In the table made up from the World Almanac for 1921 is the vote of the Socialist (or Social-Democratic) party in presidential elections since and including 1900. Note the percentage of that vote cast in the nine states named.
TABLE LIII
Socialist Vote for Presidents in Nine States, from 1900 to 1916
| Year | Total Socialist Vote | Per Cent of Socialist Vote in the Nine States |
| 1900 | 96,116 | 55.6 |
| 1904 | 402,321 | 58.2 |
| 1908 | 420,973 | 50.5 |
| 1912 | 897,011 | 48.0 |
| 1916 | 585,113 | 45.8 |
It appears, then, that these nine states—New York and New Jersey, containing the large cities of Greater New York, Jersey City, and Newark; Wisconsin, containing the great German population of Milwaukee; Illinois, containing Chicago; Ohio, containing Cleveland and Cincinnati; Nebraska, containing Omaha; Pennsylvania, containing Philadelphia and Pittsburgh; Missouri, containing St. Louis and Kansas City; Minnesota, containing Minneapolis and St. Paul; to say nothing of the smaller cities and rural districts, largely inhabited by immigrants of German birth—have contained more than half of the voting strength of the Socialist parties. Some discount must be allowed for the fact that these large cities contain also large numbers of foreign-born voters of other races; but even a generous discount for this fact does not nullify the predominance of the German element in the Socialist voting strength. These nine states account also for about half of the dues-paying membership in the Socialist party; according to the American Socialist of January 23, 1916, there were 44,132, or 47 per cent, of the total of dues-paying membership of the party, in 1914, and 38,194, or 48 per cent, in 1915, in the nine states.
JEWS IN SOCIALISM
It is also true that the active propaganda of political Socialism has increasingly attracted young Jews of foreign extraction. It appeals to them in two ways. There is a tremendous fund of idealism in the Jewish mind. For ages they have been taught to dream of an earthly millennium, in which the freedom denied them by the world everywhere would be attained, and the social ideals set forth by their prophets in their Scripture could be effectuated. Also, they have been bred to interminable discussion of abstractions and theoretical relationships regardless of the practical things of social life from which they were excluded by rigorous governmental restrictions and the race prejudice under which they have suffered, especially in Russia. It was to be expected that with the freedom of movement and expression which they have enjoyed in America, together with the tense economic and industrial conditions under which they labor here, they would respond to the propaganda of Socialism with its idealistic background, its promise of an economic millennium, and its minutiæ of theory and inexhaustible material for debate. There are no reliable statistics—little data of any kind—on which to base an estimate of the number or activity of Jews of any or all national extraction in the Socialist movement; nevertheless, it is a matter of common knowledge that they are both numerous and aggressive in its councils and its propaganda.
EFFECT OF THE WAR ON SOCIALISM
What might have been the development of political Socialism in the United States had there been no war in Europe it is impossible to say. To what extent the Germanization, not only of the Socialist party, but of large elements of politics in the old parties, might have gone on, it is impossible to say. The reactions of the war spirit, and of the variants of sympathy among the racial groups, produced profound effects. They were marked in the Socialist movement, tending to drive into the “left” or extreme radical wing, and even out of the party into the nonpolitical and antipolitical movements, many of the foreign-born Socialists who during past years have been trying to make the Socialist parties and the labor organizations of various sorts more and more radical, less and less patient toward political methods and measures. Inevitably these ultraradicals took on, or were regarded as taking on, the aspect of opposition to the cause of the Allies, to the participation of the United States in the war—to out-and-out pro-Germanism. That this pro-Germanism among the ultraradicals was not imaginary may be illustrated by one episode reported by an investigator for the Americanization Study: