Anti-Semitism in the United States

by Lee J. Levinger

3.

These four reactions against the immigrant correspond with the four peaks of the curve of immigration into the United States, with two great alterations in the process, corresponding to the Civil War and the World War.

Up till 1830, immigration into the United States was small in amount and fairly regular. The first wave stretched from 1831 to 1861, reaching its peak in 1855; its total amounted to four millions of foreigners, of whom the largest group and the first to come were the Irish, the second in number and date of arrival the Germans. The growth of intolerance against these newcomers was shown in the movement known as Know-Nothingism or the American Party. The second wave, of similar nationalities, was from 1862 to 1877; the reply to this appeared in the anti-alien planks in the political platforms of 1876. The third wave, from 1878 to 1897, was larger than these earlier ones; it included many Scandinavians and, after 1882, growing numbers of Italians, Russians, and Austro-Hungarians, the two last being composed in part of persecuted Jews, in part of impoverished peasants. The Nativist reaction against this immigrant trend appears rather in the form of religious opposition, for the American Protective Association of those days was predominantly anti-Catholic. The fourth wave began in 1898 and extended until 1914, when the outbreak of the World War in Europe caused a sudden drop to almost nothing; in its highest years, 1907 and 1913, more than 1,200,000 entered our ports annually; and the greatest number of these new arrivals came from Italy, Austria-Hungary and Russia. The reaction against these new immigrants was under way, but the war interrupted its progress, and the Ku Klux Klan arrived at its full power only after the war, when new conditions swayed the group mind of America.

In each of these cases, the height of the movement against the immigrant came just after the peak of the wave of immigration, at the time when it had had time to impress itself on the native-born. The philosophies of these four movements varied according to the nationality of the immigrants against whom the natives were protesting, and according to the general philosophy of life in vogue at the time. The first such movement, the Know-Nothing or American Party, originated in New York State in 1852 “as a secret organization with passwords, oath, grip and ritual.”[65] Its creed was summed up in two words: Americanism and Protestantism. Its special target was the two million Irish who had come into the country; they were poor laborers, with a low standard of living, ignorant, hereditary enemies of England, and Catholics into the bargain. No wonder there were anti-Irish riots in New York, Philadelphia and Boston; that it was rumored the Pope would soon be dictator of America; or that the secret anti-alien society was begun. But the course of the movement was spectacular and brief. It entered national politics, thus both making bitter enemies for itself and taking off the secrecy which was its chief source of power. Then came the abolitionist movement, and the American party was split into northern and southern branches. Most important of all, the peak of immigration was passed, the Irish adopted the American standard of living, became a part of communal life, without any danger of Catholic overthrow of our cherished institutions—Othello’s occupation was gone, and the Know-Nothing party disappeared.

The next wave of immigration and the next reaction against it were minor ones. The immigrants met groups of their own origin already absorbed into the common life of America, and fitted in with little difficulty. The attempt in 1876 to prevent the use of public funds for sectarian schools was itself comparatively slight.

But in between came the tremendous crisis of the Civil War. Here the opposition was not between native and immigrant, but between north and south, an industrial society of free laborers against an agricultural society of castes,—planters, poor whites, and negro slaves. I shall not go further into this conflict, because it is too familiar and has comparatively little to do with the particular application of my viewpoint. But, from our point of view, it is important to see the place of the first Ku Klux Klan of 1865–71. This was again a secret organization, adding the feature of disguise, for the terrifying effect on the negroes whom it was the object of the Klan to overawe. The Klan was a partisan and sectional organization, of Southern white men of Confederate sympathies, to maintain their group supremacy over the newly freed negroes and the “carpet baggers” from the North. The victors had, as usual, indulged in oppression over the losers, and the grievance was a very real one. The Klan was partially successful in its object, but at once fell into numerous abuses, was used by partisans to vent personal grudges, fell into the hands of a lawless element, and was formally disbanded in 1871 by General Nathan B. Forrest, its national commander or Grand Wizard. Its slogan of “white supremacy” shows its animus against the negroes and the North, not against the alien. Some of its partisans claim that the Klan did not disband when it was formally ordered so to do, but persisted in its underground activity until as late as 1877.[66] However that may be, its character and purpose are very clear; it was sectional, timely, and for the one aim of white supremacy. It appealed to its members and frightened its enemies by its methods of disguise and secrecy, no less than by the beatings, burnings and other outrages which were carried on either under its auspices or by the false use of its insignia and methods. Its defiance of the law imposed by force, and its use of force in reply, are the vestiges of war psychology; It was the legitimate, if unlovely, offspring of the Reconstruction. It had no function left when the white South regained control of the states, but its memory still lingers as part of the idealization of the “lost cause” of the Confederacy.

The third reaction against immigration was primarily anti-Catholic in trend. This was the A. P. A., or American Protective Association, another secret society, organized in 1887, which reached its greatest popularity in 1894 and 1895. At this same period there were several other societies with the same purpose, notably the National League for the Protection of American Institutions, which had a number of extremely prominent men among its members. At this time the so-called “new immigration” was growing strong, with its large numbers of Italian and Austrian Catholics, added to those of German and Irish origin already on the ground. The old fear of political domination by the Papacy, expressed at the time of the adoption of the first amendment to the Constitution, and then refuted, was again revived. There was an orgy of purported “confessions” of nuns and priests; there was circulated a forged oath of the Knights of Columbus, in which the members agreed to place the papal authority above their national allegiance; and a false encyclical of Pope Leo XIII. Thousands of patriotic Americans believed all this obvious nonsense, stirred up by the fear of a dominant Church; the A. P. A. had as many as two million members and threatened to drive out of public life the twelve million Catholics then in the country, without regard to their race, nation, service to America, or the number of generations they had lived in the United States. The mob spirit, once aroused, crystalized in the breaking of the Northern group mind of Civil War days into various sub-groups, Catholic, anti-Catholic and indifferent. But the financial panic of the 1890’s resulted in a sudden drop in immigration; the older settlers learned English and were absorbed into the American cultural group; the A. P. A. had no reason for existence, and again substantial unity was achieved by the mind of the American people.

In this connection we must give a passing glance to what is still our single greatest problem of groups, the existence of a ten per cent. negro minority in the United States. These people were brought here by force as slaves; as a subject class they were refused education, though at the same time their own language, religion and customs were thrown into disrepute and have been largely forgotten. Though freed from economic slavery, they are still politically a subject class in our southern states, while in northern and border states they are gaining a political balance of power. Finally, they rest everywhere under social disabilities, from the “Jim Crow” cars of the South to the subtler distaste and ostracisms of the North. The result is that they are forming complete, self-contained Negro communities within the larger cities of the North and South alike; that they are growing increasingly self-conscious as a group; and that the large number of mulattoes, who in the British and French West Indies would rank as a third group, between the racial divisions, are here forced to make common cause with negroes. The negroes are thus a self-conscious group, though their culture is imitative. The grouping of the negroes apart is easy, on the whole, because of the gross external signs, such as skin color and texture of hair, so that the mass of the whites of the United States regard them definitely as a different and a lower race. That anthropologists are not so certain of all this makes little difference, because the group mind is based rather on old habits of thought than on the understanding of new and difficult facts. Here seems a problem of a different order, then, than the racial and religious groupings of the sub-varieties of the white race, which are constantly being overcome and regrouped in a larger union of social life. In this study it will be impossible to do more than point out the existence of this distinct problem, with its similar mental background to the rest but its immeasurably more terrible implications.

The fourth wave of immigration was by far the greatest in number of newcomers, and by far the most variegated in racial and national composition. It brought a million a year or more for six years during this period. And its members had 75% of persons from southern and eastern Europe, while the immigration prior to 1890 had included only 20% of these races, and had been chiefly the English, Irish, Germans and Scandinavians. It is no wonder that the race theory began to be popular in America, under the spectacular leadership of Lothrop Stoddard and Grant Madison, and that many began to agitate for a greater or less limitation of the flood of immigration. Even so sober a student of society as Professor Edward A. Ross of Wisconsin held that it was wise to assimilate people of different group mind more slowly than we were doing at the time. He said:

[67]There have come among us in the last half century more than twenty million European immigrants with all manner of mental background, many of them having tradition which will no more blend with American traditions than oil will blend with water.