United States_--voters--but they are
preponderantly of the races whose mental operations tend to be
conservative toward really revolutionary propaganda, and of the
property-owning and property-ambitious class, as contrasted with the
propertyless, job-holding, wage-earning class generally implied in
the term “proletariat.”

This distinction underlies the reason why the strength of the
League lies in the rural communities rather than in the cities. The
League certainly showed strength in the cities, and the Socialistic
character of many of its proposals undoubtedly attracted considerable
support from city radicals who were unsatisfied with the range of the
platform; nevertheless, the Nonpartisan League represents an agrarian
rather than a revolutionary movement. There is a world of difference
between a Socialist program calling for the establishment of a wholly
co-operative commonwealth, the common ownership of all the machinery
of production, distribution, and communication, and the League
program demanding:

  1. Exemption of farm improvements from taxation.

  2. Tonnage tax on ore production.

  3. Rural credit banks operated at cost.

  4. State terminal elevators, warehouses, flour mills, stockyards,
  packing houses, creameries, and cold-storage plants.

  5. State hail insurance.

  6. A more equitable system of state inspection and grading of grain.

  7. Equal taxation of property of railroads, mines, telegraph,
  telephone, electric light and power companies, and all public
  utility corporations, as compared with that of other property
  owners.

Adding to these the “national demands”--“that the government
refuse to return to private hands ownership or operation of those
public utilities owned, operated, or controlled by the government
during the war,” and “that the conscription of wealth begun by the
government through income and excess-profit taxes shall be continued
and increased, that surplus wealth may be compelled to pay the
money cost of the war”--the program still falls far short of being
revolutionary. On the whole the underlying spirit and purpose are
more or less precisely those of the earlier agrarian Free Soil,
Greenback, Populist, Single Tax, and Free Silver movements.

The Progressive movement of 1912, given extra “steam” by the magnetic
personality of Mr. Roosevelt and the hero worship of his followers,
was a far more powerful influence in drawing common support from
farms and cities. And its support, like that of the Nonpartisan
League, was essentially American, as distinguished from foreign-born
Socialistic support. It is interesting to speculate upon the
attitude of the people generally toward the Progressive movement,
if one could imagine it coming into being during the war. To what
extent would its platform and the utterances of its leaders have been
regarded as “seditious”?

ULTRARADICAL MOVEMENTS NONPOLITICAL

From the beginning of any really radical movement in this country,
its unity of spirit has been broken by profound differences of
opinion as to the effectiveness of the appeal to the ballot box.
For more than half a century the anarchists and other advocates of
“direct action” in the labor movement in America have been telling
the more conservative elements that it would be of no use to resort
to political measures, to the election of public officers pledged to
carry out radical programs.

“The moment you succeed in winning enough votes to elect any
considerable number of your candidates, the representatives of the
capitalists will throw them out and nullify your victory.”

The great service which the New York State Assembly in 1920 rendered
to the ultraradical wing of the Socialists when it ejected legally
elected Socialist members of that house of the state Legislature was
in the verifying this prediction. It strengthened the hands of the
“Reds” not only all over this country, but all over the world. It
made it just that much harder for moderates everywhere to convince
workingmen that their grievances could be remedied by parliamentary
action; that it was really worth while for them to pay any attention
to the ballot box.

The history of the Socialist parties in America is checkered with the
ups and downs of the controversy over this question. In every labor
organization since the beginnings of the Labor movement in America
there has been a continuing warfare between those who advocated
political action as the means to social reform, and those who scorned
anything except economic pressure and even terrorism. It is a curious
fact that in the line-up on this issue, Mr. Gompers and the American
Federation of Labor logically belong with the direct-actionists; he
and his supporters always have opposed the entrance of the Labor
movement as such into politics. It is only fair to add, however, that
one of his principal motives was that of keeping the solidarity of
labor from being broken by the ordinary appeals and influences of the
politicians.

The National Labor Union of 1864, the Knights of Labor of 1869, the
International Working People’s Association of 1883, the Sovereigns of
Industry of 1874, the Workingmen’s party of 1876, the organizations
of brewery workers and miners, the American Railway Union, the
American Labor Union, the Socialist-Labor party--in fact, virtually
all the general labor organizations from the beginning of them until
to-day--have fought back and forth over this question. And the
abiding fact which remained after every battle seems to have been
that the tendency of the Americans and the foreign born longest in
the country on the whole has been to favor action through the ballot
box and parliamentary methods generally; the distinctively foreign
elements have inclined to favor economic and industrial measures,
with the “lunatic fringe” running on toward “direct action,”
sabotage, and the methods of the terrorist.

The World War brought this division sharply to a head. It split
the Socialist party and drove out of it most of the American-born
moderates; it led to the attempt by these moderates and many of
the former Progressives to organize the “National party” and the
“Farmer-Labor party,” which attracted a small following in the
presidential election of 1920. The excesses committed against
foreign-born citizens of nearly all racial groups in the zeal of the
war spirit undoubtedly drove into the extreme radical ranks a large
number of foreign-born citizens who in normal times would have been