From All Points

Elliott Robert Barkan

Description

Winner, 2008 Theodore Saloutos Award

At a time when immigration policy is the subject of heated debate, this book makes clear that the true wealth of America is in the diversity of its peoples. By the end of the 20th century the American West was home to nearly half of America's immigrant population, including Asians and Armenians, Germans and Greeks, Mexicans, Italians, Swedes, Basques, and others. This book tells their rich and complex story—of adaptation and isolation, maintaining and mixing traditions, and an ongoing ebb and flow of movement, assimilation, and replenishment. These immigrants and their children built communities, added to the region's culture, and contended with discrimination and the lure of Americanization. The mark of the outsider, the alien, the nonwhite passed from group to group, even as the complexion of the region changed. The region welcomed, then excluded, immigrants, in restless waves of need and nativism that continue to this day.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration

Introduction: Defining Themes—The West, Westerners, and Whiteness
Prelude: Western Immigrant Experiences

Part 1. Laying the Groundwork: Immigrants and Immigration Laws, Old and New, 1870s - 1903
1. Immigrant Stories from the West
2. The Draw of the Late-Nineteenth-Century West
3. Where in the West Were They?
4. Targets of Racism: Chinese and Others on the Mainland and Hawaii
5. The Scandinavians and Step Migration
6. The German Presence
7. Proximity of Homeland: The Mexicans
8. In the Year 1903
9. Foreshadowing Twentieth-Century Patterns

Part 2. Opening and Closing Doors, 1903 - 1923
10. Immigrant Stories and the West in the 1900s
11. Who Came?
12. The Dillingham Commission and the West
13. The Continuing Evolution of Immigration and Naturalization Issues and Policies (Asians)
14. Miners, Merchants, and Entrepreneurs: Europeans Compete with Europeans (Greeks and Others)
15. Land, Labor, and Immigrant Communities: Hawaii and the Mainland (Asians, Portuguese, Armenians, and Scandinavians)
16. Newcomers, Old and New (Italians, Basques, French, and Mexicans)
17. The First World War and Americanization
18. State and Federal Laws and Decisions, 1917 - 1920
19. The Early 1920s: Threshold of Momentous Changes

Part 3. "Give me a bug, please": Restriction and Repatriation, Accommodation and Americanization, 1923 - 1941
20. A World of Peoples: The 1920s and 1930s
21. Demographic Trends: A Changing West and Changing Westerners
22. Institutionalizing the Quota System: 1924
23. Divided Yet Interlinked: The Rural West
24. Filipinos: The Newer Immigrant Wave Bridging the Rural and Urban West
25. Divided Yet Interlinked: The Urban West in the Interwar Years
26. Urban Landscapes and Ethnic Encounters
27. From "Reoccupation" to Repatriation: Mexicans in the Southwest between the Wars
28. Darker Turns during the Interwar Years: Workers and Refugees
29. Aliens and Race Issues on the Eve of the Second World War
30. Interwar or Interlude? Twilight and Dawn in the West

Part 4. America's Dilemma: Races, Refugees, and Reforms in an Age of World War and Cold War, 1942 - 1952
31. Voices from America on the Eve of War
32. War: Against All Those of Japanese Descent
33. The Second World War's Other Enemy Aliens: Italians and Germans
34. The Homefront in Wartime: Preface to an Era of Change
35. Wartime and Postwar Agricultural Issues: Land, Labor, Growers, and Unions
36. Immigrants and Ethnics in the Postwar Years
37. The Cold War Heats Up: The Politics of Immigration, 1950 - 1952
38. Dora and the Harbinger of Coming Events
39. Looking Back on America's Immigrant West

Appendix
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index

Sujets

• HISTORY
• Histoire
• Kilotón
• Óxido de carbono (II)
• Southwest
• State
• History of the Americas
• NM
• United States
• NV
• Local
• HI
• OK
• ID
• UT
• MT
• CA
• CO
• Immigration

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 11 mai 2007
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253027962
• Langue: English

Extrait

F ROM A LL P OINTS
American West in the Twentieth Century Martin Ridge and Walter Nugent, eds.
F ROM A LL P OINTS
America’s Immigrant West, 1870s–1952
Elliott Robert Barkan
Indiana University Press   /   Bloomington and Indianapolis
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press 601 North Morton Street Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
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© 2007 by Elliott Robert Barkan All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by anyinformation storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from thepublisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissionsconstitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of AmericanNational Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Barkan, Elliott Robert. From all points : America’s immigrant West, 1870s–1952 / Elliott Robert Barkan. p. cm.—(American West in the twentieth century) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN: 978-0-253-34851-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Minorities—West (U.S.)—History. 2. Immigrants—West (U.S.)—History. 3. Pioneers—West (U.S.)—History. 4. West (U.S.)—Emigration and immigration— History. 5. West (U.S.)—History. 6. West (U.S.)—Ethnic relations. 7. Pluralism (Social sciences)—West (U.S.)—History. 8. Acculturation—West (U.S.)—History. 9. Racism—West (U.S.)—History. 10. West (U.S.)—Social conditions. I. Title. F596.2.B37 2007 305.800978—dc22 2006032173
1  2  3  4  5  12  11  10  09  08  97
In memory of Libby Medrich (1909–2006), a woman of remarkable talents, humor, and love of life—as well as the mother of my beloved Bryn
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
Note on Translation and Transliteration
Introduction: Defining Themes—The West, Westerners, and Whiteness
Prelude: Western Immigrant Experiences
PART 1. Laying the Groundwork IMMIGRANTS AND IMMIGRATION LAWS, OLD AND NEW , 1870s–1903
  1. Immigrant Stories from the West
  2. The Draw of the Late-Nineteenth-Century West
  3. Where in the West Were They?
  4. Targets of Racism: Chinese and Others on the Mainland and Hawai‘i
  5. The Scandinavians and Step Migration
  6. The German Presence
  7. Proximity of Homeland: The Mexicans
  8. In the Year 1903
  9. Foreshadowing Twentieth-Century Patterns
PART 2. Opening and Closing Doors, 1903–1923
10. Immigrant Stories and the West in the 1900s
11. Who Came?
12. The Dillingham Commission and the West
13. The Continuing Evolution of Immigration and Naturalization Issues and Policies (Asians)
14. Miners, Merchants, and Entrepreneurs: Europeans Compete with Europeans (Greeks and Others)
15. Land, Labor, and Immigrant Communities: Hawai‘i and the Mainland (Asians, Portuguese, Armenians, and Scandinavians)
16. Newcomers, Old and New (Italians, Basques, French, and Mexicans)
17. The First World War and Americanization
18. State and Federal Laws and Decisions, 1917–1920
19. The Early 1920s: Threshold of Momentous Changes
PART 3. “Give me a bug, please” RESTRICTION AND REPATRIATION, ACCOMMODATION AND AMERICANIZATION, 1923–1941
20. A World of Peoples: The 1920s and 1930s
21. Demographic Trends: A Changing West and Changing Westerners
22. Institutionalizing the Quota System: 1924
23. Divided Yet Interlinked: The Rural West
24. Filipinos: The Newer Immigrant Wave Bridging the Rural and Urban West
25. Divided Yet Interlinked: The Urban West in the Interwar Years
26. Urban Landscapes and Ethnic Encounters
27. From “Reoccupation” to Repatriation: Mexicans in the Southwest between the Wars
28. Darker Turns during the Interwar Years: Workers and Refugees
29. Aliens and Race Issues on the Eve of the Second World War
30. Interwar or Interlude? Twilight and Dawn in the West
Part 4. America’s Dilemma RACES, REFUGEES, AND REFORMS IN AN AGE OF WORLD WAR AND COLD WAR , 1942–1952
31. Voices from America on the Eve of War
32. War: Against All Those of Japanese Descent
33. The Second World War’s Other Enemy Aliens: Italians and Germans
34. The Homefront in Wartime: Preface to an Era of Change
35. Wartime and Postwar Agricultural Issues: Land, Labor, Growers, and Unions
36. Immigrants and Ethnics in the Postwar West
37. The Cold War Heats Up: The Politics of Immigration, 1950–1952
38. Dora and the Harbinger of Coming Events
39. Looking Back on America’s Immigrant West
Appendix
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Photos appear after pages 154 and 346 .
PREFACE
R ICHARD W HITE , the eminent historian of the American West, observedthat just as people ignored garbage along trails, so Frederick Jackson Turnerand his followers “eliminated from their history as so much human garbagemost of the diverse peoples of the West ... whose presence endangered their[thesis regarding the region’s] homogeneity.” Turner’s memorable thesis includeda discussion of the moving frontier as the site of the evolution of a compositeAmerican nationality based essentially on Protestant northern Europeans.However, so beguiling and persuasive was his 1893 essay that it created aninterpretive “box” from which western historians and writers have been strugglingto break free. Ninety years later, Frederick Luebke took western historiansto task for treating “their subject as the story of an undifferentiated English-speakingmajority.” However, fifteen years later, he was lamenting,“European immigrants are the forgotten people of the American West.” Butthat did not signify an adequate coverage of those “others,” for when it cameto the region’s ethnic diversity, most works that were not focused on a specificgroup have been limited, one-dimensional, at best providing little more thana checklist of some ethnic peoples present. Although several authors in GeraldNash and Richard Etulain’s collection Researching Western History: Topics inthe Twentieth Century (1997)—notably Roger Lotchin, Glenda Riley, andRobert Cherny—did address the larger reality, overall the remarkable array ofimmigrants in the West has been left, figuratively speaking, in the wings andrarely moved to center stage in the region’s history. 1
Notwithstanding the increasing appearance of individual works on Asianand Latino populations, Jews, and peoples from the Middle East (along withAfrican Americans, and Native Americans), we would not be going far afield tomodify Luebke’s observation to conclude that, on several levels, “many groups of immigrants are still the forgotten people of the American West.” Newsstories and discussions concerning, for example, undocumented aliens, amnesty,NAFTA, race relations, California’s Proposition 187 (1994), and Arizona’sProposition 200 (2004) do not make it emphatically clear, as I earlier wrote, that“the vast achievements in the West in the 20th century were made possibleprincipally because immigrant men and women and often their children providedmuch ... of the labor”—frequently along with their material resources,creativity, and entrepreneurialism. 2
At the beginning of the 20th century somewhat less than 10 percent of the nation’sforeign born resided in the West. 3 By 1950, some 17.6 percent did so, and by2000 nearly 47 percent. Put another way, 15.4 percent of the West’s population in1900 was foreign born compared with 13.5 percent in the rest of the nation. At theend of the century, 17.4 percent of westerners were immigrants as opposed to lessthan half that elsewhere (8.4 percent). Immigrants and their children have consistentlycomprised a significant portion of the West’s population.
The principal objective of this book is to tell their story. It goes beyond accountsof one group or cohort of immigrants and explores the collective experiencesof ethnic groups over time and place. Only in this way is it possible toshow how, time and again, immigrants were critical to the growth of theregion—economically, socially, and culturally. Some groups do stand out,usually by virtue of their greater numbers and economic roles, but only by examiningthe extraordinary array of peoples who have been present can the fullmeasure of their impact be understood. In other words, the history of the Westis a mosaic of rich hues and variations representing its myriad populations,with the edges of each blurring into one another as peoples met, worked in thesame places, lived nearby and sometimes as neighbors, sent their children tothe same schools, and gradually socialized, dated, and married across ethnicboundaries. Not all did so, of course, but many did, in the process sharing experiences,values, customs, and foods.
This is a narrative about peoples (not a people) and a