Turmoil Amid Reform

Abstract

This chapter assesses how Woodrow Wilson's candidacy, along with that of Theodore Roosevelt and Eugene Debs, signaled the height of the Progressive Era, a time beginning in the early 1900s when Americans believed that sufficient application of proper ways and means could alleviate virtually any social or economic malady. Progressives held contrasting ideas about how best to address immigrant-related issues, especially the extent to which their continued influx would exacerbate a host of problems. Some, like Wilson, saw immigrants as valuable additions to the United States, and emphasized the need to assimilate them properly so that they would come to embody “American” values and practices. Others believed that immigrants contributed disproportionately to social ills, a propensity that justified their exclusion. To these restrictionists, the imposition of more effective ways to reduce the number of immigrants and improve the quality of those allowed in would contribute to national rectification. Businesses in need of immigrant laborers sought ways to allay the restrictionists' fears, but new labor conflicts involving foreign-born women and men complicated their efforts. Two years after the 1912 election, the outbreak of war in Europe exacerbated domestic concerns about the loyalty of foreign-born residents, further complicating America's “immigration problem.”