INTRODUCTIONA STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The existence of an anti-Semitic movement in the United States of America since the World War is a paradox that attracts attention at once. The most ancient and most pervasive form of intolerance is now at home in a nation founded by revolution and dedicated to the principles of freedom and tolerance. How can such a movement exist in such a nation? The apparent contradiction leads us at once into the many contradictions of the psychology of large groups of human beings, which both parallels and contradicts the simpler psychology of their constituent individuals. This is a leading question, to answer which we must go as deeply as we can into the mind of the group, into the relation of groups to the smaller groups of which they are composed and of those smaller groups to each other, into the genesis and implications of tolerance and intolerance.

This theoretical study completed, we shall then have to verify the principles there worked out by application to the difficult and crucial problem of the present study. If a theory of group and sub-group can explain the existence and the development of anti-Semitism in America, it will have solved a problem of exceptional complexity and significance, one central to the whole field. This will involve a study of the mind of the American people, in brief outline, with its various movements of intolerance in their bearing on the present one. It will also necessitate a slight study of the various anti-Semitic examples, historic and contemporary, from which the American movement derives in part. It will conclude with a consideration of the future of the American people as a united group, taking into view the tendencies of the sub-groups within the bounds of their common nation, or over-group.

Anti-Semitism is the modern form of the ancient prejudice against the Jew; it began in Germany in 1871, directly after the Franco-Prussian War, and bases its opposition to the Jews onthe race theory. Anti-Judaism is, of course, much older, as old as the people against whom it was directed. In most ancient times, as represented by the Egyptian taskmasters and the Haman of the Book of Esther, it was like any other national hatred or prejudice. Later it took on a distinctly religious coloring, so that we find a Philo going to Rome to appeal for the Jewish colony in Alexandria or a Josephus writing a defense of his people against Apion. With the growth of Christianity into a persecuting body, anti-Judaism became strictly a religious matter, based on the New Testament story that the Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus. Medieval laws on the Jews were, then, often based on the principle of expiation, such as the yellow badge which distinguished the wearer when he left the compulsory shelter of the Ghetto. A different form of religious motivation was shown in the frequent accusations of desecrating the Host or of using the blood of a Christian child in preparing the unleavened bread of Passover, which appears in the Canterbury Tales and was revived as recently as 1911 in the notorious Beilis case at Kiev, Russia. Along with this went occasional mob outbreaks such as occur against the negroes in our Southern states, and still more rarely decrees of expulsion, which drove the entire Jewish population from England in 1294, from Spain in 1492, and from other countries at other times, for a longer or shorter period.

The actual applications of this religious anti-Judaism were far too many to enumerate here, ranging from the prohibition of tilling the soil to compulsory attendance at a Christian sermon, as in Browning’s “Holy Cross Day.” Counteracting it were the frequent intercourse and occasional intermarriage through the Middle Ages, the paid protection of the Holy Roman Emperor for hisKammerknechte, the toleration of the Moors and later of Holland, finally the emancipation of the French Revolution on abstract grounds of the Rights of Man. Religious discrimination was forbidden in the American Constitution, so that anti-Judaism of the religious type had no footing in the new nation, strong as it had previously been in several of the colonies. In addition, the number of Jews in America was very small, so that discrimination against them might exist in principlebut could have little exercise in practise. And those few were often wealthy and cultured descendants of the old Spanish Jewry. During the most of the nineteenth century the Jews entering the country met the same difficulties as other immigrants, with very little variation.

But then the problem changed; the number of Jews increased from 3,000 in 1800 to 250,000 in 1880. Some of these achieved wealth and began to associate with non-Jewish social circles. The opposition to them now became largely social. They were excluded from many hotels and summer resorts, from clubs, college fraternities and the like. This phase of the problem was often acute but never important, and is here mentioned merely in passing, though it will have its bearing on the theory to be developed. In addition, the religious prejudice continued, similar to that between Christian denominations but stronger, owing to the frequent teaching of Jewish responsibility for the crucifixion. These two aspects of anti-Judaism persisted as the only ones in America until after the World War, and these were sporadic, and often opposed by the tendency of our political democracy and by various groups of religious liberals.

Meanwhile, modern racialism had been born and with it modern anti-Semitism, the attack on the Jew as a member of a different race, inferior or at least unassimilable by the Aryan. Writers against the Jew no longer turned for their weapons to Eisenmenger’s “Endecktes Judentum” of 1701, with its religious criticism and personal strictures. The new classics are Werner Sombart’s “Die Juden und das Wirtschaftsleben” and Drumont’s “La France Juive.” An elaborate scientific basis has been constructed, on which a movement of opposition was erected, apparently much the same as that of the Inquisition or of Apion. One of the conclusions of the present study will be that it is in fact the same, and that the racial theory can be almost overlooked in estimating the actual causes and processes of anti-Semitism. It would be an interesting, though not essential task, to examine this racialtheoryin detail and determine how much scientific authenticity it may possess. In Russia the conditions of autocracy threatened by liberalism and war led to official anti-Semitism, with pogroms or massacres of the Jewsactually led by army officers. In Germany the officialism and social stratification led to discrimination against Jews in the appointment of judges, university professors and army officers. In France anti-Semitism became a part of royalism and clericalism, and from the military and royalist group came the Dreyfus case. In England anti-Semitism was chiefly literary; Hillaire Belloc proves the Jews to be aliens who should all be sent to Palestine, while Gilbert K. Chesterton visits Palestine and reports that the Jews there are terrible creatures and ought to be excluded from the Holy Land!

But all this time there was no anti-Semitism, as a literary, political or economic movement in the United States. That was a product of the period after the World War. There was merely religious prejudice of the orthodox and social ostracism of the elite among gentile society. The Jew had not even attracted the special attention of the various anti-alien movements in American history, owing to his small numbers and frequent rapid Americanization. It seemed as though anti-Semitism was a movement foreign to American life and institutions. Now, however, the movement exists and may be considered briefly in four phases.

1. The first to be considered is the attempt to limit the percentage of Jews in American universities. The “numerus clausus,” typical of Russia under the Czars, has been one of the favorite projects of the anti-Semitic parties in various European countries, working either through their representatives in the parliaments or through their sympathizers in the universities themselves. Whether the motive was to brand the Jew as inferior mentally, or to make him so through lack of education, is hard to say—probably it is merely another manifestation of the process which this paper aims to trace.

In American institutions of higher learning there has been a growing problem of the increase of entering classes, as well as a growing perplexity at the number of Jewish immigrants who seek an advanced education. These young people often lack American manners and background, standing out from the great mass of the student body, whether for good or bad is immaterial. What more natural than that some would attempt to solve thetwo problems at once by excluding a certain percentage of these objectionable persons, at the same time cutting down enrollment? I do not speak of rumors that this purpose has been achieved in certain institutions by personal interviews, psychological tests, and the like, even though statistics seem to bear out this interpretation. I consider only the Harvard incident, which is public and official.

In June 1922 President Lowell of Harvard, in his address at the graduation exercises drew attention to the double phase of the problem, the increase of registration and the danger to the social and personal standard of the university, and recommended its full investigation by committees of the faculty and board of trustees of the university. The sensation caused by this bringing into the open of a subject long covertly agitated, especially in view of the large Jewish population of Boston, and fairly large registration at Harvard, was extreme. The matter came to an end April 9, 1923, when the committee recommendation was accepted by the Board of Overseers for the University. The report recommended:

In the administration of rules for admission Harvard College maintains its traditional policy of freedom from discrimination on grounds of race or religion. Concerning proportional representation, your committee is unanimous in recommending that no departure be made from the policy that has so long approved itself—the policy of equal opportunity for all, regardless of race or religion. Any action liable to interpretation as an acceptance of the principle of racial discrimination would to many seem like a dangerous surrender of traditional ideals.

The report even avoids recommending any test of personal fitness which might be interpreted as a cover for racial or religious discrimination.

2. A further expression of anti-Semitism appeared in the form of books and magazine articles. “The Cause of World Unrest,” an English book, was reprinted in 1920 by G. P. Putnam’s Sons of New York; “The Protocols of the Meetings of the Zionist Men of Wisdom” by Small, Maynard and Co. of Boston in the same year; “The Jews in America” by Burton J. Hendrick, appeared as a series of articles in the World’s Work, and was issued later as a book by Doubleday Page and Co.of New York in 1923. Periodicals such as “The Searchlight” of Atlanta, the “Fellowship Forum” of Washington, D. C., and “The American Standard” of New York City (to mention only a few of a large number) conducted an active campaign against Jews and Catholics, which still continues.

Most conspicuous of all was the long series of articles on the Jewish problem carried by the Dearborn Independent of Dearborn, Mich., the personal organ of Mr. Henry Ford. This series began in May, 1920; the four booklets containing their reprinted form are dated, the first on November, 1920; the fourth, May 1922. They take ostensibly the position that international finance, under the leadership of certain Jews, is endeavoring to rule the world. Actually, however, they use any anti-Semitic theme that comes to hand, from the race theory to articles on the “Jewish liquor trust” and “the Jewish aids of Benedict Arnold.” Their chief arsenal of material is the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, referred to above, a purported record of secret meetings held by leaders of world Jewry with the object of overthrowing the gentile nations and ruling the world themselves. This work first saw the light in Russia in 1901 and was utilized in 1905 as part of the propaganda against the abortive revolution of that year; it was the work of one Serge Nilus. Later study has shown it to be a forgery, largely copied from a French political pamphlet directed against Napoleon III and published in Brussels in 1865 by Maurice Joly under the title, “Dialogues in Hell between Machiavelli and Montesquieu”! The Russian editions of this work, and those in German, as well, included virulent attacks on Britain and America as representatives of liberalism, and therefore of Judaism; naturally, these have been omitted from the English versions.

3. This agitation could not remain theoretical—in fact, probably the theory was itself a late product of a broader tendency. The Johnson immigration act, setting the quota of immigrants to be admitted to the United States on the basis of their proportion in this country in 1890, was avowedly planned on a racial basis to encourage immigrants from northern and western Europe, and exclude those from eastern and southern Europe and from other continents. Secretly there seems to have been both anti-Jewishand anti-Catholic sentiment involved, as certain partisan publications boast quite openly.

By far the most significant expression of anti-Semitism in the United States is the Ku Klux Klan, which will later be considered in some detail. At this point it is sufficient to point out that the Klan was organized in 1915 by William J. Simmons of Atlanta, Ga., and became a national movement in 1920. Its name and much of its ritual are taken from the Ku Klux Klan of 1867–71, but its motives are quite different, for the old Klan was a local movement intended to protect the defeated Confederacy, to overawe the negroes and to oppose the North; while the modern Klan is not sectional, but in every section opposes the negro, the Jew, the Catholic and the foreign-born. Its membership is exclusively “white, gentile, Protestant American” and it therefore claims to be the only “one hundred per cent. Americans”. The Klan defends its purpose and attacks the proscribed groups by business boycott, political opposition, sometimes even by threats or by physical violence. The Klan is the most important symptom at hand of the nature of anti-Semitism in the United States, beside being a most significant type of social grouping and of social motive.

4. A final type of anti-Semitism in America was a direct importation from Europe through a group of Russian emigrés, some of them living in this country as private citizens, others as employees of the section on Russia of the Department of State. These men were bitterly anti-Soviet, anti-radical, and (whether for propaganda purposes, or through the convictions of the Russian aristocracy as a whole) bitterly anti-Semitic. Anti-Semitism is an article in the creed of every reactionary movement in Europe, with the single exception of the Italian Fascisti, and is strongest of all among the Russians. It seems to have been these people who persuaded Mr. Henry Ford of the authenticity of the Protocols, and introduced these to America as a whole. They seem also to have been active in the anti-radical agitation of the post-war period, which tried to identify foreigner, radical and Jew in the mind of the American people,and to attribute the Russian revolution, the Bolshevist government and the radical groups in America, alike to insidious Jewish influence.

As this tendency was not as public as the others, I give some proof of its existence. It was discussed in Hearst’s International Magazine in 1923 in a series of articles by the editor, Norman Hapgood; and in the Bnai Brith Magazine of October and November, 1924, in two articles by Jacob Spolansky, a former agent of the United States Department of Justice, who was employed to hunt down radicals and if possible to find Jews among them. As the most official statement, I quote Mr. Louis Marshall, president of the American Jewish Committee, in his annual report to that body, delivered November 13, 1921.1

The committee conducted an investigation with a view to discovering the identity of those who instigated the attacks against the Jews of America. It was found that they consisted of a group of Russian emigrés who had wormed themselves into the confidence of some Americans who, in turn, had succeeded in securing the assistance of others whose co-operation was given either because they were gullible and believed the fantastic inventions of men schooled in intrigue in the Russian police system, or because they already cherished ill-will against Jews and were ready to assist in any movement through which they could satisfy real or fancied grudges.

In the report of the same body, October 19, 1919,2reference is made to the hearing before the sub-committee of the Judiciary Committee of the United States Senate in February 1919, when—

Dr. George Simons, who had been for a number of years in Russia, testified regarding the alleged activities of Jews in the Bolshevist movement in Russia and stated that the present conditions there are due, in large part, to the activities of Yiddish agitators from the East Side of New York City who went to Russia immediately following the overthrow of the Czar. Dr. Simons stated further that the Bolshevist movement in Russia was being supported financially and morally by certain elements on the East Side of New York City.

There is, then, an anti-Semitic movement in America, and has been since 1919 or 1920. Its philosophy of racialism, exclusiveness and “hundred per cent.” Americanism, is derivedlargely from the Voelkische parties of Germany and other nations of Europe, which lay great stress on Aryan race and especially on its Nordic or Teutonic branch. The extreme of this position is found in the apparently well reasoned position of Burton J. Hendricks, who attempts to prove that the Spanish and German Jews were desirable because white, but that the Russian Jews are undesirable immigrants because they are descended from the Chazars, a Tartar tribe which embraced Judaism in the ninth century. The premises of this writer seem untenable, and the conclusions do not necessarily follow on them. Much of this anti-Semitic literature and public action seems to be based on similar rationalizations of intolerance, of group prejudice.

In studying this anti-Semitic movement in America as a crucial example of the relations of group and sub-group, I stand in the contrary danger, that of rationalizing the inferiority complex of a persecuted group. My only justification for facing this danger is that nobody can approach this type of problem without one danger or the other, and the subject is too vital to be entirely neglected. I can only hope that my analysis of the underlying problem of the nature of human groups and of their interrelations may be made in such a scientific spirit that the application of my theory to the special problem of anti-Semitism in the United States may be of some value in the clearing up of this great field of human action.

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