DIVIDED BY RACIAL TRADITIONS
Another thing, conspicuous here as in no other country where “labor” might be regarded as directly a political factor, is the fact that even had these thousands of men been individually available for prompt assimilation, or manageable in their groups as material for political manipulation, they have constituted such a hodge-podge of conflicting racial and national antecedents, prejudices, and inhibitions that any coherent political action by them always has been out of the question. Scandinavian and Slav, Austrian and Italian, British and German, Greek and Turk; Protestant and Catholic, Jew and Gentile—to say nothing of those smaller clan, village, and even family feuds, often of long-forgotten origin, within the racial groups ... at every turn some hoary animosity, born, perhaps, centuries ago out of historic or obscure conflicts of which the average native-born American maybe never heard in his life, has kept and doubtless long will continue to keep these racial groups apart and practically preclude any possibility of getting them to work together. The events and political by-products of the World War have only further confused and intensified these causes of disunion.
The Socialists alone, of all the considerable political parties, have tried to unite “labor” (chiefly meaning unskilled labor) by efforts to convince all the racial groups of a common political interest superior to any racial interest. They have almost completely failed.
Politicians, large and small, have been to some extent aware of this diversity of traditions and interests among the racial groups, based upon ancient or current controversies in old countries; but their approach to the subject always has been pragmatical and opportunistic, and usually unintelligent without real information about or understanding of the explosive matters with which they were meddling, or any but temporary or local concern about the consequences. The Fiume controversy, interesting both Italians and Jugo-Slavs; the Irish situation; the war between the Poles and the Bolsheviki in Russia; and conspicuously the whole stupendous question of the League of Nations—all are fine examples of international and interracial conflicts and emergencies of which American politicians of both parties have taken advantage for their own purposes without regard to consequences to the welfare of the world—or of their own country, for that matter.