The Finnish _Kalenteri_ for 1918 gave a list of racial groups of Socialists in the United States in this order of relative strength. It is a striking fact that the Americans lead, but it must be remembered that for their statistical purposes a naturalized citizen may be as good an American as one native-born of old stock. (See Table XLIX.) TABLE XLIX RANKS OF RACE GROUPS IN RELATIVE SOCIALIST STRENGTH ================================================= Rank | Race -------------------------------+----------------- 1 | Americans 2 | Finns 3 | Germans 4 | Jews 5 | Slavs 6 | Lithuanians 7 | Scandinavians 8 | Czechs 9 | Hungarians 10 | Italians 11 | Letts 12 | Slovaks ================================================= This is well enough for rough purposes, but it is too loose for generalization as to racial tendencies. “Jews” might be of almost any nationality, and “Slavs” might cover natives of almost any of the countries east of the Carpathians and the Adriatic. The foreign-language groups of the Socialist party in 1916 had an aggregate membership of over 29,000, and if we accept the estimate of the National Executive Secretary of the party, of 94,140, as the dues-paying membership during the first four months of that year, it would appear that 31 per cent of all dues-paying members of the party were foreign-born persons, either not citizens or so unfamiliar with English as to prefer to belong to a foreign-speaking branch of their political party. There are two ways of looking at all this. One is to assume that, but for the war and the disorganization which it threw into the Socialist party’s ranks, including a virtual decision to confine membership to voters, there would have grown up a large political body of aliens, of unknown and probably menacing potentiality. The other is to recognize that, with the foreign-speaking organizations as a starting point, the immigrant would have been brought directly and early into an active interest in American politics, personal participation in the study of its affairs, and susceptibility far greater than it is common to acknowledge to the appeal of reason and experience in the solution of political questions. The present writer believes that to a considerable extent the fluctuations in the Socialist vote are due to changes of mind about Socialism _on the part of individual voters of all races_. THE SOCIALIST VOTE