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. He then pointed out, perhaps half in envy and half in re-spect, that in the hardest of times the Jew has money to lend if not to burn Ethnic Conflict and Immigration Restriction 79and before he is ready to execute his will he owns the grocery store, themeat-market, the grog-shop, the planing-mill, the newspaper, the hotel andthe bank. The extremist fringe in the free-silver movement saw the Jew asthe archenemy foisting an international gold standard on beleaguered Amer-ican farmers who were fighting for silver, the people s money. The presence of east European Jews, who started coming to the UnitedStates in the 1870s, aggravated existing anti-Semitic feelings; and as alreadynoted, all Jews faced growing social and economic discrimination.As Jewishimmigration from eastern Europe increased, anti-Semitism helped to kindlethe movement for immigration restriction.In 1906 a member of PresidentTheodore Roosevelt s immigration commission told an investigator that the movement toward restriction in all of its phases is directed against Jewishimmigration. Alongside religious antagonisms, immigrants also confronted economicconflicts.Many workers opposed immigrants on the grounds that they de-pressed wages and were potential strikebreakers.The Knights of Labor calledfor a ban on contract labor, as did a number of labor leaders.Organized labor,with a high proportion of foreign-born workers, was reluctant to supportgeneral immigration restriction, but labor leaders were becoming more crit-ical of immigration in the 1880s and in the economically depressed 1890s.In 1897 the American Federation of Labor (AFL), America s largest laborunion, finally supported a literacy test as a means of limiting immigration.Although employers needed workers for the nation s growing industries, attimes they were uneasy about immigration.Labor disturbances, fairly com-mon in the late nineteenth century, were frequently blamed on foreign agi-tators.In 1886 policemen broke up a peaceful protest meeting in Chicago.Be-fore the crowd could be dispersed, however, a bomb exploded, killing sevenpolicemen.Although no one knew who threw the explosive, the press blamedforeigners.One newspaper declared, The enemy forces are not American[but] rag-tag and bob-tail cutthroats of Beelzebub from the Rhine, the Danube,the Vistula, and the Elbe. Another said the German anarchists accused ofthe crime were long-haired, wild-eyed, bad-smelling, atheistic, reckless for-eign wretches, who never did an honest hour s work in their lives. Especially important in the growth of nativism was Americans awarenessof the increased immigration from southern and eastern Europe.These newimmigrants were considered undesirable, unassimilable, and hostile or in-different to American values.Stereotyped images of Slavs, Italians, and Jewspredominated.A retired superintendent who had worked in the Pennsylva-nia steel mills from the 1880s through the 1930s recalled, Racism was verydistinct then.We all called them Huns, Dagos and Polacks. To the na-tivist, Italians suggested an image of crime and violence.As a Baltimore 80 Ethnic Conflict and Immigration Restrictionnewspaper put it, The disposition to assassinate in revenge for a fanciedwrong is a marked trait in the character of this impulsive and inexorablerace. Such hostile sentiments led to the lynching of eleven Italians in NewOrleans in 1891.After the murder of a police superintendent, suspicion fo-cused on the local Sicilian community and several Italians were indicted.City officials called for stern action but the jury refused to convict.An angrymob then took matters into its own hands and lynched the accused men.Late nineteenth-century Americans were increasingly receptive to pseudo-racial thinking that classified European nationalities or ethnic groups, suchas Slavs, Jews, and Italians, as races.Such thinking emphasized differencesand deemed one race to be superior to another.This point of view found in-creasing support in the early twentieth century.Not surprisingly, racists re-garded earlier immigrant groups as more desirable.One alarmed nativist said, it is only in recent years that new, more ignorant and therefore more dan-gerous elements have entered into the problem of immigration.The Irishand German tides were ebbing, while those of Southern and Eastern Europewere both increasing and threatening.None but an optimist.can view itwithout concern. Just as religious prejudice, economic rivalry, and intellectual racism gen-erated opposition to immigration, so did politics.Urban reformers noted withapprehension the rise of the Irish in urban politics.Reformers, usually old-stock Americans, believed that political machines built on immigrant voteswere corrupt and inefficient, the protectors of prostitution, graft, and saloons.Prostitution was considered a virtual immigrant monopoly.A reform groupin the 1890s declared, Unless we make energetic and successful war uponthe red light districts.we shall have Oriental brothel slavery thrust uponus.Jew traders, too, will people our levees with Polish Jewesses and anyothers who will make money for them.Shall we defend our American civi-lization, or lower our flag to the most despicable foreigners French, Irish,Italians, Jews, and Mongolians? When the power of the immigrant-sup-ported machine was broken, they argued, American cities would be reformed.Many reformers, however, attributed political corruption to business in-fluence.They noted that immigrants supported machines because the ma-chines helped them.Clean up the immigrants environment, and the ma-chine would lose its following
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