Chapter XXII: Section 2169: (not a | | | | | | (6)

========================================================================
| 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 content with political methods and would have diminished in their radicalism as their economic status improved. Doubtless, also, the period of unemployment and industrial depression following the war, ensuing as it has upon a period of unprecedentedly high wages, has tended to encourage radical thought.

But it must always be remembered that the extreme radical movements have directly relatively little _political_ influence. This for two very good reasons: In the first place, experience has not justified the theory of the “Reds” that terrorism in this country will frighten government into concessions. It has, in America, anyway, quite the opposite effect. It alienates public sympathy and impels the average man, normally sympathetic toward the “under dog,” to approve of repressive measures. Furthermore, the members of these ultraradical organizations, although they may be technically citizens, _are not voters_ in any practical sense.

THE “I. W. W.” AND THE HOMELESS WORKER

This latter consideration is more important than is commonly realized. The rank and file of the Industrial Workers of the World--better known as the “I. W. W.”--for example, is made up of men without fixed abode; itinerant workingmen, largely, though by no means wholly, of foreign birth. They have left their homes and families, if they ever had either. The I. W. W. is the only organization which at least pretends to look after the interests of the homeless, jobless worker. The homeless, jobless worker cannot become naturalized, because the naturalization process presupposes a fixed residence, and witnesses who can testify to that residence over long periods of time. And even if the man be native born or long since naturalized, he cannot vote or otherwise function as a political unit because he has no fixed home from which to register and vote.

A fixed abiding place, a _home_, is psychologically a _sine qua non_ of real and wholesome civic interest, as well as a legal prerequisite for participation in public affairs. Theoretically, a native-born or naturalized citizen has a membership in and duty toward the United States. Actually, the degree of his participation depends upon _the depths of his roots in some locality_, and the relation of that locality to the civic unit toward whose welfare the voter contributes, not only his taxes, but his personal interest. A good part of the trouble with city government in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, and other great cities is due to the fact that so many fine, public-spirited voters live in suburbs.

Thousands of the best men who participate in the daytime in the life of New York City live in New Jersey and Connecticut, or, anyway, in towns outside of Greater New York. Their real interests are in New York, but they vote in another state. They contribute little to the local welfare in the places Where they live because of their real interest in New York. Consequently their civic vitality, so to speak, is entirely lost to both communities--and to the United States. The foreign-born voter in the crowded East Side of New York is a far more effective citizen, for good or ill, than the presumably more intelligent business man who cannot--or at any rate does not--participate substantially in the political life either of the city where his business and daily activities are carried on, or in the village in another state where he has his legal residence.

Over against this anomalous condition put the case of the well-meaning citizen, native or foreign born, who works for a certain mining corporation in Illinois. The town where he lives belongs absolutely to that corporation. It so happens that a part of the mining property of that corporation lies in Illinois and a part in Indiana. Under stress of business and mining conditions the company suddenly moves the whole population, men, women, and children, over the state line. What must happen then to any possible civic interest or enthusiasm--supposing any to exist--on the part of American citizens, voters, who had begun to think about the public interests of the state of Illinois? What happens to the naturalization proceedings begun by any alien to make himself a useful citizen of his adopted country? How can any real civic interest live under such conditions?

It is common to sneer at the city workingman because he stays in town unemployed when he might get a job in the wheat fields or at mining or fruit picking where labor is scant. Laying aside the question of any desire on his part to stay with his family, or any doubt in his mind about his ability as a hodcarrier or a tailor to make good as a farm hand, or any reluctance on the part of the railroad to assist him with the gift or loan of transportation to some distant and practically most uncertain job--what becomes in such a hop-skip-and-jump sort of industrial--and social-existence, of any interest in civic affairs? To a newly made citizen, who has faithfully memorized, if you please, the Constitution of the United States, who knows just how Senators are elected and what is the relation between the functions of the President and those of the local dog-catcher, and who can sing, duly standing uncovered, _all_ the stanzas of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” it must appear that his intellectual equipment for citizenship is more or less extraneous to the practical and immediate task of feeding his wife and babies!

It is this sort of experience, of shifting employment and residence and the conditions that go with it, that has given momentum to the I. W. W. and kindred movements. “Stag towns” in the Far West, matching “women towns” in New England; permanently separated families; the utter impossibility of getting and keeping wives or maintaining any sort of decent, not to say normal, domestic life, are major factors that have brought into such organizations not only foreign-born wanderers, some of them naturalized, but a surprisingly large number of native Americans--the latter particularly among the leadership.

On the other hand, the I. W. W. from its beginning[176] has paid close attention to the immigrant. Fifteen years ago, at the second convention of the I. W. W., it was urged that propaganda should start in Europe before the immigrant left the homeland, so that he would be prepared upon arrival in this country to join the organization. This was not done, but even so early there was a large issue of printed matter in foreign languages, and the whole machinery was conceived on the presumption of a polyglot membership. Moreover, the I. W. W. always has taken the most liberal position as regards any form of race prejudice. At the opening of the first convention William D. Haywood took a strong stand against discrimination against the negro by craft unions, and the organization never has tolerated any distinction of race, color, nationality--or sex. Even with regard to the Japanese of California, at the third convention a delegate from that state declared that “the whole fight against the Japanese is the fight of the middle class of California, in which they employ the labor faker to back it up.”

The Communist party, into which to a considerable extent went the extremists from the older movements when the effects of the war brought division to their ranks and made it impossible for moderate and ultraradical to abide under the same roof, at first became a nucleus for the spread of the extreme form of Communist doctrine. It embodies the essentials of the platform of the Third Internationale. The ruthless suppression of this organization by the public authorities may well prevent its having any but a fugitive life. The I. W. W., too, seems, for the time being, at least, to be under effective handicap. But whether these, or either of them, survive or perish, or whatever other organization may be the residuary legatee of their existence, the fact remains, and it is a most important fact from the point of view of this Study, that such movements have no room under their _ægis_ for what Americans understand as political action. They seek revolutionary change not only in the _form_, but in the _nature_ of government--would, in fact, abolish all government as we know it, and substitute the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as it exists--or has been supposed to exist--in Russia. Their theory has no use for our present parliamentary methods, for representative government in our understanding of the word; they scoff at and would utterly destroy what we mean by Democracy. They would not leave a recognizable vestige of our Constitution, our courts, our legislatures. They would provide no political function for the voting citizen as we visualize him. And--what is most important--they would bring about these basic changes by compulsion. The ballot box has no substantial place in their program.

Such propaganda, such programs, appeal only to those who have and who, however mistakenly, believe they can have, no stake in our present civilization. To such as these, citizenship in the sense in which we have here discussed it has no meaning; the “America” which has been built up, by native and foreign born together, since the landing of the Pilgrims, arouses no enthusiasm.

It is not surprising that such movements as the I. W. W. and the Communist parties appeal to the wandering, homeless folk of any race. And when their propaganda tells such folk (as it does) that the actual fruit of their labor is a product of sixty dollars a day, and that the difference between that figure and what they receive is the measure of what the capitalist class is appropriating, it is small wonder that the ignorant and reckless, without attachment to any home or land, smarting under concrete conditions about whose reality--whoever may be to blame for them--there can be no dispute, follow such leadership and look to it to bring them into better conditions.

From the moment of his arrival in this country, every hardship that the immigrant of any race suffers, every injustice practiced upon him by his own countrymen or other foreign-born persons who preceded him hither, by the police and other local officials (to him the embodiment of government), by landlord or employer or others in more prosperous circumstances, every hour of unemployment and privation, every enforced separation from his family, every disillusioning experience, contributes just so much to his readiness of mind to accept the “Red” teachings and promises. Revolution finds no hospitality in contented minds. Injustice, real or fancied, is, in the last analysis, the only agitator we have to combat.

Every particle of information coming to the Americanization Study on the subject of the mental attitude of the immigrant of any race in America confirms the fact which ought to be obvious as a matter of ordinary common sense: that the opportunity to work, at fair wages, under anything like decent conditions of home and social surroundings, and from that work to gain a place to live, the means of maintaining and supporting a family and making a reasonably comfortable and happy home, establishing a real stake in the community, assures the making of a good citizen and a well-meaning voter, a valuable active member in our body politic.

XIII

SOME GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

The one thing that emerges most clearly in the results of this or any other candid study of the naturalization and political activity of the foreign-born citizen of the United States is that admission to active membership in our political society should be based upon _the personal qualifications of the individual_.

No sound basis is disclosed for discrimination on the ground of race or color, religious beliefs or political predilection. Even the statutory bar against belief in anarchism or polygamy is obviously ineffectual, because the anarchist theory _per se_ involves, if not virtual atheism, at least repudiation of government and a disbelief in the sanctity of an oath. And a declaration of disbelief in polygamy, so far as it may be assumed to imply anything concerning personal morality, conveys no assurance of chastity in any sense of the word. Furthermore, what is the practical use of inquiring into a person’s beliefs to-day, when there can be no guaranty as to what they will be to-morrow?

The educational test assures no safety as to character. The ability to speak, read, and write English or any other language, intelligence and general or even exact information as to our form of government and the “high spots” of American history, are little in the way of assurance of loyalty or usefulness as a citizen. The most noxious propagandist that we could import or admit to citizenship could pass the most rigid intellectual test. During the debate on the naturalization law in the House of Representatives in June, 1906,[177] Representative Steenerson of Minnesota said:

... The qualifications that we have required of people in the past
who intend to become citizens is that they be men of good moral
character and that they are attached to the principles of the
Constitution of the United States.... They may be men of good moral
character and attached to the principles of the Constitution, and
yet be unable to comply with this requirement. Ability to _write_
the English language.... If, for instance, an elderly man like
President Fallières of France should decide to emigrate to the
United States, he cannot be naturalized, because in all probability
he would not be able to learn the English language within five
years; whereas Count Boni de Castellane, who has undoubtedly
had opportunities in the past ten years of learning the English
language, could be naturalized, because he could speak and write
English....

It is not from the immigrants who come here to settle on our public
domain, who come here to abide permanently and to build homes
and raise families, that we may expect frauds upon our election
laws or danger to our free institutions. Such immigrants should
not be denied citizenship because of inability to speak and write
English. They may, notwithstanding, be as loyal and as patriotic
as any. Nothing has been shown that connects inability to speak
English with any of the evils complained of. There is no relation
of cause and effect between them. The frauds and perjury against
naturalization laws were committed by persons proficient in English.

One of the naturalizing judges in Kansas, long familiar with the workings of the law, said in his answer to the questionnaire of the Americanization Study:

My judgment is that this government has occasion for greater fear
from many of the educated foreigners than from the uneducated
foreigner. More stress should be placed upon the character of the
man and his loyalty to this government, and his willingness to
abide by its laws and uphold its Constitution than upon his mere
educational qualifications. My observation has led me to conclude
that one of the chief difficulties with the administration of
our naturalization laws is that the Department seems inclined to
apply to all foreigners the same test; whether the applicant has
been a resident of the community for twenty-five years, leading
an exemplary life, upholding all the institutions, interested in
all the efforts to upbuild the state physically, mentally, and
morally, or whether he be a unit in the slum hordes of the city.
The Department seems to have conceived it to be its duty to force
all of them into the same strait-jacket.... I have in mind cases
where the Department has endeavored to withhold citizenship on
the merest technicality from men who for years have been our best
citizens, thoroughly loyal and devoted to the best interests of
the state. We seem to have gone upon the theory that the educated
foreigner, by reason of his education alone, will necessarily be
a good citizen, and that the ignorant foreigner is necessarily an
undesirable citizen.

An educational test, such as that to which petitioners for naturalization are subjected by some judges and some naturalization examiners, applied at the ballot box to all who would vote, would wreak havoc upon the enrollment of both native and naturalized. It is safe to say that not one out of a hundred of native-born citizens, even college educated, could pass respectably the examination. A very small proportion of American-born citizens of any age or of either sex have read the Constitution of the United States or have even a superficial knowledge of its contents. The present writer has derived some amusement during his conduct of this investigation from asking of more than ordinarily intelligent acquaintances some of the questions to which applicants for naturalization have to respond in various courts. The ignorance of even fundamental matters displayed by these scions of the “old stock” has been almost invariably both ludicrous and lamentable.

One of the questions which the Americanization Study asked of the naturalization judges was whether they would favor a standard intellectual test for both native and foreign born as a prerequisite for admission to the ballot box. Of 326 judges who answered the question a substantial majority (180) answered, “Yes,” and 44 were not sure but that it would be a good thing. The best answer that the 102 who opposed the idea could make was valid enough--_i.e._, that the native born have had 21 years of residence in the atmosphere of American institutions, and may be assumed to have a general intellectual fitness. The other objections were legalistic; but they all came out to the same fact--that fitness for citizenship and the ballot is a question of personal character and general attitude toward the public welfare.

At first glance it might seem simple enough to devise an oral or written examination by which to test the individual equipment of an applicant for citizenship--or a native-born citizen seeking access to the ballot box; actually it is impracticable. A set of questions would permit memorizing and recital by rote; to leave it as at present to the wit of the examiner or the judge means that no two applicants will be subjected to the same test. The naturalization judges say frankly that they cannot outline an examination, though they think that somebody might!

The Merchants’ Association of New York appointed a committee on immigration and naturalization which gave considerable study to this subject, and came out where everybody else comes out:

In recommending that unnecessary obstructions and technical
difficulties be eliminated from naturalization procedure your
committee does not believe qualifications for citizenship should
be lowered. On the contrary, it believes they should be raised. In
addition to present requirements concerning residence and moral
character there should be an educational qualification requiring
proficiency in English and reasonable familiarity with our history
and government. Your committee _will not attempt to enumerate the
details of such requirement_, but recommends that a suitable and
well-defined educational standard for citizenship be fixed by
statute.

Every applicant for citizenship--including the wives who now are swept in regardless of their own fitness by the naturalization of their husbands, or kept out by their rejection or failure to apply, should be considered in the light of his own personal character and record of behavior during the preliminary-period residence here. And character and behavior should be proved as any other material facts are proved--by _preponderance of evidence_. The present practice is quite otherwise. The whole procedure would be revolutionized if the applicant were required, or permitted, to produce _a body of reasonable and competent evidence sufficient to convince the court or its representative assigned to take the testimony_. His neighbors, his employer, his pastor, the school-teacher, his fellow workmen, by word of mouth or affidavit--in short, all those who know what sort of person he (or she) has been during the five years of required residence--could readily satisfy the court as to the essential fact. The judges themselves in most cases would welcome this change. As it is now, the whole business is wound up with red tape, and thousands of persons have been excluded on the flimsiest technical grounds, simply because the evidence presented to the court must be, in the typical case, that of two witnesses, _only_ two, and _the same_ two throughout the whole proceeding. If anything can be found amiss with these or either of them, the application must be rejected.

It may even be argued that the presumptions and the benefit of doubts should be in favor of the applicant; that the burden of proof should lie upon those who oppose admission. During the whole period, 1908-18, in the whole United States only 14.3 per cent of all denials of petitions for naturalization were for reasons involving the personal fitness of the applicant--“ignorance” and “immoral character.”[178] This means that _if every alien who applied for citizenship during those eleven years had been granted his certificate of naturalization without investigation or formality, the proportion of “ignorant” and “immoral” admitted would have been only 1.7 per cent--less than two in a hundred_!

Whatever might have been the merits, real or imaginary, of the hairsplitting, meticulous policy which has governed the operations of our naturalization system since the Act of 1906 swept into ancient history the scandals of the previous years, that policy was effectively junked during the war. Since the beginning of the fiscal year, 1918-19, under the operation of the military naturalization plan, more aliens have been naturalized on the sole ground that they were in the war service--practically without regard to race, declaration of intention, previous residence, educational or moral qualifications--than the ordinary naturalization of any year since the beginning of the present system. These are direct admissions; we have no means of knowing how many “derivative” citizens these soldiers and sailors carried in with them, or have made by marriage to alien women since their naturalization.

This wholesale letting down of all the bars, however necessary and innocuous it may be deemed, at least has reduced to absurdity the policy of hand picking and superscreening practiced in the ordinary cases. It furnishes a sound and logical starting point for a new, more reasonable, and more humane system, under which the alien may know with greater certainty what he must do and prove in order to establish his right to join us; a system which will give him a different impression of our common sense and efficiency, as well as of our attitude toward him not only as a petitioner for fellow citizenship with us, but as a fellow member of the human race.

NO LOWERING OF STANDARDS