CHAPTER XI IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS

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On a single Chicago hoarding, before the spring election of 1912, the writer saw the political placards of candidates with the following names: Kelly, Cassidy, Slattery, Alschuler, Pfaelzer, Bartzen, Umbach, Andersen, Romano, Knitckoff, Deneen, Hogue, Burres, Short. The humor of calling "Anglo-Saxon" the kind of government these gentlemen will give is obvious. At that time, of the eighteen principal personages in the city government of Chicago, fourteen had Irish names, and three had German names. Of the eleven principal officials in the city government of Boston, nine had Irish names, and of the forty-nine members of the Lower House from the city of Boston, forty were obviously of Hibernian extraction. In San Francisco, the mayor, all the heads of the municipal departments, and ten out of eighteen members on the board of supervisors, bore names reminiscent of the Green Isle. As far back as 1871, of 112 chiefs of police from twenty-two States who attended the national police convention, seventy-seven bore Irish names, and eleven had German names. In 1881, of the chiefs of police in forty-eight cities, thirty-three were clearly Irish, and five were clearly German.

In 1908, on the occasion of a "home-coming" celebration in Boston, a newspaper told how the returning sons of Boston were "greeted by Mayor Fitzgerald and the following members of Congress: O'Connell, Kelihar, Sullivan, and McNary—following in the footsteps of Webster, Sumner, Adams, and Hoar. They were told of the great work as Mayor of the late beloved Patrick Collins. At the City Hall they found the sons of Irish exiles and immigrants administering the affairs of the metropolis of New England. Besides the Mayor, they were greeted by John J. Murphy, Chairman of the board of assessors; Commissioner of Streets Doyle; Commissioner of Baths O'Brien. Mr. Coakley is the head of the Park Department, and Dr. Durgan directs the Health Department. The Chief of the Fire Department is John A. Mullen. Head of the Municipal Printing Plant is Mr. Whelan. Superintendent of the Street Cleaning is Cummings; Superintendent of Sewers Leahy; Superintendent of Buildings is Nolan; City Treasurer, Slattery; Police Commissioner, O'Meara."

The Irish domination of our Northern cities is the broadest mark immigration has left on American politics; the immigrants from Ireland, for the most part excessively poor, never got their feet upon the land as did the Germans and the Scandinavians, but remained huddled in cities. United by strong race feelings, they held together as voters, and, although never a clear majority, were able in time to capture control of most of the greater municipalities. Now, for all their fine Celtic traits, these Irish immigrants had neither the temperament nor the training to make a success of popular government. They were totally without experience of the kind Americans had acquired in the working of democratic institutions. The ordinary American by this time had become tinctured with the spirit of legalism. Many voters were able to look beyond the persons involved in a political contest and recognize the principles at stake. Such popular maxims as: "No man should be a judge in his own case," "The ballot a responsibility," "Patriotism above party," "Measures, not men," "A public office is a public trust," fostered self-restraint and helped the voters to take an impersonal, long-range view of political contests.

Warm-hearted, sociable, clannish, and untrained, the naturalized Irish failed to respect the first principles of civics. "What is the Constitution between friends?" expresses their point of view. In their eyes, an election is not the decision of a great, impartial jury, but a struggle between the "ins" and the "outs." Those who vote the same way are "friends." To scratch or to bolt is to "go back on your friends." Places and contracts are "spoils." The official's first duty is to find berths for his supporters. Not fitness, but party work, is one's title to a place on the municipal pay-roll. The city employee is to serve his party rather than the public that pays his salary. Even the justice of courts is to become a matter of "pull" and "stand in," rather than of inflexible rules.

A genial young Harvard man who has made the Good Government movement a power in a certain New England city said to me: "The Germans want to know which candidate is better qualified for the office. Among the Irish I have never heard such a consideration mentioned. They ask, 'Who wants this candidate?' 'Who is behind him?' I have lined up a good many Irish in support of Good Government men, but never by setting forth the merits of a matter or a candidate. I approach my Irish friends with the personal appeal, 'Do this for me!' Nearly all the Irish who support our cause do it on a personal loyalty basis. The best of the Irish in this city have often done as much harm to the cause of Good Government as the worst. Mayor C., a high-minded Irishman desiring to do the best he could for the city, gave us as bad a government as Mayor F., who thought of nothing but feathering his own nest. Mayor C. 'stood by his friends.'"

The Hibernian domination has given our cities genial officials, brave policemen, and gallant fire-fighters. It has also given them the name of being the worst-governed cities in the civilized world. The mismanagement and corruption of the great cities of America have become a planetary scandal, and have dealt the principle of manhood suffrage the worst blow it has received in the last half-century. Since the close of the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of city-dwellers have languished miserably or perished prematurely from the bad water, bad housing, poor sanitation, and rampant vice in American municipalities run on the principles of the Celtic clan.

On the other hand, it is likely that our British, Teutonic, Scandinavian, and Jewish naturalized citizens—still more our English-Canadian voters—have benefited American politics. In politics men are swayed by passion, prejudice, or reason. By the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the average American had come to be on his guard against passion in politics, but not yet had he reached the plane of reason. This left him the prey of prejudice. Men inherited their politics, and bragged of having always "voted straight." They voted Democratic for Jefferson's sake, or Republican from love of Lincoln. The citizens followed ruts, while the selfish interests "followed the ball." Now, the intelligent naturalized foreigner, having inherited none of our prejudices, would not respond to ancient cries or war-time issues. He inquired pointedly what each party proposed to do now. The abandonment of "waving the bloody shirt" and the sudden appearance of the politics of actuality in the North, in the eighties, came about through the naturalization of Karl and Ole. The South has few foreign-born voters, and the South is precisely that part of the country in which the reign of prejudice in politics has longest delayed the advent of efficient and progressive government.

In 1910 there were certainly three million naturalized citizens in the United States. In southern New England and New York they constitute a quarter of all the white voters. The same is true of Illinois and the Old Northwest. In Providence, Buffalo, Newark, St. Paul, and Minneapolis, there are two foreign voters to three native white voters. In Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston, the ratio is about one to two. In Paterson, Chicago, and New York, the ratio is nearer three to five, and in Fall River it is three to four. When the foreigners are intelligent and experienced in the use of the ballot, their civic worth does not suffer by comparison with that of the natives. Indianapolis and Kansas City, in which the natives outnumber the naturalized ten to one, do not overshadow in civic excellence the Twin Cities of Minnesota, with three natives to two naturalized. Cleveland, in which the naturalized citizens constitute a third, is politically superior to Cincinnati, in which they are less than a sixth. Chicago, with thrice the proportion of naturalized citizens Philadelphia has, was roused and struggling with the python of corruption while yet the city by the Delaware slept.

THE NEW IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP

Between 1895 and 1896 came the great shift in the sources of immigration. In the former year, 55 per cent. of the aliens came from northwestern Europe; in the next year, southern and southeastern Europe gained the upper hand, and have kept it ever since. With the change in nationalities came a great change in the civic attitude of the immigrants. The Immigration Commission found that from 80 to 92 per cent. of the immigrants from northwestern Europe, resident five years or more in this country, have acquired citizenship or have taken out first papers. Very different are the following figures, which show the interest in citizenship of the newer immigrants:

PER CENT.
NATURALIZED
Russian Hebrews 57
Austrians 53
North Italians 46
Bulgarians 37
Poles 33
Lithuanians 32.5
South Italians 30
Russians 28
Magyars 27
Slovaks 23
Rumanians 22
Syrians 21
Greeks 20
Portuguese 5.5

In 1890 and in 1900, 58 per cent. of the qualified foreign-born men were voters; by 1910 the proportion had fallen to 45.6 per cent. The presence of multitudes of floating laborers who have no intention of making this country their home, a marked indifference to citizenship on the part of some nationalities, and the stiffer requirements for naturalization imposed under the act of 1906, have caused the number of non-naturalized qualified foreigners in this country to swell from approximately 2,000,000 in 1900 to 3,500,000 in 1910. As things are going, we may expect a great increase in the number of the unenfranchised. No doubt the country is better off for their not voting. Nevertheless, let it not be overlooked that this growth in the proportion of voteless wage-earners subtracts from the natural political strength of labor. The appeal of labor in an industry like the cotton manufacture of the North, in which, besides the multitude of women and children, 70 per cent. of the foreign-born men remain aliens after five years of residence, is likely to receive scant consideration by the ordinary legislature. Nor will such labor fare better at the hands of local authorities. The anti-strike animus of the police in Lawrence, Little Falls, and Paterson was voiced by the official who gave to the press the statement: "We have kept the foreign element in subjection before, and will continue to do so as long as I am chief of Little Falls' police." Thus, without intending it, some of our commonwealths are accumulating voteless workers, like those conservative European states which restrict manhood suffrage in the industrial classes.

THE NATURALIZED IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR LEADERS

"Come over here quick, Luigi," writes an Italian to his friend in Palermo. "This is a wonderful[267]
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country. You can do anything you want to, and, besides, they give you a vote you can get two dollars for!" This Italian was an ignorant man, but not necessarily a bad man. It would not be just to look upon the later naturalized citizens as caring less for the suffrage than the older immigrants. Some of them appreciate the ballot all the more from having been denied it in the old country. For the Declaration of Independence and the Fourth of July they show a naÏve enthusiasm which we Americans felt a generation ago, before our muck had been raked. "The spirit of revolt against wrong," says a well-known worker among immigrants, "is stronger in the foreign-born than in the natives, because they come here expecting so much democracy, and they are shocked by the reality they find. It is they who insist upon the complete program of social justice." Granting all this, there is no denying, however, that many of the later immigrants have only a dim understanding of what the ballot means and how it may be used.

banquet

Photograph by Lodder

A Civic Banquet to "New Citizens," July 4th

Thirty years ago we knew as little of the ways of the ward boss as we knew of the megatherium or the great auk. The sources of his power were as mysterious as were the sources of the Nile before Speke and Baker. Now, thanks to Miss Addams and other settlement-workers who have studied him in action from close at hand, we have him on a film. The ward boss was the discoverer of the fact that the ordinary immigrant is a very poor, ignorant, and helpless man, in the greatest need of assistance and protection. Nevertheless, this man has, or soon will have, one thing the politician greatly covets, namely, a vote. The petty politician soon learned that by befriending and aiding the foreigners at the right time, he could build up an "influence" which he might use or sell to his own enrichment. So the ward politicians became pioneers in social work. For the sake of controlling votes, they did many things that the social settlement does for nothing.

It is Alderman Tim who gets the Italian a permit for his push-cart or fruit-stand, who finds him a city-hall job, or a place with a public-service corporation, who protects him if he violates law or ordinance in running his business, who goes his bail if he is arrested, and "fixes things" with the police judge or the state's attorney when he comes to trial. Even before Giuseppe is naturalized, it is Tim who remembers him at Christmas with a big turkey, pays his rent at a pinch, or wins his undying gratitude by saving his baby from a pauper burial or sending carriages and flowers to the funeral.

All this kindness and timely aid is prompted by selfish motives. Amply is Tim repaid by Giuseppe's vote on election day. But at first Giuseppe misses the secret of the politician's interest in him, and votes Tim-wise as one shows a favor to a friend. Little does he dream of the dollar-harvest from the public-service companies and the vice interests Tim reaps with the "power" he has built up out of the votes of the foreigners. If, however, Giuseppe starts to be independent in the election booth, he is startled by the Jekyll-Hyde transformation of his erstwhile friend and patron. He is menaced with loss of job, withdrawal of permit or license. Suddenly the current is turned on in the city ordinances affecting him, and he is horrified to find himself in a mysterious network of live wires. With the connivance of a corrupt police force, Tim can even ruin him on a trumped-up charge.

The law of Pennsylvania allows any voter who demands it to receive "assistance" in the marking of his ballot. So in Pittsburgh, Tim expects Giuseppe to demand "assistance" and to take Tim with him into the booth to mark his ballot for him. Sometimes the election judges let Tim thrust himself into the booth despite the foreigner's protests, and watch how he marks his ballot. In one precinct 92 per cent. of the voters received "assistance." Two Italians who refused it lost their jobs forthwith. The high-spirited North Italians resent such intrusion, and some of them threaten to cut to pieces the interloper. But always the system is too strong for them.

Thus the way of Tim is to allure or to intimidate, or even combine the two. The immigrant erecting a little store is visited by a building inspector and warned that his interior arrangements are all wrong. His friends urge the distracted man to "see Tim." He does so, and kind Tim "fixes it up," gaining thereby another loyal henchman. The victim never learns that the inspector was sent to teach him the need of a protector. So long as the immigrant is "right," he may put an encroaching bay-window on his house or store, keep open his saloon after midnight, or pack into his lodging-house more than the legal number of lodgers. Moved ostensibly by a deep concern for public health or safety or morals, the city council enacts a great variety of health, building, and trades ordinances, in order that Tim may have plenty of clubs to hold over the foreigner's head.

So between boss and immigrant grows up a relation like that between a feudal lord and his vassals. In return for the boss's help and protection, the immigrant gives regularly his vote. The small fry get drinks or jobs, or help in time of trouble. The padrone, liquor-dealer, or lodging-house keeper gets license or permit or immunity from prosecution, provided he "delivers" the votes of enough of his fellow-countrymen. The ward boss realizes perfectly what his political power rests on, and is very conscientious in looking after his supporters. Of the Irish "gray wolves" in the Chicago council I was told, "Each of them is a natural ward leader, and will go through hell-fire for his people and they for him."

To the boss with a hold on the immigrant the requirement that the poor fellow shall live five years in this country before voting presents itself as an empty legal formality. In 1905 a special examiner of the Federal Department of Justice reported: "Naturalization frauds have grown and spread with the growth and spread of the alien population of the United States, until there is scarcely a city or county-seat town ... where in some form these frauds have not from time to time been committed." In 1845 a Louisiana judge was impeached and removed for fraud, the principal evidence being that he had issued certificates to 400 aliens in one day. The legislature might have been more lenient could it have foreseen that in 1868 a single judge in New York would issue 2500 of such certificates in one day! The gigantic naturalization frauds committed in the Presidential campaign of 1868 resulted in an investigation by Congress and in the placing of congressional elections under Federal supervision. During the month of October two New York judges issued 54,000 certificates. An investigation in 1902 showed about 25,000 fraudulent certificates of naturalization in use in that city.

There is hardly need nowadays to recount what Tim and his kind have done with the power they filched through the votes of Giuseppe and Jan and Michael. They have sold out the city to the franchise-seeking corporations. They have jobbed public works and pocketed a "rake-off" on all municipal supplies. They have multiplied jobs and filled them with lazy henchmen. By making merchandise of building laws or health ordinances, they have caused an unknown number of people to be crushed, or burned, or poisoned. Worst of all, by selling immunity from police interference to the vice interests, they have let the race be preyed on and consumed in the bud. Thanks to their "protection," a shocking proportion of the inhabitants of our cities of mixed population are destroyed by drinking, dissipation, and venereal diseases.

It is in the cities with many naturalized foreigners or enfranchised negroes that the vice interests have had the freest hand in exploiting and degrading the people. These foreigners have no love for vice, but unwittingly they become the corner-stone of the system that supports it. The city that has had the most and the rawest foreign-born voters is the city of the longest and closest partnership of the police with vice. Tammany Hall first gained power by its "voting gangs" of foreigners, and ever since its Old Guard has been the ignorant, naturalized immigrants. Exposed again and again, and thought to be shattered, Tammany has survived all shocks, because its supply of raw material has never been cut off. Not the loss of its friends has ever defeated it; only the union of its foes. The only things it fears are those that bore from within—social settlements, social centers, the quick intelligence of the immigrant Hebrew, stricter naturalization, and restriction of immigration.

In every American city with a large pliant foreign vote have appeared the boss, the machine, and the Tammany way. Once the machine gets a grip on the situation, it broadens and entrenches its power by intimidation at the polls, ballot frauds, vote purchase, saloon influence, and the support of the vicious and criminal. But its tap-root is the simple-minded foreigner or negro, and without them no lasting vicious political control has shown itself in any of our cities.

The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power. The Italian who opens an ice-cream parlor has to have a victualer's license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian votes. The Polish saloon-keeper loses his liquor license if he fails to line up his fellow-countrymen for the local machine. The politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who attracts the foreign vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established political machine, neutralizing the anti-machine ballots of an equal number of indignant intelligent American voters.

The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The saloon-keeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation of his own business, and of other businesses—gambling, dance-halls, and prostitution—which stimulate drinking. If "blue" laws are on the statute-book, these interests may combine to seat in the mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters, the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer is a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy Germans and Bohemians are marshaled in the "United Societies," ostensibly social organizations along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway the foreign-born vote not only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and affiliated interests.

The foreign press is another means of misleading the naturalized voters. These newspapers—Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, Yiddish, etc.,—while they have no small influence with their readers, are poorly supported, and often in financial straits. Many of them, therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party representing the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-born readers are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege gains another intrenching-tool.

THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LIKE-MINDEDNESS

If the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes his opinions, is he then an element of strength to us?

When a people has reached such a degree of political like-mindedness, that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is free to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yet[277]
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passed the civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old straw—the relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie untouched. Pressing questions—public hygiene, conservation, the control of monopoly, the protection of labor, go to the foot of the docket, and public interests suffer.

Y. M. C. A. Class of Slovenes in English Visiting a Session of the City Council of Cleveland

instruction

Class of Foreign-Born Women (Carinthians) at the Cleveland Hardware Co., Cleveland, O., Meeting for Instruction in English in the Factory, Twice a Week from 5 to 6:30

Some are quite cheerful about the confusion, cross-purposes, and delay that come with heterogeneity, because they think the variety of views introduced by immigration is a fine thing, "keeps us from getting into a rut." The plain truth is, that rarely does an immigrant bring in his intellectual baggage anything of use to us. The music of Mascagni and Debussy, the plays of Ibsen and Maeterlinck, the poetry of Rostand and Hauptmann, the fiction of JÓkai and Sienkiewicz were not brought to us by way of Ellis Island. What we want is not ideas merely, but fruitful ideas, fructifying ideas. By debating the ideas of Nietzsche, Ostwald, Bergson, Metchnikoff, or Ellen Key, American thought is stimulated. But should we gain from the introduction of old Asiatic points of view, which would reopen such questions as witchcraft, child-marriage, and suttee? The clashings that arise from the presence among us of many voters with medieval minds are sheer waste of energy. While we Americans wrangle over the old issues of clericalism, separate schools, and "personal liberty," the little homogeneous peoples—Norwegians and Danes and New Zealanders—are forging ahead of us in rational politics and learning to look pityingly upon us as a chaos rather than a people.

POLITICAL MYSTICISM VS. COMMON SENSE

If you should ask an Englishman whether the tone of political life in his country would remain unaffected by the admission to the electorate of a couple of million Cypriotes, Vlachs, and Bessarabians after five years' residence, he would take you for a madman. Suggest to the German that the plane of political intelligence in reading and thinking Germany would not be lowered by the access to the ballot-box of multitudes of Serbs, Georgians, and Druses of Lebanon, and he will consign you to bedlam. Assure the son of Norway that the vote of the Persian or Yemenite, of sixty months' residence in Norway, will be as often wise and right as his own, and he will be insulted. It is only we Americans who assume that the voting of the Middle Atlantic States, with their million of naturalized citizens, or of the East North Central States, with their million, is as sane, discriminating, and forward-looking as it would be without them.

The Italian historian and sociologist Ferrero, after reviewing our immigration policy, concludes that the Americans, far from being "practical," are really the mystics of the modern world. He says: "To confer citizenship each year upon great numbers of men born and educated in foreign countries—men who come with ideas and sympathies totally out of spirit with the diverse conditions in the new country; to grant them political rights they do not want, and of which they have never thought; to compel them to declare allegiance to a political constitution which they often do not understand; to try to transform subjects of old European monarchies into free citizens of young American republics over night—is not all this to do violence to common sense?"


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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