Trans-National America: Homogeneity vs. Cosmopolitanism
Henry Cabot Lodge and Randolph Bourne had drastically different ideologies regarding the intersection of immigration, race, and democracy.
While Henry Cabot Lodge argues that purportedly inferior races and unassimilable immigrants are injurious to the morally and intellectually superior Anglo-Saxon race that he deems is pure American, Randolph Bourne claims that people of foreign cultures who retain their diverse traditions and practices exemplify the potential strength of American culture.
Henry Cabot Lodge argues that certain races and immigrants inhibit the superior Anglo-Saxon race. Quoting M. Gustave Le Bon, a French writer, Lodge argues that the Anglo-Saxon race has “homogeneous” characteristics, including a “fixed morality,” that give them a “definiteness and national character unknown to any other people,” exemplifying Lodge’s conception of Anglo-Saxon superiority. Furthermore, he notes that the United States has had “astonishing progress” only as a result of the “mental constitution of the English race,” implying that the Anglo-Saxon race has an important place in American society. Moreover, Lodge points out non-Anglo-Saxon inferiority, citing that an illiteracy test will have the greatest effect on “undesirable immigrants” such as “Italians, Russians, Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, and Asiatics.” Lodge further asserts that these undesirable immigrants provide no social or economic benefit to the United States — rather, he says, they constitute the slum population, and that these “unassimilable” immigrants “breed” out the higher moral and intellectual qualities of the pure Anglo-Saxon race and thus create a weaker and more socially and politically vulnerable America. Lodge’s earnest tone and strong, nationalistic diction further emphasize not only his support of a monocultural melting pot, but also his belief that a trans-national America would inhibit the pure American qualities of Anglo-Saxons.
On the other hand, Bourne has a more cosmopolitan conception of America, arguing that immigrants who retain their diverse traditions and practices demonstrate the potential strength of American culture. Almost in direct contrast to Lodge’s claim that immigrants lessen the moral and intellectual characters of the Anglo-Saxon race, Bourne claims that immigrants “[cooperate] to the greater glory or benefit, not only of themselves, but of all the native ‘Americanism’ around them.” In this sense, Bourne is arguing that rather than inhibiting American qualities, immigrants enhance them. Moreover, Bourne disagrees with Lodge’s conception of a monocultural melting pot. He asserts that it is not ”… the Jew who sticks proudly to the faith of his father and boasts of that venerable culture” who is dangerous to America (as Lodge certainly suggests), but rather “the Jew who has lost the Jewish fire and [becomes] a mere elementary, grasping animal.” Therefore, unlike Lodge who claims that unassimilable immigrants are undesirable, Bourne suggests that assimilable immigrants end up having no originality or uniqueness to add to American society. Bourne claims that the “…life of personality” in immigrants is an ideal that is integral to America’s future “social good,” highlighting how American society relies in part on cultural diversity. Overall, while Henry Cabot Lodge argues that inferior races and unassimilable immigrants weaken the pure American qualities of superior Anglo-Saxons, Randolph Bourne’s more cosmopolitan conception of America exemplifies the potential strength of American culture if cultural diversity is retained.
Bibliography
Bourne, Randolph S. “Trans-National America.” In American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions, edited by Nicholas Lemann, 48–67. New York, NY: Library of America, 2020. Previously published in The Atlantic Monthly, July 1916.
Lodge, Henry Cabot. “Speech in the Senate on Immigration.” Speech, March 16, 1896. In American Democracy: 21 Historic Answers to 5 Urgent Questions, edited by Nicholas Lemann, 28–47. New York, NY: Library of America, 2020.
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