Part 31

Chapter 313,611 wordsPublic domain

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

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