Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/414

398 and Slavonic races. At the late presidential election the socialist vote in New York city was 7,326, an increase of about fourteen hundred over that polled in 1892. Doubtless, as the socialists claim, the increase would have been much more considerable had not the silver question for the time taken precedence of all other issues, although the socialist propaganda publicly declared against free silver. In 1895 the party polled 10,993 votes. The significant feature of the situation, however, is the marked increase in the party's vote in the ninth congressional district, situated on the east side of the city, south of Stanton Street. Here more than half the socialist vote was polled. It is here that the socialists expect to elect, within a few years, an assemblyman to represent them at Albany; it is from this district that they hope ultimately to send a congressman to Washington. In the twelfth assembly district, constituting a part of this congressional district, the result of the recent election was tabulated as follows: Tammany (Democrat), 2,590; Republican, 2,257; Socialist, 1,284. It is in this section of the city that the socialists are centralizing, that the most active party leaders are colonizing. Such imperfect statistics as are available reveal the fact that the Hungarian, Polish, and Russian population stands in the ratio of 5:1 to that of all other nationalities. Many of the first three named peoples are not yet voters, but each year the naturalization mill turns them out by thousands as free electors, after they have solemnly sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Yet the socialist ideals are entirely at variance with the true theory of American government as conceived by the early makers of the American state. The question, then, confronting us is whether the process of assimilation or the growth of socialism will be the most rapid.

I had thought to find every advance made in civilization distinctively associated with a certain race or races, and while the characteristics of many races have become implanted in and integral parts of the national civilization, yet I am obliged to admit after deep reflection that such advances are due in greatest part not to the individual or the race, but to the entire foreign element. When the number of immigrants was comparatively small they became quickly amalgamated with the native population, but as the numbers increased, progress in this direction was naturally slower, yet in no other country has the process been carried on so quickly and thoroughly in proportion to the amount of material to be acted upon as in the United States. As the national spirit acts upon the foreign element, so the foreign element reacts upon American civilization: there results one heterogeneous whole, and this increased heterogeneity arising from an admixture of nationalities is, as already intimated, the primal cause of American progress. It is a little