The International Jew/Volume 3/Chapter 49

by Henry Ford

Bolshevism is working in the United States through precisely the same channels it used in Russia and through the same agents—Revolutionary and Predatory Unionism, as distinct from Business and Uplift Unionism, and Jewish agitators. When Martens, the so-called Soviet ambassador, “left” the United States after being deported, he appointed as the representative of Bolshevik sovietism in the United States one Charles Recht, a Jew, a lawyer by profession, who maintained an office in New York. This office is the rendezvous of all the Jewish union leaders in New York, some of the labor leaders throughout the country, and occasionally of one or two American government officials known to be henchmen of Jewish aspirations in the United States and sympathizers with predatory radicalism.

The situation in New York is important because from that center lines of authority and action radiate to all the cities of the United States. New York is the laboratory in which the emissaries of the revolution learn their lesson, and their knowledge is being daily increased by the counsel and experience of traveling delegates straight out of Russia.

The American does not realize that all the public disturbances of which he reads are not mere sudden outbreaks, but the deliberately planned movements of leaders who know exactly what they are doing. Mobs are methodical; there is always an intelligent core which gets done under the appearance of excitement what had been planned beforehand. Up through the German revolution, up through the French revolution, up through the Russian revolution came the previously chosen men, and to this day in all three countries the groups thus raised to power have not lessened their hold—and they are Jewish groups. Russia is not more Jew controlled than is France; and Germany, with all her so-called anti-Semitism, tries in vain to loosen the grip of Judah from her throat.

It is this fact of prepared disorder which makes the New York situation of interest today, because its lines of influence and authority reach everywhere throughout the country.

For that reason, and before showing how the Jewish organizations advance Bolshevism and revolution in the United States, the first step will be to describe the condition and extent of the Hebrew labor movement.

Most New Yorkers remember the “Save Fifth Avenue” movement. That avenue, from Fourteenth to Thirty-fourth street, with sections of Broadway, is historic ground. It is wrought into the history of America in a peculiarly intimate way. A little more than 15 years ago it contained the homes of the older families, the establishments of famous publishers, the stores of art dealers, and the famous shopping center. It was a district known throughout the United States as typifying American substance and good taste.

But presently, Americans who thought they were secure in their own city, were aware of an advancing shadow. A subtle atmosphere of deterioration became evident. In the top lofts of buildings, sweatshops had been installed, which noon and night poured into the streets an alien stream—not a glad, hopeful-eyed immigrant rejoicing to be in America and at work, but something darker.

It was the Russian and Polish Jew. He swarmed into this district, the most typically American of any outside of Boston and Philadelphia, from the first. Nowhere else would the sweatshops go except in the very heart of Goy respectability. There were protests and organizations; Jews were appealed to in the name of the city; they smiled and promised, but like a tide coming in, the invasion swept farther and stronger every week. New Yorkers hesitated to go down into the district to trade, and merchants lost their business. Real estate values dropped in consequence, the Jews bought valuable properties at low figures.

Today, at noontime, Fifth Avenue is packed from wall to curb with dark, squat figures in masses of thousands. They parade in dense throngs and make the street impassable. They make a strange, un-American atmosphere, Slavonic with some Oriental admixture. Their tongue is alien, their attitude is one of sullenness mingled with a sense of power. You leave the New York of American meaning whenever you approach that alien throng. They have taken over the district as completely as if they had invaded it with the bayonet.

All this would be very hopeful, of course, if we could take and sustain the attitude of the unsophisticated young reader of fiction, and regard these people as “new Americans.” There is a mass of moving stories (mostly written by Jews, by the way) pretending to describe the glowing hearts with which these throngs look out upon America, their intense longing to be American, their love of our people and our institutions. Most unfortunately, the actions of these people and the utterances of their leaders give the lie to this fair picture which, as Americans, we would fain believe. The resistance offered to Americanization, consisting in the limitations put upon the Americanization program, has been sufficient to convince all observers that, so far as the Jewish invasion is concerned, it is not their desire to go the way America is going, but to influence America to go the way they are going. They talk a great deal of what they bring to America, hardly anything at all of what they found here. America is presented to them as a big piece of putty to be molded as they desire, not as a benign mother who is able and willing to make these aliens to be like her own children. The doctrine that the United States is nothing definite as yet, that it is only a free-for-all opportunity to make it what you will, is one of the most distinctive of Jewish political teachings. If it be provincialism to insist that our alien guests become American and cease their endeavors to make America something alien, then there are hundreds of thousands of Americans to plead guilty to provincialism.

“The Melting Pot,” a term to which Mr. Zangwill gave currency, is not a very dignified name for our Republic, but aside from that, it is being more and more challenged as descriptive of the process that goes on here. There are some substances in the pot that will not melt. But more significant still, there are rapidly increasing interests who want to melt the pot.

So far as Fifth Avenue was concerned, it was the pot that melted. At least, not the most intrepid Jewish leader will shout much about the American characteristics of the most conspicuous Jewish colony in the world, that of New York.

The lofty buildings in this district are filled with clothing workshops, of which the Jew has a monopoly in the United States. Coatmakers, pantmakers, buttonhole workers, ladies’ garment workers, these men are engaged in the “needle trades” in which adult men of no other race participate.

Why the tendency of the Jew to the “needle trades”? It is explained by his aversion to manual labor, his abhorrence of agricultural life, and his desire to arrange his own affairs. Arriving in the city of his destination, the Jew would rather not leave it except for other cities. There is one Hebrew society whose charter would indicate that its work is the placing of Jews in the rural districts, but it does next to nothing in this respect. On the other hand, there is testimony that city colonization goes on apace. Widespread Jewish associations are on the lookout for likely towns in which to settle a few Jews, who in time become a larger colony, and in a little longer time run the place. There is nothing haphazard about it. The Jew is not an adventurer, he does not cut himself off from his base, but all his movements are made under consultation and direction. New York is the great training school in which the newly arrived immigrant receives his instructions as to the method of handling the American goyim.

Thus, preferring any kind of a life in the city, and not taking to the trades which involve much bodily effort, the Jew gravitates to the needle, not in the capacity of a creative artist, as is the commercial tailor, but in the production of quantities of ready-to-wear goods.

Aside from the “white collar quality of the job,” the “needle trades” appeal to the Jew because at such work he can practically arrange his own hours. For this reason, the Jew generally prefers piece work to day work, domestic industries to factories—he can arrange his own time. Many people wonder how the Jews of New York have so much time for revolutionary consultation, parades, meetings, demonstrations, restaurant debates and radical authorship. No other class of working people can get the time; other people work pretty steadily. The explanation is at hand: extreme Socialism and Bolshevism have a great deal of “time off.”

Trotsky, the present head of Russia, lived that way in New York. His main arrangement was for leisure to work up his scheme. All the East Side leaders knew that Trotsky was to “take the Czar’s job,” even though he never had an extra dollar to spend. There was nothing haphazard about it. It was prearranged, and the appointed men went directly to their preappointed places. The East Side has other rulers ready now, and they live in the midst of the revolutionary “needle trades.”

One point that should not be overlooked in all this, of course, is that the “needle trades” being exclusively Jewish, all their abuses are Jewish too. This is said for the benefit of those apologists for Russian Bolshevism who explain that the reason for it all is the way the poor “Russian” was treated in America. If Americans will ever learn to remember that the Russian is not a Jew, and that Bolshevism is not Russian but Jewish, and if in addition to that the American will ever learn to remember that every Russian-Jewish laborer in New York comes into contact with a Russian-Jewish employer, and every Russian Jew tenant pays his exorbitant rent to a Russian Jew landlord, it will then be clear that once more has the United States been made to bear a slander that does not belong to it.

It may be well to remember also that it was on account of these Russian and Polish Jews, while they yet resided in Russia, that the United States broke off her trade treaty with that country—broke off with the Russia that was a country and a government before America was discovered; and, having by that act contributed to the Jewish throttle on Russia through Germany, it is now proposed that the United States, on account of these same Jews, enter into trade agreements with the present Russian tyranny. Verily, the diplomacy of Judah has come very near determining our foreign policy. If they were strong enough, in spite of President Taft’s refusal, to make us break with Russia, they may also be strong enough to make us shake hands with Bolshevism.

The Jewish trade union is exclusively Jewish for the reason that the trades affected are exclusively Jewish. That is, the Jewish trade union is not an American trade union, it is not a mixed trade union, it is Jewish. Like all other Jewish activities the purpose of the trade union is to advance Jewish interests alone. These unions are one aspect of United Israel.

This should be borne in mind with reference to the widespread strikes in the clothing trade and the rapid increase in the price of clothing to the 99,000,000 non-Jews in the United States. In spite of all the strikes, the profits advanced enormously; it may be said that the strikes were essential to the advance of profits; and the country as a whole paid.

Look at some of the figures of the “needle trades” before the war. In the entire United States, the men’s and women’s clothing manufactured in 1914 had a value of $932,099,000. In New York alone, $542,685,000 was produced. The rest was produced by the Jewish clothing centers in Chicago, Cleveland, New Jersey and Philadelphia.

The figures for the period of the war and since will be staggering. Clothing in the regular trade began to mount in price, until at the end of the war in 1918, it had attained an increase of 200 per cent and 300 per cent. Until well into 1920 the monopoly held up the price. This was done in face of the declaration by the manufacturers of cloth that the whole profiteering persistence was due to the manufacturers of clothing. Russian-Polish Jews, in this country only a few months, drew $50 to $80 a week. Threats of strike were used to get a five per cent increase in wages, which was met by a 20 per cent increase in the cost of clothing. The American public paid.

If, however, these statements were merely an attempt to arouse indignation that for once the workers got more than they earned, the attempt would be a failure. It is pretty hard to find anyone to regret the workers getting hold of a bonanza. The high wages weren’t of much use, as it proved, but people at least had the satisfaction of handling them.

These statements are made to show that during the war the Jewish unions waxed fat, a fact which has a bearing on their Bolshevik attitude today. Not all the wage was the gain of the man who earned it—there was the union to pay. Girls in the fur trade in New York earned $55 a week, of which they paid in $27.50 a week to the unions. Other workers paid in like proportion. There was great talk of what would be done. In Russia, of course, they had the government’s gold vaults immediately upon the success of the revolution, but in the United States the preliminary funds would have to be supplied by themselves. A great revolutionary stroke was planned of which the written evidence still remains.

There are two divisions of Jewish wealth and power centering in New York. The first is German-Jewish, represented by the Schiffs, the Speyers, the Warburgs, the Kahns, the Lewisohns and the Guggenheims. These play the game with the aid of the financial resources of the non-Jews. The other division is composed of the Russian and Polish Jews who monopolize the hat, cap, fur, garment and toy trades. (By the way—it is the Russian and Polish Jew who controls the American stage and movies also.) Between them their grip and influence is far from negligible. They may sometimes have internecine quarrels regarding the division of profits and eager publicists may zealously call attention to these quarrels as evidence of the lack of unity among the Jews, but in the Kehillah and elsewhere they understand each other pretty well, and on the question of Jew vs. “goy” they are indivisibly one.

Between these two forces the attempt to hold up prices was continued until late in 1920. The heads of the Jewish clothing associations announced that the price of clothing would not be lowered. Solidly behind them were the associated Hebrew labor unions, so-called, which threatened dire things if the prices came down. The first great store to reduce prices in New York was Wanamaker’s, a non-Jewish house. In fact, there was no reduction of prices among Jewish manufacturers and merchants generally, until in the month of November less than a dozen Jews were called into the presence of a non-Jewish financier, after which a belated effort was made to save the buying market by sensational reductions. The Jewish controllers of the clothing business had just previously stated that not only would prices not go down, but the 1921 prices would go still higher.

There is a distinction between what the Jewish coalition would do and what it could do, but its will and its power never so closely correspond as when the non-Jewish element is asleep, and never are Jewish will and power so widely divorced as when the non-Jewish mind is alert. When the non-Jewish financial mind made itself felt in November, 1920, the bottom dropped out of the Jewish trade prophecies and policies. The only thing to fear is not the alert Jew, but the consequences of sleepiness among the Christians. The Jewish Program is checked the moment it is perceived and identified.

Ordinary people who for five years have been paying high tribute to the clothing trust are entitled to know who comprise that trust. But that is a trifling affair compared with the political uses to which the clothing trust has been put in this country. The clothing trust, being composed exclusively of Jews, most of whom have formed the ax-head of Jewry in the fight against certain Old World governments, is today the heart and center of a movement which, if successful, would leave not a shred of the Republic, its institutions, nor even the liberty, which is every American’s by inheritance.

What is the strength of these people? How are they banded together? What are the facts concerning them?

In New York City alone there are 2,760 Jewish cloak and suit manufacturing concerns; 1,200 Jewish clothing manufacturers; 2,880 Jewish fur manufacturers; 600 Jewish skirt manufacturers; 600 manufacturing tailoring establishments; 800 Jewish merchant tailoring concerns.

These employers have organized themselves into associations such as the following:

Associated Boys’ Clothing Manufacturers of Greater New York.

Associated Fur Manufacturers.

Associated Shirt Manufacturers.

Association of Embroidery and Lace Manufacturers.

Children’s Dress Manufacturers’ Association.

Cloak, Suit and Skirt Manufacturers’ Protective Association.

Cotton Garment Manufacturers of New York.

Dress and Waist Manufacturers’ Association.

East Side Retail Clothing Manufacturers’ Association.

Ladies’ Hat Manufacturers’ Protective Association.

Mineral Water Dealers’ Protective Association.

National Association of Separate Skirt Manufacturers.

National Society of Men’s Neckwear Manufacturers.

New York Association of House Dress & Kimono Manufacturers.

New York Tailors’ Verein.

Shirt Manufacturers’ Protective Association.

Among the employed Jews, the unions are numerous but all gathered up into one central organization. For example, the International Fur Workers’ Union of the United States and Canada, is made up of the following:

Feather Boa Makers’ Union.

Fur Cap Makers’ Union.

Fur Cutters’ Union.

Fur Dressers’ Union.

Fur Dyers’ Union.

Fur Floor Walkers’ Union.

Fur Hatters’ Union.

Fur Head and Tail Makers’ Union.

Fur Lined Coat Finishers’ Union.

Fur Nailers’ Union.

Fur Operators’ Union.

Fur Pluckers’ Union.

Muff Bed Workers’ Union.

In the garment industry, the organizations include every operation in the process of making clothes. There are separate unions for buttonhole makers, vest makers, pants makers, coat cutters, coat operators, coat pressers, coat tailors, coat basters, lapel makers, knee pants makers, clothing turners, overall workers, palm beach workers, shirt makers, vest pressers, and even a washable sailor suit union. These together comprise the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America.

In children’s clothing we have another complete organization:

Children’s Jacket Makers (three unions).

Children’s Jacket Pressers.

Children’s Sailor Jacket Makers’ Union.

Children’s Cloak and Reefer Workers’ Union.

Children’s Dressmakers’ Union.

In women’s wear, there are unions organized around every garment known to the wardrobe, some of which are:

Amalgamated Ladies’ Garment Cutters’ Union.

Bonnaz, Singer and Hand Embroiderers’ Union.

Buttonhole Makers and Button Sewers’ Union.

Children’s Cloak and Reefer Workers’ Union.

Cloak and Suit Tailors’ Union.

Cloak and Suit Piece Tailors and Sample Makers’ Union.

Cloak Examiners, Squarers and Bushelers’ Union.

Cloak Makers’ Union.

Cloak Operators’ Union.

Cloak, Skirt and Dress Pressers’ Union.

Ladies’ and Misses’ Cloak Operators’ Union.

Ladies’ Tailors Alteration & Special Order Union.

Ladies’ Waist and Dressmakers’ Union.

Skirt and Cloth Dressmakers’ Union.

Waterproof Garment Workers’ Union.

White Goods Workers’ Union.

Wrapper, Kimono, House Dress and Bath Robe Makers’ Union.

These unions comprise the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union.

The reader will have an idea, after reading these lists, that the employes represented in these unions are women. The majority are men. It may require something of an effort to remember that, but it is essential. These organizations control an essential business which before the war produced over One Billion Dollars’ worth of goods a year, and since the war has probably received for its products each year the amount of a big fat Liberty Loan; and these unions have received 30 to 40 per cent of that for wages and propaganda funds.

Now, let it be said at once that these Jewish unions are not to be confused with the regular Labor Union Movement, as we know it in the United States.

They are not Jews who have gone into the American trades unions. They have started unions of their own which are Jewish in membership, control and purpose. It is true, of course, that the regular trades union movement which heads up in the American Federation of Labor is under the presidency of a Jew, Samuel Gompers, but the membership is mixed, the large majority being non-Jews, and the purpose is not racial.

These Jewish unions comprise a body by themselves and are to be reckoned with, not only as labor union groups, but as racial and political groups whose purposes can be determined by the character and utterances of their leaders, as well as by the actions authorized and approved by the unions themselves.

Now, this Hebrew union movement is a part of the New York Kehillah. Jewish leaders have sought to counteract THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT’s account of Kehillah activities by saying that the Kehillah is such a little weak thing. Admittedly, however, the Jewish clothing trust and the Jewish garment workers’ unions are among the biggest and most powerful aggregations in the country. Not even a Jewish leader would have the temerity to deny that. Well, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union are affiliated with the Kehillah.

More than that: this Kehillah, which Jewish spokesmen with cool contempt for truth would have the public believe was weak and unimportant—this same Kehillah, in its Executive Committee, constitutes The American Jewish Committee.

Is the American Jewish Committee a nonentity? Ask any President of the United States, any Senator or Governor.

The American Jewish Committee heads up in District No. 12—New York City—and the Committee for District No. 12 is also the Executive Committee of the Kehillah.

The men who represent before the world the combined organizations mentioned in this article are the Kehillah, and they are the American Jewish Committee, and besides, they are the men whose failure in candor has left such an impression of dissatisfaction throughout the masses of the Jewish people.

Who are they? Who are these men with whom the Kehillah is said to be such a puling thing?

Louis Marshall, of the law firm of Guggenheimer, Untermeyer and Marshall. Mr. Marshall is not only head of District No. 12, but he is also head of the American Jewish Committee. His headship of the A.J.C. makes him Jewish leader of the United States. His headship of District No. 12 makes him head of the New York Kehillah. Quite an important man? Yes; and an important place, in spite of lying Jewish spokesmen.

Who are the others? Eugene Meyer, Jr., formerly of the Capital Issues Committee of the United States war government.

Who else? Judah L. Magnes. Judah L. Magnes is the organizer and active leader of the New York Kehillah. The two bodies are linked up again. They are linked up by the Kehillah’s constitution which is able to decree that its executive committee shall be the American Jewish Committee as far as District No. 12 (New York City) is concerned.

There are other names on the American Jewish Committee which also constitutes the executive committee as the Kehillah—Adolph Lewisohn, Cyrus L. Sulzberger, Felix Warburg, and so on, 36 in all.

In the current annual report of the American Jewish Committee this relation with the Kehillah is acknowledged in a note at the foot of page 123, just as in the constitution of the Kehillah its relation with the A.J.C. is acknowledged and explained.

Now to recapitulate.

The Hebrew labor unions, both of employees and employers, which are in complete control of the garment industry of the United States, represent one wing of Jewish aggression in the realm of political revolutionism. It is not a small wing in itself. Certainly it does not become smaller by its connection with the Kehillah nor the Kehillah by its gain of these workers. The two unions mentioned above number over 337,000 members. That figure is conservative. Besides these there are associated with the Kehillah the members of 1,000 other Jewish organizations, such as synagogues, charitable societies and educational bodies, and 100,000 individual members who belong on their own account.

Link this organization with the powerful American Jewish Committee, and at once the protest of the editors and the spokesmen that the Kehillah is a weak, unimportant body becomes a deliberate falsehood.

And as for those “Gentile fronts” who are ready victims of Jewish propaganda, and who, without personal knowledge, are describing the Kehillah as a large and flourishing charitable society (bad teamwork there!) let them read in the next article what some of the Kehillah leaders are trying to do to the United States.