Well hey there and welcome back to Heimler’s History. We’ve been going through Unit 6 of the AP U.S. History curriculum, and in the last video we talked about the huge waves of immigrants and migrants moving into and around the United States. In this video it’s time to talk about the American responses to international immigrants, and if you can already taste the sauce, then get them brain cows ready because I’m about to milk them. SO in this video I’m basically trying to do one thing: I’m trying to explain the various responses to immigration in the period 1865-1898. So just as a refresher, during the Gilded Age European and Asian immigrants were arriving in America by the millions. Many of them settled in urban industrial centers and took up work in factories where they were exposed to dangerous working conditions, but don’t worry, they got paid a pittance for such risks. And right along with this wave of immigration, debates sprang up over what to do about all these immigrants. I mean, they don’t look American, they don’t act American, and they shore as Moses don’t speak American. And so many Americans began to grow concerned over the identity of America with all these non-Americans running around. Additionally, the immigrants themselves were grappling with their own identity in American society. Should they assimilate to American society or hold on to their native society, or some mixture of both? Ultimately, many immigrants partially assimilated and partially held on to their ethnic identities. But it was the nativists who were nigh unto having an apoplectic stroke about what they considered to be the immigrant attack on American culture. Now nativism, when being defined, is essentially a policy of protecting the interests of native born folks over against the interests of immigrants. And nativism reached a fever pitch in the hands of Protestant ministers like Henry Cabot Lodge who argued that white Anglo-Saxon Americans were committing, and I quote, “race suicide” by allowing so many members of “inferior races” to intermingle with pure-blooded Americans. Nativists formed groups like the American Protective Association which was a powerful organization against Catholics. Wait, I thought we were talking about resistance to immigrants, why were they against Catholics? Well, as it happened, the millions of Irish immigrants who were coming to America just so happened to be Catholic in large measure, and so you can see why the APA was resisting Catholicism. Now, if you asked them, they would say that they had no quarrel with Catholicism, per se, they just couldn’t handle the fact that with many Irish Catholics being voted into office, the Catholic Church was clearly planning a hostile takeover of America. But it wasn’t only nativists who opposed immigrants, it was also labor unions. At the end of the day, labor unions feared this huge influx of immigrants precisely because they were desperate for work and would therefore agree to be hired for meager wages. Union leaders in particular worried that immigrants would undermine their ability to negotiate with manufacturers, because if the union decided to strike, then manufacturers could just fire all the unionized workers and replace them with underpaid immigrants. But it wasn’t only labor unions that opposed immigrants, so did the thinky-thinky people. Owing to the growing popularity of a pseudoscientific idea called Social Darwinism, immigrants had to bear the brunt of philosophical racism too. Now, proponents of Social Darwinism applied biological Darwinism to societal realities. In nature, they argued, the strong eat the weak and only the fittest survive. Why wouldn’t that also apply to culture as well? And so Social Darwinists believed that immigrants, especially Irish immigrants, were racially inferior to the true standard of American whiteness, and that if they were allowed to intermingle with our American ladies, then the gene pool would be forever degraded. Now, as I’ve mentioned before, this is kind of an astonishing theory because the Irish immigrants showing up to America were, in fact, white. But under the auspices of this kind of thinking, Social Darwinists actually came to believe that the Irish were in fact a different race altogether. Now those were the responses people had to immigrants mainly on the east coast, but the immigrants on the West coast were treated with utmost dignity and honor. Wouldn’t that be hilarious if that’s how it went? No, it was the same in the west. Now remember that on the west coast, the bulk of immigrants arriving there were from Asia, and no small portion of those people were Chinese. By 1852 something like 20,000 Chinese were living in California, for example. By 1870, it was over 50,000. Chinese immigrants were responsible for the lion’s share of the work done on the transcontinental railroad and others largely took up jobs that no one else was willing to do anyway. Even so, Chinese immigrants experienced the same kind of hostility from nativists that we talked about earlier. When the Panic of 1873 hit, Californian nativists blamed their economic troubles on the Chinese because since they were willing to work for such low wages, that, they argued, depressed wages for everyone else. And so the nativists got to work and one of their crowning achievements against the Chinese was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This law banned any further Chinese immigration to the United States. Like, all of it. And this act represents the only law in U.S. History to target a specific nationality to be excluded from immigration. So, you know, not one of our prouder moments in American history. However, even with all the bleakness I just mentioned, there was a little light with respect to immigrants, and now is where I introduce you to Jane Addams. She could see that the immigrants streaming in to Chicago were suffering, and therefore she sought to do something about it. Addams’s solution was the establishment of settlement houses, the most famous of which was the Hull House which she opened in 1889. The purpose of these settlement houses were to help immigrants better assimilate to American society so they could find better economic and social opportunities. In the settlement houses immigrants were taught English and their children were enrolled in early childhood education programs. Immigrants were taught democratic ideals and given opportunities to attend recreational outings in, for example, theaters. So the point of all of this basically comes down to this: immigrants had it hard during the Gilded Age, and many people worked against their inclusion in American society. But folks like Jane Addams softened the nativist blow and helped them get on their feet. Okay, that’s what you need to know about Unit 6 Topic 9 of the AP U.S. History Curriculum. If you need help getting an A in your class and five on your exam in May, and want me to keep making them, then let me know by subscribing. Heimler out.