IMMIGRANTS IN POLITICS
On a single Chicago hoarding, before the spring election of 1912,
the writer saw the political placards of candidates with the
following names: Kelly, Cassidy, Slattery, Alschuler, Pfaelzer,
Bartzen, Umbach, Andersen, Romano, Knitckoff, Deneen, Hogue, Burres,
Short. The humor of calling "Anglo-Saxon" the kind of government
these gentlemen will give is obvious. At that time, of the eighteen
principal personages in the city government of Chicago, fourteen had
Irish names, and three had German names. Of the eleven principal
officials in the city government of Boston, nine had Irish names,
and of the forty-nine members of the Lower House from the city
of Boston, forty were obviously of Hibernian extraction. In San
Francisco, the mayor, all the heads of the municipal departments,
and ten out of eighteen members on the board of supervisors, bore
names reminiscent of the Green Isle. As far back as 1871, of 112
chiefs of police from twenty-two States who attended the national
police convention, seventy-seven bore Irish names, and eleven had
German names. In 1881, of the chiefs of police in forty-eight
cities, thirty-three were clearly Irish, and five were clearly
German.
In 1908, on the occasion of a "home-coming" celebration in Boston,
a newspaper told how the returning sons of Boston were "greeted by
Mayor Fitzgerald and the following members of Congress: O'Connell,
Kelihar, Sullivan, and McNary--following in the footsteps of
Webster, Sumner, Adams, and Hoar. They were told of the great work
as Mayor of the late beloved Patrick Collins. At the City Hall they
found the sons of Irish exiles and immigrants administering the
affairs of the metropolis of New England. Besides the Mayor, they
were greeted by John J. Murphy, Chairman of the board of assessors;
Commissioner of Streets Doyle; Commissioner of Baths O'Brien. Mr.
Coakley is the head of the Park Department, and Dr. Durgan directs
the Health Department. The Chief of the Fire Department is John
A. Mullen. Head of the Municipal Printing Plant is Mr. Whelan.
Superintendent of the Street Cleaning is Cummings; Superintendent of
Sewers Leahy; Superintendent of Buildings is Nolan; City Treasurer,
Slattery; Police Commissioner, O'Meara."
The Irish domination of our Northern cities is the broadest mark
immigration has left on American politics; the immigrants from
Ireland, for the most part excessively poor, never got their feet
upon the land as did the Germans and the Scandinavians, but remained
huddled in cities. United by strong race feelings, they held
together as voters, and, although never a clear majority, were able
in time to capture control of most of the greater municipalities.
Now, for all their fine Celtic traits, these Irish immigrants had
neither the temperament nor the training to make a success of
popular government. They were totally without experience of the kind
Americans had acquired in the working of democratic institutions.
The ordinary American by this time had become tinctured with the
spirit of legalism. Many voters were able to look beyond the persons
involved in a political contest and recognize the principles
at stake. Such popular maxims as: "No man should be a judge in
his own case," "The ballot a responsibility," "Patriotism above
party," "Measures, not men," "A public office is a public trust,"
fostered self-restraint and helped the voters to take an impersonal,
long-range view of political contests.
Warm-hearted, sociable, clannish, and untrained, the naturalized
Irish failed to respect the first principles of civics. "What is the
Constitution between friends?" expresses their point of view. In
their eyes, an election is not the decision of a great, impartial
jury, but a struggle between the "ins" and the "outs." Those who
vote the same way are "friends." To scratch or to bolt is to "go
back on your friends." Places and contracts are "spoils." The
official's first duty is to find berths for his supporters. Not
fitness, but party work, is one's title to a place on the municipal
pay-roll. The city employee is to serve his party rather than the
public that pays his salary. Even the justice of courts is to
become a matter of "pull" and "stand in," rather than of inflexible
rules.
A genial young Harvard man who has made the Good Government movement
a power in a certain New England city said to me: "The Germans want
to know which candidate is better qualified for the office. Among
the Irish I have never heard such a consideration mentioned. They
ask, 'Who wants this candidate?' 'Who is behind him?' I have lined
up a good many Irish in support of Good Government men, but never by
setting forth the merits of a matter or a candidate. I approach my
Irish friends with the personal appeal, 'Do this for me!' Nearly all
the Irish who support our cause do it on a personal loyalty basis.
The best of the Irish in this city have often done as much harm to
the cause of Good Government as the worst. Mayor C., a high-minded
Irishman desiring to do the best he could for the city, gave us as
bad a government as Mayor F., who thought of nothing but feathering
his own nest. Mayor C. 'stood by his friends.'"
The Hibernian domination has given our cities genial officials,
brave policemen, and gallant fire-fighters. It has also given them
the name of being the worst-governed cities in the civilized world.
The mismanagement and corruption of the great cities of America have
become a planetary scandal, and have dealt the principle of manhood
suffrage the worst blow it has received in the last half-century.
Since the close of the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of
city-dwellers have languished miserably or perished prematurely from
the bad water, bad housing, poor sanitation, and rampant vice in
American municipalities run on the principles of the Celtic clan.
On the other hand, it is likely that our British, Teutonic,
Scandinavian, and Jewish naturalized citizens--still more our
English-Canadian voters--have benefited American politics. In
politics men are swayed by passion, prejudice, or reason. By the
last quarter of the nineteenth century, the average American had
come to be on his guard against passion in politics, but not yet had
he reached the plane of reason. This left him the prey of prejudice.
Men inherited their politics, and bragged of having always "voted
straight." They voted Democratic for Jefferson's sake, or Republican
from love of Lincoln. The citizens followed ruts, while the selfish
interests "followed the ball." Now, the intelligent naturalized
foreigner, having inherited none of our prejudices, would not
respond to ancient cries or war-time issues. He inquired pointedly
what each party proposed to do _now_. The abandonment of "waving the
bloody shirt" and the sudden appearance of the politics of actuality
in the North, in the eighties, came about through the naturalization
of Karl and Ole. The South has few foreign-born voters, and the
South is precisely that part of the country in which the reign of
prejudice in politics has longest delayed the advent of efficient
and progressive government.
In 1910 there were certainly three million naturalized citizens
in the United States. In southern New England and New York they
constitute a quarter of all the white voters. The same is true of
Illinois and the Old Northwest. In Providence, Buffalo, Newark,
St. Paul, and Minneapolis, there are two foreign voters to three
native white voters. In Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and Boston,
the ratio is about one to two. In Paterson, Chicago, and New York,
the ratio is nearer three to five, and in Fall River it is three to
four. When the foreigners are intelligent and experienced in the
use of the ballot, their civic worth does not suffer by comparison
with that of the natives. Indianapolis and Kansas City, in which the
natives outnumber the naturalized ten to one, do not overshadow in
civic excellence the Twin Cities of Minnesota, with three natives
to two naturalized. Cleveland, in which the naturalized citizens
constitute a third, is politically superior to Cincinnati, in which
they are less than a sixth. Chicago, with thrice the proportion of
naturalized citizens Philadelphia has, was roused and struggling
with the python of corruption while yet the city by the Delaware
slept.
THE NEW IMMIGRATION AND CITIZENSHIP
Between 1895 and 1896 came the great shift in the sources of
immigration. In the former year, 55 per cent. of the aliens
came from northwestern Europe; in the next year, southern and
southeastern Europe gained the upper hand, and have kept it ever
since. With the change in nationalities came a great change in the
civic attitude of the immigrants. The Immigration Commission found
that from 80 to 92 per cent. of the immigrants from northwestern
Europe, resident five years or more in this country, have acquired
citizenship or have taken out first papers. Very different are the
following figures, which show the interest in citizenship of the
newer immigrants:
PER CENT.
NATURALIZED
Russian Hebrews 57
Austrians 53
North Italians 46
Bulgarians 37
Poles 33
Lithuanians 32.5
South Italians 30
Russians 28
Magyars 27
Slovaks 23
Rumanians 22
Syrians 21
Greeks 20
Portuguese 5.5
In 1890 and in 1900, 58 per cent. of the qualified foreign-born men
were voters; by 1910 the proportion had fallen to 45.6 per cent. The
presence of multitudes of floating laborers who have no intention of
making this country their home, a marked indifference to citizenship
on the part of some nationalities, and the stiffer requirements
for naturalization imposed under the act of 1906, have caused the
number of non-naturalized qualified foreigners in this country to
swell from approximately 2,000,000 in 1900 to 3,500,000 in 1910. As
things are going, we may expect a great increase in the number of
the unenfranchised. No doubt the country is better off for their not
voting. Nevertheless, let it not be overlooked that this growth in
the proportion of voteless wage-earners subtracts from the natural
political strength of labor. The appeal of labor in an industry like
the cotton manufacture of the North, in which, besides the multitude
of women and children, 70 per cent. of the foreign-born men remain
aliens after five years of residence, is likely to receive scant
consideration by the ordinary legislature. Nor will such labor fare
better at the hands of local authorities. The anti-strike animus of
the police in Lawrence, Little Falls, and Paterson was voiced by
the official who gave to the press the statement: "We have kept the
foreign element in subjection before, and will continue to do so as
long as I am chief of Little Falls' police." Thus, without intending
it, some of our commonwealths are accumulating voteless workers,
like those conservative European states which restrict manhood
suffrage in the industrial classes.
THE NATURALIZED IMMIGRANTS AND THEIR LEADERS
"Come over here quick, Luigi," writes an Italian to his friend
in Palermo. "This is a wonderful country. You can do anything
you want to, and, besides, they give you a vote you can get two
dollars for!" This Italian was an ignorant man, but not necessarily
a bad man. It would not be just to look upon the later naturalized
citizens as caring less for the suffrage than the older immigrants.
Some of them appreciate the ballot all the more from having been
denied it in the old country. For the Declaration of Independence
and the Fourth of July they show a naïve enthusiasm which we
Americans felt a generation ago, before our muck had been raked.
"The spirit of revolt against wrong," says a well-known worker among
immigrants, "is stronger in the foreign-born than in the natives,
because they come here expecting so much democracy, and they are
shocked by the reality they find. It is they who insist upon the
complete program of social justice." Granting all this, there is no
denying, however, that many of the later immigrants have only a dim
understanding of what the ballot means and how it may be used.
[Illustration: Photograph by Lodder
A Civic Banquet to "New Citizens," July 4th]
Thirty years ago we knew as little of the ways of the ward boss
as we knew of the megatherium or the great auk. The sources of
his power were as mysterious as were the sources of the Nile
before Speke and Baker. Now, thanks to Miss Addams and other
settlement-workers who have studied him in action from close at
hand, we have him on a film. The ward boss was the discoverer of
the fact that the ordinary immigrant is a very poor, ignorant, and
helpless man, in the greatest need of assistance and protection.
Nevertheless, this man has, or soon will have, one thing the
politician greatly covets, namely, a vote. The petty politician soon
learned that by befriending and aiding the foreigners at the right
time, he could build up an "influence" which he might use or sell
to his own enrichment. So the ward politicians became pioneers in
social work. For the sake of controlling votes, they did many things
that the social settlement does for nothing.
It is Alderman Tim who gets the Italian a permit for his push-cart
or fruit-stand, who finds him a city-hall job, or a place with
a public-service corporation, who protects him if he violates
law or ordinance in running his business, who goes his bail if
he is arrested, and "fixes things" with the police judge or the
state's attorney when he comes to trial. Even before Giuseppe is
naturalized, it is Tim who remembers him at Christmas with a big
turkey, pays his rent at a pinch, or wins his undying gratitude
by saving his baby from a pauper burial or sending carriages and
flowers to the funeral.
All this kindness and timely aid is prompted by selfish motives.
Amply is Tim repaid by Giuseppe's vote on election day. But at first
Giuseppe misses the secret of the politician's interest in him, and
votes Tim-wise as one shows a favor to a friend. Little does he
dream of the dollar-harvest from the public-service companies and
the vice interests Tim reaps with the "power" he has built up out
of the votes of the foreigners. If, however, Giuseppe starts to be
independent in the election booth, he is startled by the Jekyll-Hyde
transformation of his erstwhile friend and patron. He is menaced
with loss of job, withdrawal of permit or license. Suddenly the
current is turned on in the city ordinances affecting him, and he
is horrified to find himself in a mysterious network of live wires.
With the connivance of a corrupt police force, Tim can even ruin him
on a trumped-up charge.
The law of Pennsylvania allows any voter who demands it to receive
"assistance" in the marking of his ballot. So in Pittsburgh, Tim
expects Giuseppe to demand "assistance" and to take Tim with him
into the booth to mark his ballot for him. Sometimes the election
judges let Tim thrust himself into the booth despite the foreigner's
protests, and watch how he marks his ballot. In one precinct 92 per
cent. of the voters received "assistance." Two Italians who refused
it lost their jobs forthwith. The high-spirited North Italians
resent such intrusion, and some of them threaten to cut to pieces
the interloper. But always the system is too strong for them.
Thus the way of Tim is to allure or to intimidate, or even combine
the two. The immigrant erecting a little store is visited by a
building inspector and warned that his interior arrangements are all
wrong. His friends urge the distracted man to "see Tim." He does so,
and kind Tim "fixes it up," gaining thereby another loyal henchman.
The victim never learns that the inspector was sent to teach him
the need of a protector. So long as the immigrant is "right," he
may put an encroaching bay-window on his house or store, keep open
his saloon after midnight, or pack into his lodging-house more than
the legal number of lodgers. Moved ostensibly by a deep concern for
public health or safety or morals, the city council enacts a great
variety of health, building, and trades ordinances, in order that
Tim may have plenty of clubs to hold over the foreigner's head.
So between boss and immigrant grows up a relation like that between
a feudal lord and his vassals. In return for the boss's help and
protection, the immigrant gives regularly his vote. The small fry
get drinks or jobs, or help in time of trouble. The _padrone_,
liquor-dealer, or lodging-house keeper gets license or permit or
immunity from prosecution, provided he "delivers" the votes of
enough of his fellow-countrymen. The ward boss realizes perfectly
what his political power rests on, and is very conscientious in
looking after his supporters. Of the Irish "gray wolves" in the
Chicago council I was told, "Each of them is a natural ward leader,
and will go through hell-fire for his people and they for him."
To the boss with a hold on the immigrant the requirement that
the poor fellow shall live five years in this country before
voting presents itself as an empty legal formality. In 1905 a
special examiner of the Federal Department of Justice reported:
"Naturalization frauds have grown and spread with the growth and
spread of the alien population of the United States, until there
is scarcely a city or county-seat town ... where in some form
these frauds have not from time to time been committed." In 1845 a
Louisiana judge was impeached and removed for fraud, the principal
evidence being that he had issued certificates to 400 aliens in
one day. The legislature might have been more lenient could it
have foreseen that in 1868 a single judge in New York would issue
2500 of such certificates in one day! The gigantic naturalization
frauds committed in the Presidential campaign of 1868 resulted in
an investigation by Congress and in the placing of congressional
elections under Federal supervision. During the month of October two
New York judges issued 54,000 certificates. An investigation in 1902
showed about 25,000 fraudulent certificates of naturalization in use
in that city.
There is hardly need nowadays to recount what Tim and his kind
have done with the power they filched through the votes of
Giuseppe and Jan and Michael. They have sold out the city to the
franchise-seeking corporations. They have jobbed public works
and pocketed a "rake-off" on all municipal supplies. They have
multiplied jobs and filled them with lazy henchmen. By making
merchandise of building laws or health ordinances, they have caused
an unknown number of people to be crushed, or burned, or poisoned.
Worst of all, by selling immunity from police interference to the
vice interests, they have let the race be preyed on and consumed
in the bud. Thanks to their "protection," a shocking proportion of
the inhabitants of our cities of mixed population are destroyed by
drinking, dissipation, and venereal diseases.
It is in the cities with many naturalized foreigners or enfranchised
negroes that the vice interests have had the freest hand in
exploiting and degrading the people. These foreigners have no love
for vice, but unwittingly they become the corner-stone of the
system that supports it. The city that has had the most and the
rawest foreign-born voters is the city of the longest and closest
partnership of the police with vice. Tammany Hall first gained
power by its "voting gangs" of foreigners, and ever since its Old
Guard has been the ignorant, naturalized immigrants. Exposed again
and again, and thought to be shattered, Tammany has survived all
shocks, _because its supply of raw material has never been cut off_.
Not the loss of its friends has ever defeated it; only the union
of its foes. The only things it fears are those that bore from
within--social settlements, social centers, the quick intelligence
of the immigrant Hebrew, stricter naturalization, and restriction of
immigration.
In every American city with a large pliant foreign vote have
appeared the boss, the machine, and the Tammany way. Once the
machine gets a grip on the situation, it broadens and entrenches its
power by intimidation at the polls, ballot frauds, vote purchase,
saloon influence, and the support of the vicious and criminal. But
its tap-root is the simple-minded foreigner or negro, and without
them no lasting vicious political control has shown itself in any of
our cities.
The machine in power uses the foreigner to keep in power. The
Italian who opens an ice-cream parlor has to have a victualer's
license, and he can keep this license only by delivering Italian
votes. The Polish saloon-keeper loses his liquor license if he
fails to line up his fellow-countrymen for the local machine. The
politician who can get dispensations for the foreigners who want
their beer on a Sunday picnic is the man who attracts the foreign
vote. Thus, until they get their eyes open and see how they are
being used, the foreigners constitute an asset of the established
political machine, neutralizing the anti-machine ballots of an equal
number of indignant intelligent American voters.
The saloon is often an independent swayer of the foreign vote. The
saloon-keeper is interested in fighting all legal regulation of
his own business, and of other businesses--gambling, dance-halls,
and prostitution--which stimulate drinking. If "blue" laws are
on the statute-book, these interests may combine to seat in the
mayor's chair a man pledged not to enforce them. Even if the
saloon-keeper has no political ax of his own to grind, his masters,
the brewers, will insist that he get out the vote for the benefit
of themselves or their friends. Since liberal plying with beer is
a standard means of getting out the foreign vote, the immigrant
saloon-keeper is obliged to become the debaucher and betrayer of his
fellow-countrymen. In Chicago the worthy Germans and Bohemians are
marshaled in the "United Societies," ostensibly social organizations
along nationality lines, but really the machinery through which
the brewers and liquor-dealers may sway the foreign-born vote not
only in defense of liquor, but also in defense of other corrupt and
affiliated interests.
The foreign press is another means of misleading the naturalized
voters. These newspapers--Polish, Bohemian, Italian, Greek, Yiddish,
etc.,--while they have no small influence with their readers, are
poorly supported, and often in financial straits. Many of them,
therefore, can be tempted to sell their political influence to
the highest bidder, which is, of course, the party representing
the special interests. Thus the innocent foreign-born readers
are led like sheep to the shambles, and Privilege gains another
intrenching-tool.
THE LOSS OF POLITICAL LIKE-MINDEDNESS
If the immigrant is neither debauched nor misled, but votes his
opinions, is he then an element of strength to us?
When a people has reached such a degree of political
like-mindedness, that fundamentals are taken for granted, it is
free to tackle new questions as they come up. But if it admits to
citizenship myriads of strangers who have not yet passed the
civic kindergarten, questions that were supposed to be settled are
reopened. The citizens are made to thresh over again old straw--the
relation of church to state, of church to school, of state to
parent, of law to the liquor trade. Meanwhile, ripe sheaves ready
to yield the wheat of wisdom under the flails of discussion lie
untouched. Pressing questions--public hygiene, conservation, the
control of monopoly, the protection of labor, go to the foot of the
docket, and public interests suffer.
[Illustration: Y. M. C. A. Class of Slovenes in English Visiting a
Session of the City Council of Cleveland]
[Illustration: Class of Foreign-Born Women (Carinthians) at the
Cleveland Hardware Co., Cleveland, O., Meeting for Instruction in
English in the Factory, Twice a Week from 5 to 6:30]
Some are quite cheerful about the confusion, cross-purposes, and
delay that come with heterogeneity, because they think the variety
of views introduced by immigration is a fine thing, "keeps us
from getting into a rut." The plain truth is, that rarely does
an immigrant bring in his intellectual baggage anything of use
to us. The music of Mascagni and Debussy, the plays of Ibsen and
Maeterlinck, the poetry of Rostand and Hauptmann, the fiction of
Jókai and Sienkiewicz were not brought to us by way of Ellis Island.
What we want is not ideas merely, but fruitful ideas, fructifying
ideas. By debating the ideas of Nietzsche, Ostwald, Bergson,
Metchnikoff, or Ellen Key, American thought is stimulated. But
should we gain from the introduction of old Asiatic points of view,
which would reopen such questions as witchcraft, child-marriage,
and suttee? The clashings that arise from the presence among us
of many voters with medieval minds are sheer waste of energy.
While we Americans wrangle over the old issues of clericalism,
separate schools, and "personal liberty," the little homogeneous
peoples--Norwegians and Danes and New Zealanders--are forging ahead
of us in rational politics and learning to look pityingly upon us as
a chaos rather than a people.
POLITICAL MYSTICISM VS. COMMON SENSE
If you should ask an Englishman whether the tone of political
life in his country would remain unaffected by the admission to
the electorate of a couple of million Cypriotes, Vlachs, and
Bessarabians after five years' residence, he would take you for
a madman. Suggest to the German that the plane of political
intelligence in reading and thinking Germany would not be lowered
by the access to the ballot-box of multitudes of Serbs, Georgians,
and Druses of Lebanon, and he will consign you to bedlam. Assure the
son of Norway that the vote of the Persian or Yemenite, of sixty
months' residence in Norway, will be as often wise and right as his
own, and he will be insulted. It is only we Americans who assume
that the voting of the Middle Atlantic States, with their million
of naturalized citizens, or of the East North Central States, with
_their_ million, is as sane, discriminating, and forward-looking as
it would be without them.
The Italian historian and sociologist Ferrero, after reviewing our
immigration policy, concludes that the Americans, far from being
"practical," are really the mystics of the modern world. He says:
"To confer citizenship each year upon great numbers of men born
and educated in foreign countries--men who come with ideas and
sympathies totally out of spirit with the diverse conditions in the
new country; to grant them political rights they do not want, and of
which they have never thought; to compel them to declare allegiance
to a political constitution which they often do not understand;
to try to transform subjects of old European monarchies into free
citizens of young American republics over night--is not all this to
do violence to common sense?"