Opposition in the late nineteenth century was a result of
the fact that the immigrants who came to the U.S. during this time were largely from
Eastern and Southern Europe, namely Poles, Russians, Jews, Italians, Greeks, etc. These
groups did not readily assimilate into U.S. culture; instead they tended to retain their
old world customs and even language. They primarily settled in big cities and lived in
neighborhoods with people of their own background. They also tended to be fiercely
Roman Catholic, at a time when anti-Catholicism was still extant in the
U.S.
Opposition after World War I (the twenties) was partly
due to the horror of the war, and new ideas about genetic purity, such as Madison
Grant's Passing of a Great Race, which claimed that the great race
of Nordics from Northern Europe was being threatened by the Latin and Slavic peoples of
Eastern Europe. Also popular at the time was The Decline of the West
by Oswald Spengler, who argued that European civilization had entered an
inevitable state of decline, and would be superseded by a yellow race. There also was a
very popular false science known as Eugenics, which held that human race could be
controlled by controlling humanity.
These factors, and
continued anarchism in Europe led many Americans to conclude that all people of eastern
European ancestry were potential anarchists. The end result was the Emergency
Immigration Act of 1921 which severely limited immigration from all areas except the
Americas, and completely excluded people of Asian ancestry. This last was a blunt insult
to the Japanese, and did not help matters when war clouds began gathering in the
Pacific.
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