Calls for a Ban on Immigration
A U.S. Senator proposes a sweeping one-year suspension of immigration, citing fears of disease and labor competition.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
United States Senator Chandler, of the senate committee on immigration, proposes that congress shall pass a law at the earliest opportunity suspending immigration, except from Pan-American countries, for one year. This is an excellent proposition, which will stop all immigration until the cholera has died out in Europe. We do not believe the American workingman will enjoy free trade in the products of cheap labor, and we are certain he will not enjoy free immigration of cheap foreign labor, like the Huns, Poles and Italians with which we are at present inundated. The steamship companies and railroads will fight this exclusion measure, as the scheme to cheapen American labor by the introduction of cheap free goods will not be complete unless associated with free immigration of the foreign cheap labor that makes the foreign cheap goods.
“We are certain he will not enjoy free immigration of cheap foreign labor, like the Huns, Poles and Italians with which we are at present inundated.”
This editorial exposes the xenophobic rhetoric that linked public health concerns (cholera) with economic protectionism and nativist labor politics during the late 19th century.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.