Other immigrants: Mexicans and the Dillingham commission of 1907-1911

Journal of American Ethnic History

Volumn 30, Issue 2, 2011, Pages 33-57

  Benton Cohen, Katherine ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 79953670155     PISSN: 02785927     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.5406/jamerethnhist.30.2.0033     Document Type: Article

References (120)

1. Frederick C. Croxton, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 3, Statistical Review of Immigration, 1820-1910-Distribution of Immigrants, 1850-1900 (Washington, DC, 1911), 11.
2. Daniel Folkmar, with Elnora Folkmar, Reports of the Immigration Commission vol. 5, Dictionary of Races or Peoples (Washington, DC, 1911), 8. The reports are digitized at http://library.stanford.edu/depts/dlp/ebrary/ dillingham/body.shtml; most also appear at http:// ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ immigration/themes-dillingham.html (accessed February 25, 2010)
3. John Higham used the term in Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism 1860-1925 (New Brunswick, NJ, 1955), 169;
4. then Robert Orsi in The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 2d ed. (New Haven, CT, 2002);
5. and then James R. Barrett and David Roediger in "Inbetween Peoples: Race, Nationality, and the 'New Immigrant' Working Class," Journal of American Ethnic History 16, no. 3 (1997): 3-45.
6. Robert Zeidel, Immigrants, Progressives, and Exclusion Politics: The Dillingham Commission, 1900-1927 (DeKalb, IL, 2004), chap. 1.
7. Oscar Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life (1950; repr., New York, 1957), chap. 5.
8. United States Immigration Commission, Brief Statement of the Investigations of the Immigration Commission, with Conclusions and Recommendations and Views of the Minority, vol. 1 (Washington, DC, 1911), 15;
9. Robert A. Divine, American Immigration Policy, 1924-1952 (New York, 1972).
10. W. Jett Lauck, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 6, Immigrants in Industries, pt. 1, Bituminous Coal Mining (Washington, DC, 1911), pt. II, 11.
11. Folkmar, Dictionary of Races or Peoples, 82-83.
12. Handlin's chapter on the Commission in Race and Nationality was entitled "Old Immigrants and New." See Isaac Hourwich, Immigration and Labor: The Economic Aspects of European Immigration to the United States (New York, 1912).
13. But see also Mae M. Ngai, "The Architecture of Race in American Immigration Law: A Reexamination of the Immigration Act of 1924," Journal of American History 86, no. 1 (June 1999): 44-69.
14. See, for example, Thomas J. Archdeacon, Becoming American: An Ethnic History (New York, 1983);
15. Maldwyn Allen Jones, American Immigration (1960; repr., Chicago, 1992), esp. 152-57;
16. Desmond King, Making Americans: Immigration, Race, and the Origins of the Diverse Democracy (Cambridge, MA, 2000);
17. Roger Daniels, Coming to America (1991; repr., New York, 2002);
18. Roger Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door: American Immigration Policy and Immigrants since 1882 (New York, 2004);
19. Charles Jaret, "Troubled by Newcomers: Anti-Immigrant Attitudes and Action during Two Eras of Mass Immigration to the United States," Journal of American Ethnic History 18, no. 3 (Spring 1999): 9-39;
20. and Lawrence H. Fuchs, "Immigration Reform in 1911 and 1981: The Role of Select Commissions," Journal of American Ethnic History 3, no. 1 (Fall 1983): 59-89.
21. But see Gunther Peck, Reinventing Free Labor: Padrones and Immigrant Workers in the North American West, 1880-1930 (Cambridge, UK, 2000), esp. 96-98;
22. and Ronald Takaki, A Different Mirror: A History of Multicultural America (Boston, 1993), 187n55.
23. On the western volumes, see Elliott Barkan, From All Points: America's Immigrant West, 1870s-1952 (Bloomington, IN, 2007).
24. I have found no recent surveys of Mexican American history that cite the reports at all. But see Mark Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow: Mexican Immigrant Labor in the United States, 1900-1940 (Westport, CT, 1976), chap. 1;
25. and Natalia Molina, Fit to Be Citizens? Public Health and Race in Los Angeles, 1879-1939 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 47-50.
26. Tomá Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley, CA, 1994),cites the abstracts, but mainly to discuss Japanese labor.
27. Also see Gilberto Cádenas, "United States Immigration Policy towards Mexico: A Historical Perspective," Chicano Law Review 2 (Summer 1975): 71.
28. "Senate Passes Coolie Measure," New York Times, February 17, 1907;
29. John Lund, "Boundaries of Restriction: The Dillingham Commission," UVM History Review 6 (December 1994), available at www.uvm.edu/~hag/histreview/vol6/lund.html (accessed August 31, 2009);
30. Daniel J. Tichenor, Dividing Lines: The Politics of Immigration Control in America (Princeton, NJ, 2002), 128-32.
31. On the passport measure in congressional debates, see "Restriction of Immigration," Congressional Record, 59th Cong., 2d sess., 1907, vol. 41, pt. 4, 3083-3089.
32. See, for example, "An Important Task," New-York Daily Tribune, May 5, 1907
33. "Substitutes for Asiatics," Los Angeles Times, May 8, 1908; and "Restriction of Immigration," 3083.
34. Archdeacon, Becoming American, 118.
35. Henry A. Millis, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 23, Immigrants in Industries, pt. 25, Japanese and Other Immigrant Races in the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain States (Washington, DC, 1911), 21-22.
36. "Papers and Discussions of the 23rd Annual Meeting, St. Louis, Missouri, December 1910," Bulletin of the American Economic Association, 4th series, no. 2 (April 1911): 246-47.
37. Archdeacon, Becoming American, 141; Niles Carpenter, Immigrants and Their Children, 1920: A Study Based on Census Statistics (Washington, DC, 1927), 119.
38. Lawrence A. Cardoso, Mexican Emigration to the United States, 1897-1931 (Tucson, AZ, 1980), 46-48.
39. Archdeacon, Becoming American, 118-19; but see Jaime R. Aguila, "Mexican/U.S. Immigration Policy Prior to the Great Depression," Diplomatic History 31, no. 2 (2007): 207-25, esp. 210-11.
40. Also see Mario Barrera, Race and Class in the Southwest: A Theory of Racial Inequality (Notre Dame, IN, 1979), 75.
41. Ángel Baldenegro, quoted in Katherine Benton-Cohen, Borderline Americans: Racial Division and Labor War in the Arizona Borderlands (Cambridge, MA, 2009), 91.
42. Henry A. Millis, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 25, Immigrants in Industries, pt. 25, Japanese and Other Immigration Races in the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain States, vol. 3 Diversified Industries (Washington, DC, 1911), 128.
43. The quotation appears in Reisler, By the Sweat of Their Brow, 13
44. and David Gutiérez, Walls and Mirrors: Mexican Americans, Mexican Immigrants, and the Politics of Ethnicity (Berkeley, CA, 1995), 47.
45. See also Handlin, Race and Nationality in American Life, 75.
46. Both quotations are in Mark Wyman, Round Trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930 (Ithaca, NY, 1993), 109.
47. U.S. Immigration Commission, Brief Statement, vol. 1, 41.
48. Aguila, "Mexican/U.S. Immigration Policy," 211.
49. These recommendations, though marginal to the Commission's work, did reveal whom they saw as relevant constituencies. U.S. Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission vol. 41, Statements and Recommendations Submitted by Societies and Organizations Interested in the Subject of Immigration (Washington, DC, 1911), 360.
50. "Coast Man Selected," Washington Post, March 27, 1907;
51. David H. Walker, A Genera Review: The Traffic Association of California (1895), 56, http://www.archive.org (accessed September 16, 2009).
52. Millis, Japanese and Other Immigrant Races, vol. 23, 41.
53. On eugenics and Dillingham members and staff, see Barbara M. Solomon, Ancestors and Immigrants, and Changing New England Tradition (Cambridge, MA, 1956), esp. 152;
54. The Journal of Heredity 6 (1915): 162;
55. and Warren Zimmermann, First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power (New York, 2002), 459.
56. For chronology, see Matthew Jacobson, Barbarian Virtues: The United States Encounters Foreign Peoples at Home and Abroad (New York, 2000), chap. 5;
57. Daniel E. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity, rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA, 1995), esp. 102-103;
58. and Handlin, Race and Nationality, 104-106. Lodge later served on the board of the Carnegie Institution, which was the major funder of American eugenic research. Dictionary of Races or Peoples coauthor Elnora Folkmar was a medical doctor and eugenic expert.
59. U.S. Immigration Commission, Statements and Recommendations, vol. 41, 103, 106, 289.
60. E. A. Ross, "The Causes of Race Superiority," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 18 (July 1901): 67-89, quotation on 85.
61. Nancy Leys Stepan, "The Hour of Eugenics": Race, Gender, and Nation in Latin America (Ithaca, NY, 1991).
62. Alexandra Minna Stern, Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America (Berkeley, CA, 2005).
63. See also Ngai, Architecture." 37.
64. Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America (Princeton, NJ, 2004).
65. Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race (Cambridge, MA, 1998), 7.
66. On Mexicans and whiteness, a good beginning is Ian Haney López, White by Law: The Legal Construction of Race (1996; repr., New York, 2006).
67. W. Jett Lauck, "The Economic Investigations of the United States Immigration Commission," Journal of Political Economy 18, no. 7 (July 1910): 527.
68. Henry A. Millis, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 24, Immigrants in Industries, pt. 25, Japanese and Other Immigrant Races in the Pacific Coast and Rocky Mountain States, vol. 2, Agriculture (Washington, DC, 1911), 412.
69. Jeremiah W. Jenks, "Some Difficulties in the Administration of Dependencies," Proceedings of the Twenty-Third Annual Meeting of the Lake Mohawk Conference of Friends of the Indian and Other Dependent Peoples, ed. Lillian D. Powers (New York, 1905), 80-113;
70. John Howard Brown, "Jeremiah Jenks: A Pioneer of Industrial Organization?" Journal of the History of Economic Thought 26 (March 2004): 69-89, esp. 82.
71. Here something larger is meant than just "internal colonialism," on which see Barrera, Race and Class in the Southwest.
72. On Lodge and Beveridge, see John A. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge: A Biography (1953; rev. ed., New York, 1968), 209.
73. Mark E. Pry Arizona and the Politics of Statehood, 1889-1912," (master's thesis, Arizona State University, 1995), 90-91
74. U.S. House, Committee of the Whole House, Committee on Territories, Statehood for the Territories, 59th Cong., 1st sess., 1906, H. Rep. 59-496;
75. Beatrice A. Cottrell, "Senate Action on the Omnibus Bill of 1902" (master's thesis, University of New Mexico, 1938), 12-17.
76. Pry, "Arizona and the Politics of Statehood," 112.
77. See, for example, L. S. Rowe, The United States and Porto Rico (New York, 1904), 130-39.
78. Walter L. Williams, "United States Indian Policy and the Debate over Philippine Annexation: Implications for the Origins of American Imperialism," Journal of American History 66 (March 1980): 810-31, quotation on 818.
79. Garraty, Henry Cabot Lodge, 195.
80. On "jingoism" and immigration restriction, see Zimmermann, First Great Triumph, 464. Meeting location in Commission minutes, William W. Husband Papers, Chicago History Museum, Chicago, IL.
81. John Nieto-Phillips, "Citizenship and Empire: Race, Language, and Self-Government in New Mexico and Puerto Rico, 1898-1917," Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies 11 (Fall 1999): 51-74.
82. On this point, the author thanks Theresa Alfaro-Velcamp and Jaime Aguila. See Josefina Zoraida Váquez and Lorenzo Meyer, The United States and Mexico (Chicago, 1985), 72-102;
83. and J. Fred Rippy, The United States and Mexico (New York, 1931), esp. vii.
84. But see also Thomas McCormick, "From Old Empire to New: The Changing Dynamics and Tactics of American Empire," in Colonial Crucible: Empire in the Making of the Modern American State, ed. Alfred McCoy and Francisco Scarano (Madison, WI, 2009), 74-76.
85. Cardoso, Mexican Emigration, 18, 30-31, 55-56.
86. On Mexicans, see, for example, Lauck, Reports, vol. 6, Bituminous Coal Mining, part II, 50. On Europeans
87. Lilian Whiting, The Land of Enchantment: From Pike's Peak to the Pacific (New York, 1906), 182.
88. See Lund, "Boundaries of Restriction"; and Lund, "Vermont Nativism: William Paul Dillingham and U.S. Immigration Legislation" (paper presented at The Historical Society Annual Meeting, Baltimore, MD, June 2008).
89. Representative John L. Burnett to Secretary William B. Wilson, May 27, 1917 and June 2, 1917, Folder 54261/202, RG 85.
90. Memo from William B. Wilson to Commissioners of Immigration and Inspectors in Charge of District, December 18, 1918, ibid.
91. Millis, Japanese and Other Immigrant Races, vol. 24, 287;
92. Millis, Japanese and Other Immigrant Races, ibid., vol. 25, 95.
93. On the cuts, see Zeidel, Immigrants, Progressives, and Exclusion Politics, 82-85.
94. Emanuel A. Goldenweiser, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vols. 26-27, Immigrants in Cities: A Study of the Population of Selected Districts in New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Milwaukee (Washington, DC, 1911);
95. W. Jett Lauck, ibid., vol. 13, Slaughtering and Meat Packing.
96. Jessie C. Lloyd, ibid., vols. 34-35, Immigrants as Charity Seekers.
97. Jeremiah W. Jenks and W. Jett Lauck, The Immigration Problem (New York, 1912).
98. Millis, Reports, vol. 25.
99. Japanese and Other Immigrants, 287, 95.
100. Leslie Hayford, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 36, Immigration and Crime (Washington, DC, 1911), 230, 231
101. See also Barkan, From All Points, 118-21
102. Millis, Reports of the Immigration Commission, vol. 25, Japanese and Other Immigrants, 13;
103. Lauck, Reports, vol. 6, Bituminous Coal Mining, pt. I, 52, and pt. II, 46, 50;
104. Alexander E. Cance, Reports, vol. 22, Immigrants in Industries, pt. 24, Recent Immigrants in Agriculture, vol. 2 (Washington, DC, 1911), 470.
105. Millis, Reports, vol. 25, Japanese and Other Immigrants, 13;
106. "No Foreign Labor Wanted," Bisbee Daily Review, May 27, 1903, 1.
107. On dual wages in the Southwest, see inter alia, Camille Guerin-Gonzales, "The International Migration of Workers and Segmented Labor: Mexican Immigrant Workers in California Industrial Agriculture, 1900-1940," in The Politics of Immigrant Workers: Labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy since 1830, ed. Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Carl Strikwerda (New York, 1993), 155-74.
108. On this point, see Reisler, Sweat of their Brow, chap. 1; and Mario T. García, Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880-1920 (New Haven, CT, 1981), 90.
109. Mario T. García, Desert Immigrants: The Mexicans of El Paso, 1880-1920 (New Haven, CT, 1981), 90
110. See also García, Desert Immigrants, 90-91.
111. See Benton-Cohen, Borderline Americans; and Phylis Martinelli, Undermining Race: Ethnic Identities in Arizona Mining Camps, 1880-1920 (Tucson, AZ, 2009).
112. Millis, Reports, vol. 25, pt. 1, Japanese and Other Immigrants, 22-23.
113. Lauck, Reports, vol. 6, pt. 2, Bituminous Coal Mining, 116, 119;
114. W. Jett Lauck, Reports, vol. 19, Summary Report on Immigrants in Manufacturing and Mining, (Washington, DC, 1911), 186-87. 87.
115. W. Jett Lauck, who oversaw the Immigrants in Industries studies, finally noticed a "large influx of Mexicans" in "The New Immigration," American Review of Reviews (December 1920), 621, copy in Immigration Press (folder 4 of 4)
116. W. Jett Lauck Papers, Box 80, File 1912-1928, File 1912-1928, Small Special Collections Library, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA.
117. Cádenas, "United States Immigration Policy," 68-70;
118. Reisler, By the Sweat of their Brows;
119. Ngai, Impossible Subjects;
120. Lynne M. Getz, "Biological Determinism in the Making of Immigration Policy in the 1920s," International Social Science Review 70, no. 1 (1995): 26-33, esp. 29.