[125]Unless it be the Indian, there is no American type; the future American will be the result of a synthesis of all the people that have poured their life-blood into the veins of our nation. Hence it is impossible for the Jew—and the same principles apply to Irishman, German, Italian, and the others—to become a hundred per cent. American until America is at least three per cent. Jewish. The Melting Pot theory marks an advance over the Americanization theory in its treatment of the immigrant, not in its conception of the United States. Uniformity, physical or social or both, is taken as the sine qua non of group unity, like-mindedness as its minimum. But many ethnic groups, religious groups and others, wish to maintain their identity in their new home. Democracy would allow them to do so. The group theory of American life—which I have already elaborated historically and in the present, would not merely allow this, but take it as the only normal way in which an over-group of a hundred million people can ever hope to attain the unity of a group mind. 2. The first form of such a theory is called by Dr. Berkson the “Federation of Nationalities.” It is modelled after the Federal government, which is a union of self-governing states. In the same way, as geographical units grow steadily less important and functional units more important in our national life, the same conception of federation was applied to these. The Soviet government has taken national control as a function of a federation of economic interests; the federation of nationalities view takes it as a federation of ethnic and religious groups. Our greater cities are now beginning to establish this sort of an appearance. They have Italian quarters, Jewish quarters, Negro quarters, even an American quarter, restricted to families whose acceptability can be approved and vouched for. The advocate of this theory holds that races are unchangeable—“a man cannot change his grandfather,” they say—the best that they can do is to live in amity within the same general national boundaries. Now, it is true that groupings based on heredity and on interest are growing increasingly important, as compared with the geographical groupings which once meant so much. Only in the old families, whose associations with a particular state have persisted for generations, is much state sentiment left among us. On the other hand, the Catholic, the Bohemian, the German, the Jew—every national and religious group has enduring loyalties. And the new economic groupings, labor, capital, the commercial class, the trade association, are developing their own group minds more rapidly than we can easily note.