The Changing Face of the Nation: Proponents

1
The Changing Face of the Nation Proponents
Opponents of the New Order
2
The Changing Face of the Nation

• As population pressures eased in Western Europe,
  the number of immigrants from Eastern Europe, and
  eventually Africa, Asia, Oceana, and the
  Americas, increased tremendously.
• The influx of these new outsiders threatened
  "native" Americans by bringing their own customs,
  traditions, and religions.

3
Changing Face of the Nation
4
Changing Face of the Nation
5
Changing Face of the Nation
6
Changing Face of the Nation
7
Immigration Restrictions

• There have been restrictions on immigration to
  America since the colonial period, but not until
  the late 19th Century did legislation become
  particularly restrictive, focusing on groups of
  people sectioned by ethnicity, profession, and
  national origin.
• The 1875 Immigration Law was designed to outright
  exclude Asians and, indirectly, unmarried women.
• By specifically making it illegal for anyone to
  enter the United States for the purposes of
  prostitution, the entrance of unmarried women was
  at the sole discretion of individual agents.
• "That it shall be unlawful for aliens of the
  following classes to immigrate into the United
  States, namely, persons who are undergoing a
  sentence for conviction in their own country of
  felonious crimes other than political or growing
  out of or the result of such political offenses,
  or whose sentence has been remitted on condition
  of their emigration, and women "imported for the
  purposes of prostitution."

8

• In 1882, a 50 cent head tax was instituted and
  convicts and lunatics were specifically barred
  from entry.
• In 1891, the list of undesirable citizens was
  expanded to include, among others, paupers,
  diseased people, and those who had their passage
  paid by someone else.
• The 1917 Quota Act, which appears below,
  implemented an 8 head tax, an exhaustive list of
  undesirables, and set temporary national origin
  quotas.
• "That the following classes of aliens shall be
  excluded from admission into the United States
  All idiots, imbeciles, feeble-minded persons,
  epileptics, insane persons persons who have had
  one or more attacks of insanity at any time
  previously persons of constitutional
  psychopathic inferiority persons with chronic
  alcoholism paupers professional beggars
  vagrants persons afflicted with tuberculosis in
  any form or with a loathsome or dangerous
  contagious disease"

9

• The 1924 Immigration Act, or Johnson-Reed Act,
  codified the national origins quotas and gave
  more complete power to the Immigration Bureau to
  regulate the national standards.
• During congressional debate over the 1924 Act,
  Senator Ellison DuRant Smith of South Carolina
  drew on the racist theories of Madison Grant to
  argue that immigration restriction was the only
  way to preserve existing American resources. The
  text of his speech from Congress follows below.
• "It seems to me the point as to this measureand
  I have been so impressed for several yearsis
  that the time has arrived when we should shut the
  door. We have been called the melting pot of the
  world. We had an experience just a few years ago,
  during the great World War, when it looked as
  though we had allowed influences to enter our
  borders that were about to melt the pot in place
  of us being the melting pot."

10
Chinese Immigration

• The earliest Asian immigrants to the United
  States were typically Chinese and, in the
  beginning, they were welcomed into the country.
• In 1865, the Central Pacific Railroad recruited
  thousands of Chinese immigrants to work on the
  construction of the transcontinental railroad and
  in 1868 the Burlingame Treaty was ratified to
  ease Chinese immigration to the United States.
• However, as soon as, and even before, inroads
  were made for Asian immigration, setbacks began
  to be put in place.
• Following the onslaught of Chinese immigration
  due to the California Gold Rush, the Asian
  immigrants came to be on the receiving end of
  multiple restrictive laws and violence.
• By the end of the 19th Century, the Chinese and
  eventually all Asians, were excluded from
  American citizenship.

11

• The Burlingame Treaty was designed to facilitate
  Chinese immigration.
• The excerpt below explains that the treaty was
  constructed to ensure equal rights and privileges
  for Chinese immigrants.

• "The United States of America and the Emperor of
  China cordially recognize the inherent and
  inalienable right of man to change his home and
  allegiance, and also the mutual advantage of the
  free migration and emigration of their citizens
  and subjects respectively from the one country to
  the other, for purposes of curiosity, of trade,
  or as permanent residents."

12

• The text of the Foreign Miner's Tax or the Act to
  Protect Free White Labor Against Competition with
  Chinese Coolie Labor, and to Discourage the
  Immigration of the Chinese into the State of
  California is provided below to serve as an
  example of anti-Chinese legislation on the state
  level.
• The Act is specifically designed to discourage
  employment of Chinese laborers by imposing
  crippling taxes upon them.
• SECTION 1. There is hereby levied on each person,
  male and female, of the Mongolian race, of the
  age of eighteen years and upwards, residing in
  this State, except such as shall, under laws now
  existing, or which may hereafter be enacted, take
  out licenses to work in the mines, or to
  prosecute some kind of business, a monthly
  capitation tax of two dollars and fifty cents,
  which tax shall be known as the Chinese Police
  Tax
• The Chinese Exclusion Act is direct legislation
  designed to keep all Chinese immigrants from
  entering the state of California, setting
  restrictions on citizenship, employment, and
  travel.
• SEC. 14. That hereafter no State court or court
  of the United States shall admit Chinese
  citizenship and all laws in conflict with this
  act are hereby repealed.

13
Jewish Immigration

• Although there was a Jewish population in the
  United States prior to the 19th century,
  primarily from Brazil, a new group of Jewish
  immigrants came from the newly integrated German
  State.
• Driven to emigration because of land shortages,
  poverty, and governmental restrictions on
  marriage, employment, and residence, the majority
  of German Jews immigrated to the United States
  following the Revolution in 1848
• At the onset of the 20th Century, Jews fleeing
  the extreme persecution in Poland and Russia came
  to the United States in very large numbers they
  were also restricted by the government on where
  they could live and how they could earn their
  living.

14

• By the end of the 1800's most immigrants were
  pouring through Ellis Island, passing the Statue
  of Liberty emblazoned with The New Colossus, a
  poem written by a Jewish woman, Emma Lazarus.
• The persecution of Jews in America was not as
  systemic as in Europe and restrictions on Jewish
  Immigration came along with restrictions placed
  on Eastern European immigration in general

15
Immigrant Experience Ethnic Communities

• The United States was essentially flooded with
  immigrants at the end of the 19th century.
• Many of these men, women, and children had never
  been to America before, were unaccustomed to the
  traditions, and knew relatively no one in their
  mythical adopted home.
• For this reason, they tended to gravitate towards
  others from the same country or region.
• A contemporary, albeit fictional, account of
  immigrants looking for and forming expatriate
  communities in America is found in the excerpt
  from Chapter Two of Upton Sinclair's "The
  Jungle."

16
(No Transcript)
17
Eugenics

• The study of Eugenics is one of the more
  prominent theories of scientific racism
  popularized in the early 1900's.
• Eugenicists believed that heredity determined
  almost all of a person's capacities and that
  genetic inferiority predisposed people to crime
  and poverty.
• Eugenics was promoted by the ideas of Social
  Darwinism and was used to justify changes to
  immigration law in the United States.
• Raymond Pearl was originally an advocate of
  Eugenics and in 1908 he published Breeding Better
  Men an article in defense of the ideology.
• The article applies the theories of selective
  agricultural breeding to human breeding while
  explaining how this process would benefit society
  as a whole

18

• Also, in the 1927 ruling of Buck v Bell the
  United States Supreme Court upheld a statute the
  required sterilization of the mentally retarded
  "for the protection and health of the state."
• The ruling was seen as governmental endorsement
  of Eugenics.
• Justice Holmes wrote the opinion of the court in
  which he claims that the responsibility of the
  state to the public is to maintain a clean gene
  pool and that outweighs its responsibility to
  "feeble minded" individuals.

19
Social Darwinism

• Social Darwinism is a form of scientific racism,
  in reality a pseudo-science, which claims that
  Darwin's theory of evolution and natural
  selection in biology can also be applied to the
  competition between social groups.
• It implies that variations between ethnic or
  racial groups determine their ability to be rank
  socially, that some are inherently inferior to
  others and should be left to die out as a result
  of their own incompetence.
• The theory gave a "scientific" or educated
  justification for racism and could be, to some
  extent, used to support the field of Eugenics.

20

• In Herbert Spencer's Progress, he draws the
  parallel between the organic process of
  biological development and the organic quality of
  all processes in society.
• Spencer's ideology was popular through the end of
  World War Two, although the term was not "coined"
  until Richard Hofstadter published Social
  Darwinism in American Thought in 1944.

21
Dr. Joseph DeJarnette

• Dr. DeJarnette was an extremely vocal believer in
  Eugenics and, as director of Virginia's Western
  State Mental Hospital in the early 1900's he
  instituted the compulsory sterilization of mental
  patients.
• He believed that to protect the whole of society
  the imperfect genes should be weeded out through
  selective breeding.
• Dr. DeJarnette wrote the poem Mendel's Law A
  Plea for a Better Race of Men in support of his
  beliefs. It explains how breeding helps other
  species and it should help humans as well.
• Scientifically, Mendel's Laws refer to the laws
  of genetics, as they apply to hereditary traits
  DeJarnette used the name to gain a degree of
  scientific relevance.

22
Social Gospel

• In searching for a solution to social ills
  brought on by the newly industrialized society in
  the United States, a Protestant Christian
  movement was born.
• The Social Gospel movement used Christian
  principles for the resolution of urban problems
  and although it was not a unified movement,
  religious leaders from many faiths were
  considered a part of the movement.
• Also, the Social Gospel was other side of the
  social application of Darwinism.
• Whereas Social Darwinism tended to focus on
  eliminating the undesirables from the gene pool,
  followers of the Social Gospel believed that
  certain groups necessitated help because of their
  inherent deficiencies.

23

• In 1907, Walter Rauschenbusch published
  "Christianity and the Social Crisis", a book
  related to the principles of the Social Gospel,
  in which he argues that sin should not only be
  applied to individuals, but to society in
  general.
• Rauschenbusch claimed that if society could sin,
  then it is possible to fight that sin through a
  Social Gospel.

24
In His Steps

• In His Steps, a book published by Charles M.
  Sheldon in 1897, was for a long time one of the
  most popular and influential books in the Social
  Gospel movement.
• According to Sheldon, American society would
  experience a dramatic transformation if only
  people would base their public and private
  actions on the answer to the simple question of
  "What Would Jesus Do?"
• "He rose at last with the awe of one who has
  looked at heavenly things. He felt the human
  forces and the human sins of the world as never
  before. And with a hope that walks hand in hand
  with faith and love Henry Maxwell, disciple of
  Jesus, laid him down to sleep and dreamed of the
  regeneration of Christendom, and saw in his dream
  a church of Jesus without spot or wrinkle or any
  such thing, following him all the way, walking
  obediently in His steps."