In response to the demagogic attacks and raft of new laws like the McClintic deportation bill, Communist and left wing activists initiated the National Council for the Protection of Foreign-Born Workers to fight back at a May, 1926 conference. Thurber Lewis provides the background.

‘Peonizing the Foreign Born’ by Thurber Lewis from Daily Worker Saturday Supplement. Vol. 3 No. 123. June 5, 1926.

The Exploited Immigrant Proletariat–Their Brave Struggles–The Attack of the Masters–The Anti-Alien Bills–The Washington Conference–Black Days

HEAVY industry in the United States depends on the foreign-born worker. The Italian, Slav, Hungarian, Pole–these nationalities, with a lesser number of other countries–all workers born in alien lands, make up a majority of those who run the steel mills, the mines, the heavy industries of the country.

America as a capitalist nation has become rich and world powerful because of her enormous resources, yes, but chiefly because there were workers to build these resources into industries–and profits. In this epic of pyramided wealth the foreign-born worker has had a heavy role.

The millions of foreign-born workers who are in this country now and the millions more who came here and died in the harness have not had an easy time of it. Along with the Negro, these immigrants are the most exploited workers in the country. They are the poorest paid, they work the longest hours, they do the hardest work.

Foreign Workers Are Handicapped.

THE foreign-born worker has been handicapped in the matter of his own protection. He has no political rights; outside the coal fields unions are weak or do not exist at all in the industries in which he predominates; there are discriminatory laws in many states against him; racial and language divisions make unity of action difficult. Indeed, it has been one of the weapons of his exploiters to foster these differences.

Yet the rank and file of some of the largest and bravest struggles recorded in the history of the American labor movement were foreign-born workers. Homestead, Lawrence, Ludlow, the steel strike of 1919–and don’t forget the battle of Passaic raging now these names stand as a tribute to the fighting spirit of the foreign-born worker in America.

Brave Struggles Drowned in Blood.

WHAT happened to these achievements? Without exception they have been drowned in brutality and blood. Cossacks, militia, stool-pigeons, industrial spies, the blacklist, are some of the things the foreign-born worker is up against.

The industrial serfs of America, the foreign-born workers, number the better part of the foreign-born population of the country–fourteen million. This polyglot mass of wage slaves has never achieved the unity of defense that the attacks of their exploiters upon them both justify and make necessary. It is only in time of strike, when small sections of them are objects of economic offensive, that they manage to unite–as workers–for their common defense.

Mass Attack on Workers.

BUT NOW THE WHOLE FOREIGN-BORN WORKING POPULATION OF THE COUNTRY IS FACED WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED POLITICAL ONSLAUGHT. It is not enough for them to be helots. It is not enough for their strikes to be broken by sheer military assault. It is not enough for them to be preyed upon in every way by the industrial overlords. They must now be registered, catalogued, held under constant surveillance and, if need be, deported or jailed.

Proposed legislation now pending in the United States Congress makes provision for this. Tremendous forces are at work to make these bills into laws.

Thus comes unity. For the first time in the history of the country, foreign-born workers are organizing NATIONALLY, ignoring racial differences before an attack directed not against this race or that but against a class.

The Washington Conference.

ON the 15th and 16th of May 150 delegates representing more than a half million workers, mostly foreign-born, met in the Playhouse at Washington, D.C. It was the National Conference for the Protection of Foreign-Born Workers. Its object was to fight against anti-alien bills before congress. Foreign-born workers, aided by American-born workers who realize that the attack is not merely upon the immigrant worker, but upon the whole working class, met in national convention for united, mutual protection against further enslavement. This fact is historical.

Nineteen unions, thirty fraternal organizations, the Polish Catholic Union (150,000 members), twelve local councils for the Protection of the Foreign-Born and six miscellaneous organizations were represented. A permanent national body was created. A national executive committee of seventeen was chosen.

The immediate purpose of the organization is to conduct a campaign against the Aswell, McClintic, Hayden and Taylor and a dozen other bills before congress that constitute an open and dangerous menace to the foreign-born workers in the United States. What are these bills?

A Reduced Living Standard.

IN general, they are part of a campaign to reduce the standard of living of the American working class. This may seem far-fetched. It is not. Intensified competition in foreign markets will make this reduction necessary for American capitalism. It means that the whole working class is the object of attack. What part of an army does an enemy attack first? The weakest, of course. Which part of the American working class is the weakest, the most amenable to attack, the least able to defend itself, without political rights, and the most enslaved? Those who came here from other lands.

In particular, these bills mean the setting up of a national industrial, OFFICIAL blacklist system with the full legal authority of the United States government to enforce it. It is a black-passport system that will bind and gag the immigrant worker and deliver him, helpless, to the most insufferable exploitation. The bills, if they become laws, will make trade unions among the foreign-born workers an impossibility. The first sign of rebellion will be met by jail or deportation.

The Insidious Aswell Bill.

TAKE the Aswell bill. It is entitled:

“For the registration of aliens and for other purposes.” It provides that foreign-born, unnaturalized residents in this country shall register once every calendar year. The execution of the bill means that every foreign-born worker will, upon demand, be required to produce a registration card, stamped to date, giving his complete identification. For the privilege of being permitted to enter this great national rogue’s gallery, the alien affected by the statute will be required to pay the government $10 for the initial registration and $5 for each subsequent registration.

Whenever an alien moves he must report the circumstances to the nearest post-office within two days. When- ever his features or physical appearance change he must report that also. If he is arrested in a strike for picketing, for violating an injunction or as the result of the many frame-ups commonly engineered by the bosses, it becomes part of his record. Fancy his chance of getting a job in one of Gary’s mills with an item like that listed on his registration card. Fancy organizing a union in one of Gary’s or any other mill under such circumstances.

The punishment provided in this iniquitous proposal is $5,000 fine, imprisonment for two years or both for violating in any way its exacting specifications. Seven million workers would be affected by this law.

Revival of Palmer Days.

THE McClintic bill is a deportation measure. It gives the United States department of labor unlimited power over aliens in this country. It allows the department of labor, aye, it urges the department to out-do Palmer at his best and pack to the bulwarks as many “Bufords” as it cares to send out of harbor. The bill declares that all aliens who have been in the country for five years and have not become citizens are liable to deportation within six months after the bill becomes a law. Well, why can’t all aliens take out papers? Why, indeed! Try to get them. It’s no easy job. And is it strange that all the deportation bills pending make not even a gesture at rendering naturalization easier?

The other bills are variations on the theme. Some of them appear very harmless and innocent. But they are sinister. They are all part of the same scheme the complete enslavement of the foreign-born workers and the wrecking of the labor movement. The American Federation of Labor has recognized this. It is fighting the bills. Labor councils and local unions by the hundreds have condemned them. The labor movement as a whole is becoming alive to their meaning. The Washington conference for the Protection of the Foreign-Born will soon be followed by another conference to carry the fight thru the next session of congress.

Black Days If They Pass.

ONLY a few of the less poisonous bills have been reported out of committee this session of congress. These are bills that are directed against “smuggled” aliens, those who have returned to the country following deportation and “criminals.” They are the beginning. Never fear that the others have been abandoned. If they go thru it will mean black days for the American workers!

The Saturday Supplement, later changed to a Sunday Supplement, of the Daily Worker was a place for longer articles with debate, international focus, literature, and documents presented. The Daily Worker began in 1924 and was published in New York City by the Communist Party US and its predecessor organizations. Among the most long-lasting and important left publications in US history, it had a circulation of 35,000 at its peak. The Daily Worker came from The Ohio Socialist, published by the Left Wing-dominated Socialist Party of Ohio in Cleveland from 1917 to November 1919, when it became became The Toiler, paper of the Communist Labor Party. In December 1921 the above-ground Workers Party of America merged the Toiler with the paper Workers Council to found The Worker, which became The Daily Worker beginning January 13, 1924.

PDF of full issue: https://www.marxists.org/history/usa/pubs/dailyworker/1926/1926-ny/v03-n123-supplement-jun-05-1926-DW-LOC.pdf