The Expanding City and Its Problems 495These nativists, again like the pre-Civil War vari-
ety, disliked Catholics and other minority groups
more than immigrants as such. The largest nativist
organization of the period, the American Protective
Association, founded in 1887, existed primarily to
resist what its members called “the Catholic menace.”
The Protestant majority treated “new” immigrants as
underlings, tried to keep them out of the best jobs,
and discouraged their efforts to climb the social lad-
der. This prejudice functioned only at the social and
economic level. But nowhere in America did preju-
dice lead to interference with religious freedom in the
narrow sense. And neither labor leaders nor impor-
tant industrialists, despite their misgivings about
immigration, took a broadly antiforeigner position.
After the Exclusion Act of 1882 and the almost
meaningless 1885 ban on importing contract labor,
no further restrictions were imposed on immigration
until the twentieth century. Strong support for a lit-
eracy test for admission developed in the 1890s,
pushed by a new organization, the Immigration
Restriction League. Since there was much more illit-
eracy in the southeastern quarter of Europe than in
the northwestern, such a test would discriminate
without seeming to do so on national or racial
grounds. A literacy test bill passed both houses of
Congress in 1897, but President Cleveland vetoed it.
Such a “radical departure” from the “generous and
free-handed policy” of the past, Cleveland said, was
unjustified. He added, perhaps with tongue in cheek,
that a literacy requirement would not keep out
“unruly agitators,” who were only too adept at read-
ing and writing.
Ellis Island Immigrants, 1903at
http://www.myhistorylab.com
Looking Backward at Immigrant Originsat
http://www.myhistorylab.com
Foreign-Born Population, 1890at
http://www.myhistorylab.comThe Expanding City and Its Problems
Americans who favored restricting immigration made
much of the fact that so many of the newcomers
crowded into the cities, aggravating problems of
housing, public health, crime, and immorality.
Immigrants concentrated in the cities because the
jobs created by expanding industry were located
there. So, of course, did native-born Americans; the
proportion of urban dwellers had been steadily
increasing since about 1820.SeetheMapView theImageWatchtheVideoAn 1891 cartoon blames immigrants for the ills of American society: anarchy, socialism, mayhem, and organized crime.