💰 Jobs and wages
Soldiers came home and wartime factory orders ended. A sharp slump in 1920-21 left many out of work. Some workers and their unions feared that new arrivals would take jobs and accept lower pay.
Increased Social Tensions in the 1920s » Immigration: Closing the Golden Door
What you'll learn this session
Study time: 30 minutes
Edexcel spec: Paper 2 Section A, Investigation A3, Key topic 2
- Who had been coming to the USA, and why
- Why many Americans turned against immigrants after the First World War
- What the 1917 literacy test and the quota laws of 1921 and 1924 did
- How to answer a 'Describe TWO features' question
🔒 Unlock Full Course Content
Sign up to access the complete lesson and track your progress!
Unlock This CourseThe golden door
For decades the USA had welcomed newcomers. On the Statue of Liberty is a poem by Emma Lazarus that says: 'Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.' It describes the nation's 'golden door'. Millions walked through it. By 1910 about one person in seven in the USA had been born abroad.
Key terms:
- Immigrant: a person who moves to a new country to live there.
- Nativism: the belief that people born in a country deserve more rights and respect than newcomers.
- Literacy test: a test of whether a person can read.
- Quota: a fixed limit on how many people may be let in.
Who had been coming?
Before the 1880s most immigrants came from northern and western Europe: Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia. Most were Protestants, apart from many Irish and Germans who were Catholics. From about the 1880s the 'new' immigrants arrived mainly from southern and eastern Europe. They included Italians, Poles and Jews from the Russian Empire. Many were Catholic or Jewish. Some came to find work. Some fled poverty. Many Jews fled attacks on their communities.
Numbers were huge. More than a million people arrived in a single year several times between 1905 and 1914. Most came through Ellis Island in New York harbour. They took jobs in factories, mines and mills, often for low pay, and settled in crowded city neighbourhoods where they kept their own languages, churches and food.
Why attitudes hardened
Not everyone welcomed this. Some Americans had always disliked newcomers. After the First World War these feelings grew stronger, for several reasons:
🚨 Fear of radicals
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, many Americans feared that foreigners would bring Communist or anarchist ideas. Immigrants from eastern Europe were often blamed. (The next lesson, The Red Scare, the Palmer Raids and Sacco and Vanzetti, covers this fear.)
🇺🇸 'One hundred per cent American'
The war made many people want everyone to speak English and share the same loyalties. German Americans had been viewed with suspicion during the war. People who kept other customs were called un-American.
📖 Prejudice and false ideas
Many native-born Protestants distrusted Catholics and Jews. Some writers said northern Europeans were a 'superior race'. This belief was racist and has no scientific basis, but it was widely repeated in the 1920s.
In 1923 President Calvin Coolidge told Congress, 'America must be kept American.' By then Congress had already begun to shut the door.
The laws that closed the door
The 1917 literacy test
In 1917 Congress passed a law that said immigrants over 16 had to show they could read a short passage in their own language. President Woodrow Wilson vetoed it, but Congress overrode him. It also barred most people from a large zone of Asia. The test had little effect because most immigrants could read, so it did not cut the numbers much.
The Emergency Quota Act, 1921
This was the first law to set a limit by nationality. Each year, only 3 per cent of the number of foreign-born people of each nationality living in the USA in 1910 could enter. Total entries were capped at about 357,000 a year. Because many northern Europeans already lived in the USA, they got most of the places. It was meant to last only a short time, hence 'emergency'.
The Immigration Act, 1924 (Johnson-Reed Act)
This law went further. The quota fell to 2 per cent, and the base year moved back to 1890, before most of the 'new' immigrants had arrived. That cut the places for southern and eastern Europeans sharply. Italy's yearly quota fell to under 4,000. The total was set at about 164,000 and later cut to 150,000 a year. The act also stopped nearly all Asian immigration. There was no quota for people from Canada and Latin America, because American farms and businesses wanted their cheap labour.
Worked example
Suppose 100,000 people born in one country were living in the USA in 1910.
1921 rule: 3 per cent of 100,000 = 3,000 could enter in a year.
1924 rule: 2 per cent of the number of foreign-born people of that nationality living there in 1890. If only 10,000 lived there in 1890, 2 per cent is just 200. Moving the base year back made the quota much smaller for groups that arrived late.
The results
Immigration fell from over 800,000 in 1921 to far fewer by the late 1920s. Most of those who did enter were from northern and western Europe. The laws ended the era of open immigration. For many people in the USA this felt like security. For those turned away it meant that the 'golden door' was now almost shut.
Common mistakes
- Saying the USA stopped all immigration. It did not: it set quotas that favoured some groups heavily.
- Mixing up the two quota laws. In 1921 the figure was 3 per cent of the 1910 population. In 1924 it was 2 per cent of the 1890 population.
- Saying the literacy test stopped most immigrants. Most could read, so it had little effect.
Exam-style question
Describe TWO features of EITHER the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 OR the Immigration Act of 1924. [6 marks]
Model answer
(Immigration Act of 1924) One feature was that it set a quota for each nationality. Only 2 per cent of the number of foreign-born people of that nationality living in the USA in 1890 could enter each year. Because it used 1890 as the base year, it gave far fewer places to Italians, Poles and other southern and eastern Europeans, who had mostly arrived later.
Another feature was that it capped total immigration, at about 164,000 a year and later 150,000. It also stopped almost all immigration from Asia. However, people from Canada and Latin America were not limited by quotas.
What lifts it to the top level: each feature is named and then explained with accurate detail, such as the 2 per cent rule and the 1890 base year.
Exam tip
Choose the act you can describe in the most detail. Write two separate paragraphs, each with a feature and a precise fact. One feature alone scores no more than 3 marks.