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:
TABLE XLVIII
Number of Socialists Paying Dues Each Year, from 1903 to 1915
| 1903 | 15,975 |
| 1904 | 20,763 |
| 1905 | 23,327 |
| 1906 | 26,784 |
| 1907 | 29,270 |
| 1908 | 41,751 |
| 1909 | 41,479 |
| 1910 | 58,011 |
| 1911 | 84,716 |
| 1912 | 113,371 |
| 1913 | 95,401 |
| 1914 | 93,579 |
| 1915 | 79,374 |