Editorial

With a melody reminiscent of a college fi ght song or the US Marines Hymn, the lyrics of “America Always First” paint a grim picture of a nation under attack. “This once proud and happy nation,” the second verse begins, “is a wreck beyond compare”; government waste, misguided internationalism, and divided loyalties are singled out as particular problems. Only one candidate could rescue the country from this “awful plight” and “set the nation right.” Included in Philadelphia printer Weldon Company’s America First Songbook, “America Always First” was written not in 2016 but in 1920, not for a current presidential candidate but for the Warren G. Harding/Calvin Coolidge campaign.1 In the wake of World War I, fearful Americans laid many of their problems at the feet of immigrants, who seemed to threaten the nation’s stability and even safety. The following decade included a resurgence of biological racism, a spate of deportations, and new immigration restrictions. This issue of the Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography is dedicated to the history of immigration and ethnicity. When former editor Tamara Gaskell and the PMHB editorial board selected this topic several years ago, they could not have imagined that the issue would come out just days before Americans would vote in an election in which immigration has been a central theme. Yet, one could not call this confl uence a coincidence.