Americans by Choice

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.)

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:

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.)

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:

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.

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.)

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]