Races and Immigrants in America

Governor Johnson of Minnesota.—Swede
(From The World To-Day)

Profits and Wages.—We have now stated at some length in this and the preceding chapter the two standpoints from which the immigration of industrial races is viewed. One standpoint is that of the production of wealth, the other the distribution of wealth. One is the development of our natural resources, the other is the elevation of our working population. If we inquire somewhat more critically and take into account all of the circumstances, we shall find that the motives animating this difference of policy are not really the above distinction between production and distribution, but the distinction between two opposing interests in distribution; namely, profits and wages. Unfortunately it is too readily assumed that whatever increases profits does so by increasing production. As a matter of fact it is only secondarily the production of wealth and development of resources that is sought by one of the interests concerned—it is primarily increase of profits at the expense of wages. Cheap labor, it is asserted, is needed to develop the less productive resources of the country—what the economists call the margin of production. It is needed to develop the less productive industries, like sugar beet, and the less productive branches of other industries, like the construction of railways in undeveloped regions or the reconstruction of railways in older regions, or the extension of a coal mine into the narrow veins, and so on. Without cheap labor these marginal resources, it is asserted, could not profitably be exploited, and would therefore not be developed.

This argument, within limits, is undoubtedly true, but it overlooks the part played by machinery and inventions where wages are high. The cigar-making machine cannot extensively be introduced on the Pacific coast because Chinese cheap labor makes the same cigars at less cost than the machines. High wages stimulate the invention and use of machinery and scientific processes, and it is machinery and science, more than mere hand labor, on which reliance must be placed to develop the natural resources of a country.

But machinery and science cannot be as quickly introduced as cheap immigrant labor. Machinery requires accumulation of capital in advance of production, but labor requires only the payment of daily wages in the course of production. Consequently in the haste to get profits the immigrant is more desired than machinery. But excessive profits secured in this way bring reaction and a period of business depression which check the production of wealth even more than the period of prosperity has stimulated production. Consider the extreme vacillations of prosperity and depression which characterize American industry. In a period of prosperity the prices of commodities rise rapidly, but the wages of labor, especially unorganized labor, follow slowly, and do not rise proportionately as high as prices. This means an enormous increase in profits and production of commodities. But commodities are produced to be sold, and if the market falls off, then production comes to a standstill with what is known as “overproduction.” Now, wage-earners are the mass of consumers. If their wages do not rise in proportion to prices and profits, they cannot purchase as large a proportion of the country’s products as they did before the period of prosperity began. “Overproduction” is mainly the “underconsumption” of wage-earners. Immigration intensifies this fatal cycle of “booms” and “depressions.” A natural increase in population by excess of births over deaths, continues at practically the same rate year after year, in good times and bad times, but an artificial increase through immigration falls off in hard times and becomes excessive in good times. Thus, in 1879, at the lowest point of depression, the number of immigrants was 177,826, but three years later, in the “boom” culminating in 1882, it rose to 788,992. In nine years following the depression of 1897 the number increased from 230,000 to 1,100,000.

Even this does not tell the story complete, for the effects of free immigration are intensified by the opposite policy of a protective tariff on imports. While labor is admitted practically free, the products of labor are taxed to prevent free ingress. The following table shows the extreme points in the rise and fall of immigration and imports:—

CULMINATING POINTS OF IMMIGRATION AND IMPORTS OF MERCHANDISE

By comparing the two sets of columns it will be seen that, owing to the protective tariff, the imports of merchandise vary but slightly in periods of prosperity and depression compared with the variation in number of immigrants. Thus in the recent period of prosperity, the imports increased twofold above the lowest point of the preceding depression, while the number of immigrants increased nearly fivefold.

The swell of immigration in the above-mentioned periods of prosperity increases the supply of labor, but the protective tariff prevents a similar increase in the supply of products. Thus immigration and the tariff together prevent wages from rising with the rise in prices of commodities and cost of living. This permits profits to increase more than wages, to be followed by overproduction and stoppage of business.

Furthermore, when once the flow of immigrants is stimulated it continues for some time after the pinnacle of prosperity has been reached. In 1903 the boom met a check at the beginning of the year, but the number of immigrants continued to increase during the summer and fall at the rate of 20,000 per month in excess of the number during the high period of prosperity in 1902. This makes it possible for great corporations to continue their investments by means of cheap labor beyond the probable demands of the country, with the result of overproduction, loss of profits, inability to pay fixed charges, and consequent panics. Thus it is that immigration, instead of increasing the production of wealth by a steady, healthful growth, joins with other causes to stimulate the feverish overproduction, with its inevitable collapse, that has characterized the industry of America more than that of any other country. It helps to create fortunes during a period of speculation, and intensifies the reaction during a period of stagnation.

CHAPTER VII

Statistics are considered by many people as dry and uninteresting, and the fact that a book is statistical is a warning that it should not be read, or that the statistical paragraphs should be passed over for the narrative and historical parts. This is a dilettante and lazy attitude to take, and especially so in the study of social subjects, for in these subjects it is only statistics that tell us the true proportions and relative importance of our facts. The study of statistics leads us to a study of social causes and forces, and when we see that in the year 1790 three per cent of our population lived in cities, and in the year 1900 thirty-three per cent lived in cities of 8000 population and over, we are aroused to the importance of making a serious inquiry into the reasons for this growth of cities and the effects of city life on the future of democracy and the welfare of the nation. More impressive to the student of race problems becomes the inquiry when we realize that while one-fifth of our entire population lives in the thirty-eight cities of over 100,000 population, two-fifths of our foreign-born population, one-third of our native offspring of foreign parents, and only one-tenth of our people of native parentage live in such cities. That is to say, the proportion of the foreign-born in great cities is four times as great, and the proportion of the children of foreign parents is three and one-third times as great as that of the colonial and older native stock. These proportions appear in the accompanying table and the upper diagram on page 162.

POPULATION IN THE UNITED STATES AND LARGE CITIES: 1900

If we present the matter in another form in order to show the full extent of foreign influence in our great cities, we have another diagram, which shows that 59 per cent of the population outside, and only 30 per cent of the population within these cities is of native parentage, while 27 per cent of the population outside, and 65 per cent of the population within these cities is of foreign parentage. The census enumeration carries us back only to the parents, but if we had knowledge of the grandparents we should probably find that the immigrant element of the nineteenth century contributed a goodly portion of those set down as of native parentage.

Distribution of Population: 1900

Percentage of Population in Cities: 1900

CONSTITUENTS OF THE POPULATION OF CITIES OF MORE THAN 100,000 INHABITANTS: 1900

Still more significant becomes the comparison when we take each of these cities separately, as is done in the chart reproduced on page 163 from the Statistical Atlas of the Twelfth Census.

Here it appears that the extreme is reached in the textile manufacturing city of Fall River, where but 14 per cent of the population is of native extraction, while in the two greatest cities, New York and Chicago, the proportion is 21 per cent, and the only large cities with a predominance of the native element are St. Joseph, Columbus, Indianapolis, and Kansas City, with Denver equally divided. As already stated, grandparents would still further diminish the proportion of native element.

If we carry our comparison down to the 160 cities of 25,000 population, we shall find that in such cities is one-half of the foreign-born population,[91] and we shall also see marked differences among the races. At one extreme, three-fourths of those born in Russia, mainly Jews, live in these principal cities, and at the other extreme, one-fifth of the Norwegians.

The other Scandinavian countries and the Welsh and Swiss have about one-third, while the English and Scotch are two-fifths, Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and Poland, one-half to three-fifths, Ireland and Italy nearly two-thirds.

Individual cities suggest striking comparisons. In New York, computations based on the census show 785,035 persons of German descent, a number nearly equal to the population of Hamburg, and larger than the native element in New York (737,477). New York has twice as many Irish (710,510) as Dublin, two and one-half times as many Jews as Warsaw, half as many Italians as Naples, and 50,000 to 150,000 first and second generations from Scotland, Hungary, Poland, Austria, and England.[92] Chicago has nearly as many Germans as Dresden, one-third as many Bohemians as Prague, one-half as many Irish as Belfast, one-half as many Scandinavians as Stockholm.[93]

The variety of races, too, is astonishing. New York excels Babel. A newspaper writer finds in that city sixty-six languages spoken, forty-nine newspapers published in foreign languages, and one school at Mulberry Bend with children of twenty-nine nationalities. Several of the smaller groups live in colonies, like the Syrians, Greeks, and Chinese. But the colonies of the larger groups are reservoirs perpetually filling and flowing.[94]

The influx of population to our cities, the most characteristic and significant movement of the present generation, has additional significance when we classify it according to the motives of those who seek the cities, whether industrial or parasitic. The transformation from agriculture to manufactures and transportation has designated city occupations as the opportunities for quick and speculative accumulation of wealth, and in the cities the energetic, ambitious, and educated classes congregate. From the farms of the American stock the sons leave a humdrum existence for the uncertain but magnificent rewards of industrialism. These become the business men, the heads of great enterprises, and the millionaires whose example hypnotizes the imagination of the farm lads throughout the land. Many of them find their level in clerical and professional occupations, but they escape the manual toil which to them is the token of subordination. These manual portions are the peculiar province of the foreign immigrant, and foreign immigration is mainly a movement from the farms of Europe to the cities of America. The high wages of the industries and occupations which radiate from American cities are to them the magnet which fortune-seeking is to the American-born. The cities, too, furnish that choice of employers and that easy reliance on charitable and friendly assistance which is so necessary to the indigent laborer looking for work. Thus it is that those races of immigrants the least self-reliant or forehanded, like the Irish and the Italians, seek the cities in greater proportions than those sturdy races like the Scandinavians, English, Scotch, and Germans. The Jew, also, coming from the cities of Europe, seeks American cities by the very reason of his racial distaste for agriculture, and he finds there in his coreligionists the necessary assistance for a beginning in American livelihood.

At this point we gradually pass over from the industrial motives of city influx to the parasitic motives. The United Hebrew Charities of New York have asserted that one-fourth of the Jews of that city are applicants for charity, and the other charitable societies make similar estimates for the population at large. These estimates must certainly be exaggerated, and a careful analysis of their methods of keeping statistics will surely moderate such startling statements, but we must accept them as the judgment of those who have the best means of knowing the conditions of poverty and pauperism in the metropolis. However exaggerated, they indicate an alarming extent of abject penury brought on by immigration, for it is mainly the immigrant and the children of the immigrant who swell the ranks of this indigent element in our great cities.

Those who are poverty-stricken are not necessarily parasitic, but they occupy that intermediate stage between the industrial and the parasitic classes from which either of these classes may be recruited. If through continued poverty they become truly parasitic, then they pass over to the ranks of the criminal, the pauper, the vicious, the indolent, and the vagrant, who, like the industrial class, seek the cities.

The dangerous effects of city life on immigrants and the children of immigrants cannot be too strongly emphasized. This country can absorb millions of all races from Europe and can raise them and their descendants to relatively high standards of American citizenship in so far as it can find places for them on the farms. “The land has been our great solvent.”[95] But the cities of this country not only do not raise the immigrants to the same degree of independence, but are themselves dragged down by the parasitic and dependent conditions which they foster among the immigrant element.

Dr. Oronhyatekha
Mohawk Indian, Late Chief of Order of Foresters

Crime.—This fact is substantiated by a study of criminal and pauper statistics. Great caution is needed in this line of inquiry, especially since the eleventh census in 1890 promulgated most erroneous inferences from the statistics compiled under its direction. It was contended by the census authorities that for each million of the foreign-born population there were 1768 prisoners, while for each million of the native-born there were only 898 prisoners, thus showing a tendency to criminality of the foreign-born twice as great as that of the white native-born. This inference was possible through oversight of the important fact that prisoners are recruited mainly from adults, and that the proportion of foreign-born adults to the foreign-born population is much greater than that of the native-born adults to the native population. If comparison be made of the number of male prisoners with the number of males of voting age, the proportions are materially different and more accurate, as follows:—

Number of Male Prisoners per Million of Voting Population, 1890 (Omitting “Unknown”)[96]

Here the foreign-born show actually a lower rate of criminality (3270) than the total native-born (3482). This inference harmonizes with our general observations of the immigrants, namely, that they belong to the industrial classes, and that our immigration laws are designed to exclude criminals.

But this analysis brings out a fact far more significant than any yet adverted to; namely, that the native-born children of immigrants show a proportion of criminality (5886 per million) much greater than that of the foreign-born themselves (3270 per million), and 70 per cent greater than that of the children of native parents.

This significant fact is further brought out, and with it the obverse of the census mistake above referred to, when we examine the census inferences respecting juvenile criminals. The census calculations show that there are 250 juvenile offenders for every million of the native-born population, and only 159 such offenders for every million of the foreign-born population; but if we remember that the proportion of foreign-born children is small, and then proceed to compare the number of boys who are offenders with the number of boys 10 to 19 years of age rather than with the number of persons of all ages, we shall have the following results, confining our attention to the North Atlantic states, where juvenile reformatories are more liberally provided than in other sections:—

Male Juvenile Offenders per Million of Male Population Ten To Nineteen Years of Age, North Atlantic States, 1890 (Omitting “Unknown”)[98]

This table throws a different light on the situation, for it shows that the tendency towards crime among juveniles, instead of being less for the foreign-born than for the native-born, is nearly twice as great as that of the children of American parentage, and that the tendency among native children of foreign parentage (3923 per million) is more than twice as great as that among children of American parents (1744 per million).

This amazing criminality of the children of immigrants is almost wholly a product of city life, and it follows directly upon the incapacity of immigrant parents to control their children under city conditions. The boys, especially, at an early age lose respect for their parents, who cannot talk the language of the community, and who are ignorant and helpless in the whirl of the struggle for existence, and are shut up during the daytime in shops and factories. On the streets and alleys, in their gangs and in the schools, the children evade parental discipline, and for them the home is practically non-existent. Says a well-informed student of race problems in New York,[99] “Example after example might be given of tenement-house families in which the parents—industrious peasant laborers—have found themselves disgraced by idle and vicious grown sons and daughters. Cases taken from the records of charitable societies almost at random show these facts again and again.” Even the Russian Jew, more devoted and self-sacrificing in the training of his children than any other race of immigrants, sees them soon earning more money than their parents and breaking away from the discipline of centuries.

Far different is it with those foreigners who settle in country districts where their children are under their constant oversight, and while the youngsters are learning the ways of America they are also held by their parents to industrious habits. Children of such immigrants become substantial citizens, while children of the same race brought up in the cities become a recruiting constituency for hoodlums, vagabonds, and criminals.

The reader must have observed in the preceding statistical estimates the startling preëminence of the negro in the ranks of criminals. His proportion of prisoners for adult males (13,219 per million) seems to be four times as great as that of the native stock, and more than twice as great as that of foreign parentage, while for boys his portion in the North Atlantic states (17,915 per million) is ten times as great as that of the corresponding native stock, and four times as great as that of foreign parentage.

The negro perhaps suffers by way of discrimination in the number of arrests and convictions compared with the whites, yet it is significant that in proportion to total numbers the negro prisoners in the Northern states are nearly twice as many as in the Southern states. Here, again, city life works its degenerating effects, for the Northern negroes are congregated mainly in towns and cities, while the Southern negroes remain in the country.

Did space permit, it would prove an interesting quest to follow the several races through the various classes of crime, noticing the relative seriousness of their offences, and paying attention to the female offenders. Only one class of offences can here be noted in detail; namely, that of public intoxication. Although classed as a crime, this offence borders on pauperism and the mental diseases, and its extreme prevalence indicates that the race in question is not overcoming the degenerating effects of competition and city life. Statistics from Massachusetts seem to show that drunkenness prevails to the greatest extent in the order of preëminence among the Irish, Welsh, English, and Scotch, and least among the Portuguese, Italians, Germans, Poles, and Jews. The Italians owe their prominence in the lists of prisoners to their crimes of violence, and very slightly to intoxication, though the latter is increasing among them. In the Southern states the ravages of drink among the negroes have been so severe and accompanied with such outbreaks of violence that the policy of prohibition of the liquor traffic has been carried farther than in any other section of the country. Probably three-fourths of the Southern negroes live in prohibition counties, and were it not for the paternal restrictions imposed by such laws, the downward course of the negro race would doubtless have outrun considerably the speed it has actually attained.

Besides the crimes which spring from racial tendencies, there is a peculiar class of crimes springing largely from race prejudice and hatred. These are lynchings and mob violence. The United States presents the paradox of a nation where respect for law and constitutional forms has won most signal triumphs, yet where concerted violations of law have been most widespread. By a queer inversion of thought, a crime committed jointly by many is not a crime, but a vindication of justice, just as a crime committed by authority of a nation is not a crime, but a virtue. Such crimes have not been continuous, but have arisen at times out of acute racial antagonisms. The Knownothing agitation of 1850 to 1855, which prevailed among religious and patriotic Americans, was directed against the newly arrived flood of immigrants from Europe and Asia, and was marked by a state of lawlessness and mob rule such as had never before existed, especially in the cities of Boston, New York, Pittsburg, Cincinnati, Louisville, and Baltimore.[100] These subsided or changed their object under the oncoming slavery crisis, and the Civil War itself was a grand resort to violence by the South on a question of race domination. Beginning again with the Kuklux and White-cap uprisings in the seventies, mob rule drove the negroes back to a condition of subordination, but the lawless spirit then engendered has continued to show itself in the annual lynching of fifty to one hundred and fifty negroes suspected or convicted of the more heinous crimes.[101] Nor has this crime of the mob been restricted to the South, but it has spread to the North, and has become almost the accepted code of procedure throughout the land wherever negroes are heinously accused. In the Northern instances this vengeance of the mob is sometimes wreaked on the entire race, for in the North the negro is more assertive, and defends his accused brother. But in the South the mob usually, though not always, stops with vengeance on the individual guilty, or supposedly guilty, since the race in general is already cowed.

Other races suffer at the hands of mobs, such as the Chinese in Wyoming and California at the hands of American mine workers, Italians in Louisiana and California at the hands of citizens and laborers, Slovaks and Poles in Latimer, Pennsylvania, at the hands of a mob militia. With the rise of organized labor these race riots and militia shootings increased in number, often growing out of the efforts of older races of workmen to drive newer and backward races from their jobs, or the efforts of employers to destroy newly formed unions of these immigrant races. Many strikes are accompanied by an incipient race war where employers are endeavoring to make substitution, one race for another, of Irish, Germans, native whites, Italians, negroes, Poles, and so on. Even the long series of crimes against the Indians, to which the term “A Century of Dishonor” seems to have attached itself without protest, must be looked upon as the mob spirit of a superior race bent on despoiling a despised and inferior race. That the frenzied spirit of the mob, whether in strikes, panicky militia, Indian slaughter, or civil war, should so often have blackened the face of a nation sincerely dedicated to law and order is one of the penalties paid for experimenting on a problem of political and economic equality with material marked by extreme racial inequality.

Poverty and Pauperism.—Prior to year 1875 the laws of the United States imposed no prohibition upon the immigration of paupers from foreign countries, and not until the federal government took from the states the administration of the law in 1891 did the prohibitions of the existing law become reasonably effective. Since that year there have been annually debarred, as likely to become public charges, 431 to 7898 arrivals, the latter number being debarred in the year 1905. In addition to those debarred at landing, there have been annually returned within one to three years after landing, 177 to 845 immigrants, many of whom had meantime become public charges. From these statements it will be seen that, prior to 1891, it was possible and quite probable that many thousand paupers and prospective paupers were admitted by the immigration authorities, and consequently the proportion of paupers among the foreign-born should appear larger than it would in later years. In the earlier years systematic arrangements were in force in foreign countries, especially Great Britain, to assist in the deportation of paupers to the United States, and therefore it is not surprising that, apart from race characteristics, there should have come to this country larger numbers of Irish paupers than those from any other nationality. Since these exportations have been stopped, it is not so much the actual pauper as the prospective pauper who gets admission. 96 per cent of the paupers in almshouses have been in this country ten years or more, showing that the exclusion laws are still defective, in that large numbers of poor physique are admitted. Taking the census reports for 1904, and confining our attention to the North Atlantic states, where children are generally provided for in separate establishments, we are able to compute the following as the relative extent of pauperism among males:—

Male Paupers in Almshouses Per Million Voting Population, North Atlantic States, 1904.

Here we see the counterpart of the estimates on crime, for the natives of foreign parentage show a smaller proportion of paupers than the natives of native parentage, while the foreign-born themselves show more than double the relative amount of pauperism of the native element, and the colored paupers are nearly twice the native stock.

The census bureau also furnishes computations showing the contributions of the different races and nationalities to the insane asylums and benevolent institutions.[102] In general it appears that the foreign-born and the negroes exceed the native classes in their burden on the public. A report of the Department of Labor of great value and significance, incidentally bearing on this subject, shows for the Italians in Chicago their industrial and social conditions. According to this report the average earnings of Italians in that city in 1896 while at work were $6.41 per week for men and $2.11 per week for women, and the average time unemployed by the wage-earning element was over seven months. In another report of the Department of Labor it appears that the slum population of the cities of Baltimore, Chicago, New York, and Philadelphia in 1893 was unemployed three months each year. With wages one dollar a day, and employment only five months during the year, it is marvellous that the Italians of Chicago, during the late period of depression, were not thrown in great numbers upon public relief. Yet, with the strict administration of the exclusion laws leading to the deportation of over 2000 Italians a year as liable to become public charges, it is likely that the immigrants of that race, although low in physique, poverty, and standards of living, are fairly well screened of actual paupers.

CHAPTER VIII

American democracy was ushered in on a theory of equality. And no word has been more strangely used and abused. There is the monarchical idea of equality, and Mr. Mallock begs the question when he gives the title “Aristocracy and Evolution” to a book on the necessary part played by great men. Doubtless, in Greek, aristocracy means “government by the best,” but in history it means government by the privilege of birth and landed property. Democracy may be in philology “government by the mob,” but in politics and industry it has been opportunity for great men without blood or property. Mr. Münsterberg, too, sees the breakdown of American democracy and the reaction towards aristocracy in the prominence of civil-service reform, the preëminence conceded to business ability, the deference to wealth, and the conquest of the Philippines.[103] But civil-service reform is only a device for opening the door to merit that has been shut by privilege. In England it was the means by which the mercantile classes broke into the offices preëmpted by the younger sons of aristocracy.[104] In America it is an awkward means of admitting ability wherever found to positions seized upon by political usurpers. It appealed to the American democracy only when its advocates learned to call it, not “civil-service reform,” but “the merit system.” As for the astonishing power of mere wealth in American affairs the testimony of another English observer is based on wider observation when he says, “Even the tyranny of trusts is not to be compared with the tyranny of landlordism; for the one is felt to be merely an unhappy and (it is hoped) temporary aberration of well-meant social machinery, while the other seems bred in the very bone of the national existence.”[105]

A feeling of disappointment holds true of the conquest and treatment of the Philippines. That a war waged out of sympathy for an oppressed island nearby should have shaken down an unnoticed archipelago across the ocean was taken in childlike glee as the unexpected reward of virtue. But serious thinking has followed on seeing that these islands have added another race problem to the many that have thwarted democracy. Only a plutocracy sprung from race divisions at home could profit by race-subjection abroad, and the only alternative to race-subjection is equal representation in Congress. But to admit another race to partnership without the hope of assimilation is to reject experience. Independence or cession to Japan is the self-preservation of American democracy.

Another idea of equality is the socialist idea. Infatuated by an “economic interpretation of history,” they overlook the racial interpretation. Permitting and encouraging plutocracy, they hope to see the dispossessed masses take possession when conditions become intolerable. But the “masses” would not be equal to the task. Privileged wealth knows too well how to buy up or promote their leaders, how to weaken them by internal dissensions, how to set race against race. Most of all, the inexperienced despotism of the masses is worse than the smooth despotism of wealth. The government of the South by the negro, the government of San Francisco by “labor,” fell into the hands of the “carpet-bagger” and the “boss.” Once in power, internal strife and jealousy, struggle for office, or racial antagonism disrupt the rulers, and a reaction throws them back more helpless than before. Men are not equal, neither are races or classes equal. True equality comes through equal opportunity. If individuals go forward, their race or class is elevated. They become spokesmen, defenders, examples. No race or class can rise without its own leaders. If they get admitted on equal terms with other leaders, whether it be in the councils of the church, the law-making bodies of the city, state, and nation, or the wage conferences of employers, they then can command the hearing which their abilities justify. They secure for their followers the equal opportunity to which they are entitled.

This is exactly the political problem that grows out of the presence of races and immigrants. With these admitted to the suffrage on the basis of mere manhood inspired by a generosity unknown to the people of any other land, the machinery of representative government inherited from England does not, for some reason, permit the free choice of leaders. The difficulties may be seen in cities where the system first broke down. A variety of races and nationalities living in the same ward are asked to elect aldermen and other officers by majority vote. No one nationality has a majority, but each sets up its list of candidates. The nationality with a mere plurality elects all of its candidates, and the other nationalities—a majority of the voters—are unrepresented. This is an extreme case, and has not often been allowed to happen. But the only means of preventing it is the “ward boss.” The boss emerges from the situation as inevitably as the survival of the fittest. And the fittest is the Irishman. The Irishman has above all races the mixture of ingenuity, firmness, human sympathy, comradeship, and daring that makes him the amalgamator of races. He conciliates them all by nominating a ticket on which the offices are shrewdly distributed; and out of the Babel his “slate” gets the majority.

The boss’s problem is not an easy one. His ward may contain business men on the hill and negroes along the canal. To nominate a business man would lose the negro vote—to nominate a negro would lose the business vote. He selects a nondescript somewhere between, and discards him for another at the next election. The representative becomes a tool in the hands of the boss. The boss sells his power to corporations, franchise speculators, and law-evaders. Representative democracy becomes bossocracy in the service of plutocracy. The ward system worked well when the suffrage was limited. Then the business men elected their business man unimpeded. But a system devised for restricted suffrage breaks down under universal suffrage. Could the ward lines be abolished, could the business men come together regardless of residence and elect their choice without the need of a majority vote, could the negroes and other races and classes do the same, then each would be truly represented by their natural leaders. So it is, not only in cities, but in county, state, and nation. Universal suffrage, clannish races, social classes, diversified interests, seem to explain and justify the presence of the party “machine” and its boss. Otherwise races, classes, and interests are in helpless conflict and anarchy. But the true explanation is an obsolete ward and district system of plurality representation adopted when but one race, class, or interest had the suffrage. Forms of government are the essence of government, notwithstanding the poet. An aristocratic form with a democratic suffrage is a plutocratic government. Belgium and Switzerland have shown that a democratic form is possible and practicable. Proportional representation instead of district representation is the corollary of universal suffrage which those countries have worked out as a model for others.[106] The model is peculiarly adapted to a country of manifold nationalities, interests, and classes. Races and immigrants in America have not disproved democracy—they have proved the need of more democracy.

This is seen also in the distinction between men and measures. It often has been noted that in American elections the voters are more interested in voting for candidates than they are in voting on issues. The candidate arouses a personal and concrete interest—the issue is abstract and complicated. The candidate calls out a full vote—the issue is decided by a partial vote.

This difference is partly the result of organization. The candidate has a political party, campaign funds, and personal workers to bring out the vote. The issue has only its merits and demerits. Equally important under American conditions is the race or nationality of the candidate. This feature is often concealed by the ingenuity of political managers in nominating a ticket on which the several nationalities are “recognized.” But with the recent progress of the movement to abolish party conventions and to nominate candidates directly at the primaries the racial prejudices of the voters show themselves. The nationalities line up for their own nationality, and the political and economic issues are thrown in the background. It is different when they vote on the issues directly. The vital questions of politics, industry, corporations, and monopoly which menace the country, unless rightly answered, cut across the lines of nationality. The German farmer, manufacturer, wage-earner, merchant, capitalist, and monopolist may all unite to elect a popular German to office, but they do not unite to give a corporation a monopoly. The same is true of other nationalities. Wherever the referendum has been fairly tested, in Chicago, Detroit, Oregon, and elsewhere, the sound judgment of all races has prevailed over bias, prejudice, or racial jealousy. There none can claim preëminence, for all have shown their share of patriotism, intelligence, and regard for equal rights. By an automatic self-disfranchisement the ignorant, the corrupt, and the indifferent of all races eliminate themselves by failing to vote. Instead of being dismissed on the ground that voters care mainly for men and less for measures, the referendum should be adopted on the ground that it permits those interested in measures to decide the question. Those who are not interested enough to vote do thereby proclaim that they are satisfied whichever side wins. The initiative and referendum are, above all other forms of government, the specific remedy for the ills of universal suffrage and conflicting nationalities. Race antagonism springs from personalities, race coalescence from community of interest. A vote for candidates intensifies antagonism—a vote on measures promotes community.

There are, indeed, some kinds of measures which stir up race antagonism. But the keenest of these have happily been eliminated. More intense than any other source of discord is religious belief. Religious differences in America are not so much theological as racial in character. The Judaism of the Jew, the Protestantism of the British and colonial American, the Lutheranism of the German, the Roman Catholicism of the Irish, Italian, and Slav, the Greek Catholicism of other Slavs, all testify to the history and psychology of races. Far-sighted indeed were our fathers who separated Church and State. Were the people taxed to support religion, every election would be a contest of races. All other questions would be subordinate, and democracy impossible. But with religion relegated to private judgment, each race is free to cultivate at will that one of its own peculiarities most fanatically adhered to, but most repellent to other races, while uniting with the others on what is most essential to democracy. Religious freedom is more than a private right—it is an American necessity.