AMSCO 6.9 Responses to Immigration in the Gilded Age

Overview

AMSCO Topic 6.9, "Responses to Immigration in the Gilded Age," covers how Americans reacted to the massive wave of immigration between 1865 and 1898, from hostile restriction laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act to surprisingly helpful institutions like political machines and settlement houses. This chapter pairs directly with AMSCO 6.8 on immigration and migration, which explains who came; 6.9 explains how the country responded. The big tension to track: the Statue of Liberty went up in New York Harbor in 1886 as a symbol of welcome, while Congress was simultaneously passing the first major federal laws restricting who could enter.

For the AP exam, you should be able to explain the various responses to immigration over time, including nativism, restriction, machine politics, and reform efforts like Jane Addams's settlement houses.

Opposition to Immigration: Who Wanted Restriction and Why

Four main groups pushed to restrict immigration between 1865 and 1898, each with its own motives that often overlapped.

• Labor union members had economic concerns. Employers used immigrants to depress wages and break strikes, so unions saw new arrivals as competition that undercut their bargaining power.
• Employers actually benefited from workers competing for jobs, but they feared immigrants would push radical reforms. Business owners frequently blamed strikes and the labor movement on "foreign agitators."
• Nativists worried immigrants would take jobs AND weaken the culture of the Anglo majority. Many nativists were Protestants openly prejudiced against Roman Catholics. The largest anti-Catholic organization of the 1890s was the American Protective Association.
• Social Darwinists believed southern and eastern Europeans and all non-Europeans were biologically inferior to people of English and Germanic heritage. Many leading 19th-century biologists supported this idea before it was completely discredited.

Notice the pattern: unions and employers were on opposite sides of every labor fight in Topic 6.7, yet both ended up supporting restriction. That's a great example of overlapping motives for an essay.

Restrictions on Chinese and Other Immigrants

The first major laws limiting immigration based on race and nationality targeted the Chinese, and the hostility came mainly from western states. In many mining towns, half the population was foreign-born, often mostly Chinese. Under pressure from native-born miners, California passed a Miner's Tax of $20 a month on all foreign-born miners. Then in 1882, Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, banning all new immigration from China. Those restrictions were not fully lifted until 1965.

Other restrictions followed quickly:

• 1882: Congress barred "undesirable" persons, including paupers, criminals, convicts, and people diagnosed as mentally incompetent.
• Contract Labor Law of 1885: restricted temporary workers, meant to protect American workers from competition.
• Ellis Island (1892): after this immigration center opened in New York Harbor, new arrivals had to pass more rigorous medical examinations and pay a tax before entering.
• Literacy test: President Cleveland vetoed one, but a literacy test eventually passed in 1917.

During the severe depression of the 1890s, nativist sentiment spiked. Jobless workers and employers alike used foreign-born residents as a convenient scapegoat for economic problems.

The Impact of Restrictions

Here's the twist: early restrictions did not stop the flow of newcomers. Between 1860 and 1920, the foreign-born population stayed consistently between 13 and 15 percent of the total US population. The Statue of Liberty remained a beacon of hope for the poor and oppressed of southern and eastern Europe until the Quota Acts of the 1920s (covered in Period 7) almost closed "Liberty's golden door."

Boss and Machine Politics

Political machines were tightly organized groups of city politicians who welcomed newly arrived immigrants to win their loyalty in future elections. Each machine had its "boss," the top politician who gave orders to the rank and file and handed out government jobs to loyal supporters. Tammany Hall in New York City is the classic example; like several other machines, it started as a social club and evolved into a power center coordinating the needs of businesses, immigrants, and the underprivileged. In return, the machine asked for one thing: votes on election day.

Machines had a genuinely helpful side. Successful bosses knew how to manage competing social, ethnic, and economic groups in the city, and machines often brought modern services and a crude form of welfare to urban newcomers. They would:

• Find jobs and apartments for recently arrived immigrants
• Show up at a poor family's door with baskets of food during hard times

But machines could be greedy as well as generous, stealing millions from taxpayers through graft and fraud. In New York City in the 1860s, an estimated 65 percent of public building funds ended up in the pockets of Tammany Hall's "Boss" Tweed and his cronies.

A good way to think about machines for an essay: they were a "response to immigration" too, just an opportunistic one. They filled a gap because city governments offered no real social services.

Settlement Houses

Settlement houses were a reform response. Young, well-educated, middle-class women and men moved into immigrant neighborhoods to learn about the problems of immigrant families firsthand and to relieve the effects of poverty by providing social services.

The most famous was Hull House in Chicago, started by Jane Addams and a college classmate in 1889. Settlement houses:

• Taught English to immigrants
• Pioneered early-childhood education
• Taught industrial arts
• Established neighborhood theaters and music schools

By 1910, there were more than 400 settlement houses in America's largest cities. Jane Addams is one of the names the College Board expects you to know for this topic, as an example of women helping immigrants adapt to US language and customs.

One more outcome worth remembering: many immigrants stayed in low-paying jobs and lived in tenements, but their children who took advantage of public education and the industrial economy's opportunities often joined the growing middle class of this period.

Historical Perspectives: Was the United States a Melting Pot?

This is the chapter's historiography section, and it's great prep for assimilation questions. The core debate: to what extent did immigrants give up their heritage to become "Americanized"?

The Melting Pot Idea

The prevailing 19th and early 20th century view held that immigrant groups quickly shed old-world characteristics to become successful citizens. J. Hector St. John Crèvecoeur expressed this as early as 1782 in Letters From an American Farmer, describing how the American experience "melted" European immigrants "into a new race of men." The term stuck thanks to Israel Zangwill's popular 1908 play The Melting Pot.

The Salad Bowl Comparison

Modern historians have challenged the melting pot concept. Carl N. Degler argued a more accurate metaphor is the salad bowl, in which each ingredient (each ethnic culture) remains intact. His evidence: the diversity of religions in the US. Neither immigrants nor their descendants gave up their religions for the Protestantism of the American majority.

Alienation

In The Uprooted (1952), Oscar Handlin observed that newcomers often became alienated from both their native culture and their new country's culture. First-generation immigrants did not lose their cultural identity in the melting pot; only their children and grandchildren became fully assimilated. Many historians agree that after two or three generations, assimilation reduced cultural differences among most ethnic groups.

African Americans

Historian Richard C. Wade noted that African Americans who migrated to northern cities faced the special problem of racism, which created seemingly permanent ghettos with "a growingly alienated and embittered group." The two-or-three-generation pattern did not apply.

Ongoing Debate

Historians remain divided. Some see diverse ethnic groups building a common culture; others see American urban history defined by intergroup hostility, alienation, crime, and corruption. The chapter ends with the question that drives the debate: is there a common process in which prejudice against the most recent immigrants fades after two or three generations?

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Reinforce this chapter with the matching course-topic guide on 6.9 Responses to Immigration, which frames the same content the way the exam tests it. Then continue through the full set of APUSH AMSCO notes, starting with 6.10 Development of the Middle Class.

To check your understanding:

• Run through Period 6 multiple-choice questions in guided practice.
• Try a Gilded Age prompt with FRQ practice and instant scoring. Immigration responses make great SAQ and DBQ material because of the historiography debate.
• Look up any term you're shaky on in the APUSH key terms glossary.