Provincialism, Dislike for the East, Swedes and Germans Make Midwest Isolationists' Sole Stronghold in U. S.
PARRY, ALBERT
Provincialism, Dislike for the East, Swedes and Germans Make Midwest Isolationists' Sole Stronghold in U. S. By ALBERT PARRY [Albert Parry is the author of Garrets and Pretenders; a history of...
...American Historical Review, Vol...
...They resent EuSfc-SOcietyv...
...A friend on_ the spot reports: "This anti-British, pro-Hitler sentiment is most pronounced among Rockford's Swedish people and in the schools and at college...
...Yet, the best the combine could do) was 175,000 votes for Bowron—and it's a certainty' that all the regimented communazis turned out to do their "civic dut\" in spite oT the heat » « * XlOW that Bowron has a majority of the City Govs* cil—which he didn't have before—Los Angeles can expect some bona ride totalitarian tactics...
...McCormick certainly is—-with the only morning newspaper of Chicago at his disposal...
...symbol as they rightly, far more rightly than th* isolationists, may—however, has a definite utility;' VI may force the public to turn in puzzlement to the faeti themselves, removing decisions from the dead hand yesterday to the living mind of today...
...North Dakota, in my judgment, is the clearest expression or this small-town opposition to aiding the Allies...
...Gallup remarks: "The tabulation of ballots in the Midwest area shows the largest opposition to convoys in the section running from Ohio to the western border of Nebraska...
...a history of bohemianism in America...
...Of course, this is not the entire picture...
...But sound and statesmanlike as the...
...no'counterpart'of Manhattan's McWilliams or Brooklyn's Cassiriv...
...but although they have not made the point, and indeed seem unaware of it, the reader of the passages cited will be struck by the large number of times isolation is urged for exactly thisr reason—to prevent foreign influences from destroying our barely-won unity...
...From that time till the close of his presidency he was more than ever alienated from Jefferson and Madison, and the influence of Hamilton in political affairs was more marked...
...Arid still another friend, who knows his Midwest, suggests that the same is true for practically every other Midwestern leader and brand of isolationism...
...the greedy buier foreclosing the mortgage on a Midwestern farm...
...It feels that "one must be absolutely pure.before one can combat eviC In the main, Hutchins is a missionary with the naive belief that one must never use force to...
...To them, the East is the grasping industrialist and wholesaler charging high prices...
...1934...
...He is now Assistant to District Attorney John F. Dockweiler, whom Clinton's machine put into this key County office, and Mrs...
...Of the non-Teutonic isolationists and appeasers, many are of Anglo-Saxon stock, and this is by far the most significant part of the story...
...And while these members of Olson's "cabinet" were in the inside pitching to the best of .their ability, pressure from the CIO, from the red front of Hollywood, from various transmission belts and from pink-tinged federal government bureaus completed the squeeze and forced other members of Olson's official family to knuckle under to Communist demands...
...Rippy and Debo, in their study "The Historical Background of the American Policy of Isolation" (Smith College Studies in History, vol...
...TBATr"the Scandinavians of the Middle West are to a degree acquitting tierr Banse's hope is also evident The Nazis' main victbty, however, 4s <not among the Norwegians anft Danes, but among tlje ^ar* "more numerous and influential people of Swedish stock...
...various German "societies was again exhorted to attend -en masse, which they certainly did...
...In fact, open opposition to the Soviet Union's West Coast wire-pullers is almost an impossibility in Governor Olson's officialdom...
...As such it is politically of great importance...
...Evidently every member ~6f the...
...Mayor Fletcher Bowron who was the candidate of the "reform" group which recalled the former mayor in 1938, was returned to office with a 32,000 vote lead over his opponent, Stephen W. Qunningham...
...Indeed, during the election of 1796, the new French minister, Adet, sought openly to influence the election...
...And so, to continue cut-tfeg a big figure, he goes into the camp of those who will boost him m for any of his qualities but for the advocacy of the fallacies ttey stand for...
...3 and 4, passim...
...That is why thq^pjing things opposite to what Park Avenue is doing...
...This "Hutchirisism" is typi-calljrMidwestern because it is chiefly from here,.the Middle- West that the great legions of American missionaries' of various denominations, have set-out to enlighten the natives of the Far East, India, Africa and other remote lands...
...Boos and catcalls came from the listeners every time he mentioned Great Britainand-Premier Churchill...
...This.area-rthe geographic home of isolationism—is opposed to convoys by approximately 3 to 2" Compare this sad finding with the boastful prediction made a decade ago by Professor Ewald Banse, the leading Nazi writer on military affairs, and a personal friend of Hitler, in his book Bourn wutiroUc im Weltkriegei "The strongest elements in the Middle West, especially between the Ohio and the Great Lakes, are German arid Scandinavian...
...Because your Midwesterners are essentially friendly folks they refuse' to think that anyone can really be bad or bothersome...
...Even Hitler cannot beSas bad as he is pictured by the Easterners...
...It's rather difficult to -untangle the threads of relationship in Mayor Bowron's "happy family," but his system of selecting appointees might be termed "commu-nepotism...
...Isolationists Use Washington as Symbol To Distort Present-Day Problems .By Worrell Gainsborough (This is the fourth and concluding article by Mr...
...It's a pretty formidable machine, and in the9recent mayoralty campaign this machire was again hitched (but-this time mow loosely) iu that of the reformer-boss, Clifford E. Cliff., ton...
...She is the California correspondent of The New Leader...
...with Washington now-coming in for a full share of abuse...
...There' are many Germans and Scandinavians in the Middle West who are solidly behind the American national policy of aid to Britain...
...In a restaurant the other day, a Hoosier insurance man remarked to me: In...
...On the contrary, it was an Irishman, Patrick J. Quinn, a retired policeman of 69, who on April 4 was cruelly beaten up by pro-Nazis at a North S'de meeting of the America First Committee, because he protested against insults directed at the President of the United States...
...39, p. 266...
...evidence of at least a questionable connection between Edmund Randolph, his secretary of State, and Fauchet, the French minister who succeeded Genet...
...English attacks upon American shipping soon increased the stress, and in fact the Jay mission was a frantic Federalist move to stave off the war which the Francophiles were threatening by winning some concessions' from England...
...Unlike the New York rally of April 23, the Chicago rally addressed by Lindbergh' was not attended by many pro-Nazi Irish...
...However, it isn't likely they will have smooth sailing: Investigative committees, protests, possible., indictments and other headaches for Communists are^ in the offing...
...A warns, who knows Mrs...
...Western Rumblings IN the March issue of the American Mercury, * Rena Vale detailed the rise of a new type of political boss in Los Angeles—a man who could mix the tricks of the old bosses exposed by Lincoln Steffens...
...In'all ither'sections of this country, the aid-to-Britain forces amSiaer themselves to'be the winners,-and they may be right...
...He calls it a nefarious invention of the Atlantic seaboard _of Wall Street, of the- English-loving society crowd, of Harvard ind Dartmouth professors, of immigrants...
...Of the influence of the Genet affair on Washington, the historian Bassett writes (J...
...What impresses me most is their deep belief that they have succeeded with love and preaching where their fellow-white men, business men and soldiers, have failed with the dollar and .the gun...
...Elizabeth Dilling of The Red Network, are obsessed with a pathological hatred of Roosevelt and the New Deal...
...Janet Ayer Fairbank, orte of the local lealers'of the America First Committee, said to me the other day fasffcras wrong to explain her friend's.pro-Hitler speeches solely by 1 "mother's concern for her sons of military age...
...With the possible" exception of those missionaries who have come back'from the Far East, they are against aid to Britain and her allies...
...The Gallup poll of April 23 reveals that, while the South is for convoys' 59 per cent, the Far West 42 per cent, New England and Mid-Atlantic states 41 per cent, our geographic heart is most sluggish: East Central states are but 35 per cent for convoys, and West Central only 33, Dr...
...But we need not seek out recondite references...
...Father of oar country was—and only the mature mind that has delved into the circumstances he faced and the decisions that he sbaped to deal with them can begin to appreciate that—none of this is really revelaut...
...S. Basset, The Federalist System, p. 99), "He was far more of a neutral than either Jefferson or Hamilton...
...Withr the fall of Great Britain, they feel thgre,wijl.be-enough spoils to go...
...Until some of the City Councilmen change sides—which is always possible—the comrades will have the City Hall to themselves...
...that the KttM seaboard federation of four million scattered farmers, traders and merchants has become a continental power of one hundred thirty million, the richest and potentially the most powerful on earth...
...9, nos...
...origin...
...Although he is a registered Republican, Mayor Bowron has consistently favored the communists, but public sentiment has compelled him to denounce "Communism, Nazism and all subversive elements" in ringing tones from the Citty Hall steps on certain patriotic occasions...
...providing a safe harbor for fifth columnists is the fact that the urge ti> vigilantism is again manifesting- j itself...
...Above all, the Axis is so far away...
...Politicians like Senator Wheeler of Montana, -industrialists headed by Henry Ford, are Convinced that they, can be Hitler's partners in the world of tomorrow...
...around, even for Der Fuehrer's junior partners...
...On" April 1, speaking in Chicago for the America First Committee,' Cblbnei Lindbergh was cheered when he said that in his opinion Britain was doomed even if we continued to help her...
...Miss Vale, a California newspaperwoman, is well known to our readers for her many fresh and exciting stories of Western events...
...Even then in 1795 and 1796 while French diplomatists were accusing the United States of ingratitude and treachery, they themselves were plotting to re-establish control and tutelage over the American republic byj getting Louisiana and West Florida back from Spain, allying France with the Southwestern Indians, and tempting the allegiance to the Union of the new western states, to build up thereby a new colonial empire that would be the preponderant power in the New World...
...Presenting his case in the American Historical Review, Jan...
...His articles have appeared in the American...
...Indeed, Washington might have had this in mind when 'he wrote, "Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, fellow-citizens, I conjure you to believe me, the jealousy of a fre,e people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government...
...Senator Nye of...
...Patradoxically* the home-staying Midwesterner comes to practically the same conclusion, although in a different way...
...Working, closely with the Lindberghs and Wheelers of the America First Committee, it has an origin and a goal all its own...
...Cooper is still fronting for various communist causes...
...Nor is the feeling wholly spontaneous...
...You have similar specimens in other parts of the land—there is nothing uniquely Midwestern about them, but undoubtedly we have more of them here, and_ some of them are unduly powerful...
...Then there are the Communist "pie-card" holders in- various CIO unions, the deeply secretive agents in aircraft factories, the functionaries of the open Communist Party, as well as the run-of-the-mill Communists and fellow travelers...
...Mercury and the Encyclopaedia of the Social Science...
...with the French alliance, roused another storm of indignation...
...Somewhat similarly, the America First Committee chose Chicago as its headquarters because of the isolationism of the Middle West, but since became a factor in itself, strengthening the appeasing pro-Hitler sentiment a hundred-fold by its unceasing activity...
...From Rockford, Illinois, with its large Swedish population, comes a steady stream of letters to Midwestern editors signed by such names as Gunderson, Erickson, and Peterson, all worded in a parallel style, .all saying the same things in favor of the Nazis...
...Norton, listed heavily toward the Popular Front, and her daughter, Mrs...
...Any study of the minds of men of Washington's period as revealed in their writings would reveal how widespread was the fear that she Union would not last...
...The present necessity of delivering aid to Britain is understood here far less than ia other sections' of the land...
...Also, Bowron's machine gained two seats and therefore a majority on the City Council...
...that little Midwestern boy who arrived among the big fits of the world at large by one lucky accident, and has no new ichievements to back up his reputation...
...But what is almost as alarming as thSq, prospects of the fifth largest city in the United States...
...And the way of an appeaser, Hfcs-that of a transgressor, is har4- Democrat who .bolt the Olson-Communist machine are used by the Republicans' and punished "by the'Democfats...
...For virtually always the appeal is not really t* Washington the farseeing statesman, but to Washington the symbol...
...As for the Southerners, who are so rai;in' to fight Hitler, your Midwestern-os have nothing but an amused, indulgent smile: the belligerent Southerners are nothing but kids spoiling for any fight...
...Therefore, they stayed in the service and took orders like the good little bureaucrats they are...
...But what moved Washington mote than this was...
...Jaehously enough, the aversion to Park Avenue frills unites ¦S^stern ColonelVlaly with the Midwestern Judy, mentally, another acquaintance of mine advanced a similar ation for Colonel Lindbergh's speeches and articles...
...In a letter to the Chicago:Daily News an A.E.F...
...jPYPICALLY Midwestern also is the isolationist group led by * President Robert M. Hutchins of the University of Chicago...
...What moves these people...
...Nor is it really relevant to argue that the circumstances have changed since the day of Washington...
...And the best way is to 9nj the fight right into their base and stronghold—into the Mid-% Vest...
...Some' day these elements may break away politically from the An^Io-Saxons...
...Grant Cooper, was active in communist dominated organizations...
...Under these circumstances, he, the effect.of a complexity of causes driving him to the phenomenal hatred of Roosevelt becomes a cause in his turn, for a newspaper, of 1,000,000 circulation is a powerful weapon of propaganda and influence...
...Heretofore, he made certain concessions to AFL unions, even though his advisors on unionism were CIO chieftains and Labor's Non-Partisan League officials...
...The recent sallies of Wheeler to 4e Southwest and Northeast, also the rally of Lindbergh in New-York, show that the -Midwestern appeasers are already tackling tte:rest of the country...
...consequently, ZV/i% of the registered voters decided the city's fate for the next four years...
...In my years in the Middle West L have met a number of them, home on furlough or retired...
...Unless legal machinery is allowed to function in California to clean out nests of Communists and Nazis, the vigilante will ride again...
...Also, we seem to have...
...So intensive and well organized is their pressure here tint some of the isolationist leaders think it possible to turn the Me of senrnnent.throaghbut the nation once the 'Middle Western ampaign is entirely successful...
...Clifford E. Clinton, cafeteria owner and self-styled reformer, slapped together a political machine" in the same way he would make an omelet in order to oppose the well-entrenched Shaw...
...Professor Anton J. Carlson, the noted physiologist of the University of Chicago, and another darling of the America First Committee, still charms both friend and "foe with his shrewdly exaggerated Swedish accent...
...Lipdhergh is of Swedish descent, with Michigan and Minne-sota'as his earfy background...
...Nor was this fear of foreign influences—the Fifth Columns of these days—peculiar to him...
...Despite all the industries of the Middle West, the rural tradition has remained as its.main/distinguishing mark—even in the large cities...
...The use of symbol to counter symbol—and the opponents of the isolationists have not used Washington ths...
...The mind marked with this provincial snob-bism is nurtured in the rich corn- and wheatfields of the Middle West, and so enjoys the comparative peace of this great area that it does not see why anyone should be upset about troubles occurring thousands of miles away...
...Reuben Borough, a faithful supporter of the Soviet Union, was appointed Public Works Commissioner, and shortly thereafter the same faces that were to be seen at communist front meetings were also •Seen behind desks in the City Hall...
...And for some reason, Governor Olson didn't dare toss them out of state jobs...
...They couldn't break their secret connections with the Communist Party at the time of their disillusionment over the Pact because the Party would - reveal their past connections with it...
...Quisling-like methods are being applied to arouse it...
...Janet is a. social snob, as so many Midwestern .society women are...
...Wendell Willkie it at the microphone...
...The last lines of Miss Vale's dispatch indicate the rumblings of Klan and fascist-minded elements intent on "taking matlers into their own hands...
...Enough has been said to show that Washington in his Farewell AddTess had in mind not necessarily a 'Permanent policy of isolationism, but isolation until our country was united and strong...
...Los Angeles ;s the southern capital of the state...
...Oat in Hollywood, the old "anti-Nazi" crowd are now acting as Hitler's cultural vanguard and are busy dishing out communazi isolationism with caviar and sex...
...the crucial months which followed the passage of the mil apparently .have failed to convince the central states that the rest of the nation is right and they are wrong...
...Gallup's poll showed that, while the country as a whole favored the bill to the extent of 58 per cent,' the Midw^estern supporters of aid to Britain mustered only, 39 per cent...
...have brought together many quotations from outstanding men of their time...
...y ' ^ In the -past, whenever legal machinery broke dowaffl the Westerner took the law into his own hands, hanged cattle rustlers, gamblers, Chinese and other, ciassifi-cations of persons wtio offended...
...Anti-Communist Democrats are forced either to re"^eVs'e their coats of to form alliances' with the bfacfc reactionary crowd...
...but policy-makers must face the fact that present problems are not solved by the incantation of hallowed names...
...the last war it was the East that cleaned up on all those munitions contracts, but in the Middle West held the bag when peace came, after we expanded our farms and the prices dropped...
...And down one layer underground are the busy ibureacrats in city and state offices...
...Easily the best recent study of the international background of the Farewell Address, made on the basis of research in foreign archives, is that of Professor S. F. Bemis of Yale...
...THIS dislike for the Atlantic seaboard and its ideas is a most * ec&mon denominator of many and various groups of Midwest-em SoJatJonists...
...For here they have far more opponents and weak spots "*n it is generally realized.' Fifth Column Elements Strong In Los Angeles City Government By Rena Vale New Leader's West Coast Correspondent HOLLYWOOD.—On May 6th Los Angeles had a city .election and a heat wave, and took the latter seriously...
...And'not only the middle class hates this image of the East...
...Who were the listeners...
...This is not a method of deciding policy, but rather a method of gaining support for a policy already chosen...
...But sith the Middle West as their stronghold, the appeasers will never •all quits...
...while in Paris our minister, James Monroe, was carrying out official instructions but at the same time encouraging the French government to resist American efforts...
...For one reason and another —_his-: ->••- • torical but mainly hysterical— they bate or.distrust Great Britain...
...He is iaecure...
...May 8th People's World, communist West Coast daily, carried a banner on the election story which read as follows: "VOTE FOR BOWRON SEEN AS BLOW TO REp-BArrERS...
...It is said that the' Ka Klux Klan is organizing again in the Los Angeles area, and not infrequently one hears the sentiment voiced: "I'd like to take 'em out and hang 'em...
...PESPITE the fact that communist stock has hit the toboggan over the nation, it hasn't fallen off many - points in Los Angeles...
...arid the iadns'trialist's or banker's wife and daughter gdirig in for too many lirs'StTd frills, including the dubious luxury of loving the English md other Europeans...
...There was the tragic example of the fate of the Greek city states, portrayed by Thucydides, which had allowed their internal and internecine struggles to lead them to call in outsiders who -soon came to rule over them...
...Some of them are the.Darl-ans and Lavals of America...
...The Far Westerners are notoriously panicky about the Japs, and are as un-fiHras the Easterners about the Nazis...
...For one thing, the present state regime owes its life to the work of the Popular Front in 1938, and a strong faction of comrades have weathered the storm...
...But this incident weakened his feeling for the Republican party, and he felt a proportional inclination towards the Federalists...
...Unlike.the laterlamerited, Cliveden set, they apparently do not mind being junior partners...
...whip in the civic elements, fold in the Communist apparatus and emerge with a "reform" pie...
...Citizens went to beaches and bars—every-whereilmt to the polls...
...CjStilL others, such as Robert McCormick of the Chicago Tribune and Mrs...
...It goes back to 1938 when Bowron was contending for the city throne against Mayor Frank L. Shaw...
...It looks as if the prophecy may come true...
...Gainsborough examining the symbols deriving from, and the historical evidence and milieu of, George Washington's Farewell Address and the use of it made by isolationist spokesmen...
...Over storms of protest that would have wrecked any other state in the union, Olson has retained State Immigration and Housing Director Carey McWilliams, Fish and Game Commissioner Germaine Bulcke and the Governor's Executive Secretary, M. Stanley Mosk, the Communist connections of all of whom are a matter of public knowledge...
...Grant Cooper, son-in-law of the Mayor's secretary, was appointed to a post in the City Health Department...
...under the title "Washington's Farewell Address: a Foreign Policy of Independence," he says, "The immediate purpose of the Address was to strike a powerful blow against French intermeddling in American affairs (American Historical Kcviev, Vol...
...1I/E are not here concerned with the question ™ whether or not the Federalists were as much Anglomen a? the Republicans vere Gallomen, or even to decide whether Washington held the balance true...
...What does concern us is that a number of incidents subsequent to this served, whether rightly or no, to strengthen Washington's fear of foreign influences in undermining the union...
...Historically, all of them are descendants (in spirit if not in flesh) of the pioneers who in the last three quarters of the tantnry left their Eastern homes with no love lost between them and their points of...
...of Park Avenue...
...l|ENTION has been made above of the need for ' examining the milieu in which a speech is made >r a document prepared...
...The man who saw \ French jealousy of Britain help us win independence -' and who saw Spain open the Mississippi to us because she feared England might help us attack her possessions could have been under no illusions as to the close connection between America's fortunes and Europe's misfortunes...
...This is the first article to appear in the East on the recent Los Angeles election, and its implications...
...combat force...
...I have gone to school with their sons and daughters...
...He has spent many years in the Midwest] dflCAGO.—Nowhere in America is isolationism as strong as in the Middle West Last February, at the height of the nationwide flscuksibh' of the Lend-Lease Bill, Dr...
...39, p. 263...
...Events there today are colored with a grim hue...
...Far removed from ether of the two oceans, the man on the small-town street of the jfifofe West pooh-poohs the threat of invasion and Trojan Horse activity...
...The year after the Genet recall witnessed the Whiskey Rebellion of 1794, which many did not hesitate to ascribe at least to the heightened spirit of domestic faction fostered by the war that had broken out in 1793 between England and France...
...veteran gave his impression: "Never since my days in the Army of Occupation in Germany have I heard'more broken English and German spoken...
...Tattoo, and Whistler's Father...
...The Mayor's personal secretary, Mrs...
...A view of the platform ef the tremetdous "Freed*** Roily" held recently:M Madison Square Gardes which aHrocted more that If0.000 persons to answer the challenge of the appeasers...
...Any student of American history must be familiar with the ' great stimulus which the French Revolution gave to the popular movement in this country, embittering the battles that' soon aligned Federalists and Republicans against each other as "Anglomen" and "Gallomen...
...and co-author with Wythe Williams of the recently published Riddle of the Reich...
...For they believe the Nazis will eventually succumb to love and preaching—just as in the assorted foreign lands, in the .years gone by, their own native charges have responded to" their sermons...
...It indicates conditions approximating pre-Hitier Germany when orderly legal procedures were thrown overboard by extremist groups battling for control...
...No, says your Midwesterner, if you just stay home and don't bother the Axis, the Axis sott't bother you...
...Had the President been against aid to Britain, they would have been for it...
...The publication of the Jay Treaty, which was "incompatible" (Bemia, Diplomatic History of U.S...
...The impatience with the East has iiBuned"nere as a tradition...
...They have achieved fine positions in their own Nortn'-Siore or Grosse Point society, but somehow they feel in-set^ijjgn they think or hear...
...Los Angeles probably has more Communists" per square inch than any other city in United States...
...This tni«,^»™ smart and .won't play the game of Wall Street" .It is the same small-town Midwesterner who refuses to see Hitler s threat to our own shores and institutions...
...Their campaign must be counter-acted...
...All of this would mean very Jittle to the nation if it weren't for the fact that Mayor Bowron's regime is the white hope of the communazi crowd on the West Coast...
...For this purpose he utilized the- well-oiled Communist Party apparatus, and after Bowron was elected he paid off his election debts to the comrades...
Vol. 24 • June 1941 • No. 20
