Americans by Choice

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“CIVIC INTEREST” IN GRAND RAPIDS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MUNICIPAL VOTERS’ LEAGUE OF CHICAGO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SOME OTHER INSTANCES

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

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

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

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:

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: