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in all oppressed communities under capitalism, cheap
drink was encouraged as a pacifier. Immigrant mill communities
would fester with saloons - Gary, Indiana had
more than one saloon for every one hundred inhabitants.
Of course, the local police and courts preyed on these
"foreigners" with both abuse and shakedowns. They had
few democratic rights in the major urban centers, and in
the steel or mining or rubber or textile company towns they
had none.
In the U.S. Empire nationality differences have
always been disguised as "racial" differences (so that the
Euro-Amerikan settlers can maintain the fiction that theirs
is the only real nation). The Eastern and Southern European
national minorities were widely defined as non-white,
as members of genetically different (and backward) races
from the "white" race of Anglo-Saxons. This pseudoscientific,
racist categorizing only continued an ideological
characteristic of European capitalist civilization. The
Euro-Amerikans have always justified their conquest and
exploitation of other nationalities by depicting them as
racially different. This old tactic was here applied even to
other Europeans.
So Francis A. Walker, President of M.I.T. (and
the "Dr. Strangelove" figure who as U.S. Commissioner
of Indian Affairs developed the Indian reservation
system), popularized the Social Darwinistic theory that the
new immigrants were "beaten men from beaten races;
representing the worst failures in the struggle for
existence ..." Thus, as double failures in the "survival of
the fittest," these new European immigrants were only
capable of being industrial slaves.
eagerly encouraging their influx when the economy was
booming. It was often stated that these "races" were prone
to extreme and violent political behavior that the calm,
business-like Anglo-Saxon had long since outgrown. One
writer in a business journal said: "I am no race worshipper,
but ... if the master race of this continent Is subordinated
to or overrun with the communistic and revolutionary
races it will be in grave danger of social disaster."
(15)
One answer - and one that became extremely important
- was to "Americanize" the new laboring masses,
to tame them by absorbing them into settler Amerika, to
remake them into citizens of Empire. The Big Bourgeoisie,
which very much needed this labor, was interested in this
solution. In November, 1918 a private dinner meeting of
some fifty of the largest employers of immigrant labor
discussed Americanization (this was the phrase used at the
time). Previous social work and employer indoctrination
campaigns directed at.the immigrants had not had much
success.
It was agreed by those capitalists that the spread of
"Bolshevism" anlong the industrial immigrants was a real
danger, and that big business should undercut this trend
The wildest assertions of "racial" identity were
common. Some Euro-Amerikans claimed that these
"swarthy" Europeans were really "Arabs" or "Syrians."
U.S. Senator Simmons of North Carolina claimed that the
Southern Italians were 'the degenerale progeny of the
Asiatic hordes which, long cenrlrries ago, overran [lie
shores of the Mediterranea~i.. ." (12)
The St. Paul, Minnesota District Attorney argued
in Federal court that Finns shouldn't receive citizenship
papers since "a Finn ... is a Mongolian and not a 'white person'."
Scientists were prominent in the new campaign.
Professor E.A. Hooton of Harvard University claimed
that there were actually nine different "races" in Europe,
each with different mental abilities and habits. As late as
1946, in the widely-used textbook, New Horizons In
Criminology, Prof. Hooton's pseudo-science was quoted
by police to "prove" how Southern Italians tended to
"crimes of violence," how Slavs "show a preference for
sex offenses," and so on. (13)
A widely-read Sarurday Everiing Post series of
1920 on the new immigrants warned that unless they were
restricted and kept segregated the result would be "a
hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the goodfor-nothing
mongrels of Central America and
Southeastern Europe." (14) On the street level,
newspapers and common talk sharply distinguished between
"white Americans" and the "Dago" and "Hunky"
- who were not considered "white" at all.
The bourgeoisie had a dual attitude of fearing
these new proletarians during moments of unrest and