Your Great-Grandparents Were Not Welcome Here

I'm continuing a train of thought from the past two Saturdays. From consideration of independence for the Philippines, I moved on to the major argument against it, U.S. fears of Japanese expansionism; which led to strains in U.S.-Japanese relations, including immigration restrictions imposed against the Japanese here.

But as noted last week, Americans were less upset about immigration from Asia than they were about immigration from Europe.

"To the Rescue" by Wm. Hanny in St. Joseph News-Press, Jan., 1921

This was mainly due to the relative size of those immigrant populations. Tight restrictions were already in place limiting immigration from the Far East, whereas there were none at all on immigrants coming from Europe. The Great War, moreover, had devastated the economies of Europe far more extensively than that of Japan, motivating more Europeans to gamble on seeking their fortunes on the other side of the Atlantic.

"Holding Back the Tide" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, Jan., 1921

Alarmed editorial cartoonists gravitated to watery metaphors, much as Louis Dalrymple and others did a generation earlier. Here William Morris depicts what immigration legislation there was as being comically inadequate to stemming a rising tide.

"I Was An-Hungered And Ye Gave Me Meat" by Wm. C. Morris for George Matthew Adams Service, Jan., 1921

In the same month, Morris turned around and referenced one of Jesus's parables (Matthew 25:31-46) to scold his hard-hearted fellow citizens for shutting the door against desperate European emigres.

"The Gate Question" by Milton Halladay in Providence Journal, Jan., 1921

Returning to aquatic imagery, Milton Halladay depicts Congress's proposed 14-month immigration embargo as somehow differentiating between Europeans worth admitting into the country from those undeserving.

So what sort of numbers were we talking about, anyway?

"Three Is a Crowd" by Warren in Chicago Tribune, ca. Feb., 1921?

The population of the U.S., according to the 1920 census, was about 106 million, or less than a third of what it is today.

 

I haven't been able to find this cartoon by Warren in the Chicago Tribune, and I'm not familiar with any Tribune cartoonist by that name. Alonzo "Jack" Warren (1886-1955) did study art in Chicago, among other places, but this signature does not look like his. "Bart" Bartholomew's monthly "Federal News" page in the May, 1921 edition of Cartoons Magazine has a paragraph about a cartoonist named Edwin Warren, but that guy worked in Alabama, not Chicago. I have found at least one other Warren cartoon attributed to the Trib, but so far, nothing about the artist himself.

[Update: He was William S. Warren. See my April 17, 2021 post.]

"Damming the Flood at Its Source" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, January 28, 1921

Bona fide Tribune cartoonist John McCutcheon cites an unemployment figure of 3 million. Contributing to that number was the urbanization of the country, due to migration from farms to cities as well as new arrivals from abroad. Soldiers returning from the war found their jobs occupied by people who had stayed home; and although some reclaimed their jobs from women who had taken their place, that was not the case for all.

"Just As Though We Couldn't Put It Up Again" by J.N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, February 2, 1921

And yet, the U.S. economy was in an expansionary phase. The Senate's "Men Wanted" sign was shared by much of industry in the country. But resentment built up steam in the labor force against newcomers who were perceived as driving down wages.

"We Used to Think It Belonged to Us" by Carey Orr in Chicago Tribune, February 16, 1921

 

Of course, this was all before unemployment compensation was a thing here. Some cartoonists accepted the notion that at least some portion of the unemployed were jobless by choice. I'm going to have to post a trigger warning about this next cartoon; I can't imagine any editor today—not even at Rupert Murdoch's New York Post—green-lighting this ghastly idea:

"Our Own Ku Klux Klan" by Alfred G. "Zere" Ablitzere in New York Evening Post, ca. Jan., 1921

As gobsmackable as this Zere cartoon is today, how likely is it that today's cartoons making light of Q Anon will seem equally tone-deaf a century from now?

But more to the point of today's post, blaming immigrants for depressing wages has to be included as one factor in the rise of the Klan in the 1920's. Persecution of Black Americans remained its principal focus, but hatred of immigrants — Jews and Catholics in particular — occupied its spare time.

"A Serious Matter" by Orville P. Williams for Star Co., ca. Feb. 10, 1921

Not that those immigrants had to come to the U.S. in person to earn American resentment, as this cartoon favoring a raise in tariffs illustrates. 

I do wonder why some editor thought it necessary to add the ill-fitting word "promiscuous" to the "imported mdse. from Europe."