This act, while it served to exclude illiterates, made no drastic cut in the volume of immigration. Indeed a material reduction was resolutely opposed in many quarters. People of certain nationalities already in the United States objected to every barrier that shut out their own kinsmen. Some Americans of the old stock still held to the idea that the United States should continue to be an asylum for "the oppressed of the earth." Many employers looked upon an increased labor supply as the means of escaping what they called "the domination of trade unions." In the babel of countless voices, the discussion of these vital matters went on in town and country.
Americanization.—Intimately connected with the subject of immigration was a call for the "Americanization" of the alien already within our gates. The revelation of the illiteracy in the army raised the cry and the demand was intensified when it was found that many of the leaders among the extreme radicals were foreign in birth and citizenship. Innumerable programs for assimilating the alien to American life were drawn up, and in 1919 a national conference on the subject was held in Washington under the auspices of the Department of the Interior. All were agreed that the foreigner should be taught to speak and write the language and understand the government of our country. Congress was urged to lend aid in this vast undertaking. America, as ex-President Roosevelt had said, was to find out "whether it was a nation or a boarding-house."
General References
J.R. Commons and Associates, History of Labor in the United States (2 vols.).
Samuel Gompers, Labor and the Common Welfare.
W.E. Walling, Socialism as It Is.
W.E. Walling (and Others), The Socialism of Today.
R.T. Ely, The Labor Movement in America.
T.S. Adams and H. Sumner, Labor Problems.
J.G. Brooks, American Syndicalism and Social Unrest.