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1896: Immigration
1896, a collection of political cartoons from the watershed presidential campaign that marked America's transition to the twentieth century. Cartoons from around the country and from three parties in the election--Republican, Democratic, and Populist--with party platforms, contemporary comment, and explorations of campaign themes.
 New ImmigrantsIn 1896, immigration had long been contentious in presidential politics. Before the Civil War, some native-born Americans feared Irish Catholic immigration would undermine democracy and Protestantism, and such fears still lurked (for example, some whites joined the American Protective Association in the 1890s). New anxieties arose about immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, including Italians, Poles, Hungarians, and Russian Jews. Most whites saw Asian immigrants as even more unassimilable, and far more racially different, than Europeans. Chinese immigration had been a hot-button issue in presidential campaigns of the 1880s; after passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, renewed in 1892 and 1902, anti-Chinese agitation continued on the West Coast but to a lesser degree. Immigration was a minor issue in the Bryan-McKinley contest, but after 1900 nativist fears arose again, as thousands of immigrants packed the Eastern cities and as Japanese, along with Chinese, immigrants, arrived on the West Coast. Critics blamed recent immigrants for causing crime, being "un-American" in their language, religion, and family lives, and for concentrating in cities where their votes were controlled by machines--a circumstance unavoidable for many immigrants who faced residential segregation and dire poverty. In the mainstream press, socialism, communism, and anarchism were widely depicted as "alien" political beliefs brought over from foreign soil. Labor organizers argued that large influxes of new workers undermined wages; indeed, industrialists and railroad magnates (such as Collis Huntington and Jay Gould) sought to import workers to de-stabilize unions and provide a large labor pool. Since business leaders tended to vote and contribute to the Republican party, Democrats tended to be more bitterly anti-immigration. The need to "Americanize" new arrivals became a goal for reformers in both parties after 1900. The native white element of the population is 54.87 per cent, but it produces only 43.19 per cent of the white prisoners. The foreign white element... is only 32.93 per cent of the population, and yet it procuces 56.81 per cent of the white prisoners. ... How many of the murders committed by natives are due to the example and presence of the foreigners cannot be estimated, but it is doubtless no small proportion. --Sydney G. Fisher, Popular Science Monthly, in Public Opinion 1 October, 1896 In his speech at Chicago last night, Carl Schurz commended in highest terms the wisdom of the great civilized nations of Europe in adopting the gold standard and declared that "these nations have prospered." ... Mr. Schurz did not attempt to explain why it is, if the gold standard has made European countries prosperous, the poor of those countries have been seeking better homes where it was possible to rise from a state of abject poverty. America has been the haven of this large class until recent years, but now the gold standard has wrought its perfect work here, driving the boys from unprofitable farms to fill the ranks of the great army of the unemployed, which is constantly increased by immigrants from the "prosperous countries of civilized Europe." ... If Mr. Schurz has forgotten the cry of starvation that has been coming up from Ireland for 500 years; the distress of thousands in "Darkest England"; the half fed peasants in every gold standard country--if Mr. Schurz has forgotten the real conditions that confront the humble in "civilized Europe" the masses of immigrants have larger memories. They want no system perpetuated here that has driven them from their native land. --Raleigh News and Observer, 6 September 1896 1896 IMMIGRATION STATISTICS.
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![[Chinese for Bryan]](chineseforbryan.gif)
![[Chinese for mckinley]](chineseformckinley.gif)
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© 2000, Rebecca Edwards, Vassar College