The International Jew, the world's foremost problem [volume I] : $b being a reprint of a series of articles appearing in the Dearborn Independent from May 22 to October 2, 1920Ford, Henry
General
The International Jew, the world's foremost problem [volume I] : $b being a reprint of a series of articles appearing in the Dearborn Independent from May 22 to October 2, 1920
Ford, Henry
Antisemitic literature; Jews -- United States; United States -- Ethnic relations
It is probably this way that the Jewish "sweatshops" of New York may be
explained. When the susceptible people of the nation commiserated the
poor Jews of the New York sweatshops, they for the most part did not
know that the inventors and operators of the "sweatshop" method were
themselves Jews. Indeed, while it is the boast of our country that no
race or color or creed is persecuted here, but liberty is insured to
all, still it is a fact which every special investigator has noted that
the only heartless treatment ever accorded the Jew in the United States
came from his own people, his overseers and masters. And yet there is no
evidence that either the "sweater" or the "sweated" ever thought of it
as inhumanity or as "heartless." It was "business." The "sweated" lived
in the hope of having a roomful of people sewing for him or her some
day. Their endlessly vital interest in "business" and their unflagging
ambition to get further up the ladder and become masters in their own
sweatshop, enabled them to work without the slightest sense of
oppression or injustice which, after all, is the sorest thing about
poverty. The Jews never regard work as a calamity, but neither do they
regard subordinate positions as permanently theirs. Thus, they spend
their energies in getting up and out rather than in lamenting the
inconveniences of the place where they are and trying to improve it.
All this is individually excellent but socially harmful. The result is
that, until recently, the lower ranges of employment were wholly
unsupervised, and the higher circles never felt the necessity of
devising industrial reforms and benefits. The record of the great Jews
in charity is very noble; their record in industrial reforms is nil.
With commendable sympathy toward their own people, they will donate a
part of their profits to rectify some of the human need resulting from
the method by which they made their profits, but as for reforming the
method by which they get their profits in order that the resulting need
might be diminished or prevented, apparently it has never occurred to
them. At least, while there are many charitable names among the
wealthier Jews, there are no names that stand for an actual, practical
humanizing of industry, its methods and its returns.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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