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Business Attitudes Toward European Immigration, 1880-1900

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Morrell Heald
Morrell Heald
Affiliation:
New Haven
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Extract

Tradition depicts American business as the chiefexploiter of our national free immigration policy during the latter defender andhalf of the nineteenth century. The contribution of immigrant labor to the building of the American industrial empire is much discussed. The interest of employers in recruiting cheap labor and strikebreakers from Europe is a familiar story. That industrialists and their allies in the years of rapid expansion and mechanization of the American economy stood to gain as much as any other group, even including the aliens themselves, from the maintenance of large-scale immigration has appeared so obvious as to demand little careful investigation. Historians have ordinarily described the succession of laws after 1882, gradually narrowing the “open door” the United States offered to Europe and pulling in the welcome mat as well, as a series of labor and nativist victories in the face of dogged resistance by the business world. Yet such an interpretation fails to explain the fact that the period which saw the growth of strong anti-immigrant feeling among native workers witnessed a strikingly similar development in the ranks of businessmen. During the 1880's and 1890's, while labor leaders protested the competition of alien workers, business publications were criticizing no less bitterly the impact of immigration upon American society. When nativists sought financial support for their efforts to restrict immigration they found many businessmen in sympathy with their aims. Measures presented to Congress for regulating and limiting the admission of aliens were frequently concurred in by prominent business leaders. Indeed, a notable development in American business thought after 1880 was the rise of hostility toward the swarms of cheap foreign laborers which employers had long considered essential to their own, and the nation's, prosperity.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , Summer 1953 , pp. 291 - 304
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1953

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References

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21 June 9, 1894, p. 8.

22 Age of Steel, February 17, 1883, p. 178; Railroad Gazette, February 23, 1883, p. 128; March 18, 1883, p. 317; December 21, 1883, p. 884.

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34 May 31, 1883, p. 301. Also, Railway Review, July 24, 1886, p. 385. The Railroad Gazette, however, conceded that the reduction in available land was bound to limit opportunities for native and foreigner alike. August 6, 1886, pp. 544-45.

35 December 22, 1880, p. 4.

36 March 20, 1885, p. 10. Also, Comm. Chronicle, May 28, 1887, pp. 668-69; National Board of Trade, Proceedings …. 1888, p. 23; Am. Iron and Steel Ass'n, Bulletin, July 27, 1881, p. 187.

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38 Am. Bankers' Ass'n, Proceedings …, 1886, pp. 83-90. See also a speech by George William Curtis, “The English-Speaking Race,” before the New York Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report …, 1887-88, pp. 48 ff.

39 April 14, 1892, p. 719; Ma y 25, 1893, pp. 1179-80.

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44 Nevins, Allan, op. cit., p. 328Google Scholar. For other comments on the responsibility of immigratio n for the growth of radicalism, see Age of Steel, May 14, 1885, p. 8; Am. Manufacturer, January 29, 1886, p. 10; July 16, 1886, p. 10; Iron Age, August 9, 1888, pp. 204-5; Railway Review, July 9, 1887, p. 399; Railway Age, August 12, 1887, pp. 560-61; November 15, 1889, p. 748; New York Chamber of Commerce, Annual Report …. 1887-88, p. xxvi; National Board of Trade, Proceedings …, 1894, p. 85Google Scholar; Bradstreefs, May 15, 1886, p. 306; August 11, 1894, p. 500.

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