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: