The Jew and American Ideals

by John Spargo

1. Disfranchisement of all Jews whose parents and grandparents were not all native-born American citizens.

2. Denial of the right to hold legislative or administrative office, either elective or appointive, to all Jews other than those whose parents and grandparents were all born in the United States.

3. Denial of the right of naturalization to Jews on the ground that they are not assimilable.

4. Prohibition or very strict limitation of further Jewish immigration.

5. Exclusion from the legal, medical, and teaching professions of all Jews except those entitled to full citizenship. (See 1 and 2.)

6. Exclusion of all Jews, except those entitled to full citizenship, from certain economic rights and privileges, including the right to acquire and own land, the right to engage in the sale of stocks, bonds, securities, or real estate, or in banking, money-lending, or insurance.

7. The right of admission to colleges and universities to be so limited as to admit only a small percentage of Jewish students.

That this outline of a program will seem to many to be simply a fantastic jest I am quite well aware. The fact remains, however, that it is simply a bald presentation of the program believed in by a great many anti-Semites. I have only taken the measures that are seriously urged for adoption in England and changed their wording to correspond to American conditions. There is not one item in the program which I did not hear advocated with evident seriousness when I was in England. I learned of one society organized upon a national scale, all of whose members must "prove that their parents and grandparents were of British blood." This society is very actively engaged in the spread of anti-Semitic propaganda. Its prospectus states that it was "Founded to secure the re-enactment of the Act of Settlement, 1700, 1701, which secured the government of Britain to Britons and the land of Britain to the ownership of Britons."

The point of the demand for the re-enactment of the Act of Settlement lies in the fact that one of the clauses in that historic instrument provides that, "no person born out of the kingdoms of England, Scotland, or Ireland, or the dominions thereunto belonging (although he be naturalized or made a denizen), except such as were born of English parents, shall be capable to be of the Privy Council, or a member of either House of Parliament, or enjoy any office or place of trust, either civil or military." It is also stipulated that no such person shall be capable "to have any grant of lands, tenements, or hereditaments from the Crown to himself, or to any other or others in trust for him." In the light of the constitution of this British society with its large dues-paying membership, and its demand for the re-enactment of the above-quoted provisions of the Act of Settlement, the most drastic parts of the suggested program do not seem so fantastic, after all.

Here, then, is a program of anti-Semitism which fairly expresses the political and economic aspirations of large groups with whom our American anti-Semites, led by the Dearborn Independent, appear to be working in close co-operation and harmony. Whether the program fully meets with their approval or not, it can hardly be questioned that, if their anti-Jewish agitation is to have the result of bringing about political and economic remedies for the conditions they assail, and not pogroms, it will be necessary to discriminate between Jews and Gentiles in citizenship, in education, in property rights, and in economic opportunity. Precisely how these discriminations are to be made may be open to doubt, but that they must be made is—once the anti-Semitic position is taken—beyond all doubt.