Americans by Choice

Table III

Applicants for Naturalization in Supreme Court, New York City, in October, 1868

———
———
October 6	6
“ 7	8
“ 8	379
“ 9	668
“ 10	717
“ 12	723
“ 13	901
“ 14	523
“ 15	857
“ 16	721
“ 17	633
“ 19	955
“ 20	944
“ 21	773
“ 22	675
“ 23	587
———
Total	10,070
———
———

The significance of these great totals of applications for naturalization within a few days before election appears in Mr. Davenport’s summary of the behavior of the judges:11

But the essential aid rendered by these judges need not be further detailed. It was mainly comprised of one or more of the following derelictions of duty:

I. Hasty and incomplete examination of applicants and witnesses.

II. Total neglect at times to examine the one class or the other.

III. Through negligence, imposition, which might easily have been guarded against, or direct complicity, the issue of certificates in the names of persons who never appeared in Court, applied therefor, produced a witness, or took an oath.

IV. Similar issue of certificates to applicants, persons of assumed or fictitious names and others, upon the oath of residence and moral character of persons of assumed and fictitious names, or of known criminals and persons of immoral character.

V. Similar issue of certificates upon “minor applications” when the persons to whom such certificates issued were known, or could readily have been ascertained to be, unentitled thereto on such applications.

VI. Total neglect or refusal to commit known disreputable persons and others whose business it was for pecuniary or other consideration to act as witnesses, and who in such capacity repeatedly appeared before them.

VII. The conducting of naturalization proceedings in a secret manner, by causing citizens and others to be denied admission to the court-room, or ejected therefrom when observed.

The Judiciary Committee of the New York State Assembly, in a report upon the first notorious election frauds made to that House of the state legislature thirty years before, or on April 6, 1838, already had registered the fact that this was no post-war state of affairs, and depicted the situation of which the frauds of 1868 were only one year’s fruit:

Men vote who do not reside in the ward, often not in the state; aliens are frequently brought to the polls and their vote imposed upon the inspectors, although many of them have not been a week in the country; and voters are not infrequently taken from poll to poll, voting in three or four different wards at the same election. These are the frauds constantly practiced at our elections, to the disgrace of the state, and to the manifest wrong of the country.

It was partly the sense of the great public danger lying in such conditions, partly the growing anti-foreign feeling, and altogether an improving public morality, that beginning about 1870 and increasing as the years passed, brought about the cleansing of public elections and the reform embodied in the naturalization law of 1906 which has totally abolished the situation into which the immigrants of the mid-century and earlier stepped as into a swamp. Still survives in some quarters the notion that the alien is hurried from the ship to the ballot box, and that he pours therein some corrupting influence brought with him from abroad. The latter never was true; he has accepted and taken advantage of the situation which we ourselves created and suffered for generations to exist. The former was true during three-quarters of a century, but it is true no longer, and has not been true for nearly two decades.

First Choice in Politics

Bear it in mind that the chief motive of the newcomer is the same as that which usually leads men to go anywhere—the desire to “better himself.” It is notable that a very large number of immigrants arrive with the notion that the Republican party is the “party of prosperity,” of the “full dinner pail,” high wages, and the other advantages which have been the widely advertised slogans of that party. Without passing upon the question of the truth of these slogans, one may note that what actually happens is that the immigrant’s real search is for that connection, political or industrial, which involves employment and other advantages of a material kind. As soon as the conditions permit, he joins the penumbra of the political organization which has jobs to distribute, which controls public contracts and the wages that go with them. That means Tammany and the Democratic party in New York City; in Philadelphia it means the Republican organization, which in its day has followed and in some respects surpassed Tammany in all the ways of political corruption and machinism. In other cities it has been to this party or that, as the dominant color shifted, that the immigrant has swung.

As long as the naturalization process was the sport of corrupt politics, the political organizations gave early attention to the alien. With the institution of the present stringent law and practice, however, and also with the vast magnitude of the flood—swamping all the machinery which had been devised to absorb the immigrants—the politicians up to a recent time ceased to pay any attention to them. One of the results of this has been a considerable increase in the lapse of time between the arrival of the immigrant and his first steps in the direction of citizenship. One of the most enterprising of the younger leaders of Tammany Hall said to the present writer some months ago:

We don’t pay any attention to the alien until he comes to us for some favor—a job, a peddling license, some help when his boy is arrested, or assistance in getting out his naturalization papers. There’s too many of ’em. When they do come, we do what we can for them, and naturally we say: “Well, how about it? Are you going to see the Democratic organization only when you want something? Why aren’t you a citizen? Get yourself naturalized and then come along with us.”

All of which is very natural and human, and a good illustration of the way in which the politician gets his hold upon the individual voter—newcomer or native.

The war created a new interest in the alien, brought new pressure upon him to become a citizen. Private concerns demanded at least “first papers” as a condition for employment; labor organizations intensified their insistence upon citizenship, or at least declaration of intention, as a prerequisite to membership; laws were passed in many states increasing the disabilities of aliens. And the political organizations generally have returned, but in a far better spirit, to the former search for voters among the foreign born; creating committees and bureaus to assist the alien in getting naturalization, and resuming the old “hand-picking” methods of getting the foreign born into active participation.

Little attention has been paid to the extent to which the politicians use private jobs as a part of their patronage. Not only the petty employments in saloons and even brothels have been at the disposal of the local leaders; but places for unskilled labor with street-railroad corporations and other public utilities needing the franchises and privileges in the public streets, have been utilized as the coin-current of local political traffic. Not infrequently a merchant finds that the stringency of the enforcement of ordinances regarding his buildings, blocking sidewalks with his merchandise, etc., is considerably mitigated after he has acted upon the suggestion of a district leader as to the employment of some person as truck hand or watchman. And the writer well remembers one occasion, many years ago in Chicago, when the street-railroad companies were keenly interested in an aldermanic election, wherein the polling places in certain doubtful wards were blocked by long lines of obviously foreign-born laborers, few if any of them voters, who did not attempt to vote, but monopolized the line for blocks, effectively slowing down the voting so as to prevent the real voters from getting to the polls at all!

The Politician Close to Humanity

The secret of the whole business lies in the fact that political machines, and the political bosses of all sizes and grades who make up their staffs, are powerful and long-lived in just the measure to which they grow out of and identify their activities with the rank and file of the community—clear down to the bottom. The vote of a new-made citizen born in Galicia or Syria or Portugal is just as good for his purpose as that of a Son of the American Revolution—vastly more so if (as sometimes happens) the new voter will follow his “advice” and the old one will not! Furthermore, their vitality, especially in the poorer sections, is commensurate with the constancy of their activities; that is, their practical utility to the people all the time, for all purposes. As William Bennet Munro says:12

The work which the party organizations lay out to do, and in large measure actually perform, is extensive and exacting. It does not, as in Europe, all fall within the few weeks which precede an election; it is spread over the whole year.

And he goes on to describe, aptly, why this work is “spread over the whole year,” and how it comes about that the boss, little or big, acquires so great an influence in his bailiwick. What he says applies most aptly to the so-called “poorer districts,” where the foreign-born voters live in the greatest numbers:

It seems usually to be forgotten that the evolution of the boss follows the law of natural selection, which in this case secures the survival of the man who is most resourceful in using to full advantage the conditions that he finds about him. To gain even a ward leadership and to hold this post requires industry, perseverance, and, no end of shrewd tactfulness. He must not be content with doing the work that comes to him; he must look for things to do. As his work consists mainly in doing favors for voters, he must inspire requests as well as grant them. Therefore he encourages voters to come to him for help when they are out of work, or in any other sort of trouble. When a voter is arrested, the ward or district leader will lend his services to secure bail or to provide counsel, or will arrange to have the offender’s fine paid for him. Then there are the day-to-day favors which the local boss stands ready to do for all who come to him, provided they are voters or can influence voters.

Picturing the boss thus as the district philanthropist, the description goes on to enlarge upon the more sinister uses to which the power thus gained is devoted, in punishing disloyalty. And this is even more effective upon those relatively unfamiliar with the niceties, the ins-and-outs, of public administration:

If a word from the boss will get one man employment, a word will also, very often, procure another employee’s dismissal. At a hint from him, the small shopkeeper, the peddler, the pawnbroker, the hackman, can be worried daily by the police or by the health and sanitary officials of the city on baseless or imaginary pretexts—tactics in which, as the history of almost every larger city shows, the machinery is unrelenting and vindictive.

The affirmative side of the district leader’s activity is the one that makes most impression upon the neighborhood. Almost every sort of reformer, who would bring to the foreign-speaking district a sense of the need for voting for a different sort of alderman, for example, lives in another part of town, represents another stratum of society, comes into no sort of natural touch with his foreign-born fellow citizen. But the latter knows the district leader—last winter he got a job, a little coal, a bed in a hospital for his wife; his boy was let off by the police after a piece of reckless mischief; or there was some other human favor; and all the return he is asked to make—cheap enough, to be sure—is that on election day he shall vote as the district leader who helped him in his need asks him to vote. What difference does it make to him? Show him a difference, convince him that something real, something that he can understand, is involved, and he will respond. But nobody shows him. “Uptown,” whence comes the reformer whom he does not know, and whose motives he has no substantial reason to respect, does not understand his life or its problems; does not even live in the ward. The district leader does. He is his neighbor, and he sees him almost every day.

Then, too, the political organization meets him on the social side, provides a club, which in the intervals between elections gives entertainments, has pool tables, provides cigars; used to provide liquor. A spirit of fellowship grows up; the new foreign-born voter gains acquaintance at the natural point of contact between his daily life and the politics into which he is being introduced. The result is obvious.

Political Aspects of Social Clubs

The spontaneous groups of foreign-speaking people of nearly every race, which have sprung up everywhere in response to the varied needs of the strangers within our gates—social, insurance, musical, athletic, etc.—necessarily and naturally take on political aspects. As President Wilson said once, “politics is human nature”; there is nothing sinister about this fact. It is wholesome that groups of folk, coming together spontaneously about a nucleus of common interest, should consider together and act together, in regard to such public matters as they think concern them. The only thing that is really dangerous in a republic is stolid indifference; it is on that that corruption and injustice feed.

In the matter of helping their fellow countrymen to secure naturalization, these organizations perform a service of value and importance both to the alien and to the country. Many of these racial societies devote much attention to old-country politics, and form nests of propaganda and even more concrete activity whose effects are felt not so much in this country as “back home.” And when, as in the case of Ireland, Poland, Italy, and so on, the issues of foreign politics are made the bone of contention in American political contests, these German-American, Italian-American, Polish-American societies may become exceedingly active in our own affairs, and project lines of division which may greatly complicate the politician’s task, and sometimes stand him upon his head.13

It is not too much to say that the power of Tammany Hall in politics, and that of every other important political organization in Philadelphia, Chicago, San Francisco, Boston, or elsewhere—including those dominant in rural districts—grows out of intimate association with the people in their daily lives, and could grow out of nothing else. “Power and patronage,” says Professor Munro, “provide a cycle hard to break.” True; but “power and patronage” is only a phrase. Behind it lies the fact that the politician gains and holds his power because he deserves it; through his organization of the machinery, always “on the job,” through which human beings, with wives and children to feed, clothe and shelter, get the means to do it. The small, unskilled job in the employ of the city, or of business which can be helped or harmed by political or official action, is the coin-current through which the politician controls—so far as he does control—the rank and file of the foreign-born voters. This, and the small and larger personal human favors that he is in a position to render.

Here, with the first economic “toe-hold” that the immigrant gets in America, begins his introduction to our life and to our politics.

Politics a Great Americanizing Force

Politics, local politics—the ordinary interest of the ordinary citizen; the day’s work and the day’s life, are great Americanizing forces, and they are working every minute. The immigrant generally, especially he of the so-called “new immigration,” comes here without much if any experience in public affairs. All the life of all the generations from which he comes has been passed without real participation; government in the old country went on over his head, in a rarefied stratum which he never entered and of which he knew little. That is one reason why, on the average, it takes more than ten years for him to come to the point of asking for citizenship.

Of late some of the very people who declared that the immigrant comes here with only “sordid motives” have favored pressure upon him to become a citizen by means of refusing him employment unless he does become one. The great increase in declarations of intention during the past three or four years has been due almost entirely to the restrictions adopted formally or informally all over the country confining employment, even in privately owned industries, to those who have at least taken out “first papers.” Even in the Bureau of Naturalization there was for a time more than a tendency to pursue this policy of forcing citizenship upon aliens. It was abandoned because no government can kidnap the subjects or citizens of another without getting into difficulty. There is still a good deal of confusion of thought about this matter.

The importance of it lies in the fact—obvious to any right thought about it—that we want for our new citizens only those who come of their own accord and free will. We want, moreover, only those who are right-minded. The effort to stamp out the use of every mother tongue but one, to obliterate all affection for the old home in Scandinavia, Bavaria, Dalmatia, Bohemia, not only is futile; we do not want for our fellow citizens the kind of people who can turn their back without a qualm upon the memories of childhood.

Breathes there the man with soul so dead
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burned
As home his footsteps he hath turned
From wandering on a foreign strand?

What sort of an American could be made out of one able in any circumstances—worst of all under repressive compulsion—to turn his back upon the tongue, the traditions, and the associations of his fathers? We are not such ourselves, and in our sane minds we do not want those who join us to be such. The process of real assimilation is a process slow in its nature, reaching not forms and words, but sentiments of the highest and most subtle kind.

You cannot beat love of country into any worthwhile person with a club—or with a law.