Digest of Public Opinion on Jewish Matters

[The purpose of the Digest is informative. Preference is given to papers not generally accessible to our readers. Quotation does not indicate approval.-Editor.]

The opinion that the efforts now being put forth by Albert Johnson of Washington, chairman of the House Committee on immigration, to bring about further immigration restriction, are not receiving the entire measure of support accorded his early activities in this line, is voiced by the “Jewish Independent” of Cleveland, which writes (April 8):

“In Cleveland, for instance, the Plain Dealer, long an ardent booster of restrictive policies in immigration, now editorially suggests that the present law remain unaltered.

” ‘In the main,’ says the Plain Dealer, ‘the law has worked satisfactorily, and has accomplished the ends for which it was designed. There seems now to be little occasion for making it either more stringent, as its author suggests, or less so as, many employers of unskilled labor propose. Reports from Europe indicate that potential emigrants have their eye focused no longer upon the United States but upon Canada and the Argentine. And whereas we are placing obstacles in the path of those who would come, those countries are making inducements which the Southern Europeans, particularly, regard as attractive. The lure of new countries with the promise of free land, and of public aid for settlers, looms larger in the eye of the European wishing to emigrate than the high wages in American mills.’

“Newspapers of large cities and Congressmen of Districts in which large cities are located do not reflect the attitude of the citizenry about them when they uphold a measure which in addition to imposing a degree of restriction which is entirely unreasonable and unwarranted, has subverted the American tradition of racial equality by its pro-Nordic discriminatory provisions and has resulted in the cruel separation of husbands and wives and of parents and children.”

URGES FORD TO FACE “JEWISH ISSUE” HE PROVOKED

Ford should face the Jewish issue, which his paper has aroused, despite the technical limitations in this respect imposed on the suit by the rulings of the court, declares the Grand Forks (N. D.) “Herald” of March 28, which goes on to say :

“The (Ford) attorneys are doubtless taking the correct legal attitude for the safeguarding of their client’s interests in the case now at issue, and their attitude is therefore entirely logical. But how about that of Mr. Ford?

“Mr. Ford, through the magazine which he owns and controls, has made from time to time, very sweeping attacks on the race of which Mr. Sapiro is a member. That magazine, however, has a limited circulation and Mr. Ford’s charges have therefore been read in their entirety by a comparatively small number of people. The present triall, on the other hand is front page material, which is being covered at length in every important newspaper in the country.

“So if Mr. Ford is sincerely convinced of the justice of these charges made through his personal organ it would seem that he should be glad of the opportunity thus offered to him to give these charges, and any corroborative evidence which he may have to support them, the widest publicity, before the bar of public opinion, where he originally filed them.”

The prediction that Sapiro will win his libel suit against Henry Ford is made by the Cedar Falls (La.) “Record” of March 25. The paper thinks that the attorneys for the defense “will have little difficulty in proving that Sapiro was domineering in his contacts and that it was this characteristic that caused his elimination from one cooperative association after another.”

However, the “Record” coneludes: “It is more than likely that the charge that Sapiro has been manipulating a Jewish conspiracy to control agriculture will fall flat permitting Sapiro to win a technical victory. Sapiro is a brilliant and fearless lawyer. He has the advantage over Senator Reed, Ford’s attorney, in that he has had intimate personal knowledge of and contact with the farmers’ cooperative movement.”

The Atchison (Kansas) “Globe” of March 27 endorses the sentiments of the Jewell (Kansas) “Republican,” which declared:

“We do not have much sympathy with Henry Ford in the present case against him for libel. His long abuse of the Jews seems unaccountable. Why should a man like Ford feel called upon to slander a whole race of people? Ford’s littleness in this detracts from his bigness in other respects.”

A number of papers satyrize about Mr. Ford’s contention that he is not aware of what goes into his own paper, the “Dearborn Independent.”

Thus, the Waterville (Me.) “Sentinel” of April 2, remarks:

“If the defense has its way in the Sapiro trial it will prove that Henry Ford was not even a paid subscriber to the ‘Dearborn Independence,”

Greensboro (N. C.) “News” (March 28) : “The Sapiro-Ford trial, having already established the fact that Henry Ford did not and does not write ‘Henry Ford’s Own Page,’ has now progressed another step. It appears that Mr. Ford not only does not write his own page but does not read his own magazine.”

Webster City (La.) “Freeman-Journal” (March 24) : “The Freeman-Journal heard a Chautauqua speaker declare here in Webster City that he always read everything Henry Ford wrote, as it was usually full of meat and information. Perhaps he didn’t know that Henry never wrote the things credited to him and that he wasn’t entitled to the honor of authorship of the many good articles that appeared in his newspaper magazine.”

Fort Wayne (Ind.) “Journal-Gazette” (March 28): “Those who have read Henry Ford’s ‘Dearborn Independent’ with anything like regular practice for any length of time and have been following the testimony in the Sapiro libel suit for a million dollars in damages will get their own notions of Mr. Ford as the publisher of an organ of public opinion.”