292 THE CLASS STRUGGLE THE NEW AMERICANISM 293 these in purity of their American stock, having from to 10 per cent. From these figures it will be seen that the southern tier of states still retains an overwhelming majority of people whose blood is untainted by contact with foreigners.
Contrast this with the most progressive states of the North.
New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Montana and Utah have 50 per cent. or more who are foreign born. Next in the order of progressive states, those having from 35 to 50 per cent. are Arizona, Nebraska, Iowa, Pennsylvania, Vermont and New Hampshire, while the remaining states of the North follow close behind. Anyone acquainted with the United States knows that the states with a large mixture of the foreign born in their populations are the progressive states. They do not stand still.
In invention, agriculture, education, industry, transportation, and in the number of Socialist votes polled, they lead the South. The pure American states of the South are known as the most backward in all these fields and there are those who claim that the old American stock is so degenerating that the Negro becomes more vigorous and the prospect of his probable future control of southern capitalism enrages the ruling whites and fosters the lynching spirit.
This degeneracy of the true Americans is more pronounced than many surmise. If one will follow the line of the Appalachian Mountains from West Virginia to Northern Alabama he will trace a region inhabited by a people who have been almost entirely isolated from contact with the foreigner, and yet it is the most backward of the backward sections of the South. East of this line live the poor whites of the lowland and who are also practically immune from foreign contagion. The latter live in rags and squalor, are mostly illiterate, and are so thoroughly American that many of them cling to the belief that the North is a foreign country and that the Yankee is a foreigner.
The inhabitants of the mountain region have been so shielded from foreign contagion that the overwhelming masses in all their lives never saw a Jew, an Italian, a Russian or a German and never heard a foreign language spoken. What mixture of other blood is found in their veins is due to contact with the Indian and the Negro. Here the primitive colonial society of 200 years ago finds its only survival in America. Here the old clan ethic of savage times, that an injury done to one member of the tribe is an injury to all its members, still survives in the family feuds of the mountains. The spinning wheel and household manufacture still prevail. Homespun is still worn by the natives and city clothes are rarely seen. Hunting and fishing by the males would identify these communities with the nomadic tribes of a few thousand years ago were it not for the household industry of the women. The old Elizabethan ballads that were sung by our forefathers 200 years ago are still sung by these Americans and are handed down from grandmother to child.
Many of these natives never saw a railroad or an electric car, while a Pittsburgh steel plant would strike one of them speechless. The movie is a foreign mystery, Charlie Chaplin is unknown, and it is no exaggeration to assert that many of these Americans do not know that a world war has been raging for nearly four years.
This is your pure American, oh super patriot! No foreign influences have contaminated him or led him astray. The Socialist movement has not touched him or been able to make any great impress on his brothers in the lowlands or in the thickly settled communities. He is a special, finished product of unadulterated Americanism and as such should be a source of pride to the National Security League. He wants little, knows little, and gets little. Behold him, the pure American type, the one distinctive contribution based on the proposition that things foreign corrupt the mind, the thought and life of Americanism.
Many other illuminating facts might be cited regarding this distinctly Americanized region. We have space for only a few.
The ruling classes of the South, descendants of the old regime of Americans, have not shown the intelligence or enterprise of the bourgeoisie of the North and of other countries. The South has all the resources that would make a paradise of capitalist exploitation, yet its ruling exploiters have been so backward in