Nativism In The 1920s Research Paper

American life during the 1920s was a triumphant time post-War where new technology, consumer products, leisure and entertainment boomed. Beneath the victorious and peaceful persona, citizens struggled with losing sight of their traditional ways. In an attempt to counter this, Americans shunned diplomatic relationships with other countries, denounced un-American lifestyles, and closed its doors to many immigrants. They faced many social, political and economical issues that stemmed from loss of American identity due to immigration and led to strong nativism and racism, as well as labor union strikes that drastically affected the economy.

The 1920s was a time of cultural change in the United States that led to a conservative reaction. Nativism

and racism have always been a part of the American psyche, but it is especially noticed during times of fluctuation such as the twenties. The Ku Klux Klan expanded beyond the South and appealed to many Americans who were attracted to the secret society that promised to defend what they believed to be American values. It claimed five million members during its peak and was stopped not due to its crippling racism that included lynching and intimidation, but its money fraud. Simultaneously to this grim racial violence, the Harlem Renaissance emerged as the “Mecca of the New Negro”. The New Negro came to be from the idea of racial pride that through intellect and the production of music, art and literature, Blacks could escape racist stereotypes. Blacks rallied to create the Universal Negro Improvement Association, which came to be the most assertive black political movement ever in the United States.
Unlike the Harlem Renaissance, this issue with nativism and racism led to fears of job competition, which virtually stopped immigration into the United States during the decade of the 1920s.

Quotas and restrictions passed into law made it very difficult to immigrate to the United States from overseas. The Immigration Act of 1924 limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States by providing visas to two percent of the total number of people of each nationality, completely excluding immigrants from Asia. This was partially due as a result of a growing concern about radical revolutions being imported into the country. The Immigration Act was an amendment of the Emergency Quota Act of 1921 that hurt New Immigrants by cutting the acceptances from the census of 1890 from three percent to two percent. Labor unions also feared that immigrants would take jobs away from “real” Americans. Native born Americans felt they were losing their cities and jobs to undesirable newcomers which revived a renewed nativism and hostility to new immigrants. Prior to the Emergency Quota Act and Immigration Act, the only restriction against immigrants by federal law was the Chinese Exclusion Act. Rather than hoping that the New Immigrants could be molded into good Americans, these Acts focused on blocking immigrations

altogether.
Labor unions that had grown strong during the war fought to maintain their power through a series of strikes in 1919.

Among the largest was a strike of the entire American steel industry that affected hundreds of thousands of workers and consumers, and the radical rhetoric used by some workers’ leaders seemed to raise the idea of a class warfare. This series of strikes proved to be alarming until workers returned to work under heavy threat of violence. After months of debate, steelworkers carried out their strike threat in September 1919 and shut down half of the steel industry across the nation. Steel owners turned the public against the American Federation of Labor by seizing the aftermath of the Red Scare and saying they were led by communist leaders. They played on nativist fears by pointing out that the majority of workers were immigrants. This turmoil caused a short yet sharp recession from 1920 to 1921 where unemployment exceeded eleven percent. Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover was soon able to convince major industrial leaders to increase wages and production to boost the economy. By 1922, the economy was growing until the crash in

1929.
This decade of mass consumption and mass production still lived in the shadow of immigration issues from the Gilded Age and labor problems from Westward Expansion. Cultural problems stemmed from nativist culture against New Immigrants, and racism was prevalent. Immigration quotas were passed by the federal government in an attempt to preserve American culture and protect American jobs from immigrants willing to work for cheap labor. Immigration and labor worked hand-in-hand for centuries, and the 1920s is no different. Americans were still possessive of the jobs they believed to be theirs. While labor unions protested for better pay and working conditions, as repeated various times throughout history, the steel strike caused the economy to dwindle for a short period before rising again once better conditions were granted to workers. Overall, the 1920s was a time of exponential social advancement among different races and cultures that flourished with production and profit.