Old Fears New Foes (3/5): An Economic Threat
Immigrant Radicals Take American jobs
Americans worried about the biological quality of prospective immigrants during the 1920’s. These concerns resulted in the most restrictive Immigration Act ever enacted. Americans came to fear “new immigrants” because they hailed from different places than previous migrants.
We argue that pre-existing anxieties about certain immigrants and not concerns about their biological worth made the passing of this Act possible. Among these was the economic threat which Italian immigrants posed.
Taking American Jobs?
These new immigrants were often seen as inferior because they readily took jobs which paid little, required low skills, and were unappealing to Americans. Their willingness to accept low wages undercut the bargaining power of other workers who would have to settle for the same mediocre salary.
Thus, American workers felt threatened by the constant influx of new immigrants. This fear stemmed from the effects of Chinese labor was perceived to have had on the American economy during the late 19th century. Henry George, an American journalist, claimed that “in every case in which Chinese comes into fair competition with white labor the whites must either retire from the field or come down to the Chinese standard of living” (1869).
The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act was passed to address those issues. Similarly, Italians’ eagerness to take up any job made them into the “Chinese of Europe” (Connelly, 2008). As a result, even if new immigrants were willing to work; they were not wholly desirable (Spiro, 2009).
Italians were compared to the Chinese, as they were both frugal and willing to work for low wages (Mayo-Smith, R. 1888). They took menial stigmatized jobs for pitiful wages including working on railroads, sand mines, and others with poor and rough conditions (Mayo-Smith, 1888; LaGumina, 1973; Vellon, 2018; Zenderland, 2001; Cinotto, 2013).
Italians were seen as “docile, ignorant, and undedicated” (LaGumina, 2018). They had cheap and “simple” diets (Mayo-Smith, 1888). The jobs they took and the lives they lived appalled American observers. Clarence Davenport concluded they lack “self-reliance, initial resourcefulness nor self-sufficing individualism that necessarily marks the pioneer farmer” (Davenport, 1911). Grant, another scientist, described Italians as “uneducated, unskilled, and illiterate peasants” (Spiro, 2009). Likewise Woodrow Wilson (D-New Jersey) described new immigrants as having “neither skill nor energy nor any initiative of quick intelligence” (Spiro, 2009).
Dr. Sweeney, a physician, said Italians were a “degenerate horde so depraved they hardly belong to our species” (Messina, 2010).
The alleged inferiority of Italians was related to how they obtained jobs in the first place. Many of them were grandfathered into a job (padroni), and consequently could be exploited (LaGumina, 2018).
The manner in which they obtained jobs was not their only questionable practice. On November 12, 1875 The New York Times alleged Italians were selling their children into slavery (LaGumina, 1973). Italians were having an impact on the job market.
Businesses Turn Against Cheap Labor
At the turn of the 20th-century, many businesses which previously desired cheap labor and opposed restricting immigration, came to see new immigrants as an economic threat.
This change occurred when low-skilled workers started to organize and possibly radicalize each other (Okrent, 2019). The Russian Revolution of 1917 had stoked fears of revolution and the rise of Communism increased nervousness surrounding radicals.
At the time, many saw Italians as “natural born gangsters but also as anarchists and terrorists,” particularly during the Red Scare of 1919–20 (Cinotto, 2013). This resonated with the testimony of the American consul in Florence, Italy, who gave testimony that emigrants were riddled with socialist ideas and therefore the only way “to keep subversives out of the United States” was to bar them altogether (Ngai, 2014).
The economic concerns were compounded when the First World War ended. About four million soldiers returned and were now unemployed (Spiro, 2009; Allerfeldt, 2010). Concerns about economic productivity were an important aspect of restricting immigration. For Coolidge, “it would be suicidal for us to let down the bars for the inflowing of cheap manhood….There is no room either for cheap men or cheap goods” (Coolidge, 1912). In short, Italians took low paying jobs, lived in conditions others found appalling, and became a threat to both workers and employers.
We argue that pre-existing anxieties about certain immigrants and not concerns about their biological worth made the passing of the 1924 Act possible. Just seven years prior, 1917, a bill establishing a literacy requirement was vetoed by the sitting president three times (Spiro, 2009). Congress did not override the veto despite these bills passing with overwhelming support until the American Federation of Labor supported said restrictions (Spiro, 2009).
While the 1917 bill was meant to allay fears about new immigrants, most of its advocates did not explicitly discuss how it affected Southern Europeans (Ngai, 2014; Okren, 2019). Presumably, they avoided this discussion because it could alienate some supporters. If the significant concern about new migrants was their biology, then this aspect would have been emphasized rather understated. Likewise, the several restrictions to exclude “lunatics,” and those with mental or physical defects had to do with these people’s “ability to earn a living” (Zenderland, 2001), rather than a fear of their poisoning bloodlines.
The fact that the concerns about Chinese workers and Italian workers were similar, suggests that these concerns were not biological but of a different nature. In fact, Italians were not always seen to be bad. During the late 19th century, some, like US Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R-Massachusetts), found Italians to be “sober and industrious” (LaGumina, 2018).
This difference in perception can be attributed to economic and demographic changes rather than Italian’s biological traits. American economic anxieties can best explain the disgust about how Italians lived, and their willingness to take low paying jobs.
Albert Johnson authored the Johnson-Reed Act. He was first elected by “railing against radicals, city slickers” and Japanese immigrants (Spiro, 2009). Johnson long argued that importing laborers took jobs away from Americans which resonated strongly with Southern whites (Allerfeldt, 2010).
While the 1924 Act borrows language from the eugenicists which was used to justify pre-existing anxieties about immigrants. This 1924 Act was only enacted once the American Federation of Labor supported such restrictions.
In this piece we have seen that economic anxieties are key to understanding the passage of the Johnson-Reed Act. We have previously shown that Americans were also anxious about assimilating new immigrants partly because many of them sought to return to their home countries and partly because they were different.
Authors: Christian Orlic & Lucas Heili
This article is based on a paper written by Christian Orlic for one of his graduate degrees.
You can read Part I here: Old Fears New Foes
You can read Part II here: Immigrants Do Not Assimilate
You can read a brief history of Immigrations before 1924: Restricting Undesirable Immigrants
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to express their gratitude to Lillian Manansala. Lillian orgsanised a few meetinhgs via Zoom for the colleages in this class to discuss ideas, arguments, and approaches to our research. Lillian also offered some proofreading. We also wanted to thank Eric Revis who provided comments of a general nature. Lastly Scott Thompson provided copy editing of the paper.
