Since it was dedicated in 1886, the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor greeted millions of immigrants sailing to the United States. In 1903, a poem by Emma Lazarus was inscribed on the pedestal, stating America's welcome for immigrants:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame."Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Lothrop Stoddard urged white Americans to stop ruining the country by letting weak people come in. A similar voice was Madison Grant, who wrote The Passing of the Great Race, published in 1916. Grant was concerned about blacks, but also about unrestricted immigration. In the first great wave of immigrants, from the 1830s to 1850, about five million people came to the United States from northern Europe -- from Germany, Ireland and Great Britain. In the second great wave, another ten million immigrants came, still with a majority from northern Europe. But more and more immigrants arrived from southern and eastern Europe -- from Italy, Russia and Austria-Hungary. Then between 1890 and 1930, 22 million people arrived, and this time the majority were from Greece, Hungary, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Russia and Spain.
During this influx of non-blondes, Grant wrote about white supremacy, but more specifically about Nordic superiority. His book was a best-seller, and was reprinted many times, with revisions in 1918, 1920, and 1921. It was translated into German, French and Norwegian.
There had been some concern about immigration before, but the eugenics movement brought a new, sharp focus. In 1882, Congress had passed two laws about immigration, one barring convicts and people likely to need public care, the other barring the Chinese. In 1907, the government made an agreement with Japan to limit Japanese immigration. In 1917, Hindus and some other Asians were excluded. But in 1921, Congress passed restrictions limiting the number of immigrants to 357,803 (not counting immigrants from North and South America). And that year, U.S. Rep. Albert Johnson, head of the House Committee on Immigration and Naturalization, opened hearings on immigration. Johnson appointed Harry Laughlin as an expert witness on eugenics.
Laughlin had worked with Charles B. Davenport to start the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) in New York in 1910. Their intention was to provide statistical data for the study of human traits, and Davenport developed a questionnaire used by trained workers in door-to-door interviews, amassing 750,000 records by 1924. The mass of data -- the sheer bulk of it -- was impressive even if it was worthless, and it gave credibility to pronouncements from the ERO.
In his testimony to the Congressional committee, Laughlin relied heavily on intelligence tests, particularly the extensive testing that Robert Yerkes had done with Army recruits. He used them to argue that southern and eastern Europeans were not as intelligent as northern Europeans. He made racist arguments, but dressed them up as science.
The eugenics movement persuaded policy-makers in the United States -- the nation of immigrants -- that unrestricted immigration was a serious threat to the nation's health. In 1924, the government passed the Johnson Act, setting limits on the number of immigrants who could come here from various nations. The limits were designed to encourage immigration from northern Europe and to discourage immigration from the rest of the world, southern Europe included. The law was effective; the number of immigrants plummeted.
The Johnson Act turned out to be one of the most lethal bills ever passed. Fifteen years after its passage, Jews trying to escape from Nazi Germany were refused asylum in America. It is not possible to know how many Jews would have fled to the United States if they had been welcome. Of the six million Jews who died under Hitler, would 10,000 have been saved by a more hospitable policy? Would half a million people have been saved?
The annual immigration quota for Germany was 25,957. That is, 25,957 German people were allowed to move into the United States each year, but no more. The number of people who applied for visas during one year under Hitler was six times the quota. That is, well over 100,000 people applied for visas and failed to get them. Further, besides the people who applied, there must have been others who knew they were not welcome and did not even bother to try.
A clear understanding of the impact of the Johnson Act requires a quick review of the expansion of Nazi power. Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in January 1933, assumed dictatorial power in March, and began to take steps against the Jews in April. In September 1935, Germany passed the Nuremberg laws, stripping Jews of the right to vote and prohibiting marriage between Jews and non-Jews. It is not fair to expect that everyone in the world would understand what was about to happen in Germany, but it was clear that the Jews there were in trouble. So in July 1938, representatives from 32 countries met in France to discuss the problem of refugees. They failed to get much done; in fact, most Western countries made it clear that they would not welcome Jewish refugees. On November 9-10, 1938, there was a night of terror for Jews, remembered as "Kristallnacht," or the "Night of the Broken Glass," when Nazis smashed Jewish shops all over Germany and Austria.
The following spring, in 1939, there was a bill in Congress to permit an additional 20,000 refugees -- children -- to come to the United States. The bill died in committee.
In May 1939, the British government issued a new policy concerning Palestine, which they governed: no more than 75,000 Jewish refugees would be admitted there over the next five years.
There is no doubt that the anti-immigration policy contributed to the deaths of many Jews. To say that the Johnson Act killed hundreds of thousands of people is a good guess, but only a guess. However, there were hundreds of people whose names are known without guesswork who sailed to the United States and were refused entry, who then returned to Europe and were killed by the Nazis.
On May 15, 1939, the S.S. St. Louis sailed out of Hamburg, carrying 936 Jewish refugees bound for Cuba. Many of them hoped to go the United States eventually, but planned to wait for permission in Cuba. The ship arrived in Havana on May 27, and the refugees learned that the Cuban government had tightened its anti-immigration policies. Only 22 people were allowed to disembark. Police used spotlights on the harbor to make sure no one jumped overboard and tried to swim to relatives waiting in boats nearby. One passenger committed suicide.
On June 2, the ship steamed out of Havana and sailed toward the United States. Despite frantic pleas to the government as they sailed slowly past Florida, the refugees never got permission to land. In fact, the Coast Guard shadowed the ship to make sure no one tried to swim ashore. On June 6, the ship turned back toward Europe, 913 refugees still aboard, while friends around the world tried desperately to open doors anywhere outside Nazi domination.
At the last moment, France, Britain, Belgium and the Netherlands agreed to take them. However, Germany conquered three of these nations shortly afterwards, and many of the well-traveled fugitives were caught. Over 600 of the refugees who had seen the lights of Miami died in Nazi concentration camps.
Review of Chapter Four:
Slamming the Doors Shut
1. What was the Eugenics Record Office?
2. Who was Harry Laughlin?
3. What was the Johnson Act?
4. What was the effect of the Johnson Act on Hitler's work?
5. When refugees were fleeing from Hitler, how close did they get before they were sent back to die?
Discuss: What is the impact of laws that restrict immigration on a program of eugenics?
