"The immigrant is a brutal destroyer. He spoils every bit of nature in his own country, then comes to new fields in our country to destroy them."
--Charles Barker Bradford
"Filthy, lousy, and diseased, scum of the earth, the off scourings of European nations."
--Hudson Maxim
Reading Daniel Okrent, the value of book length treatment of an important topic comes full force.
"The Guarded Gate" is primarily about American attitudes toward immigration, but Okrent cannot explain the who, how, what and why without examining the mindset of those who drove, and who attempted to drive, thinking about immigrants.
Of course, in the 18th century, America was not rich, and it was separated from Europe and Asia by oceans, so there was no great wave of immigration to consider, but as American wealth grew, that force, analogous to osmosis, began to draw inexorably increasing numbers of immigrants to the continent. So it has always been with wealth: wealthier locations exist (cities vs rural, rich countries vs poor) and people living in poorer areas begin to migrate toward wealth.
By the end, of the 19th century, America became a magnet for the destitute, the starving, the abused of Europe and Asia. The potato famine in Ireland, poverty in southern Italy, pogroms throughout the Pale in eastern Europe drove Irish, Italians, Jews in large numbers (hundreds of thousands) to the United States. They were the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Immigration is always a matter of numbers and rates.
If only 10% of all Chinese (which would be 150 million) and 10% of all folks living in India (another 150 million) decided to immigrate to America tomorrow, that would be a number virtually equal to the current US population. Add to that the roughly 40 million Central Americans and you see the problem. Even a lifeboat has room for only so many.
But in 1890, America was not "filled up." In fact, the captains of industry wanted more immigration because that meant cheap labor, while labor unions opposed it, because they thought they were protecting members' wages. It was the millionaire class, the factory owners, who voted down Henry Cabot Lodge's "literacy" test which was meant to screen out imbeciles and low grade intellects from admission to the US shores. Actually, the literacy test was meant to screen out not just individuals but entire groups, i.e. Italians, Jews who were often not able to read English.
Lodge and his Boston gentry were disturbed by what he saw as the dregs and rejects Europe was dumping on the US.
"The degenerate spawn of Asiatic hordes...They were coming to America to cut throats, throw dynamite, conduct labor riots and assassination."
But, as his opponents noted, it was unlikely European royalty would want to move from their positions of wealth and privilege; it was the losers who would look for another game.
Okrent explores the attitudes of the reigning powers in America around the beginning of the 20th century and the cast of characters includes people we thought we knew: Theodore Roosevelt, whose image is on Mount Rushmore, who spoke of the threat of "racial suicide" if the white race did not reproduce up to the fecundity of other races arriving in America and the USA was overwhelmed by non white immigrants of low intelligence and drive; Eleanor Roosevelt, who later advocated for Blacks, but who remarked she could not face another "Jew party" where those uncouth undesirables were present; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Civil War warrior, Supreme Court justice who famously said, "three generations of imbeciles are enough" when he voted for sterilization of a woman who was said be mentally retarded (but who probably was not.)
Meanwhile, a Harvard PhD came up with a theory of "eugenics" which proclaimed that a gene existed for each of separate qualities: courage, artistic ability, discernment, the ability to cooperate with others, social graces, tact, humor, mechanical ability, moral stamina and sexual morality. He was Charles Davenport, the founder of the Cold Spring institute which developed a survey of the population for these and hundreds of other traits, the Eugenics Records Office, in hopes of guiding gifted and talent people to mate with each other and, ultimately, to exclude people with inferior genes from the country, by either deportation or denial of entry.
The implications of Davenport's bogus "biology" all rest on the idea that complex traits, like "intelligence" or "morality" were inherited like the color of pea flowers, controlled by single, discrete genes.
Coming from an old Boston family of impeccable credentials, Abolitionists, Harvard and Stanford pedigrees, Davenport gained entry to the American royalty of the day, particularly the heirs to the Harriman railroad fortunes, but also Rockefeller (oil) and Carnegie (steel).
Davenport differed from most of his fellow travelers in the eugenics movement in that he believed there were some intelligent people among even the most "backward" groups--even Italians might contribute the occasional good genome. But most of his friends saw no exceptions among the undesirables and would have banned all immigration apart from Scandinavia and the British Isles.
Once Okrent describes the almost unimaginable wealth of these people, you can almost understand how and why they came to believe they were, like Arthur drawing the sword from the stone, cosmically (and genetically) destined to greatness, and by extension, why the ragged, huddled masses were not.
And once you peruse the lists of traits the Eugenics Records Office used to fill up index cards with scores for confidence, drive, courage, musical ability, mechanical ability, vocabulary, confidence, optimism, you can fast forward to the SAT exams, and the Harvard admission office which assigned a "personal score" to applicants, particularly tough for Asian applicants, for traits like "courage" and "likability."
And you get Susan Patton, the Princeton alumna, who implored Princeton women to marry only Princeton men, to ensure the best genes mix and Princeton grads not squander their superior traits on lesser human beings, who will only dilute the talent pool of the nation.
"Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you."
--Susan Patton, on marrying and propagating with Princeton men
The whole idea of "meritocracy" in America might be separated from race--although ideas about merit so often travels with ideas of racial superiority it is often hard to do--but, at bedrock, it rests on the notion you can define the worth of a person, assign a scoring system, and then cull out the inferior, as if you were selecting for superior vs inferior potatoes, and you can improve the "stock" of the nation.
Whew.
--Charles Barker Bradford
"Filthy, lousy, and diseased, scum of the earth, the off scourings of European nations."
--Hudson Maxim
Reading Daniel Okrent, the value of book length treatment of an important topic comes full force.
"The Guarded Gate" is primarily about American attitudes toward immigration, but Okrent cannot explain the who, how, what and why without examining the mindset of those who drove, and who attempted to drive, thinking about immigrants.
Of course, in the 18th century, America was not rich, and it was separated from Europe and Asia by oceans, so there was no great wave of immigration to consider, but as American wealth grew, that force, analogous to osmosis, began to draw inexorably increasing numbers of immigrants to the continent. So it has always been with wealth: wealthier locations exist (cities vs rural, rich countries vs poor) and people living in poorer areas begin to migrate toward wealth.
By the end, of the 19th century, America became a magnet for the destitute, the starving, the abused of Europe and Asia. The potato famine in Ireland, poverty in southern Italy, pogroms throughout the Pale in eastern Europe drove Irish, Italians, Jews in large numbers (hundreds of thousands) to the United States. They were the huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Immigration is always a matter of numbers and rates.
If only 10% of all Chinese (which would be 150 million) and 10% of all folks living in India (another 150 million) decided to immigrate to America tomorrow, that would be a number virtually equal to the current US population. Add to that the roughly 40 million Central Americans and you see the problem. Even a lifeboat has room for only so many.
But in 1890, America was not "filled up." In fact, the captains of industry wanted more immigration because that meant cheap labor, while labor unions opposed it, because they thought they were protecting members' wages. It was the millionaire class, the factory owners, who voted down Henry Cabot Lodge's "literacy" test which was meant to screen out imbeciles and low grade intellects from admission to the US shores. Actually, the literacy test was meant to screen out not just individuals but entire groups, i.e. Italians, Jews who were often not able to read English.
Lodge and his Boston gentry were disturbed by what he saw as the dregs and rejects Europe was dumping on the US.
"The degenerate spawn of Asiatic hordes...They were coming to America to cut throats, throw dynamite, conduct labor riots and assassination."
But, as his opponents noted, it was unlikely European royalty would want to move from their positions of wealth and privilege; it was the losers who would look for another game.
Okrent explores the attitudes of the reigning powers in America around the beginning of the 20th century and the cast of characters includes people we thought we knew: Theodore Roosevelt, whose image is on Mount Rushmore, who spoke of the threat of "racial suicide" if the white race did not reproduce up to the fecundity of other races arriving in America and the USA was overwhelmed by non white immigrants of low intelligence and drive; Eleanor Roosevelt, who later advocated for Blacks, but who remarked she could not face another "Jew party" where those uncouth undesirables were present; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Civil War warrior, Supreme Court justice who famously said, "three generations of imbeciles are enough" when he voted for sterilization of a woman who was said be mentally retarded (but who probably was not.)
 |
| Davenport |
Meanwhile, a Harvard PhD came up with a theory of "eugenics" which proclaimed that a gene existed for each of separate qualities: courage, artistic ability, discernment, the ability to cooperate with others, social graces, tact, humor, mechanical ability, moral stamina and sexual morality. He was Charles Davenport, the founder of the Cold Spring institute which developed a survey of the population for these and hundreds of other traits, the Eugenics Records Office, in hopes of guiding gifted and talent people to mate with each other and, ultimately, to exclude people with inferior genes from the country, by either deportation or denial of entry.
The implications of Davenport's bogus "biology" all rest on the idea that complex traits, like "intelligence" or "morality" were inherited like the color of pea flowers, controlled by single, discrete genes.
Coming from an old Boston family of impeccable credentials, Abolitionists, Harvard and Stanford pedigrees, Davenport gained entry to the American royalty of the day, particularly the heirs to the Harriman railroad fortunes, but also Rockefeller (oil) and Carnegie (steel).
Davenport differed from most of his fellow travelers in the eugenics movement in that he believed there were some intelligent people among even the most "backward" groups--even Italians might contribute the occasional good genome. But most of his friends saw no exceptions among the undesirables and would have banned all immigration apart from Scandinavia and the British Isles.
 |
| Mary Harriman |
Once Okrent describes the almost unimaginable wealth of these people, you can almost understand how and why they came to believe they were, like Arthur drawing the sword from the stone, cosmically (and genetically) destined to greatness, and by extension, why the ragged, huddled masses were not.
And once you peruse the lists of traits the Eugenics Records Office used to fill up index cards with scores for confidence, drive, courage, musical ability, mechanical ability, vocabulary, confidence, optimism, you can fast forward to the SAT exams, and the Harvard admission office which assigned a "personal score" to applicants, particularly tough for Asian applicants, for traits like "courage" and "likability."
 |
| Mary Patton |
And you get Susan Patton, the Princeton alumna, who implored Princeton women to marry only Princeton men, to ensure the best genes mix and Princeton grads not squander their superior traits on lesser human beings, who will only dilute the talent pool of the nation.
"Simply put, there is a very limited population of men who are as smart or smarter than we are. And I say again — you will never again be surrounded by this concentration of men who are worthy of you."
--Susan Patton, on marrying and propagating with Princeton men
The whole idea of "meritocracy" in America might be separated from race--although ideas about merit so often travels with ideas of racial superiority it is often hard to do--but, at bedrock, it rests on the notion you can define the worth of a person, assign a scoring system, and then cull out the inferior, as if you were selecting for superior vs inferior potatoes, and you can improve the "stock" of the nation.
Whew.
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