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

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

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}

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:

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

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

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:

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:

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:

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:

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

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]

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:

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.