NATIVISM IN VIRGINIA IN THE 1890s

by Patrick Reed

PREFACE

    To attempt a discussion of nativism in a region that was largely ignored by foreigners may seem like an unpromising, if not hopeless, undertaking. But in light of the extreme xenophobia which existed after 1915 in the South, still a region without the benefit of a large immigrant population, it is not unnatural to search for roots in the southern past. The 1890s, a decade which witnessed the arrival of record numbers of immigrants on American shores and the eruption of rabid anti-foreign and anti-Catholic sentiments in some sections of the country, is the obvious period to examine. And Virginia, a representative southern state yet located in the northeastern corner of the region, is an attractive area on which to focus.

    The study of a phenomenon such as nativism involves a search for public opinion. In the pre-Gallup era, such an approach naturally involves certain risks. For example, the opinions expressed in newspapers and periodicals of the period may not accurately represent the feelings of the entire population. There is also danger in ascribing the attitudes of Virginians to the South as a whole, just as it is risky to assume that southern spokesmen expressed the ideas of Virginians. On the other hand, it would be unwise to ignore contemporary southern sources, for just as the state's newspapers reflected as well as created public opinion, regional periodicals were read by, and in turn influenced by Virginians.

    Immigration and restriction of immigration were by no means the most important issues facing Virginians during the 1890s. Southerners were much more concerned with the stresses of agrarian revolt, embodied in the Populist movement, with its demands for economic and social reform. But the availability of land and the need for capital and labor in the South made the desirability of foreign immigration a popular topic for discussion. The numerous conventions and conferences on the issue, both in Virginia and throughout the South, afford an excellent opportunity to discover the attitudes of southern business and industrial leaders, and of state government officials. Confrontations between native Virginians and foreigners were, of course, rare. Only in the case of the state's German population, which was a relatively large and articulate group, is it possible to examine Virginians' direct reaction to an immigrant culture on a large scale and, in turn, to discover a foreign group's attitude toward other immigrants. However, the lack of first-hand experience with other immigrant groups did not keep Virginians from forming opinions on the desirability or undesirability of these nationalities. Though their attitudes are often clearly expressed, it is necessary at times to premise findings upon Virginians’ attitudes on different but related subjects, such as the southern principle of white racial superiority. But despite the infrequency of direct confrontations, there is ample evidence to conclude that the southern nativist outburst of the early twentieth century, at least in the case of Virginia, was more than a sudden response to an immediate external danger; it was rather the intensification of a long standing southern self-consciousness and regional pride.

    This essay began as a research paper in a seminar in recent American history at the University of Virginia. I wish to express my gratitude to Professor E. E. Younger for guiding me to this fascinating topic, and to Dr. J. F. Kett for reading the paper. I especially wish to thank my brother Kirk Reed, at the University of Chicago, for his many valuable comments and criticisms. For the paper's remaining deficiencies, the author retains responsibility.

    Immigration into the United States increased dramatically during the last two decades of the nineteenth century. Some of these newcomers settled on farm lands in the West, but an increasing number crowded into the cities of the East and Midwest. Native Americans began to attribute the growing social problems of those years to the rapid influx of immigrants, many of whom were considered unassimilable. The restriction movement steadily gained momentum during the 1890's, and was supplemented by savage antiforeign and anti-Catholic outbursts in most sections of the country.

    Meanwhile, the southern states were left largely untouched by the flood of immigrants., Unlike many northerners, who sought to limit the flow, Southerners made numerous efforts to turn the tide of immigration toward their region. This fact has led many observers to conclude that the South was not a participant in the nativist uprisings of the 1890's. John Higham, the foremost historian on American nativism, Lound that "Southern spokesmen in the late nineteenth century seldom attacked immigrants in terms of race .... Moreover, economic interests kept every kind of nativism so well in check that in January 1898, southern Senators voted 15 to 3 against the literacy test, supplying more than half the opposition to it. Higham argued that "Southern views on immigration underwent an astonishing revolution in the early twentieth century," and only then did the South become "the nativist section par excellence."1 In a 1951 study, Rowland T. Berthoff, another prominent immigration historian, found that while "planters, land speculators, railroads, industrialists, and the state governments" were actively seeking immigrants, "the popular southern attitude was hostile. Thus two opposing points of view developed during these years in a section which ... was never significantly affected by immigrants."2

    Between 1865 and 1900, practically all Southerners had recognized the benefits to be gained by an increase in population. They realized that if the South were to compete with the more prosperous sections of the country, she would have to break the bonds of her stagnant agricultural economy and exploit her abundant natural resources. But while Virginians certainly wished to participate in a southern economic rejuvenation, an examination of their attitudes toward immigration reveals some significant differences from the findings of Higham and Berthoff.

    Contrary to Higham's contention, Virginians frequently relied on racial criteria to distinguish between desirable and undesirable immigrants. Furthermore, the example cited by Higham to prove that southern nativism was suppressed before 1900 was merely a misleading exception, not at all reoresentative of the attitudes of most Southerners at that time. And at variance with Berthoff's conclusion that two contradictory opinions developed simultaneously, this study reveals rather a consensus attitude among Virginians toward foreigners. Even among those most actively promoting immigration efforts, a consistent set of qualifications was becoming ever more rigidly applied to the type of immigrant sought.

    After the Civil War, the desire for immigration in the South arose from the need for unskilled agricultural labor. Plantation owners complained that the newly-freed blacks were no longer dependable workers, as the more ambitious often migrated to the cities or to the North, leaving only the "lazy and shiftless" behind to work the fields. Some southern whites hoped that a class of white immigrant laborers would stimulate further emigration of blacks from the region, while others merely wanted to supplement the inadequate labor force and thereby keep farm wages low.3 Meanwhile, southern land speculators were seeking to profit from sales to northern and European immigrants, and the southern railroads, expanding rapidly after 1880, initiated further efforts to recruit settlers. These private interests often printed brochures and maintained immigration agents in the North and abroad to distribute their advertisements on the advantages of the South.

    Virginians actively participated in these enterprises. In 1866 Virginia established a state board of immigration, whose function it was to "carry into operation a practical plan for introduction of sober and industrious emigrants, with their families, from Europe, and especially from Scotland and England, into this state." The General Assembly passed seventeen acts and resolutions between 1866 and 1879 encouraging immigration into the state, and six different land companies were incorporated and authorized to develop Virginia's resources and seek immigrants. However, in 1888 the General Assembly found that "it is deemed expedient in the present condition of the commonwealth to abolish the board of immigration,"4 an action no doubt stimulated by the board’s utter failure to achieve the desired results. By 1890 barely 1% of the state's population was foreign born, compared to almost 15% of the nation’s total population.5

    The closing of the immigration agency in 1888 by no means meant that Virginia was abandoning all efforts to attract a desirable class of settlers. It simply marked a change in strategy, for in the same year the state began to take part in regional efforts to draw the attention of potential immigrants to the South. The movement got under way that spring with the organization of the Southern Immigration Association at Hot Springs, North Carolina. Delegates from eleven southern states, including Governor Fitzhugh Lee of Virginia, expressed the hope that railroads, industries, chambers of commerce, and other organizations would unite in their efforts to attract capital and settlers to the region. But while praising the spirit of the meeting, the Manufacturers' Record of Baltimore, the South's leading exponent of industrial expansion, urged the organization to proceed with caution: "The South needs many more men of capital ... but it does not need mere muscle.... The South has happily escaped the evils attendant upon the employment of foreign laborers at the North. It will lend no aid to any who wish to bring that element into its borders.... Settlers from the Northwest are valuable additions to our population.… The South is the place for them, but not for the hordes who are coming by thousands weekly from European ports. If the [Southern Immigration Association] will announce that their efforts will be directed solely to promoting the immigration of English speaking people, they will receive all the moral and material support they desire. If, on the other hand, they establish agencies on the European continent, and attempt to pour into the South the same class of immigrants that have been landing in New York and Canada for the last fifteen years, they will be opposed by nine-tenths of the Southern people."6

    Virginia Governor Philip W. McKinney appointed G. W. B. Hale, later a prominent Populist, the state's delegate to the Interstate Immigration Convention at Asheville, North Carolina, in December 1890. This body evidently heeded the warning of the Manufacturers' Record, for there was no mention of efforts to recruit settlers abroad. The only plan advanced by the convention was to engage "speakers who will address meetings in the East, North, and West, and contend against the prejudice against the South."7

    A cautious attitude toward outsiders was evident in the Virginia press as early as 1892. That year the Richmond Dispatch revealed its position on foreign immigration: "This country should ever be a haven of refuge for the worthy neople of all lands who may desire to make their homes with us, but ... our hospitable sentiment has been too often imposed upon, and now there should be upon, and now there should be ... a restriction put upon the reception of immigrants who have no appreciation of our institutions and whose presence among us a menace to peace and good order. It is disgraceful that we should have allowed America to become Europe's dumping ground."8 Thus, even during the most active efforts to secure immigrants, one of the state's leading newspapers was advocating a careful selectivity.

    In the spring of 1893, Virginians made their most impressive bid to attract settlers by hosting a Southern Governors’ Conference in Richmond. While the expressed aim of the convention was to point out the advantages of the South "as a home for the immigrant of small means," and although the convention's final resolution issued an invitation to any worthy immigrant, "without regard to his religion, his politics, or his nativity,"9 the delegates appeared much more selective in their individual statements of preference. Governor Elias Carr of North Carolina denied, in effect, that his state sought immigrants "of small means." He stated that "North Carolina desired exactly what Virginia desired in the way of immigration--settlers that either had money or were skilled in some one of the manufacturing arts." Another North Carolina delegate felt the South "should look principally to the North and the West for settlers," as more could be gained there "than from any effort to advertise the advantages of the South abroad." The delegates from Tennessee criticized "indiscriminate foreign immigration, ... favor[ing] efforts to secure home-seekers who are natives of this country." They vigorously opposed the introduction "of large bodies of foreigners speaking different languages, and nurtured under distinctly different social and political systems."10 A reporter for the Dispatch found that "the consensus of opinion as gathered from all the delegates to the Convention was that the South did not desire such immigrants as constitute the masses that are dumped at Castle Garden." Convention members also agreed "that it would be best to discountenance the immigration of labor to the South."ll With such a negative approach, it is not surprising that the convention accomplished absolutely nothing.

    In the wake of the Governors’ Convention, the Manufacturers' Record offered the following explanation of the attempts to acquire immigrants: "The present efforts are not designed to stimulate a southward movement of cheap foreign labor, but to secure a much larger influx of home-seekers." Although the Record no longer condemned all non-English speaking foreigners, it discouraged immigration of such groups as the Irish, Poles, Hungarians, and Italians, pointing instead to "Germany and Sweden as the most productive fields to work, [with] England, Scotland, and Switzerland ... also good territory."l2

    Many Virginians were likewise urging the South to proceed with caution in its immigration efforts. In 1894, the Wytheville Patriot-Herald, a Republican organ, argued that the South should "not turn to Europe for immigrants to fill her spare room" and even endorsed such statements as "We must weed out the human rubbish coming to our shores year after year."13 The Norfolk Virginian-Pilot hoped that newly opened lands in Russia would act as "a safety valve for the United States," checking the tide of "European paupers" pouring into the country. Soon the Pilot became outspokenly restrictionist, calling it a "national duty" to regulate the flow and recommending the literacy test as "a valuable protection against the invasion of ignorant and irresponsible hordes."14

    The lack of tangible results from the Richmond Governors’ Conference led to yet another convention in Augusta, Georgia, in 1894. Heavily subsidized by southern railroads and industrial interests, the Augusta conferees, which included Virginia Governor Charles T. O'Ferrall, confidently announced that they "expected to attract a few million new settlers."15 But once again, as at the Richmond meeting, neither delegates nor observers were willing to welcome just anyone. Senator Thomas J. Jarvis from North Carolina commented that "strikes and strife among labor were unknown among southern negroes, and the South does not desire indiscriminate immigration.... It wants only such people as can conform to our civilization, and become good citizens." A South Carolina newspaper questioned the very purpose of the convention: "Why should we [invite] strangers to come into our homes with their strange ways?... Why should we spend our time and money in trying to devise ways to induce him to come and divide our goodly inheritance with us?"16

    The Augusta conference was once again a disappointment, and its failure prompted Colonel Pat Donan, Vice President of the National Immigration and Colonization Company of Washington, D. C., and A. J. Millikin, a southern Virginia industrialist, to offer the following explanation for the inability of the regional conventions to achieve practical results: "Southern immigration and development conventions have been ... held over and over for years, and the programme has never varied. A lot of highly estimable gentlemen, well-meaning and of good pedigee, get together. After divers rounds of juleps ... they 'point with pride’ to the unparalleled ... advantages of the South…. They announce their quenchless eagerness to welcome honest and industrious settlers--who will not meddle with politics--to the sun-kissed land of Dixie. They have stump speeches from ... old-hacky politicians, pass a string of high-sounding resolutions--and adjourn. Then they sit down to wait for the mighty incoming rush of brain and brawn and boodle--that never comes. There is rarely one practical business idea in the whole performance, and it naturally results in naught."17 When the failure of the Augusta meeting became apparent, the regional convention approach for seeking settlers and capital was abandoned. Virginians made one final organized effort to attract immigrants at a State Immigration Convention in October 1894, but because of the important role played by representatives of the state's German citizens at this convention, it is necessary first to examine Virginians' reaction to this immigrant group.

    Virginia’s German -Americans were by far her largest and most distinctive immigrant group in the 1890s. Small German communities could be found in several parts of the state, but the most articulate and cohesive group lived in the Richmond area. Though many of these Germans were second- and even third-generation Americans, they held tightly to their cultural heritage and, above all, to their honored German language. In 1894, University of Virginia Professor Schele de Vere, a German by birth, urged them to "cling to all that is great and glorious in the history of the Fatherland,"18 and in 1897, a German minister exhorted them to "keep the language pure and undefiled," for it "is a blessing in an educational and religious sense."19 In 1890, a German-American Association was formed, its object "to strengthen the self-esteem which we, as German-born or descendants of German parents, should always maintain."20 The organization also sponsored an annual "German Day" in Richmond to commemorate the founding of the first German colony in America in 1714.

    There were occasional references by Germans to "fanatical persecution ... against our immigrants and even against our beautiful German language ... by both the schools and secret organizations."21 Although it is impossible to determine the precise circumstances of such incidents, in 1894 President Alfred von N. Rosenegk of the German-American Association referred specifically to a "recent shameful attack upon and to the disgraceful expression used against [us]." A man named Blackwell, the head of an organization, and his tools acted in a very unbrotherly manner towards their brethren in a very un-American spirit."22 The Association reacted to these attacks by seeking to divorce itself from all political and religious issues, stressing its social and cultural functions instead. By 1895 President Rosenegk was able to announce that "there has been formed out of the German lodge ... a new independent, and much stronger German society that cannot possibly be subjected to nativeism [sic]."23

    The anti-German outbursts, however, represented the actions of only a small group of Virginians, for despite the Germans’ maintenance of a distinct cultural identity, a great number of Virginians continually praised them for their "ready adaptation to the habits, thoughts, and aspirations of our country."24 In 1890 the Richmond State noted that "in law, the pulpit, the press, the medical profession and in all branches of business they have fitting representatives [who] reflect the honor of their race."25 The Dispatch termed them ''peaceful, law-abiding citizens, and expressed the hope "that Virginia could secure every year many thousands of them.... They could ... be of inestimable value to us."26 In 1895 Governor O'Ferrall told them, "You come of a great race--a race [characterized by] honesty, faithfulness, valor, thoughtfulness, perseverance, and industry,"27 and even the restrictionist Norfolk Virginian-Pilot expressed "great respect for the German people, ... who not only furnish a large proportion of our best living citizenship, but have supplied a large proportion of our best ancestry."28 By far the most benevolent praise for the German immigrants came from the mouths of Germans themselves. President Rosenegk felt the German-Americans were "the best citizens, always fulfilling their duty, are self-sacrificing to the highest degree, and do not ask more than their rights."29 Other German spokesmen discussed, in filiopietistic terms, their many contributions to American life, such as the Christmas celebration, German music, and the kindergarten.30 The culmination of this self-glorification came in the prayer of Reverend Paul L. Menzel at the opening of German Day exercises in 1890: "German blood it was that regenerated the rotten nations of the Old World. In England and France, in Spain and Italy beautiful blossoms of a new culture were developed under the influence of that new spirit of life that rushed out of the oak forests of old Germany. [German] industry changed the barren wilderness [of America] into one large, delightful garden. And now, 0 Father, Thou knowest how little thanks we have received.... Oh, we confess ... that the fault has been partly ours.... Too often in misplaced modesty [!] we disregarded our own nationality.... Help us, O God, to lay aside [this weakness and] enable us better to cultivate our sacred inheritance."3l Yet in spite of this lack of humility, Virginians continued to feel that the Germans "never were among the noisy and boisterous braggadocios who constantly boast of their achievements."32

    One reason for the ready acceptance of the Germans by native Virginians was the Germans’ frequent oaths of loyalty to their adopted country and state. In 1890 President Rosenegk of the German-American Association pledged, "We have left our mother to live with our consort and are prepared to defend her against one and all, even, if it should be needed, against our own mother."33 Another representative declared that the Germans were ever "ready to espouse the cause of their adopted country, while clinging. tenderly to the customs of the Fatherland."34 President Rosenegk undoubtedly touched a sympathetic chord in 1896 when he compared German-Americans’ regard for the Fatherland with southern reminiscences of the Confederacy.35 Virginians also appreciated the Germans’ lack or political ambition, for as President Rosenegk noted, "We have never attempted to take a prominent position in politics; we have quietly and faithfully performed our duties as citizens."36

    Another explanation for the mutual acceptance of Germans and Virginians was the racial kinship they felt with one another. President Rosenegk, at the 1890 German Day celebration, declared, "No differences in religion or political views could keep us apart …, for are we not all of one Anglo-Saxon race?"37 The Dispatch replied that "our modern Christian civilization was upheld and borne by the Teutonic race," and characterized the Germans as a "calm, thrifty, hardy, reserved people, somewhat like their relatives, the English."38 And in 1897 Rabbi E. N. Calisch of the German-American Association spoke ominously of the marriage of Americans and Germans as "a union that is making for the dominant rational force of the world. The coming man will be the composite of what is best in all races of men; the coming nation, the composite of the best among the

nations of the earth. For this was America palpably designed.... Within one century have we grown from a mere rebellious Colony to be a conquering factor in the destiny of the human race .... The Germans are among, the best of the component elements of our nation's character.... All people [shall] learn from us and as the stripes of our flag shall belt the globe, it shall be a conquest ... that shall carry [America] on to the ultimate and perfected destiny of the human race.39

    A group of German-Americans played a very prominent role in Virginia’s last concerted effort to attract immigrants during the 1890s, the State Immigration Convention held at Richmond in October 1894. Representatives of the German-American Association were appointed to the "Committee on the Class of Immigrants Most Desired, and the Sections or Countries Abroad from Which it is Desirable to Secure Them," while other delegates, mostly representing the state's business interests, filled the various other compmittees.40 The same cautious attitude which had characterized earlier conventions was once again evident, and was enunciated by Governor O'Ferrall in his opening, address: "While a cordial greeting will be extended to all whose citizenship will add to our wealth in money, brain or muscle, we do not intend that Virginia shall become a Botany Bay, nor the abode of the vile and vicious.... Neither have we a welcome for the laggard or idler, for he is a poor and dangerous citizen."41 With these general criteria established, the delegates undertook to determine whom it desired and how these could be acquired.

    On the subject of the class of immigrants desired, the recommendation of the German-Americans was simple: "... farmers, honest and God-fearing, ... industrious and intelligent farmers." Praising farmers for their natural conservatism, a committee spokesman noted that "at all times and everywhere agriculture is the solid foundation of all true and sound culture." Although he gave preference to the American farmers of the West, the delegate had a special word of praise for the German agrarian, who "is fond of order and peace; not an office seeker, but always willing to sacrifice his blood and his good for the country of his choice."42

    The German-Americans were even more opinionated on the question of the most desirable areas in which to seek immigrants. Speaking for the committee, Reverend Paul L. Menzel advised against some types of foreign immigration: "We do not believe that the nations of the Latin race in Western and Southwestern Europe, or that those of the Slavonic race in the East and Southeast of that continent ought to be encouraged to immigrate into our beautiful State .... Most of them have achieved so little in their own countries that we would hardly be greatly benefited by them. But [then] there are the English, the Scotch, and the Scandanavians, all those nations of the North, who descend from one common parentage and are so closely related to us Germans.... No nation[ality] is more apt to get acclimated and assimilated to its surroundings than the Germans.... None make themselves more useful without boasting of their merits or claiming any rewards or distinctions."43

    Reverend Menzel’s recommendations received a tremendous ovation and a hearty endorsement from the convention. Reverend Dr. Georg H. Jay rose to comment that "the speech has struck the keynote of the matter," and T. J. Jackson, an Englishman who edited the Southern Planter, a farm journal, offered his agreement that those of the Latin race were not desirable. Still another delegate, Colonel J. P. Fitzgerald, added his congratulations with the words, "Sir, your speech may not be ours, but your heart is."44 Here was the unmistakable acceptance, by representatives of Virginia’s business interests, of a clearly nativist position toward the immigrants of southern and eastern Europe.

    The failure of the State Immigration Convention to achieve any practical results soon became apparent, and such meetings went the way of the fruitless regional conferences. In 1896 Virginia’s Commissioner of Agriculture, Colonel Thomas Whitehead, complained that "at present there is no state immigration movement--no law authorizing it, and until after the turn of the century, further efforts to stimulate immigration were left to the railroads, industrialists, and other private concerns. But even those efforts, faced with inevitable failure, slowly dwindled.

    Many Southerners blamed the country’s lagging economy for the South's inability to attract settlers, and they urged postponement of immigration efforts for a few years, at which time "the depression... will be changed to buoyancy and hopefulness."46 Some Virginians, meanwhile blamed poor roads, the lack of free Homestead lands, or the state’s harsh tax laws, which unlike the benefits offered newcomers in other states, tended to discriminate against "the provident and industrious man."47 Still other sources indicted northern and western immigration agents for misrepresenting the South to prospective immigrants by adding to "the ignorance of these people, originally dense."48 But Virginia’s black population received by far the greatest share of the blame. In 1893 the Dispatch complained, "It is these objectionable colored natives that cause so many more foreigners to settle [elsewhere],"49 and in 1894 a German immigrant expressed regret that blacks had been "put on equal political terms with the superior Caucasian race.... Their ignorance, indolence, and impotence stood and stand everywhere in the way of progress.... Wherever they live in great numbers, white settlers will not seek nor like to build up their houses."50

Less sympathetic voices charged that hostile southern attitudes were responsible for the failure to draw settlers into the region. Harper’s Weekly criticized "lawlessness" and the tendency in the South "to treat new-comers living among them as strangers, as intruders, who really do not ‘belong’ there."51 The New York Press blamed "Bourbonism" and the Washington Post "short-sighted bigotry," while the New York World flatly declared, "Immigrants venturing South are not cordially welcomed. It has been said, in fact, that they are scarcely even tolerated."52 This charge of intolerance toward newcomers was echoed in 1893 by a Harrisonburg, Virginia, Republican.53

   Whatever the reason for their inability to attract outsiders, Virginians were never willing to accept "the idea of bringing immigrants into the state in droves, ... of seeking quantity instead of quality."54 Their efforts having ended in failure, some Southerners called for a complete end to the movement. The Financial Index of Atlanta declared that "European immigration to the South is neither wanted nor needed.... We are unalterably opposed to immigration of a nonassimilative element."55 More progressive voices advocated continued but deliberate action: "The Manufacturers’Record heartily commends [the] intention ... to attract settlers from the North and West," and "of the better class of farmers from Germany, Great Britain, Sweden and Norway, no one interested in the advancement of the South wants to see that section overrun by the worst class of foreign immigrants."56 Even in frustration, Southerners were never willing to broaden their appeal to include classes of foreigners they considered undesirable.

    Though their opinions were seldom asked, southern blacks can hardly be described as enthusiastic about the movement to bring immigrants into the region. Blacks correctly viewed foreign workers as a threat to their already weak grasp on the southern economic ladder. For example, blacks near Petersburg, Virginia, found that they could not compete with a group of Czechoslovakian farmers, who had converted the sale of produce into a custom trade with local whites.57 Colonel J. D. Fitzgerald of Virginia revealed the desire of many southern whites to block advancement of blacks through the importation of foreigners: "The negro can only be worked as a hireling of the white man.... Let us, if our lands must be worked in shares, get white men to take the shares, and keep the negro with us as a laborer."58 Booker T. Washington expressed blacks' concern in a speech before southern business leaders in 1894: "If those of the white race look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, ‘cast down your bucket where you are, among, 8,000,000 negroes, whose habits you know, whose loyalty and love you have tested."59 Washington later warned that large scale immigration from southern Europe would result in "a racial problem in the South more difficult and more dangerous than that which is caused by the presence of the Negro."60

    As in the case of the blacks, southern white farmers only rarely made known their opinions of the efforts to acquire immigrants, as they had little first-hand experience with foreigners during the 1890s. The availability of land and the desire for unskilled white labor in the decade following the Civil War had prompted the Grangers to endorse immigration plans for a time, but slowly southern rural hostility to foreign influences began to emerge.61 At a convention of the newly-organized Farmer's Alliance and Co-operative Union at Shreveport, Louisiana, in 1887, representatives from ten southern states passed resolutions calling for "the passage of laws forbidding the ownership of lands by aliens," and opposing "the continued influx of pauper labor from the monarchies of Europe, whose anarchic views and communistic doctrines are breeding, discontent and disloyalty, ... and by an overplus of worthless labor, reducing our own laboring classes to starvation."62 Later the Virginia Alliance expressed opposition to land speculation by foreign syndicates, and the official organ of the Alliance, the Virginia Sun, endorsed the Populist demand for the prohibition of alien ownership of land.63 In 1890 an Alliance spokesman in Chase City, Virginia, compared the organization to the Democratic party in the South, which had "stood as a wall of fire between Anglo-Saxon civilization in the South and the fanatical and despotic spirit in the North."64

    The Southern States, a monthly publication of the Manufacturers’ Record concerning southern agricultural interest, reported the establishment of several German farming communities in Virginia during the 1890s, all apparently successful. The Germans near Meherrin were described as an example for native farmers, with whom they had frequent social intercourse. A group of German Baptists at Calverton were reported "well settled, prosperous and contented," as were other colonies in Wolf Trap, and in Fairfax and Lunenburg counties.65 A few colonies of Italian farmers, including one at Alexandria, Virginia, also received praise from Southerners, but natives were always careful to distinguish between the northern Italian, who often became a "useful citizen," and the southern Italian, "with his head full of anarchistic ideas and his belt full of concealed stilettos."66 In 1893 the Richmond State applauded the lynching of eight Italians, who had been found innocent of a crime, in New Orleans: "It certainly was terrible that an organized band of murderers should exist in a civilized community, and the community was justified in ridding itself of them."67

   Other eastern European farmers were likewise greeted with a degree of distrust by Virginians. A group of Hungarians in Lunenburg County were regarded "as curiosities by the citizens because of their shaggy appearances and muffled forms,"68 and a colony of Czechoslovakians, who migrated to the Petersburg.vicinity from Nebraska, met with open hostility. The first settler, who arrived in 1887, later recalled, "Many were not welcome.... The people around here called [us] ‘carpetbaggers’, because [we] had only so much property as could be tied up in a knot .... The Virginians tried to ruin everything with bad advice. There was no trust in the stores. They would not even trust you with a pinch of salt or some pepper."69 For the first ten years or so, Virginians continued to treat these Czech farmers with cynical indifference," referring to them as "gypsies" or "Bohemians," and ridiculing their foreign ways. Native Virginians were shocked by the apparent paternal domination in the Czech homes, by the heavy work performed by the women and children, and by the Czech's low standard of living. The immigrants were also held in contempt for their occasional dealings with blacks; they were supposed "to have eaten with them and to have shaken their hands, even to have called them ‘Mister’.70

    By 1900 the Czechoslovakians had established good credit with local businessmen and were even praised "for their hard work, honesty, and thrift." However, there was still no social intercourse between the two groups, and when Czechs attempted to teach in the local schools or run for local political office, they were sharply criticized. As late as forty years after the establishment of the colony, the Czechoslovakians remained socially isolated from the native community.71

    While the farmers of Virginia could hardly be called nativists during the 1890s, in their occasional encounters with different cultural groups they exhibited an unmistakably defensive position. It is riot surprising that in the twentieth century, after more extensive exposure to alien cultures, southern farmers contracted severe xenophobia. C. Vann Woodward offered the following explanation for the later intensification of their mistrust: "Frustrated in their age-long, and eternally losing struggle against a hostile industrial economy, the farmer ... eagerly welcomed exciting crusades against more vulnerable antagonists: against anything strange, and therefore evil."72

    Closely associated with the nativist outbursts of the 1890s in the North and Midwest is the ten-year career of the American Protective Association. At its peak in 1894, this anti-Catholic society listed 5600 members in Virginia, and a national membership of almost two and a half million.73 The A. P. A. may have been responsible for the attacks upon Richmond's German citizens, mentioned by President Rosenegk of the German-Arnerican Association, but as a secret organization, its membership and activities within the state are difficult to determine. However, the A. P. A. had no sympathizers among, the state's newspapers, and with such a small membership, it is safe to conclude that the organization had little success or influence in Virginia.74 The failure of the A. P. A. in the South was largely the result of southern apathy toward anti-Catholicism and the organization's close identity with the national Republican Party.75 There is no evidence of anti-Semitism in Virginia during the decade, but a small group of "free thinkers" among the Czechoslovakian community near Petersburg did receive criticism. One native Protestant congregation undertook to save these "Bohemian unbelievers," who were "trying to destroy belief in God." A local minister circulated a tract within the immigrant community, the text of which was, "The Fool Hath Said in his Heart, There is no God," and the native citizens were urged to pray fervently for the "heathens."76 Of greater concern to Virginians than foreign "free thinkers," though, were the state’s black congregations, with their fervent revivalism. The Dispatch expressed its distrust in 1890: "The negro churches so-called, are the most fertile source of Republican doctrine in the South. They are the wellsprings, indeed, of the most dangerous political teaching in this section."77

    While southern nativism was only occasionally stimulated by religious antipathy during the 1890s, the growing radicalism and industrial violence in the North played a significant part. The Haymarket riot and the Pullman strike frightened the most progressive Southerners into questioning the advantages industrial expansion would bring to their region. Even Henry Grady, in his famous "New South" address in 1886, had seen a danger in large-scale foreign immigration: "We have learned that one Northern immigrant is worth fifty foreigners."78 In 1893 the Richmond Dispatch insisted that "the South did not and does not now want a labor class of immigrants," and the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot added that the South would "have no socialist agitators, no anarchists-none, native or imported of the foul brood that threatens to debase or overturn society and destroy orderly government."79

    Virginians had little actual experience with foreign laborers during the 1890s; only in the mining districts in the western part of the state were there significant numbers. Between 1896 and 1900, several groups of Magyars, Slovaks, and southern Italians migrated into the region, and their cheap labor made possible the rapid development of the state's mining industry. The immigrants' living conditions were described as being quite inferior to those of native whites, and there was a marked tendency in the mining communities toward strict segregation between nationalities. Since jobs were plentiful and since the newcomers actually freed native workers for the easier, better paying jobs, natives displayed little open hostility toward the foreigners.80 But the reaction of at least one Virginia voice was not so passive: "The Virginian-Pilot knows it is not only heresy, but rank blasphemy, to cross-question any enterprise or capital that graciously comes among us. [But] what will it all profit Virginia and her people, with a horde of wild and pauper Hungarians, Italians and other proletarians, of the most objectionable sort imported to work ... at pauper wages? And then to degrade the State by an element worse than the barbarous Africans that first came to Virginia in Dutch ships and afterward in Yankee bottoms."81

    The Virginian-Pilot was by no means the only voice to question the New South creed of industrial development. Even the Manufacturers' Record hoped "that the day may never come when the characteristics and civilization of [the South] shall be sufficiently revolutionized or renovated to make it appropriate to call our country 'the New South.' For the South today is more distinctively American than any other section of the union."82 The Leesburg Washingtonian proudly repudiated the image of a changing South: "It is in the South that the language, the ideas and the practices of the American fathers find their most preservation. It is in the South that anarchy and other foreign teachings of social agitation have received the least encouragement. The day will come when every civilized citizen of the United States with Anglo-Saxon blood in his veins and the love of enlightened free institutions in his heart will be glad that it has changed in nothing."83 Frustrated by their inability to attract settlers and to revitalize their economy, Southerners were beginning to recognize in their Anglo-Saxon homogeneity an even more valuable possession, one which they were determined to guard at any price.

    Expressions of pride in southern homogeneity were frequent during the 1890S. Joshua W. Caldwell, a prominent Tennessee lawyer, wrote, "The strongest, most concentrated force of Americanism is in the Southern States, and Americanism is the most advanced form of Anglo-Saxon, of German civilization. There is no part of the globe except the kingdom of England which is so thoroughly and essentially Anglo-Saxon as the South."84 The Washington Post felt that one must go South [to] encounter a people who look, speak, think and feel like the men who wrested this country first from the untutored savages and afterward from the tyranny of princes."85 The Manufacturers’ Record credited "the conservatism of the Southern people and the inherent soundness of their principles" to "the fact that a population of unmixed Anglo-Saxonism has been trained under common law institutions to regard precedent and to venerate law and order and justice,"86 and the Virginian-Pilot noted that the South had "a population homogeneous, filled with honorable pride in an unbroken record of honest manhood."87 Satisfied with their racial purity, Southerners were determined to defend this heritage against any alien challenge.

    Even though few Southerners were familiar with the sophisticated racial theories which were becoming popular in the East, they had little difficulty learning to apply their long-held racial attitudes towards blacks to the small numbers of southern and eastern Europeans coming into their region. In fact, many Southerners viewed these "new" immigrants as an even greater danger, for unlike blacks, who remained a group apart at the bottom of the social ladder, the newcomers threatened to disrupt southern society, or worse, to debase the pure southern racial stock. Joshua Caldwell was only one of many who expressed such fears, arguing that "The Southern American, with his English, Scotch, Irish, Dutch, Huguenot ancestry, has enough diversity, and there is no reason why we should hybridize ourselves."88 The Southern States argued that "the immigration into this country from Southern and Eastern Europe ... will be a serious menace to the perpetuity of [southern] institutions,"89 and the Virginian-Pilot added, "We cannot but be ill-effected by this influx of pollution [from eastern Europe]."90 In 1897 southern Senators and Representatives voted 61 to 33 in favor of a literacy test requirement, a measure intended to exclude these "less desirable" immigrants.91

    Virginians displayed an even greater contempt for Asiatics than for southern and eastern Europeans. In 1882 Virginia Congressmen voted 8 to 0 for the Chinese exclusion bill,92 and in 1894 the Dispatch commented that Virginians found it "difficult to get their interest or sympathies aroused on the ... war between China and Japan. They cannot exactly bring themselves to concede that the Chinaman or the Jap is ‘a man and a brother’."93 An incident involving American citizens in China prompted the Virginian-Pilot to declare that "the best thing the United States can do for China is to turn a few big guns of our warships upon the Chinese cities and teach the heathen that American Christians cannot be plundered and murdered with impunity."94 The Pilot explained that immigration of Chinese had been halted in 1882 "not only because it furnished a cheap and degrading labor in unfair competition with ... our decent citizens, but because it adulterated, debased, defiled and poisoned our population and threatened to pollute the very sources of our citizenship."95

    The outbreak of the Spanish-American War in 1898 solidified southern racial attitudes, for while the South was generally unenthusiastic about colonial expansion, the popular imperialist doctrine of Anglo-Saxon superiority seemed to the South a vindication of her long-standing racial patterns. Furthermore, the co-operation between North and South in the war effort signaled the final reconciliation of the sections, and placed the South solidly within the mainstream of American nationalism.96 The defense of southern racial purity now became imbued with patriotic Americanism, another important ingredient in the twentieth century outburst full-scale southern nativism.

    The theories of Anglo-Saxon superiority had many strong advocates in Virginia. As early as 1893 the Dispatch viewed the democratic experiment in Brazil as "a travesty upon republican institutions and another demonstration of the racial characteristics in the way of self-government in South America."97 The Virginian-Pilot likewise felt the Cubans incapable of self-government and held that "this despicable characteristic was inherited from Spain, i.e., is in the blood."98 On the other hand, the Anglo-Saxon and other predominant elements in our citizenry make us a very different people from the Spanish or any other Latin race."99 In light of the "steady southern march of Anglo-Saxon civilization," the editors of the Dispatch urged that Spanish be taught in the public schools, for "we should be prepared for our opportunities."100

    By 1900 there remained little disagreement in Virginia over the types of immigrants desired. One southern source stated these preferences: "[The South] wants first of all, native born Northern men and women.… Next to these, … the South needs the sturdy yeomanry of Great Britain, the cool, slow-moving, but always energetic Hollander, the sturdy, hard-working, God-fearing, self-respecting people of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, the best middle class folk and peasantry of ... the German empire, and the mercurial but industrious sons and daughters of France. The South can welcome all these gladly, for ... their blood, comingled in their descendants, has made our best Southern manhood and womanhood."101 These groups, and only these, would Virginians accept.

    The failure of Southerners to take part physically in the nativist outbursts of the 1890s is easily explained. Ignored by immigrants, the South simply lacked a target toward which it could direct its nativist sentiments. Furthermore, the tendency of the undesirable "new" immigrants to settle in northern urban centers was well-established, so Southerners felt no immediate danger from this source. Nevertheless, as this study has shown, Southerners had already formed strongly defensive attitudes toward such foreigners and were always careful to exclude these from their invitations to settlement in the South.

    A clear indication of Southerners' sincerity and solidarity in their immigration preferences came soon after the turn of the century. By 1899 an upswing in the nation's economy had stimulated a rapid expansion of southern industry, and severe labor shortages soon became evident throughout the region. The renewed demands for labor prompted numerous efforts in the North to export its surplus foreign labor to the South. Many Northerners even hoped for government assistance in a redistribution of the nation's population, relieving already congested northern cities by directing the dispersal of new immigrants to less thickly inhabited areas. But such plans failed to consider southern opinion; the reaction in the South was immediate, and practically unanimous.

    Even among those with the most to gain from an increase in population, such colonization efforts were opposed. A 1904 convention of southern railroad immigration agents at Birmingham forcefully opposed a plan to operate a bureau in New York, fearing such a proposal "would make necessary a certain amount of government control over the distribution of immigrants.'' The convention felt "the South has trouble enough in its present race problem, and it decidedly objects to being made the government dumping-ground for undesirable immigrants."102 A survey conducted by the Boston-based Immigration Restriction League in 1905 found that among public officials in the South, "100 per cent prefer native Americans and northern Eurooeans …, 84 per cent do not wish any immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, and 88 per cent are opposed to receiving the aliens distributed from northern cities."103 In Virginia, both Governor Claude A. Swanson and his successor William Hodges Mann preferred no immigrants to "persons whose principles are a menace to civilization and presence a curse to society,"104 and the General Assembly, in a 1908 joint resolution, requested the state's representatives in Washington "to oppose in every possible manner the influx into Virginia of immigrants from Southern Europe … with no characteristics to make them, with us, a homogeneous people, believing as we do, that upon Anglo-Saxon supremacy depend the future welfare and prosperity of this Commonwealth."105 Most succinct of all was the Manufacturers’ Record, which declared, "the South will have human sewage under no consideration."106 When faced with a direct foreign threat, Southerners demonstrated that they were prepared to put their often-expressed nativist sentiments into action.

    The culmination of southern nativism still lay in the future. Both John Higham and Rowland T. Berthoff recognized the major contributing factors to southern participation and leadership in the nationwide xenophobic outbursts of the 1910s and twenties: the crisis of a world war; the intensification racial antipathy, symbolized by the revival of the Ku Klux Klan; the continuing economic frustration of the farmer; the growth of a militant rural fundamentalism; and the increasing exposure of southerners to the alien cultures of "new" immigrants.107 However, the respective contentions of these historians--that southern views toward immigration changed drastically after 1900, and that the attitudes of southern business interests and state governments were at variance with those of other groups in the South--overlook the universal southern hostility to certain types of foreigners which developed during the 1890s. If only in mind, Virginians, and Southerners in general, were active participants in the nativist uprisings of that decade.

NOTES

l. Higham. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-l925 (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955), l67.

2. Rowland T. Berthoff, "Southern Attitudes Toward Immigration, 1865-1914," Journal of Southern History, XVII (1951), 328.

3. Bert James Loewenberg, "Efforts of the South to Encourage Immigration, 1865-1900," South Atlantic Quarterly, XXXIII (1934)1 365-67; Berthoff, "Southern Attitudes," 329-31; Manufacturers' Record, XXIX (1896), 221.

4. "Immigration Legislation," Senate Docs., 61 Cong., 3 Sess., XXI (Serial No. 5879), No. 758, (1910-11), 901, 898.

5. "Immigration Commission Abstracts of Reports," Senate Docs., 61 Cong., 3 Sess., VII (Serial No. 5865), (19l0-l1), 126.

6. Manufacturers’ Record, XIII (1888), 11; ibid., 25; see also Richmond Mayo-Smith, Emigration and Immigration (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895), 195-96.

7. William DuBose Sheldon, Populism in the Old Dominion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1890),28; Richmond Dispatch, December 19, 1890, 3.

8. Dispatch, September 29, 1892, 2.

9. Dispatch, April 12, 1893, 1; Richmond State, April 14, 1893, 7.

10. Dispatch, April 12, 1893, 1; ibid., April 14, 1893, 4; ibid., April 13, 1893, 1.

11. Dispatch, April 12, 1893, 1.

12. Manufacturers’ Record, XXIII (1893), 218, 265, 308, 465.

13. Wytheville Patriot-Herald, March 16, 1894, 1; ibid., July 27, 1894, 3.

14. Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, September 3, 1894, 4; ibid.,

August 25, 1895, 2.

15. Atlanta Constitution, May 28, 1894, 3. This extreme show of confidence was undoubtedly an attempt to make the South appear relatively unaffected by the serious depression which was plaguing the country.

16. Atlanta Constitution, June 1, 1894, 1, 4.

17. New York Times, June 24, 1894, 9.

18. State, October 3, 1894, 1.

19. Dispatch, September 30, 1897, 7.

20. Dispatch, September 30, 1897, 7.

21. Dispatch, September 27, 1892, 1.

22. Dispatch, October 4, 1894, 1.

23. Dispatch, September 15, 1893, 1; ibid., September 13, 1895, 6.

24. Dispatch, September 21, 1891, 2; ibid., September 24, 1891, 2; State, October 2, 1894, 2.

25. State, October 4, 1890, 1.

26. Dispatch, October 5, 1890, 1.

27. Dispatch, September 13, 1895, 6.

28. Virginian-Pilot, January 26, 1899, 4.

29. Dispatch, September 24, 1891, 1.

30. Dispatch, September 15, 1893, 1; ibid., September 16, 1896, 5.

31. Dispatch, October 7, 1890, 1.

32. Dispatch, September 13, 1896, 6.

33. Dispatch, October 7, 1890, 1.

34. Dispatch, October 5, 1890, 3.

35. Dispatch, September 16, 1896, 5.

36. Dispatch, September 15, 1893, 1.

37. Dispatch, October 7, 1890, 1.

38. Dispatch, October 5, 1890, 3.

39. Dispatch, September 30, 1897, 7.

40. In addition to delegates from individual counties, convention members represented the Business-Men’s Associations of Norfolk and Roanoke, the Norfolk and Richmond Chambers of Commerce, the Portsmouth Board of Trade, the Norfolk Real Estate Exchange, several transportation lines, the German-American Association, and the State Board of Agriculture. Dispatch, October 17, 1894, 1.

41. State, October 16,1894, 2.

42. Dispatch, October 18, 1894, 1.

43. Dispatch, October 18, 1894, 1, 3.

44. Dispatch, October 18, 1894, 3.

45. Southern States, IV (1896), 382.

46. Manufacturers' Record, XXIX (1896), 307.

47. Washington Post, April 18, 1893, 5.

48. Dispatch, April 12, 1893, 4.

49. Dispatch, April 11, 1893, 2; see also Niles Carpenter, Immigrants and Their Children (New York: Arno, 1969), 34-35.

50. Dispatch, October 18, 1894, 1.

51. "The Development of the South," Harper's Weekly, XXXVIII (1894), 914.

52. Dispatch, April 9, 1893, 4; Washington Post, April 6, 1893, 4; Manufacturers’ Record, XYIII (1893), 380.

53. Dispatch, April 4, 1893, 2.

54. Dispatch, October 19, 1894, 2.

55. Manufacturers' Record XXVI (1894), 1. Loewenberg, "Efforts of the South to Encourage Immigration," 382.

56. Manufacturers' Record, XXVI (1894), 1.

57. Nels Anderson, "Petersburg, A Study of a Colony of Czechoslovakian Farmers in Virginia," Edmund deS Brunner, ed., Immigrant Farmers and Their Children (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929), 194.

58. Dispatch, October 18, 1894, 3.

59. Virginian-Pilot, September 24, 1894, 4.

60. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 169.

61. Solon J. Buck, The Granger Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1913), 297.

62. W. Scott Morgan, History of the Wheel and Alliance and the Impending Revolution (Fort Scott, Kansas: 1889), 142, 144.

63. Berthoff, "Southern Attitudes," 345; Richmond Virginia Sun, March 20, 1892, 2.

64. Dispatch, August 24, 1890, 4.

65. Southern States, V (1897), 235, 277, 420.

66. Emily Fogg Meade, "Italian Immigration to the South," South Atlantic Quarterly, IV (1905). 223; Virginian-Pilot, Novemebr 1, 1896, 4; Southern States, V (1897), 176.

67. State, April 19, 1893, 3.

68. Southern States, III (1895), 443.

69. Anderson, "Petersburg," 188.

70. Anderson, "Petersburg," 183, 200, 209.

71. Anderson, "Petersburg," 210-12.

72 .C. Vann Woodward, Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York: Macmillan, 1938), 418-19.

73. Donald L. Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964), 178-179. Both tese figures are actually high; the latter total probably never exceeded half a million. See Higham, Strangers in the Land, 81.

74. Kinzer, An Episode in Anti-Catholicism, 255. The Virginia Press seldom mentioned the organization, and then only in a disparaging tone. On one occasion, the Virginian-Pilot ridiculed the Massachusetts A. P. A. by charging, that it ''will probably enter a protest to the color the Creator gives to the grass and the trees." Virginian-Pilot, September 22, 1894, 4.

75. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 8l.

76.Anderson, "Petersburg," 198-99.

77. Dispatch, August 28, 1890, 2.

78. Henry W. Grady, "The New South," New England Magazine, N. S. II (1890), 87.

79. Dispatch, April 9, 1893, 12; Norf'olk Virginian-Pilot, January 14, 1897, 4.

80. "Reports of the Immigration Cominission," Senate Docs., 61 Cong., 2 Sess., LXIX (Serial No. 5668), (1909-10), 165-66.

8l. Virginian-Pilot, October 7, 1899, 4.

82. Manufacturers' Record, XXV (1894), 307.

83. Leesburg (Va.) Washingtonian, Januarv 16, 1897, 2.

84. Joshua W. Caldwell, A Memorial Volume (Nashville: Brandon, 1909), 197.

85. Southern States, III (1895), 375.

86. Manufacturers' Record, XXXI (1897), 217.

87. Virginian-Pilot, August 25, 1895, 2.

88. Caldwell, A Memorial Volume, 198.

89. Southern States, IV (1896), 212-13.

90. Virginian-Pilot, May 12, 1896), 4.

91. Cong. Record, 54 Cong., 2 Sess., 247 (December 17, 1896), 1677 (February 9, 1897). Virginia’s representatives in Washington endorsed the measure 6-1.

92. Cong. Record, 47 Cong., 1 Sess., 2227 (March 21, 1882).

93. Dispatch, September 23, 1894, 4.

94. Virginian-Pilot, October 1, 1895, 4.

95. Virginian-Pilot, Januarv 4, 1899, 4; see also ibid., January 5, 1899, 5; ibid., March 10, 1899, 4.

96. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 170.

97. Dispatch, September 24, 1893, 4.

98. Virginian-Pilot, March 14, 1899, 4.

99. Virginian-Pilot, October 4, 1899, 4.

100. Dispatch, September 6, 1898, 4.

101. Southern States, IV (1896), 212-13.

102. Walter L. Fleming, "Immigration to the Southern States," Political Science Quarterly, XX (1905), 290.

103. Robert DeCourcey Ward, "Immigration and the South," Atlantic Monthly, XCVI (1905), 616.

104. Berthoff, "Southern Attitudes," 353; "Amendment of Immigration Laws," Senate Docs., 62 Cong., 2 Sess., XXXV, No. 251, (1911-12), 3. These are Swanson's words.

105. Virginia General Assembly, House Journal, 1908, 428.

106. Manufacturers' Record, XLVII, Part 2 (1905), 497,

107. Berthoff, "Southern Attitudes," 347, 360; Higham, Strangers in the Land, 164, 166-71, 175; 181-82.

    Even though this paper takes issue with statements by John Higham and Rowland Berthoff, the author remains deeply indebted to these two historians. Higham’s Strangers in the Land is the standard work on American nativism for the period 1860-1925, and Berthoff’s article on "Southern Attitudes Toward Immigration, 1865-1914" is the best treatment of the development of southern nativism. Both of these works were invaluable as guides to general interpretations and bibliography.

    In the selection of Virginia newspapers from the period, the author sought to obtain a balance of views, representative of all major segments of the state’s population. The Richmond Dispatch, as the state's leading newspaper, was heavily relied upon, and the Richmond State supplemented views from the capital city. The Wytheville Patriot-Herald represented the state’s Republicans, the Virginia Sun reflected the opinions of the Virginia Farmers' Alliance, and the Leesburg Washingtonian voiced small town sentiments. A list of "Papers in Favor of Restriction" from the files of the Immigration Restriction League in the Harvard University Library led the author to the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot, an advocate of area business interests as well as of immigration restriction. Other state newspapers, expressing the views of such groups as blacks and the Women's Christian Temperance Union, were consulted, but these failed to deal with issues relevant to the topic under discussion.

    Nels Anderson's intensive study, based on personal interviews, of one of Virginia’s few foreign communities in Immigrant Farmers and Their Children was an extremely useful source, and the massive Dillingham Immigration Commission Reports shed some light on the few foreign industrial laborers within the state. Even more helpful were the influential Manufacturers' Record and the Southern States farm magazine. These progressive southern voices reflected the prevailing opinions toward immigration of the South's industrial and agricultural interests. A complete bibliography follows.

Books

Brunner, Edmund deS., ed. Immigrant Farmers and Their Children (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929 .

Buck, Solon J. The Granger Movement (Cambridge: Harvard Universitv Press, 1913).

Caldwell, Joshua W. A Memorial Volume (Nashville: Brandon, 1909).

Carpenter, Niles. Immigrants and Their Children (New York: Arno Press, 1969).

Higham, John. Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860-1925 (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Rutgers University Press, 1955).

Kinzer, Donald L. An Episode in Anti-Catholicism: The American Protective Association (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1964).

Mayo-Smith, Richamond. Emigration and Immigration (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1895).

Morgan, W. Scott. History of the Wheel and Alliance and the Impending Revolution (Fort Scott, Kansas, 1891).

Sheldon, William DuBose. Populism in the Old Dominion (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1935).

Woodward, C. Vann. Tom Watson: Agrarian Rebel (New York: Macmillan, 1938).

 Fleming, Walter L. "Immigration to the Southern States," Political Science Quarterly, XX (1905), 276-97.

Grady , Henry W. "The New South," New England Magazine, N. S. II (1890), 87.

Loewenberg, Bert James. "Efforts of the South to Encourage Immigration, 1865-1900," South Atlantic Quarterly, XXXIII (1934), 303-85.

Meade, Emily Fogg. "Italian Immigration to the South," South Atlantic Quarterly, IV (1905), 217-23.

Ward, Robert DeCourcey. "Iminigration and the South," Atlantic Monthly, XCVI (1905), 611-17.

"The Development of the South," Harper's Weekly, XXXVIII (1894), 914.

 Government Documents

"Amendment of Immigration Laws," Senate Docs., 62 Cong., 2 Sess., XXXV, No. 251, (1911-12), 3.

Cong. Record, 47 Cong., 1 Sess.., 2227 (March 23, 1882); 54 Cong., 2 Sess., 247 (December 17, 1896), l677 (February 9, 1897).

"Immigration Commission Abstracts of Reports," Senate Docs., 61 Cong., 3 Sess., VII (Serial No. 5865), (1910-11), 126.

"Immigration Legislation," Senate Docs., 61 Cong., 3. Sess., XXI (Serial No. 5879), No. 758, (1910-11), 895-98, 901.

"Reports of the Immigration Commission," Senate Docs., 61 Cong., 2 Sess., LXIX (Serial No. 5668), (1909-10), 165-66, 210, 222-23.

Virginia General Assembly, House Journal, 1908, 428.