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CHAPTER FIVE LABOR AS THE ALIEN OTHER – Ed Sebesta 10/10/2020 Sumners opposition to the foreign born, that is immigrants from Europe, labor unions, specifically the Congress of Industrial Organizations (C.I.O.), civil rights for African Americans, and radicalism are all intertwined. His opposition to New York U.S. House Congressional Representative Vito Marcantonio, and clashes with him, and Marcantonio’s campaign for labor, African American civil rights, and immigrants is where all these things come together and Marcantonio is the personal manifestation of all of Sumners’ racist nightmares. ANGLO-SAXONISM Anglo-Saxonism is the belief that the British are Anglo-Saxon and there is a common Anglo-Saxon civilization of English speaking peoples. It also is the idea that some Europeans are superior to others. These racial theories can include Dutch, Scandinavians, and German nationalities in this superior racial group. This superior national group existed in opposition to Latins (Italians, French, Spanish, and Portuguese) and Slavic groups in Eastern Europe and other nationalities. Sumners included Germans in his superior group in his multiple speeches quoting Tacitus’ commentary on the ancient Germans as the origin of his fantasized AngloSaxon origins for the constitution. In a 1907 DMN article reports: Hatton W. Sumners, who recently returned to Dallas, states that the thing which most impressed him is the strength and unity of the German people. Mr. Sumners made a study during his tour of the European system of jurisprudence. “The Germans are freer from the evidences of decay than any other people whom I saw,” said Mr. Sumners. “Civilizations seemed old and tired in many sections, but in Switzerland, Holland and Germany there is a rugged strength, and just now an industrial activity which could hardly be expected in countries so old and crowded.” It isn’t the national policies of these individual governments which result in success, it is a racial aspect which is common to these nations and of which there isn’t “evidence of decay.”1 However, in a 1907 Farm and Ranch article, of a series of accounts which he wrote while traveling but were published after his return reveal Sumners’ concerns that he feared that the Germans would decay. He writes
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No author, “Round About Town,” DMN, Sept. 16, 1907, page 14.