Social Science History Association Immigrant Support for the American Socialist Party, 1912 and 1920 Author(s): Gary Marks and Matthew Burbank Source: Social Science History, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Summer, 1990), pp. 175-202 Published by: Duke University Press on behalf of the Social Science History Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1171437 . Accessed: 24/11/2013 05:04 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Duke University Press and Social Science History Association are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Science History. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 152.2.176.242 on Sun, 24 Nov 2013 05:04:25 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ImmigrantSupport for the American Socialist Party,1912 and 1920 GARY MARKS & MATTHEW BURBANK THE PERIOD of greatestsocialist strengthin the United States, the seconddecade of thetwentieth century, coincided with the finaldecade of a greatwave of immigration.This phenomenon has attractedthe attention both of scholarsseeking to understand thebasis of supportfor the American Socialist party and of those seekingto addressthe moregeneral question of the sourcesof immigrantradicalism (Bodnar 1985; Lipset 1977). Bothperspec- tivespose a basic empiricalquestion: What role did ethnicity play in supportfor the Socialist party, or, more specifically, which im- migrantgroups supported the party and which groups opposed it? GaryMarks is associateprofessor of politicalscience at theUniversity of North Carolinaat Chapel Hill. He is theauthor of Unions in Politics: Britain, Germany, and the UnitedStates in theNineteenth and EarlyTwentieth Centuries (1989) and, withS. M. Lipset,"Why Is ThereNo Socialismin theUnited States?" A ComparativeHistorical Perspective (forthcoming). MatthewBurbank is a doctoralcandidate in theDepartment of Political Science at theUniversity of North Carolina at ChapelHill. He is currentlydoing research on contextualeffects and Britishvoting behavior. Thisis a revisedversion of a paperdelivered at theannual meeting of the South- ernPolitical Science Association,November 1988. The authorswould like to thankthe members of theAmerican politics discussion group at theUniversity of NorthCarolina at Chapel Hill fortheir comments and Eileen McDonagh, GeorgeRabinowitz, and David Sheavesfor their assistance at variousstages of theproject. Research for the project was aidedby a grantfrom the University of NorthCarolina. Social Science History 14:2 (Summer 1990). Copyright I1990 by the Social Association. CCC Science History oi45-5532/90/$I.50. This content downloaded from 152.2.176.242 on Sun, 24 Nov 2013 05:04:25 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 176 SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY The attemptto answerthis question has spawneda vastscholar- shipon thepart of historians and social scientists, but a definitive answerremains elusive. Part of the reasonfor this is thatwe lack sufficientlydetailed and disaggregateddata on thepolitical orientationsand activitiesof immigrantsthemselves. The small- est unitsof electoralreturn are at theward or countylevel, and informationat thisaggregate level can neverallow us to draw conclusionsabout individual behavior with any certainty. But it also seemsto be thecase thatthe analysis of currentlyavailable data has notbeen takenas faras possible.Previous research has exploredthe relationship between ethnicity and socialismby ex- aminingparticular immigrant groups in individualstates, cities, or towns(e.g., Critchlow1986; GorensteinI96I; Leinenweber I98I; Lorence1982; Miller 1975; Wolfle and Hodge 1983). Such case studiesprovide invaluable accounts of thediversity of im- migrantpolitics, but theydo not providea reliablebasis for generalization.In thisarticle we takea stepback from the wealth of illustrativeanalysis and try to gaina broader,more systematic, overviewof immigrantsupport for socialism across a widerange ofcontexts by examining voting among eight immigrant groups- Germans,English, Finns, Irish, Italians, Norwegians, Russians, and Swedes-in thepresidential elections of 1912 and 1920, elec- tionsin whichthe American Socialist party received its highest levelsof support.' In part,our resultsconfirm generalizations that are already well establishedin thefield. Our expectationsof strongpositive relationshipsbetween concentrations of Russian and Finnishim- migrantsand socialistvoting are unambiguouslyconfirmed, as is our expectationof an equallystrong negative relationship for Irishimmigrants and socialistvoting. But we have also arrived at resultsthat are contraryto widelyheld notionsin the study of Americansocialism and immigrant political behavior. We find thatconcentrations of Swedishand Italianimmigrants are posi- tivelyassociated with socialist voting. Most notably, we findthat concentrationsof Germanimmigrants are negativelyassociated withsocialist voting in the1912 presidential election, even when we controlfor a rangeof relevant variables. As we discussbelow, thereare stronggrounds for believing that individual Germans werenot disproportionately socialist in the decade before the First WorldWar. If we are correct,the mass of evidencefor Ger- This content downloaded from 152.2.176.242 on Sun, 24 Nov 2013 05:04:25 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions ImmigrantSupport for American Socialism 177 manimmigrant socialism in citiessuch as Milwaukee,detailed in numerouscase studies,provides an inadequatebasis forgeneral- izationbecause it is basedon a context-specificrelationship. The thrustof this articleis self-consciouslyinductive. Our aim is to bringa potentiallyrich, but previously underexploited, source of data to bear on empiricalgeneralizations that have widecurrency in Americanhistoriography. However, the research presentedhere is partof a broader,more theoretical attempt to explainthe sources and limitationsof socialistsupport, and the resultsof our analysisbear directlyon thisproject (Lipset and Marksforthcoming). A numberof historiansand politicalsociologists have sought to generalizeabout immigrant support for socialism. One stream of hypothesizing,the "culturalbaggage" approach,focuses on thesocial andcultural background of immigrants.From this per- spective,scholars have arguedthat immigrants from urbanized/ industrializedsocieties were mostlikely to supportradical or socialistmovements in America,because the standards of justice theybrought with them were immediately relevant to theirnew situation(Gedicks 1976; RosenblumI973). A secondapproach has concentratedon thepostmigratory social context of immigrant liferather than on culturalpredispositions. In thisvein, scholars haveargued that the experience of immigratinginto a rapidlyin- dustrializingsociety instills a senseof uprootednessthat can be profoundlyradicalizing for those without the skills or experiences to deal effectivelywith their new environment(Handlin 1973; Leggett1963; see Marks1989). The scholarlydebate between proponents of theseapproaches has been a fruitfulone and has generatedcase studiesthat have shed muchlight on the ways in whichimmigrant politics re- flectdifferent patterns of experienceand socialization.Both ap- proaches,however, share the assumption that support for social- ism is theexpression of a generaldisposition towards radicalism thatcan be explainedin termsof theindividual immigrant's cul- turalbackground and social context.Neither approach places much weighton the rationalsources of radicalismconceived as a choice amongalternatives for political expression that are givenwithin a particularpolitical system. In otherwords, these approachesconceive of radicalismas a social-psychologicalphe- nomenon,as an expressionof personalexperiences or qualities This content downloaded from 152.2.176.242 on Sun, 24 Nov 2013 05:04:25 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 178 SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY abstractedfrom the attraction (or repulsion)exerted by theplat- forms,policies, and leadership of competing political parties. The findingsof this article suggest that support for the Socialist partycannot be understoodas theexpression of diffuseradical impulses.While the political orientations of somegroups of im- migrantsremained more or less constantacross the elections we consider,the political orientations of manyGerman and English immigrantswere transformed in response to theFirst World War andthe Socialist party's determined opposition to American inter- vention.From this standpoint, the article can be understoodas thestudy of a singlecase, namely,the change in immigrantvoting acrosstwo elections.This case was selectedbecause it posed a particularlystark challenge to theoriesof immigrantradicalism thatexplain support for socialism in termsof individualpropen- sities. We concludethat it is not possibleto generalizeabout immigrantradicalism without grasping the concrete character of theparty-political choices that were available. In otherwords, it seems to make senseto conceiveof radicalismin general,and socialistvoting in particular,as a relationbetween the individual and theparty or movementconcerned as opposedto