Both letter writers, Thomas H. James and James Ward, blamed high immigration on the railroads. Because railroad companies had an insatiable appetite for cheap labor, they lobbied for immigration policies that would confer working rights on what James called "riff-raff." These were the people, mostly southern Europeans and Asians who, according to Ward, would happily work for "a pint of beer and a loaf of bread." As such, they represented a threat to native-born laborers who had previously commanded a higher salary.



At the end of his letter, James appealed to Congressman Cooper to use his "utmost influence" to deport "the refuse." And Ward called it a "Christian duty" to bar the door to the "swarm of locusts" who wanted to start new lives in the United States; these people, he claimed would never become "true, loyal, patriotic Americans."

Several years after James and Ward had written their letters, U.S. president Calvin Coolidge took on those whose attitudes toward immigration he considered un-American. Coolidge reminded those who persisted in their belief that immigrants were second-class citizens that "immigrants and sons of immigrants" had fought alongside the "sons of equatorial Africa and the red men of our own aboriginal population" and that all had been "equally proud of the name Americans." Then he chided the native-born who "loudly proclaim[ed] their fealty and devotion" and suggested that, through their actions, immigrants often demonstrated a "far higher standard of Americanism."

Activity

Read through several more primary source documents from SIRS Decades, in which native-born Americans speak out against high rates of immigration.

Identify the substance of two of their arguments. Then write a 250-word essay in which you describe how you think President Coolidge would have responded to them.