The period from 1865 to 1924 was a one of significant change in US history, driven by the rapid industrialization of the country. At the same time, the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of people moving to the United States, especially from Southern and Eastern Europe. These immigrants became the backbone of American industrial development, with industrialists seeking out immigrant labour, and in the process creating a new industrial working class. Economic depressions, most notably in the mid- to late 1870s and the early 1890s, led to strikes and growing resentment between workers and management. Industrial action brought about a growing resentment towards workers, fuelling an already present nativism. The response of management to workers’ protest was to label it un-American, the result of what they saw as “imported radicalism” (1). Robert Zeidel's latest book argues that such a perspective fed into a broader debate concerning immigration, Americanism, and the growing call for immigration control which resulted in the Immigration Act of 1924.
Unlike other studies on this subject, Zeidel's book focusses on the role of the individual in history, rather than on the wider “forces beyond the control” of people (3). Individual industrialists are foregrounded, such as Andrew Carnegie, who spoke at length on the place of the immigrant in late nineteenth-century America. Zeidel's book opens with an overview of early efforts at promoting immigration at the federal and state levels. Yet, at the same time, the book shows how the strikes resulting from the economic downturn of the mid-1870s were blamed on immigrants bringing in foreign radical ideas. As Zeidel points out, such a view “deflected any consideration of faults or inequalities within the US economy” (4–5). This is the central point of the book, which is then expanded upon through a series of case studies. The first of these is the build-up to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act: a precursor of what was to come, and a lens through which to view all discussion of labour unrest and immigration in the coming decades. As Ziedel's book shows, industrialists increasingly blamed their own immigrant workers for social unrest, which only intensified by the end of the century.
Zeidel suggests that the assassination of President William McKinley by a foreign anarchist in 1901 marked a turning point in the wider debate over immigration. Here, and elsewhere, Zeidel is attuned to how industrialists perceived immigrants both as one homogeneous and potentially subversive group, and as an essential labour supply with certain groups favoured over others. By the early twentieth century, Southern and Eastern Europeans immigrants were the two groups perceived as subversive. How to control immigration became a central concern during the Progressive Era, as revealed by the Dillingham Immigration Commission of 1911. This commission would suggest immigration quotas and literacy tests as a means of controlling immigration, yet it would also highlight how dependent American industrialists were on immigrant labour. World War I exacerbated existing tensions, with restrictions sold as a means of benefiting all labour. Moreover, the long-standing question of loyalty came to the fore, most notably during the Red Scare of 1919–21. The extent to which all immigrants became Americanized came under the spotlight, with the resultant quotas favouring Western Europeans over the more “radicalized” Southern and Eastern Europeans.
Zeidel's book is based on extensive research, having mined numerous archival collections, which are used alongside the public statements of industrialists and politicians. As such, Zeidel is attuned to the contours of the debates over immigration and the fear of social unrest. For instance, there was a gendered dimension to how industrialists viewed unrest. The immigrant women who voiced their opinions in the public sphere through participation in strike action “did not adhere to proper social decorum” (9). This book demonstrates persuasively that dissent and radicalism were regarded as interwoven in the minds of industrialists – a perceived connection that nativists took as the basis for pushing for further immigration restrictions following World War I.
