Immigration History – Page 2 – Old Magazine Articles

‘The Real Yellow Peril”
(The Independent, 1921)

Three cheers for the late Earl S. Parker, long-suffering secretary of the now-defunct American League of Justice (California) who recognized the tyranny inherit in the California Alien Land Bill of 1921! Seeing that the Japanese immigrants had been dealt enough cruelty by being denied citizenship, he was quick to point out that it was wrong to deny them real estate as well.

Click here to read about the Yellow Peril in Canada.

A Call to Repeal the Japanese Exclusion Act
(Literary Digest, 1935)

The anonymous journalist opened this 1935 magazine article explaining how the Indian caste system took root and reasoned as to why he believed such a system was an inevitability in the United States as well.

With the California Council on Oriental Relations waging an eloquent campaign for repeal of the Japanese Exclusion Act, a quota-basis solution is suggested.

Read another article about Asian immigration to California

Click here to read about the 1921 [anti-]Alien Land Bill in California.

You might also be interested in reading about the Yellow Peril in Canada.

Immigrant Literacy Tests Passed
(NY Times, 1915)

In 1915, some newspaper readers might have preferred to interpret the passage of the Smith-Burnett Immigration bill as a legal measure that would insure a higher standard for immigrants to meet in order to guarantee citizenship; while others tended to interpret the legislation as a restrictive law that was intended only to exclude from citizenship Italians and Eastern-European Jews. This article reported on a massive New York protest decrying the Smith-Burnett bill that was attended by Louis D. Brandeis (1856 – 1941; appointed to the Supreme Court a year later), Episcopal Bishop David Hummel Greer (1844 – 1919) and former president of Columbia University Seth Low (1850 – 1916).

Green Card holders are to this day still required to show fluency in the English language, although the swearing-in ceremony and their voting ballots are often in their native language. Go figure.

In this article Vladimir Lenin speaks of his fondness for The New York Times.

No Citizenship for Japanese Immigrants
(Literary Digest, 1922)

An article that marks the date of November 13, 1922 as a poor one for the assembled masses who happened to have been of Japanese ancestry in the United States. On that date Justice George Sutherland (1862-1942), of the United States Supreme Court, handed down the ruling that the Japanese can not be citizens of this country. The opinions of many American Newspapers are presented herein, among them an excerpt from the St. Louis Star which summed up the opinion just so:

The law which prevents the naturalization of Japanese is plainly intended to exclude the Japanese because they are racially unassimlable and their presence creates economic difficulties.

You can read more about Justice Sutherland HERE…

The Fear of the ‘Nipponification’
(The Independent, 1920)

Interesting figures revealed by the U.S. Census Bureau in 1920 served to relieve much of the race-conscious anxiety among some of the members of the Anglo-Saxon majority:

The report of the Census Bureau on the number of Japanese residents in the United States shows that the number has been much exaggerated by those panic-stricken persons who affect to dread the rise of a new Japan in America…the Japanese population of the three states on the Pacific coast increased more slowly from 1910 to 1920than it did in the previous decade. There are 70,196 Japanese in California, which has a total population of 3,426,861; in other words about one Californian in every fifty is a Japanese.

The U.S. Census figures for 2011 indicated that the Asian-American population numbered over 17 million, with the lion’s share still residing in the West and the vast majority having arrived after 1965.

Citizenship Denied
(Literary Digest, 1922)

This article reported that as of 1922, the United States Government saw fit to deny 19,000 immigrants U.S. citizenship. This number, when added to the other repatriated applicants of the previous ten years, totals up to 760,000 people; which was, at that time, more than the entire population of North Dakota. The Ellis Island based naturalization service classified all rejected immigrants in fifteen different categories, this reporter preferred to name just two: Ignorance and Immoral Character. Immoral Character speaks for itself. And Ignorance covers those who didn’t appear to know enough to exercise the rights of citizenship intelligently. Oddly, there seemed to have been no talk of amnesty.

Alien Poll Tax Overruled
(The Independent,1921)

A report on the California Supreme Court of 1921 which saw fit to overturn a piece of legislation that mandated an alien poll tax.

The tax had been passed into law just one year earlier and was found to be in conflict with the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution.

Read another article about Asian immigration to California.

In The Country Illegally
(Pathfinder Magazine, 1931)

[President Hoover’s Secretary of Labor, William N. Doak] placed the number of aliens now illegally residing in the United States at 400,000. Of this number he thought 100,000 were subject to deportation… The illegal entries were made, he said, under the quota laws of 1921 and 1924, the larger part coming through Mexico and Canada, while ship’s deserters amounted to about 11,000>

Immigration Hollywood-Style
(Rob Wagner’s Script, 1935)

Apparently during the pit of the Great Depression there were complaints coming from a few frustrated corners about the number of foreign talents that were being hired to entertain us in the movie business. An old Hollywood salt answered this complaint head-on:

The average world-fan cares nothing that Chaplin is an Englishman, Garbo a Swede, Novarro a Mexican, Bergner a German or Boyer a Frenchman.

A Grateful Immigrant Speaks
(’47 Magazine, 1947)

An article by Atomic Age immigrant Juanita Wegner testifying as to her undying gratitude that she should be permitted to live in a nation with so many freedoms. Having spent much of her life on the run from the Fascists of Austria, Italy and Argentina, Wegner stated:

For all my life I’ve wanted to be an American. I’ve dreamed about it, studied, worked for it…I’ve been an American for only a few days. But if I could have one wish it would be to go up to everybody I meet and say: ‘Aren’t we lucky to have this chance! Let’s never forget it.’

Free Enterprise and the Assimilation of Immigrants
(Readers Digest, 1923)

The testimony given in this column from the early Twenties is as true today as it was then. It was written by a 1905 immigrant who observed that the first word immigrants learn when arriving in America is BUY. When presented at every corner with products they’d never seen before in tandem with the smiling and encouraging face of the sales staff, the immigrant can’t help but feel an inner drive to join the American society:

And when he succumbs, why wonder that he grows more aggressive, demanding higher wages and striking when the demand is denied?

Closing The Golden Door
(American Legion Weekly, 1922)

If you’ve been in search of an historical article that clearly indicated that Americans were irked by white immigrants just as much as they’ve been bugged by non-white immigrants – then search no more. The journalist who penned this 1922 column chides the U.S. Government, and the people who granted them authority, for the difficulties that were placed in the path of all the various poor European migrants yearning to breathe free:

Whilst it does seem most expedient to curtail immigration, it ought to be done in a way which would impose least hardship on those who after all have had a supreme belief in America. One of America’s weaknesses lies in red tape, did it need to be said; another lies in a sort of contempt for the poor whites of Europe – the ‘Wops’ and the ‘K*k*s’ and the ‘Dagoes’ and ‘Hunkies’ and the rest. They are unfortunate – after all, that is the chief thing against them.

Immigration and Labor
(The Nation, 1917)

Literacy tests were used to exclude immigrants even during the uncertain period of war with Germany and Austria. Rather than rely on immigrant labor from Italy or Mexico, steps were taken to reduce the number of available foreign workers. So great was the need for labor in agriculture and industry that the daily wage rose quickly in the month following Wilson’s call to arms.

Movies will Promote Americanism
(Touchstone Magazine, 1920)

The attached article, The Immigrant and the Movies: A New Kind of Education, is about Hollywood filmmakers with the dream of instilling among the newcomers a sense of pride in being American, the Americanism Committee of the Motion Picture Industry was formed in 1920 in order to create films that would impart this sensation.

1921 Saw Many Single European Women Moving to the U.S.
(Literary Digest, 1921)

The death and disfigurement of over four million young men during the course of the First World War (1914 – 1918) created an enormous problem for the women of Europe:

A French statesman recently estimated that in his country there are now 1,000,000 women for whom there are no mates, while similar conditions exist also in England, Italy, Germany and Austria.

This article makes clear that in a quest for husbands, half a million women had arrived in the U.S. following the end of hostilities and it was further believed that by the close of 1921 another half million will have landed.

Getting the Immigrant Vote
(Vogue Magazine, 1917)

Upon learning that the Woman Suffrage Amendment passed the New York legislature quite handily, the Suffrage Party lost no time in solidifying their base and quickly set to work locating additional voters for future state elections. They discovered that there were five hundred thousand new voters in New York City alone; two hundred thousand of them were foreign-born women.

This VOGUE article is a fun read for a number of reasons, the first one being that it seems that nothing ever really changes in America and the second reason is because this article was written by a pampered patrician of the first order and when you read between the lines you get the sense that she would rather not breathe the same air as Italian and Jewish Immigrants:

As well-born American women, we can never out-vote the immigrant; we must make her an all-American citizen and voter.

Illiterate Immigrant Soldiers
(Current Opinion, 1920)

So deep were the ranks of khaki-clad immigrants who filled the U.S. military’s regiments and divisions throughout the course the First World War that our British allies would often refer to the U.S. Army as the American Foreign Legion; yet as grateful as the services were to have so many additional strong arms to deploy during a time of national emergency, it was not without a cost.

This article is all about how the army addressed the issue regarding the high number of illiterate immigrants who broadened their phalanx spanning the years 1917 through 1920.

Junk Science and Immigration Policy
(Literary Digest, 1917)

The melting pot in this sense is applied to the race-conscious study of forensic anthropology. This article concerns the work of Dr. Ales Hrdlika (1869-1943) of the National Museum of Washington, and the records that he maintained regarding the physical features of the earliest European settlers compared to the Americans of the early Twentieth Century (read: Jews and Italians), following so many generations of immigration and intermarriage.

What is amusing is the illustration of The American Face:

…the diagram drawn to scale from Dr. Hrdlicka’s data… shows the mean man of the old American stock. It is pointed out that the most conspicuous peculiarities of the type are the oblong outline of the face and the well-developed forehead.