Labor did, however, finally achieve one of its most major objectives in the 1920s— limiting immigration. The restrictions on immigration imposed in the 1920s were part of a long-term trend. In 1882, for example, Chinese immigration was banned for 10 years, a restriction that was later renewed and strengthened. In 1885, the practice of prepaying the cost of an immigrant’s voyage in exchange for future labor services was made illegal. In 1907, a financial test for immigrants was imposed, and in 1917, a literacy
Test. This trend, which was common in other countries receiving large numbers of immigrants such as Argentina and Australia, reflected the growing assertiveness of labor, which believed that free immigration was slowing the growth of the real wages of low-skilled labor. In the United States, sectional interests, as Claudia Goldin (1994b) has shown, also played a role. The South, for example, believed that its political power was being weakened by rapid population growth in other regions based on immigration. Until World War I, the door was still open; in 1921, legislation was passed that effectively limited immigration.
The Emergency Immigration Act of 1921 restricted the number of people to be admitted each year from any country to 3 percent of the number of people of that nationality residing in the United States in 1910. In 1924, a new law limited immigration to 2 percent of a nationality’s 1890 U. S. population. This change further restricted immigration from southern and eastern Europe. Immigration from East Asia, moreover, was completely eliminated, reinforcing President Theodore Roosevelt’s earlier “gentleman’s agreement” with the Japanese. The law also set a maximum limit of slightly more than
150,000 immigrants with quotas based on 1920 to become effective in 1929. The effects of these restrictions on the flow of immigrants can be seen in Table 22.3. The contrast between the prewar years (the war in Europe began in 1914) and the 1920s is obvious. The limit on immigration was clearly effective in cutting the number of legal immigrants.
Why were drastic restrictions placed on immigration at this time? In part, the restrictions were the result of growing hostility to the “new immigrants” from southern and eastern Europe who had constituted the bulk of the large influx of immigrants in the years leading up to the war. Racism, including the activities of the Ku Klux Klan, was on the rise, excited partly by wartime propaganda and patriotism. Sometimes racism was given a pseudoscientific veneer by writers who claimed that the new immigrants were less able and intelligent than native-born Americans. Sometimes, moreover, racism was combined with antiradicalism: the newcomers, it was said, filled the ranks of the anarchists and communists.
World War I, moreover, had created the specter of a large influx of labor that would erode the real wages of low-skilled labor. In the years preceding World War I, the economy of central Europe had grown rapidly; afterward it lay in ruins, saddled for years with heavy reparation payments.
Could be sure what that would mean. The war, moreover, had created a vast new supply of shipping that could easily bring immigrants to the United States. Would not the country be swamped with immigrants from continental Europe once the war was over? These fears seemed to be confirmed by the resumption of a high level of immigration immediately after the war. Slightly more than 800,000 immigrants entered the United States between June 1920 and June 1921. Fear in turn bred legislation limiting immigration.
World History
