Full transcript
0:01So, immigrants and immigration weren't
0:05seen as much of a problem until the
0:08Gilded Age, until the late 19th century,
0:111870s, 1880s, or so.
0:14Right? Until then,
0:16Americans tended to embrace the idea of
0:20pluralism, right? Or pluralist ideas.
0:23Americans tended to argue that uh the
0:26United States was a place that benefited
0:30from having a lot of different types of
0:32people come here, right? The idea was
0:35that the United States needed new ideas
0:38uh and new people to grow and to cover
0:41continent, and that the American style
0:45of democracy was capable of managing
0:48lots of different interests, right?
0:50Republicanism, small r republicanism,
0:53was seen as a tool for managing
0:57uh different interests for a a common
1:00good.
1:01So,
1:02um
1:03I should say that this idea of pluralism
1:06in the late 18th, early 19th century
1:10was easier to embrace than it would be
1:13in the 20th century
1:15because America was fairly homogeneous
1:19in a lot of ways, right? It was
1:21basically, though not entirely,
1:23basically a place that was being
1:27immigrated
1:29to from
1:30Eastern and Western Europe, right? Um
1:34African slaves are a whole other thing,
1:36right? So, when and they aren't
1:38immigrants, right? They're they were
1:40brought to the United States against
1:41their will.
1:42Um so, immigrants from Western and
1:46Eastern Europe, from places like
1:48England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland,
1:51Germany, France,
1:53you know, it was easy to be pluralist
1:55when the people who are immigrating are
1:58basically like the people who are
1:59already here, right? They're white,
2:02they're upwardly mobile,
2:04they're basically Protestant with a
2:05couple of exceptions,
2:07and most of them either spoke English or
2:10could learn to speak English pretty
2:11quickly. So, pluralism
2:14isn't something Americans are that
2:16worried about because the people coming
2:19to the United States aren't seen as
2:21different, and also
2:24there's enough economic opportunity that
2:28they aren't generally seen as a threat
2:30to economic opportunity of the people
2:33who already live in the United States. I
2:35mean, there were some limitations on
2:38immigration starting in the 1790s. You
2:41know, these tended to be based on
2:44Americans' ideas of morality. You know,
2:46like so for instance,
2:48if you're a prostitute, you couldn't
2:50immigrate into the United States, right?
2:52The idea was like, well, you're a person
2:54who is dangerous to us because of your
2:56morals, and we're looking to spread good
2:59morals, so we can't have you coming here
3:02if you're a prostitute. Although again,
3:04having said that out loud, I'm not sure
3:06it makes me think like, you know,
3:08how how how how hard that would be to
3:10actually enforce, right? Somebody shows
3:13up, you ask her if she's a prostitute,
3:15she says no, what are you going to do,
3:17right?
3:18Okay, so so what changes during the late
3:2119th century? Well, really like two
3:23things happened to make immigrants into
3:26a problem and to make pluralism
3:28something Americans question.
3:31So, first and foremost, immigration
3:33expands a lot faster than people thought
3:36possible during the 1870s through the
3:381910s, right? The country doubles in
3:41size during these years, and most of
3:44that growth was through immigration. So,
3:46the first thing that changed
3:48was there is the realization that there
3:51are many more immigrants coming to the
3:54United States than ever before. So
3:56there's this growing concern that that
3:58Americans might be overwhelmed by
4:01immigrants, people who haven't become
4:03American yet.
4:05The second concern
4:07is that
4:09um
4:10immigration changes in makeup, right? So
4:12the closer we get to the 20th century
4:15the more common it becomes for so-called
4:19new immigrants to be the people
4:21dominating the roles of immigrants in
4:24the United States. So instead of those
4:26people from Western and Northern Europe
4:29we begin to see more people from Eastern
4:31and Southern Europe.
4:33So out with Scotland and England and
4:35Germany
4:37in with the Greeks, the Italians and the
4:39Portuguese. So people who were
4:42ethnically or racially different, people
4:45of different religious backgrounds,
4:47people who didn't speak English and
4:49showed no interest in speaking English.
4:52So the second thing that really changes
4:53American attitudes towards
4:56uh immigrants was the realization
5:00that not only were there a lot more
5:01immigrants coming
5:03but a lot of these people were from
5:05places that kept them from just becoming
5:08American. And this is sort of a key
5:10problem here. It's a a key context.
5:13Uh was that pluralism became a problem
5:15because until the late 19th century
5:18people just believed people became
5:21American by acting American. Right? If
5:24you moved to the United States from
5:25Scotland
5:26and you bought property and took care of
5:29your family and became an asset to your
5:31local community's economy because maybe
5:34you were a a barrel maker and the
5:36community needed barrel makings then
5:39hey, that was a good thing.
5:40Um
5:41you know, uh if you
5:44you know, moved to the United States and
5:47began using the political rights
5:50that you had as an American, you begin
5:52involving yourself in political debates,
5:54reading the newspaper, voting. If you
5:57demonstrated you knew how to act
6:00democratically, then hey, that was a
6:02good thing.
6:03So, the belief was is that you became
6:05American by using economic rights and
6:08using political rights that made America
6:11different than other places, at least
6:13but that's what people thought. So, the
6:15big concern about those two changes I
6:17mentioned
6:18was that these people couldn't use
6:20economic or political rights
6:22effectively,
6:24um or didn't want to use these rights
6:26effectively. If they didn't use
6:28economic and political liberties, then
6:31how were they going to become American?
6:33Would the nation just have this inner
6:35nation of outsiders living in the United
6:37States?
6:39So, during the first couple of decades
6:41of the 20th century, Americans grew
6:45increasingly fearful of immigrants. And
6:48as a result, they passed increasingly
6:50stricter laws to enforce the belief that
6:53American society should be as white as
6:55possible.
6:56Uh and then in the course of doing that,
6:59they built and then protected the idea
7:02of 100%
7:04Americanism.
7:06100% Americanism simply was the idea
7:09that immigrants
7:11when they moved to the United States,
7:13that they would submit to the idea that
7:16there was an us and that there was a
7:19them.
7:20Like there were Americans and there were
7:21everybody there was everybody else.
7:24That idea had to be made and then
7:26enforced.
7:28Now, there are a couple of important
7:29contexts that made the creation of 100%
7:33Americanism something that happened at
7:35this specific point in time in the early
7:3820th century and in particular in the
7:411920s.
7:43The first was a rise of the debate about
7:46civil liberties and their role in the
7:48American
7:50American economy and political
7:53environment. Civil liberties were the
7:56individual rights that citizens had no
7:58matter what the majority of people
8:01believed.
8:03So, it didn't matter who is in charge.
8:06If you
8:07as an individual disagreed with them,
8:10you had the right to do so. They did not
8:12necessarily have to represent your
8:15ideas. You could speak out against them.
8:17You had an individual freedom to say
8:20what you wanted,
8:21regardless of whether or not that was
8:23going to be popular. Right?
8:25So, at a time when it was getting
8:28tougher to define what most Americans
8:30thought because of pluralism,
8:33the idea of civil liberties became a
8:36hotly contested
8:38point of thinking. It became a became a
8:40debate because some people said, "We
8:43really should be homogenizing American
8:45society. We should be working to create
8:47a world where people think the same so
8:49that we feel safe and secure."
8:51Other people said, "No, we should be
8:54working to, you know, invigorate
8:57political debate so we can manage this
8:59change." So, the debate over whether or
9:01not people had access to these civil
9:04liberties and how well they could use
9:07them, uh well, that was that was a hot
9:09topic that really shaped why people
9:11thought immigration was potentially a
9:15threat in the United States.
9:18A second important historical context,
9:20something that's happening in the early
9:2220th century to color the way people
9:24thought about pluralism and immigrants,
9:27were the culture wars. All right?
9:29There've been a series of culture wars
9:31in the United States uh history.
9:33Uh and in the 1910s and 1920s, there was
9:37a massive debate between people who
9:41historians call fundamentalists and
9:44people that historians call modernists.
9:47Fundamentalists basically thought the
9:50United States should change, that it
9:52should in fact begin reeling back and
9:55going back to what it had been like in
9:57the 19th century when this Western,
10:01Northern European set of values really
10:04dominated American life.
10:07Modernists tended to believe in
10:09changing, in embracing new ideas, in
10:12becoming something different. They they
10:13tended to see the '20s as a point time
10:16when America could become something new
10:19and different and offer more different
10:21people freedoms that it hadn't offered
10:24in the past. So, a lot of this debate
10:27over immigration and what the role of
10:29the immigrant was in the United States
10:32took shape from a big question of 1920s.
10:36Was the United States going to remain
10:38what it had been in the previous century
10:41or was it going to become something new?
10:44What was more important?
10:46So, what I'm arguing today in lecture
10:49is that Americans of the 19 teens and
10:51'20s saw immigration as a threat.
10:55They saw it as a threat to the American
10:57way of life
10:58and they worked to define and enforce
11:01the idea of 100% Americanism,
11:06which demanded immigrants to the United
11:08States reject where they had come from,
11:11their language, their food, and their
11:13religion
11:14to become
11:16an American, to adapt to the American
11:19way of life.