“ OR DUMPING GROUND?”: RACIAL DISCOURSE IN AMERICAN SCIENCE, MAGAZINES, AND TEXTBOOKS IN THE LATE NINETEENTH AND EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURIES

A thesis submitted To Kent State University in partial Fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts

by

Emily L. Wicks

May, 2012 Thesis written by Emily Wicks B.A., University of Pittsburgh, 2010 M.A., Kent State University, 2012

Approved by

______, Kenneth J. Bindas, Advisor

______, Kenneth J. Bindas, Chair, Department of History

______, Timothy Moerland, Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

ii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

LIST OF FIGURES………..…..……………………..…………………………………..iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS…………………………………………………………...... vi

INTRODUCTION…………………………………………………………………..…….1

CHAPTER ONE Language of Fear: Scientific Studies of Race and Ethnicity in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Centuries …………………………………………………...... 15

CHAPTER TWO “The Stranger within our Gates”: The Portrayal of Race, Ethnicity, and in Popular Periodicals……………………………………….………...... 65

CHAPTER THREE The Gatekeepers of : The Discourse in Progressive Era Textbooks……………………………………………………………………………….118

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………………181

BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………...... 188

iii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figures

1.1. “The Ignorant Vote-Honors are Easy”…..……....……………...…………………...16

1.2. A distribution of European races according to ’s The Passing of the Great Race ………...………………………………………………………………...26

1.3. “Percentage Distribution of Letter Grades”...…….…………………………………36

1.4. tree logo…..…...……....…………………………………………………..43

1.5. “Heart and Minds”……...... ………………………………………………………...62

2.1. Image from the 1903 Century article entitled “What Shall We Be?”……....….…...72

2.2. Image from the 1921 Outlook article entitled “A Greenhorn at the Gate”…..…...... 93

2.3. Image from the 1907 Outlook article entitled “The Gateway of the Nation”.……...94

2.4. “Hereditary Types”…………………………………………………………………95

2.5. “Profitable Benevolence”…....……………………………………………………...96

2.6. “Admiration”…....……...…………………………………………………………...97

2.7. “The at Bat”………………...... ………………………………………...99

2.8. “100% Impure”...……....………………………………………………………….100

2.9. “Look Out for the Undertow!”…………………....……………………………….101

3.1. Map of distribution of races from M.F. Maury’s Physical Geography…...... 122

3.2. Pictures of the various races from Charles Dryer’s Lessons in Physical Geography...... 123

3.3. A page from Charles Dryer’s Lessons in Physical Geography……...…………....139

iv

3.4. Image of the “Black race” from Jacques Redway’s Elementary Physical Geography...... 153

3.5. A Comparison of races from H. Justin Roddy’s Elementary Geography...... 158

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Completion of this thesis would not have occurred without the support and guidance of numerous people. My deepest appreciation is to my advisor, Dr. Kenneth

Bindas, Chair of Kent State University Department of History. He has helped me throughout the entire project, from discussing possible thesis topics to editing numerous drafts. He encouraged me to develop my ideas into a cohesive project and taught me how to effectively and confidently express my argument through writing. Anytime I became overwhelmed, discussing my topic with him allowed me to remember the overall purpose of my work. Without his meticulous editing and guidance, this thesis would not have been completed. In addition to Dr. Bindas, I would like to thank my committee members, Dr. Clarence Wunderlin and Dr. Elizabeth Smith-Pryor, both of the Kent State

University Department of History, for lending me their expertise and advice throughout this process.

On a more personal level, I would like to thank my colleagues in Bowman 205, who were there for me during the ups and downs of my graduate career. Specifically, I would like to thank Colleen Benoit, Ilya Braverman, Sarah Žabić, and Jeffrey O'Leary for supporting me all along. I could not have made it through these two years without all of you, as you helped me through coursework and kept me sane! In addition, I would like to thank my family and friends who listened to me vent and allowed me to discuss my ideas with them. In particular, my deepest gratitude is to my mother and father who are still

vi my biggest supporters. My father's love of history was instilled in me at a young age and motivated me to follow this path. With my mother's heirloom of an old textbook, my thesis topic was able to come alive. This thesis was possible because of their love and support.

vii

INTRODUCTION

During the Progressive Era, white American citizens felt their values and morals were being challenged by a changing American society that created a sense of anxiety.

They feared their way of life was being undermined economically, politically, and by racial minorities who they perceived as threatening to overrun and ruin their white

American society and culture.1 Journalist George Creel, in a 1921 Collier’s article, questioned whether America was a “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground” for "inferior" races, thus reflecting a national anxiety over the future of American racial purity.2 In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, increased scientific research concerning race and ethnicity only furthered the fear of “inferior” African American and immigrant traditions, characteristics, and beliefs degrading white American society. Psychologist and president of the American Psychological Association Robert Yerkes, in the foreword to A Study of American Intelligence by Princeton University professor of psychology Carl

1 As Matthew Frye Jacobson points out, the idea of race, ethnicity, and whiteness is fluid, and at different times, varying racial categories were employed. When referencing descriptions of racial categories, this thesis uses terms as they were meant during the Progressive era, but I recognize that today they hold a tone of prejudice. While these categories are cultural constructions, these were the terms used during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and therefore need to be referenced in this discussion. In the study of ethnicity during this period, narrower distinctions of “whiteness” are apparent. Therefore, for this work, when I refer to the American white middle class, I am referring to those who are “native” to America (meaning born in the United States) or whose ancestry is traced to those groups deemed “superior” such as Anglo-Saxons or Nordics. Immigrant groups deemed “inferior” are referred to as “Alpine,” “Mediterranean” or by nationality. African were part of the “” race, and seen as the lowest segment of the racial hierarchy; see Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Press, 1998), 6-12. 2 George Creel, “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground?,” Collier’s, September 3, 1921, 9.

1

2

C. Brigham, told readers that Brigham’s analysis of intelligence testing of various races was “a notable service to psychology, to sociology, and above all to our law-makers.” To

Yerkes and other scholars, Brigham’s conclusions of the mental inferiority of immigrants and were “not theories or opinions but facts.” Yerkes warned readers, “[N]o one of us as a citizen can afford to ignore the menace of race deterioration or the evident relations of immigration to national progress and welfare.”3 Similarly, scholar and eugenicist in his work, The Revolt against Civilization, emphasized the importance of “scientific” studies of race, arguing the “grim blight of civilized society has been correctly diagnosed only in recent years” due to “momentous biological discoveries.” With these “discoveries,” Stoddard, like Yerkes, urged that “all political and social problems need to be re-examined.”4 To Stoddard and other concerned white citizens, one of the biggest social problems was the threat African Americans and immigrants posed to the "superior" white “Nordic” race. Stoddard argued, “Racial impoverishment is the plague of civilization. This insidious disease, with its twin symptoms the extirpation of superior strains and the multiplication of inferiors, has ravaged humanity like a consuming fire, reducing the proudest societies to charred and squalid ruin.” In a time when the white American identity was being challenged by the movement of immigrants and African Americans, “scientific” theories arose to prove that

3 Robert Yerkes, foreword to A Study of American Intelligence, by Carl C. Brigham (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923), vii-viii. 4 Lothrop Stoddard, preface to The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922).

3

white Americans should fear inferior races as “a deadly menace both to civilization and the [White] race.”5

This thesis will examine the Progressive Era United States racial discourse to understand how existing racial theories were strengthened by members of the intelligentsia, permeated through popular culture, and served as a focal point in school textbooks. The rapid increase in immigration from southern and eastern and the

Great Migration north by southern American blacks exposed tensions and nativist fears that American values would be corrupted by “inferior” thoughts and traditions these migrants brought with them. In the early twentieth century, respected academics and social critics in the sciences and social sciences used their research to document the inferiority of these minorities compared to the “Nordic” race found in the United States and and often used Darwinian heredity to support their theories. To these scholars, traits such as drunkenness, criminality, stupidity, and corruptibility were indicators of inferior inheritable traits, not brought about by lack of education, malnutrition, or poverty. Most social scientists and social critics believed racial characteristics were also hereditary, and therefore, racial mixing spelled the doom of white civilization. These theories were not limited to academia, as these experts used the media of the day to reinforce commonly held racial prejudices to heighten white middle- class fears that these groups could pollute the human race and threaten democracy in U.S. society. By examining their studies and their appropriation into the popular imagination through popular magazines and school textbooks, this thesis will demonstrate that fear of

5 Stoddard, 88, 113.

4

immigrants and minorities in twentieth-century America dominated the discourse concerning the future of the country. This thesis will argue that the fear of supposed

"inferior" racial groups and the assertion of a racial hierarchy outlined by social scientists and social critics were disseminated, appropriated, and incorporated into American consciousness, including the very groups being accused of being lower races. This thesis will explore how the language of scholars, journalists, and textbook authors reflected the fear and anxiety concerning the shifting racial makeup of the United States in response to the threat of “new” groups from southern and and the American South. In the end, the language of fear incited action amongst both the white American public and politicians and was manifest in both legal restrictions and assimilation efforts.

The topic of America’s understanding of racial and ethnic ideology is important for several reasons. First, it has been a constant aspect of American society even as its definition constantly changes due to the social, cultural, and political climate. When discussing the idea of race, this thesis will focus on the beliefs that existed in white society during the Progressive Era. However, as historian Nell Irvin Painter explains,

“[R]ace is an idea, not a fact…,” therefore, any study of racial and ethnic categories is difficult because race and ethnicity are culturally constructed,6 and are, as professor of law Ian F. Haney López states, “highly contingent, specific to times, places, and situations.”7 Throughout the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, race and ethnicity were seen as biological, and during the Progressive Era, racial ideology was divided into

6 Nell Irvin Painter, The History of (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010), ix-xii. 7 Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996), xiii-xiv.

5

degrees of whiteness that encouraged white Americans to judge the superiority and inferiority of different ethnicities and nationalities.8 López asserts that the White race is not a monolith or homogenous, but has been inconstant and varied in its meaning throughout history.9 This thesis will develop López’s argument more fully to show that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars divided the White race into three main categories: Nordic, Alpine, and Mediterranean, which were ingrained into the larger racial hierarchy and reflected a societal fear that alien beliefs and traditions were undermining the country.

In addition, the topic of race and ethnicity in the Progressive Era is interesting due to the way it infiltrated popular culture. Not only were social scientists fearful of the future of the , but middle-class Americans were also concerned over the safety of American culture, traditions, and society. While it is difficult to discern what

American citizens felt or thought in a specific time period, by examining cultural items, such as magazines and textbooks, historians can gauge what Americans were reading and therefore absorbing. Of course, there are other ways to examine this issue through song lyrics, literature, or art, but magazines seemed a clear choice because of their rising importance during the Progressive Era. As prices dropped and the field grew, magazines reached numerous audiences.10 However, most magazines still targeted white middle- class Americans who clung to Protestant traditions and American values. Therefore,

8 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 6-12. 9 López, xiii-xiv. 10 David E. Sumner, The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900 (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2010), 16; Matthew Schneirov, The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America, 1893-1914 (New York: Press, 1994), 4-5.

6

magazines often focused on issues that concerned the middle class, such as crime, poverty, and immigration and excluded lower-class and minority readership. In addition, during this time period, the middle class viewed education as important and necessary to furthering American society. Textbooks, as an integral aspect to the educational system, will be examined in this thesis to explore how children of all races were being taught the importance of the racial hierarchy. These primary sources—scholarly, journalistic, and educational—demonstrate how the racial hierarchy was adapted and reflected a national fear of alien beliefs, characteristics, and traditions.

In order to examine this racial discourse and the relationship it reflects between scholars, journalists, educators, and the American public, a theoretical foundation concerning language and culture must be laid. Led by theorists such as Ferdinand de

Saussure, Mikhail Bakhtin, and especially Claude Lévi-Strauss, discourse theory examines the meaning of language as structural and disseminated through binary oppositions. These structures function unconsciously, and therefore, to these structuralists, human agency is limited, and language, not people themselves, determines human thought.11 Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin argued that language must be viewed diachronically, as changing throughout history and as something that should be contextualized, not removed from the social situations, which challenged scholars who saw “nothing outside the text.” Instead, Bakhtin believed discourse could only be understood if placed within its context as a form of interaction. As professor of history

Simon Gunn explains, Bakhtin argued that a “language community can be divided into

11 Simon Gunn, History and Cultural Theory (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2006), 10-12.

7

multiple ‘socio-ideological’ languages, by status, profession, generation, and so on, which contribute to linguistic vitality but also make language a site of social struggle.”12

While languages may share a similar structure, Bakhtin introduced the theory of

“dialogized heteroglossia,” which emphasized the variety of languages, voices, and speech that created tension within communication potentially leading to linguistic change.13

Seen as both a product and a critique of structuralism, many post-structuralists questioned the idea of “system” because they believe that meaning in language and culture cannot be absolutely determined, as there are multiple interpretations which constantly shift.14 Michel Foucault uses ideas from both movements to discuss discourse and power, arguing that discourse shapes understanding and constitutes “practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak.”15 Therefore, the ideas of self and human agency disappear and language constructs human perceptions of the world.

However, in contrast to structuralists, Foucault argues that the deeper meaning of discourse is culturally constructed,16 particularly paying attention to discursive formations, meaning “whenever, between objects, types of statement, concepts or thematic choices, one can define a regularity (an order, correlations, positions and

12 Gunn, 65-67. 13 Anna Green, Cultural History (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), 68-69. 14 Gunn, 17. 15 Michel Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge, trans. A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York: Harper Colophon, 1972), 49. 16 Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982), xxi.

8

functionings, transformations).”17 Foucault introduces two methods to study discourse.

First, archaeology to study the “the rules of formation governing those discourses from which a particular knowledge was constituted,”18 and later genealogy, which studied history without making causal connections.19 In Madness and Civilization, Foucault examined how discourse was used to classify and control human beings, in his case lepers, criminals, and the poor, to emphasize the role of royalty in creating this system and of medical practitioners in using knowledge to confine certain societal groups.20

These experts were viewed as having a knowledge or “truth” on the subject of mental illness and therefore because of their knowledge, were given power to control other groups. However, in later works¸ such as History of Sexuality, Foucault claimed that power was not only held by political institutions, but came from everywhere. Discourse and power are closely related because “discourse transmits and produces power; it reinforces it, but also undermines and exposes it, renders it fragile and makes it possible to thwart it.” He concluded, “Power relations are both intentional and nonsubjective….there is no power that is exercised without a series of aims and objectives.”21

Structural theory and their progeny aid in the study of racial discourse of the late nineteenth and early twentieth-centuries America by making clear the idea that race and

17 Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge, 38. 18 Gunn, 90. 19 Green, 76. 20 Dreyfus and Rabinow, 5, 9. 21 Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage/Random House, 1980), 94-95, 101.

9

ethnicity are culturally constructed identities that have a long history as part of the social system. By examining these racial discourses over multiple decades, certain themes remained constant, but also language evolved and meanings varied based on contextual interpretation. While some scholars believe that discourse should not be interpreted in relation to the context, Bakhtin’s methodology is most appropriate for this research because the context of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries greatly lends itself to the study of racial discourse because of his theory of variations of language within one society. In addition, his idea of heteroglossia can be tied in with Foucault’s concepts of knowledge and power. For while Bakhtin sees different groups using variations of language, Foucault believes that power comes from everywhere. In this thesis, the discourse of different segments of society will be studied: of scholars, in popular magazines, and in children’s textbooks. Scholars, journalists, educators, and readers all had their own power over racial ideas. While scholars supported the racial hierarchy with

“science” and disseminated their work to the public, each group adapted and appropriated the hierarchy to fit their societal needs. All groups believed African Americans and immigrants were a frightening menace, but the solutions they offered to this problem ranged from restriction and eugenics to assimilation.

With this theoretical underpinning, I developed a methodology that allowed me to examine the various groups’ discourse of race in order to demonstrate the national fear of minorities and the various ways people proposed to fix this societal concern. As a cultural history, this thesis will approach the topic through discourse analysis. This thesis is also a consciousness study because it explores how scholars and the white American

10

public viewed and discussed the changing racial composition of the United States and how this created a collective understanding of race and ethnicity during the Progressive

Era. "To be sure, the consciousness of racial difference had existed for centuries," as historian Jackson Lears asserts, "But there was something profoundly different about the of the late nineteenth century—it was more self-conscious, more systematic, more determined to assert scientific legitimacy." In a society that seemed to be in upheaval economically, politically, and socially, scientific conceptions of race seemed to bring

"solidity to personal identity, in a secularizing market society where most forms of identity were malleable and up for sale." Through eugenics, some white Americans believed a managerial utopia could be engineered by perfecting the human race. This desire for a utopian society and moral and cultural revitalization was not only reflected in racial ideology, but also in other areas of society, as seen with the increased calls for physical fitness and organized sports and the rise of prohibition. As other reforms in society, eugenics and scientific beliefs of race were respected intellectually, which

"underscores the centrality of racialist thinking among Americans who considered themselves enlightened and progressive. Here as elsewhere, racism and modernity were twinned." 22

As historian Michael McGerr explains, during the Progressive Era, the term

“segregation” took on its Jim Crow definition, however, it did not only apply to African

Americans but also to immigrants, Native Americans, and the working class. While progressives often encouraged “association” between diverse groups of people, they also

22 Jackson Lears, Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920 (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009), 93-95, 100-102, 108-109.

11

believed that some differences between people could not be eliminated. In fact, McGerr asserts, segregation drew upon progressive ideals. For example, many progressives wanted to reform and protect society, and segregation offered a way to prevent social conflict from occurring. They believed that with what McGerr calls “the shield of segregation, the fundamental project of transforming people could go on in safety.”23

While civic nationalists ideas of political and social equality were often espoused, many white Americans still adhered to , believing the opportunities of “racial inferiors” should be limited. These white Americans sought to “marginalize and punish the dissenters or to tame and ‘Americanize’ them, rendering them suitable for incorporation into the national community,” explains historian Gary Gerstle. These

“[d]isciplinary campaigns would lift up some, but not all, groups of racial inferiors into the American mainstream.”24 Gerstle, like McGerr, demonstrates the complexity of

Progressive Era thinking. While in some ways it encouraged equality and reform, it also accommodated racial notions of supposed American and Nordic white superiority.

When examining this racial discourse, it is important to recognize that it does not always fit into clear-cut categories. Race, being a cultural construction, did not have a concrete definition. In addition, the solutions proposed were not always clearly defined either. While this thesis focuses on calls for assimilation and restriction, there are many gray areas in between, which reflect white Americans’ uncertainty over how to fix the supposed minority “problem” during this era. Because there was not one absolute answer

23 Michael McGerr, A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 182-184. 24 Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 8-9.

12

to this issue, concern over the future of white American society was only heightened.

This thesis focuses on the dominant racial discourse in white American society but recognizes that there are works in academia and popular culture that deviate from it. For example, while many social scientists used science to support the racial hierarchy and immigration restriction, a minority disagreed with theories of social evolution. These internal contradictions reveal the difficulty and complexity of the study of racial ideology. However, the scope of this project focuses on the dominant racial discourse that permeated both academia and popular culture and reflected a consciousness of race and ethnicity.

This thesis begins in the late 1880s and culminates in the 1920s as this period saw high rates of immigration to the United States and the most prolific implementation of racial policies at the local, state, and federal level. The first chapter will analyze the language used by the intelligentsia in their studies of race to demonstrate that even as they continued to use social Darwinist theories, they increasingly employed derogatory language to describe what they believed were inferior races, such as eastern and southern

Europeans, Asians, and African Americans, as dangerous to those more “civilized” and

“superior” white Nordics. To demonstrate the fear and anxiety that existed in scholarly works, I examine how anthropologists, psychologists, biologists, and other scholars addressed race and ethnicity in their publications in order to advocate for control and restriction of immigrants and African Americans. To these scholars and social critics, the only way to ensure the purity of the Nordic race was to curb immigration and stop racial mixing.

13

To reveal how these theories pervaded the American mindset, the second chapter will sample popular American magazines as representative of the middle-class understanding of immigrants and African Americans and the danger they posed. Many of these articles outline the inferiority of these races and warn of the threats they posed to

American society. Interestingly, magazines reflect an ambiguity not seen in scholarly works. Articles, while clearly expressing a fear of minorities, offered various solutions.

While many argued for restriction or eugenic measures, many other articles suggested assimilation and were the only ways to meld the immigrants and African

Americans who were already in the United States into white American society. They argued that restriction could not fix the problem that already existed within the United

States, and in order to create loyal, efficient citizens out of minorities, education must be used to instill American values and traditions.

The third chapter will explore the proliferation of racial discourse in introductory- level school textbooks during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, where students were taught about racial hierarchy and the traits of various races using language describing certain groups as “savages” and Caucasians as “civilized,” in much the same tone as the scientists who developed these racial categories. Similarly to those journalists who advocated assimilation, textbook authors and educators stressed to children the ability of inferior races to transform themselves into more civilized citizens. While the racial hierarchy in textbooks identified to white American children which groups should be feared because of their inferior traits, the texts also stressed the role of environment in determining civility. To educators, if inferior races adapted to American society, culture,

14

and beliefs, they could become civilized. Therefore, educators believed assimilation and

Americanization were the best solutions to ending the immigrant and African American threat.

In December 1915, President Wilson warned of recent immigrants “who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life…America never witnessed anything like this before…Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed out.”25 This language of fear regarding minorities dominated both the social and political realms in Progressive Era America, as white Americans worried about

“disloyal” and “inferior” immigrants and African Americans overrunning white civilization. While the threat of minorities seemed clear to white Americans, the solution to the problem was not as simple and ranged from restriction to assimilation, reflecting the complexity of racial discourse. However, this discourse did not only dominate

Progressive Era society, but aided in the formation of a racial ideology that pervaded the twentieth century. The racial discourse of the Progressive Era is but only a part of an ongoing dialogue about the definition of race and the creation of an American identity that continues in today’s society.

25 quoted in John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American , 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 200.

CHAPTER I

Language of Fear: Scientific Studies of Race and Ethnicity in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Centuries United States

The late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries are often portrayed as a period of transition and reform in the United States. However, one aspect of dominant white society, racial and ethnic ideology, grew increasingly regressive and defensive as the fear of minorities became an accepted part of many people’s daily beliefs and discussion. A racial hierarchy appeared in , magazine articles, political cartoons, advertisements, and literature. For example, popular during this time period were “coon songs,” which meant to imitate “typical” African American music and often stereotyped and insulted

African Americans. In the 1904 song “I’m the Toughest, Toughest Coon,” an African

American man is depicted as having “a razor in my boot,…[and] a gun with which to shoot,” encouraging the common belief among white Americans that African Americans were violent and criminals.1 Immigrants were seen just as, if not more, dangerous to the

“Nordic” white race as African Americans. In an image from Harper’s Weekly by

Thomas Nast (figure 1.1), a southern African American and a northern Irishman were portrayed as apes suspended on the scale of civic virtue at the same level, showing they

1 John Lowe, Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 118.

15

16

were equally threatening to American government.2 While this image was published before the Progressive Era, this projection of primitivism became the common visual stereotype for those races viewed as “scientifically” inferior in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Figure 1.1: Thomas Nast’s “The Ignorant Vote-Honors are Easy” appeared in Harper’s Weekly in 1876.

This already established dislike and fear of minorities among white American citizens only increased into the twentieth century. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s

(1925) epitomizes this acceptance, as one of the main characters, Tom, warns,

“Civilization’s going to pieces,” and references a book, The Rise of the Empires by Goddard, stating, “Well, it’s a fine book, and everybody ought to read it. The idea is if

2 Thomas Nast, “The Ignorant Vote—Honors Are Easy,” Harper’s Weekly, December 9, 1876, in “HarpWeek: Cartoons from Harper’s Weekly and Other Leading Journals,” http://elections.harpweek.com/1876/cartoon-1876-Medium.asp?UniqueID=26&Year=1876 (accessed March 28, 2011).

17

we don’t look out the white race will be—will be utterly submerged. It’s all scientific stuff; it’s been proved.”3 In fact, during this time, it did seem as if science could prove that certain groups were inferior to others. While The Rise of the Colored Empires did not exist, it is clear that Fitzgerald was familiar with historian, Lothrop Stoddard, who received his Ph.D. from Harvard University and who wrote The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy in 1920. Stoddard used language similar to Tom, writing, “All over the civilized world racial values are diminishing, and the logical end of this dysgenic process is racial bankruptcy and the collapse of civilization.”4 Stoddard went on to not only provide evidence of inferiority, but to encourage readers to be afraid of what would happen if measures were not taken to stop or slow this decline in racial purity.

Racism and nativism were not new concepts to Americans in the twentieth century; yet, with the increase in immigrant populations, anthropologists, psychologists, sociologists, and eugenicists began researching the mental and social abilities of these groups, positing their inferiority to the Anglo-Saxon.5 They used intelligence tests, the measurement of head sizes, crime statistics, and a variety of other examples to prove, scientifically, that minorities were inferior and even dangerous to the American way of life. Social activists, hoping to improve society through reform, often used these scientific studies to portray certain racial or ethnic groups as inferior and detrimental to

3 F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925), 10. 4 Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 302-303. 5 Between 1901 and 1914, ten immigrants arrived for each one thousand people already in the United States. This was twice the rate of the 1890s. Roger Daniels, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890–1924 (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Inc., 1997), 58.

18

the United States. The myriad of racial theories and scientific studies worked to legitimize the commonly held nativist and racial ideologies among the public and furthered their fears that certain groups could pollute the human race and U.S. society.

By exploring the theoretical and social scientific literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this chapter will demonstrate that the intelligentsia who carried out these studies used language that sharpened and reflected fear among white American citizens of both African Americans and immigrants and the possible damage they could do to American society.

Many historians, such as Thomas Gossett, focus on the social construction of racial and ethnic identities in the United States. By studying anthropological concepts, , race in discourse, racism, and nativism, Gossett outlined the complex nature of race in the early twentieth century. He noted that while not everyone took these ideas to the extreme, many were influenced by and believed those studies that showed intelligence varied between races.6 Anthropologist Lee D. Baker continued Gossett’s work in a thorough and insightful examination of racial theories and their proponents in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; and, like Gossett, viewed race as ideologically and culturally constructed. “The relationships and linkages between the shifting discourse on race within and the racial constructs undergoing transformation in the

6 Thomas Gossett, Race: The History of an Idea in America (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963), vii, 373.

19

United States,” he writes, demonstrated how anthropologists in this time helped in the formation of racial categories and influenced society’s ideology and policies.7

John Higham’s seminal Strangers in the Land argued that nativism was always present, but its intensity increased or decreased dependent upon economic, political, and social factors often connected to nationalism. During and after , therefore, nativists voiced their fears of disloyal immigrants.8 A more recent study by Matthew

Frye Jacobson links the concept of American virtue and foreign barbarism to three areas: markets, images, and politics. In his section on images, Jacobson outlines how anthropological studies shaped how Americans viewed and treated minorities.9 In another one of his works, Whiteness of a Different Color, Jacobson argues:

Thus the racial sciences were in fact racializing sciences, ever responding to the political imperatives of the slavery question, questions of territorial expansion, and, later, the vexing immigration question, and at the same time creating in their

7 Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley: University of Press, 1998), 2. Other books discussing race and ethnicity in the United States include Thomas J. Archdeacon, Becoming American: An Ethnic History (New York: The Free Press, 1983); Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (Princeton, NJ: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990); and David R. Roediger, Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrant Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs (New York: Basic Books, 2005). For a closer examination of the nativist movement see Dale T. Knobel, America for the Americans: The Nativist Movement in the United States (New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1996). 8 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 4. 9 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2000), 101-102. For a gendered interpretation, see Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995). For a discussion of eugenics, see Steven Selden, Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America (New York: Teachers College Press, 1999); Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); and Susan Currell and Christina Cogdell, Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006).

20

wake new kinds of ‘certainty’ that ‘explained’ slavery, expansion, and the trouble with immigrants.10

People were no longer simply proclaiming the supremacy of Anglo-Saxons, they now saw themselves under attack by supposed inferior, unclean groups who threatened their morals and way of life. When one examines the myriad of social scientific studies, books, speeches, and journals by scholars and social critics, a foundation which supported and furthered the public’s fears of different races is revealed. Some scholars made a more direct and substantial impact on societal beliefs when their books became popular with the public or their ideas were published in popular magazines like the

Saturday Evening Post (discussed in Chapter 2). Popular or scholarly, these various scientific approaches, tied to anthropological studies of racial characteristics, biological explanations of heredity, and the use of intelligence tests, illustrate how social scientists’ discourse legitimized fear of those considered racially inferior. Examination of various scholars’ language of fear reveals how they sharpened the discussion of racial hierarchy in society. The language of fear apparent in these select studies on social Darwinism, mental capabilities, and eugenics was made manifest in immigration restrictions. To these social critics, the only way to stop the threat of inferior races was to control and restrict their entry into the country. While racial and ethnic ideology was already ingrained in the minds of the American public during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars and critics in the social sciences heightened the fear of minorities with their language choice that warned of “a process of racial impoverishment,

10 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 33.

21

which destroyed the great civilizations of the past and which threaten[ed] to destroy

[their] own.”11

THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

Between 1890 and 1920, Americans understood that the changes taking place in their society were leading to an upheaval of traditional values and their way of life.

Woodrow Wilson noted in 1913 that the changes in industry and everyday relationships were “nothing short of a new social age, a new era of human relationships, a new stage- setting for the drama of life.”12 Historian Donald K. Pickens argues that with its many components, progressivism “was not a pure substance; rather, it was an alloy through which ran sizable streaks of conservatism and, on occasion, a vein of reaction.”

According to Pickens, progressives, fearful of the current economic and political corruption, looked to a past they nostalgically saw as more independent and virtuous and optimistically hoped to reform society to better create this imagined reality.13 Earlier,

Robert Wiebe argued that the rise of urban-industrial life in the Progressive Era broke down autonomous communities through increased transportation and communication, which resulted in a more powerful government with more centralized authority and a society which ranked people by occupation. Rather than portraying the Progressive Era

11 Lothrop Stoddard, preface to The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922). 12 Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People (New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913), 4. 13 Donald K. Pickens, Eugenics and the Progressives (Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968), 102.

22

as a desire for a return to traditional society, Wiebe suggested that the reformers attempted to create an organized society for a modern future.14 While some people celebrated the modern progress resulting from technology, growing wealth, industry, and imperialistic achievements, others longed for a more simple and autonomous life. During this earlier period, American society was supposedly comprised of “island communities” connected by a market economy, each with the autonomy to make decisions and manage its members’ lives. These communities, often rural, homogeneous, and Protestant, held values that reflected the idea, as Wiebe noted, “that God had ordained modesty in women, rectitude in men, and thrift, sobriety, and hard work in both.”15

With the rise of corporate capitalism and an urban culture, citizens, especially the white middle class, saw their roles and communities being challenged and altered. Wiebe explained that increased numbers of corporations, seen as corrupt, gained power and took advantage of the workers and farmers in America. Communication and transportation created a more connected and interdependent United States. Many Americans, especially the “new middle class,” consisting of urban professionals, sought to establish social order through better organization and management. They stressed the need for governmental involvement to achieve their goal of more centralized authority.16 In addition, according to historian Steven Diner, underlying these reforms were two ideas:

14 Robert Wiebe, Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967), xiv. Another seminal work on the Progressive Era includes Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1955). 15 Wiebe, viii, 2, 4. 16 Ibid., xiii-xiv, 112.

23

First, humans were basically rational, so the citizenry of America, if properly informed and empowered, would insist that government eschew special interests to pursue the common good….Second, the natural and social sciences could now discover the causes of the nation’s social problems and offer solutions….The activist government envisioned by reformers relied upon scientific experts to staff new, impartial administrative agencies….Undergirding progressives’ technocratic faith in science and expertise lay a third assumption, a powerful if vaguely defined faith in Christian morality.17

The need to construct an ordered and rational society using these core beliefs created an environment where anthropology and other academic fields were used to help the government regulate people and social issues such as crime, immorality, alcoholism, and .18

One major perceived threat to these values and social order was the movement of

African Americans and immigrant populations within and to the United States. Despite the desire to reform other aspects of society, such as instituting market regulation, improving working conditions and hours, and increasing social purity, hygiene, and temperance, this period was more of a “regressive era” as society grew increasingly racist and nativist.19 “Progressive thinkers and politicians became ensnared in a web of

‘,’” according to historian David Southern and therefore saw that a racial hierarchy with good and bad races was a biological fact leading to an ideology of control and linking progressive reform and race.20 The dominant white middle class grew increasingly fearful of all minority groups who might upset their social order, ushering in

17 Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), 201. 18 Baker, 81-82. 19 Daniels, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 48; Diner, 46, 261. 20 David W. Southern, The Progressive Era and Race (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2005), 2.

24

an era of decay and moral decline linked to their alien beliefs and traditions. The combination of African Americans who moved to urban cities of the North during the

Great Migration in the early twentieth century and the thirteen million immigrants who entered the country between 1901 and 1914 heightened the anxiety among “native”

Americans.21 The late nineteenth century saw a white hysteria towards the black population, viewing them as a “lost cause” to reform because of their antisocial behavior and criminality, outrageously leading to the increased use of lynch mobs. This concern existed in both the South and North, where a fear of competition led to exclusion of blacks from jobs.22 In addition to African Americans, “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe were seen as inferior and detrimental to society because they were perceived as bringing with them a polluted germplasm, radical ideologies, and ethnic traditions that threatened the purity of America.23 With immigrants from -

Hungary, , and making up 87% of the immigration in 1907 (as compared to

1% in 1869 and 10% in 1882), “native” Americans’ fears worsened.24 Their concern, both tied into racial and ethnic understanding and bolstered by the Progressive Era focus on order and reason, helped to encourage the spread of scientific racism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

21 Daniels, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 58. 22 Southern, 28-29, 31, 35. 23 Marouf A. Hasian, Jr., The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought (Athens, GA: The University of Press, 1996), 49; Daniels, Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 58-62. 24 Philip Perlmutter, Divided We Fall: A History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 111.

25

ANTHROPOLOGY, SOCIAL DARWINISM, AND THE LANGUAGE OF EVOLUTION

While racial ideologies had already existed in American society, what historian

John Higham termed “race-feeling,” or the idea of , did not arise until intellectuals began cataloging races. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, scholars studied racial groups to create a based on physical characteristics such as skin color, hair texture, or skull size to support white supremacy. Racial differences were not always obvious, but had to be created. “A rather elaborate, well-entrenched set of racial ideas was essential,” Higham argues, “before the newcomers from Europe could seem a fundamentally different order of men.”25 The hierarchy that scholars created grew increasingly complex, for by the early twentieth century it was no longer a case of good versus bad or white versus black. These distinctions were replaced by increased variations. While the American intelligentsia accepted the general racial categories of

“Caucasians,” “,” and “,” social critics and eugenicists, such as

Madison Grant, a lawyer and amateur anthropologist, increasingly focused on degrees of whiteness. According to his taxonomy, the “Negro” was the lowest race, labeled as savage or uncivilized. However, the hierarchy now saw increased divisions among the white population as three basic European races were developed: “Nordic,” “Alpine,” and

“Mediterranean.”26

25 Higham,132-133. 26 Elizabeth M. Smith-Pryor, Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2009), 46-47.

26

Figure 1.2: A distribution of European races developed by eugenicist Madison Grant in his 1916 work, The Passing of the Great Race.27

The Nordic was most civilized and superior to all other races. Alpine and Mediterranean peoples fell somewhere between Nordics and . Madison Grant outlined their position: “Both of these races are…western extensions of Asiatic subspecies and neither of them can be considered as exclusively European.”28 In addition to “Negros” and marginalized White races, the “Yellow races” in Asia, “Brown races” in west-central

Asia and Northern , and the “Red races” in the Americas, were viewed as

“inferior” and “dangerous” to the Nordic civilization.29

27 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 4th ed. (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 272. 28 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 167. 29 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color, 4-16.

27

In order to understand the language of fear used by these eugenicists in the early twentieth century, it is necessary to provide a background in social Darwinist theory, which would continue to influence scholars throughout the Progressive Era. Beginning in the late nineteenth century and continuing into the twentieth century, anthropologists argued for the primacy of heredity and acquired characteristics. Following the release of

Charles Darwin’s On the Origins of Species (1859), social Darwinists pointed out that each race represented different stages of evolution.30 While Darwin examined biological organisms, scholars saw that his theory could be applied to civilizations and even individuals. For social Darwinists, heredity rather than environment shaped the evolution of a race and society.31 “Twentieth-century American naturalists and eugenicists accepted as valid the eighteenth-century notion that race existed because of early deviation from the original type of the species,” writes historian Donald K. Pickens, “Different races of men were expressions of imperfection from a given type.”32 Therefore, Darwin’s theory of natural selection could apply to society and racial groups as a “method for producing superior men, superior nations, and superior races.”33

One of the leading proponents of social Darwinism was , an

English scholar whose works sold 300,000 copies in the United States, a rare feat for non-fiction publications.34 The two phrases often identified with Darwinism, “the

30 Charles Darwin, On the Origins of Species (London: John Murray, 1859). 31 Gossett, 144-145. 32 Pickens, 163. 33 Gossett, 145. 34 William H. Tucker, The Science and Politics of Racial Research (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994), 27.

28

struggle for existence” and “survival of the fittest,” originated from Spencer’s theories of evolution. These two phrases would continue to influence the discourse of racial scientists into the Progressive Era. Spencer believed that human intellect, bodies, and social institutions could be ranked, and therefore, an evolutionary hierarchy could be created.35 To him and his followers, “No adequate change of character can be produced in a year, or in a generation, or in a century. All which teaching can do…is the checking of retrograde action.”36 Therefore, to Spencer and his supporters, the education of inferior races was useless since their traits and characteristics were biological and could not be significantly altered. Spencer’s portrayal of the racial hierarchy as a struggle for survival became a key theme used by psychologists and eugenicists who feared the end of civilization and the Nordic race. However, some eugenicists went even further, doubting the social Darwinist theory of natural selection and instead believing that they, along with government officials and the “better” public, needed to intervene to correct society. The inability to elevate an individual or race meant that social Darwinists opposed any social reform like public education, libraries, governmental programs for the poor and sickly, charities, free meals, sanitation laws, and even health services because these would interfere with natural selection.37 Even Darwin, who was not necessarily a eugenicist, stated in his work The Descent of Man:

We civilized men…do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last

35 Gossett, 145-146. 36 Herbert Spencer quoted in Gossett, 147. 37 Gossett, 147-148; Baker, 27.

29

moment….Thus, the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man.38

While Darwin’s language was not as emotional as will be seen in later decades, Darwin did introduce ideas that were fundamental for eugenicists. He, like Progressive Era social scientists and critics, compared the weak to domestic animals and argued that society should not waste resources to save them. The fear of weak races procreating and the danger these uncivilized, unfit populations posed to “civilized men” became common themes among social scientists. Historian Lee Baker argues that within Spencer’s work, three racist ideologies were exposed that “were reproduced and canonized within U.S. anthropology.” First¸ “race, language, culture, nationality, ethnicity and so forth were all viewed as one and the same in Spencer’s racial and cultural scheme.” Second, scientific reasoning and law could prove inferiority and superiority of races. And lastly, tones were seen as evil and barbarous compared to the supremacy of . These social Darwinist ideologies allowed for the systematic categorization and ranking of races in a time when organization and scientific empirical evidence were of utmost importance.39

While anthropologists studied a variety of physical characteristics such as skin color and hair to classify races, one important scientific method involved the study of the skull and brain through and phrenology. These two fields adhered to the theory that the size of a skull reflected intelligence; therefore, the larger the skull, the

38 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871), 168. 39 Baker, 28-31.

30

higher the intellect. The most influential American scholar in this field was Samuel G.

Morton, a physician from Philadelphia who used his collection of 800 human skulls to research and publish Crania Americana (1839).40 His findings showed that English skulls were the largest, followed by American and German, then Negro, Chinese, and lastly,

Native American.41 Despite the fact that he had not perfected a method of measuring cranial capacity and replicating his results, his findings were accepted and even celebrated by some. The Charleston Medical Journal stated, “We can only say that we of the South should consider him as our benefactor, for aiding most materially in giving to the negro his true position as an inferior race.”42 After Morton’s death, other physicians and anthropologists such as Josiah Clark Nott continued to study the size of skulls. Nott examined different areas of the skull to find comparisons between races. He argued:

Looking back over the world’s history, it will be seen that human progress has arisen mainly from the war of races. All the great impulses which have been given to it from time to time have been the results of conquests and colonizations. Certain races would be stationary and barbarous for ever, were it not for the introduction of new blood and novel influences; and some of the lowest types are hopelessly beyond the reach even of these salutary stimulants to melioration.43

From Nott’s work, it is clear that his scholarly findings and language revealed a concern about minorities. Nott’s theories were used by individuals to support slavery and

Manifest Destiny as a means to civilize “stationary and barbarous” people. In fact,

40 Samuel G. Morton, Crania Americana (Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839). 41 Gossett, 69-71, 74. 42 George Stocking Jr., Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the (New York: Free Press, 1968), 144. 43 J.C. Nott and G.R. Gliddon, Types of Man (Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854), 52.

31

southerners like John C. Calhoun used Morton’s and Nott’s work and language to make their pro-slavery arguments.44 Nott referenced a “war of races,” which reflected the struggle in society between the civilized and uncivilized, arguing for the importance of blood to fix this racial problem. The idea of a race war and of blood as representative of race and heredity remained constant among those scholars concerned over the future of the Nordic race. However, the key is the last line, where as Spencer suggested, certain groups were simply too savage to be saved, and therefore, money or reform efforts should not be wasted on them.

While anthropologists continued to find results to support their supposed racial hierarchy, it became apparent that phrenology and craniometry were not accurate because the human skull was too irregular.45 However, their language continued to influence scholars and the public. As Pickens argues, “Nineteenth-century American anthropology was functional: it supported the racial attitudes of the day.”46 By the turn of the century, social scientists looked for modern “scientific” methods of proving a racial hierarchy and introduced an even more inflammatory language of fear.

INTELLIGENCE TESTING AND STUDIES OF HUMAN BEHAVIOR

In the early twentieth century, racial theorists found a new advocate in the scientific research of psychology. Previous studies of craniometry, which attempted to

44 Nott and Gliddon, 51. 45 Gossett, 76. 46 Pickens, 167.

32

measure intelligence through skull size, were replaced by more scientific testing of aptitude. In 1905, French psychologists Alfred Binet and Théodore Simon developed a series of tests called the Binet-Simon scale to measure intelligence of various age groups.

In 1916, Lewis Terman, a psychologist at Stanford University and later the president of the American Psychological Association, published a revised version of the Binet-Simon scale calling it the Stanford-Binet scale of intelligence. Scholars in various fields and government organizations found in these tests the perfect vehicle to prove that races had varying degrees of intelligence and that Nordic whites were superior while other races were made up a larger percentage of groups labeled as “idiots,” “imbeciles,” “morons,” or “feeble-minded.”47 In addition, other psychologists conducted research to determine which human characteristics, such as alcoholism, crime, or laziness, were more prevalent in different races. The development of these measures of both mental capabilities and human behavior provided the scientific proof that the racial hierarchy argued by many previous scholars was in fact “true.”48 When discussing the lower, feeble-minded people, social critics, such as Stoddard, warned, “The influx of such lower elements into civilized societies is an unmitigated disaster. It upsets living standards, socially sterilizes the higher native stocks, and if…interbreeding occurs, the racial foundations of civilization are undermined, and the mongrelized population, unable to bear the burden, sinks to a lower plane.”49 By discussing the results of “interbreeding” as a “disaster,” “steriliz[ing] the higher native stocks,” and creating a “mongrelized population,” Stoddard reflected

47 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 166-168; Gossett, 363. 48 Gossett, 363-364. 49 Stoddard, The Revolt against Civilization, 5-6.

33

the fear of the decline of white civilization if lower races are introduced. He placed the

Nordic race in opposition with inferior races that would only do harm to white American civilization. White Americans who already believed an upheaval of traditional values was occurring in Progressive Era society due to political and economic corruption would only be further frightened by the threat to “the racial foundations of civilization.” To believers of the racial hierarchy, Nordic superiority was firmly established and should not be tainted by inferior traits. More specifically, psychologists and other supporters incited alarm among the white American public by emphasizing minorities’ inferior mental capabilities, negative behaviors and traits, and legal standing as U.S. citizens.

The Stanford-Binet scale allowed Terman to examine the intelligence of various races in his 1916 book The Measurement of Intelligence. His data revealed that certain groups, such as Spanish-Indians or Mexicans, were likely to have low IQs of between 70 to 80, which he connected to race. He urged further study, which he believed would reveal

enormously significant racial differences in general intelligence, difference which cannot be wiped out by any scheme of mental culture….[F]rom a eugenic point of view they constitute a grave problem because of their unusually prolific breeding.50

His warning, which mentioned the difficulty of “wiping out” the lower intelligence of immigrants because of their higher birth rates, spoke to the Progressive Era fear of

America being overrun by foreigners and their strange traditions. Stoddard argued that

“our least intelligent stocks” were increasing a great deal and that “[o]bviously, it is this

50 Lewis Terman, The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1916), 91-92; Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 168.

34

prodigious spawning of inferiors which must at all costs be prevented if society is to be saved from disruption and dissolution. Race cleansing is apparently the only thing that can stop it.”51 His urgency and fear of inferior groups is made clear by his use of

“prodigious spawning” when referring to non-white races and through his argument that action must be taken “at all costs.” By suggesting that “race cleansing” was the only way to prevent society from “disruption,” he suggested to concerned Nordic readers that other races were polluted, dirty, tainted, and therefore inferior.

While the Stanford-Binet scale was not the first test developed and used in the

United States, it was used to test intelligence in 1917 when the United States entered

WWI. Under the direction of Dr. Robert Yerkes, the Committee on the Psychological

Examination of Recruits formed under the American Psychological Association to determine which men were most suited for specific positions.52 The idea of using intelligence testing to prove feeblemindedness did not seem obvious to all people. For example, Justice John W. Goff of the New York Supreme Court stated, “Standardizing the mind is as futile as standardizing electricity.”53 However, to Yerkes, this massive intelligence testing during WWI allowed him and other psychologists to prove the relevance of these tests. Yerkes gained support from the Surgeon General of the Army,

William C. Gorgas, who was in charge of keeping unfit people out of the army.54 When speaking of the Committees plans, Yerkes stated, “[F]or individual information…we

51 Stoddard, The Revolt against Civilization, 254. 52 Daniel J. Kevles, “Testing the Army's Intelligence: Psychologists and the Military in World War I,” The Journal of American History 55 (December 1968): 565. 53 Justice John W. Goff quoted in Kevles, 566. 54 Kevles, 567-568.

35

substitute systematic scientific observation; that on the basis of this observation a first line army be organized; that men of inferior ability be reserved for later use or classified appropriately in the second or third line.”55 Therefore, to Yerkes, “scientific observation” was more efficient and accurate than solely relying on the individual information given to the army by each person. By studying intelligence and applying it to the racial hierarchy,

Yerkes and his supporters believed “a first line army” could be created to protect

American ideals and traditions. Yerkes and other psychologists used the Stanford-Binet scale to develop an “army alpha” and “army beta” test. The alpha was more predominantly used over the beta test, which was for people who were unfamiliar with

English. The 1.7 million soldiers tested were ranked from A to E on a scale, where A was most intelligent and E reflected those who were least intelligent.56 He concluded that foreign groups, such as those from , Italy, Russia, Greece, and produced a greater proportion of D scores than those from England, Holland, Denmark, or other

“Nordic” countries (figure 1.3).57

55 Robert Yerkes to Surgeon General quoted in Kevles, 568. 56 Gossett, 367. 57 Robert M. Yerkes, ed., Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XV: Psychological Examining in the United States Army (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921), 697.

36

Figure 1.3: “Percentage distribution of letter grades in intelligence by nativity of foreign-born men in draft.” The groups portrayed from top to bottom: England, Holland, Denmark, , , Sweden, , Belgium, White Draft, Norway, Austria, , Turkey, Greece, All Foreign Countries, Russia, Italy, Poland. This graph supposedly demonstrated that people from “Nordic” countries have a higher percentage of people with scores of A, B, and C, than “Alpine” or “Mediterranean” countries.

With the completion of the tests, Carl Brigham, a psychologist at Princeton, used the results to publish A Study of American Intelligence in 1923. He argued, in agreement with earlier scholars, that four specific races existed, and further, a racial hierarchy could be established using scientific measurements. The “Nordic” was superior, followed by

37

the “Alpine,” the “Mediterranean,” and finally, the “Negro.” He, in an even more emotional and racialist manner than Terman or previous psychologists, warned,

“American intelligence is declining, and will proceed with an accelerating rate as the racial admixture becomes more and more extensive.” He pointed out that the intelligence of immigrants to the United States declined because 70-75% of them came from the

Alpine and Mediterranean races. This suggested to readers that the “new” immigrants from southern and eastern Europe should be feared because they threatened superior

American mental aptitude and therefore mixing or assimilating them into the native white

American population would be detrimental to the superiority of Nordic civilization.

Further, overall American intelligence would decrease faster because the United States’

African American population was mixing with whites.58 He ended by stressing:

These are the plain, if somewhat ugly, facts that our study shows. The deterioration of American intelligence is not inevitable, however, if public action can be aroused to prevent it….The steps that should be taken to preserve or increase our present intellectual capacity must of course be dictated by science and not by political expediency. Immigration should not only be restrictive but highly selective….The really important steps are those looking toward the prevention of the continued propagation of defective strains in the present population.59

His findings, which he considered “ugly facts,” denied other possible causes of decreased intelligence among immigrants, such as their environment, their knowledge of the

English language, or the number of years they had been in the United States. While describing intelligence as “deteriorating,” Brigham offered hope to a concerned public who could be “aroused to prevent it” and to save the intelligence of America from the

58 Carl C. Brigham, A Study of American Intelligence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923), xix, 189-190, 197, 209-210. 59 Ibid., 210.

38

almost less than human “defective strains” by making immigration laws “not only…restrictive but highly selective” and “dictated by science.”60 To Brigham, the threat of inferior immigrant intelligence would not fix itself through “racial admixture,” or assimilation. Instead, concerned native white Americans had to step in to restrict immigration to protect superior white American civilization.

Intelligence was but one trait connected to race. During the early twentieth century, scientists believed that an array of human social traits were attributed to racial heredity. One major concern was morality tied to American ideals. Social critics like

Madison Grant warned:

These immigrants adopt the language of the native American, they wear his clothes, they steal his name and they are beginning to take his women, but they seldom adopt his religion or understand his ideals and while he is being elbowed out of his own home the American looks calmly abroad and urges on others the suicidal ethics which are exterminating his own race.61

Grant played to the Progressive Era fear of crime in society by portraying immigrants as thieves stealing American mores and threatening the purity of American women and

American ideals. He asserted that by idly watching and allowing immigrants to enter the

United States and “elbow them out,” Nordic whites were committing racial suicide and exterminating themselves. Supporting these fears, Harry Laughlin, a leading eugenicist, suggested that a disproportionate percentage of people in asylums, jails, and poorhouses were immigrants, proving their “inborn socially inadequate qualities.”62 Others, like

David Starr Jordan, the president of Stanford University, warned of alcoholism,

60 Ibid., 210. 61 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 91. 62 Harry Laughlin quoted in Gossett, 401.

39

concluding, “The savage races which have never known alcohol are even less resistant, and are soonest destroyed by it.”63 His colleague, , a biologist and the most notable eugenicist in the United States who formed a laboratory in Cold Springs

Harbor, New York and later founded the ,64 conducted investigations into immigration and heredity and concluded that German characteristics included intelligence and honesty, while the Irish were prone to alcoholism and defectiveness, and had an innate “tendency for crimes of personal violence.”65

Other scholars felt that race could explain religious preferences as well. William

McDougall, a professor of psychology at Harvard, argued that Nordics were more likely to be curious, inquiring, and introverted, and therefore, broke away from the authority and emotional displays of the . In contrast, the less self-reliant Alpine and Mediterranean races followed the authority of Catholicism.66 This supposed dependence of immigrants on the Catholic Church created anxiety among the Protestant middle class. By outlining these scientific stereotypes, scholars projected fear onto specific groups they believed were more likely to be “defectives,” “degenerates,” and unable to function in a “civilized” society. They were, therefore, a hindrance to the progress of the United States.67

63 David Starr Jordan, The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races through the Survival of the Unfit, 4th ed. (Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1906), 37. 64 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 151. 65 Charles B. Davenport, Heredity in Relation to Eugenics (New York: H. Holt, 1911), 212-220. 66 William McDougall, Is America Safe for Democracy? (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921), 102. 67 Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 22.

40

With these stereotypes “confirmed” by research, psychologists and other intellectuals explained why the immigrant was a danger to U.S. citizenship and the

American republic. Eugenicist Charles W. Gould’s America: A Family Matter proclaimed:

The teachings of science, the records of history, the warnings of common sense our own bitter present experience, cry out unto us. There is no ground on which utterly alien people, alien in race, in language, in customs, mature men, mature women, settled in their foreign ways should be admitted to our own citizenship….It is monstrous. We have robbed and are robbing our children of their heritage.68

To Gould, the signs of a foreign or “alien” threat “cry out unto us,” and he hoped to convince readers that allowing aliens to become U.S. citizens was dangerous. He worried about immigrants who dismissed American ways and morals, as they were criminals who robbed society and society’s children of their American heritage, freedom, and certain civic aspects, like intelligence, courage, persistence, patience, and statesmanship. As

Progressive Era middle-class reformers already viewed economic and political corruption as threatening traditional American morals, they also feared inferior immigrants would harm American progress and democracy. To Gould, American heritage, intelligence, and civic duties “cannot be taught, they must come to us with the mother’s milk…until they become part and parcel of our very being.”69 Therefore, Gould suggested to readers that inferior races could not learn to be efficient and loyal American citizens; instead, this was a biological characteristic acquired at birth. Similarly, Henry Osborn, a zoologist,

68 Charles W. Gould, America: A Family Matter (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 162. 69 Gould, 162-163.

41

paleontologist, and geologist, differentiated between the American ideas of all men being born with equal rights and the ability of all men to govern. He felt that education could not make up for inferior heredity, and therefore, not all men had the ability to participate in politics.70 Terman agreed, declaring that feeble-minded people could not be made

“capable citizens” or “intelligent voters” through schooling.71 An economics professor,

John Rogers Commons’s Race and Immigrants in America targeted southern and eastern

Europeans in his discussion of democracy, arguing, they “have been reduced to the qualities similar to those of an inferior race that favor despotism and oligarchy rather than democracy.” This statement would seem frightening to white American readers who believed that a successful government had to be democratic and who saw despotic and oligarchic governments as threats to American superiority and freedoms. To Commons, intelligent people of southern and eastern European races could only gain power in their societies by joining the army or Church; however, this often prevented them from reproducing because many died in the army and those in the Church were celibate.

Similar to scholars like Brigham, Commons believed the only solution to the “inferior, defective, and undesirable classes of immigrants” was “stringent selection.” He cited a study by the Commissioner of Immigration at New York, which stated 200,000 of the one million immigrants to America in 1903 were “an injury instead of a benefit to the industries of the country.” In order to correct this, Commons suggested physical

70 Gossett, 388. 71 Terman, 91.

42

examinations along with literacy tests be used to weed out those who “fall below a certain physical standard.”72

Intellectuals not only reflected anxiety but the need for action when discussing civic duty. Charles Davenport, a scholar in biology and eugenics, suggested that Nordic men must marry well, women must have fit children and “be willing to make sacrifices of their personal ambitions, their freedom, their love of ease, to do the work that none others can do and which is a patriotic service not less sublime than that rendered on the fields of battle.”73 As the race issue was no less a war, women’s role in race betterment compared to action in battle.

Utilizing language challenging intelligence, negative behaviors, and civic duty, social critics portrayed a country spoiled by feeble-mindedness, vice, and unpatriotic activity. At a time when white Americans were coming into contact with foreign groups at an increased rate, they were concerned how these minorities would impact social and civic reform and the future of a moral and democratic United States.74 This fear was only furthered by eugenicists who adopted these and other studies to prove the decay of civilization through heredity and race.

72 John Rogers Commons, Races and Immigrants in America, rev. ed. (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920), 11, 230. 73 Charles C. Davenport, “The Eugenics Programme and Progress in its Achievement,” in Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures (New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1914), 12. 74 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 171.

43

EUGENICS AND THE FEAR OF THE DECLINE OF CIVILIZATION

Figure 1.4: Eugenics logo, which states, “Eugenics is the self direction of human evolution. Like a tree eugenics draws its materials from many sources and organizes them into an harmonious entity.”

The culmination of all this research influenced the creation of the field of eugenics. Historian David Southern suggests, “Eugenics built naturally upon established

Darwinism and utilized intelligence tests and the work of the behavioral sciences to spin a wide and sticky web of scientific racism that few escaped.”75 As figure 1.4 portrays, eugenics saw itself as growing out of all other social and biological sciences.76 Marouf A.

Hasian Jr., a professor in communications, explains that “eugenics” had various meanings:

Eugenics could…mean the improvement of national ‘races’ [or] [s]ometimes eugenics was defined in ways that focused on the perpetuation of the white race. These interpretations were used to justify marriage restrictions between ‘normal’

75 Southern, 50. 76 “Eugenics Tree Logo,” in “Eugenics Archive,” http://www.eugenicsarchive.org/eugenics/list2.pl (accessed April 21, 2011).

44

whites and atavistic immigrants or African Americans. This strain in the eugenic discourse was especially strong in the first two decades of the twentieth century.77

Eugenicists sought to prove that heredity was the single most important aspect of racial theory. Rather than basing theories on differences in culture or environment or allowing natural selection to better society, supporters of eugenics argued that in order for the

Nordic civilization to succeed, actions needed to be taken to correct the genetic makeup of civilization and allow the best individuals to reproduce. British naturalist, Francis

Galton (who was actually Darwin’s cousin), considered the founder of eugenics and who began publishing on race and heredity in the 1860s, argued that certain characteristics or qualities could be manipulated just as breeders cultivate certain traits in animals through selection. He compared whites and nonwhites and argued that a strong work ethic was instinctual to Europeans, and the characteristic of “wild, untameable restlessness” known to savages had been bred out of the White race.78

In the United States, Galton’s ideas were ignored until the fear stemming from immigration during the early twentieth century created an environment where eugenic ideas took hold. These theories were appealing to some progressives of the time because of their reformist ideas and use of scientific “facts” to create order in society.79 While eugenics was occasionally used to compare whites and nonwhites in the United States, it was usually used to differentiate within the White race because of the variety of

77 Hasian, 28. 78 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 152-154. 79 Southern, 50.

45

immigrants coming to the country.80 In a time when citizens were concerned about the immorality of society, contemporary anthropologist Lee Baker argued, “Eugenics was employed to stay so-called genetic pathologies, including alcoholism, feeblemindedness, manic depression, rebelliousness, prostitution, nomadism, criminality, and immorality.”

Therefore, eugenics offered a solution to the concerns expressed by anthropologists and psychologists who feared differing mental capabilities and inferior characteristics.

Eugenics mimicked other reforms of the era because it used education and government action to improve society and restore racial hygiene in the United States. The laissez- faire approach to social betterment would no longer work; instead, there needed to be a rational approach managed by scholars, such as biologists, anthropologists, or sociologists, and the government.81 One estimate held that between 1910 to 1914 “the general magazines carried more articles on eugenics than on the three questions of slums, tenements, and living standards, combined.”82 As will be discussed in Chapter 2, magazines like Collier’s, Good Housekeeping, and the Saturday Evening Post often ran headlines such as “Danger That World Scum Will Demoralize America” or “Close the

Gates.”83 These headlines painted the immigrants not as people, but “scum,” and the reference to demoralization brought fear to many citizens, most of whom considered

Protestant morals as a central tenet of American society. These headlines were inspired or often written by scholars and called for increased control and restriction of minority

80 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 155-156. 81 Baker, 90. 82 Higham, 150-151. 83 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 162; George Creel, “Close the Gates,” Collier’s, May 6, 1922, 9.

46

groups. Social scientists and eugenicists encouraged the idea that citizens needed to not only care for themselves but civilization as a whole and helped to create a unique language charged with emotion and fear. Certain themes, such as the decline of civilization, the importance of “clean” blood, the harm of racial mixture, and the war of races, appeared throughout the works of eugenicists who heightened fears to incite action among the general public and government officials.

Eugenicists feared not only the existence of inferior races, but also the general decline in civilization and the American republic. Two of the most prominent and influential social critics, Madison Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, along with academics such as , Charles Davenport, and Harry Laughlin, stressed the role of biology and heredity in bettering society and used language that warned of a decline in civilization. “[I]t is clear,” Stoddard cautioned, “that both in Europe and America the quality of the population is deteriorating, the more intelligent and talented strains being relatively or absolutely on the decline. Now this can mean nothing less than a deadly menace both to civilization and race.”84 By discussing the outlook of civilization with phrases like “deadly menace,” Stoddard used emotionally charged language to describe the threat of inferior races as pests that needed to be exterminated because they could cause death to the Nordic race. In contrast to this language of fear, these same scholars depicted Nordic civilizations as “a purely European type….It is therefore, the Homo europeaus, the white man par excellence.” In addition, they used words such as “vigor”

84 Stoddard, The Revolt against Civilization, 113.

47

and “power” to describe Nordics.85 When discussing supposed Nordic superiority, for example, Jordan highlighted the fact that almost all Anglo-Americans had “noble and royal blood in his veins,” while Stoddard reminded that “the white man proved worthy of his opportunity,” as the “ and negroes feared and adored him as a god.”86 With regard to the threat of inferior races, Grant turned assimilation on its head, arguing, “If the Melting Pot is allowed to boil without control and we continue to follow our national motto and deliberately blind ourselves to all ‘distinctions of race, creed or color,’ the type of native American of Colonial descent will become extinct as the Athenian of the age of

Pericles, and the Viking of the days of Rollo.”87 The melting pot was a common assimilation image that the public could easily identify. According to sociologist Robert

Parks, “As the ends of the earth have come together in America, we have become, against our wills, a world’s melting pot. For us the international situation has now become a domestic problem.” To Parks, the melting pot was a process of accommodation and assimilation through social contact where secondary groups, such as immigrants, adopted the primary culture’s language, attitudes, and habits. This allowed their incorporation into the culture, although he also believed it was necessary for people of the primary culture to learn about foreign peoples.88

However, eugenicists and others warned that races could not be mixed together because it would create an inferior race. In an argument against assimilation and racial

85 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 168. 86 Jordan, 28; Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color, 148. 87 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 263. 88 Robert Parks, Race and Culture (Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1950), xi, 204, 283.

48

mixing, Dr. James Bardin, M.D. wrote, “A Chinaman’s skin will remain yellow, a

Negro’s skin will remain black, no matter what we may do to alter them….No matter how much we educate him, no matter how much we better his position in society, he will remain a Negro psychically as long as he remains a Negro physically.”89 Eugenicists utilized examples such as the , Romans, and to demonstrate how this racial decline and extinction had happened before and could occur again. Grant,

Stoddard, and others saw their civilization as “decaying,” “falling,” being “destroyed,”

“deteriorating,” and “dying,” all leading to the end of a moral and clean society.90 An

Army physician, Robert Wilson Shufeldt, whose work The Negro: A Menace to

American Civilization, clearly demonstrated his fear of African Americans intermixing with the white American population, but admitted that some mulattos were “wonderfully handsome creatures,” but only like an American skunk because the skunk and mulatto were “a black animal with more or less of a white stripe in it, that is given to stealing…and can, when irritated, elevate its tail and raise the most outrageous stink, which is quite sufficient to check the progress of any Anglo-Saxon, however robust and civilized he may be.”91 Thus, while mulattos might have had some visible white traits, they were overwhelmingly black, like the skunk. By comparing mulattos to an animal,

Shufeldt identifies them as dirty nuisances to white civilization. While the Anglo-Saxon was “robust” and “civilized,” this was not enough to avoid the “stink” which mulattos

89 James Bardin, “The Psychological Factor in Southern Race Problems,” Popular Science Monthly 83 (October 1913): 372-373. 90 See Madison Grant’s The Passing of the Great Race, Lothrop Stoddard’s The Revolt against Civilization and The Rising Tide of Color, and David Starr Jordan’s The Blood of a Nation for examples. 91 Robert Wilson Shufeldt, The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization (Boston: The Gorham Press, 1907), 90-91.

49

posed to Anglo-Saxon progress. Therefore, to eugenicists like Shufeldt, mulattos and other “inferior” races were less than human and more like pests to white American society. In addition, some eugenicists played off Spencer’s phrase when arguing that the

“survival of the unfittest,” or the idea that immigrants were better adapted to exist in the current urban, industrial conditions, was the main cause of the downfall of civilization.92

One aspect that related to eugenics was the contamination of blood through . As David Starr Jordan wrote in his Blood of a Nation, “The word ‘blood’ in this sense is figurative only, an expression formed to cover the qualities of heredity….But the old word well serves our purposes. The blood which is ‘thicker than water’ is the symbol of race unity.”93 Similarly, Stoddard noted, “It is clean, virile, genius-bearing blood, streaming down the ages through which the unerring action of heredity, which, in anything like a favorable environment, will multiply itself, solve our problems, and sweep us on to higher and nobler destinies.”94 Blood represented the ties to ancestry and racial solidarity, and supposedly, by mixing in inferior blood, the purity of Nordic heredity would be lost. Sociologist Edward Ross stated, “The superiority of a race cannot be preserved without pride of blood and an uncompromising attitude toward the lower races.” While North America was of the highest civilization, it was in “a silent struggle to determine which shall do the assimilating.” Ross’s words suggested a unity of

Nordics based on blood, one that led to a struggle against those races deemed weak or inferior. By referencing the struggle over assimilation, Ross played to white American

92 Jordan, 25; Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 92. 93 Jordan, 8-9. 94 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color, 305.

50

fears that the inferior races would overrun and ruin American culture and society.95 To

Charles Davenport “No fact is more startling to-day, and fraught with greater danger to the commonwealth than the low fecundity of our best blood.”96 To Stoddard and other scholars, people needed to acknowledge the primary role of heredity and pure blood in the progress of all aspects of society. In fact, as Shawn Michelle Smith, a professor in visual and critical studies, argues, “The discourse of blood purity…[became] one of the founding tenets of a racialized middle-class identity by the late nineteenth century.”97

Therefore, to encourage fear of minorities, social scientists and critics emphasized the threat of foreign blood to Nordic purity.

Stoddard believed society was in a crisis where the inferior races, who bred more quickly, were replacing the creative, productive, and intelligent White race. To Stoddard, specialized characteristics that made whites superior were recessive and were being overtaken by more general, dominant traits of inferior races as mixing occurred.98

Kenneth L. Roberts, a journalist and former U.S. Army Captain, wrote based upon his experiences, that the mixture of Nordic, Alpine, Mediterranean, and Semitic races created a less than human result similar to a dog: “a hybrid race of people as worthless and futile as the good-for-nothing mongrels of Central America and Southeastern Europe.”99

95 Edward Alsworth Ross, “The Causes of Race Superiority,” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 18 (July 1901): 85. 96 Davenport, “The Eugenics Programme,” 11. 97 Shawn Michelle Smith, American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999), 45. 98 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color, 301-306. 99 Kenneth L. Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1920), 22.

51

Roberts’s comparison of mixed races to dogs or mongrels emphasized their perceived inferiority and the danger they posed to white Americans. Davenport agreed, arguing against the miscegenation of races.

Hybridized people are badly put together people and a dissatisfied, restless, ineffective people. One wonders how much of the exceptionally high death-rate in middle life in this country is due to such bodily maladjustments; and how much of our crime and insanity is due to mental and temperamental friction.100

His combination of the language of heredity and psychologists’ ideas of physical and mental capabilities warned that racial mixing could cause birth defects, early death, or crime, all of which would frighten white American readers. The desire for a moral and safe society created the implication that crime came from miscegenation. Davenport believed that by mixing blood, not only would the physical characteristics of Americans change, but citizens would also grow more prone to committing criminal acts. Their fears of racial miscegenation led many eugenicists to support both segregation and strict immigration restrictions.101 According to Edward Ross, unlike civilizations in South

America or East Africa, North Americans avoided “mingling” their blood with Native

Americans and other lower populations, and therefore, he believed North America held the peak of civilization while the rest of the hemisphere “will drag the ball and chain of hybridism.”102 All of these writers warned that the continued mixture of superior white blood and inferior blood would be like committing racial suicide. While “there is no bloodshed, no violence, no assault of the race that waxes upon the race that wanes[, t]he

100 Davenport quoted in Gossett, 379-380. 101 Pickens, 57-58. 102 Ross, 85.

52

higher race quietly and unmurmuringly eliminates itself….”103 By issuing this frightening warning Ross and other eugenicists hoped to encourage public action to prevent racial suicide or elimination.

This civilization deterioration was literally a war between races. As Grant stated:

Fight [the Nordic race] must, but let that fight be not a civil war against its own blood kindred but against the dangerous foreign races, whether they advance sword in hand or in the more insidious guise of beggars at our gates, pleading for admittance to share our prosperity. If we continue to allow them to enter they will in time drive us out of our own land by mere force of breeding.104

Similarly to Ross, Grant attempted to encourage outcry and unity among the Nordic race.

Rather than fight amongst themselves, the Nordic race should work together to fight the real threat: “dangerous foreign races.” By portraying immigrants as beggars who threatened U.S. prosperity, Grant encouraged fear of foreign groups. In addition, he created anxiety by suggesting that prolific immigrant breeding could drive Nordics from their own land. To stop this, Nordics must wage a war against inferior races.

In other scholarly works, this idea of war was discussed literally and metaphorically. Grant explained the “native” American population was more affected by war than that of inferior races, as Anglos tended to be more heroic and valiant. True

Americans and those of the Nordic race were more willing to fight, and therefore, more likely to suffer losses.105 Referring specifically to the Great War, Stoddard asserted, “The war was nothing short of a headlong plunge into white race-suicide. It was essentially a

103 Ibid., 88. 104 Madison Grant, introduction to The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), xxx. 105 Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, 91.

53

civil war between closely related white stocks…which killed…the youngest, the bravest, and the best.”106 In 1920, when Stoddard wrote this, the destruction of WWI was very much in the public mind, and therefore, referencing the great loss of life had an emotional impact. However, scholars also referenced the idea of war when discussing the threats of immigration. Stoddard titled one of his works A Revolt against Civilization, a clear reference to the belief that society needed saved through force. Calling inferior ethnic groups the “Under-Man,” he stated, “The Under-Man revolts against progress! Nature herself having decreed him uncivilizable, the Under-Man declares war on civilization.”107

With this declaration of war, Stoddard, and many like him, believed the public needed to fight to reclaim their civilization.

Within these studies and declarations of a race war, African Americans interestingly drew little attention because society already recognized their inferiority.

Instead, many academics feared the immigrants who they saw as invading America and menacing civilization.108 Scholars, government officials, and the general public did not idly stand by, but instead actively approached the issue through scientific and political means.

106 Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color, 179. 107 Stoddard, The Revolt against Civilization, 87. 108 Tucker, 60.

54

SCIENTIFIC RACISM IN THE POLITICAL REALM

“Americans, the Philistines are upon us. Rend the fetters with which we have bound ourselves. Nothing but our own folly stands between us and freedom from alien invasion. Speak the word, repeal at once the naturalization laws which corrupt our institutions and destroy us.”109 With this warning from Charles Gould, he and his fellow social scientists demanded that the American public and government be drawn into action. This scientific discourse, more so than other racial ideology, was influential not only in the intellectual world, but in the political and social realms as well. It is impossible to separate the racial beliefs in the United States from the political happenings of the time.

By 1920, the panic over minorities had reached the point where it could no longer be ignored by the government. With the vast number of studies and articles being published yearly, it was apparent that civilization was doomed unless immediate action was taken. During this time, it was believed that illness, radical beliefs, and violence threatened the United States. In particular, during and after WWI, influenza terrified the

American public as death tolls rose. In fact, as historian Dorothy A. Pettit and biochemist

Janice Bailie explain, “In terms of mortality, the influenza pandemic overshadowed

World War I.” In 1918, Americans knew very little about Spanish influenza, but according to Pettit and Bailie, “[T]he nation was in for a rude jolt. Over the course of the next five or six months, the so-called European disease would become a universal

109 Gould, 164.

55

problem.”110 For example, in just October of 1919, nearly 20,000 people died of influenza in the United States.111 White Americans viewed foreigners as a source of influenza and other diseases that threatened to undermine the purity of American society.

In addition, Bolshevism and radicalism threatened postwar America. Politicians believed there might be links between , Bolsheviks, and radical Americans. To some, such as Archibald Stevenson, a lawyer and a leader of a committee on Bolshevism with the American Protective League, Bolshevism was the “gravest menace in the country….”112 As journalist Ann Hagedorn explains, “[I]t was about fear, which would soon be translated into a new war in America—a war against the ‘other.’ Reds. Radicals.

Liberals. Labor Leaders. Union Men and Women. Anarchists. Socialists. Immigrants.

Dissidents of every variety.”113 The fear and propaganda that was produced during this time made it seem that all agitation was caused by foreigners, blacks, or those connected to Bolshevism. Immigrants were seen as a source of labor unrest, as many participated in strikes or belonged to radical organizations, such as the Industrial Workers of the World

(I.W.W.).114 At the same time the was occurring, the Red Summer arrived, so named for the summer of 1919 when intense and race rioting led to bloody violence. With the end of WWI, black soldiers returned to the United States hoping they earned equality through military service. Instead, antiblack riots and occurred

110 Dorothy A. Pettit and Janice Bailie, A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918-1920 (Murfreesboro, TN: Timberlake Books, 2008), 3, 74-75. 111 Ann Hagedorn, Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007), 6. 112 Archibald Stevenson quoted in Hagedorn, 55. 113 Hagedorn, 226. 114 Ibid., 30, 380.

56

throughout the country as whites attempted to reassert racial dominance. Blacks, with a new racial pride, rioted throughout the United States. As journalist Cameron McWhirter states, “It would be the worst spate of race riots and lynchings in American history.” At least 25 major riots occurred and at least 52 African Americans were lynched. Hundreds of people were killed and thousands more were injured.115 With the social unrest caused by illness, radical beliefs, and violence, minorities were viewed as a hindrance to

American ideals and progress.

The same fear of minorities expressed by academics is apparent in the writings and speeches of U.S. presidents and politicians of the era. In the late nineteenth century, the greatest concern focused on African Americans, who were seen to occupy lowest rung of the racial hierarchy. Debate focused on what rights (if any) they deserved.

President informed a great deal of the American public, who may have not read Grant or Davenport, about the threat of “race suicide” and the “Negro problem.”116 He believed that “the Negro, unlike so many of the inferior races, does not dwindle away in the presence of the white man. He holds his own;…he increased faster than the white, threatening to supplant him.”117 Roosevelt viewed African Americans as inferior to whites and argued the “great majority of the negroes in the South are wholly unfit for suffrage.” While he explained that some African Americans could slowly become citizens through education, his language still reflected a belief in the supposed

115 Cameron McWhirter, Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011), 12-17. 116 Hasian, 48. 117 Theodore Roosevelt quoted in Thomas G. Dyer, Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980), 95.

57

inferiority of African Americans.118 Roosevelt was not alone in these views, as most people saw African Americans as lower on the racial hierarchy; however, during the twentieth century, politicians began to pay more attention to the supposed immigrant problem.

With the growing fear over the loss of racial purity in the United States, politicians could no longer ignore the issue of immigration. As Marouf Hasian Jr. states,

"People like Stoddard, Grant, and Davenport were not publicly stigmatized like members of the . Their credentials were impeccable and their scientific ethos was beyond question. American presidents kept in constant touch with many of these writers.”119 This connection between eugenics and politics is clear in the language politicians and presidents used. President Warren Harding tied the concern over immigration to science, stating, “Whoever will take the time to read and ponder Mr.

Lothrop Stoddard’s book on The Rising Tide of Color…must realize that our race problem here in the United States is only a phase of a race issue the whole world confronts.”120 Similarly, President Calvin Coolidge openly pointed out that biological studies demonstrated that intermixing deteriorated the Nordic race, and, when signing the

Immigration Act of 1924, he stated, “America must be kept American.”121 His Secretary of Labor, James J. Davis, went even further in his opinion of old versus new immigrants by arguing that:

118 Theodore Roosevelt quoted in Dyer, 109. 119 Hasian, 56. 120 Warren G. Harding quoted in Gossett, 404-405. 121 Calvin Coolidge quoted in Gossett, 407.

58

The people that came to this country in the early days were the beaver type and they built up America because it was in their nature to build. Then the rat-people began coming here, to house under the roof that others built. And they try to undermine and ruin it because it is in their nature to destroy….A civilization rises when the beaver-men outnumber the rat-men. When rat-men get the upper hand the civilization falls….Beware of breeding rats in America.122

The language used is reminiscent of that used by the scholar Shufeldt when he described

African Americans as skunks. By describing immigrants as rats, a species viewed as a vermin to society, Davis identified “new” immigrants as low on the racial hierarchy and as dirty, dangerous pests to the “superior” Nordic race. To him and other critics, these races purposely “undermine[d]” and “ruin[ed]” the society created by the “beaver-men”

(Nordic race) that was efficient and intelligent enough to build a civilization. The image of rats infesting and contaminating white American society reflected the anxiety over

“new” immigrants in the United States. The same concern scholars expressed over the race problem, the fear of the decline in civilization, and immigrants as pests and vermin resonated with politicians. As anxiety over the immigrant problem grew, many academics, government officials, and the public demanded legislation.

The threat of radical beliefs, of “dangerous, contagious, or loathsome diseases,” and of economic competition from immigrants who had “a poorer standard of living, with habits repellent to our native people, or an industrial grade only suited to the lowest kind of manual labor,” culminated in the passing of the temporary Emergency Quota Act of

1921 and ultimately the .123 The 1921 act limited each European country to an immigration quota of three percent of their total in the 1910 American

122 James J. Davis, The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922), 27. 123 Commons, xvii, 233.

59

foreign-born population. The stricter Immigration Act of 1924 lowered the quota to two percent and changed the year to 1890. The use of the base year favored immigrant groups who came to the United States earlier, “old” immigrants, who were thought to be superior to those from southern and eastern Europe and Asia.124

However, these two pieces of legislation were not the first attempts at governmental control of immigration. In fact, from 1907 to 1911, the U.S. Immigration

Commission, also known as the Dillingham Commission, was used by Congress to investigate the immigration situation in the United States. To the Commission, “new” immigrants were backwards and difficult to assimilate into U.S. culture and society.

It is difficult to define and still more difficult to correctly measure the tendency of newer immigrant races toward Americanization, or assimilation into the body of the American people. If, however, the tendency to acquire citizenship, to learn the English language, and to abandon native customs and standards of living may be considered as factors, it is found that many of the more recent immigrants are backward in this regard, while some others have made excellent progress. The absence of family life, which is so conspicuous among many southern and eastern Europeans in the United States, is undoubtedly the influence which most effectively retards assimilation.125

As Prescott Hall, part of the Immigration Restriction League, stated to the Commission,

“We should exercise at least as much care in admitting human beings as we exercise in relation to animals or insect pests or disease germs.”126 As other social critics, Hall portrayed immigrants as both frightening and troublesome to society, just as animals,

124 Leonard Dinnerstein, Roger L. Nichols, and David M. Reimers, Natives and Strangers: A Multicultural History of Americans (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 239-240. 125 United States Immigration Commission, Brief Statement of the Immigration Commission with Conclusions and Recommendations and Views of the Minority, 61st Cong., 3 sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911), S. Doc. 747, 42. 126 United States Immigration Commission, Statements and Recommendations of Societies and Organizations Interested in the Subject of Immigration, 61st Cong., 3 sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911), S. Doc. 764, 107.

60

pests, and diseases. In the Commission recommendations it was asserted, “A majority of the Commission favor the reading and writing test as the most feasible single method of restricting undesirable immigration.”127 Included in the Commission’s findings was volume five, Dictionary of Races or People, which included a discussion of five great races, “which school geographies have made most familiar to Americans, viz, the

Caucasian, Ethiopian, Mongolian, , and American, or, as familiarly called, the white, black, yellow, brown, and red races.”128 This statement makes it clear that the scientific categorization of race was being ingrained in public understanding. The

Commission specifically mentioned school geographies as teaching these classifications to Americans, and this will be further explored in Chapter 3. As Matthew Frye Jacobson states, through the discussion of physical characteristics and moral and intellectual qualities, “the commission’s Dictionary of Races or Peoples is fundamentally a hierarchical scale of human development and worth.”129 Through the reports, it is revealed that the Dillingham Commission and government officials were clearly influenced by the racial hierarchy and language used by social critics and scholars.

Many supporters of immigration restriction believed that literacy tests could determine who was “fit” or “unfit” for citizenship in the United States. The theory held that if only those foreigners who could read and write were allowed to enter the United

States, undesirable and unintelligent races from southern and eastern Europe would be

127 United States Immigration Commission, Brief Statement of the Immigration Commission with Conclusions and Recommendations and Views of the Minority, 48. 128 United States Immigration Commission, Dictionary of Races or Peoples, 61st Cong., 3 sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911), S. Doc. 662, 3. 129 Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color, 78-79.

61

prevented from immigrating to the United States. Senator Henry Cabot Lodge proposed this type of bill in 1897, but it was vetoed by President Grover Cleveland a year later.

Similar literacy bills were introduced but defeated in 1902-1904, 1907, 1909, 1913, and

1915. As historian Matthew Frye Jacobson states:

But throughout these years, the starker racial argument was in ascendance. Indeed, a literacy bill was finally passed over Wilson’s veto in 1917; by then, however, the racialist, eugenic strain of American nativism was often frankly posed, without the concealing cloak of the more environmentalist—and hence more optimistic and humanitarian—concern for literacy.130

The conditions of the United States shifted between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to make the passing of bills between 1917 and 1924 possible.

Historian Gary Gerstle argues, “[W]ith war looming, and America full of immigrants from lands that the United States might soon be fighting, support for immigration restriction grew to the point that Congress was able to override a presidential veto, which it did in passing the Immigration Act of 1917.” New threats, such as Bolshevism, led to another bill in 1918 limiting the immigration of radical immigrants, including anarchists, advocates of revolution, and others that were deemed threatening to American democracy.131 While immigration bills demonstrated the increased fear of certain

European groups, they also expressed the continuing fear of other foreigners, such as

Asians. For example, the Immigration Act of 1917 instituted an Asiatic Barred Zone, which extended the (1882) to other Asian countries, not allowing

130 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 200. 131 Gary Gerstle, American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), 96, 98.

62

them to immigrate to the United States.132 The growing fears of alien groups combined with American nationalism peaked at this time, as figure 1.5 illustrates, which describes immigrants as European trash being dumped in America.133 As historian John Higham states, the war created “an urgent demand for national unity and homogeneity that practically destroyed what the travail of preceding decades had already fatally weakened: the historic confidence in the capacity of American society to assimilate all men automatically.”134

Figure 1.5: “Heart and Minds,” by F. Victor Gillam, 1890. Two ships labeled as “European Garbage Ship” are dumping immigrants at the feet of the . The caption states, “The Proposed Emigrant Dumping Site. Statue of Liberty—‘Mr. Wilson, if you are going to make this island a garbage heap, I am going back to .’”

With the scientific and social studies done, specifically those undertaken by people like Davenport, Grant, and Stoddard, a wealth of knowledge regarding racial theory influenced political action. During the congressional committees on immigration,

132 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 200-201. 133 F. Victor Gillam, “Heart and Minds,” 1890, in Edward T. O’Donnell, “Bring Us Your Tired, Your Poor. Or Don’t,” New York Times, May 7, 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/nyregion/thecity/07immi.html?pagewanted=all (accessed March 28, 2011). 134 Higham, 301.

63

social critics, like Stoddard and Laughlin, were called as witnesses to discuss racial science. For example, Stoddard argued for restriction based on ideas of race and the danger of immigrants to American traditions and ideology.135 Laughlin was appointed

Expert Eugenics Agent of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization in

1920 and presented “Biological Aspects of Immigration” to Congress. He explained,

“Apparently the quality of our immigration is declining.” He argued that to select immigrants, heredity examinations needed to be undertaken in home territories to provide sufficient information. In addition, he stated that in the United States, immigrants needed to register and be followed up with to see if they had properly Americanized or if they should be deported.136 Under their influence, politicians supported immigration restriction “to exclude all foreigners for years to come, at least until we can ascertain whether or not the foreign and discordant element now in what many are please to term

‘our great melting pot’ will melt into real American citizens.”137

The racial studies and theories published by intellectuals were not, despite their rigor, objective or impartial. They were tainted by fear and created a specific set of racialized ideas that targeted specific minority groups. While ethnic and racial ideology existed in different forms years beforehand, during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, scholars and social critics created new, more rational theories about race that

135 Lothrop Stoddard, Restriction of Immigration, hearing, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, 68th Cong., 1st sess., (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1924), CIS H344-2-A, in Vilja Lehtinen, “‘America Would Lose Its Soul’: The Immigration Restriction Debate, 1920-1924” (master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, 2002), 75. 136 Harry H. Laughlin, Biological Aspects of Immigration, hearing, Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives, 64th Cong., 2d sess., (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921), CIS H269-4, 6-7, 15. 137 Congressman quoted in Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 201.

64

were used to develop a scientific racial hierarchy. Social scientists used their studies to

“prove” white supremacy and the inferiority of ethnic groups and utilized a language of fear that reflected a societal concern over the threat of minorities to the Nordic race and the future of civilization as a whole. This chapter focuses on social scientists and critics who believed in a scientific racial hierarchy and whose ideas were used to promote eugenics. While today, scholars understand race as a social construct, the belief that science legitimized theories of race and evolution was common in the United States during the Progressive era. Social scientists and critics who adhered to scientific theories of racial evolution and eugenics were dominant and represented a popular mindset in

U.S. society. While some scholars, such as anthropologist critiqued evolutionism, as historian Matthew Frye Jacobson argues, "[E]volutionism, not cultural relativism, still carried the day in popular discussion."138 The language of a racial hierarchy was not isolated solely to scholarly works. Instead, it permeated into other aspects of society, such as popular culture and education. Magazines and textbooks are both examples of mediums that reflected beliefs of race and ethnicity and inferiority of

“other” races to the white (and specifically Nordic or American) race. As will be demonstrated in the following chapters, authors and editors of magazines and textbooks adapted this language to their audiences. While many social scientists and critics often saw restriction as the only solution, magazines and the educational system suggested another answer: assimilation.

138 Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 150.

CHAPTER II

“The Stranger within our Gates”1: The Portrayal of Race, Ethnicity, and Immigration in Popular Progressive Era Periodicals

In an article for World’s Work in 1920, social critic and eugenicist, Lothrop

Stoddard, argued, “[L]ately certain phenomena such as “hyphenism” during the war, the political activity of foreign propagandas like Sinn Fein, the prevalence of imported revolutionary doctrines among certain alien groups, and the increasing race- consciousness of our colored population, combine to make some foreign observers doubt the stability of our national type and institutions.”2 As Stoddard and other concerned social scientists’ works demonstrated, domestic anxiety over rising immigration and movement of African American populations northward challenged white America’s security and identity. However, it was not only within the scholarly community where these fears were discussed, as many popular periodicals with diverse readership addressed these issues. In this chapter, articles from numerous late nineteenth- and early

1 Arthur M. Wolfson, “The Stranger within our Gates,” Independent, April 6, 1913, 44-45. 2 Lothrop Stoddard, “Is America American?,” World’s Work, December 1920, 201; World’s Work was first published in 1900, and its goal was to discuss the “activities of the newly organized world, its problems and even its romances.” This popular magazine ran independently until 1932 when decreased sales caused it to be absorbed by another magazine, Review of Reviews. See Theodore Peterson, Magazines in the Twentieth Century (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1964), 152-153.

65

66

twentieth-centuries magazines are examined to demonstrate how a concern over race, ethnicity, and immigration was reflected in popular American culture.3

It was not a unique occurrence for popular magazines to publish material dealing with immigration and race. The most popular magazine of the first half of the twentieth century, the Saturday Evening Post, under the leadership of editor George Horace

Lorimer, published numerous articles concerning immigration. Lorimer and his magazine targeted the growing American middle class by emphasizing traditional morals and values and warning of the threat hyphenated Americans posed.4 In April 1921, the

Post suggested the development of a “racial theory” and the need to restrict immigration.

Later that year, in May, it advised that Grant’s and Stoddard’s books should be read by

“every American…if he wishes to understand the full gravity of our immigration problems.” Lorimer heralded the arrival of “data that have enabled scientists to study intelligently the beginnings of our racial degeneration” and of “the rose-colored myth of

3 To locate most articles, the Readers’ Guide to Periodicals was utilized by searching the index of topics with terms such as “immigration,” “race,” “eugenics,” and related ideas. A sampling of articles was taken because of the abundance of writings on these subjects. As the Progressive Era encompassed a few decades, I took a sampling of years (1903, 1908, 1913, 1918, 1920, and 1922) to examine in the Readers’ Guide to Periodicals (for 1903, I used Cumulative List to a Selected List of Periodicals as Readers’ Guide was not available). Articles from other years were obtained through more general searches of magazines available electronically. This chapter includes articles from World’s Work, Review of Reviews, Saturday Evening Post, Ladies’ Home Journal, Cosmopolitan, Century, McClure’s, Popular Science, Scientific American, Outlook, Forum, Atlantic Monthly, Missionary Review, and more. These periodicals cover a breadth of topics and are geared to different audiences. While some are more general magazines, such as McClure’s, others target more specific audiences such as Popular Science (males), Ladies’ Home Journal (females) or Missionary Review (Christians). All of these periodicals reached mass audiences within the United States during the Progressive Era, which allowed for a national discussion of race and immigration. 4 David E. Sumner, The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900 (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2010), 29.

67

the all-powerful melting pot.”5 In 1919, Lorimer assigned Kenneth L. Roberts to investigate the alleged immigration problem for the Post articles, which Roberts later published as Why Europe Leaves Home, a warning that central Europeans were overrunning the United States.6 The intersection between scholarly works and popular periodicals reflected a negotiation of information that occurred during the Progressive

Era, as both editors and readers were made aware of the increasing scientific and political anxiety over foreigners. In addition, social scientists and social critics, such as Stoddard and Roberts, often used popular magazines to make their ideas more accessible to the public.

This chapter examines how the ideas of race, ethnicity, and immigration were presented in Progressive Era magazine articles and images. While social critics and scientists were often set in their beliefs that unrestricted immigration was a detriment to white civilization, this was not universal among the American people. Magazine articles tended to be more ambiguous, offering varied views of the immigration problem in the

United States. Through their articles, magazines reflected the national distress and fear over race and immigration, but they did not only support restriction and eugenics like many of the siren warnings and diatribes of scholars and social critics but also saw assimilation and Americanization as a way to decrease the threat from minority populations and create a united and homogenous U.S. citizenry.

5 “The Burbanks of the People,” Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1921 and “The Great American Myth,” Saturday Evening Post, May 7, 1921 quoted in Jan Cohn, Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989), 155. 6 Ann Gibson Winfield, Eugenics and Education in America: Institutionalized Racism and the Implications of History, Ideology, and Memory (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2007), 88; Cohn, 153-154.

68

MAGAZINES IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

With the ability to inexpensively produce and sell these periodicals, popular magazines truly became the national medium of the Progressive Era because, as sociologist Matthew Schneirov argues, they “were important not only as vehicles for new cultural ideals but also as the first form of mass communications that reached a national audience.”7 They remained the dominant national medium of communication for thirty years until radio and motion pictures replaced them. In 1865, for every ten people, one monthly magazine was published.8 By 1900, this increased to three magazines for every four citizens. That year, 65 million monthly magazines circulated.9 Between 1890 and

1905, circulation of these periodicals tripled. Certain aspects in society made the expansion of magazines possible, such as the completion of a transcontinental railroad, faster rotary web presses for printing, the creation of less expensive halftone engraving for image production, the reduction of paper manufacturing costs, the increased use of advertising, and the decreased cost of mailing the magazines.10 In 1897, the three leading magazines were Munsey’s (700,000 circulated), Cosmopolitan (300,000 circulated), and

McClure’s (260,000 circulated). In 1909, the Saturday Evening Post became the most circulated magazine. The first magazine to reach one million subscribers was Ladies’

7 Matthew Schneirov, The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America, 1893- 1914 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 4-5; Sumner, 16. 8 Sumner, 16. 9 Schneirov, 5. 10 Sumner, 16-17. As in other areas of society during the Progressive Era, the magazine industry professionalized, which created a professional class of magazine writers; see John Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, The Magazine in America, 1741-1990 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 61, 67, 70.

69

Home Journal in 1903.11 By covering a variety of topics and appealing to greater number of readers, Progressive Era magazines were able to reflect American interests.

An interesting aspect of popular magazines from this era was their ability to adapt to society and reflect beliefs. When discussing images and descriptions of African

American males in society, for example, Linda G. Tucker, a professor of English, explains how beliefs and ideas are expressed and shaped in their construction and use.

She states:

Culture lore precedes and parallels ideology while working in much the same way. Cultural lore creates, expresses, and is structured by the values and beliefs of a group. It functions as a system of documentation through representations saturated with history and meaning, widely recognized and understood, and highly adaptable to changes in current belief and systems and contexts. This system of documentation shapes the texts and contexts, the stories and the images, through which people understand, construct, reconstruct, negotiate, change, and represent themselves and others in relation to the cultural contexts in which they live.12

One way that cultural lore is expressed is through magazines, especially during the

Progressive Era, when some people felt threatened by corrupt politics, foreign traditions and ideologies, and other societal issues. These magazines, which reached millions of readers, Schneirov explains, “were espousing an ethic of social responsibility and solidarity—decrying public selfishness and corruption…. For the first time, a national medium of mass communication had become a political force as magazine ‘muckraking’

11 Sumner, 16; Schneirov, 11; Mary Ellen Zuckerman, A History of Popular Women’s Magazines in the United States, 1792-1995 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998), xii-xiii. Along with magazines geared towards women, magazine specialization in other areas ran the gamut from 1890. Specialization occurred in magazines on science (Scientific American and Popular Science), religion (Christian Century and the Independent), and humor (Puck); see: Sumner, 7; and Tebbel and Zuckerman, 65-66, 84-87. 12 Linda G. Tucker, Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture (Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007), 48.

70

popularized a wave of reform movements across the country.” As many magazines were focused on middle-class readership, they targeted issues of interest to them, such as immigration and working-class unrest. Magazines reflected cultural dreams or the desire for an American utopia by representing the “[t]he dream of a society governed by experts and freed from the chaos of class conflict, poverty, political corruption and the business cycle…,” and Schneirov asserts, these publications provided information to readers on the “new social order” that was being created as society and technology progressed.13

Richard Ohmann’s Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the

Century argues,

Magazines circulated nationally to people with common values and interests; they entered similar homes everywhere, and were part of what made those homes similar. And of course magazines helped shape the values and interest of PMC people [professional-managerial class], including an interest in the brand named commodities advertised there.14

In addition, Schneirov views “the magazine as a creative product of its publishers, editors, and contributors but at the same time as a product created in a larger social context.”15 Therefore, when examining magazines, it is important to consider the agency of the readers, magazine editors, and journalist while placing it in the context of the time.

One issue many felt threatened American values was immigration and minorities.

Magazines, such as Century and McClure’s, reflected these fears by pointing to the declining birth rate among educated Americans, working-class radicalism, and the “Red

13 Schneirov, 2-3, 17, 124. 14 Richard Ohmann, Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century (New York: Verso Press, 1996), 160. 15 Schneirov, 18.

71

Menace.”16 By examining both articles and images from a variety of magazines from the

Progressive Era, it becomes clear that both editors and readers were interested in the topics of race and immigration through a variety of perspectives. Both understood that racial hierarchy existed within society, but how to deal with it was a different story.

Unlike the works of social critics which stressed the need for controlling and restrictive measures, magazines reflected an ambiguity over which solution to use, whether it be restriction or assimilation. Whatever the sentiment regarding these topics, the sheer abundance of articles makes it clear that like social scientists and critics, magazine editors and the public saw the necessity of a national conversation regarding race, ethnicity, and immigration. While journalists offered varying solutions, the fact that magazines wanted action to be taken demonstrated that concern and fear over the minority “problem” existed in Progressive Era society.

RACE, ETHNICITY, AND IMMIGRATION IN MAGAZINES

The idea of racial hierarchy was especially important to magazine readers.

Gustave Michaud argued in “What Shall We Be?,” which appeared in Century in 1903, that “ the race of a man tells us of his inherited, not acquired, features and tendencies, and these are always, to a higher or lower degree, transmissible.”17 Natural selection explained the differences between races, he wrote, and he identified the native white

16 Ibid., 105, 197, 255. 17 Gustave Michaud, “What Shall We Be?: The Coming Race in America,” Century Magazine, March 1903, 684.

72

American stock as those descendants of immigrants who settled in the United States before 1835. The problem, however, was that these natives were becoming a minority because of their decreasing reproduction rate, the increased immigration to the United

States, and the prolific rate at which these immigrants reproduced. He defined three white races: the Baltic (in this thesis termed “Nordic”), the Alpine, and the Mediterranean and provided pictures (figure 2.1) of each race for readers to better understand these racial differences. 18

Figure 2.1: The first page of Michaud’s “What Shall We Be?,” which appeared in Century in 1903, used images to depict the appearance of a person belonging to the Alpine, Mediterranean, or Baltic race.

18 Michaud, 683.

73

To Michaud, the Baltic race were “tall, have blue eyes, light hair, and a narrow nose….Mentally they are enterprising and persevering, and cheerfully dedicate most of their time and thought to work.” He lists other positive traits they possessed, such as being “altruistic, fearless, honest, and sincere.” In addition, they were clean and organized. The Alpines thrived in areas that were not hospitable to other races, such as barren mountains or fertile plains. This race had a broad and short skull, a round face, gray eyes, and chestnut hair. Their stature was usually small and stocky. He described them as “conservative,” “not artistic,” and not interested in personal appearance or dress, but instead clinging “to a costume which was worn two centuries ago.” This race was more meditative than active and while “laborious, rarely strive hard to become rich.” On a positive note, the had “powerful family affection.” This made them better husbands and wives, but bad citizens since they were more concerned with the family unit than with their nation. The Mediterranean was the oldest race that could be easily identified because “their eyes and hair are dark, and their stature is inferior to that of the

Baltic. They are generally slender in body.” This race was identified as “emotional,” lacking “persevering energy,” “instinctively courteous in address,” and artistic.19

Michaud makes a clear connection between race and environment, detailing how the “superior” Baltic race evolved from the through natural selection.

As he stated, when some of the “primitive” Mediterranean race moved northward into a colder climate, those “who, through lack of ingenuity, foresight, or activity, were unable to meet the requirements of a severe winter, perished, generation after generation;…the

19 Ibid., 683-687.

74

posterity of the active, energetic, and thoughtful was thereby relatively increased.” Those people who survived became the Baltic race.20 Others writers agreed, as William Z.

Ripley stated in 1908, “In Europe the populations have grown up from the soil....They are the product of their immediate environments.”21 Therefore, unlike many social critics who solely emphasized heredity, some journalists noted the importance of environment in racial development.

Magazines often examined the variation of people from specific countries or regions in more detail to create a hierarchy. To John Foster Carr, writing in World’s

Work in 1903, the English and American races shared many positive characteristics, such as religion, traditions, government types, culture, sense of adventure, “rude energy and the same fierce joy in rivalry.” Because of these similarities, Americans were viewed as a continuation of the English type, an “old and sturdy stock.” The friendship and unity between England and the United States led some, as Carr explained, to call for “race patriotism,” “race federation,” or “union of the race.”22 Similarly, when Current

Opinion posed the question “Is There an American Type?,” it answered, “There is no such type now, but such a type is evolving. Its coming is seen in stature, physiognomy, pigmentation, structure, and in other ways,” specifically tied to those of English, Scotch, or Dutch ancestry being able to breed exclusively. Unfortunately, because of

“intermarriage with more recent elements of the population[,]…no hope can be

20 Ibid., 685-686. 21 William Z. Ripley, “Races in the United States,” Atlantic Monthly, December 1908, 745. 22 John Foster Carr, “Anglo-American Unity Fast Coming,” World’s Work, October 1903, 4016- 4017, 4019-4020.

75

entertained for any rapid progress in this direction.” The article suggested that characteristics such as a superior stature and prominent cheekbones and angle of the lower jaw made a unique American type.23

Magazines tended to be less positive when describing other ethnicities to demonstrate their inferiority to the Anglo-Saxon race. These groups were the “recent elements” or Carr’s label of “undesirable.”24 In Living Age, Bampfylde Fuller argued that northern European races often lost their superior characteristics through intermixing, while southern European blood was more “tenacious of its qualities” as it

“overpowers a northern strain” when the two were mixed. For example, Jewish people were labeled clannish and preserved their traditions, religion, and physical features.

While sociable and “eloquent speakers,” the Irish were not introspective and were “as unconscious as an Oriental of grotesqueness in dress.” They were not clean and smelled.

In addition, as other southern and eastern Europeans, Irishmen liked “a strong despotic government.”25

Oftentimes distinctions between northern and southern Europeans were drawn out to make Nordic “superiority” clear to white Americans who were fearful of southern

European immigration. Dr. Allan McLaughlin, part of the U.S. Public Health and

Marine Hospital Service, went so far as to differentiate between northern and southern

Italians. An Italian from the north was “taller, often of lighter complexion, and is usually

23 “Is There an American Type?,” Current Opinion, December 1921, 782-783. 24 “Is There an American Type?,” 782; Carr, 4017. 25 Bampfylde Fuller, “A Psychological View of the Irish Question,” Living Age, November 8, 1913, 323-325.

76

in a more prosperous condition than his brother from the south.” Furthermore, the northern Italian was intelligent, could read and write, and was skilled in a trade. In contrast, “the southern Italian, short of stature, very dark in complexion, usually lands here almost destitute. His intelligence is not higher than one could imagine in the descendant of peasantry illiterate for centuries.” These people were usually illiterate and unskilled. Therefore, whereas southern Italians “concerns us most in considering the desirability of the Italian immigrant[,] [h]is northern brother need give us no more concern than the representatives of the United Kingdom, Germany, or Sweden.” Dr.

McLaughlin did offer complements to the entire Italian race, especially their very high moral standards, being “quick to learn,” and not usually being paupers. In regards to other “” races, the Portuguese “have the highest proportion of illiterates of any

European race” and brought less money to the United States. Despite their “peaceable disposition, thrift and skill in fruit growing and truck farming,” they were physically undersized but “remarkably free from disease and physical defects.” The Spanish had a lower illiteracy rate and brought more money than the Portuguese, while the Roumanian type “is short and dark, and they are usually free from disease and have a fairly good physique.” They were industrious and were proud of their Roman blood. To

McLaughlin, the other Latin races made more favorable immigrants than the southern

Italians did; however, with overall negative characteristics such as illiteracy and poverty, many Latin races were seen as threatening American superiority and progress.26

26 Allan McLaughlin, “Italian and Other Latin Immigrants,” Popular Science Monthly, August 1904, 341-343, 345, 348-349.

77

World War I led to a rise of anti-Germanic or Teutonic sentiment and fear of immigrant disloyalty. At the time of WWI, Germans were the largest nationality among foreign-born people. To historian John Higham, “The fury that broke upon the German-

Americans in 1915 represented the most spectacular reversal of judgment in the history of American nativism.” Before the war, Americans believed Germans to be one of the most assimilable and respectable ethnic groups. During the war, however, they were accused of disloyalty, which Higham argues, was “the gravest sin in the morality of nationalism.”27 In a 1918 article for the Outlook, Dr. M.R. Vesnitch, the Serbian minister to France and head of the Serbian War Mission to the United States, argued that two races had been in opposition for twenty centuries: Gallic and the Germans. To

Vesnitch, the Celts were “the most gallant race in the history of mankind.” In contrast,

“[t]he Teutons have spent their time and energy in struggling for the political and material subjugation of other peoples as well as their own.” He insulted German art and literature and argued that their spirituality had been replaced by materialism. While the

Germans were “selfish,” had “a tendency to domination,” and never fought for freedom, the Celts were chivalrous and always marched towards “liberty and justice.” Vesnitch concluded that by impressing Celtic culture and character upon the immigrants, the human race could be saved from Teutonic autocracy and domination.28 While previously

German immigrants were often seen as “old” immigrants who were more favorable to the southern and eastern “new” immigrants, the war shifted white Americans’ opinions.

27 John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925, 2nd ed. (Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988), 195-196. 28 M.R. Vesnitch, “A Conflict of Racial Ideals: An Explanation of the Origin of the War,” Outlook, April 17, 1918, 627-628, 632.

78

All of these articles were united in their concern and fear over the types of immigrants coming into the United States. William Z. Ripley stated in a 1908 article in

Atlantic Monthly that until the 1880s “our immigrants were drawn from the Anglo-Saxon or Teutonic populations of [.]” These were good immigrants only to be replaced by hordes “from Mediterranean, Slavic, and Oriental sources.” To many

Americans, these “new” immigrants were inferior to Anglo-Saxon or Nordic people, and

Ripley complained that these new immigrants “heap up in great cities” and were

“immobile elements of population, congesting the slums of great cities.” Because of their

“race instinct,” they remained segregated in ethnic communities and did not

Americanize.29 F.W. Hewes, in his article for World’s Work published in 1903, described the distribution of immigrant races within the United States and even supplemented his work with maps to aid readers. “The Germans spread through the northern States, The

Irish sticking to the Atlantic Coast—Canadians and English well Assimilated—

Scandinavians in the Northwest.” Latin peoples, such as Italians, French, Spanish,

Portuguese, and Greek, were found mostly in New York but also in Louisiana and

California. He also pointed out that many eastern Europeans (as he noted, many of which were Jewish), such as , , and Hungarians, were found not only in cities but also in other regions of the United States.30 The explanations and accompanying maps allowed white Americans to identify which immigrants were the greatest proportion of the population and therefore might endanger the American way of life. By examining the

29 Ripley, 746, 749, 752-753. 30 F.W. Hewes, “Where Our Immigrants Settle,” World’s Work, October 1903, 4021-4024.

79

maps, readers could identify if the increasing immigrant population was threatening their communities.

One concern echoed throughout magazines was the takeover of inferior foreign races. Edward Alsworth Ross, a professor of sociology, warned readers of Century that

“the sturdy blood of once poured its red riches into American arteries to strengthen and to quicken” was now being tainted by the “vitiated and diseased and enfeebling mixtures” of immigration. He continued:

By their presence the foreigners necessarily lower the general plane of intelligence, self-restraint, refinement, orderliness, and efficiency. With them, of course, comes an increase of drink and of the crimes from drink. The great excess of men among them leads to sexual immorality and the diffusion of private diseases.31

White Americans believed certain races consumed alcohol in great amounts, leading temperance and prohibition reformers to target immigrant groups. Alcohol was seen as the root of many problems, including, according to historian Lynn Dumenil, “vice, prostitution, sexual excess, and crime.”32 “Alcohol, as is well known, has filled our poorhouses, insane asylums, and prisons for fifty and a hundred years,” wrote S.S.

McClure in 1909.33

Two related fears of the Progressive Era were disease and crime. Many native

Americans believed “inferior” races were diseased and that some of their ailments were

31 Edward Alsworth Ross, “American and Immigrant Blood: A Study of the Social Effects of Immigration,” Century Magazine, December 1913, 225. 32 Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York: Hill & Wang, 1995), 226. 33 S.S. McClure, “The Tammanyizing of a Civilization,” McClure’s, November 1909, 126.

80

inheritable and put “superior” American citizens at risk.34 Dr. Charles T. Nesbitt, Health

Director for Wilmington, North Carolina, believed alien races were a “health menace” and suggested African Americans, Chinese, and Japanese introduced diseases to the

White race that could cause the collapse of civilization. Regarding blacks, he argued,

“We are just learning how terribly the Negro has been revenged upon us for his enslavement. He brought malaria and hookworm from his native jungle, and though he showed little effects of them himself he has spread them among us with fearful results.”

In addition, he believed the Mongolian race brought infections like cholera, the plague, typhus, and smallpox for which they had developed immunity. By bringing these diseases, along with others common in Japan and China such as lung fluke, blood fluke disease and amoebic dysentery, Asian immigrants were perceived as a threat to white health and civilization.35 In a Cosmopolitan article in 1921, Woods Hutchinson argued that while in the Orient there was “freedom from hurry and bustle and…abundant leisure for reflection and meditation,” the busy life in the West allowed whites to live longer. In addition, he explained that around a decade earlier the bubonic plague killed millions in

Asia but had little effect in America. This, he attributed to white Americans’ “high sanitary standards of living…[and] the magnificent fight waged against it by the United

States Public Health Service.” Even though hundreds of thousands of Americans died in the influenza epidemic two years earlier, other areas, such as , faced greater

34 Howard Markel and Alexandra Minna Stern, “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society,” Milbank Quarterly 80 (November 2002): 761, 767. 35 Charles T. Nesbitt, “The Health Menace of Alien Races,” World’s Work, November 1913, 74- 76.

81

mortality rates. In the end, Americans lived longer because they suffered “[f]ewer fevers and fewer famines, black death gone, smallpox a ghost of its former self, typhoid vanishing, tuberculosis declining, more kinds of food and better balanced diet the year round, cleaner water to drink, and less indulgence in more exhilarating beverages, less gambling, less readiness to let blood over every difference of opinion.”36 The only stop to this progress would be the disease immigrants brought to the United States.

Asia was not the only source of disease. An article in Outlook identified southern and eastern Europeans as “dangerous immigrants” because they were a source of trachoma, a contagious eye disease.37 In Collier’s, Louise Eberlf explained that venereal diseases spread within the United States because “of the neglect and the hideous false modesty that prevail among us where this most loathly of all the secret worms that prey upon a people is concerned.” She blamed the lax medical inspection at Ellis Island for allowing infected immigrants to enter the United States. She concluded by asking,

“Don’t we pay the difference afterward in attempts to stop the spread of the evil diseases, in fighting immorality, in dealing with the criminals and delinquent and insane who are the fruit of those diseases?”38 Like the social critics, Eberlf raised concern and fear by asking Americans how they would stop this foreign menace from lowering their national civility.

Crime was also seen as a result of inferior immigrants. In an article for McClure’s in 1910, Charles B. Brewer warned, “There is more crime, proportionately, among those

36 Woods Hutchinson, “The Pace That Kills,” Cosmopolitan, January 1921, 65-66. 37 “Dangerous Immigrants,” Outlook, January 4, 1913, 12. 38 Louise Eberlf, “Where Immigration Medical Inspection Fails,” Collier’s, February 8, 1913, 27.

82

of foreign birth in the United States than among our own native-born.”39 In addition, in a study of the mortality of foreign stocks, Louis I. Dublin, an insurance company statistician, showed that immigrant races not only had a higher death rate from diseases, such as tuberculosis and pneumonia, but also from violence.40

Besides the numerous immigrants entering the United States, white Americans, especially northerners, were frightened by the “black invasion” and “our distinctly national negro problem” because of increased unrest and violence.41 In the early 1900s, race riots broke out in northern and southern cities, such as East St. Louis, Chicago,

Washington, D.C., Knoxville, New Orleans, and dozens more. In the North specifically, tensions were high because of black urban migrants and the competition with whites for work and housing.42 In his 1919 article for Century, Glenn Frank referenced the race riots as demonstrating the intensification of the “negro problem.” Besides the “black invasion” northwards, Frank included a section, “Congestion’s Brutal Breed,” in which he argued that the African Americans who remained in the “black belt” region were being bred with “vicious and criminal qualities that readily unleash in rioting.” He attributed the violence and rioting to a “new race pride” and a “changed attitude” that emanated from leaders like W.E.B. Du Bois and encouraged insolence and violence. Although

Frank believed he was providing a scholarly point of view of the “race problem,” his

39 Dumenil, 241; Charles B. Brewer, “Some Follies in our Criminal Procedure,” McClure’s, April 1910, 677. 40 Louis I. Dublin, “The Mortality of Foreign Race Stocks,” Scientific Monthly, January 1922, 98- 104. 41 Glenn Frank, “The Clash of Color,” Century Magazine, November 1919, 87-88. 42 Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), 250-251.

83

language subjugated African Americans as a “problem,” an “invasion,” a “brutal breed,” coming from “savagery,” and not as evolved as whites.43 Frank was not the only journalist who noticed changes in African Americans. As historian Steven Diner explains, participating in the war “enhanced African-Americans’ self-respect; and in the

1920s, social commentators proclaimed an assertive ‘.’”44 A 1903 article for

Collier’s by Thomas Nelson Page presaged Diner’s claim, stating that “negroes throughout the country are in a state of upheaval.” To Page and others, this “new” Negro became problematic as an “Afro-American” through education, which led to the demand for social equality.45

To complicate matters, Alfred H. Stone wrote that the upheaval was not caused by

African Americans but by the “Mulatto” race. To Stone, the confusion of the Mulatto race as neither white nor black made the whole race issue difficult. White Americans, he argued, needed to acknowledge the fact that Negroes possessed “certain persistent, ineradicable, distinguishing characteristics,” and because of “its very failure to develop itself in its own habitat,” were inferior.46 To Stone, the Negro race was

docile, tractable, and unambitious,--with but few wants, and those easily satisfied. He inclines to idleness, and though having a tendency to the commission of petty crimes is not malicious, and rarely cherishes hatred. He cares nothing for ‘the sacred right of suffrage,’ and when left to his own inclinations, will disfranchise himself by the thousand rather than pay an annual-tax.47

43 Frank, 86-93, 97. 44 Diner, 252. 45 Thomas Nelson Page, “The New Aspect of the Negro Question,” Collier’s Weekly, February 28, 1903, 11. 46 Alfred H. Stone, “The Mulatto Factor in the Race Problem,” Atlantic Monthly, May 1903, 658- 659. 47 Stone, 660.

84

But, the real problem was Mulatto agitation over “negro disfranchisement,” “negro’s rights,” and “negro cars.” They were the cause for the problems and without them, the

“race problem” in the United States would be resolved.48 To Stone, blacks were too lazy, docile, and uninterested in suffrage to agitate, which helped quell some of white

Americans’ fears regarding the “negro problem.”

Even more than the “New Negro,” the “Red Menace” created hysteria among native citizens. This Red Scare was part of a larger fear of radicalism, which reached its peak during and after WWI. The war instilled in the American public the fear of disloyalty. As John Higham explains, anti-German and anti-radical sentiments were interlocked, and after the war, many believed the Germans and Bolsheviks were working together. In addition, supposed radical union groups were reorganizing after the war,

“rebounding from wartime restrictions, [and] were magnetized by forces radiating from the new Russia.” Foreign-born workers specifically played an important role in the rise of some radical union groups and their activity around the United States. For example, at the height of the Red Scare, 376,000 workers, many of whom were from southern and eastern Europe, participated in a steel strike that employers argued was an alien outbreak to create a revolution, which only encouraged middle-class fear of radicalism. During and after WWI, the government targeted the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.), a radical group that advocated class loyalty before national loyalty and which actively recruited foreigners.49 The main tactic used to combat radicals was deportation. With the

48 Ibid., 661. 49 John Bodnar, The Transplanted: A History of Immigration in Urban America (Bloomington, IN: Indiana Unviersity Press, 1985), 100-101; Higham, 219.

85

immigration law of 1917, the Department of Labor was allowed to deport foreigners who were accused of advocating radicalism. To those natives who wanted to keep America one hundred percent American, deportation was a solution. In addition, local and state officials led raids and passed legislation to prosecute people for organizational membership in radical groups.50

Numerous magazine articles addressed this menace and attempted to explain the threat to American readers. In “The Case against the ‘Reds,’” Attorney General A.

Mitchell Palmer explained to readers of the Forum why the government felt it necessary to deport the “Reds.” Playing upon Americans’ fear of crime in society, Palmer asserted:

Robbery, not war, is the ideal of communism. This has been demonstrated in Russia, Germany, and in America. As a foe, the anarchist is fearless of his own life, for his creed is a fanaticism that admits no respect of any other creed. Obviously it is the creed of any criminal mind, which reasons always from motives impossible to clean thought. Crime is the degenerate factor in society. Upon these two basic certainties, first that the ‘Reds’ were criminal aliens, and secondly that the American Government must prevent crime, it was decided that there could be no nice distinction drawn between the theoretical ideals of the radicals and their actual violations of our national laws.51

Palmer warned that through “stealing, murder, and lies, Bolshevism has looted Russia not only of it material strength, but of its moral force.” This metaphor of communism as criminal warned that if the United States did not deport and prevent the arrival of “Reds,”

America might face the same future as Russia. Just as eugenicists asked the American public to get involved to save the purity of the American race, so to Palmer hoped

American citizens would become “voluntary agents…in a vast organization for mutual

50 Higham, 219-221, 223-225, 227. 51 Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, “The Case against the ‘Reds,’” Forum, February 1920, 174.

86

defense against the sinister agitation of men and women aliens, who appear to be either in the pay or under the criminal spell of Trotzky [sic] and Lenine [sic].” Communist ideas had already invaded American society through organizations, such as the Industrial

Workers of the World (I.W.W.), where “the most radical socialists, the misguided anarchists, the agitators who oppose the limitations of unionism” misled workers. Palmer explained that this threat was now a domestic problem, and middle-class Americans needed to help the state stamp out the Reds because “they have infected our social ideas with the disease of their own minds and their unclean morals[.]” Like a blood disease, he wrote, “[W]e can get rid of them! and not until we have done so shall we have removed the menace of Bolshevism for good.”52 Palmer used metaphors of crime and disease, vital concerns in the United States, to get white Americans to help prevent American ideology and civilization from being harmed by alien radical beliefs and their activities.

Another aspect of American life threatened by these inferior races was the value of work. Immigrants and African Americans competed for jobs not normally done by white Americans out of fear. For example, an early article (1886) from Good

Housekeeping explained that American girls did not want to work as domestic servants because they feared their “social standing will descend to the level of the immigrants….”

In addition, the article warned against the use of black servants in the South to raise children because they were “ignorant,” “superstitious,” and taught the white children to speak with a “negro dialect and pronunciation.” The article encouraged American

52 Palmer, 175-176, 180, 183, 185.

87

women to work in domestic service because of the need for intelligent women who were thoroughly knowledgeable of housekeeping.53

Not only did immigrants and minorities make certain jobs less appealing to whites, but they were also seen as a drag to the American economy. A 1913 article in

Century explained the problem:

That for many years a new and developing country prospered nobly under a rising tide of sturdy, industrious, brainy immigration is no reason why the same country, now replete and slowing, should glut its industries and poison its rich life-blood with an overwhelming influx from the inert, unintelligent, and unassimilative peoples of and the west of Asia.54

This was not a unique opinion, but one reiterated in numerous magazines during the early twentieth century. Dr. Allan McLaughlin argued in Popular Science Monthly that immigrants came to the United States because of the country’s prosperity.55 However, these same immigrants were draining this prosperity and sending it back to their native countries. In 1908, F.G. Moorhead wrote about this concern in the Northwest, where

12,000 to 15,000 southern Europeans and Asians worked on railroad construction. These immigrants worked for low wages but still retired $500,000 a month from circulation. “It is upon this fact that the white, native-born workingman has so bitterly reflected when paid a decreased wage in script.”56

Specifically, Moorehead believed Asians posed a threat to the economy of the

United States, often being labeled as the “.” For example, “The undesirable

53 “Employment as Housekeepers,” Good Housekeeping, May 1, 1886, 385. 54 “A Great National Problem,” Century Magazine, November 1913, 151. 55 Allan McLaughlin, “Immigration,” Popular Science Monthly, June 1904, 165. 56 F.G. Moorhead, “The Foreign Invasion of the Northwest,” World’s Work, March 1908, 9992.

88

Hindu” lived in run-down shacks unfit for the white man (even those from southern

Europe) and was physically weak. Moorhead noted that the Japanese were the most desirable laborers but were unpopular because they did not fully assimilate. While some bosses in the Northwest wanted more Chinese laborers, he explained that they reached the country in “devious ways.”57 To many authors, the Chinese and the Japanese were viewed as undesirable competition to the white American workers because they lowered the wages of everyone. They believed, as Collier’s reported in 1921, that the Japanese

“can live on less than we can. They are willing to work longer hours for less pay.”58

Some authors saw the Japanese and Chinese workers as part of an invasion. As C.L.

Ross wrote, “Asia will never conquer us by the sword, because Asia will never so desire to conquer us, Asia will conquer us in a peaceful and hence more effective manner. Asia will conquer us through the medium of commerce. We may be more than conquered.

We may be assimilated.”59 Ross maintained U.S. military superiority but warned that the future of American commerce and society as a whole was threatened. In a time when

American citizens wanted immigrants to assimilate into U.S. society, to think that they might be the ones assimilating into Asian culture heightened white American anxiety and fear.

These foreign races were also hindering the success of the White race by introducing negative traits into society. First and foremost, many feared that overall U.S. intelligence would decrease because of these inferior foreign elements. Professor

57 Moorehead, 9994-9997. 58 Julian Street, “America and Japan,” Collier’s, August 27, 1921, 16. 59 C.L. Ross, “America No Melting Pot,” Technical World, July 1913, 751.

89

Kimball Young asserted in Scientific Monthly that mental traits were inherited, and therefore, intelligence was connected to heredity and race. A mixing of inferior races, such as , with people of northern European ancestry could damage “the welfare of the country.” He summarized numerous intelligence tests for his readers before concluding that Nordics were superior to southern and eastern Europeans and African

Americans.60 Similarly, Dr. Arthur Sweeney examined the WWI Army intelligence tests and used the results to argue that America, with its superior intelligence, needed to protect itself from “the influx of the worthless. Unless we do so we shall degenerate to the level of the Slav and Latin races, with their illiteracy, ignorance, and consequent degradation. America is becoming Europeanized, not with the best but with the worst element of that continent.”61 Many articles reflected this fear that the United States was being overtaken by an “invasion” of inferior races, which were illiterate, ignorant, inferior, and with traditions and ideologies adverse to U.S. beliefs and ways.

IMAGES AND CARICATURES OF RACE AND ETHNICITY IN MAGAZINES

Magazines not only depicted immigrants and minorities through their articles but also used imagery and caricature to heighten fear. Illustration was not always common to periodicals, but rather it became more popular in the latter part of the nineteenth century.

Harper’s Monthly was one of the first literary periodicals to realize the power of images

60 Kimball Young, “Intelligence Tests of Certain Immigrant Groups,” Scientific Monthly, November 1922, 419-420, 422, 429-430. 61 Arthur Sweeney, “Mental Tests for Immigrants,” North American Review, May 1922, 611.

90

accompanying text, and soon other periodicals such as Scribner’s Monthly and Century ran illustrations. Initially the increase in illustrations occurred because of an improved wood engraving technique, which allowed for decreased production costs. However, wood engravings were replaced with the introduction of photoengraving in the late 1880s and early 1890s. This, as English professor Henry B. Wonham states, “sparked a second wave of revolution and brought an end to the reign of the ‘quality’ literary periodicals over the sphere of magazine art…[and paved] the way for a new generation of garishly illustrated, remarkably inexpensive, and terrifically popular magazines.” Magazines like

McClure’s, Cosmopolitan, and Munsey’s sold for fifteen cents, twelve cents, and ten cents per issue, respectively, in 1893. The improvements in illustration production allowed more magazines to participate in this image revolution.62

Wonham’s Playing the Races examines the rise of images and caricatures in an era where journalists believed that realism could be used to reveal the truth and even liberate or present a sympathetic view of various races. He argues that caricatures and realism are not mutually exclusive, but both can be used by magazines in their depiction of foreigners and minorities. He explains, “Like realism, caricature operates on the phrenological and physiognomic premise that the essence of identity can be gleaned through observation and interpretation of the exterior form.” Caricature is tied to physiognomy, the study of reading facial features, to determine character and temperament. Therefore, through illustrations magazines tried to provide an accurate depiction of race and ethnicity. As Wonham states, “[M]uch of the magazine art

62 Henry B. Wonham, Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14-15.

91

published by the better periodicals after 1890 depicted ethnic, cultural, or class

‘characteristics’ as determining features of identity, suggesting that individuals are traceable to certain generic sources, and that ‘type’ is the hidden truth behind the illusion of ‘character.’” However, previously, caricature was seen as a crude art form, and it was not until the late nineteenth century that caricatures began to be used by magazines as representative of reality. These caricatures functioned in various ways. First, the images permitted magazines to address real issues and concerns such as immigration in a humorous manner, which allowed “undesirable elements” to remain in the pages of the magazines and not in the actual lives of readers. Second, the images reaffirmed the status quo of the dominant culture (white American culture). Lastly, as Wonham asserts,

“Ethnic caricature…functions as a strategic control on the magazine’s own democratic experiment, ensuring that ethnic identities remain fixed and discernible in the bewildering flux of a multiethnic society.”63

In Beyond Ethnicity, historian Werner Sollors questions how the Progressive Era could be a time of both the “self-made man” and the era of Jim Crow. Two ideas—that anyone could become an American and that people were shaped by natural descent— were created in the same society but opposed one another.64 This tension between

Americanization and heredity of race is played out in these images. As Wonham states,

“Against the unwelcome homogenization of the melting pot, caricature inscribes ethnic markers as inflexible features of identity, which only become more pronounced with

63 Wonham, 13, 16, 18, 22, 25, 26. 64 Werner Sollors, Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 38.

92

every comical step the irreparable alien takes toward the fantasy of perfect assimilation.”65 Thus, images and caricatures from the Progressive Era played a significant role in the creation of negative and fearful representations of race and immigration during this era.

Sometimes images were used in documentary or informational articles to present a more “realistic” view of immigrants and minorities. While these were not as dehumanizing as caricatures, they encouraged stereotypes of foreigners.66 In her article,

“A Greenhorn at the Gate,” Natalie De Bogory went undercover to understand the immigrant experience. She wore clothing she identified as something that would be worn by a Slavic immigrant. Her story demonstrated the process of entering the country and described the various people who helped her as a greenhorn immigrant. Accompanying her article was an image of her dressed as a Slavic woman (figure 2.2).67 While she is trying to be authentic, her image also reinforced the American stereotype of an immigrant as plain, poor, unknowing, and weak.

65 Wonham, 38. 66 Ibid., 18. 67 Natalie De Bogory, “A Greenhorn at the Gate,” Outlook, November 30, 1921, 523-524.

93

Figure 2.2: Picture of the author, Natalie De Borgory, dressed as a Slavic immigrant. This image accompanied her 1921 article in Outlook. Caption states: “Author in Greenhorn Guise.”

In addition, in “The Gateway of the Nation,” the Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, Robert Watchorn, explained how complex and difficult it was to enforce immigration restrictions. While it might have seemed easy to exclude an immigrant who was sick or old, when a person heard an immigrant’s individual story, making that decision became more difficult. To the author, there was a difference when the problem was examined in the abstract form and when it was explored using concrete examples; therefore, he urged sympathy and pity for immigrants. In his article, Watchorn included images of different immigrant types, such as a Hungarian (figure 2.3).68 While the author intended for the images to make the reader sympathetic, middle-class

68 Robert Watchorn, “The Gateway of the Nation,” Outlook, December 28, 1907, 899, 901.

94

American readers saw undesirable, pathetic, and poor immigrants who would only weaken U.S. prosperity and progress.

Figure 2.3: This image appeared in “The Gateway of the Nation,” which was published in 1907 in Outlook.

More often than not, images of minorities described them as a threat or nuisance to American culture and way of life. For example, when depicting Jewish people, magazines often used stereotypes to entertain readers while simultaneously portraying them as a problem. As historian Matthew Frye Jacobson states:

[V]isible Jewishness in American culture between the mid-nineteenth and mid- twentieth centuries represented a complex process of social value become perception: social and political meanings attached to Jewishness generate a kind of physiognomical surveillance that renders Jewishness itself discernible as a particular pattern of physical traits (skin color, nose shape, hair color and texture, and the like)—what Blumenbach called ‘the fundamental configuration of face.’ The visible markers may then be interpreted as outer signs of an essential, immutable, inner moral intellectual character….69

69 Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998), 174.

95

Figure 2.4: “Hereditary Types” appeared in Puck at an unknown date. This image depicts the profiles of a family. Mister Cohn, a Jewish man, marries Miss O’Rourke, and they have a son, Master Cohn.

Figure 2.4, from Puck, a humor magazine, resembles the “scientific” depictions of how heredity worked, with great exaggeration.70 A Jewish man, Mister Cohn, is identified by his exaggerated nose, while Miss O’Rourke is an Irish woman with a small nose and an ape-like appearance, just as figure 1.1 portrayed the Irish as simians. Their son, Master

Cohn, like his father, possesses an oversized nose and resembles his Irish mother, with a similar mouth and chin. Americans viewed neither ethnicity positively, and the combination would be disturbing, as it depicted race mongrelization.71 Figure 2.5, also from Puck, entitled “Profitable Benevolence,” uses facial characteristics, stereotypical

70 “Hereditary Types,” Puck, no date, in Wonham, 45; Wonham, 22. 71 Wonham, 44.

96

Jewish accent, and “Jewish” behavior to document both the humor and fear such people might bring to the country.72

Figure 2.5: “Profitable Benevolence,” Puck, March 20, 1901. Caption: “Here, my poor man. I ain’d godt der heart to see anypody go coldt: pud dis on und vear it!” “Ach! Who says der Heprew haf no heart?”

This image depicts a Jewish tailor offering clothing to a poor passerby. However, the second image shows that this Jewish tailor is not doing this out of Christian kindness, but instead, he uses this man to advertise his clothing store, reaffirming the stereotype that

Jewish immigrants were greedy, manipulative, and not American. As Wonham states,

“[T]he Jew in late nineteenth-century America caricature forfeits his claim to humanity by expressing an unlimited willingness to commodify everyone and everything around him.”73

72 “Profitable Benevolence,” Puck, March 20, 1901, in Wonham, 30. 73 Wonham, 30.

97

In addition to Jewish people, white artists in magazines used caricatures of

African Americans to solidify their place in the racial hierarchy. In figure 2.6, which appeared in Puck in 1901, African American children look at an advertisement for Uncle

Tom’s Cabin where a white girl is dressed as the black character, Topsy.74

Figure 2.6: Image in Puck, April 1901. Caption: “’Mean ter say she’s a white gal?’ ‘In course she is.’ ‘Golly! I reckon no cullud gal cud look as much like a white gal as dat gal looks like a cullud gal.”

One child states, “Golly! I reckon no cullud gal cud look as much like a white gal as dat gal looks like a cullud girl.” This image is geared to middle-class readers who felt anxiety over the racial state of America. With black children trying to mimic white

74 “Admiration,” Puck, April 1901, in Wonham, 89.

98

middle-class clothing in a comical way as an attempt to be a part of “white” society, the magazine demonstrated that this concept of African Americans becoming white was ridiculous. This magazine and readers used race as an identifying category in society. It suggests that African Americans could not fully assimilate into white culture because they would always be black. This failure of African Americans to “appear” or “pretend” to be white was a common theme in magazines of this era.75 It was socially accepted for whites to imitate African Americans through , and as historian Michael Rogin explains, “[M]instrelsy copies of black often mocked black efforts to imitate white. The genteel version of white supremacy operated according to the same punishing logic of mimicry. Encouraging blacks to model themselves on whites, paternalists trapped

African Americans into role-playing.”76 Middle-class Americans could feel reassured of their superiority over African Americans who could only try to masquerade as civilized.

In her work, Lockstep and Dance, Linda G. Tucker examines images of black men in culture and traces origins of the negative stereotypes to the Jim Crow era. While focusing on black men, some of her arguments can be applied to African Americans in general. For example, the images of this era often placed blacks in the negative part of the white versus black binary where African Americans were portrayed as criminals, dehumanized, or demonized. Images depicted African Americans as a threat to middle-

75 Wonham, 28. 76 Michael Rogin, Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996), 33.

99

class whites and acceptable when they “conform to certain prescribed roles,” such as a pickaninny, auntie, or criminal.77

Jews and African Americans were not the only ethnic groups caricatured. The anxiety over Chinese immigration and their threat to the American way of life can be seen in figure 2.7, which appeared in Harper’s Weekly. In this image, a Chinese man is depicted in a humorous manner as being excited by an advertisement for “Chinamen to

Play Baseball.”78 The absurdity of such a person playing such an identifiable American sport is made plain by the stereotypical clothing, hair, facial features, and attire, all of which portrays the Chinese immigrant as lacking masculinity and unable to assimilate into American culture.

Figure 2.7: “The Chinaman at Bat” appeared in Harper’s

Weekly during the 1880s.

77 Tucker, 47. 78 “The Chinaman at Bat,” Harper’s Weekly, 1880s, in Matthew Frye Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917 (New York: Hill & Wang, 2000), no page number.

100

Radicals were an easy target, as figure 2.8 demonstrates. Radicalism threatened

American values with its discontent, strikes, strife, and desire for labor trouble.79 The

United States, depicted as a police officer, has to protect the somewhat gullible, yet innocent, American worker from the danger of the “Reds,” portrayed as menacing, ugly, poor, and dirty.

Figure 2.8: Image appearing in the Saturday Evening Post in 1921. A man dressed poorly and looking evil has a hat on that says, “Undesirable Alien” with a flag stating, “Red.” He is offering a man labeled “Labor” a bottle of “Strike,” and next to him sit bottles of “Discontent,” “Labor Trouble,” and “Strife.” In the background is a police officer who represents the United States. The caption underneath states, “100% Impure.”

79 “100% Impure,” in Kenneth L. Roberts, “Plain Remarks on Immigration for Plain Americans,” Saturday Evening Post, February 12, 1921, 21.

101

Similarly, in figure 2.9, immigration is shown as leading to Bolshevism, disease, lower intellectual standards, and race degeneration.80 In the cartoon, the artist blames sentimentalists and employers of cheap labor for dragging the future of America, against its will, towards a wave of immigration. While sentimentalists and employers think they are doing something positive, in reality, with the wave of immigration, the decline of

American superiority and progress will occur.

Figure 2.9: In this image from the Saturday Evening Post, “Sentimentalist” and “Employer of Cheap Labor” drag a crying “Future of America” towards a wave of “Immigration.” The cartoon has immigration leading to “Lowered Standards,” “Race Discrimination,” “Bolshevism,” and Disease.” The caption reads, “Look Out for the Undertow!”

80 Herbert Johnson, “Look Out for the Undertow!,” in Kenneth L. Roberts, “The Existence of an Emergency,” Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1921, 3.

102

In the accompanying 1921 article, the author stressed the need for immigration restriction to protect from the “immigration emergency” caused by foreigners of “an entirely different breed” who have “swarmed” into the United States.81

SOLVING THE RACE PROBLEM THROUGH IMMIGRATION RESTRICTION AND EUGENICS

As many social critics and social scientists, some journalists saw the idea of a melting pot and a united, assimilated population as a pipe dream. In magazines, there was the opinion that America could not “digest” immigrants quickly enough. While they could be assimilated into American occupations and commerce, “they are entirely indifferent or actually antagonistic to the most revered household gods of traditional

America.” These “half-breed Americans” gained political power in cities despite the discomfort this posed to the former ruling class of “old stock” Americans.82 “Half-breed”

Americans or hyphenated-Americans were seen as problems to those who doubted assimilation. As Julian Street wrote in 1921, “Hyphens are hard to melt.” This made people realize that the melting pot was “overloaded,” and that “its by-product consisted too often of bricks and bombs.”83 Various articles, such as George Creel’s “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground?,” argued that while assimilation worked with “old” immigrants, the

“new” immigrants resisted the process, and the melting pot failed because differences

81 Kenneth L. Roberts, “The Existence of an Emergency,” Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1921, 3. 82 “The Rise of the ‘New’ American,” New Republic, May 10, 1922, 301-302. 83 Street, 10, 16.

103

between Nordic, Mediterranean, and Alpine ideals, beliefs, and traditions made it impossible for the races to amalgamate. He labeled undesirable immigrants as “human wreckage,” and claimed, “In the future our home is going to be a home, and not a dumping ground.” To do this, Creel recommended immigration restriction.84

Immigration restriction was the most common solution to solve the alien problem.

As many scholars and social critics, journalists too believed, “With the rapid and progressive increase of immigration from Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, and other countries of southern and eastern Europe, deterioration in the quality of immigration was sufficiently marked to indicate the necessity for more thorough regulation and restriction.”85 People offered various suggestions and criticisms of different types of restriction. Politicians fought for the passage of literacy tests. Numerous literacy bills were proposed, and three presidents, Cleveland, Taft, and Wilson, vetoed the bills. It was only when Wilson’s veto was overruled in 1917 that the test was put into practice.86

While some thought the veto of a literacy bill was “ill-advised,” others did not support the idea of restricting immigrants based on literacy.87 Some claimed that the test might restrict an intelligent immigrant from entering the United States because his country’s educational system failed to teach him to read and write.88 Others claimed that literacy tests did not protect the United States from dangerous immigrants who may be

84 George Creel, “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground?,” Collier’s, September 3, 1921, 9-10, 25-26. 85 McLaughlin, “Immigration,” 169. 86 T. Coleman du Pont, “Does America want Immigration or Emigration?,” Current Opinion, August 1920, 178. 87 Prescott F. Hall, “Controlling Immigration by Number Limitation,” Survey, June 14, 1913, 371; Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues, 200. 88 Young, 433.

104

criminals.89 Another solution was the use of mental or intelligence tests, psychological and physical examinations, or background checks.90 A common suggestion to solve the immigrant problem was to send an immigrant to rural areas where he could benefit from space, clean air, and agricultural work or to tell him where in the country he would find the “most satisfactory conditions of employment and living.”91 For example, in an article for Literary Digest, it was argued that with the lack of surplus of labor in the South, immigrant workers should be sent to southern states to help develop lands and industries.92

Many magazine articles suggested that to limit immigration, legislation also had to restrict the types of immigrants coming to the United States. Kenneth L. Roberts wrote in the Saturday Evening Post, “Immigration must be stopped. This is a matter of life and death for America.” If action was not taken, he believed, these immigrants

“waiting to burst their gates and pour their floods into America” would cause the United

States to be overrun with a “new composite race of people wholly different from the

Americans of the present day, or by a number of racial groups which will fight and bicker and haggle among themselves over their alien racial differences.”93 Senator Henry Cabot

Lodge, a member on the Senate Committee on Immigration, explained that restrictive legislation allowed the United States to exclude the insane, criminals, paupers, the sick,

89 “Dangerous Immigrants,” 12. 90 Young, 433; Michaud, 689. 91 McLaughlin, “Italian and Other Latin Immigrants,” 346; “A Million and a Quarter Immigrants,” Outlook, December 28, 1907, 881. 92 “To Send Immigrants South,” The Literary Digest, October 11, 1913, 617-618. 93 Kenneth L. Roberts, “Plain Remarks on Immigration for Plain Americans,” Saturday Evening Post, February 12, 1921, 21.

105

and anarchists among others.94 In addition, restrictions on steamships helped keep out unwanted immigrants. If an immigrant came to the United States with a disease or illness that they had at the time of embarkation, the transportation line had to pay a one hundred dollar fee for each violation.95 Yet another solution called for the restriction of immigration based upon a certain percentage. One proposal restricted immigration from one nation to ten percent of the number of immigrants of that nationality that came to the

U.S. at a certain time.96 This would restrict the more undesirable elements from southern and eastern Europe. The 1913 bill, introduced into Congress by Senator William

Dillingham, wanted to limit the population of a nationality to ten percent of the number of immigrants of a nationality “in the United States at the time of the United States census next preceding,” however, it failed.97 Then, in 1921, the Dillingham Bill, which originally set a quota to five percent of the 1910 census, was reduced to three percent.

While President Wilson allowed the bill to die, Congress and President Harding passed the bill in May of 1921 as the Emergency Quota Act.98

In addition to restriction, magazines touched upon eugenics. The Saturday

Evening Post wrote supportive reviews of books about eugenics, like those written by

Grant and Stoddard. In addition, Current Opinion published a summary of The Revolt against Civilization by Lothrop Stoddard, explaining that Stoddard wanted people to be

94 Henry Cabot Lodge, “A Million Immigrants a Year,” Century Magazine, January 1904, 469. 95 Herbert Francis Sherwood, “The Silent Keeper of the Gate,” Outlook, June 6, 1908, 289. 96 “New Immigration Measures in Congress,” Survey, June 14, 1913, 368-369. 97 “The ‘Ten-Per-Cent’ Immigration Bill,” Literary Digest, June 21, 1913, 1368. 98 Higham, 310-311.

106

“thinking racially,” and to keep eugenic ideas in mind.99 Similarly, in an article for

Scientific American, Charles B. Davenport’s eugenic work at Cold Harbor was explained, and the author informed readers that Davenport “would have love and the ‘eugenic principles’ go hand in hand in the marriage of the future, for happier homes and healthier children and the minimum of insanity, and the hereditary degenerations, pauperism, and crime.”100 These articles reflected a need to bring eugenics into everyday American life so that it would influence daily decisions and ensure the continuation of a pure Nordic race. Eugenicists and articles that were positive towards the science argued, “[E]ugenics may become a popular and a useful study.”101 To do this, the ideas of heredity and race betterment had to be disseminated to the public. In “Intellectual Reading for the Home,”

Good Housekeeping recommended books on the development theory of race and on heredity, such as those by Galton, to female readers.102 Eugenicists believed that physical and mental traits, along with some diseases, were inherited. These aspects were biological, not cultural, meaning that foreigners could not be assimilated into American culture.103 To deal with these problems, restriction needed to be used to avoid racial mixing, and the good native stock needed to reproduce more. Some feared that the decrease in reproduction among the native white American was akin to race suicide. As

Ethel Wadsworth Cartland wrote in 1913, “Yes, it must be said, the old stock, the grand

99 “The Struggle Between Biology and Bolshevism,” Current Opinion, September 1922, 378. 100 “Social Problems and Eugenics,” Scientific American, May 10, 1913, 426. 101 J. Lionel Tayler, “The Social Application of Eugenics,” Westminster Review, October 1908, 424. 102 “Intellectual Reading for the Home,” Good Housekeeping, February 20, 1886, 230-231. 103 Raymond Pearl, “Breeding Better Men,” World’s Work, January 15, 1908, 9823.

107

old stock, the fine, cultivated, progressive, loyal, Puritan stock, is dying out! The native

Americans, my own beloved people, are passing from the life of the Nation—a passing suicidal!” She, and others of this mindset, argued that Americans needed to stop being selfish and do the right thing, as a “necessity for our people.”104

However, not everyone was supportive of these eugenic sentiments. Some argued race suicide was not occurring, but rather economic times made Americans want to feel secure in their lives and employment.105 In addition, critics asserted that by having fewer children, parents ensured that their children had more opportunities.106 One psychologist,

Havelock Ellis, wrote in an article for the Forum, that race should be eliminated from eugenics because it could not be assumed that one race was better than another was.

Even Nordic blood was rarely found unmixed with other races, and therefore, it could not be claimed that one race was superior to another.107

THE DESIRE FOR RACIAL ASSIMILATION AND AMERICANIZATION

While magazine articles and their images reflected many of the same opinions of race and a racial hierarchy that many scholars and critics decried, they differed in how to solve the alleged “race problem.” While scholars and eugenicists such as Grant and

Stoddard focused on the threat of inferior races to the White race and how, therefore, they

104 Ethel Wadsworth Cartland, “Childless Americans,” Outlook, November 15, 1913, 585, 587. 105 “Refusal to Multiply,” Living Age, November 29, 1913, 569. 106 “‘Race Suicide’ or ‘Overcrowding,’” World’s Work, September 1908, 10640. 107 Havelock Ellis, “Eugenics and the Uneducated,” Forum, January 1922, 1, 3-4.

108

should be restricted from entering the country, most magazine articles took a more active approach to addressing those immigrants already in the United States. While eugenics and immigration restriction were often discussed in magazines, assimilation and

Americanization were usually suggested as a solution to the immigrant and race

“problems” in the United States. Many Progressive Era magazines attempted to sympathize with the immigrants rather than show outright fear of them. However, underlying the sentiments of pity and desire for assimilation were concerns over alien beliefs and traditions invading the United States. The tension, as John Higham explains, was between

[t]he impulse of fear and the impulse of love [which] ran throughout its whole course, clashing in principle though in practice sometimes strangely blended. One current tended to soften the movement, orienting it toward the welfare of the immigrant; the other steeled it to an imperious demand for conformity. Out of fear, the Americanization movement fostered a militant nationalism, and by this means it eventually made its widest, most fervent appeal to the native-born public.

Some of the more extreme Americanization supporters wanted one hundred percent

Americanism and insisted on complete loyalty, duty to the nation, and used propaganda, coercion, and punishment to achieve their results.108 As Reverend James I. Vance proclaimed in a 1917 Missionary Review article, “Closing the gate to the alien is really no solution of our immigration problem. The alien is already here.” He suggested converting immigrants to Christianity to assimilate them into the country, but this was only one method.109

108 Higham, 237, 247. 109 James I. Vance, “The Problem of the Aliens in America,” Missionary Review, December 22, 1917, 929.

109

Assimilation and Americanization could also be achieved through education and adoption of white American culture and ideals. Simon Lubin, in an article for the Survey, asserted that a nation did not have to be comprised of one race bound by territorial boundaries, for “it is the psychic factors which are of prime importance.” To Lubin and others, adoption of immigrants into American society was possible by taking the roots of a foreign belief or ideology and modifying it to fit into American society. Lubin believed immigrants brought positive attributes, talents, skills, intelligence, and ideals; and rather than being the “scum of the earth,” these people could make actual contributions to the

United States.110 Especially during wartime, due to fear of the foreigner, it was seen as necessary to assimilate immigrants and unite with them against the enemy. As an article in the Survey from 1918 stated:

We must not forget that they will live with us as an integral part of the community after the war, as they did before the war, and for this reason it is essential that during this war time no bitterness nor prejudice should be engendered. The present need for national unity and the security of our future demand that good will and good understanding be established between all the different people in the United States.111

Articles of this nature wanted American readers to understand that fear would not aid in assimilating immigrants. Americanization was needed, as an article in Ladies’ Home

Journal expressed, with “the utmost tolerance and patience. It is our duty to show our

110 Simon Lubin, “The Strength of America: II. The Conception of Nationality,” Survey, January 3, 1920, 352, 356. 111 Committee on Foreign-born Women of the Committee on Women in Industry of the Council of National Defense, “Making the Foreign Born One of Us,” Survey, May 25, 1918, 213.

110

aliens that Americanization is justice, liberty and equal chance for all, and that loyalty to these principles is binding upon all….”112

However, others believed it was necessary to change the beliefs of immigrants because they could threaten the American way of life. While they may have wanted

Americans to be sympathetic to immigrants, they also feared “[t]he persistence of racial characteristics and of European antagonisms…[as] the greatest menace to our unity of purpose.” Many agreed with Arthur M. Wolfson, the principal of the High School of

Commerce in , when he argued that assimilation of these “strangers” was necessary because of the new immigrant types. These people from Russia, Italy, and other areas of southern and eastern Europe did not know the institutions of the United

States and needed to be “assimilated; each must be speedily educated so that men, women and children will become true Americans.”113 Similarly, Eva Clark Waid, chairman of the Committee of Home Missions Among Immigrants, Council of Women for Home Missions, titled her article for Missionary Review, “Americanization—The

Duty of Haste.” Americanization had to occur quickly because America needed a labor force that could read and speak English, be efficient laborers, and be a part of “a united, understanding, homogenous people” in order to be loyal and patriotic citizens during times of peace and war.114 Since this article was published in 1918 towards the end of the war, it is understandable that the author wanted efficient and loyal immigrants to help

112 Anna Howard Shaw quoted in Dudley Harmon, “Americans for America,” Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1918, 3. 113 Arthur M. Wolfson, “The Stranger within our Gates,” Independent, April 6, 1913, 44-45. 114 Eva Clark Waid, “Americanization—The Duty of Haste,” Missionary Review, November 1918, 819-820.

111

support the American war effort and because of the fear of what immigrants could do if they were not loyal U.S. citizens.

In order to assimilate and Americanize foreigners, education was seen as vital.

Education of immigrant children was essential to Americanization, but educating adults was viewed with importance as well. One suggested method of teaching immigrant adults about American society and language was through the use of night schools. This would allow working immigrants to learn as well as earn a living. One article even described schools that taught immigrants phrases based on their needs in their workday and daily life. They learned to describe sicknesses, ask for protection, and describe U.S. geography, history, and patriotism to prepare them for citizenship.115 However, to others, it was understandable that immigrants who had to work and care for families did not feel like going to evening schools. One suggestion to solve this problem was to offer free classes in factories on company time. These would be offered by the Board of Education and taught by trained teachers. The importance of professional educators was stressed because teaching English and other subjects to immigrants was a specialized skill that should be done by a teacher with a background in psychology and a friendly demeanor towards immigrants.116 Some factories already actively sought to adjust immigrant thinking and way of life. For example, at the Ford Motor Company, instituted the “Five Dollar Day” to encourage efficiency and assimilation.117 In addition,

115 “Assimilating the Adult Immigrant,” Outlook, February 1, 1908, 244-245. 116 Committee on Foreign-born Women of the Committee on Women in Industry of the Council of National Defense, 213-215. 117 Bodnar, 98.

112

it was suggested that public schools also serve as “social and educational centers for adults of every industrial community. The public school must be humanized and socialized and brought by enlightened public opinion to adapt itself to the needs of the times.”118

While the education of adults was stressed, immigrant children also needed to be

Americanized.

The too rapid Americanization of these children into pert young people without respect for authority is a dangerous problem. We should make every effort towards encouraging the children of the foreign-born to appreciate the culture of their parents’ native land….If these first generation Americans are cut loose from the culture of the past of their parents, they start their young lives in our country without nourishment for the higher sides of their natures. Reverence and respect for authority are not developed.119

When assimilating children and even adults, importance was placed on the school system and libraries. Americanization would not occur at home, but mostly at schools. In addition, after school hours, libraries were a vital resource to immigrant children and adults who desired to learn English or read about the United States. Textbook and schools could instill Americanism in both immigrant and native students.120 For example, one article from 1922, “The Quintessence of Americanism in a Hundred

Words,” printed the winning entry for a contest creating “The American’s Creed” to be published in booklets by the National Patriotic Organizations. The Creed stressed the importance of the U.S. government, the citizens’ duty to the country, and the necessity of

118 Committee on Foreign-born Women of the Committee on Women in Industry of the Council of National Defense, 214. 119 Ibid., 213. 120 Ralph H. Bevan, “First Aid to Americanization,” Forum, March 1922, 230-231.

113

obeying laws, respecting the flag, and defending the country against enemies. The article concluded by stating that the Creed had already been recited by more than 2,000,000 children in the United States.121 This demonstrates that through schooling, Americans were trying to instill American ideals and values into both native and immigrant children.

To assimilate and Americanize, journalists stressed the adoption of the English language by immigrants. James J. Davis explained that “knowledge of a common language which must be the language of the nation to which ones owes allegiance will weld the bands of friendship, mutual help and harmony.”122 However, other articles stressed the importance of having immigrants learn English but keep their native language as well. For example, one suggestion was that to teach American ideas and customs to immigrants, teachers give illustrated talks in the immigrants’ native tongue.

English should be compulsory in all elementary schools for unification, but immigrant children should respect their native language.123 This encouragement for immigrants to retain their native languages demonstrates that some magazine journalists and readers saw cultural understanding and pluralism as necessary in assimilating foreigners into

American culture.

Assimilation and Americanization could also be used to stop radicals. Instead of deportation, fines, and imprisonment, American ideas and propaganda could be used on

121 “The Quintessence of Americanism in a Hundred Words,” Current Opinion, September 1922, 379. 122 James J. Davis, “Training for Citizenship,” Forum, August 1922, 652. 123 Committee on Foreign-born Women of the Committee on Women in Industry of the Council of National Defense, 214; Earl Barnes, “Language as a Factor in Americanization,” Public, July 27, 1918, 956.

114

the weak-minded immigrant.124 Fredrick Davenport argued that immigrants needed to be shown that the U.S. government cared for them and suggested, “America had looked after their bodies, but the Communist International had looked after the development of their mental life.” To combat communism, natives should offer education and help to newly arrived immigrants.125 Nicholas Murray Butler, the president of Columbia University, recommended, “The only instrument that will combat a wrong idea, a wrong state of feeling, is a right idea, a right state of feeling.”126

Journalists also offered education as the solution to the “Negro problem.” Many authors determined, “As a nation we must develop and extend the facilities for the industrial education of the negro. It is not higher education that the negro primarily needs.”127 The idea was not to educate them in advanced subjects, but in “all principles of morality, culture, ethics, etc., be derived from the white race and transmitted to the lower race through the agents of that race.” These agents would be African Americans who were trained by white men.128 Even African American leaders such as W.E.B. Du

Bois supported the training of the “Negro” race and published his opinions in popular magazines. In a 1903 issue of Outlook, he argued that African Americans needed independent leadership to educate and regenerate their race. He claimed the “Negro problem” was “largely a problem of ignorance.” He stressed the idea of “the talented

124 “The Melting Pot Boils Over,” Public, November 29, 1919, 1106. 125 Fredrick M. Davenport, “The Red Peril and the Red Hysteria,” Outlook, August 4, 1920, 610- 611. 126 Nicholas Murray Butler, “Our Bolshevik Menace,” Forum, January 1920, 54. 127 Frank, 95. 128 Harris Hancock, “The Education of the Colored Race is the Duty of the Nation,” Popular Science Monthly, May 1908, 460.

115

tenth” in the African American race to resolve the ignorance of the race. In addition, to solve the “race problem,” African Americans needed to be given the right to vote.129

Therefore, with training and more independence, African American leadership could uplift their race. Some articles blamed the South for the race problem. For example, in a

1903 issue of World’s Work, it was claimed, “But dominant Northern opinion yet holds firmly to the doctrine that no political discrimination should be made against the Negro simply because of his color or race: that…he shall have the door open to him for all the privileges of citizenship when he is worthy; and that when he proves personally fit he shall not be excluded simply because he is a Negro.”130 This theme, of the “Negro” race having to evolve and earn the rights of American citizenship, was seen throughout popular magazines during the Progressive Era.

Throughout this era, magazines demonstrated that restriction was not the only solution for the alleged minority problem. Numerous authors attempted to emphasize the importance of sympathy for immigrants and African Americans and the need to assimilate and uplift them into white American society. While middle-class readers may have pitied “inferior” minorities, fear also played a significant role, as it was clear to them that in order for the native white American traditions to continue and progress, alien groups needed to be Americanized into loyal and productive citizens.

During the Progressive Era, as the magazine industry flourished, journalists attempted to address social fears. Issues that raised a great deal of concern were that of

129 W.E.B. Du Bois, “The Training of Negroes for Social Power,” Outlook, October 17, 1903, 409- 414. 130 “Changed Opinions on the Race Questions,” World’s Work, March 1903, 3156.

116

race, ethnicity, and the increasing immigration of “undesirable” foreigners. Magazines reflected the scientific research that created a racial hierarchy. This hierarchy did not only differentiate between white and “other” races, but saw distinctions within whiteness which determined that white foreigners from southern and eastern Europe were inferior to the “old stock” that inhabited the United States. These white immigrants, along with the

“negro problem,” “yellow peril,” and “Red Menace,” were viewed with fear as detriments to society that introduced crime, disease, and radical ideologies and would lower the intelligence and civility of the Nordic race. While these ideas were reflected in both Progressive Era social science and popular magazines, these periodicals had a less clear-cut method of dealing with the problems associated with minorities. Whereas many social scientists only warned of the fall of Nordic society and demanded restrictions, many people in America realized that millions of immigrants were already in the United

States and that this social issue required their immediate attention. While many journalists supported restrictions, many others believed assimilation was the way to integrate these foreigners into society and limit their threat to the United States.

Magazines adopted social science, but adapted it to fit societal demands. The immigrants could not be forced out of the United States, but through education, they could be made into American citizens. As discussed earlier, public schools were seen as the central component to this assimilation process. Through their daily lessons, immigrant and native children were taught how to be productive and patriotic citizens in the United

States. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, much of the material they learned came from textbooks that introduced them to topics such as geography, biology, and civics. Just as

117

with magazines, the topics of race, ethnicity, and a racial hierarchy were adapted to their audience—schoolchildren—and incorporated into their daily lives to reflect a fear of the inferior races and the need for assimilation.

CHAPTER III

The Gatekeepers of Racial Hierarchy: The Discourse in Progressive Era Textbooks

Among many American intellectuals, the answer to the “immigrant problem” seemed simple: restriction. To some, like Kenneth L. Roberts, who wrote both popular magazine articles and academic works, assimilation was impossible. He warned that if immigration of inferior races to the United States continued, “America will be populated by a mongrel race entirely different from the present American people as we know them to-day.” He explained that nothing could alter the physical or racial traits of these lesser races, and therefore, assimilation efforts would be useless to solve the supposed immigrant problem.1 Most politicians also doubted the ability of minority populations to assimilate. Woodrow Wilson, during his presidential campaign in 1912, stated, “In the matter of Chinese and Japanese immigration, I stand for the national policy of exclusion. The whole question is one of assimilation of diverse races. We cannot make a homogeneous population of a people who do not blend with the .”2 With

1 Kenneth L. Roberts, Why Europe Leaves Home (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1920), 21-22. 2 Woodrow Wilson quoted in Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Tide of Color against White World- Supremacy (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920), 286-287.

118

119

an established racial hierarchy and the reality of inferior groups within American civilization, many intellectuals and politicians supported the exclusion and restriction of seemingly inferior peoples.

While restriction might keep out new immigrants, there were already millions of foreign-born “mongrel” people living in the country, which led many to question whether these minorities could be made into productive and loyal U.S. citizens. As demonstrated in Chapter 2, the American public generally hoped that minority groups could be

Americanized and assimilated into the white American populace, primarily because they could find no other logical solution. To supporters, assimilation was necessary because of the fear that if alien traditions and beliefs persisted in the United States, society would be harmed. This pragmatic realization was adopted by American educators who recognized their role in the assimilation process. They would be responsible to teach immigrant children and adults, as well as African Americans, how to emulate and thus meld into white American society. While educators reinforced the racial hierarchy, they also adapted it to fit their needs, depicting white America as the ideal society which minorities could join through assimilation and uplift. They viewed the process much the same way education reformer described the stages of childhood development: primitivism, barbarism, and civilization. Thomas Daniel Fallace, a contemporary professor of education, believes that to Dewey and other psychologists,

“the growth of the race and the growth of the individual occurred through the same stages

120

of consciousness when faced with similar environmental and social problems.”3

Therefore, education theory in the Progressive Era suggested that like children, weaker races could transform and become more civilized and cultured and no longer threaten white American society.

An integral part of the education of both native and minority children in

Progressive Era United States was textbooks. In textbooks that undoubtedly reached thousands of students, M.F. Maury, a superintendent of the naval observatory and geographer, and later Charles Redway Dryer, a professor of geography at Indiana State

Normal School, presented a racial hierarchy for readers to comprehend. Maury’s and

Dryer’s works, Physical Geography and Lessons in Physical Geography, respectively, never became as famous as Madison Grant’s or Lothrop Stoddard’s books, and as scholars of geography, they were never identified as leading intellectuals of racial theory.4 But, unlike Stoddard and Grant who appealed to an adult audience, Maury’s and

Dryer’s works were textbooks designed for American schoolchildren. They reached tens of thousands of young readers and disseminated the ideas that academic racial scholars had published. Similar to Grant or Stoddard, Maury and other textbook authors used maps to detail the distribution of the various races (figure 3.1).5 When examining the map, the alleged white American superiority is made clear, as the United States is placed in the center. Asia is separated from Europe to demonstrate the supposed inferiority of

3 Thomas Daniel Fallace, Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895-1922 (New York: Teachers College Press, 2011), 62. 4 M.F. Maury, Physical Geography, Rev. ed. (New York: University Publishing Company, 1886); Charles Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography (New York: American Book Company, 1901). 5 Maury, 119.

121

the “Yellow race” to the “White races.” The dark gray color on Africa makes the contrast of racial types clear between Europe and Africa. Through illustration and description, textbook authors identified those regions where the “Black race” lived as least cultured, the areas where “Mongolian and Red races” dominated and ranged from savage to civilized, and countries controlled by the “White race,” which were most cultured, civilized, and enlightened.

122

Figure 3.1: Map of distribution of races of men according to Maury. Includes: Caucasian (Pink), Mongolian (Yellow), Negro (Blue), American (Brown), and Malayan (Green).

123

In his work used for geography classes, Dryer used pictures (figure 3.2) and descriptions, similar to those seen in popular magazines, to provide visual proof about each civilization, race, and culture.6 Through these images, Dryer demonstrates the perceived threat and inferiority of other races to the White race. The Ethiopian is portrayed without clothing, a clear sign of savagery, and his glare is ominous and frightening. The Mongolian follows white American stereotypes by wearing “ancient” or

“traditional” clothing. His blank stare reflects a sense of unknowing or unintelligence to viewers. The American fulfills perceptions of Native Americans with his outfit, hairstyle, and overall defeated demeanor. Lastly, the Caucasian represents the symbol of civility by being well dressed, groomed, modern looking, and having a clear air of power and authority.

Figure 3.2: Pictures of the various races according to Dryer.

6 Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 388.

124

This description of race in schoolbooks was not an anomaly, as many well- educated teachers, professors, and scholars wrote textbooks during this period that reinforced the racial divisions in American society. Maury and another professor of geography, Arnold Henry Guyot, dominated the geography textbook industry in the nineteenth century; however, after the turn of the century, other academics like Ralph S.

Tarr, a professor of geology and geography at Cornell University, and Richard Ellwood

Dodge, a professor of geography at Columbia University and editor of the Journal of

Geography, also wrote textbooks. As historian Charles Carpenter explains, they “were all men of high academic standing and, like their predecessors Guyot and Maury, had a deep personal interest in the study of geography.”7

The textbooks published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, especially those dealing with geography, biology, and history, often included sections or chapters reinforcing the racial hierarchy of the day. Schoolchildren were taught this information as fact, corroborated by examples from their culture, economy, and government. While the language used by textbook authors was not as paranoid or cautionary as that of social critics, and while their texts seemed objective and truthful, it reflected a belief in a clear hierarchy of “advanced” and “inferior” peoples and the fear that racial divisions could lower “superior” white American culture. However, educators were not out to exclude minorities, but to enlighten them to the benefits and progress of white American society. Textbooks instructed foreign-born and African American children that they could adapt to their social environment and evolve to a higher stage.

7 Charles Carpenter, History of American Schoolbooks (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963), 268.

125

While often overlooked in favor of literature, poetry, and other published works, textbooks represent a powerful cultural document that can be used, as scholars Eugene

Provenzo, Jr., Annis Shaver, and Manuel Bello argue in their work The Textbook as

Discourse, to “provide important insights into the nature and meaning of a culture and the social and political discourses in which it is engaged.”8 The material in these works, while often presented in a simple factual form, is contrived and can reveal wider national beliefs. Textbooks are a powerful tool as they help shape the minds of the children reading them, because as Donnarae MacCann’s White Supremacy in Children’s

Literature argues, the material in literature (and I assert textbooks) legitimizes society and its values.9 Jean Anyon, a professor of education, asserts that while textbooks present themselves as scientific and objective, they serve a larger ideological function where the "objective is demonstrably partial in that it expresses the social priorities of certain political, economic, or other groups. Ideologies are weapons of group interest; they justify and rationalize; they legitimate group power activities and needs.”10

During the Progressive Era, textbooks represented both the fear of minorities and immigrants in the United States and the need to assimilate them into American culture to solve the perceived problems they posed. As historian David Southern argues, the white middle class were exposed to overt racist ideology their whole lives through education

8 Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello, eds., The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks (New York: Routledge, 2011), i. 9 Donnarae MacCann, White Supremacy in Children’s Literature: Characterizations of African Americans, 1830-1900 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1998), xiii, xv. 10 Jean Anyon, “Ideology and United States History Textbooks," Harvard Educational Review 49 (August 1979): 361-386, in The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks, ed. Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello (New York: Routledge, 2011), 111.

126

and literature which taught them “that whites were the instigators of high civilization while blacks were lazy, emotional, clownish, instinctual, and incapable of restraint and logic.”11 On a daily basis, a white American child’s belief in their racial superiority and a fixed racial hierarchy was reinforced through children’s books, newspapers, schools, churches, and even the government. However, the discourse found in textbooks and literature is not one-sided but instead represents a negotiation of power between the speaker and listener. The readers hold power because they have to accept the material being presented as factual or plausible. Children represent a unique group of readers because they are still learning to understand their societal structure and system and therefore “constitute a particularly volatile group of respondents” who the authors try to connect with by using commonly accepted cultural references or assumptions. In addition, MacCann reminds us that “gatekeepers,” the “cultural arbiters within institutions,” can either obstruct or facilitate the dissemination of an author’s information to the audience.12 By using textbooks that included the racial hierarchy, gatekeepers, such as schoolteachers and school boards, legitimized the research of the racial scientists and the white American fear of minorities while also adapting the hierarchy to encourage the nation’s goal of assimilation.

The examination of several introductory-level textbooks for mostly primary and secondary schools but also some for post-secondary schools published between the 1880s and 1920s reveals how the racial hierarchy constructed by scientists, academics, and

11 David W. Southern, The Progressive Era and Race (Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2005), 47. 12 MacCann, xviii, xxii-xxiii, 233.

127

critics made their way into schoolbooks, especially for geography, biology, history, and civics classes.13 In their work on how to teach geography, Professor Richard Elwood

Dodge and Clara Barbara Kirchwey, an instructor in geography, explained that elementary school children should be introduced to and receive a thorough education in

“home geography,” which focused on the United States. In intermediary and secondary levels, after the children moved beyond home geography, they received introductions to other countries.14 Therefore, “introductory” meant different things to younger children as compared to the more advanced children who got a more detailed discussion of geographical explanations of the races of people.15

However, despite the grade level differences, all placed racial attributes in line with geography, civilization, and power. The structure or racial system is not innate in people but a construct of society, and in most school subjects during the Progressive Era,

American children read that they were superior to all other races, while immigrants and

African Americans learned of their supposed biological inferiority. Indoctrinating children to this scientific racial hierarchy created a binary of race, which placed foreigners in opposition to white Americans. However, public schools used this racial

13 Geography texts are most explored because the discussion of race was most often and most thoroughly included in these works. I did not choose textbooks for a specific grade level but rather because of their introductory-level material to a topic. 14 Richard Elwood Dodge and Clara Barbara Kirchwey, The Teaching of Geography in Elementary Schools (Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1913), 19. 15 Many of the geography texts studied in this thesis come from those recommended in Dodge’s and Kirchwey’s work. In addition, a 1912 Journal of Geography article, “The Development of Physiography in American Textbooks,” included a discussion of recommended texts. See Beulah A. Mulliner, “The Development of Physiography in American Textbooks,” The Journal of Geography 10 (June 1912): 319-324.

128

binary to show immigrants that the United States exemplified premier civilization, and that by coming to this country, immigrants should strive to emulate it. Unlike many racial scientists who focused on restriction, schools recognized that a large population of immigrants already inhabited the United States and that measures needed to be taken. A fear of foreign traditions and beliefs drove educators to attempt to Americanize minorities to ensure they were effective and productive citizens that would not threaten U.S. progress with disloyalty and “inferior” culture. As many magazine articles affirmed,

American schools had to emphasize the Americanization and assimilation of minorities into society in order to create a homogeneous population. By examining how these texts compared the foreign with white American or Nordic appearance, culture, government, and economy, it becomes clear that scientific racial hierarchy lay at the very foundation of schoolchildren’s education, instilling in both native American children and ethnic groups that in order to succeed in society and eliminate the fear of a heterogeneous population, one should follow Anglo-Saxon ideals and traditions.

EDUCATION IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA

The Progressive Era saw a tremendous increase in not only the number of children attending school but also the frequency of attendance and the grade levels completed. This increase was due to the growing importance society placed on schooling. Before the mid-nineteenth century, wealthier children went to private schools and the poor went to “charity schools” if possible. However, Horace Mann, the

129

Massachusetts Commissioner of Education, and other reformers advocated the development of “common schools” supported by taxes, where all children could attend.

With the development of common schools, more children were given the opportunity for education. By the 1890s, schools were thoroughly established in most cities and

Northern rural areas. Most of the increase in students and attendance was concentrated in these same areas because of the higher immigration rates. For example, in 1890, New

York City had 1.5 million people, and by 1915, this number had increased to 5 million.

In this city, it was not uncommon for the school year to begin with 30,000 more students than desks available. The South did not have this dramatic increase because education seemed unnecessary for agricultural work or for poor white and black citizens. As an

Alabama superintendent stated, black children “in general [are] only capable of receiving and profiting by an elementary education which costs comparatively much less than that suitable for the white race in its more advanced stages of civilization.”16

Schooling was a natural outlet for Progressive Era beliefs in scientific management and efficiency. Just as middle-class reformers and businessmen wanted to centralize authority in government and business and create more efficient workers, schools wanted to create more productive ways of teaching and managing education.17

This meant that progressive reformers pushed for better schools and mandatory attendance laws.18 These attendance laws were often disliked by immigrant parents who

16 Patricia Albjerg Graham, Schooling in America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation’s Changing Needs (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 12-13, 19-22, 27-28, 31. 17 H.W. Warren Button and Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., History of Education and Culture in America (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983), 216. 18 Robert Wiebe, Search for Order, 1877-1920 (New York: Hill & Wang, 1967), 171.

130

relied on children’s income to survive, however, reformers saw attendance as encouraging a better citizenry. In addition, progressive ideals encouraged people to

“systemize operations to make them more efficient,” and this belief was seen in the organization of classrooms. Teachers held absolute authority and hoped “to gain

‘efficiencies’ through social engineering” of the children through teaching.19 Teachers, mostly women, also strove to professionalize their field during this time through more required formal and collegiate education. However, teachers were usually denied the autonomy and pay they thought their profession deserved.20 While teachers held power in the classroom, the expert in schooling was viewed to be the superintendent, who made executive decisions.21

During this period, school experts adopted Taylorist ideas of efficiency and management and applied them to education. Dr. Franklin Bobbitt, in describing increased school efficiency stated, “Definite quantitative and qualitative standards must be determined for the product at each of these stages…The worker must be kept up to standard qualifications for this kind of work during his entire service.” The “product” to whom Bobbitt referred was the student and the “worker,” the teacher.22 Unlike efficiency in factories, the goal of school efficiency was “social harmony and the leadership of the competent.” One way to encourage this involved separating students into grade levels so that only certain material was taught to each age group. School reformer Frank

19 Graham, 25, 32. 20 Steven J. Diner, A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998), 94, 196-197. 21 Button and Provenzo, 218. 22 Dr. Franklin Bobbitt quoted in Button and Provenzo, 219.

131

Spaulding argued for the elimination of small classes and unnecessary classes to decrease the number of teachers needed by a school, thereby increasing efficiency. To test the efficiency of the teachers, other reformers wanted achievement tests, such as handwriting scales, arithmetic tests, spelling tests, and school surveys, to be used as a measure of a teacher’s success.23 The curriculum shifted, as historian Stephen Steinberg notes, “from their classical traditions toward science, vocational training, and professional education, and thus were more compatible with the talents and aspirations of children born outside the upper class.”24 In an elementary civics text, for example, authors Charles McCarthy,

Flora Swan, and Jennie McMullin included a whole section on efficiency and explained its application to schools. In schools in Gary, Indiana, they pointed out how the whole school (both classrooms and outdoors) was used as different classes and activities occurred simultaneously. This allowed the school to get “every cent out of its taxpayers’ investment.” In addition, students’ work was varied and useful as they learned practical skills, such as cabinet making, so they could make desks for the school.25

As with many other reforms during this period, those concerned with schooling demanded that educators emphasize Protestant values, as these doctrines made up much of American morals.26 As historian Philip Perlmutter argues, “To evangelical Christians,

23 Button and Provenzo, 219, 226, 229. 24 Stephen Steinberg, The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America (New York: Atheneum, 1981), 136. 25 Charles McCarthy, Flora Swan, and Jennie McMullin, Elementary Civics, Rev. ed. (New York: Thompson, Brown & Company, 1918), 143-147. 26 Wiebe, 57.

132

Americanization was synonymous with Protestantization.”27 In the same manner, schooling was a way to introduce democratic and social values and a good work ethic in order to ensure the continuing prosperity of the American government and economy.

Therefore, not only were school lessons supposed to teach academic knowledge but also civic values and allegiance to the United States.28 In his work on children’s periodicals in the late nineteenth century, R. Gordon Kelly, a professor in American studies, contends that after the Civil War, middle-and upper-class parents feared that popular, inexpensive children’s literature would include material that would threaten American democracy.

They only wanted works printed that would serve to reinforce the American way of life and republican outlook.29 Textbooks reflected this same desire to celebrate and encourage American ideals, which included, according to Wiebe, “a hectic campaign to instill patriotism through worship of the Constitution, the flag, and America’s heroes….As servants of the community, the public schools would simply have to inculcate its youth with a pure and narrow truth.”30

In order to guarantee the continuation of American democracy in a time of increasing immigration, U.S. education encouraged assimilation, where the needs of the society came before the needs of the children. As seen with popular magazines, much of the public and school districts believed that because of the large number of immigrants, it

27 Philip Perlmutter, Divided We Fall: A History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 288. 28 Graham, 25, 32-33. 29 R. Gordon Kelly, Mother was a Lady: Self and Society in Selected American Children’s Periodicals, 1865-1890 (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974), 86. 30 Wiebe, 57.

133

was vital for schools to teach the English language and American patriotism. With WWI and the question of the loyalty of immigrants, Americans believed it was necessary, as a

New York City school superintendent asserted, “to teach an appreciation of the institutions of this country and absolute forgetfulness of all obligations or connections with other countries because of descent or birth.”31 Using language similar to Grant or

Stoddard, William Torrey Harris, the U.S. Commissioner of Education, reflected fear by warning, “If we do not Americanize our immigrants by luring them to participate in our best civilization…they will contribute to the degeneration of our political body and thus de-Americanize and destroy our national life.”32 However, unlike Grant or Stoddard,

Harris emphasized “luring” them to American civilization through Americanization as the key to solving the immigrant problem, not restriction. Unlike eugenicists who wanted to stop immigration, educators knew that restricting immigration would not fix the problem of foreigners already in the United States. Therefore, to counter their fear of minorities, white Americans stressed the ability of immigrants, as Harris stated, “to participate in our best civilization,” meaning adapt to their new environment and contribute to American progress. It is clear from education officials that the goal of schooling was to indoctrinate American values, customs, and democracy in all people,

American and foreign, to create better citizens and to prevent minorities from threatening the U.S. way of life. Fearful of foreigners, Americans believed that only once an

31 New York City school superintendent quoted in Graham, 27. 32 William Torrey Harris quoted in Graham, 11.

134

immigrant completely assimilated could their allegiance to the United States be trusted.33

Therefore, as Wiebe explains, reformers encouraged a curriculum emphasizing civics for both immigrant adults and foreign and native children to “facilitate the arrival of Social

Rationality, preparing the nation for a higher civilization.”34 However, with their assimilation beliefs, teachers and school officials stifled the cultural autonomy of immigrants. As historian Stephen Steinberg argues, “More than any other single factor, the public school undermined the capacity of immigrant groups to transmit their native cultures to their American-born children.”35 Immigrants’ displeasure with these efforts led some groups to create parochial or language schools that “native” Americans viewed as detrimental to their Americanization efforts.36

But what of the textbooks used in this education system? Printed schoolbooks emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with the development of printed books. This allowed teachers to break away from strictly oral lectures and create an organized structure to the educational material. In addition, the textbook allowed for the future development of orderly curricula in schools. As scholar Ian Westbury explains regarding the development of curriculum:

Thus, as I have emphasized, textbook publishing is a commercial, nationally unregulated, profit-seeking industry. It is not an industry whose work is directed (as in the case in many other countries) by governmental curriculum development

33 Annis N. Shaver, “The Discourse of Americanization Textbooks, 1914-1924,” in The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks, ed. Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello (New York: Routledge, 2011), 56, 60. 34 Wiebe, 157. 35 Steinberg, 54. 36 Diner, 95, 97.

135

agencies with the power to command conformity to their expectations prior to approval.37

He argues that the U.S. textbook industry was not regulated, and therefore, there were few controls limiting what material could be printed, how often it could be changed, or what the schools would accept. Westbury asserts that by the mid-nineteenth century, uniformity in texts occurred, and a few publishing firms were able to dominate regions.38

This dominance of publishers can be seen among the sources used for this chapter, as top companies such as American Book Company, Henry Holt and Company, Ginn and

Company, and Macmillan led the field.39 In addition, Westbury explains that over time,

“[t]exts became easier to read, larger in size, smaller in terms of the number of pages, and increasingly included illustrations. Their content became more ‘practical’ and less formal and their style of presentation more interesting.”40

One aspect of Westbury’s description central to this chapter is the increase of illustrations in textbooks. As Gerard Giordano, a professor of education, explains, tables, maps, and graphs were not common in nineteenth-century textbooks. However, this changed in the twentieth century as textbook publishers invested more money in illustrating their works. Giordano states that one estimate was that some textbook costs increased several hundred dollars, “but that certain types of books, such as those in

37 Ian Westbury, “Textbooks, Textbook Publishers, and the Quality of Schooling,” in Textbooks and Schooling in the United States: Eighty-ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1, ed. David L. Elliot and Arthur Woodward (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990), 11. 38 Westbury, 7. 39 Carpenter, 275. 40 Westbury, 7.

136

geography, might require $20,000 to $30,000.”41 Author D.C. Knowlton wrote in 1925 that for a textbook to be effective, illustrations had to be used. “If a picture will tell the story better, or if it will add details of real value to the child as he tries to call up the scene, it is as important an asset to the teacher as is the text itself.”42 As this chapter will demonstrate, the “scene” these textbooks and their illustrations created reassured native

American children of their dominance in society, while teaching minority children that they had to assimilate to become part of the civilized, progressive, white American society.

DESCRIPTIONS OF APPEARANCE IN TEXTBOOKS

In many texts, the discussion of race appeared in a section or chapter labeled

“Races of Man” or “Man and Nature.”43 These sections often began with a broad description of mankind, or as textbook author and professor of geography H. Justin

Roddy wrote, “People from different parts of the earth differ very little in shape and size.

They are so much alike that we think all people distantly related. Still people do differ in some ways.”44 Through a breakdown of races, textbook authors established a clear

41 Gerard Giordano, Twentieth-Century Textbook Wars: A History of Advocacy and Opposition (New York: Peter Lang, 2003), 134. 42 D.C. Knowlton, “The Teaching of History in the Junior High School: Tools and Workroom” Historical Outlook 16 (1925): 76-79, quoted in Giordano, 137-138. 43 As seen in Justin H. Roddy, Elementary Geography (New York: American Book Company, 1902), 22 and Ralph Stockman Tarr, Elementary Physical Geography (New York: Macmillan and Co., 1895), 407. 44 Roddy, 22.

137

hierarchy. One aspect used to describe the various races was their physical characteristics, such as skin color, facial features, or hair type, which allowed for easy categorization. Biology schoolbook author and high school teacher Benjamin C.

Gruenberg also saw a great deal of similarities between the races of man, but “on the other hand, the variations in skin color, in hair characteristics, in eyes, in shape of head, in form of eyelids, in stature, and in other physical characters are so great as to exceed by far the ranges of ‘individual variation’ found in most other species.”45 To geographers, such as Andrew John Herbertson and Fanny Dorothea Herbertson, skin color “[i]n the present state of our knowledge…seems the most useful, as it is certainly the simplest, mode of classification.”46 By defining a system of skin and , hair, and facial structure based on race, these authors attempted to make the identification and classification of races simple for children to understand.

When examining the language used to describe physical characteristics of various races, it is interesting to note how terms are given positive or negative connotations. On their own, words such as “dark,” “woolly,” “coarse,” “oblique,” or “massive” may not seem negative, but during the Progressive Era, when used to describe physical traits of those races perceived as the lowest on the racial hierarchy, they became negative. These perceptions were created by those in authority, white intellectuals, and applied to the racial hierarchy to ensure the superiority of white Americans. As professor of law Ian F.

Haney López explains, “Whatever the language used, it is clear that White identity is tied

45 Benjamin Charles Gruenberg, Elementary Biology: An Introduction to the Science of Life (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1919), 488. 46 Andrew John Herbertson and Fanny Dorothea Herbertson, Man and His Work: An Introduction to Human Geography, 2nd ed. (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1911), 129.

138

inextricably to non-White identity as its positive mirror, its superior opposite.” By describing the relationship of whites and non-whites as one of positive versus negative, white Americans were able to create a positive, superior white identity. López continues,

“Whites thus stand at the powerful vortex of race in the United States; Whiteness is the source and maintaining force of the systems of meaning that position some as superior and others as subordinate.”47 This position of white authority is clear in Progressive Era textbooks where, to ensure that children learned the racial hierarchy, authors described the White race positively and other races negatively. The Progressive Era perceptions of race made certain characteristics negative by tying it to the racial hierarchy, thereby denoting the inferiority of the race.

In schoolbooks, the White or Caucasian race was described as aesthetically pleasing. Maury’s text told children that “[t]he Caucasians are the most symmetrical in figure, comely in person, and beautiful in feature, of all the branches of the human family.”48 Roddy concurred, asserting, “A Caucasian has a pinkish skin, fine silky, often wavy hair, and a high, broad forehead.”49 Similarly to Roddy, high school biology teacher and textbook author Truman Jesse Moon noted Caucasians’ white skin and fine hair, labeling their features as “regular” compared to the other races.50

47 Ian F. Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (New York: New York University Press, 1996), 29-31. 48 Maury, 117. 49 Roddy, 23. 50 Truman Jesse Moon, Biology for Beginners (1921; repr., New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1924), 340.

139

Figure 3.3: Page from Dryer's work that categorizes races by home, color, hair, skull, jaw, lips, nose, eyes, culture, and present range. He uses positive terms, such as “civilized,” “enlightened,” and “highly developed,” to describe the Caucasian race in comparison to negative traits to describe other races. For example, the Black race has “woolly” hair, “thick and rolling” lips, is “very low” in culture, and uses “simple” implements. The Yellow race has “small,” “oblique” eyes and has “stagnant” literature. The Red race has a “massive” jaw, “scanty” beard, and is “rudimentary” in science.

140

As in other textbooks, clearly organized classification system appeared in Dryer’s textbook (figure 3.3).51 In this table, for the White race, Dryer mentioned a “not projecting, small” jaw, thin lips, a straight nose, and a range of skin, hair, and eye colors.

He later attributed this variation of appearance in the White race to the fact that there are different classifications of “white.” Just as Madison Grant, Dryer mentioned three dominate types: “North European or Teutonic,” “Alpine,” and “Mediterranean.” It is clear from his description that North Europeans had the most positive attributes, such as

“Blond or florid, with flaxen or reddish, glossy hair, blue eyes, long skull, and tall stature.” Alpines were described as “light brown or swarthy, with…dull hair, brown, gray, or black eyes, broad skull, and medium stature.” Lastly, Mediterraneans were

“olive brown to almost black, with dark or black wiry hair, dark or black eyes, long skull, and small stature.”52 With the Caucasian race, textbook authors noted the great deal of variation but tried to explain it by further dividing the race into categories used by social scientists. While these schoolbooks attempted to present the material objectively, by mentioning the North European race’s “glossy hair” and “tall stature” over the Alpine’s

“dull hair” and the Mediterranean’s “small stature,” they encouraged a division among the White race based on a “superior” and “inferior” appearance. This categorization of

Alpines and Mediterraneans as inferior would be influential on children at a time when immigration from these areas was increasing to the United States.

51 Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 389. 52 Ibid., 387, 389.

141

Even more revealing than the authors’ descriptions of the White race, were those of the “Negro race,” the “Brown or ,” the “Yellow or Mongolian race,” and the “American or Red race.”53 The most negative perceptions concern the “Negro race.”

Roddy labeled them as having “a dark brown or nearly black skin, curly or kinky hair, thick lips, and a flat nose,”54 while Dryer told readers that the “Ethiopian or Black race” had “black, frizzly, woolly, or shaggy” hair, “thick and rolling” lips, and a “broad and flat” nose. In addition, Dryer argued that they have large eyes that were black with cornea yellowish in color.55 When compared to the various descriptions of whites, it is seen that the blacks were depicted as an opposite to whites. Their kinky hair, thick lips, and flat nose were contrasted to the glossy and wavy hair, thin lips, and straight nose of

Caucasians. In addition to the “Negro race,” most textbooks identified a “Yellow race,” or “Mongolian race” which existed in Asian countries such as China, Japan, or India.

According to Jacques Redway’s physical geography text, these people had “straight black hair, high cheek-bones, and yellow or yellowish-brown skins.”56 Multiple authors pointed out that the Yellow race had “oblique eyes” or as Redway stated, “[T]he eyes are set at a peculiar angle, giving rise to the term ‘almond-eyed.’”57 Gruenberg also mentioned that these people have “characteristic eyelids” and a shorter stature than

53 Roddy, 22; Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 389. 54 Roddy, 22. 55 Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 389. 56 Jacques Wardlaw Redway, Elementary Physical Geography: An Outline of Physiography (1900; repr., New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1908), 336. 57 Redway, 336.

142

whites do.58 Dryer also noted that their beards were scanty compared to the heavy beard of Caucasians.59 This emphasis on the fullness of the Caucasian race's beard related to the belief that facial hair reflected the manliness and superiority of a race. During this era, according to historian Kimberly A. Hamlin, "Full, manly beards were hallmark of

Anglo-Europeans."60 Describing a race as having a "scanty" beard was an insult to their racial development and masculinity. Concepts of gender were linked to the idea of civilization, as historian Gail Bederman describes, "Civilized women were womanly— delicate, spiritual, dedicated to the home. And civilized white men were the most manly ever evolved—firm of character; self-controlled; protectors of woman and children." In contrast, amongst the "inferior" races, pronounced sexual differences did not exist, as women were seen as masculine and men as effeminate.61 Although seemingly scientific in their description, these authors contributed to the view of the Yellow race as inferior because of “peculiar” attributes such as their eye angle or "scanty" beards.

Besides the Negro and Yellow races, textbook authors also identified two other races: “American or Red race” and the “Malay or Brown race.” First, the American race was the race of natives found in both North and South America. Authors identified these individuals as the “Red race” because of their “coppery red” skin color. Dryer also mentioned their “black, long, straight, course” hair, scant beard, “massive” jaw,

58 Gruenberg, 489. 59 Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 389. 60 Kimberly A. Hamlin, "The 'Case of a Bearded Woman': Hypetrichosis and the Construction of Gender in the Age of Darwin," American Quarterly 63 (December 2011): 962. 61 Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 25.

143

“medium” lips, “large” nose, and “small…deepset” eyes.62 To Gruenberg these people often resembled the Mongolian race, and Redway even included them in his description of the Yellow race. Redway explained that Indians in South America and had intermixed with Latin races, but in North America, “where the associations between

Indians and Teutonic peoples have always been marked by bitter hatred, the Indian blood is pure.” However, because of their treatment and racial characteristics, Gruenberg stated that these people’s role in the world was diminishing.63 Lastly, the “Brown or Malay race” was identified as having “brownish skin, dark eyes, and straight dark hair” and were located in southeastern Asia and the Pacific islands.64 Moon added to this description by stating they have “fairly developed bodies” and were “rapidly disappearing.”65

These textbooks made the classifications of the races simple and understandable to children. Each race was described with a few adjectives to make them easily identifiable. Armed with the knowledge children learned from the tables, descriptions, and pictures of the races, they could easily identify the racial groups they encountered on a daily basis or saw the perceptions of their own races depicted on these pages. While it seems objective, the “other” races’ characteristics often contrasted the most with those of the Caucasian/White race. Attributes that were often seen as aesthetically pleasing, such as fair skin and silky hair, were denoted as Caucasian characteristics. Images in the

62 Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 389. 63 Gruenberg, 489; Redway, 338. 64 Roddy, 22. 65 Moon, 340.

144

textbook encouraged this by depicting Whites as superior looking to foreign races. To these textbook authors, and therefore the children they taught, white appearance was

“regular” compared to that of foreigners. Appearance, clearly linked to race, would be difficult to assimilate into society. Skin color, face shape, and other attributes could not be made more “American” or “white,” but to these textbook authors, other aspects, such as culture, economy, and governmental beliefs could be corrected to fit into the American ideal of civility. While many racial scientists depicted education as useless in civilizing a race, educators viewed civilization as stages of evolution that could be achieved through racial progress.

RACE AND CIVILIZATION

Textbook authors based most of their description of racial hierarchy on the civility and culture of the various races. Civilization was an important concept to white middle- and upper-class Americans because as historian Gail Bederman explains, during this era, it "was seen as an explicitly racial concept....Civilization denoted a precise stage in human racial evolution—the one following the more primitive stages of 'savagery' and

'barbarism.'" Only the White race had evolved to the civilized stage.66 Gruenberg wrote,

“We know that the life of man—that is, civilized man, the man who has the benefit of all the experience of the race—does differ from the life of beasts and from the life of the

66 Bederman, 25.

145

savage in many important ways.”67 These scholars placed humans within the evolutionary experience and argued, “With the appearance of man, the long succession of steps in the creation of life-forms seems to have ceased. His coming was the culminating act of creation.” Through this description in his textbook, scholar James Monteith eased any tensions between religion and theories of evolution by arguing that “an All-wise

Creator” instituted this path of evolution.68 In his work, The Realm of Nature, Hugh

Robert Mill asserted that man was unique from animals because of their ability to live in a variety of climates but more importantly, because of their intellectual ability, use of reason, development of language, and the recognition of religion.69 While other animals had the ability to reason, Redway contended that only humans could reason abstractly.70

These aspects, which demonstrated how humans differed from animals, all contributed to human civilization, a key theme in all these textbooks. Mill most clearly explained the concept by stating:

Civilisation may be defined as the result of men using the power of changing their natural surroundings, and regulating their natural wishes or impulses in order to increase the wellbeing of the community to which they belong. Each variety of the human species appears to be capable of attaining a certain degree of mastery over themselves and their surroundings, this degree being much higher in the case of some varieties than in others.71

67 Gruenberg, 512. 68 James Monteith, New Physical Geography (New York: American Book Company, 1885), 128- 129. 69 Hugh Robert Mill, The Realm of Nature: An Outline of Physiography (1892; repr., London: John Murray, 1905), 321-322. 70 Redway, 335. 71 Mill, 322.

146

He placed an emphasis on religion when determining the civility of groups, arguing that the least civilized people in tribes believed in spirits and ghosts, while partially civilized people were polytheists, and the most civilized races were monotheists. This ethnocentric perspective portrayed Americans and Europeans as superior to other races.

Gruenberg also noted the role leisure played in making man civilized compared to animals. Because humans spent time thinking about things such as music or art for entertainment rather than focusing solely on food and shelter, they were a more civilized species.72 Tarr argued, though:

[W]ith the progress of civilization and the development of means of transportation, the barriers [between races] have in large measure been removed, and before the white race, the others are disappearing or are being rapidly absorbed. There are still savage or uncivilized races which are kept within certain bounds by natural barriers…but most races have reached the stage of development when natural barriers are easily overcome.73

Tarr’s statement is unique to those of eugenicists in Chapter 1 because of his use of stages of development. Unlike Grant or Stoddard, Tarr’s comment suggested the ability of “uncivilized races” to evolve to a higher point of development. This concept, the ability of supposed inferior races to adapt to their environment and progress in the world, was a major difference between the social critics and textbook authors. Educators and proponents of Americanization believed inferior races could be uplifted and brought to the standards of white American civility in large measure so that they would no longer be a menace to white society.

72 Mill, 322-323; Gruenberg 513. 73 Ralph Stockman Tarr, First Book of Physical Geography (1897; repr., New York: Macmillan and Co., 1901), 180-181.

147

For example, in emphasizing the role of environment, textbook author Maury explained that man, unlike animals, could counter external conditions, such as severe weather.74 Tarr emphasized geographic conditions in the development of humans, arguing, “In his advance toward a higher civilization, man has been subjected to many of the same influences that have affected the abundance and variety of plants and animals.”75 To Mill and other authors, personal characteristics, such as self-reliance and strength, could be developed through struggle. Intellect and other aspects were best encouraged in conditions that were neither too difficult nor too easy to sustain life. If it were easy to survive, a race would not be challenged intellectually or physically; but, if it were too difficult to obtain necessities, the race’s survival would be in jeopardy.76 As

Tarr explained, “For instance, amid the conditions of the tropics, although savage, his superior intelligence and skill made man the master; but his mastery cost so little effort, and his livelihood was so secure, that he did not advance as rapidly as those who were placed amid the greater difficulties of the temperate zone.” The skill used here “made the men of temperate latitudes the masters of the world.”77 In addition, Mill declared the importance of both heredity and environment in the development and civility of man, stating, “[M]any of the characteristics of nations are due as much to the nature of the land they dwell in as to the inherent qualities of the race.”78 In his geography text, William

Morris Davis, a professor in geography, explained that while climate could influence the

74 Maury, 116. 75 Tarr, First Book of Physical Geography, 181. 76 Mill, 323-324. 77 Tarr, First Book of Physical Geography, 181-182. 78 Mill, 32.

148

culture of a race, the more civilized a people, the less likely climate would affect them.

He claimed that civilized people “have developed world-wide commerce, and thus gather supplies from all parts of the earth; while…[savage tribes] know little or nothing of regions away from their own home.”79 Unlike many eugenicists who denied the role of environment, these textbook authors often saw a mix of environment and heredity as influences on the races of man.

This belief in both heredity and environment led educators to recognize the difficultly of assimilating inferior races, while still supporting Americanization efforts.

For example, Dryer explained in his textbook that in the United States, immigrants went from being predominantly Teutonic to Alpine and Mediterranean and that “[t]his change in character of the immigrants, and the influx of people who differ widely from the original stock in temperament, habits, language, and religion, make the problem of assimilation and blending into a homogeneous people a serious one.” However, while demonstrating a fear of these “new” immigrants and their abilities to assimilate, Dryer still supported schooling to Americanize children to “learn the English language, absorb

American ideas, and undergo a change even in the form of their heads.”80 To these educators, environmental adaptation could overcome heredity if education was emphasized and encouraged.

Even though they encouraged assimilation, these textbook authors also demonstrated that all races were not equally civilized and that the inferiority of some

79 William Morris Davis, Elementary Physical Geography (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1902), 349-350. 80 Charles Dryer, High School Geography, Physical, Economic and Regional (New York: American Book Company, 1912), 419.

149

should be feared. By examining culture, personality, economy, and government, these scholars created a simple taxonomy. While clearly based on the categorization of racial groups created by social scientists and eugenicists, these educators adapted the hierarchy to fit their assimilation needs.

I. Culture and Personality

Textbook authors focused on how culture and personal characteristics established a racial hierarchy. Students were taught how races could be “civilized,” “half civilized” or “savage” because of their cultural traditions and personality. Through examination of personal characteristics, such as intelligence, clothing, food, and other cultural aspects, these textbook authors taught schoolchildren about the inherent inferiority and superiority of racial groups.

The White or Caucasian race was labeled by Roddy as “the most civilized and enlightened people of the world.” In supporting this claim, he argued, “They produce better food and clothing than other races. Most of the people can read and write, and good school and colleges are generally found among them.” 81 Dryer, in his description of white culture stated, “Arts, industries, science, literature, and social institutions [are] highly developed.”82 In their work, World Geographies, authors Tarr and McMurry asserted that in the United States, education was made available to everyone. They

81 Roddy, 23. 82 Dryer, High School Geography, 259.

150

attributed this to “our forefathers.” The educational system spread throughout the United

States and “[o]ur excellent system of education is one of the chief causes of our rapid advance, for educated people can do things which ignorant people cannot do.” 83 This description celebrated the United States’ democratic past, equality of education, and the superiority of American intelligence. In addition, in her dissertation on the coverage of immigration in history textbooks between 1789 and 1930, Mary Lee Margaret Lang argues that often history textbooks portrayed the founding of the United States in a positive light, and that “historians rejoiced in the fact that we were English in tradition and descent. Every text uses terms such as sober, industrious, preserving, intelligent, religious, enterprising, resolute, honest, wise, thrifty, zealous people to describe the

English.”84 While her study encompasses a larger period and focuses on high school textbooks, the same celebration of American heritage is found in other works.

This emphasis on American culture and heritage led to the development of foreigners as the “Other.” In their section, “Food, Clothing, Shelter,” Tarr and McMurry divided material between “our own country” and other foreign regions, emphasizing the hard work of farmers, who worked from four or five o’clock in the morning until eight o’clock at night to provide food for themselves and others. Their description suggested that white Americans were hard workers and providers. Tarr and McMurry stated that in the United States, “We wear much more clothing than the Indians did, both in the

83 Ralph S. Tarr and Frank M. McMurry, World Geographies, Rev. ed. (New York: Macmillan Company, 1919), 107. 84 Mary Lee Margaret Lang, “Immigration as Treated in Early History Textbooks, 1789-1939: Prelude to ” (Ed.D. dissertation, Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992), 159.

151

summer and winter, and it is of many more kinds.”85 Throughout this section, the authors continually used “we,” but never defined who this was, instead leaving students to assume it meant white Americans. While they included Indians in the United States sections, Tarr and McMurry clearly established a binary of “us” versus “them,” demonstrating that Indians were not considered as part of the United States. Similarly,

Dryer argued, “Civilized people are prevented from going naked by a sense of modesty, and a sense of what is becoming or in fashion determines the material, cut, style, color, and other details.” For example, among “highly civilized people” fur clothing articles represented luxury and were very expensive. While much of the world still lived in huts,

Dryer explained that mechanical progress had allowed the civilized people to create

“commodious and luxurious homes.” Dryer consistently compared the “civilized” whites to “Others,” demonstrating the supposed superiority of the White race. In his examination of Western Europe, Dryer noted that , Germany, and France led the world in industry, wealth, science, culture, and power with no rivals; however, the

United States threatened their status.86 By constantly contrasting other societies to that of

America, these authors added to the fear of alien ways and beliefs and demonstrated to foreign-born children (and native children) why they should embrace the “superior”

American culture and traditions.

Dryer also differentiated between the types of White races. The Alpines, according to his textbook, were “noted for their domestic virtue and devotion to family,

85 Tarr and McMurry, 1-2. 86 Dryer, High School Geography, 289, 292, 429.

152

divorce being almost unknown among them.” While Italians were known for their talent in art and music, which he admitted were aspects the “typical” American lacked and would be useful to the future of the country. However, he noted that within Italy, there were different innate characteristics. In the northern region, they were “industrial, progressive, democratic, and prosperous,” while in southern Italy, they were

“agricultural, reactionary, feudal, poor, and ignorant.”87 In his work, Mill spoke of

Alpines as “typically solid, trustworthy, persevering, and deliberate,” while

Mediterraneans were “impulsive and enthusiastic; they are passionate, inconstant, and fond of ease.”88

Through their discussion of the culture and personalities of other races, the textbooks clearly established a hierarchy from savage to civilized. When discussing the

“Negro race,” Tarr and McMurry generalized by saying that “the people live in a very strange way,” and connecting much of their unusual lifestyle, food, and clothing to the climate.89 While Mill attributed tallness, power, and “well-formed bodies” to the Black race, he labeled them “sensual and unintellectual; like children they are usually happy, light-hearted, and careless, but are subject to moods of depression and outbursts of appalling cruelty.” He described the race as living in the tropics where they did not wear clothing, used primitive agricultural methods, and followed a religion that was “usually a low practice of witchcraft.”90 Redway, among other authors, told readers that some of

87 Ibid., 419-420, 468. 88 Mill, 328. 89 Tarr and McMurry, 3. 90 Mill, 325.

153

the Negro race frequently practiced cannibalism.91 While at times being described as unintelligent and child-like, textbooks also reflected a fear of the Black race, which was perceived as believing in witchcraft and being cannibalistic. In addition, in his section on the Black race, Redway included an image (figure 3.4) that identified the race as

"savage."92 This image portrayed a frightening member of the Black race, whose sex is indeterminate, who is not clothed, and who chillingly stares at the viewer. This image and similar descriptions perceived the Black race as a threat to the White race.

Figure 3.4: Description of the “Black race” as "A Savage" in Redway's geography text.

91 Redway, 336. 92 Ibid., 335.

154

Other authors distinguished groups within the “Negro race.” Roddy explained that some African tribes had settled homes, but “[o]thers live in the forests, are ignorant and degraded, wear little clothing, and get their food chiefly by . These may be called Savages.” Roddy, by italicizing “savages,” drew attention to the term, as if labeling it as a proper geographic term. He later described other African groups, such as the and , as “barbarous herdsmen who are often fierce and treacherous.”

Like other textbook writers, Roddy also identified the natives of Australia as black and asserted that they were “ignorant and degraded, and are now rapidly dying out.”93 Davis observed another group of Africans—those who inhabited the desert—and argued these people were “few and miserable as compared with the more favored races of the world.”

He called their art “primitive,” but did note they had “strength and endurance” in order to handle the harsh climate of the desert and had the “intelligence” to take advantage of their homeland. But “they cannot rise above a low stage of development” because their nomadic ways preserved a “rude manner of life” reminiscent of early man. This lifestyle did not allow them to construct homes, but rather live out of tents. Later, tying environment to race, Davis connected the geographical setting to the struggles of the savages and compared them to civilized people. He explained, “A member of an isolated savage tribe depends for food, clothing, weapons, and dwelling upon what he finds close to his home.” Factories and shops in civilized areas manufactured clothing, weapons, or shelter, while in these savage tribes, people had to fend for themselves. He, like previous authors, created a binary between the life of savage tribes, who were isolated,

93 Roddy, 22, 119, 124.

155

and civilized people whose houses, possessions, and food could be derived from all over the world and brought to them.94 Authors also compared African slaves to whites. For example, in his history textbook, Burnham wrote that the Europeans who settled the

United States were “the most highly civilized races in the world,” while the African slaves were “barbarous pagans.” “They were not only far beneath their masters in all civilized ways of living but they were divided from them also by a great gulf of race differences which to this day keeps white people and from living together upon a footing of perfect equality.”95

When describing the “Asian or Yellow race,” textbook authors placed them in the mid range of the racial hierarchy, as they were perceived both positively and negatively.

Mill generalized that the group had “great powers of endurance, and are as a rule very laborious workers,” and showed a fair degree of civilization but were also conceited and apathetic. Because of this and their Polytheistic beliefs, he labeled them half civilized.96

Authors identified different Asian groups, labeling them as either “half civilized” or advanced in civilization. Roddy italicized the term “half civilized,” noting it as a term children should learn. To him, those people who roamed and lived in tents were only half civilized. However, those who built houses, farmed, and could read and write were more civilized.97 Isaac Oscar Winslow, in his geography text, had to admit, “They were among the first people of the world to become civilized. Long ago, while the people of Europe

94 Davis, 360-361, 364-366. 95 S. Burnham, The Making of Our Country: A History of the United States for Schools (Chicago: Winston, 1920), 547-548, quoted in Giordano, 65. 96 Mill, 326. 97 Roddy, 23.

156

were still wild and barbarous, those of Asia had learned to use horses and to keep sheep, dogs, and other animals. They also raised wheat and other crops.” However, he quickly explained that while Europe had progressed, Asia remained stuck in the past.98

Similarly to popular Progressive Era magazines, many textbooks distinguished between the Chinese and Japanese. However, compared to magazines, which often included both negative and positive views of the Japanese and Chinese, textbooks viewed the Japanese as more civilized because of their willingness to assimilate. This taught children that adopting Western traditions and technology made a race more civilized and therefore less threatening to white Americans. Winslow wrote that while Japan allowed people from civilized nations to enter their country and “have been anxious to learn as much as possible from Americans and Europeans, and are now one of the powerful nations of the world,” China has been slow to change their traditions.99 Dryer portrayed

Japanese people as “willing to throw away their native, ancestral civilization,” which he expressed was “a marvel,” especially since this occurred in a little over one generation.

And, while the Chinese were “industrious, skillful, thrifty, and honest,” the overcrowding and “deadening religion” added to their lack of progress.100 Roddy also both complimented and insulted the Chinese. He called their customs, such as footbinding,

“curious” and saw them as people who ate very little. They were also polite, “patient, industrious, and thrifty, as well as skillful in all kinds of handiwork” such as their

98 Isaac Oscar Winslow, The Earth and its People (Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., Publishers, 1910), 157-160. 99 Winslow, 162-163. 100 Dryer, High School Geography, 476-477, 480.

157

chinaware, silk, and cotton goods. Yet Roddy, like other authors, viewed the Japanese more favorably than the Chinese, labeling them “livelier, more energetic, and more progressive.” However, he noted their odd custom of having no chairs or bedsteads.101

Tarr and McMurry explained that China, which once viewed western civilized people as

“foreign devils,” “are awakening at last” and allowing Europeans and Americans to teach them about art, industry, and government of a civilized nation.102

These authors used condescending and paternalistic language to describe a relationship between the United States and Asia, similar to that of teacher to student.

This relationship was furthered when discussing Pacific Island peoples. Moon described them as the “lowest stage of culture” with a primitive language.103 In regards to the

Philippines, Winslow hoped, “With the improved schools and good government that the Americans are giving them, these people are becoming educated and prosperous.” He projected this to other islands in U.S. possession, suggesting that the United States could spread civilization.104 These sentiments were not shared by eugenicists and many racial scientists who argued that no amount of education and environmental change could fix biological and hereditary characteristics. In contrast, these textbooks suggested to students that American culture could civilize these races through education and government assistance. While they showed Asia as progressing, the authors still portrayed some of the traditions as backwards. In figure 3.5, the binary

101 Roddy, 110. 102 Tarr and McMurry, 206-207. 103 Moon, 340. 104 Winslow, 177-178.

158

of foreign versus Caucasian compared a Mongolian child with a serious look and traditional, stereotypical dress to a happy Caucasian boy smiling and dressed in a sailor outfit.105 This image reinforced the text that expressed the alleged Caucasian superiority to Asians, but also suggested that by altering ones dress and adopting American culture, a foreigner could resemble native, white Americans.

Figure 3.5: A comparison of a Mongolian and Caucasian child from Roddy's geography text.

One group often portrayed negatively was the “Red race.” Dryer explained that these people slept in tepees, made clothes of skins and furs, and still remained in the stone age using weapons and tools like the bow, knives, and scrapers made of wood and

105 Roddy, 22.

159

stone, rather than metal. He believed that while they had a great deal of natural knowledge, they too often engaged in “petty warfare.” In addition, these natives were “a formidable obstacle” to white people; however, because of the railroad and superior U.S. military strength, the country was able to go west and defeat the tribes.106 Mill identified these people as “hardy warriors” but quickly labeled them as inferior because of their cruelty to captured foes.107 While educators emphasized environment and adaptability, they also acknowledged that the favorable conditions in the United States were not enough for the emergence of the powerful nation. Instead, as Davis argued, “The aboriginal inhabitants of this great land were savages who did not know how to develop its riches. The entire territory remained a until it was entered by the descendents of a race that had…gained a leading position among the peoples of the Old

World.”108 Davis, like eugenicists, stressed the role of heredity in the success of building a powerful nation. The Native American race was not progressive enough to create a civilized country; however, the races originating from the Old World were evolved enough to develop the wilderness and create a superior society. While white Americans may have perceived Native Americans as “noble savages” during the Jeffersonian era, by the mid-nineteenth century they were simply “savages.”109 In his examination of textbooks, Gerard Giordano points to a passage from an American history textbook by

Mowry and Mowry from 1897, which stated, “When aroused to vengeance [the Indians]

106 Dryer, High School Geography, 393. 107 Mill, 327. 108 Davis, 371. 109 Bernard W. Sheehan, Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974), 90-91.

160

appeared to enjoy nothing better than to pillage and burn the homes of the whites, and to murder with special cruelty the women and children.”110 To these authors, not only were

Indians cruel, but they also enjoyed torturing the White race and therefore should be feared.

Like the other races, authors differentiated the divisions within the “Red race.”

For example, “[t]he highest native American civilisation had its seat on the plateau of

Mexico and in the Andes valleys.” While it was destroyed, the “‘Indian’ element” remained strong in South America.111 Monteith agreed, viewing the South American

Indians as powerful people when they mixed with the Spanish, while American Indians, unwilling or unable to blend, slowly disappeared.112 Unlike the social scientists discussed in Chapter 1 who warned against intermixing races, Monteith suggested that by mixing with Spanish blood, South American Indians were able to grow stronger, supporting the theory that assimilation into the dominant culture would be beneficial to both the primary and secondary races. In contrast, the Native Americans in the United

States did not mix and therefore were declining in numbers. In her history text, Ellen

Churchill Semple not only saw Native Americans as disappearing but also believed they

“were exterminated.” To her, their defeat was certain.113

110 W.A. Mowry and A.M. Mowry, A History of the United States for Schools: Including a Concise Account of the Discovery of America, the Colonization of the Land, and the Revolutionary War (New York: Silver, Burdett, 1897), quoted in Giordano, 74. 111 Mill, 327. 112 Monteith, 127. 113 Ellen Churchill Semple, American History and its Geographic Conditions (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903), 42.

161

An evaluation of textbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries demonstrates that negative perceptions of nonwhite races existed which encouraged a fear of inferior traits and traditions influencing the perceived white American superiority.

In a binary of Americans or Caucasians versus minorities, whites were portrayed not only as educated and dominant but also as paternalistic leaders who needed to teach other races how to progress and join modern civilization. However, educators used this fear of inferior races to encourage assimilation. White children saw these depictions of race as reassuring their racial superiority, while minority children saw that they could

Americanize through education and adoption of and traditions. Both native and minority children learned that other races could evolve and be assimilated into the “superior” white society, thus ensuring that “inferior” cultural traditions would not threaten American ideals and beliefs.

II. Economy

One area of civilization that was tied to both the heredity of race but also to the surrounding environment was economic development and prosperity. Through their portrayal of the different economic resources, endeavors, and successes, these authors portrayed some races as not only economically superior, but as racially superior.

Economy was depicted as a scale of evolution, where societies passed through stages of economic development to become civilized and modern. By explaining the various

162

stages of economy, these textbooks laid out a path to civility for foreign races. To these authors, economic progression was possible and should be encouraged.

In his textbook, Davis further developed the binary of civilized versus savage through his outline of economic and geographical factors. According to Davis, civilized people participated in agriculture, manufacturing, and commerce, as their trades were highly developed. They were also able to gather materials from all over the world for production. He then compared this to savage tribes, where “there are so few things to do that every man is well practiced in nearly all the duties of a man’s life.” In a civilized nation, diverse and specialized skills were necessary to carry out jobs, while savages needed to provide their own food, clothing, weapons, and shelters for themselves as there were no mills, factories, or shops like in a civilized society.114

Of all the textbooks examined, Dryer’s and Herbertson’s and Herbertson’s works best exemplify how texts established an evolutionary progression of economic activity.

They created a hierarchy of economic means of production that reflected the hierarchy of races. While these economic descriptions were based on race, the authors believed it was possible for a society to move from one stage to another on their way to civility. In general, this progression went from hunting societies to pastoral societies then to agricultural societies and finally reached superior status as manufacturing societies.

According to Dryer, hunting fell under a collective economy, which was “the simplest way of getting a living in which men make no effort to produce anything.” Both Dryer and Herbertson and Herbertson argued that these societies, such as “wild” tribes in

114 Davis, 364-365.

163

Australia and other areas, exerted a great deal of energy continually trying to obtain food and resources and therefore often suffered from starvation or had to turn to cannibalism.

Therefore, Herbertson and Herbertson concluded these groups “quickly disappear before a superior race.” However, these people did not have to remain as a hunting society, the authors agreed, if only they were able to develop more skillful weapons, find resources to trade, or settle in one area, then they could progress as a society.115

“A higher stage is reached when men cease to live by destroying,” Herbertson and

Herbertson concluded, “and begin to create new resources. This takes place as soon as they begin to keep and domesticate animals, or to till the soil. Such societies rapidly increase in wealth and numbers.”116 However, Dryer explained that agricultural societies varied between hoe, garden, field, and plantation cultures. He stated that the hoe culture was found in areas of South America, Africa, and the and used sticks and

“rude hoes” to cultivate crops. When this “culture becomes more efficient it develops into garden culture, which is intensive agriculture in small plots, the work being done mostly by hand.” He expressed that that this was dominant in sub-tropical areas with cheap labor, such as China, Japan, India, and . Both Dryer’s and Herbertson’s and

Herbertson’s works stressed the importance of animal domestication in furthering to the stage of agriculture. Dryer argued that because Indians had not domesticated animals before Europeans arrived, they were backwards. With the use of animal power, the field culture was able to develop. Dryer connected this to North American and European

115 Dryer, High School Geography, 267; Herbertson and Herbertson, 49-50. 116 Herbertson and Herbertson, 51.

164

societies. In addition, there was plantation culture, which was dominated by specific crops and a labor force of “inferior native or imported races.” For example, Dryer stated,

“White men, as a rule, can not work in tropical countries; the proprietors find, therefore, that forced native labor, or none at all, are the only alternatives.” Dryer even went as far as to connect crop types to level of civility. He argued that root crops, often found in hoe cultures, “are generally indicative of a lower stage of civilization than grain crops.”117 A society became even more progressive with the development of manufacturing.

Herbertson and Herbertson asserted that this, like agriculture, went through stages, from

the first attempt of the lowest tribes to improve their chances of obtaining a living, through the gradual discovery of the various arts of life, and the introduction of division of labor…to the growth of manufacturing societies making a speciality of products of different kinds. In a highly complex society we find very varied and highly developed manufactures carried on by skilled workmen, while a residuum of the workers sell their unskilled labour for what it will fetch.118

Therefore, by developing more efficient “arts of life” (meaning tools) and creating organization, societies were able to progress from “simple societies” to more civilized and evolved ones.119 These ideas on economy suggested to children that by adopting more civilized tools and practices and emulating Anglo-Saxon societies, “inferior” races could become a part of a more advanced and efficient culture.

Another aspect of an advanced society concerns its labor source. Dryer claimed that the most human labor was used in advanced industrial communities, and the problem of finding a sufficient supply of unskilled labor that could assimilate into society was the

117 Dryer, High School Geography, 269-271, 274, 277. 118 Herbertson and Herbertson, 89. 119 Ibid., 49.

165

greatest problem plaguing civilized society. Young countries, such as the United States,

Canada, or Australia, needed labor, while Great Britain, France, and Germany were self- sufficient. Other places, such as Italy, Austria-Hungary, India, China, or , had an over abundance of labor. While there was a growing surplus of African labor, he argued,

“The people often lack efficiency, are difficult to control, are unaccustomed to manual labor, and have a high death rate.” The people of India were “industrious and of good physique,” but religious issues kept them from leaving their country. While people in

Russia, the Balkan states, and the Turkish Empire were partially European, they were

“rather unintelligent.” Lastly, “[t]he Chinaman is docile, peaceable, hardy, easy to feed, and of high efficiency. He does not assimilate with other peoples, and the white man’s prejudice against him is so strong that he is excluded by law from the United States and

Australia, where a large supply of labor is most needed.”120 In her dissertation, Lang further discusses the dislike of immigrants who came to America to work but did not assimilate. She cites David Montgomery’s 1890 American history textbook, which, regarding the Chinese, stated:

He can live on a few cents’ worth of rice a day, he has no family to support, and so he can afford to work for wages on which an ordinary laborer would starve. On this account, Congress considered itself justified in shutting out such a class from a land whose doors have hitherto stood wide open to all the world.121

The negative economic and cultural characteristics attributed to the Chinese were used to support legislation that omitted them from the United States. To the American public, the

Chinese, more so than other immigrants, refused to assimilate into American society.

120 Dryer, High School Geography, 309-310. 121 David H. Montgomery, The Leading Facts of American History (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1890), 370, quoted in Lang, 129-130.

166

Americans feared the Chinese because their traditions and beliefs did not seem to disappear with education, and therefore, the Chinese had to be restricted from the country.

When examining the American economic progress in her American history book,

Ellen Churchill Semple saw it passing through the phases of evolutionary development.

Settlers brought their “best capital in elements of European civilization. As exponents of this civilization they represented the forces of heredity.” However, she noted that it was the environment that influenced them, as they had to live primitively when they first arrived. They developed the knowledge to handle their surroundings and create commercial and industrial centers and routes of communication.122 Therefore, to Semple, both American heredity and the environment allowed them to succeed. While she agreed with many social scientists regarding the importance of Americans’ European ancestry,

Semple acknowledged that it was also vital that Americans were able to adapt to their environment and use natural resources to develop a successful industrial and commercial nation. In contrast to the social scientists and critics who believed in the dominance of heredity, Semple and other authors argued that environmental adaptability also allowed a race to evolve. When looking at the recent nineteenth-century immigrants, Semple stressed that most aliens were unskilled laborers. She emphasized that their economic occupation influenced their ability to assimilate.

Those immigrants who have settled upon the farms have rapidly assimilated American standards of life, political, social, and economic…; but those who, like Russians and Italians, have crowded into cities, have been less Americanized, have transferred a bit of Europe to United States soil, because in the congested

122 Semple, 337-340.

167

districts of a New York or Chicago the immediate influence of our continental area is lost.123

Interestingly, this quote is reminiscent of the discussion in popular magazines about the role of environment in assimilation. In magazines, journalists argued that cities allowed foreigners to create colonies of their nationality and resist Americanization, while rural settings encouraged greater assimilation to American culture. Similarly to Semple, Davis pointed to environmental and climatic advantages in the United States with fertile soil, good geography for forestry, mining, and the open plains for the construction of railroads.

However, as mentioned in a previous section, this environmental advantage was not enough for inferior races, such as Native Americans, who were unable to fully develop the land.124 Therefore, Davis, like other authors, explained to students the role of both environment and heredity in the development of economies. While certain environmental and climatic advantages allowed a race to evolve, some “inferior” races, such as Native

Americans, were not capable of exploiting these advantages and progressing along the hierarchy of civility.

As in other areas of civilization, the textbook authors both praised and insulted foreign economies. For example, Roddy claimed, “The Chinese are skillful farmers, and raise rice in the lowlands, tea on the hillsides, and the mulberry tree for the silkworm,” and are very skilled at handmade crafts. In addition, with their mineral resources and plethora of cheap labor, “China may yet be the greatest manufacturing country of the

123 Ibid., 312. 124 Davis, 371.

168

world.” However, unlike the more civilized nations, China “has poor roads and few railroads” and needs foreign capital and machinery to become an industrial power.125 In addition, while Native Americans had an advantage over their enemies because they were able to capture wild horses and ride without a saddle, they remained in the stone age of culture and did not use metal weapons or tools.126 In regards to the Black race, Africa was viewed as rich in natural resources such as ivory, gold, feathers, and gums, and

Africans were “skillful in weaving cloth, making baskets, and plaiting mats.” Many authors described the Black race as “living by hunting or by cattle-rearing, and, in rare cases, following primitive agriculture” or counting “their wealth in the number of cattle they own.”127 One text went so far as to imply that Ethiopians had no homes or crops, used bows, and like other authors stated, were cannibals.128 Dryer provided a negative description of the black “savages” in Australia, asserting, “The wants of these savages are almost as simple as those of the animals around them, and they exercise but little more forethought than the animals in providing for them. The European colonists and their descendants living in the same country make use of a hundred natural resources of which the savages never dreamed.” While the natives had no huts or shelters and ate animals

“raw and alive,” the European inhabitants grew wheat, corn, and fruits, raised livestock, and mined. They constructed houses using an abundance of materials, traveled in

125 Roddy, 110; Dryer, High School Geography, 477. 126 Dryer, High School Geography, 303. 127 Roddy, 119-120; Mill, 325. 128 Moon, 340.

169

automobiles, and participated in trade.129 Dryer used patronizing language in describing the economic conditions of central Africa, explaining that because of Caucasian colonies, the “negro stock” had been “modified.” While agriculture and the hoe culture dominate,

[h]abits of industry and thrift are encouraged and readily acquired, and the natives are being educated in agricultural mechanic arts…and much is being done to develop the resources of the country, and to improve the condition of the people. The civilization of races sunk for centuries in savagery cannot be accomplished in a few generations, but the prospects for improvement in central Africa are better than anywhere else in the tropics.130

All of these patronizing descriptions of economies demonstrated that these authors believed that by identifying racial traits, children could be taught which races to fear because of their perceived inferiority. These inferior economic practices and traditions were viewed as detrimental to U.S. success and power, therefore, assimilation was necessary. It was believed that the United States and other Western powers could help

“inferior” nations through colonial intervention. To children, this demonstrated that even the “Negro,” the lowest on the racial hierarchy, could be uplifted if they adopted white

American economic tactics and traditions. By assimilating into white society, inferior races could progress on the path to civilization. As Dryer explained, “The most enterprising nations…like the British, Germans, Russians, and the people of the United

States, are expanding by annexation and colonization to occupy, control, and develop nearly every portion of the habitable globe.”131 Thus, even in their description of the economy of nations, textbook authors conformed to a racial hierarchy, asserting that

129 Dryer, High School Geography, 263-264. 130 Ibid., 499. 131 Dryer, Lessons in Physical Geography, 392.

170

while savage groups collected and hunted, more civilized peoples cultivated and domesticated plants and animals and eventually progressed to manufacturing and industry. However, unlike many social critics and racial scientists who focused on heredity, these educators taught children that through adopting white American economic ways, seemingly frightening inferior foreigners could be civilized, assimilated, and turned into loyal Americans.

III. Government and Civic Duty

The discussion of government in textbooks reinforced the belief that Americans and related white Europeans were superior to other nations and races, who could introduce their alarming ideologies to American society if they were not assimilated.

Schoolchildren were instilled with nationalistic information that celebrated American

(and therefore white) greatness at the expense of foreigners and their homelands.

Through their textbooks, educators demonstrated that it was vital that American ideals not be compromised by the threats of alien beliefs. Instead, all foreigners had to be

Americanized, as American democracy and government was the only way to create a civilized, loyal, and strong nation. In 1915, President Wilson explained the American fear of “hyphenated Americanism,” stating, “[Y]ou cannot become thorough Americans if you think of yourselves in groups…A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in American has not yet become an American.” Later, he described some naturalized citizens as “hav[ing] poured the poison of disloyalty into the

171

very arteries of our national life.”132 As Giordano explains, “Even before the war, expressions of nationalism in textbooks had helped allay postwar fears about international danger.” Both the United States and European countries grew increasingly nationalistic in their school texts between WWI and WWII, which while not overtly attacking immigrants or foreigners as threats as President Wilson did, made it clear that

American democracy was supreme and needed to be defended from inferior societies.133

If foreigners wanted to enter the United States, they had to be educated and assimilated to be productive and loyal citizens to ensure that they would not be a menace to America.

As they did with economy, authors Herbertson and Herbertson created a racial hierarchy of government that reflected a progression to civility. At the lowest level were the hunting tribes, where “there is little political organization” and “the power of the chief very despotic. It is generally exercised in a cruel and arbitrary manner, and the obedience of the subjects is based on fear.” From there, a group could evolve into a pastoral society, where the most experienced man or patriarch had absolute authority in a band of people. The central government was also patriarchal in manner, as in Russia, where the Tsar was viewed by peasants as a father. Among the agricultural races, government was seen as evolving from a feudal society to a republic.134

To these textbook authors, and thus to the students to whom they were directed,

“No other peoples have ever succeeded in establishing democratic government” like the

132 President Wilson quoted in Diner, 254. 133 Giordano, 31, 35. 134 Herbertson and Herbertson, 125-128.

172

White race.135 For foreigners, the democracy of the White race was something they should desire to emulate, while for native Americans it was something that should be protected. In describing the northern Europeans, Davis claimed, “They have developed liberal governments in which the rights of the people are considered….” This was contrasted in the next paragraphs by his assertion that Asian “governments are usually despotic” and the Black race was “governed by despotic kings or chiefs.” In a later section when specifically discussing the United States and how it was settled by the leading race of the Old World, he contended, “But these members of the leading race of the Old World would not have left their homes for a new country, however, favorable its geographical features, if its government had been tyrannical or oppressive.” He emphasized the importance of environment by explaining that it was the geography of the

New World along with “a liberal form of government under which the highest opportunity is open to every citizen” that allowed for the creation of the United States.

Davis is clearly celebrating the European (white) way of governing people while portraying the “lesser” races as tyrannical. Because, as he stated, “Let us remember that

‘it is excellent to have a giant’s strength, but tyrannous to use it like a giant.”136

Similarly, McCarthy, Swan, and McMullin in their civics text claimed, “You may well be proud to belong to a group of people who are intelligent enough to live together peaceably and pleasantly in such great numbers, and who, in order to secure the things

135 Mill, 327. 136 Davis, 345-346, 371-372.

173

they all want, work together successfully in spite of the necessarily huge and awkward size of their organizations.”137

Similar to Davis, Roddy celebrated American democracy. He explained to children that there were only two types of government, republics and monarchies, although monarchies could be limited or absolute. He supported democratic government by stating, “All people are then protected and benefited” from the laws that are made.

This instilled in children the desire for a strong, protective government. He explained that the United States was a republic, where men were elected by the people. Later, when discussing South American countries, Roddy expressed that they were all independent republics, similar to the United States.138 Like Roddy, Herbertson and Herbertson asserted that the United States “served as a model for the South American Republics.”139

While seen as inferior to the United States during this time, these authors view the new republic governments of South America as comparable to the United States almost as little brothers because they adopted a style similar to the United States. In this regards,

South America was depicted positively because educators wanted to emphasize the dominance and superiority of American government and the ability of inferior races to improve themselves by emulating American ways. The United States was the model or savior to other countries as well. Giordano argues that with regards to the , the were often seen as repressive or cruel, the Americans as helpful, and the

137 McCarthy, Swan, and McMullin, 97. 138 Roddy, 24, 38, 80. 139 Herbertson and Herbertson, 128.

174

Filipinos as unable to run an autonomous government.140 Similarly, he quotes a textbook which stated, “Among the colonizing nations of the world Spain has been notorious for the wretched government of its provinces….[and] in the interest of humanity the United

States was compelled to assert herself.”141 From this, children viewed the United States as the savior to “helpless” colonized peoples. These depictions encouraged both native and foreign children to embrace American ideals and be loyal to American government and endeavors. With positive explanations of U.S. actions and beliefs, educators hoped immigrant children would be more open to accepting American ideals and traditions.

Roddy also drew a comparison between the United States and Europe, where only two of the twenty countries at the time were republics. “[H]owever,” he writes, they “are limited monarchies, in which the people have a voice in making the laws. The rulers of

Russia and Turkey were long absolute monarchs, and their empires were the last of the

European countries to adopt a limited form of government.” Interestingly, Roddy, among other authors, offered little discussion of the governments of the Yellow or Black races, except for the mention of tribes or of poor governing.142 Dryer identified the Chinese government as inferior to that of the United States, arguing that one reason for its limited industrial development was its “corrupt government.” “Some measure of escape from these seems to be at hand,” he argued, “and the natural conditions are favorable for

140 Giordano, 34. 141 R.L. Ashley, American History: For Use in Secondary Schools (New York: Macmillan, 1907), quoted in Giordano, 45. 142 Roddy, 91, 119-120.

175

development to the rank of a great world power.”143 It is possible that by avoiding discussion of or offering only negative commentary on Asian or African governments, textbook authors were depicting the governments of White races as the only viable options for creating a successful civilization. In their civics textbook, McCarthy, Swan, and McMullin explained how the U.S. governmental system resulted from the development of government in England. The desire to vote emerged in the era of the

Industrial Revolution, as workers no longer worked for themselves but in factories where they felt unrepresented. Therefore, they realized that having political representation would be beneficial. However, this desire to vote was not limited to only the English.

Throughout the nineteenth century the Italians, the French, the Germans, the Russians, in fact all the peoples of Europe have striven in their own countries for the right to vote. Today the same struggle is going on in the countries of Asia—in China, and in India. When we assume a superior attitude towards these ‘foreigners’ we are likely to forget that seventy-five years ago white male citizens were working for the ballot in the states of the United States….Thus we find that everywhere, as people grow more intelligent, they have opinions about their community life which they want to express by the use of the ballot.144

The text attempted to equate the American experience to that of the contemporary plight of foreigners struggling for the right to vote. In this case, the textbook authors, similarly to many of the magazine authors from Chapter 2, were encouraging students to empathize rather than critique foreigners who may be in an “inferior” environment to that of the

United States. While much of the public feared minorities as much as the social critics and scientists, they believed that sympathy and assimilation would fix the supposed race problem.

143 Dryer, High School Geography, 477. 144 McCarthy, Swan, and McMullin, 10-14.

176

While the above quote urged children to identify with rather than judge foreign peoples, the description of governments in all the texts encouraged the formation of a social and racial hierarchy. Viewing government as an evolutionary progression from despotic tribes to a just republic instilled in them the belief that the United States government and similar western European countries were superior to the repressive, backwards governments of “inferior” Black and Yellow races. However, to these educators, the United States could be used as a model for other nations and races who were struggling to be represented fairly and who wanted to move up the evolutionary hierarchy.

CONCLUSION: IMMIGRATION AND TEXTBOOKS

The racial hierarchy created in these textbooks reflected both sympathy and fear towards minorities. While sometimes welcomed as unskilled labor, immigrants were most often portrayed negatively. In his study of nationalism in textbooks, Giordano includes a quote from an American history textbook:

The Germans, Irish, , and English are being replaced by the Hungarians, Poles, Russians, Italians, and other peoples of southern and eastern Europe….Their low standards of living tend to reduce wages and their congestion in the slums of the great cities makes breeding places for disease and offers the unscrupulous politician cheap votes with which to debauch the city government….The whole question of immigration is summed up in this: Can we assimilate and mold into citizenship the millions who are coming to our shores, or will they remain an ever-increasing body of aliens, an undigested and indigestible element in our body politic, and a constant menace to our free institutions.145

145 D.S. Muzzey, An American History (Boston: Ginn and Company, 1911), 621-622, quoted in Giordano, 33-34.

177

This language is reminiscent of that of the racial scientists discussed in Chapter 1, as immigrants are described as “undigested and indigestible” and “a constant menace” to

U.S. democracy. Lang, in her dissertation, agrees with this sentiment arguing that textbooks made it seem as if immigrants had no “permanent interest” in the United States and its proper governance. She points to the Chinese and Italians specifically as being targeted for “withholding their allegiance to the United States.” Lang asserts that in textbooks of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, cries of “race-suicide” were raised, as some authors warned that the progress of U.S. civilization was being threatened by the influx of immigrants.146 In his study of eugenics in high school textbooks from

1914 to 1948, Steven Selden, a professor in education policy, claims, “It is clear from these data that eugenics significantly penetrated the high school biology curriculum between 1914 and 1948.” However, he continues, “It is important to repeat that none of the texts reflected overt racial bias. The arguments were never made in terms of race.

They were made only in terms of biological merit.” 147 While it seems that some textbooks reflected the concern over immigration and minorities as the racial scientists did, most of the textbooks in this study did not use such emotional language or description of immigrants, and none mentioned eugenics. This may be because eugenics was not considered an “introductory” subject matter or possibly that when discussing the race of humankind, these educators did not feel that eugenics would encourage assimilation of minorities.

146 Lang, 129, 153. 147 Steven Selden, Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America (New York: Teachers College, Columbia University, 1999), 69.

178

The racial hierarchy, however, is apparent throughout all texts. The categorization and classification of foreigners into races allowed children to easily identify and organize people into races, from those “savages” who should be feared to the

“highly civilized” White race. In fact, in the front cover of Roddy’s text, Miss Dora

Louine Fox of Ashland, Ohio (my great grandmother) wrote out which races belonged in each continent as well as their skin color. This confirms that the geography text created an understandable system of organization that a young girl could copy, take in, and apply to the society around her. These educators, unlike many racial scientists or eugenicists, believed that this hierarchy could be altered. While heredity was an important factor, environmental influences was emphasized as affecting the civility of a race. Through their descriptions of culture, economy, and government, textbook authors taught children that through assimilation, supposed inferior races could become increasingly evolved.

Superior white civilization was depicted as a positive influence on foreigners and as something for which others races should strive. In addition, in a time where assimilation was emphasized, immigrant children were being exposed to this material. As a young immigrant child reading that your race was biologically “savage” or “half civilized,” it would seem impossible to fully assimilate into a nation that disliked and even feared you.

Therefore, the “scientific” studies of racial scientists which argued that other races were biologically inferior did not encourage assimilation, but rather a binary of “us” versus the

“Other.” As Steinberg states, “The irony of all this, however, is that as ethnic groups experience less rejection from the society at large, the possibilities and temptations of

179

assimilation are that much greater.”148 While textbooks encouraged a racial hierarchy and probably alienated some immigrant children through their descriptions, the goal of the Progressive Era education system was to assimilate, not alienate, minority children.

Therefore, textbooks showed minority children that both heredity and environment influenced the racial hierarchy, and through assimilation, inferior races could be transformed. To ensure the success and continuation of white American civilization and traditions, foreigners had to be made into loyal, law-abiding Americans.

This study of various introductory texts to geography, history, and biology demonstrates that children of differing age levels were being exposed to material that created a system of racial organization which reflected the scientific categorization of people based on appearance, characteristics, civility, economy, and government.

Through their textbooks, authors, similarly to the works of many social scientists and critics, instilled children with the idea that their American (and white) ways were superior to those of frightening and inferior foreigners and minorities. More importantly, however, these educators emphasized the possibility for minorities to assimilate into white American society, while racial scientists claimed that biologically, Americanization and assimilation was impossible. By depicting race as a more fluid evolutionary hierarchy, where societies could progress to more “superior” stages, textbooks supported the belief that immigrants could adapt to a new environment and become “civilized.”

Like many popular magazine articles, textbooks recognized the need to deal with the minorities already present in the United States. With the constant fear of alien beliefs and

148 Steinberg, 56.

180

traditions, much of the American public knew that restriction would not correct the supposed race and immigrant problem already in the United States. Therefore, popular magazines and educators adopted, but also adapted, social scientists’ race hierarchy to address societal needs and concerns of minorities’ abilities to meld into American society and transform into U.S. citizens.

CONCLUSION

"When you hear people like me talk about assimilation, that's what we're talking about: helping people assimilate into America, helping us remain one nation under

God…[and providing] civic lessons of what it means to be an American citizen.”1 These sentiments are reminiscent of those of politicians during the Progressive Era; however, this quote came from a speech made by President George W. Bush at a community college in Omaha, Nebraska in 2006. While the language of fear used to describe immigrants and African Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries seems overtly racist by today’s standards, it laid a foundation for racial and ethnic understanding and beliefs throughout the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

During the Progressive Era, white Americans worried their customs and traditional Protestant values were being challenged by incoming “new” immigrants and

African Americans whose alien beliefs and cultures threatened the future of white civilization. Preexisting beliefs in a racial hierarchy were only bolstered by the scientific research of social scientists and social critics who tried to prove the inferiority of certain races or ethnic groups. These theories were incorporated and appropriated into everyday

1 George W. Bush quoted in Johanna Neuman, “Bush Shows Immigrants' Efforts to Join U.S. Society,” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2006, http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/08/nation/na-bush8 (accessed February 27, 2012).

181

182

American life as the middle class encountered racial ideology in popular magazines and children of all races read about it in their school textbooks. These groups adapted the racial theories to fit their societal needs and address white Americans’ concerns over

African Americans and immigrants. While many scholars argued for restriction and control, magazines reflected the ambiguity of the general public. To white Americans, restriction was not the only viable or effective solution to this problem. Instead, many

Americans, especially educators, advocated assimilation or Americanization, which stressed the role of environment in determining racial characteristics and the ability of individuals to meld into American society and culture. While these societal groups advocated varying solutions, which demonstrated the complexity of racial discourse, their ideas were all based on the fear that minorities would disrupt the white American way of life and threaten white civilization’s progress.

The scientific racism that emphasized fear during the Progressive Era declined a bit during the 1930s. Professor of international and public affairs Elazar Barkan explains that while the defeat of helped white America reject a scientific basis to racial ideology, the overall “decline of scientific racism was due to changes in the sciences and of the scientists themselves, and was closely related to the politics of race in…the United

States.” Inconsistencies in racial science continued as scholars had trouble developing a racial typology to which all members of a race could conform. In addition, the debate over environment versus heredity further complicated the matter, as it could not be firmly resolved in any scholarly discipline. Besides the lack of concrete evidence, the inclusion of “outsiders” in the scientific realm also altered theories. For example, Barkan explains, 183

more women and Jewish people became involved in disciplines such as anthropology and encouraged more egalitarian thinking in terms of race. In the 1930s, with the worsening of the Great Depression, people began to realize that poverty was not biologically caused.

“The Depression undermined the confidence of the middle classes,” Barkan states, “and unsettled the eugenic belief in heredity.” 2 According to historian Mark H. Haller, during this time period “racism ceased to have scientific respectability, and as a result, American eugenics and racism faced a parting of the ways.”3

Although many historians view scientific racism and eugenics dying in the 1930s, historian Christina Cogdell asserts, “[M]any of the goals of eugenic research survived the transition to genetics, adjusting only as needed to match current scientific understanding.” In the years after WWII and even today, eugenic ideals, such as race prejudice, a belief in science and technology creating evolutionary progress, and the pursuit of an efficient and hygienic society, continue.4 Even though the scientific racism of the Progressive Era may have gone into decline, negative beliefs of race and ethnicity have continued in American society. The racial hierarchy used by scholars of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries persisted throughout the twentieth century. In the American South, African Americans struggled against the Jim Crow racial hierarchy for decades. Segregation existed throughout the United States in varying forms. In both the North and South, occurred in public transportation, restaurants,

2 Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 2-3, 9, 344. 3 Mark H. Haller, Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963), 182. 4 Christina Cogdell, Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), xiii-xiv. 184

housing, and jobs, as blacks were treated as second-class citizens in all aspects of life.5

Historian Glenda Gilmore explains that the South tried to extend their ideas of white supremacy to other parts of the world; however, they came under attack by critics, such as African Americans, some whites, and Communists who encouraged equality of all races.6 While many historical accounts of African American history see the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s as the climax of the black struggle for equality, many historians suggest the fight continues today in numerous places like public schools, housing, and healthcare.7 As anthropologist Lee D. Baker explains, after WWII many anthropologists and other scholars denied the classification of race, but “by evading race and racism as integral aspects of the United States’ experience, it allowed conservatives and well-meaning liberals to advance a romantic ideal of a color-blind society.” Baker argues that while the biological categories of race do not exist, socially, the categories of race exist in the United States and therefore lead to racial disparities.8

Just as prejudice against African Americans continues in the United States, so does the fear of what immigrants will do to American society. While historian Philip

Perlmutter explains that the civil rights movement aided both African Americans and immigrant groups as the Civil Rights Act of 1964 forbade discrimination based on race or

5 Martha Biondi, “How New York Changes the Story of the Civil Rights Movement,” Afro- Americans in New York Life and History 31 (July 2007):16. 6 Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950 (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008), 2-6. 7 Clarence Taylor, “Hurricane Katrina and the Myth of the Post-Civil Rights Era,” Journal of Urban History 35 (July 2009): 640-655; also see Leon F. Litwack, “‘Fight the Power!’: The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement,” The Journal of Southern History 75 (February 2009): 3-28. 8 Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896-1954 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 210, 212. 185

national origin, he also believes there are “echoes of neonativism,” as whites and immigrant groups continue to clash over immigration policy, jobs, language, and civic loyalty.9 Similarly to the 1920s, in the 1980s, “immigration took up a central position on the American social agenda,” according to historian Roger Daniels. As the U.S.

Immigration Commission created in the early twentieth century, Congress created the

Select Commission on Immigration and Refugee Policy in the 1980s. Daniels explains that this Commission was not as overtly racist as the one in the 1920s, but it reflected a similar fear and nativism. For example, Republican Senator Alan Simpson stated, “A substantial proportion of these new persons and their descendants do not assimilate satisfactorily into our society….Furthermore, if language and cultural separation rise above a certain level, the unity and political stability of our nation will—in time—be seriously eroded.” Rather than focusing on Europeans, which now comprise a minority of immigrants, some Americans shifted their concern to Hispanic immigrants.10 With a continuing dispute over the protection of the U.S.-Mexican border in contemporary times, some politicians use language reminiscent of the Progressive Era. State Senator

Russel Pearce, who wanted to decrease the threat of illegal immigrants, stated in 2011,

“If you are ever going to stop this invasion, and it is an invasion, you have to quit rewarding people for breaking those laws.”11 After the Obama administration threatened

9 Philip Perlmutter, Divided We Fall: A History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1992), 250, 314. 10 Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in America Life (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990), 388-391, 397. 11 Russel Pearce quoted in Marc Lacey, “Arizona Lawmakers Push New Round of Immigration Restrictions,” New York Times, February 23, 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/24arizona.html (accessed February 27, 2012). 186

to sue the Arizona government to overturn its restrictive immigration law, both

Republican Senators from Arizona, John McCain and Jon Kyl, argued, “The Obama

Administration has not done everything it can do to protect the people of Arizona from the violence and crime illegal immigration brings to our state.”12 While focusing on a different group of people and claiming to be concerned with only illegal immigrants, similarly to racial discourse in the Progressive Era, these quotes reflect a fear of an

“invasion” of criminal and violent foreigners from which the government needed to

“protect” America.

While this thesis has attempted to examine the language of fear in scholarly works, popular magazines, and textbooks, there is further research that needs to be done.

First, this thesis focuses solely on three primary source types; therefore, it would be interesting to expand the material examined. Song lyrics, art, literature, and other cultural items can be analyzed to determine if and how they reflect a fear of minorities.

In addition, this thesis examines primarily white scholarly and middle-class views and opinions of race in Progressive Era America, however, further work needs to be done to explore the working-class perspective. Concentrating solely on the racial discourse of white Americans, the viewpoints of minorities in popular culture should be examined.

Similarly, this thesis focuses on only a few decades, which begs the questions: can these connections be made to an earlier or later time period and how does the language of fear continue or change over time? It would be interesting to trace the language of fear as the

12 John McCain and Jon Kyl quoted in Greg Sargent, “It's Official: Obama Admin will Sue Arizona,” Washington Post, July 6, 2010, http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum- line/2010/07/obama_will_sue_to_overturn_imm.html (accessed February 27, 2012). 187

makeup of American society has shifted. As minorities become an increasingly larger proportion of the U.S. population today, studies of language could be used to reflect societal beliefs. It is clear from the quote by George W. Bush that he, along with other politicians and some white Americans, still feel it is necessary to either assimilate minorities into American culture or restrict them; however, as American society becomes increasingly diverse, this sentiment will become more difficult to achieve. This thesis has demonstrated that ideas of race and ethnicity, while difficult to define, seem ingrained in American ideology. While theories of race have changed over time,

Progressive Era language laid a foundation for the continuing development of racial discourse in the United States. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Primary Sources

“A Great National Problem.” Century Magazine, November 1913.

“A Million and a Quarter Immigrants.” Outlook, December 28, 1907.

“Assimilating the Adult Immigrant.” Outlook, February 1, 1908.

Bardin, James.“The Psychological Factor in Southern Race Problems.” The Popular Science Monthly 83 (October 1913): 368-374.

Barnes, Earl. “Language as a Factor in Americanization.” Public, July 27, 1918.

Bevan, Ralph H. “First Aid to Americanization.” Forum, March 1922.

Brewer, Charles B. “Some Follies in our Criminal Procedure.” McClure’s, April 1910.

Brigham, Carl C. A Study of American Intelligence. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923.

Butler, Nicholas Murray. “Our Bolshevik Menace.” Forum, January 1920.

Cartland, Ethel Wadsworth. “Childless Americans.” Outlook, November 15, 1913.

Carr, John Foster. “Anglo-American Unity Fast Coming.” World’s Work, October 1903.

“Changed Opinions on the Race Questions.” World’s Work, March 1903.

Committee on Foreign-born Women of the Committee on Women in Industry of the Council of National Defense. “Making the Foreign Born One of Us.” Survey, May 25, 1918.

Commons, John Rogers. Races and Immigrants in America. Rev. ed. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1920.

188

189

Creel, George. “Close the Gates.” Collier’s, May 6, 1922.

______. “Melting Pot or Dumping Ground?.” Collier’s, September 3, 1921.

“Dangerous Immigrants.” Outlook, January 4, 1913.

Darwin, Charles. The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex. London: John Murray, 1871.

______. On the Origins of Species. London: John Murray, 1859.

Davenport, Charles B. “The Eugenics Programme and Progress in its Achievement.” In Eugenics: Twelve University Lectures, 1-14. New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1914.

______. Heredity in Relation to Eugenics. New York: H. Holt, 1911.

Davenport, Fredrick M. “The Red Peril and the Red Hysteria.” Outlook, August 4, 1920.

Davis, James J. The Iron Puddler: My Life in the Rolling Mills and What Came of It. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1922.

______. “Training for Citizenship.” Forum, August 1922.

Davis, William Morris. Elementary Physical Geography. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1902.

De Bogory, Natalie. “A Greenhorn at the Gate.” Outlook, November 30, 1921.

Dodge, Richard Elwood and Clara Barbara Kirchwey. The Teaching of Geography in Elementary Schools. Chicago: Rand McNally and Company, 1913.

Dryer, Charles Redway. Lessons in Physical Geography. New York: American Book Company, 1901.

______. High School Geography, Physical, Economic and Regional. New York: American Book Company, 1912.

Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Training of Negroes for Social Power.” Outlook, October 17, 1903. du Pont, T. Coleman. “Does America want Immigration or Emigration?.” Current Opinion, August 1920.

190

Dublin, Louis I. “The Mortality of Foreign Race Stocks.” Scientific Monthly, January 1922.

Eberlf, Louise. “Where Immigration Medical Inspection Fails.” Collier’s, February 8, 1913.

Ellis, Havelock. “Eugenics and the Uneducated.” Forum, January 1922.

“Employment as Housekeepers.” Good Housekeeping, May 1, 1886.

Fitzgerald, F. Scott. The Great Gatsby. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925.

Frank, Glenn.“The Clash of Color.” Century Magazine, November 1919.

Fuller, Bampfylde. “A Psychological View of the Irish Question.” Living Age, November 8, 1913.

Gould, Charles W. America: A Family Matter. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.

Grant, Madison. Introduction to The Rising Tide of Color against White World- Supremacy, by Lothrop Stoddard. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.

______. The Passing of the Great Race. 4th ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921.

Gruenberg, Benjamin Charles. Elementary Biology: An Introduction to the Science of Life. Boston: Ginn and Company, 1919.

Hall, Prescott F. “Controlling Immigration by Number Limitation.” Survey, June 14, 1913.

Hancock, Harris. “The Education of the Colored Race is the Duty of the Nation.” Popular Science Monthly, May 1908.

Harmon, Dudley. “Americans for America.” Ladies’ Home Journal, August 1918.

Herbertson, Andrew John and Fanny Dorothea Herbertson. Man and His Work: An Introduction to Human Geography, 2nd ed. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1899.

Hewes, F.W. “Where Our Immigrants Settle.” World’s Work, October 1903.

Hutchinson, Woods. “The Pace That Kills.” Cosmopolitan, January 1921. 191

“Intellectual Reading for the Home.” Good Housekeeping, February 20, 1886.

“Is There an American Type?.” Current Opinion, December 1921.

Jordan, David Starr. The Blood of the Nation: A Study of the Decay of Races through the Survival of the Unfit. 4th ed. Boston: American Unitarian Association, 1906.

Laughlin, Harry H. Biological Aspects of Immigration, hearing. Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, House of Representatives. 64th Cong., 2d sess. Washington: Government Printing Office, 1921. CIS H269-4.

Lodge, Henry Cabot. “A Million Immigrants a Year.” Century Magazine, January 1904.

Lubin, Simon. “The Strength of America: II. The Conception of Nationality.” Survey, January 3, 1920.

Maury, M.F. Physical Geography. Rev. ed. New York: University Publishing Company, 1886.

McCarthy, Charles, Flora Swan, and Jennie McMullin. Elementary Civics. Rev. ed. New York: Thompson, Brown & Company, 1918.

McClure, S.S. “The Tammanyizing of a Civilization.” McClure’s, November 1909.

McDougall, William. Is America Safe for Democracy?. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1921.

McLaughlin, Allan. “Immigration.” Popular Science Monthly, June 1904.

______. “Italian and Other Latin Immigrants.” Popular Science Monthly, August 1904.

“The Melting Pot Boils Over.” Public, November 29, 1919.

Michaud, Gustave. “What Shall We Be?: The Coming Race in America.” Century Magazine, March 1903.

Mill, Hugh Robert. The Realm of Nature: An Outline of Physiography. 1892. Reprint, London: John Murray, 1905.

Monteith, James. New Physical Geography. New York: American Book Company, 1885.

Moon, Truman Jesse. Biology for Beginners. 1921. Reprint, New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1924. 192

Moorhead, F.G. “The Foreign Invasion of the Northwest.” World’s Work, March 1908.

Morton, Samuel G. Crania Americana. Philadelphia: J. Dobson, 1839.

Mulliner, Beulah A. “The Development of Physiography in American Textbooks.” Journal of Geography 10 (June 1912): 319-324.

Nesbitt, Charles T. “The Health Menace of Alien Races.” World’s Work, November 1913.

“New Immigration Measures in Congress.” Survey, June 14, 1913.

Nott, J.C. and G.R. Gliddon. Types of Man. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Grambo & Co., 1854.

Page, Thomas Nelson. “The New Aspect of the Negro Question.” Collier’s Weekly, February 28, 1903.

Palmer, Attorney General A. Mitchell. “The Case against the ‘Reds.’” Forum, February 1920.

Pearl, Raymond. “Breeding Better Men.” World’s Work, January 15, 1908.

“The Quintessence of Americanism in a Hundred Words.” Current Opinion, September 1922.

“‘Race Suicide’ or ‘Overcrowding.’” World’s Work, September 1908.

Redway, Jacques Wardlaw. Elementary Physical Geography: An Outline of Physiography. 1900. Reprint, New York: Charles Scribner’s Son, 1908.

“Refusal to Multiply.” Living Age, November 29, 1913.

Ripley, William Z. “Races in the United States.” Atlantic Monthly, December 1908.

“The Rise of the ‘New’ American.” New Republic, May 10, 1922.

Roberts, Kenneth L. “The Existence of an Emergency.” Saturday Evening Post, April 30, 1921.

______. “Plain Remarks on Immigration for Plain Americans.” Saturday Evening Post, February 12, 1921.

193

______. Why Europe Leaves Home. Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company Publishers, 1920. Roddy, H. Justin. Elementary Geography. New York: American Book Company, 1902.

Ross, C.L. “America No Melting Pot.” Technical World, July 1913.

Ross, Edward Alsworth. “American and Immigrant Blood: A Study of the Social Effects of Immigration.” Century Magazine, December 1913.

______. “The Causes of Race Superiority.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 18 (July 1901): 67-89.

Semple, Ellen Churchill. Influences of Geographic Environment. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1903.

Sherwood, Herbert Francis. “The Silent Keeper of the Gate.” Outlook, June 6, 1908.

Shufeldt, Robert Wilson. The Negro: A Menace to American Civilization. Boston: The Gorham Press, 1907.

“Social Problems and Eugenics.” Scientific American, May 10, 1913.

Stoddard, Lothrop. “Is America American?” World’s Work, December 1920.

______. The Revolt against Civilization: The Menace of the Under Man. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1922.

______. The Rising Tide of Color against White World-Supremacy. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1920.

Stone, Alfred H. “The Mulatto Factor in the Race Problem.” Atlantic Monthly, May 1903.

Street, Julian. “America and Japan.” Collier’s, August 27, 1921.

“The Struggle Between Biology and Bolshevism.” Current Opinion, September 1922.

Sweeney, Arthur. “Mental Tests for Immigrants.” North American Review, May 1922.

Tarr, Ralph Stockman. Elementary Physical Geography. New York: Macmillan and Co., 1895.

______. First Book of Physical Geography, 1897. Reprint, New York: Macmillan and Co., 1901.

194

Tarr, Ralph S. and Frank M. McMurry. World Geographies. Rev. ed. New York: Macmillan Company, 1919. Tayler, J. Lionel. “The Social Application of Eugenics.” Westminster Review, October 1908.

“The ‘Ten-Per-Cent’ Immigration Bill.” Literary Digest, June 21,1913.

Terman, Lewis. The Measurement of Intelligence: An Explanation of and a Complete Guide for the Use of the Stanford Revision and Extension of the Binet-Simon Intelligence Scale. Boston: Houghton Mufflin, 1916.

“To Send Immigrants South.” The Literary Digest, October 11, 1913.

United States Immigration Commission. Brief Statement of the Immigration Commission with Conclusions and Recommendations and Views of the Minority. 61st Cong., 3 sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911. S. Doc. 747.

______. Dictionary of Races or Peoples. 61st Cong., 3 sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911. S. Doc. 662.

______. Statements and Recommendations of Societies and Organizations Interested in the Subject of Immigration. 61st Cong., 3 sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1911. S. Doc. 764.

Vance, James I. “The Problem of the Aliens in America.” Missionary Review, December 22, 1917.

Vesnitch, M.R. “A Conflict of Racial Ideals: An Explanation of the Origin of the War.” Outlook, April 17, 1918.

Waid, Eva Clark. “Americanization—The Duty of Haste.” Missionary Review, November 1918.

Watchorn, Robert. “The Gateway of the Nation.” Outlook, December 28, 1907.

Wilson, Woodrow. The New Freedom: A Call for the Emancipation of the Generous Energies of a People. New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1913.

Winslow, Isaac Oscar. The Earth and its People. Boston: D.C. Heath and Co., Publishers, 1910.

Wolfson, Arthur M. “The Stranger within our Gates.” Independent, April 6, 1913.

195

Yerkes, Robert M., ed. Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XV: Psychological Examining in the United States Army. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1921.

______. Foreword to A Study of American Intelligence. By Carl C. Brigham. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1923.

Young, Kimball. “Intelligence Tests of Certain Immigrant Groups.” Scientific Monthly, November 1922.

Secondary Sources

Archdeacon, Thomas J. Becoming American: An Ethnic History. New York: The Free Press, 1983.

Anyon, Jean. “Ideology and United States History Textbooks." Harvard Educational Review 49 (August 1979): 361-386. In The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks, edited by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello, 109-139. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Baker, Lee D. From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896- 1954. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Barkan, Elazar. The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain and the United States Between the World Wars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Bederman, Gail. Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1995.

Biondi, Martha. “How New York Changes the Story of the Civil Rights Movement.” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History 31 (July 2007): 15-31.

Bodnar, John. The Transplanted: A History of Immigration in Urban America. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985.

Button, H.W. Warren and Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr. History of Education and Culture in America. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1983. 196

Carpenter, Charles. History of American Schoolbooks. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1963.

Cogdell, Christina. Eugenic Design: Streamlining America in the 1930s. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004.

Cohn, Jan. Creating America: George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1989.

Currell, Susan and Christina Cogdell. Popular Eugenics: National Efficiency and American Mass Culture in the 1930s. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2006.

Daniels, Roger. Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life. Princeton, NJ: HarperCollins Publishers, 1990.

______. Not Like Us: Immigrants and Minorities in America, 1890–1924. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee Inc., 1997.

Diner, Steven J. A Very Different Age: Americans of the Progressive Era. New York: Hill & Wang, 1998.

Dinnerstein, Leonard, Roger L. Nichols, and David M. Reimers. Natives and Strangers: A Multicultural History of Americans. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Dreyfus, Hubert L. and Paul Rabinow. Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1982.

Dyer, Thomas G. Theodore Roosevelt and the Idea of Race. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1980.

Dumenil, Lynn. The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s. New York: Hill & Wang, 1995.

Fallace, Thomas Daniel. Dewey and the Dilemma of Race: An Intellectual History, 1895- 1922. New York: Teachers College Press, 2011.

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith. New York: Harper Colophon, 1972.

______. The History of Sexuality. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage/Random House, 1980.

Gerstle, Gary. American Crucible: Race and Nation in the Twentieth Century. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. 197

Gilmore, Glenda Elizabeth. Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2008.

Giordano, Gerard. Twentieth-Century Textbook Wars: A History of Advocacy and Opposition. New York: Peter Lang, 2003.

Gossett, Thomas. Race: The History of an Idea in America. Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1963.

Graham, Patricia Albjerg. Schooling in America: How the Public Schools Meet the Nation’s Changing Needs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

Green, Anna. Cultural History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Gunn, Simon. History and Cultural Theory. Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Limited, 2006.

Hagedorn, Ann. Savage Peace: Hope and Fear in America, 1919. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2007.

Haller, Mark H. Eugenics: Hereditarian Attitudes in American Thought. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963.

Hamlin, Kimberly A. "The 'Case of a Bearded Woman': Hypetrichosis and the Construction of Gender in the Age of Darwin." American Quarterly 63 (December 2011): 955-981.

“HarpWeek: Cartoons from Harper’s Weekly and Other Leading Journals.” http://elections.harpweek.com/1876/cartoon-1876- Medium.asp?UniqueID=26&Year=1876 (accessed March 28, 2011).

Hasian Jr., Marouf A. The Rhetoric of Eugenics in Anglo-American Thought. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1996.

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925. 2nd ed. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1988.

Hofstadter, Richard. The Age of Reform: From Bryan to F.D.R. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1955.

Jacobson, Matthew Frye. Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad, 1876-1917. New York: Hill & Wang, 2000.

198

______. Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998.

Kelly, R. Gordon. Mother Was a Lady: Self and Society in Selected American Children’s Periodicals, 1865-1890. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1974.

Kevles, Daniel J. “Testing the Army's Intelligence: Psychologists and the Military in World War I.” The Journal of American History 55 (December 1968): 565-581.

Knobel, Dale T. America for the Americans: The Nativist Movement in the United States. New York: MacMillan Publishing Company, 1996.

Lacey, Marc. “Arizona Lawmakers Push New Round of Immigration Restrictions.” New York Times, February 23, 2011. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/24/us/24arizona.html (accessed February 27, 2012).

Lang, Mary Lee Margaret. “Immigration as Treated in Early History Textbooks, 1789- 1939: Prelude to Multiculturalism.” Ed.D. diss., Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1992.

Lears, Jackson. Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877-1920. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2009.

Lehtinen, Vilja. “‘America Would Lose Its Soul’: The Immigration Restriction Debate, 1920-1924.” master’s thesis, University of Helsinki, 2002.

Litwack, Leon F. “‘Fight the Power!’: The Legacy of the Civil Rights Movement.” The Journal of Southern History 75 (February 2009): 3-28.

López, Ian F. Haney. White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race. New York: New York University Press, 1996.

Lowe, John. Jump at the Sun: Zora Neale Hurston’s Cosmic Comedy. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997.

MacCann, Donnarae. White Supremacy in Children’s Literature: Characterizations of African Americans, 1830-1900. New York: Garland Publishing, 1998.

Markel, Howard and Alexandra Minna Stern. “The Foreignness of Germs: The Persistent Association of Immigrants and Disease in American Society.” Milbank Quarterly 80 (November 2002): 757-788.

199

McGerr, Michael. A Fierce Discontent: The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, 1870-1920. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

McWhirter, Cameron. Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2011.

Neuman, Johanna. “Bush Shows Immigrants' Efforts to Join U.S. Society.” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 2006. http://articles.latimes.com/2006/jun/08/nation/na-bush8 (accessed February 27, 2012).

O’Donnell, Edward T. “Bring Us Your Tired, Your Poor. Or Don’t.” New York Times, May 7, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/07/nyregion/thecity/07immi.html?pagewanted= all (accessed March 28, 2011).

Ohmann, Richard. Selling Culture: Magazines, Markets, and Class at the Turn of the Century. New York: Verso Press, 1996.

Painter, Nell Irvin. The History of White People. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2010.

Parks, Robert. Race and Culture. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1950.

Perlmutter, Philip. Divided We Fall: A History of Ethnic, Religious, and Racial Prejudice in America. Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1992.

Peterson, Theodore. Magazines in the Twentieth Century. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1964.

Pettit Dorothy A. and Janice Bailie. A Cruel Wind: Pandemic Flu in America, 1918-1920. Murfreesboro, TN: Timberlake Books, 2008.

Pickens, Donald K. Eugenics and the Progressives. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1968.

Provenzo, Jr., Eugene F., Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello, eds. The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Roediger, David R. Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrant Became White: The Strange Journey from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. New York: Basic Books, 2005.

200

Rogin, Michael. Blackface, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Hollywood Melting Pot. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1996.

Sargent, Greg. “It's Official: Obama Admin will Sue Arizona.” Washington Post, July 6, 2010. http://voices.washingtonpost.com/plum- line/2010/07/obama_will_sue_to_overturn_imm.html (accessed February 27, 2012).

Schneirov, Matthew. The Dream of a New Social Order: Popular Magazines in America, 1893-1914. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994.

Selden, Steven. Inheriting Shame: The Story of Eugenics and Racism in America. New York: Teachers College Press, 1999.

Shaver, Annis N. “The Discourse of Americanization Textbooks, 1914-1924.” In The Textbook as Discourse: Sociocultural Dimensions of American Schoolbooks, edited by Eugene F. Provenzo, Jr., Annis N. Shaver, and Manuel Bello, 55-73. New York: Routledge, 2011.

Sheehan, Bernard W. Seeds of Extinction: Jeffersonian Philanthropy and the American Indian. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1974.

Smith, Shawn Michelle. American Archives: Gender, Race, and Class in Visual Culture. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999.

Smith-Pryor, Elizabeth M. Property Rites: The Rhinelander Trial, Passing, and the Protection of Whiteness. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina, 2009.

Sollors, Werner. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.

Southern, David W. The Progressive Era and Race. Wheeling, IL: Harlan Davidson, 2005.

Steinberg, Stephen. The Ethnic Myth: Race, Ethnicity, and Class in America. New York: Atheneum, 1981.

Stocking Jr., George. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: Free Press, 1968.

Sumner, David E. The Magazine Century: American Magazines Since 1900. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2010.

201

Taylor, Clarence. “Hurricane Katrina and the Myth of the Post-Civil Rights Era.” Journal of Urban History 35 (July 2009): 640-655.

Tebbel, John and Mary Ellen Zuckerman. The Magazine in America, 1741-1990. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Tucker, Linda G. Lockstep and Dance: Images of Black Men in Popular Culture. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

Tucker, William H. The Science and Politics of Racial Research. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1994.

Westbury, Ian. “Textbooks, Textbook Publishers, and the Quality of Schooling.” In Textbooks and Schooling in the United States: Eighty-ninth Yearbook of the National Society for the Study of Education, Part 1, edited by David L. Elliot and Arthur Woodward, 1-22. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Wiebe, Robert. Search for Order, 1877-1920. New York: Hill & Wang, 1967.

Winfield, Ann Gibson. Eugenics and Education in America: Institutionalized Racism and the Implications of History, Ideology, and Memory. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, Inc., 2007.

Wonham, Henry B. Playing the Races: Ethnic Caricature and American Literary Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Zuckerman, Mary Ellen. A History of Popular Women’s Magazines in the United States, 1792-1995. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1998.