Inquiry Lesson
Data Set #1:1
[Teacher’s Note: The following passage features the reasoning of Senator Reed (R-Pa), one of the
authors of the Immigration Act of 1924. The current law restricted the flow of immigrants to 3% of the
number of immigrants of any particular country that had been living in the United States in 1910. Reed
wanted to stem the flow to only 2%. Excerpted from "Our New Nordic Immigration Policy," Literary
Digest 10 May 1924: 12-13.]
The purposes of the new law, we read in a New York Times article by Senator Reed (Rep., Pa.), author
of The Senate Bill, are:
"1. America realizes that she is no longer an empty country in need of more people. She realizes that
her the people living here now are enough to use the natural resources at a reasonable rate of progress.
She knows that her prosperity at this moment far exceeds that of any other land in the world. She
realizes that unless immigration is limited she will be overwhelmed by a vast migration of
peoples from the war-stricken countries of Europe. Such a migration could not fail to have a
negative effect upon American wages and standards of living, and it would make it harder to make
immigrants who are already here act like Americans. Therefore we need a limitation of the number of
immigrants who may enter this country.
1
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Imm_KKK/Immigration%20Pages/Documents/immigrationpolicy.htm
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Inquiry Lesson
Data Set #2:2
1921 Political Cartoon
2
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Imm_KKK/IndexImages/htmlpages/onlywaytohandleit.htm
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Inquiry Lesson
Data Set #3:3
“Keep on Guarding the Gates”
[Teacher’s Note: The following article illustrates a common contemporary view of immigration
restriction. Most Americans viewed immigrants from northern and western Europe in a much more
favorable light than those that came from southern and eastern Europe. Excerpted from "Keep on
Guarding the Gates" Current Opinion, June 1923, pp. 652-4.]
America has been letting in too many unskilled handworkers who belong to poor racial stocks and
whose steady infiltration not only fills our asylums and jails, but tends to deteriorate our native stock.
This has hurt our country.
Whether or not there is an actual labor shortage in the United States - or a labor surplus - there can be
no question that we want better immigrants, not merely more. The older type of immigration was
better than the sort that began to flood the country after 1890.
Immigrants from Holland, Scandinavia, and Scotland are honest, law-abiding, industrious characters.
But the ignorant, unskilled Pole, Sicilian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Bulgarian are ignorant, unskilled,
low-grade peoples from the south and East of Europe.
3
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Imm_KKK/Immigration%20Pages/Documents/guardingthegates.htm
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Inquiry Lesson
Data Set #4:4
Maps of Europe showing the proposed changes to the quotas, from the Literary Digest, May 10, 1924
4
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Imm_KKK/IndexImages/htmlpages/Maps.htm
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Inquiry Lesson
Data Set #5:
5
“Shut the Door”: A Senator Speaks for Immigration Restriction
[Teacher’s Note: At the turn of the 20th century, unprecedented levels of immigration from Southern
and Eastern Europe to the United States aroused public support for restrictive immigration laws. After
World War I, which temporarily slowed immigration levels, anti-immigration sentiment rose again.
Congress passed the Quota Act of 1921, limiting entrants from each nation to 3 percent of that
nationality’s presence in the U.S. population as recorded by the 1910 census. As a result, immigration
from Southern and Eastern Europe dropped to less than one-quarter of pre-World War I levels. Even
more restrictive was the Immigration Act of 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act) that shaped American
immigration policy until the 1960s. During congressional debate over the 1924 Act, Senator Ellison
DuRant Smith of South Carolina drew on the racist theories of Madison Grant to argue that
immigration restriction was the only way to preserve existing American resources. Although blatant
racists like Smith were in the minority in the Senate, almost all senators supported restriction, and the
Johnson-Reed bill passed with only six dissenting votes.]
It seems to me the point as to this measure—and I have been so impressed for several years—is that
the time has arrived when we should shut the door…
I think that we have sufficient stock in America now for us to shut the door, Americanize what we
have, and save the resources of America for the natural increase of our population…
I think we now have sufficient population in our country for us to shut the door and to breed up a
pure, unadulterated American citizenship…Thank God we have in America perhaps the largest
percentage of any country in the world of the pure, unadulterated Anglo-Saxon stock; certainly the
greatest of any nation in the Nordic breed…
Let us shut the door and assimilate what we have, and let us breed pure American citizens and develop
our own American resources. And let us make pure Americans, with American aspirations, and
thoroughly familiar with the love of American institutions, rather than the importation of any number
of men from other countries. If we may not shut out everyone, then I am in favor of putting the quota
down to the lowest possible point, with every selective element in it that may be.
Source: Speech by Ellison DuRant Smith, April 9, 1924, Congressional Record, 68th Congress, 1st
Session (Washington DC: Government Printing Office, 1924), vol. 65, 5961–5962.
5
http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5080
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Inquiry Lesson
Data Set #6:67
Political Cartoon and Photo depicting the Literacy Test Requirement
(Sources: National Archives and Library of Congress, date unknown)
6
7
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Imm_KKK/IndexImages/htmlpages/literacytestcartoon.htm
http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/mmh/clash/Imm_KKK/IndexImages/htmlpages/literacytestphoto.htm
14