Theodore Dreiser, the novelist, believes the Jews should be willing to occupy a country of their own, he wrote in answer to charges of anti-Semitism made by Hutchins Hapgood, author of “The Spirit of the Ghetto.”
The man who wrote “An American Tragedy” also is convinced that the Jews “are money-minded, very pagan, very sharp in practice and usually, insofar as the rest is concerned, they have the single objective of plenty of money, by means of which they build a fairly material surrounding.”
In addition, the novelist has heard that “the profession of the law is today seriously considering, in such States as Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Oregon, limiting the number of Jewish lawyers.”
“The Jews lack, if I read the Pennsylvania Bar Association correctly, the fine integrity which at least is endorsed and, to a degree, followed by the lawyers of other nationalities,” Dreiser explains.
An interchange of letters, published in the latest issue of the Nation, reveals that Dreiser thinks an international conference would be a big help to Jews, “anti-Semitism being what it is today, culture and liberality to the contrary notwithstanding.”
“They should now take steps to assemble and consider their State and their future,” the novelist wrote under date of December 28, 1933. “There are lands as well as nations . . . which should be willing and able to furnish them forth not only with an entirely adequate country but with the loans and equipment necessary to start them upon an independent and, as I see it, certain to be successful and even glorious career as a nation.
“But not wanting that, some anti-nationalistic if not anti-social feeling or mood animating them, why not a program of race or nation blending here in America, the type or kind of race or nation blending that has been in progress here since America was founded among the English, French, Germans, Italians, Poles, Hungarians, Russians, Swedes, Chinese and others?
“As Shaw urged only recently, why not every Jewish male forced to marry a Gentile female, and every Jewish female a Gentile male?”
In answering one of Dreiser’s letters, that dated October 10, 1933, Hapgood sums up his impressions of it as follows:
“This letter of yours,” he declares, “is a clear expression not only of anti-Semitism but of intense nationalism in general. If you hadn’t signed the letter I might have thought that it was written by a member of the Ku Klux Klan or a representative of Hitler.”
Dreiser denied exaggerating the number of Jews in the United States.
“It is true that the census for 1927 shows the total Jewish population in the United States to be 4,288,000 as against a total population of 118,000,000, but the accuracy of this can certainly be a question,” the novelist stated, “particularly in the face of the fact that so many Jews deliberately pass as Americans, using American names and, to a degree, this would be further qualified because of the number of half-Jews and quarter-Jews who, none the less, because of their Jewish blood, adhere racially and religiously with Jewry.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
