Washington now has more than a million and a half inhabitants, 56 per cent of whom are of old native stock. Eastern Washington felt a boom in 1862 when it began to accumulate population attracted partly by mines and partly by farming possibilities, until it reached an equilibrium with the Puget Sound end of the State which has always been an important political factor. Many settlers at this time were immigrants from the "border States" of the Civil War, who became disgusted with the guerrilla warfare to which they were subjected, and who were not enthusiastically for either side. During the '80's, the rapid construction of railway lines brought the population of Washington up to a respectable figure in a very few years.
The present Whites are mainly from the States of the upper Mississippi Valley. Canada has furnished 100,000 more of British ancestry, and a slightly larger number has come direct from the British Isles. Germany has contributed 100,000, Scandinavia 175,000. As against this, Italy is represented by less than 25,000, and the Slav countries altogether by not much more than 60,000. Hence Washington is entitled to claim that it is one of the most Nordic of the States.
CHECKING THE ALIEN INVASION
During the earlier part of the immigration period, the tradition of an "Asylum for the Oppressed" of all nations was the ruling principle in the national attitude towards aliens, though even then there was occasional objection to the undesirable character of some of the immigrants.
Various States adopted their own restrictions. Massachusetts, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and others tried to control the flow of new arrivals by head taxes and administrative regulations, while foreign governments sometimes opposed these measures, as in the case of Wurtemberg in 1855. The United States having sent back some paupers who had been dumped on its shores, public resolutions are said to have been passed by the Wurtembergers, protesting at this lack of hospitality. If the paupers were returned, they complained bitterly, "we shall have defrayed the expense of their journey in vain." But the right to deport undesirable aliens had been set forth by the famous Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, and the Federal Government has never wavered in its assertion of this right.
For a generation before the Civil War, the undesirability of unrestricted immigration was debated, but without definite action. The first federal restriction was the law of 1875, excluding foreign convicts and prostitutes. President Roosevelt in 1907 appointed an Immigration Commission which made a long investigation and a voluminous report that served as a base for future measures and by 1914 most of the undesirable classes, except illiterates, were formally excluded.
The opposition to restriction was from the steamship companies, whose interest was obvious, and from the large employers of cheap labor, who were likewise not at all disinterested. It also arose among alien groups in the United States, that wished to get more of their own people into this country.