6.9: Responses to Immigration in The Gilded Age

Question 1

IMMIGRANT QUESTION

Answer 1

• Americans = concerned w/ identity of nation w/ immigrants
• Immigrants = to assimilate or not?

Question 2

NATIVISTS

Answer 2

• Believed Immigrant Attack on American Culture
• Protestant Minister Lodge: ‘Anglo-Saxon Americans committing race suicide by intermingling w/ inferior races’
• American Protective Association against Catholicism
• Claimed Catholic Church [Irish] planning hostile American takeover

Question 3

LABOR UNIONS

Answer 3

• Believed immigrants stealing jobs bc willing to work for meager wages
• Believed immigrants undermining negotiating power bc available as replacements for striking workers

Question 4

SOCIAL DARWINISM

Answer 4

• Believed immigrants = racially inferior [especially Irish]
• Gene pool = forever degraded if they intermingled
• Believed Irish = different race

Question 5

WEST

Answer 5

• 1870: 50,000 Chinese in California
• Worked on transcont. rail
• Panic of 1873: Cali Nativists blamed Chinese for depressing wages
• 1882: Chinese Exclusion Act: banned further immigration to US

Question 6

JANE ADDAMS

Answer 6

• Settlement Houses in Chicago
• Hall House
• Helped immigrants assimilate
• Taught English and democratic ideals
• Child enrollment into schools
• Outings to theatres for culture exposure