Ford's fourth chapter opens with a specific political dispute: the effort by Jewish organizations to change the classification of Jewish identity in the U.S. Census from a racial/national category to a religious one. In the early 20th century, U.S. immigration records classified Jewish immigrants as belonging to the Hebrew race — a classification that documented the significant scale of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe. Ford claimed that Simon Wolf, a prominent Washington Jewish leader, and other officials of the American Jewish Committee had successfully lobbied the Census Bureau and the Bureau of Immigration to reclassify Jews from a racial/national category to a religious category, which had the effect of removing Jewish immigration from the statistics that tracked the national origins of new immigrants.
Ford also cited the role of Daniel Guggenheim and Julian Mack — both prominent figures in American Jewish civic life — in lobbying Congress on immigration classification issues. Ford's argument was that the effort to classify Jews as a religion rather than a national group was politically motivated: it served Jewish interests to be classified as a religion (which would make any restriction on Jewish immigration analogous to religious discrimination) rather than as a nationality (which would make Jewish immigration subject to the national-origin quota system that Congress was then debating and would eventually enact as the Immigration Act of 1924). Ford saw this classification dispute as an example of Jewish political organization operating in the specifically Jewish interest while presenting itself as a matter of principle.
Ford supported his argument by quoting extensively from Jewish sources. He cited Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, from 'Der Judenstaat' (The Jewish State, 1896): 'The Jewish question is not a social question and not a religious question, even though it may sometimes take these and other forms. It is a national question which can only be solved by making it a political world question.' Ford used this quote to argue that the most prominent Jewish nationalist thinker had himself defined Jewish identity as a national identity — the same definition Ford was using.
Ford also cited Moses Hess, the 19th-century Jewish socialist and Zionist precursor, who had written in 'Rome and Jerusalem' (1862): 'Jewish noses cannot be reformed, and the black, wavy hair of the Jews will not turn into blond hair through baptism or conversion, nor can its distinguishing racial characteristics be removed by any sort of education. The Jewish race is a primary race that has maintained itself in complete purity throughout all the centuries despite the most varied influences of climate.' Ford cited this not as his own view of Jews but as evidence that prominent Jewish writers themselves had articulated a racial definition of Jewish identity.
Ford also cited Israel Friedlaender, a professor at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who had written: 'The dispersion of the Jews had nothing to do with the loss of nationhood. The Jews remained a nation even in the diaspora. They maintained their language, their customs, their culture, their solidarity. The synagogue was not merely a house of worship. It was the parliament of an exiled people.' And Rabbi Isaac Lesher (also spelled Leeser), who had written: 'The Jews are a people — one people — and nothing shall make us otherwise.' Ford presented this accumulation of quotes from Jewish authorities as evidence that his framing of Jewish identity as national rather than purely religious was not his invention but a position with deep roots in Jewish thought itself.