Powell J. Encyclopedia Of North American Immigration

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Waipahu Plantation strike

The Waipahu Plantation strike of 1906 was one of the ear-

liest collective labor actions in the face of state intervention

and sugar industry bosses. Its success demonstrated the value

of collective action and laid the foundation for “blood

unionism,” labor unions based on ethnic identity.

Between 1850 and 1920, more than 300,000

Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Korean laborers were

brought to Hawaii as contract laborers to raise “king sugar”

for low wages on American plantations run by companies

such as the Oahu Sugar Company. When the company was

founded in 1897, its 943 fieldworkers earned an average of

$12.50 a month. By 1900, there were more than 60,000

Japanese in the islands, the largest single ethnic group,

composing about 40 percent of the population. Neverthe-

less, almost all supervisory positions were held by whites.

In 1900, the Organic Act established Hawaii as a territory

of the United States, at the same time abolishing the con-

tract labor system, though workers sometimes had to resort

to violent confrontations or strikes to win this new right.

In response, in 1901, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Asso-

ciation agreed to fix wages at an artificially low level and

continued to utilize loopholes to continue certain provi-

sions of the old labor contracts. After years of heightened

tensions, in 1906, 1,700 Japanese laborers struck against

the Waipahu Plantation, demanding higher wages. Forty-

seven armed policemen were called in to intimidate the

strikers. Despite the show of force, the Japanese laborers

stood firm, eventually winning concessions.

Further Reading

Coulter, John Wesley. The Oahu Sugar Cane Plantation. [?1933].

Moriyama, Alan T. Imingaisha: Japanese Emigration Companies and

Hawaii, 1894–1908. Honolulu: U

niversity of Hawaii Press,

1985.

Special Review of the Main Industry of H

awaii: S

ugar Industry of the

Islands of Oahu, Hawaii, Maui and Kauai. Honolulu, Hawaii:

vening Bulletin, 1906.

Takaki, Ronald. Pau Hana: Plantation Life and Labor in Hawaii,

1835–1920. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1983.

Wakefield, Edward Gibbon (1796–1862) author,

reformer

Edward Gibbon Wakefield was a doctrinaire and eccentric

visionary, who did much to shape the British ideal of self-

government in white colonies, particularly Canada, Aus-

tralia, and New Zealand. Born in London, he was educated

at Westminster and entered the British Foreign Service in

1814. He served three years in prison for abducting under-

age girls for marriage. While imprisoned, he became inter-

ested in questions of colonial development. Wakefield

eventually became the most renowned proponent of sys-

tematic colonization, designed to transplant the best aspects

of British society to other temperate climates around the

world. In Wakefield’s view, land should not be granted in

large blocks or given freely to individual settlers, as these

practices encouraged careless development. Instead, it

should be sold to the highest bidder at a “sufficient price,”

314

and the money used to encourage the immigration of free

settlers. Those who could not afford land would become

laborers, who would eventually earn enough in wages to

purchase their own land. Because of the concentration of

capital, sound planning, and good breeding, economic

growth and civilized society would grow hand in hand, mak-

ing the colonies fit for “responsible government,” that is,

control by the local population on all purely local matters.

Wakefield developed his ideas in A Letter from Sydney (1829)

and England and America (1833). He accompanied John

eorge Lambton, Lor

d Durham, to Canada in 1838, and

significantly influenced the sections of the D

URHAM

EPORT

(1839) relating to public lands and self-govern-

ment. Though his recommendations regarding responsible

government were not followed in the resulting Act of Union

(1840), they were substantially implemented in 1848.

Wakefield’s mature program for systematic colonization was

published in 1849 as A View of the Art of Colonization in

esent r

eference to the British Empire. Wakefield immigrated

to New Zealand in 1853 and was elected to its first consti-

tutional assembly

Further Reading

Bloomfield, Paul. Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Builder of the British

Commonwealth. London: Longmans, G

reen, 1961.

wan, H. I. British Emigration to British North America: The First

Hundr

ed Years. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1961.

Mar

tin, Ged. Edward Gibbon Wakefield: Abductor and Mystagogue.

Edinburgh, U.K.: Ann Barry, 1997.

tuar

t, Peter. Edward Gibbon Wakefield in New Zealand. Wellington,

w Zealand: Price Milburn for Victoria University, 1971.

Wald, Lillian (1867–1940) social worker, reformer

Lillian Wald was a pioneer in the field of public health nurs-

ing. Helping to establish the Henry Street Settlement house

in New York City in 1895, she ministered to the needs of

thousands of immigrants as she campaigned for progressive

reforms in the United States.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, to German-Jewish immi-

grant parents who were refugees following the 1848 revolu-

tion (see

REVOLUTIONS OF

1848), Wald deliberately

avoided a traditional middle-class education, opting instead

to enroll in the nurse training program of Manhattan’s Belle-

vue Hospital, graduating in 1891. In 1892, she entered the

Women’s Medical College, where she began to teach home

nursing in the tenement houses of the Lower East Side.

Overwhelmed by the needs of the immigrant poor, she

abandoned her formal medical career and in 1893 moved

to the Lower East Side. She raised funds to purchase what

became the Henry Street Settlement, which served as home

to a body of nonsectarian, public health nurses who charged

fees only to those who could pay. By 1914, 100 nurses were

working there, and Henry Street Settlement owned nine city

houses, seven vacation homes, and three stores. It also served

as a community center, where Wald provided clubs, a sav-

ings bank, a health clinic, job training, and a library. She

helped convince the local school board to provide school

nurses, free lunches, and special assistance to the handi-

capped. Her opposition to World War I (1914–18) led to a

decline in contributions to the Henry Street house and

increasing accusations of political radicalism. Wald was a

founding member of the National Association for the

Advancement of Colored People, helped establish the New

York State Bureau of Industries and Immigration, and

served as chairman of the American Union against Mili-

tarism.

Further Reading

Carson, Mina. Settlement Folk: The Evolution of Social Welfare Ideol-

ogy in the A

merican Settlement Movement, 1883–1930. Chicago:

Univ

ersity of Chicago Press, 1990.

Coss, Clare. Lillian D. Wald: Progressive Activist. New York: Feminist

ess at the City University of New York, 1989.

Daniels, Doris Groshen. Always a Sister: The Feminism of Lillian D.

ald. N

ew York: Feminist Press at the City University of New

Yor

k, 1989.

Siegel, Beatrice. Lillian Wald of Henry Street. New York: Macmillan,

1983.

ald, Lillian. The H

ouse on Henry Street. 1915. Reprint, New York:

ver, 1971.

———. Windows on Henry Street. Boston: Little, Brown, 1934.

War Brides Act (Act of December 28, 1945)

(1945)

The War Brides Act was the first of sev

eral related measures

to allow United States soldiers to bring their alien brides and

families into the United States following World War II

(1941–45). Originating in the U.S. House of Representa-

tives, the Act of December 28, 1945, as the War Brides Act

was officially entitled, authorized admission to the United

States of alien spouses and minor children outside the ordi-

nary quota system following World War II (see W

ORLD

AND IMMIGRATION

). In 1947, the measure was

amended to include Asian spouses. The Act of June 29,

1946—commonly known as the Fiancées Act—authorized

admission of fiancées for three months as nonimmigrant

temporary visitors, provided they were otherwise eligible

and had a bona fide intent to marry. Although provisions of

the highly restrictive J

OHNSON

-R

EED

(1924) were still

in place, these and other special postwar measures, such as

the D

ISPLACED

ERSONS

, played a significant role in

facilitating the largest wave of immigration to the United

States since the 1920s.

The War Brides Act was amended by the Act of July

22, 1947, eliminating race as a determining factor and

thus allowing Chinese, Japanese, and Filipina spouses to be

WAR BRIDES ACT 315

covered. The War Brides Act and the Fiancées Act were

further amended by the Act of April 21, 1949, extending

the expiration date of the original measure to September

11, 1949.

U.S. servicemen began bringing British brides home as

early as 1942, but as quotas for Britain under the Johnson-

Reed Act were high, these brides required no special legisla-

tion. Eventually some 115,000 British, 7,000 Chinese,

5,000 Filipina, and 800 Japanese spouses were brought to

the United States, as well as about 25,000 children. About

15,000 British, 1,500 Australian, and 1,000 European

fiancées were covered by the measure.

Further Reading

Hutchinson, E. P. Legislative History of American Immigration Policy.

Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981.

Lar

k, R

egina F. “They Challenged Two Nations: Marriages between

Japanese Women and American G.I.s, 1945–Present.” Ph.D. dis-

sertation, University of Southern California, 1988.

Shukert, Elfrieda, and Barbara Smith Scibetta. War Brides of

orld

War II. Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1988.

Vir

den, Jenel. Goodbye Picadilly: British War Brides in America.

Urbana: U

niversity of Illinois Press, 1996.

Washington, D.C.

Washington, D.C., is unlike any other city in the United

States. Having been established in the 1790s specifically as

a new capital city for a new republic, it had no long-stand-

ing commercial base. In the 19th century, it had little of the

industry that traditionally attracted immigrants. It never-

theless grew to have one of the highest immigrant popula-

tions in the country. According to the 2000 U.S. census,

the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area had 832,016 for-

eign-born immigrants, accounting for about one of every six

residents. There are particularly high concentrations of Cen-

tral Americans and sub-Saharan Africans, reflecting the

rapid immigrant growth of the 1990s.

The first European settlement in the district area was

in Alexandria, Virginia, in 1749, but the region remained

lightly populated. After the United States gained its inde-

pendence from Great Britain in the American Revolution

(1775–83), there was a heated political debate over the loca-

tion of a new permanent capital. A compromise was reached

in 1790, and the new District of Columbia founded, created

from federal lands not part of any state. The complex of fed-

eral buildings, including the Capitol, was at the heart of the

plan for the city laid out by the French-born American engi-

neer Pierre Charles L’Enfant. When the government actually

moved to the city in 1800, it had a population of only about

8,000. The Capitol and other government buildings were

burned by the British during the War of 1812 (1812–14)

but were rebuilt by the end of the decade. Early hopes that

the city would become a great commercial center were never

realized, and by the time of the Civil War (1861–65), there

were only about 60,000 inhabitants.

The true basis of Washington’s growth proved to be

war and depression, since in times of crisis the role of the

federal government is greatly expanded. During the Civil

War, for instance, the population doubled, to about

120,000. Another trend displayed itself then, as thousands

of dispossessed migrants—freed slaves in this case—moved

to the city, seeking the benefits of government and the pro-

tection of its officers. As a result, the racial and ethnic

composition of the city differed greatly from other major

U.S. cities. By 1900, Washington’s foreign-born popula-

tion was only 7 percent, compared to New York City’s 37

percent and Boston and Chicago’s 35 percent. At the same

time, its African-American population was 31 percent,

much higher than the 2 percent in New York, Boston, and

Chicago.

The next great period of city growth was during World

War I (1914–18), when the population rose from 350,000

to 450,000 almost wholly due to internal migration.

Again, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, more

jobs could be found in Washington than anywhere else,

mainly because of federal projects. Between 1930 and

1940, the city’s population grew from 485,000 to 665,000,

with the percentage of foreign born actually shrinking to

5 percent. During World War II (1941–45), the city’s pop-

ulation grew rapidly and peaked at more than 800,000 in

1950. During the next half century, the population

declined, to 572,000 in 2000, as the suburban and

metropolitan areas have grown. In 2000, the greater D.C.

area, including the Virginia and Maryland suburbs, had a

population of more than 3.9 million, and the larger

metropolitan area, including B

ALTIMORE

, M

ARYLAND

had a population of 7.6 million.

Few cities in the United States were affected more than

Washington, D.C. by passage of the I

MMIGRATION AND

ATIONALITY

of 1965. The immigrant share of the

population has grown dramatically since then, with most

coming from Asia and Central America. In 1965, less than

5 percent of the population was foreign born; in 2000, it

was more than triple that amount, the exact percentage vary-

ing according to city, county, or metropolitan basis. Between

1983 and 1996, more than 300,000 immigrants moved to

the metropolitan area. Although they came from more than

100 countries, about half emigrated from El Salvador, Viet-

nam, South Korea, India, Pakistan, the Philippines, China,

Iran, Ethiopia, and Jamaica. About 48 percent of the metro

area immigrant population arrived since 1990, with El Sal-

vador topping the list of immigrant source countries in both

1990 and 2000 (9,276 and 15,886, respectively). The Dis-

trict of Columbia also permanently resettled more than

3,000 refugees from all parts of the world between 1996 and

2001. The share of foreign students also continues to

increase. In 1999, more than 8,000 foreign students

316 WASHINGTON, D.C.

attended the area’s universities, with the largest number at

George Washington (2,226), American University (1,711),

Georgetown University (1,589), and Howard University

(1,172).

Further Reading

“At Home in the Nation’s Capital: Immigrant Trends in Metropolitan

ashington.” Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2003.

Bennett, L. A. Personal Choice in Ethnic Identity: Serbs, Croats, and

Slo

enes in Washington, D.C. Palo Alto, Calif.: Ragusan P

ress,

1978.

Cary, Francine Curro, ed. Urban Odyssey: A Multicultural History of

ashington, D.C. W

ashington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution

ess, 1996.

Diner, Hasia, and Steven Diner. Fifty Years of Jewish Self-Governance:

The J

ewish Community of G

reater Washington, 1938–1988. Wash-

ington, D.C.: The Council, 1989.

eck, L. “Egyptian Americans in the Washington, D.C., Area.” Arab

tudies Q

uarterly 11, nos. 2–3 (1985): 103–126.

Repak, Terr

y A. Waiting on Washington: Central American Workers in

the N

ation’s Capital. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1995.

Sheridan, M

ary Beth. “Regions’s Immigrants Faring Better than Oth-

ers.” Washington Post, June 12, 2003, p. A1.

Welfare Reform Act (Personal Responsibility

and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act)

(United States) (1996)

e formally the Personal Responsibility and Work

Opportunity Reconciliation Act, the Welfare Reform Act

reflected the anti-immigrant mood of the 1990s and frus-

tration over the mounting costs of providing social services

to both citizens and immigrants. U.S. president Bill Clinton

angered liberal members of his own Democratic Party by

signing the measure on August 22, 1996, in a move aimed

at strengthening his conservative support for the November

1996 presidential election.

The major feature of the measure was to replace Aid to

Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) with a new pro-

gram, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF),

which limited aid to two consecutive years and five years

over a lifetime. More specifically, regarding immigrants, it

denied cash welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and Supple-

mental Security Income to legal immigrants, though it did

provide reimbursement to states for emergency services ren-

dered. In 1998, under pressure from immigrant advocacy

groups, Congress restored food stamp benefits to 250,000 of

935,000 immigrants who had been declared ineligible to

receive them.

Further Reading

Espenshade, T. J., J. L. Baraka, and G. A. Huber. “Implications of the

1996 W

elfare and Immigration Reform Acts for U.S. Immigra-

tion.” Population and Development Review 23, no. 4 (1997):

769–801.

West Indian immigration

West Indians are of mixed racial and ethnic background.

Immigrants to North America from the region are predomi-

nantly mulattoes or blacks, the descendants of African slaves

brought to work on Caribbean plantations for the English,

French, Spanish, and Dutch during the 17th, 18th, and 19th

centuries. Some, however, are of European descent, a signifi-

cant number of Asian Indian background—particularly

those from Trinidad (see T

RINIDADIAN AND

OBAGONIAN

IMMIGRATION

) and Guyana—and a small number of Chi-

nese descent. Prior to the 1960s, both the United States and

Canada treated immigrants from Caribbean Basin depen-

dencies and countries, in various combinations, as a single

immigrant unit known as “West Indians.” Due to the shift-

ing political status of territories within the region during the

period of decolonization (1958–83) and special international

circumstances in some areas, the concept of what it meant

to be West Indian shifted across time, thus making it impos-

sible to say with certainty how many immigrants came from

each island or region. Before 1965, however, Jamaican immi-

grants (see J

AMAICAN IMMIGRATION

) clearly predominated,

and English-speaking immigrants generally far outstripped

others. West Indians in both the United States and Canada

tended to be well educated, often filling skilled and profes-

sional positions and enjoying greater economic success than

other Americans of African descent. Their political influence,

particularly in the United States, was proportionally far

greater than their numbers would suggest. These factors led

to considerable tension between West Indians and African

Americans that eased somewhat in the 1990s.

In the narrowest sense, the term West Indies refers to

the E

nglish-speaking territories of the w

estern Atlantic and

Caribbean Basin, including Jamaica, the Bahamas,

Bermuda, the Leeward Islands (St. Kitts, Nevis, Antigua,

Montserrat, British Virgin Islands), the Windward Islands,

(St. Vincent, St. Lucia, Dominica, Grenada), Barbados,

Trinidad, Tobago, Belize, and Guyana. While these were all

still British dependencies, they could be treated more or less

as a single unit. More broadly, West Indies sometimes

includes territories settled b

y the D

utch (Netherlands

Antilles, Aruba), French (Guadeloupe, Martinique, Haiti)

and Spanish (Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico). Finally,

in the broadest use of the term, West Indies was sometimes

used to refer to all countries in the Caribbean Basin, includ-

ing C

uba and the Latin American countries of Central

America. Although each

West Indian region is culturally dis-

tinct, shared use of the English language and Caribbean her-

itage led immigrants from many different English culture

areas to congregate once they arrived in the United States.

Frequently immigrants from French and Dutch territories

settled in anglophone West Indian neighborhoods. Domini-

cans (see D

OMINICAN IMMIGRATION

), on the other hand,

more closely followed the settlement patterns of Cubans (see

UBAN IMMIGRATION

) and Puerto Ricans (see P

UERTO

WEST INDIAN IMMIGRATION 317

ICAN IMMIGRATION

), whose immigrant status was closely

tied to

COLD WAR

considerations.

West Indians did not begin to migrate to North America

in significant numbers until the early 20th century. Between

1900 and 1924, about 100,000 West Indians immigrated to

the United States, many of them from the middle classes.

The restrictive J

OHNSON

-R

EED

(1924) and the eco-

nomic depression of the 1930s virtually halted their immi-

gration, but some 40,000 had already established a cultural

base in New York City, particularly in Harlem and Brooklyn.

About 41,000 West Indians were recruited for war work after

1941, but most returned to their homes after the war. Isola-

tionist policies of the 1950s and relatively open access to

Britain kept immigration to the United States low until pas-

sage of the I

MMIGRATION AND

ATIONALITY

of 1965,

which shifted the basis of immigration from country of origin

to family reunification. The M

ARRAN

-W

ALTER

MMIGRA

TION AND

ATURALIZATION

of 1952 had established

an annual quota of only 800 for all British territories in the

West Indies, but as dependencies became independent of

colonial ties with European states (Trinidad and Tobago and

Jamaica in 1962, Barbados and Guyana in 1966, the Bahamas

in 1973, Grenada in 1974, Dominica in 1978, Saint Lucia

and St. Vincent and the Grenadines in 1979, Antigua and

Barbuda and Belize in 1981; and St. Kitts and Nevis in 1983),

they generally qualified for increased immigration.

West Indian immigration to Canada remained small

throughout the 20th century. Following the restrictive leg-

islation of 1923, it is estimated that only 250 West Indians

were admitted during the entire decade of the 1920s. By

the mid-1960s, only 25,000 West Indians lived there. Cana-

dian regulations after World War II (1939–45) prohibited

most black immigration, and special programs, such as the

1955 domestic workers campaign, allowed only a few hun-

dred well-qualified West Indians into the country each year

until 1967, when the points system was introduced for

determining immigrant qualifications.

Further Reading

Bristow, Peggy, et al., eds. “We’re Rooted Here and They Can’t Pull Us

”: Essays in African Canadian Women’s History. Toronto: Uni-

versity of Tor

onto Press, 1994.

Calliste, Agnes. “Canada’s Immigration Policy and Domestics from

the Caribbean: The Second Domestic Scheme.” In Race, Class,

ender: Bonds and B

arriers. Socialist Studies: A Canadian Annual.

Vol. 5. Ed. Jesse Vorst. Toronto: B

etw

een the Lines, 1989.

———. “Women of ‘Exceptional Merit’: Immigration of Caribbean

Nurses to Canada.” Canadian Journal of Women and the Law 6

(1993): 85–99.

Gmelch, G. Double Passage: The Lives of Caribbean Migrants Abroad

and Back H

ome. Ann Arbor: U

niversity of M

ichigan Press, 1992.

Kasinitz, Philip. Caribbean New York: Black Immigrants and the Poli-

tics of Race. I

thaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1992.

Levine, Barr

y, ed. The Caribbean Exodus. New York: Praeger, 1987.

Owens-W

atkins, Irma. Blood Relations. B

loomington: University of

Indiana Press, 1996.

Palmer, R. W. Pilgrims from the Sun: West Indian Migration to Amer-

ica. Ne

w York: Twayne, 1995.

Richardson, Bonham. Caribbean Migration. Knoxville: University of

Tennessee P

ress, 1983.

Tennyson, Brian Douglas. Canada and the Commonw

ealth C

aribbean.

Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1988.

Walker

, James W. St.-G. The West Indians in Canada. Ottawa: Cana-

dian Historical Association, 1984.

estmoreland, Guy T. Jr., West Indian Americans. Westport, Conn.:

eenwood Press, 2001.

Winks, Robin. Canadian–West Indian Union: A Forty-Year Minuet.

London: Athlone Press, 1968.

White Slave Traffic Act See M

ANN

Winnipeg general strike

Post–World War I (1914–18) ethnic tensions, economic

conditions, and the fear of bolshevism all contributed to

the Winnipeg general strike of May 15 to June 28, 1919.

Although the strike was primarily about labor issues and

enjoyed widespread support from Anglo-Canadian workers

and recently returned veterans, it was portrayed by city lead-

ers as the first step in a wave of foreign bolshevism.

Winnipeg was clearly divided between Anglo-Saxon

white-collar workers in the south and west of the city and

continental laborers in the north. In March 1919, the One

318 WHITE SLAVE TRAFFIC ACT

This photo shows Immigration Hall,Winnipeg, Manitoba, ca.

1900.Winnipeg’s population grew more than 200 percent

during the first decade of the 20th century, largely as a result

of immigration.The Red Scare in the wake of the Bolshevik

Revolution in Russia and economic hard times led to a general

strike in 1919.

(National Archives of Canada/PA-122676)

Big Union (OBU) was formed with the goal of worker con-

trol over primary industries. Foreign mine workers were espe-

cially vocal, with most chapters of the United Mine Workers

of America joining the OBU. Socialist activities were on the

rise throughout western Canada and were being carefully

monitored by the government. The great influenza epidemic

of 1918–19 hit the immigrant community of Winnipeg par-

ticularly hard, thus further heightening tensions.

After the breakdown of labor negotiations between

management and the Metal Trades Council, the Winnipeg

Trades and Labor Council called a general strike for May 15.

More than 30,000 workers responded. Anglo-Canadian

laborers were caught in the middle of a conflict between the

Anglo-Canadian business community, which was deter-

mined to preserve a “Canadian” way of life on the prairie,

and the demands of those who were seeking concessions for

workers. As sympathy strikes were called in other western

cities, the OBU attempted to create a national movement.

As rumors of a national rail strike spread, the dominion gov-

ernment intervened and invoked a strict interpretation of

Article 41 of the Immigration Act, which enabled them to

deport “anarchists and Bolsheviks” or anyone teaching

“unlawful destruction of property.” Eventually more than

100 deportations were authorized, though not all were car-

ried out. Of the 10 strike leaders in Winnipeg, six were

Anglo-Canadian. Following the strike, the criminal code

was amended, broadening the definition of sedition, raising

penalties from two to a maximum of 20 years, and outlaw-

ing any institution that advocated the use of force to bring

about political or economic change.

Further Reading

Avery, Donald. “Dangerous Foreigners”: European Immigrant Workers

and Labor Radicalism in C

anada, 1896–1932. Toronto: McClel-

land and Ste

wart, 1979.

Bercuson, David. Confrontation at Winnipeg: Labour, Industrial Rela-

tions, and the General Strike. Montreal: McG

ill–Q

ueen’s Univer-

sity Press, 1947.

———. Fools and Wise Men: The Rise and Fall of the One Big Union.

Scarborough, Canada: McGraw-Hill Ryerson, 1978.

Bumsted, J. M. “1919:

The

Winnipeg General Strike Reconsidered.”

The Beaver (June/July 1994): 27–44.

———. The Winnipeg General Strike of 1919: An Illustrated Histor

Winnipeg: Watson and Dwyer, 1994.

McCormack, A. Ross. Reformers, R

ebels, and Revolutionaries: The

West-

ern Canadian Radical Movement, 1899–1919. Toronto: Univer-

sity of T

oronto Press, 1977.

Winthrop, John (1588–1649) political and religious

leader

As Puritan leader and first governor of Massachusetts Bay

(see M

ASSACHUSETTS COLONY

), John Winthrop played a

fundamental role in establishing both the Puritan cultural

ethos that characterized the leading English colonists in

America and England’s actual political control of the Atlantic

seaboard. In less than two decades, the Great Migration that

he led transformed New England from a New World wilder-

ness to a thriving outpost of English settlement.

Born in 1588 in Suffolk, England, to a prosperous

landowner, Winthrop as a young man adopted strong Puri-

tan views. He studied law at Gray’s Inn and in 1617 was

appointed justice of the peace in Suffolk. During the 1620s

he developed a thriving law practice in London. In 1629,

Winthrop lost his lucrative position as attorney in the royal

Court of Wards and Liveries, as Charles I (r. 1625–49)

began to remove Puritan influence from the government.

Concern over England’s growing anti-Puritanism, moral lax-

ity, and weak economy led Winthrop to join with substan-

tial merchants and landowners of the Massachusetts Bay

Company. Agreeing to organize the migration to America,

he was elected governor of the colony. He set off for North

America in 1630 along with 400 other Puritans. Within the

first year, 70 percent of the settlers had either died or

WINTHROP, JOHN 319

John Winthrop was elected governor of the Massachusetts

Bay colony 12 times following its establishment in 1630. He

helped establish a sense of mission in early English settlers,

encouraging them to develop model communities that others

might look upon favorably as a moral example.

(Library of

Congress, Prints & Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-9442])

returned to England. By the following year, however, the

colony was firmly established under Winthrop’s leadership,

and he served intermittently as governor throughout his life

(1630–33, 1637–39, 1642, 1646–48). At the time of his

death, there were 15,000 inhabitants of the colony.

Winthrop was stern and single-minded but not an

extremist. His vision for the new colony had been laid out in

a sermon on shipboard during the initial voyage from En-

gland, when he argued for creation of a model community,

or “city upon a hill,” a people in covenant with God, with

full citizenship reserved for members of a reformed Church

of England (later known as the Congregational Church).

Careful to guard the colony against theological error, he led

the Massachusetts Bay colony to banish Anne Hutchison,

Roger Williams, and John Wheelwright, among others. His

son, John, became governor of the C

ONNECTICUT COLONY

Further Reading

Bremer, Francis J. John Winthrop: America’s Forgotten Founding Father.

New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

omes, P

eter J. “A Pilgrim’s Progress.” New York Times Magazine,

(April 18, 1999), pp. 102–103.

organ, E

dmund S. The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John

Winthr

op. Boston: Little, Brown, 1958.

Winthr

op, John. The Journal of John Winthrop, 1630–1649. Abridged

ed. Ed. Richar

d S. Dunn and Laetitia Yeandle. Cambridge,

Mass.: Belknap Press, 1997.

World War I and immigration

The outbreak of World War I in 1914 was seen by most

Americans and many Canadians as a distinctly European

problem. Canada was tied to Britain, both in governance

and in broad sentiment, but the United States attempted to

shield itself from the influences that had helped create the

war. Most important, it hoped to keep out dangerous radi-

cals and communists who might poison the minds of mil-

lions of Europeans already in North America who had come

from lands now at war. World War I ushered in an age of

xenophobia and of tighter restrictions on immigration that

would last, in some measure, into the 1960s.

The Great War, as it came to be called before World

War II, developed from a seemingly localized struggle

between the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Serbia, both

bent on expansion in the Balkan Peninsula of Europe. The

assassination of Austrian archduke Francis Ferdinand by Ser-

bian nationalists in June 1914 was the culmination of a long

period of international tension that began with France’s

defeat at the hands of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War

of 1870–71. From that event developed a growing milita-

rization of Europe and the formation of alliance systems that

made it difficult to solve problems such as Francis Ferdi-

nand’s assassination by diplomatic means. Just as important

in the coming of war was the intense nationalistic impulse

that had motivated much of European politics since the

REVOLUTIONS OF

1848. By the second decade of the 20th

century, it was impossible for autocratic rulers of multi-

ethnic states to quietly quell nationalistic movements.

Throughout eastern and southern Europe after 1880,

Poles, Ukrainians, Greeks, Germans, Hungarians, Czechs,

Slovaks, Slovenes, Jews, and dozens of other ethnic groups

were fleeing repressive regimes in Russia, Austria-Hungary,

Germany, and the Ottoman Empire, seeking both economic

opportunities and personal freedoms in North America.

Millions of others came from Britain, Scandinavia, Italy, and

other parts of Europe. With very few restrictions on Euro-

pean immigration to the United States and a booming econ-

omy, immigration reached all-time highs in the decade prior

to the Great War. Whereas immigration had averaged about

340,000 per year during the 1890s, between 1905 and

1914, it jumped to more than 1 million per year. Although

Canadian policy was more restrictive, the trend was the

same. During the 1890s, immigration to Canada averaged

about 37,000 per year; between 1905 and 1914, the figure

rocketed to almost 250,000 per year. Thus, when war broke

out, there were millions of people in both the United States

and Canada who had close personal ties with countries on

both sides of the conflict. This provided a powerful impulse

for politicians to stay out of the war.

Following the assassination of Francis Ferdinand, Ger-

many backed without reservation Austria-Hungary’s

extreme threats against Serbia—the so-called blank check.

Russia mobilized troops in support of Serbia, leading to an

Austrian declaration of war. Germany, fearing a two-front

war, invaded France by way of Belgium, violating neutrality

agreements signed with Britain and France in the 1830s. By

the end of August, Britain, France, and Russia—the Allied

Powers—were arrayed against Germany, Austria-Hungary,

Bulgaria, and the Ottoman Empire—the Central Powers.

Italy, long an ally of Germany and Austria, joined the Allied

Powers in 1915. The war that many predicted would be over

by Christmas soon ground to a standstill, as defensive tech-

nologies kept millions of men on both sides in hundreds of

miles of trenches throughout the war.

Although U.S. president Woodrow Wilson deeply

admired the British and their parliamentary system of gov-

ernment, he publicly urged Americans to remain “impartial

in thought as well as in action.” Most Americans agreed.

The United States generally had remained neutral in inter-

national diplomacy. In addition, many progressives believed

that war would detract from pursuit of domestic reforms

that were greatly needed. Finally, most Americans, despite

their sympathies, realized that there were simply too many

divided loyalties for the country to take sides over issues that

seemed so remote from the country’s interests. Although

the clear majority of Americans were of British, Scandina-

vian, or Italian stock, more than 2.3 million Germans and

1.5 million Irish had immigrated since 1880, and most gen-

320 WORLD WAR I AND IMMIGRATION

erally opposed siding with the Allied powers. However,

when the Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine

on May 7, 1915, with the loss of 1,198 liv

es, including 139

Americans, Wilson and the public generally turned against

the Central Powers For the duration of the war, the Ameri-

can public was bombarded with anti-German propaganda,

produced both by the British government and the U.S. gov-

ernment’s Committee on Public Information. “One hun-

dred percent Americanism” was promoted, German

language courses were discontinued, and German Ameri-

cans were frequently harassed and sometimes forced to pub-

licly express their patriotism. Immigrants from

Austria-Hungary were suspect as sympathizers or as radicals

or labor activists, despite the fact that many had emigrated

to flee the Austrian Crown, and most supported the right of

self-determination. People were unsure of Polish, Ukrainian,

and Russian loyalties and feared the importation of radical

communist doctrines. There was even a heightened effort

to discourage the customs and traditions of Mexican labor-

ers in the American Southwest.

The resumption of German submarine warfare in

February 1917 finally brought the United States into the

war, with Woodrow Wilson promoting his Fourteen Points,

emphasizing the establishment of an international peace-

keeping body (the League of Nations) and a major role for

the United States in reshaping the Old World. Although war

was declared in April 1917, American troops did not play a

large part in the fighting until January 1918. The war ended

on November 11, 1918; nevertheless 115,000 U.S. soldiers

died, and almost twice that many were wounded. Though

these figures paled in comparison to European losses, Amer-

icans tended to blame a corrupt and outdated European sys-

tem that had little in common with the democratic values of

America. This view was only heightened by the success of

the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia in October 1917 and

Russia’s subsequent withdrawal from the war in March

1918. The small Socialist Party in the United States was

dominated by immigrants, who were increasingly suspected

of internal subversion. Finally, the widespread labor unrest

of 1919 was inextricably linked to immigrant influence,

consolidating the Red Scare in America. Although the move

to round up and deport suspected radicals quickly ran its

course by 1920, Americans were in no mood for interna-

tional ventures of any kind. Congress refused to ratify the

Treaty of Versailles (1919), which would have required join-

ing the new League of Nations.

Even as the United States was entering World War I in

1917, there had been substantial concern about the “dump-

ing” of dangerous and poor immigrant refugees from

Europe. When the I

MMIGRATION

of 1917, which had

instituted an immigrant literacy test, failed to keep hundreds

of thousands of Europeans from immigrating after the war,

support for an ethnic quota grew. For the first time, many

within the business community supported such restrictive

legislation, convinced that immigrants from Canada, Mex-

ico, and the West Indies had significantly lessened the need

for potentially radicalized European labor. In order to ensure

that Bolsheviks, anarchists, Jews, and other “undesirables”

were kept to a minimum, the E

MERGENCY

UOTA

set

the number of immigrants from each national origin group

at 3 percent of the foreign-born population of that country

in 1910, a period when immigration from England, Ireland,

Scotland, and Scandinavia had been particularly high. The

measure limited immigration to 357,800 annually from the

Eastern Hemisphere, with more than half the number

reserved for immigrants from northern and western Europe.

The even more restrictive J

OHNSON

-R

EED

of 1924

made the quotas permanent, though at reduced levels. The

measure established an overall annual quota of 153,700,

allotted according to a formula based on 2 percent of the

population of each nation of origin according to the census

of 1890. Countries most favored according to this formula

were Great Britain (43 percent), Germany (17 percent),

and Ireland (12 percent). Countries whose immigration had

increased dramatically after 1890—including Italy, Poland,

Russia, and Greece—had their quotas drastically slashed.

English-speaking Canadians were initially more enthu-

siastic for the war, though the francophone population and

large Irish and German populations were not. The outbreak

of World War I forced Canada to devise a policy for dealing

with resident enemy aliens. Among the Canadian popula-

tion, more than 500,000 people were in some way linked to

the Central Powers, including about 400,000 of German

origin, 129,103 from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, almost

4,000 from the Ottoman Empire, and several thousand

from Bulgaria. Despite the fact that only about 20,000 Ger-

mans and 60,000 Ukrainians were yet to be naturalized,

most fell under suspicion. The resulting War Measures Act

of August 1914 enabled the governor in council to authorize

any orders or regulations deemed “necessary or advisable

for the security, defence, order and welfare of Canada.”

Enemy aliens were prohibited from possessing weapons and

were eventually required to register with the police and mil-

itary. Of more than 80,000 who were registered, 8,579 were

interned in 24 camps across Canada. As in the case of the

United States, most East Europeans were suspect, especially

Ukrainians, who were viewed as the main supporters of bol-

shevism in Canada. Further stressing the patriotic require-

ment, in 1917, the Wartime Elections Act enfranchised

women whose husbands, sons, or brothers were in active ser-

vice, while disenfranchising everyone from enemy countries

who had becomes citizens since 1902.

As Canada slipped into depression between 1919 and

1922, it too developed more restrictive immigration legisla-

tion. Under Section 3 of the I

MMIGRATION

of 1919,

an order-in-council excluded immigrants from countries

that had fought against Canada during the war. The list of

inadmissible immigrants was expanded to include alcoholics,

WORLD WAR I AND IMMIGRATION 321

those of “psychopathic inferiority,” mental defectives, illiter-

ates, those guilty of espionage, and those who believed in the

forcible overthrow of the government or who “disbelieved”

in government at all. At the same time, revisions made it eas-

ier to deport immigrants. Immigrants who could be shown

to have fallen into an inadmissible class when they arrived in

Canada were no longer safe from deportation after five

years. The cabinet was also authorized to prohibit entry to

any race, class, or nationality because of contemporary eco-

nomic conditions or because they were not likely to be

assimilable because of “peculiar habits, modes of life and

methods of holding property,” a provision invoked against

entry of Hutterites (see H

UTTERITE IMMIGRATION

), Men-

nonites (see M

ENNONITE IMMIGRATION

), and

Doukhobors. Additionally, in 1921, adult immigrants were

required to have $250 upon landing, and children, $125.

Farm laborers and domestic workers with previous job

arrangements were exempted from the landing fees. In

1923, immigration was restricted to agriculturalists, farm

laborers, and domestic servants. The revisions were also sup-

ported by the business community, which had previously

supported a more liberal policy. According to the president

of the Canadian Manufacturers’ Association, while it was

true that Canada had millions of “vacant acres” that needed

population, “it is wiser to go slowly and secure the right

sort of citizens.”

The Canadian government rewarded returning soldiers

with grants of land, but there was a high rate of failure. As a

result, by the mid-1920s, the Canadian government was

again seeking agriculturalists from Europe to develop

Canada’s agricultural lands. The first choice was to grant

land to British families. Under the E

MPIRE

ETTLEMENT

, British farmers with 25 pounds of capital upon arrival

could get loans and other forms of assistance. The program

eventually brought more than 100,000 British immigrants,

though many of them went into other lines of work. At the

same time, almost half a million Canadians immigrated to

the United States between 1925 and 1932.

With the end of depression by 1923, Canada turned its

attention to refugee groups still languishing in Europe, espe-

cially if they were considered helpful to Canada’s economic

recovery. Mennonites, who had been excluded by the orders-

in-council in 1919, were once again invited in 1923. Under

the provisions of the Railway Agreement of 1924, which

authorized the Canadian Pacific Railway and the Canadian

National Railway to recruit agriculturalists for the develop-

ment of the prairies, about 185,000 central Europeans came

to Canada, about half of them German speakers. Among the

earliest to arrive were German-speaking Russian Mennon-

ites, who had been doubly branded during the war as enemy

sympathizers and pacifists unwilling to share the nation’s

burden. Between 1923 and 1930, about 20,000 settled in

Canada. About 3,100 Jews were admitted by 1924, though

thousands more were excluded for fear that they were

tainted by communism. About 1,300 Armenians were

admitted in the early 1920s, but the government practiced

an essentially exclusionary policy that refused entry to most

Armenians.

Further Reading

Avery, Donald. “

Dangerous Foreigners”: European Immigrant Workers

and Labour Radicalism in Canada, 1896–1932. Toronto:

McClelland and S

tewart, 1979.

Ellis, Mark, and Panikos Panayi. “German Minorities in World War

I: A Comparative Study of Britain and the USA.” Ethnic and

acial Studies 17 (1994): 238–259.

Fernande

z, Ronald. “Getting Germans to Fight Germans: The Amer-

icanizers of World War I.” Journal of Ethnic Studies 9 (1981):

53–68.

yt, Edwin P. The Palmer Raids, 1919–1920: An Attempt to Suppress

Dissent. New York: Seabury Press, 1969.

Hutchinson, E. P. Legislative History of American Immigration Policy,

1798–1965. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,

1981.

LeM

, Michael C. From Open Door to Dutch Door: An Analysis of U.S.

Immigr

ation Policy since 1820. New York: Praeger, 1987.

Luebke, F

rederick. Bonds of Loyalty: German Americans and World War

I. DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1974.

cCormack, A. R

oss. Reformers, Rebels, and Revolutionaries: The West-

ern C

anadian Radical Movement, 1899–1919. Toronto: Univer-

sity of T

oronto Press, 1977.

Murphy, Paul. World War I and the Origins of Civil Liberties in the

nited S

tates. New York: Norton, 1979.

Nagler, Joerg A. “Enemy Aliens and Internment in W

orld War I: Alvo

von Alvensleben in Fort Douglas, Utah, a Case Study.” Utah H

is-

torical Q

uarterly 58 (1990): 388–405.

Preston, William, Jr. Aliens and Dissenters: Federal S

uppression of R

ad-

icals. 2d ed. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1995.

Swyripa, Frances, and J

ohn Herd Thompson, eds. Loyalties in Conflict:

Ukr

ainians in Canada during the Great War. Edmonton: Cana-

dian Institue of U

krainian Studies, University of Alberta, 1983.

Thompson, John Herd. Ethnic Minorities during Two World Wars.

Ottawa: Canadian Historical Association, 1991.

———. The Harvest of

ar: The Prairie West, 1914–1918. Toronto:

McClelland and Stewart, 1978.

World War II and immigration

The cataclysm of World War II (1937–45) had a profound

effect on immigration to North America. With restrictive

immigration policies in place by the 1920s, interwar immi-

gration to the United States and Canada had been dramati-

cally curtailed from the peak years just before World War I

(1914–18; see W

ORLD

AND IMMIGRATION

). The

exigencies of war dropped the numbers further still. The

United States admitted almost 1.3 million immigrants in

1907, 50,000 in 1937 when war broke out in China, and

less than 24,000 in 1943. Canada’s peak year had been

1913, when almost 400,000 immigrants landed; immigra-

322 WORLD WAR II AND IMMIGRATION

tion in 1937 dropped to about 12,000 and further down to

7,445 in the trough year of 1943. But war also changed peo-

ple’s attitudes toward immigrants and those who might

become immigrants and presented enormous challenges to

current policies. First raised were security questions regard-

ing potential enemies: What should be done with the mil-

lions of Japanese, Germans, and Italians living in North

America? Also, with millions of men and women serving

abroad, labor needs had to be met at home, and provision

had to be made for foreign families acquired while overseas.

Finally, there were humanitarian questions regarding the

protection of children threatened by war and the eventual

resettlement of refugees and other persons displaced by the

war. As a result of these challenges, a number of important

exceptions were made to the various immigration restric-

tions in the United States and Canada. Anti-Catholicism

and anti-Semitism declined in the United States, and there

was a generally less hostile attitude toward nonfounding eth-

nic groups throughout North America. Though major new

immigration legislation was not passed, changing attitudes

as a result of the war did pave the way for more far-reaching

legislative changes in the future.

Militarism, nationalism, and ethnocentrism or racism,

including anti-semitism, had been common features of polit-

ical life among the totalitarian governments of Italy, Ger-

many, and Japan during the 1930s. The first stage of World

War II began when Japan, under Emperor Hirohito, invaded

China on July 7, 1937. The war expanded when Germany,

under the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, invaded Poland on

September 1, 1939, bringing Britain and France into the

conflict. By June 1940, Nazi Germany had conquered or

neutralized all of central, northern, and western Europe. Ger-

many failed in its attempt to invade Great Britain in 1940,

but gradually fortified the entire Atlantic coastline, further

consolidating its control. In June 1941, Germany invaded

the Soviet Union, seeking new sources of oil and other raw

materials and gaining direct control over the majority of

Europe’s Jews. Finally, the Japanese bombing of the U.S.

naval base at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941,

brought the United States into a conflict that would last

another three-and-a-half years, pitting the Axis powers of

Germany, Italy, and Japan against the major Allied powers

of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and

China. By the end of the war in early September 1945,

almost 16 million Americans and more than 1 million Cana-

dians had served in the military in every part of the world.

U.S. deaths totaled more than 400,000; Canadian deaths,

45,000. The devastation in the main theaters of combat was

even greater. The military death tolls were staggering: Soviet

Union, 7.5 million; Germany, 3.5 million; China, 2.2 mil-

lion; Japan, 1.2 million; Great Britain, Austria, Poland, and

Romania more than 300,000 each. By the end of the war,

more than 20 million people had been displaced from their

homes in Europe, and millions more in Asia.

With Britain at war from 1939, charitable organizations

almost immediately petitioned the Canadian government to

provide asylum for child refugees, including Jews living in

Britain, France, Switzerland, Spain, and Portugal. The ruth-

less Nazi bombing of civilian populations in Britain led to

widespread sympathy for the resettlement of British chil-

dren, and more than 50,000 Canadians offered to host

GUEST CHILDREN

and mothers until the end of the war.

Despite the fact that Canadian Jews were prepared to host

the previously approved Jewish children, the government

refused to include them in the evacuation plan, fearing that

it would lead to immigration of their families following the

war. The Canadian government approved a plan to host up

to 10,000 British children, with Britain responsible for

screening and transportation costs, Canadian provincial

agencies and relief organizations responsible for placement,

and private citizens responsible for daily care. After the sink-

ing of the SS City of Benares on September 14, 1940, and the

esulting deaths of 73 childr

en, the program was discontin-

ued. Altogether more than 4,500 children and 1,000 moth-

ers were allowed to immigrate; virtually all were non-Jewish

Britons.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941,

the war was brought to the doorstep of the United States.

In response to the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, the

U.S. Congress had already passed the Alien Registration

Act (1940), requiring all non-naturalized aliens 14 and older

to register with the government and tightening naturaliza-

tion requirements. With the declaration of war against Ger-

many, Italy, and Japan following the attack on Pearl Harbor,

more than 1 million foreign-born immigrants from those

countries became “enemy aliens.” Although Italians and

Germans were at first suspect, most were so deeply assimi-

lated into American culture, living in local communities

with long traditions, that they were largely left alone. More

visibly distinct and ethnically related to the attackers,

Japanese immigrants and Americans of Japanese descent

were quickly targeted in the early war hysteria. Japanese

Americans and Japanese Canadians were widely suspected as

supporters of the aggressive militarism of the Japanese

Empire. The territory of Hawaii was put under military rule,

and the 37 percent of its population of Japanese ancestry

was carefully watched. On the mainland, many politicians

and members of the press, along with agricultural and patri-

otic pressure groups, urged action against the Japanese.

Despite the absence of any evidence of sabotage or spying

and the testimony of many that they posed no threat, on

February 19, 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed

Executive Order 9066, which led to the forcible internment

of 120,000 Japanese Americans, two-thirds of whom were

born in the United States (see J

APANESE INTERNMENT

ORLD

II). In the same month, the Canadian gov-

ernment ordered the expulsion of 22,000 Japanese Canadi-

ans from a 100-mile strip along the Pacific coast.

WORLD WAR II AND IMMIGRATION 323