IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION

NATIVISM: JOHN HIGHAM, STRANGERS IN THE LAND

In 1924, in the hysteria following World War I, the United States took steps to dramatically reduce immigration. In Strangers in the Land, John Higham discusses the story of how this came about. He also discusses the experience of the immigrants. And his starting point is the concept of nativism.

I. THE TERM "NATIVISM"

A) ORIGIN OF THE TERM

On p. 4 Higham says that the term was first coined about 1840. It was coined by the critics of the anti-foreign parties that arose in New York after 1835, and evolved into the Know-Nothing agitation of the 1850s. The members of these parties, themselves, at first called their organizations "Native American parties," and then the "American Party." They called their philosophy "Americanism." They said they were for "the principle of nationality." They were for the native born white Americans, as opposed to foreigners and immigrants.

B) DEFINITION

According to Higham, page 4, these Americanists feared that "some influence originating from abroad threatened the life of the nation from within."

He then goes on to say that nativism should be defined as "intense opposition to an internal minority on the ground of its foreign (i.e., "un-American) connections." And he explains that typically someone sees or suspects a failure of assimilation, and then fears disloyalty on the part of some foreign or allegedly foreign group. In some sense, then, the "Other" is foreign, subversive, and not completely loyal. He has mixed or divided loyalties. Nativism also involves a conception of what is "un-American." Fear and hostility to foreigners in general is called xenopbobia. In the 1840s and 1850s there was intense Protestant hostility to the Irish Catholics because they would not surrender their Catholicism. Some states wanted to ban parochial schools. The native-born Protestant Americans expected immigrants to assimilate. In their mind, to be a full, true American "meant" to be a Protestant. Therefore Catholics and Jews and the Eastern Orthodox people, in order to become fully assimilated Americans, were expected to convert. But they would not. Thus, ethnic groups that continued to speak their languages (Germans, Italians, Poles) or publish foreign language newspapers or refuse to convert were suspected of being guilty of defective, incomplete assimilation.
 
 

II. SHIFT IN THE SOURCES: OLD STOCK VERSUS NEW STOCK

Before the Civil War most of the European immigrants had come from northern Europe, especially Britain, Ireland, Scandinavia and Germany. Between 1820 and 1860 some 5 million European immigrant shad come to the US. Between 1860 and 1900 an additional 13.5 million immigrants arrived. After 1885 most of the immigrants were from southern Europe (Italy) and eastern Europe (Hungary, Slovakia, the Czechs, Poland, Russia, the Ukraine, Greece, etc.). This was also when the eastern European Jews came.

From 1900 to 1930 an additional 19 million immigrants came to the US. In fact, in 1905, 1906, 1907, 1910, 1913 and 1914, one million immigrants came to the US each year.

American employers wanted the immigrants as a cheap labor supply. That did not mean, however, that there was not prejudice against them or contempt and disdain and discrimination. Just because the employers were willing to USE them did not mean that employers respected them or treated them well. Immigrant labor was convenient and advantageous. Employers had an ulterior motive for "welcoming" the immigrants. Over time there was a shift in the source of immigration. The immigration from northern Europe did not just stop all of a sudden. Some of it always continued. Rather the percentage of southern and eastern Europeans increased over time relative to the percentage of northern European immigrants, especially after 1880 and even more so after 1890. On page 158 John Higham (Strangers in the Land) states that between the Spanish-American War of 1898 and World War I the new immigration from southern and eastern Europe was 3 and a half times that of the old immigration from northern Europe.

Between June 1920 and June 1921 , 800,000 immigrants came to the US. Some 65% were from southern and eastern Europe. However by 1919 the US was in a terrible recession. Unemployment reached 20 percent of the labor force, with 5.7 million people unemployed. Some 20,000 businesses went bankrupt. In the summer of 1919 there were 25 race riots, precipitated in large part by competition between black and white workers for jobs, housing and access to community resources. In this difficult climate, there was a sharp demand to restrict immigration, because the immigrants were competing for the scarce pool of jobs. Many people felt that it made no sense to bring hundreds of thousands of new people into the country when there weren't even enough jobs for the people who were here already, and those who had been born here. Even the American Federation of Labor supported a temporary halt to immigration in order to protect the interests of working people and unemployed people who wanted to work but had no jobs.

III. IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION: THREE PHASES

The laws to restrict immigration passed through three phases.

A). EMERGENCY IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1921

The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 limited new arrivals each year to 3% of the foreign-born persons of any nationality as shown by the 1910 Census. It also established a cap or maximum of about 357,000 immigrants per year. This policy was to last for two years.

B). IMMIGRATION ACT OF 1924

The Immigration Act of 1924 revised this to 2% of the foreign-born persons of any nationality as shown by the 1890 Census. It also allowed for a limit of about 150,000 persons of European ancestry. On p. 319 Higham reports that the effect of this revision of 1924 would be to cut the Italian quota from 42,000 per year to 4,000. It would reduce the Polish quota from 31,000 to 6,000. It would reduce the Greek quota from 3,000 to 100. On p. 322 he reports that the effect of the new devices for restricting immigration would be to admit about 6 or 7 times as many immigrants from northwest Europe as from southern and eastern Europe. Other scholars point out that the effect was to assign about 85% of the total to northwest Europe.(Tindall, America: A Narrative History, p. 1029).
 
 

THE NATIONAL ORIGINS FORMULA (1929)

However John Trevor and Senator David Reed of PA realized that most Americans in 1920 (the time of the last Census) were of northern European ancestry. If each nationality was given a quota on the basis of its percentage of the white population in 1920, this would achieve just about the same result as using the 1890 Census. This national origins formula would also seem less discriminatory than just picking 1890 out of the air. The Immigration Act of 1924 provided that a thorough statistical study should be done to determine exactly how many European-Americans had come from which country. And after 1927, for purposes of immigration, each nationality would be limited to its percentage of the white US population as of 1920. And as of 1927, a quota of 150,000 was to be imposed. However because of opposition, the new provisions were implemented in 1929 rather than 1927. Furthermore, immigrants would have to get a visa from a US consul overseas, first, before they could come to the US. By limiting the number of immigration visas that were issued, the US could restrict immigration at the source rather than turning people away at Ellis island. However there were as yet no restrictions on immigration from Canada and Latin America. Therefore, when this was added, the actual number of immigrants in the late Twenties was 287,000 per year. But this was quite a reduction from the 1 million immigrants in 1907 and the 800,000 who came between June 1920 and June 1921.

IV. VIOLENCE AND DISCRIMINATION AGAINST ITALIANS AND JEWS

ITALIANS

Next I want to say more about nativism and especially the animosity toward the Italians and Jews. On page 160 John Higham says explicitly that in the period after 1880 the Italians and Jews seem to have suffered the most resentment from the nativists. In the 1840s, 50s and 60s it had been the Irish. But after 1880-1890 nativism found new targets. On page 90 Higham describes the murder of six Italian workers in Colorado in 1895. They had been accused of involvement in the death of an American saloonkeeper. In 1896 a mob dragged three Italians from a jail in a small town in Louisiana and hanged them. In 1891 the superintendent of police in New Orleans was murdered while investigating an organization called the Black Hand, and which some called the Mafia. The local Sicilian immigrant population was suspected. There were arrests, but the jury did not convict the men accused of the murder. While officials stood idly by, a mob broke into the jail and dragged out 11 Italian suspects, and lynched them. The government of Italy protested this unlawful attack against Italian nationals, and recalled the Italian ambassador to the United States. There was a great deal of tension between the US and Italy at that time over the incident. In April 1892 the US paid an indemnity of $25,000 to the Italian government on behalf of the families of the victims.

On p. 264-265 he describes the three-day riot that occurred in West Frankfort, Illinois, beginning on August 5, 1920. Many Italians worked as miners in that area, and there had also been some bank robberies, popularly attributed to the Black Hand. Two boys had also been kidnapped. When their bodies were found, foreigners and especially the Italians were blamed. Thereafter mobs surged through the streets, and foreigners of all descriptions were set upon and beaten on sight. The mob invaded the Italian district of the town, grabbed residents from their homes, beat and stoned them, and burned their homes. They were intent on driving all foreigners out of town. This pillaging went on three days, and 500 state troops were called in.

On p. 184 Higham describes another incident in southern Illinois in 1914. A street brawl resulted in the death of one Italian and two native Americans. An Italian involved in the brawl was then lynched. In the same year, in another Illinois mining town, a mob suspected an Italian of complicity in an attempt to assassinate a mine superintendent. The mob dragged him from jail and hanged him.

One of the problems with Italians in the South was that they did not seem to understand the Southern code of white supremacy, the so-called "racial etiquette" of the South. Italian laborers worked in the sugarcane fields, alongside the blacks. White Southerners considered this a black man's job. And the Italians fraternized with blacks. This violated the taboos of the white supremacist South. In the town of Tallulah, Louisiana in the 1890s 5 Sicilian storekeepers dealt mostly with black customers, and treated them almost as equals. The local whites were disturbed by this. In 1899 a quarrel over a goat led to the lynching of all 5 of the Sicilians. Another locality in Louisiana tried to bar the Italian children from attending the segregated white schools

The Sacco-Vanzetti trial of 1920 also illustrated bigotry against Italians. Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were accused of the murder of a paymaster in Massachusetts. There was no evidence of their guilt, but they were draft evaders and had radical politics and were Italians. The judge referred to them as "anarchist bastards." They were convicted of murder, and electrocuted in 1927 despite worldwide protest. It is the verdict of history that they were tried, convicted and put to death more for their identity (Italian, "radical") than for any evidence of any crime that they supposedly had committed. (See America Past and Present, Robert Divine at al, Volume II, fourth edition, p. 773).

THE JEWS

On p. 92 Higham describes violence against the Jews. In Mississippi, in 1893, during the Depression of 1893, nightriders burned dozens of Jewish farmhouses belonging to Jewish landlords, and Jewish businessmen in Louisiana were intimidated. In a milltown in New Jersey in 1891 500 workers at a glass works went on a rampage because management hired 14 young Russian Jews. Three days of rioting followed and Jewish residents had to flee the area. (Highan's footnote identifies the source as the Phila. Public Ledger, but does not give the name of the New Jersey milltown. The lynching of Leo Frank, a Jew in Georgia in 1916, was one of the most famous cases of violence against Jews. More common at the turn of the century was the practice of restrictive covenants, whereby properties would not be sold or rented to Jews.
 
 

IV. FACTORS CONTRIBUTING TO THE SUCCESS OF IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION

Higham makes the point that there was a good deal of resistance to immigration restriction from the 1790s to the 1880s, but over time the tide turned. One important reason for this was the rise of theories about the Anglo-Saxon and Nordic race, which I will discuss shortly. 1. World War I and anti-German sentiment played a role. 2. The Bolshevik Revolution and fear of foreign radicalism and communism played a role. I discussed both of these last time.

3. CHANGING ATTITUDE OF THE SOUTH AND WEST

However there was also a dramatic shift in the attitude of the South and the West, which previously had opposed restriction. Along with this, especially in the 1920s, there was a re-emergence of Protestant fundamentalism.

In 1898 Lodge tried to push a literacy test bill through Congress as a means to restrict immigration. Southern Senators voted against it 15-3. However in the first decade of the twentieth century Southern attitudes hardened. Senators like Oscar Underwood of Alabama began to take the view that one race problem in America was bad enough without further endangering white supremacy through immigration. Increasingly the WASPs of the South took the view that Anglo-Saxons were the true white people, and other European peoples were somehow less white. By 1912, when the Congress voted on a literacy test for immigrants, Southern Senators voted for it 16-1 (Higham, p. 167). Southern Congressmen in the House of Representatives voted for it 68-5. Likewise, by 1912, not a single member of Congress from the 8 westernmost states (48 contiguous states) voted against the literacy test. Once the South and the West joined forces with New England Yankee patricians like Henry Cabot Lodge, immigration restriction became a very real possibility.

4. ECONOMICS: THE POST-WAR RECESSION

Another factor was economic, namely the post-war recession. In 1919 the economy began to slip into recession as the government cancelled contracts for war production and Allied orders ended. The downturn lasted into 1921. During that time 20,000 businesses failed and 5,750,000 were unemployed. During World War I almost half of American workers had enjoyed an 8 hour day. Now workers lost it, and 10 and 12 hour work days returned. In these dire times the American Federation of Labor supported a two-year suspension of immigration. American-born workers resented the influx of immigrants and felt they were taking scarce jobs and undercutting their wages. One by one the allies of the immigrants were deserting them. Business opinion was divided.
 

V. A FORM OF RACISM:THEORIES OF THE ANGLO-SAXON AND NORDIC RACE

We also need to look at the ideological factors, namely the role played by so-called intellectuals. They propounded this Anglo-Saxonism or Nordic race theory.

Before World War I the Anglo-Saxonists believed that Anglo-Saxons possessed a special gift for orderly self-government. They and the Teutonic peoples of Germany and northern Europe supposedly had a special gift for liberty. In contrast, other European peoples were unruly and prone either to despotism or subjection to despotism. The other Europeans were either despotic tyrants, like the Russians, or the "beaten members of beaten races," like the Poles, Checks, Slovaks and Hungarians. Writers at the turn of the century were commenting upon anarchy as a blood disease (Higham, p. 138) and "liberty-loving Anglo-Saxons beset by socialistic foreigners" (Higham, p. 139)

In 1890 James Hosmer wrote a constitutional history of the Anglo-Saxon race, and wrote of immigration diluting Anglo-Saxon blood (Higham, p. 139). A few years earlier Reverend Theodore Munger likewise portrayed the problem of foreign radicalism and the violence of Haymarket as a physiological problem (Higham, p. 138). Munger explained that immigration must be restricted so that the old stock would remain strong and not degenerate through intermixture with lesser strains (Higham, p. 138).

Nathaniel Shaler, dean of the Lawrence Scientific School at Harvard, held that American democracy rested upon the foundation of English racial heritage (Higham, p. 141). This reflected the view that culture was racial or resulted from biology. Shaler believed the immigrants, as peasants, lacked the English or Anglo-Saxon inborn instinct for freedom (Higham, p. 141). In 1894, however, Shaler discovered a distinction between the older immigrants from northern Europe and the new immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. He concluded that these people were constitutionally or biologically or innately incapable of appreciating Anglo-Saxon liberty and being assimilated. This spread the image of the new immigrants as unassimilable aliens. No matter what you did with them, their racial background prohibited them from becoming like the Anglo-Saxons.

Francis Walker, president of MIT, added a new idea to Anglo-Saxonism in 1891 ("The Tide of Economic Thought" Publications of the American Economic Assoc.). He began with Darwin's idea of the survival of the fittest and the struggle for survival. He said that the fittest Europeans made it in Europe and stayed there. Now the Europeans who were least fit, and couldn't make it in Europe, were coming to America. He described them as "beaten men from beaten races." Further, he developed the birth rate hypothesis. He noted a decline in the birth rate of native born Americans relative to immigrants. He suggested that the immigrants lowered the standard of living by working for cheaper wages. As the native-born Americans had to compete with the immigrants, they seemingly preferred to reduce the size of their families rather than to endure a lower standard of living with many children. This was a choice of quality over quantity. But in having fewer children the immigrants would swamp the Anglo-Saxons (Higham, p. 142-143).

Other people took this and ran with it. Now the immigrants began to be portrayed as a positive threat to the well-being of the Anglo-Saxons. Edward Ross (Higham, p. 147) suggested in 1901 that if immigration continued unabated, and the Anglo-Saxons produced fewer children while the immigrants poured in and had more children, the Anglo-Saxons would be committing race suicide. In time the immigrants would out-produce the Anglo-Saxons. This was simplified and popularized by Theodore Roosevelt, who warned American women against abortion because it was "race suicide." From 1905-1909 general magazines published more than 35 articles on the topic of the declining birth rate of the Anglo-Saxons and race suicide.

In the 1900s Americans learned of Mendel's discoveries about genetics. Thus reinforced the idea that traits are inherited and cannot be changed.

In 1899 William Ripley published The Races of Europe (Higham, p. 154). Ripley was an economist who taught at MIT and Columbia. He wrote that in Western Europe there were three races. Each could be distinguished by its physical characteristics. First, there was the northern race, which he called Teutonic. It was tall, blond and long-headed. Second, there was the Alpine race. It lived in a central zone in the region of Austria and the Alps. They were stocky and round-headed. Third, there was the southern or Mediterranean race. It was slender, dark and long-headed. Italians and Spaniards were of this southern or Mediterranean race. Of course to the east lived the Slavs. The importance of this tripartite analysis was that it divided the old Teutonic, northern Europeans from the Mediterranean southern Europeans. This conveniently divided the old stock immigrants from the new stock immigrants. Ripley also argued that when races mix, the combination may cause latent genes to be strengthened and there can be a throwback to more primitive types. This was called reversion. Thus, per Ripley, immigration and admixture threatened to damage the Anglo-Saxons through reversion. The problems and disorders in American society were the result of this reversion taking place.(Higham, p. 155).

The greatest publicist of the Anglo-Saxon race theories was Madison Grant, from an old New York family. In 1916 he published The Passing of the Great Race. He took up where Ripley had left off.. Grant believed that admixture in America was creating reversion, and producing a more ancient, lower type. Admixture produced a lowest common denominator and would drag the Anglo-Saxons down unless they awoke to the threat. Grant insisted that culture was racially determined. He said that the Alpines had always been a peasant people, and the cross between any one of the three European races and a Jew produces a Jew. He said that the Mediterraneans did have artistic and musical abilities, but the Nordic race of the north constituted the "white man par excellance." (Higham, p. 155-156). Grant used the term Nordic as Ripley had used Teutonic, following the example of the French scientist Joseph Deniker. Higham contends (p. 272) that it was Grant more than anyone else who in the Teens and Twenties taught Americans to think in terms of three European races, the Nordic, Alpine and Mediterranean. And it was Grant who popularized the concept in America of a Nordic race, who taught Americans to identify themselves as Nordic, and taught them that any mixture of the Nordic with the others was "mongrelization." And the KKK took up his theories and it too adopted the term "mongrelization" to refer to race-mixing.

During World War I it became necessary to adjust the Teutonic and Nordic theory to separate the Anglo-Saxons from the Germans, since America was at war with non eother than Teutonic, Nordic Germany. But Grant and the Anglo-saxonists were not to be deterred by inconvenient facts. In 1921 and 1923 Grant came out with new editions of his book. It sold 16,000 copies at that time, and was quite influential (Higham, p. 271). In 1916 Grant's book had not made much of a splash. But in the Twenties his ideas were reflected everywhere. His ideas were disseminated widely. although often the public did not realize he was the author of these views. Grant was a leading champion of the immigration restriction acts of 1921 and 1924.

Grant's chief disciple was Lothrop Stoddard. In 1920 he published the Rising Tide of Color. He warned that the yellow and brown races would overwhelm the white world. With Grant, he agreed that the Nordic race was the salvation of the white race, and the immigration of so-called inferior white races would mongrelize the Nordics.

These authors urged the necessity of preserving the superiority of the old Anglo-Saxon stock over the foreigners, and their attitude was "America for the Americans." Of course, to them, the true Americans were the Anglo-Saxons.

Kenneth Roberts preached much the same line, warning in 1922 (Why Europe Leaves Home) and the years before that the continuing influx of Mediterranean and Alpine and Semitic immigrants would produce a hybrid race of useless people (Higham, p. 273). He wrote for the Saturday Evening Post.

Robert Yerkes, a distinguished scientist, was president of the American Psychological Assoc. During World War I he had assisted the Army in conducting IQ tests for soldiers. Yerkes concluded that northern Europeans scored almost as high as native-born whites, while the Latins and Slavs scored lower. Negroes also scored lower. To its credit, the Army was skeptical of the results and abandoned these tests as soon as the war ended. But about 1920 this data was presented as scientific proof of the intellectual inferiority of the southern and eastern Europeans (Higham, p. 275). In 1925 the College Entrance Examination Board began using a version of these tests, called the Scholastic Aptitude Test, or SAT, to predict the performance of applicants to college.

Carl Brigham reinforced Yerkes' view in 1923 in his book entitled A Study of American Intelligence. He too proclaimed the intellectual superiority of the Nordic race to the Alpines, Mediterraneans and Negroes. (Higham, p. 276).

In the early twenties the Nordic race theory would reach the point of absurdity when Henry Fairfield Osborn tried to show that the Italian Christopher Columbus had actually been a Nordic.

THEORY AS JUSTIFICATION

These theories provided the so-called intellectual underpinnings, really the ideological justification for the immigration restriction movement. These theories helped to articulate how the new immigrants were different and why they were a danger and why therefore it was justified to exclude them. in this sense they played an important part in what happened. This was in many ways a home-grown, American form of racism. But it made invidious distinctions between European groups as well as against blacks, Latin Americans and Asians.

It is a chapter of the immigrant experience that too often is ignored, neglected and swept under the rug. It is also a part of our history that tells us something about how far we have had to come to be one nation with justice for all. It helps to show that one of the themes of American history has in fact been the struggle to expand and extend the original narrow definition of who is an American, and who is included in the political community, to include groups who were originally left out. This is the story of inclusion.

Also, Prohibition (January 1920), Scopes Monkey Trial (Tennessee, 1925), Alfred Smith candidacy (1928: an Irish-German Catholic).