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American Labour and European Immigrants in the Late Nineteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

A. T. Lane
A. T. Lane
Affiliation:
University of Bradford
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Extract

For American trade unions and labour organizations, immigration was a constant source of concern and anxiety during the second half of the nineteenth century. In their attempts to eliminate the more harmful consequences to their members of this flood of foreigners, they adopted and promoted a series of remedial measures, ranging from informal co-operation with the First International in the late 1860s, to attempts to strengthen the immigration law in the 1880s and early 1890s. None proved satisfactory. Pressure for further restriction built up and in 1897 the American Federation of Labor, to which most trade unions were affiliated, approved by a massive five-to-one majority a relatively new restrictive measure, the literacy test. This test was the central feature of an immigration bill sponsored by Senator Lodge, which had been approved by both houses of Congress in 1896 but vetoed by President Cleveland. The test was intended to discriminate against immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe where levels of literacy were low. For Lodge, who had opposed a general head tax because it was insufficiently discriminatory, the literacy test “ would tell exclusively on the most undesirable portions of immigration.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , August 1977 , pp. 241 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1977

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References

1 Report of the Committee on Immigration (54 Cong., 1 Sess., Senate Report No. 290), 2, 1.

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20 Space forbids a full and detailed citation of sources here but they include: Federal and State Government Reports, a comprehensive selection of union journals, and union and labour histories. More detailed references may be obtained from the author.

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31 Ibid., May 1897, Jul. 1898, Aug. 1899, Feb. 1901.

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39 Ibid., 1895, p. 383.

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45 The sample also includes Schaffer of the Iron and Steel Workers, Healy of the National Building Trades Council, Herron of the Mineworkers, Conlon of the Machinists, McGraith of the Printers, and White of the Garment Workers.

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