In a nation formed through settler colonialism, the distinction between welcome new arrivals and illegitimate immigrants has always depended on shifting lines of “race” and “criminality.” As political scientist Krzysztof Wasilewski writes, in the 1880s, tarring immigrants as anarchists became a convenient way for American media to smear labor organizing.
Following the Long Depression from 1873 to 1879, Wasilewski writes, new technologies and developments spurred export-driven growth in the US economy. But company owners kept the resulting gains for themselves, leading to strikes and labor unrest demanding better pay and shorter hours. Many workers viewed immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe as part of the problem, since employers often used them as strikebreakers, relying on their desperation and the difficulty of uniting workers across lines of language and culture.
At the same time, some European immigrants were active labor organizers. It was members of this group who were targeted in the 1886 Haymarket Affair. Following a deadly bombing during protests for the eight-hour day, immigrant union leaders and radical journalists were blamed, with little evidence, and four were executed.
Newspapers suggested that they were secretly working with the German government toward “the destruction of the American trade union movement.” This conveniently positioned foreigners and their ideology as the enemy of both American capital and American labor.
Following the trial, Wasilewski writes, this framework spread to media discussions of immigration generally. Most newspapers positioned themselves as allies of working Americans. But some argued that workers should advance their own interests through explicitly American organizations like the Knights of Labor, while still others suggested that the system would naturally work for them as long as they worked hard and conducted themselves in correct, patriotic fashion.
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Printing Anarchy
In practice, the media often treated any labor activism, and any criticism of business elites, as the result of scheming or ignorant foreign actors.
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At The Washington Post—a paper that had previously pushed for the expulsion of Asian immigrants—one columnist wrote that anarchism wouldn’t attract US workers because “the native American is without a doubt the most perfect existing form of humanity.” The Post, along with The New York Times and other papers, supported raising a special tax on immigrants to “get rid of the anarchist element.”
During the 1887 congressional election, Wasilewski writes, Republican candidates and parties called for banning and deporting immigrants who were politically or otherwise objectionable. Future president William McKinley proposed allowing “well-oriented and entrepreneurial immigrants” while addressing immigration that threatened the nation’s “peace and order” or the “integrity and character of its citizens.”
While no anti-immigrant legislation passed immediately, the issue festered until the passage of a new law in 1903 aimed at “the uncertain element,” including anarchists.
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