European Americans: From Immigrants to Ethnics

Rudolph J. Vecoli, Director, Center for Immigration Studies, University of Minnesota. This article will appear in a forthcoming publication of the National Council for Social Studies, which granted permission to have it printed.

Ethnicity has exercised a persistent and pervasive influence upon American history. Americans have traditionally defined themselves and others as members of ethnocultural groups. On the basis of their origins, national, racial, religious and regional, they have shared with “their own kind” a sense of a common heritage and collective destiny. Ethnic cultures have sustained patterns of values, attitudes, and behaviors which have differentiated various segments of the population. The resulting ethnic pluralism has profoundly affected all aspects of American life. Religion, politics, social mobility, even the conduct of foreign affairs, have reflected this extraordinary diversity of ethnic identities.

A series of migrations, internal as well as external, brought together peoples of various cultural, linguistic, racial and religious backgrounds. The peopling of this continent by transoceanic migration has gone on for over four hundred years. The original inhabitants, the true native Americans, were gradually displaced and dispossessed by successive waves of immigrants. They came from allover the world, Africans by the millions, brought to this land in chains, Asiatics by the hundreds of thousands, and others from countries to the north and south and from the islands of the Caribbean. But the vast majority came from Europe. In the greatest population movement in human history, some thirty-five million Europeans immigrated to the United States in the century after 1830. This fact determined the basic character of American society; it was to be predominantly Caucasian, Christian and Western.

The study of immigration history involves not only the processes of physical migration, but the long-range consequences of this mingling of peoples as well. Despite its importance, the European immigration has been relatively neglected by American historians until recent decades. The reason appears to have been the general acceptance of an assimilationist ideology by scholar and laymen alike. The “Melting Pot,” it was assumed, would transform the foreigners into indistinguishable Americans in a generation or two at most. Bemused by the alleged uniqueness of the American character and institutions, historians turned to environmental explanations. The frontier, material abundance, or mobility, rather than Old World influences, determined the values and behavior of the American people. In this light, immigration appeared to be an ephemeral episode.^[1]

These assimilationist assumptions have been called into question by the “rediscovery of ethnicity” in recent years. White ethnic groups, as well as blacks, Indians and Hispanic Americans, have demonstrated an unanticipated longevity. This “New Pluralism” has inspired historians and others to explore the ethnic dimension of American life in the past as well as the present. As a consequence we are in the midst of a renaissance of immigration history. A rich and growing literature awaits the student of European American ethnic groups, one which is enlivened by divergent interpretations and differing methodologies.

We Stand on Their Shoulders

The writing of immigration history was initiated by a handful of scholars a half century ago when the field was less fashionable than it is today. Their thorough and scrupulous scholarship rescued the subject from the partisan concerns of the advocates of immigration restriction and the filiopietists.^[2] The major works of these historians remain essential reading for the serious student of the European immigration.

Among these pioneers, Marcus Lee Hansen advanced the most comprehensive interpretation of the Atlantic migration considered as a whole.^[3] Viewing emigration as a basic force in European history, Hansen emphasized the underlying demographic, economic, and social causes which transcended political boundaries. Although sensitive to the “pull” of European conditions as of equal importance. Hansen also traced the transatlantic routes of commerce which provided ready-made paths for the westward bound emigrants.

In his volume of essays, The Immigrant in American History,^[4] Hansen integrated the story of immigration with certain major themes, such as the westward movement, political democracy and Puritanism. Viewing the immigrants as “carriers of culture,” he focused on the interaction between their heritage and the American environment. Rather than a threat to American democracy, Hansen thought the immigrants had exercised a basically conservative and stabilizing influence. Stressing their receptivity to American values, he declared that, “they were Americans before they landed.” Reflecting his own rural origins as well as the influence of his mentor, Frederick Jackson Turner, Hansen’s writings dealt with the Midwestern agrarian rather than the Eastern urban phase of the immigrant experience.^[5]

Hansen’s perspective was shared by his contemporaries who contributed solid studies dealing with specific immigrant groups. Theodore C. Blegen wrote extensively on the Norwegians, his major work being a two volume history which vividly depicts the Old World conditions as well as American experience of the immigrants.^[6] Blegen was particularly skillful in locating and exploiting “America letters,” emigrant ballads, and other documents in reconstructing the everyday lives of common folk. His colleague, George M. Stephenson, wrote with equal mastery of the Swedish immigration. The Religious Aspects of the Swedish Immigrations,^[7] is a cultural and social as well as institutional history of the Swedish American churches. In 1926, Stephenson published the first general history of American immigration,^[8] one which dealt with the role of the immigrant in the political development of the United States. Meanwhile Carl Wittke established himself as the historian of the German Americans; among his studies, those of the “Forty-eighters” and the German language press in America are particularly noteworthy.^[9] Wittke was also the author of a survey of immigration history, We Who Built America.^[10] Viewing the central motif of American history as “the impact of successive immigrant tides upon a New World environment,” Wittke’s history was a descriptive rather than interpretive account of the various nationalities comprising these tides. In the tradition of Turner, these historians like Hansen conceived of immigration as the interaction between European culture and American geography.

Oscar Handlin, Boston’s Immigrants (1941) marked a new departure in immigration history.^[11] Handlin’s theme was one of acculturation, the mutual impact of Irish Catholics and Yankee Protestants in a seaboard city. Through adaptation to the stern conditions of urban life, the Irish created their own ethnic community. Unable and unwilling to assimilate the Irish, Boston became a divided city. Wedding immigration history and urban history, Boston’s Immigrants served as a model for the coming generation of historians. Robert Ernst’s study of immigrant groups in New York City was another early example of this new genre of ethnic history.^[12] Ernst skillfully delineated the interplay of the various nationalities in the culture, politics, economy and other aspects of urban life.

Handlin has written prolifically on the subject of immigration and ethnicity. His major work, The Uprooted, depicts the effects of migration upon the immigrants themselves.^[13] “The history of immigration,” he observed, “is a history of alienation and its consequences.” Torn from a traditional peasant community, Handlin’s immigrant became an estranged individual without meaningful ties to his fellow men. In dramatic prose, Handlin tells of the breakup of European rural society, the flight from disaster, the horrors of the voyage, and the anxieties of life in a strange land. Though the newcomer seeks to regain his lost community by creating ethnic institutions, he fails to escape from his alienated condition. This grim interpretation of the immigrant experience has had a profound influence, but the question has been raised whether Handlin’s immigrant was indeed typical of the many different groups represented in the European immigration.^[14]

In subsequent writings, Handlin portrayed American society as a mosaic of competing ethnic and racial groups.^[15] Despite the resulting prejudice and conflict, Handlin judged pluralism to be a positive value. By providing a focus for personal identity as well as a vehicle for collective activity, ethnic groups served as a bulwark of liberty against the centralizing and dehumanizing tendencies of modern technocratic society.

New General Interpretations

Traditionally Americans viewed immigration as a single-minded flight from the “Old World” to the “Land of Opportunity.” Hansen first noted that the immigration to the United States was to be understood as much in terms of European conditions and that it was a part of a much more complex population movement. These insights have been further developed in the writings of Brinley Thomas and Frank Thistlethwaite. In his Migration and Economic Growth, Thomas offered a more sophisticated interpretation of the dynamics of nineteenth century European migration.^[16] Rather than being a simple reflex to the American business cycle, he analyzed the flow of labor and capital within the Atlantic economy in response to business fluctuations on both sides of the ocean. Thomas also stressed the push factor of the “Malthusian Devil,” the frontier of surplus population which moved from west to east across Europe in the nineteenth century. Rather than being pulled by American opportunity, huge fragments of the European population were expelled by societies which could not absorb their labor. As the European countries industrialized, internal migrations became alternatives to overseas movements. Thomas also noted the changing character of emigration in response to altered technological and labor conditions in the United States.

In a seminal paper, Thistlethwaite declared that the European migrations must be understood in terms of the transformation of European society in the nineteenth century.^[17] The impact of the demographic and industrial revolutions dislodged vast numbers of people from their ancestral homes and sent them wandering over the face of the earth. Thistlethwaite elaborated upon the complex patterns of movement within Europe and between Europe and other continents. While the majority of overseas migrants did come to the United States, Argentina, Brazil and Canada were also receiving heavy immigrations. The high incidence of repatriation, perhaps a third of all immigrants to the United States, was another aspect of the migratory pattern commented upon by Thistlethwaite. Rather than viewing the immigrants as an anonymous, nondescript mass, Thistlethwaite called for the study of the specific characteristics and peculiar migratory patterns of particular occupational and village groupings.

The realization that the United States was not unique as a host society has stimulated interest in the comparative study of immigration history. Louis Harfz, The Founding of New Societies is a pioneering work in this field.^[18] Its thesis is that the character of the “new societies” created by European migrations was determined by the stage of historical development of the mother country at the time of mass exodus. These “fragments” removed from the stream of European history thus retained and reinforced their original ideological cast. In a series of essays, the thesis is applied to the United States, French Canada, South Africa, Australia and Brazil.

The Hartz thesis is utilized by John Higham in his provocative essay which places immigration history in a comparative setting.^[19] Rather than being immigrants, the original colonists, Higham contends, constituted a “charter group” which set the initial character of the society and the terms upon which later arrivals were admitted. To this dominant core culture newcomers have been progressively assimilated. Higham contrasts the limited impact of the immigration upon American society as compared with Argentina or Brazil. One factor, he suggests, accounting for this difference was the tremendous variety among the immigrants to the United States while the immigration to Latin America was concentrated in a few nationalities. Thus the cultural diversity of American ethnic groups diluted their impact and hastened their assimilation. With Nathan Glazer, Higham views the mass immigration as disruptive of the established American culture and contributing to the emergence of a mass culture.^[20]

Several general histories of American immigration which incorporate the more recent findings have appeared since 1960. Maldwyn Allen Jones in an admirably concise and literate volume surveyed this “greatest folk-migration in human history.”^[21] Acknowledging his debt to Hansen, Handlin, Higham, and others, Jones sought “to tell briefly the story of American immigration from the planting of Virginia to the present.” Rejecting traditional distinctions between “colonists” and “immigrants” and “old immigrants” and “New immigrants”, Jones, while mindful of the changes taking place in both those who came and in the country which received them, stressed the fundamental sameness of the immigrant and his experience. “As a social process,” Jones concluded, “immigration has shown little variation throughout American history.”

A more recent work by Philip Taylor focuses more narrowly upon the century of mass emigration, 1830-1930.^[22] Its point-of-view is primarily that from the European side of the Atlantic. Though acknowledging “the attracting force of America’s economic opportunities and of its free institutions,” the volume describes in detail the disruptive forces at work in Europe which stimulated the impulse to emigrate. Though drawing upon the work of others, Taylor brings to bear much fresh material in his discussion of the emigration business and its regulation, the conditions of the journey, and the recruitment of emigrants. Briefer discussion is reserved for the working and living conditions of the immigrants in America, nativism and immigration legislation, and the evolution of ethnic communities. The merit of this volume lies not so much in new interpretations as in the richness of its factual rendering of the subject.

Immigration and ethnicity are major themes in Rowland Berthoff’s interpretive social history, An Unsettled People.^[23] Berthoff projects a cycle of historical development, “From adequate order through a period of excessive disorder and back again toward some satisfactory order,” as the paradigm of American history. In this scheme, the massive influx of foreigners joined with intense internal mobility contributed to the general social disorder of nineteenth century America. In a search for community, new social groups were formed, mainly along ethnic lines. Thus ethnic consciousness became a source of identification of self and others, one which was expressed in institutional patterns such as jobs and housing. Reform, including efforts to exclude or Americanize the immigrants, represents for Berthoff an attempt to bring social order out of chaos.

European Backgrounds and Reactions

Since Hansen’s general discussion in The Atlantic Migration, the European backgrounds of the emigration have been the subject of a number of specialized studies. Wilbur Shepperson, British Emigration to North America deals with a variety of colonization projects in the Victorian era.^[24] He traces the issue of emigration as it is debated in the press and in state councils, among humanitarians and trade unionists. Was it a panacea or a pandora? Shepperson’s account of various ill-fated schemes suggests that for many it was a pandora. In a perceptive essay, Charlotte Erickson analyzes the agrarian myth which lured English emigrants, fleeing from the disruptive effects of the industrial revolution, to the American “Garden of the World.”^[25] Cecil Woodham-Smith has written a vivid account of the Irish potato famine and of the mass exodus it triggered.^[26] The impact upon Irish society and culture of the American emigration is the subject of a monogrpah by Arnold Schrier.^[27] The official and press reaction to the population drain, its effects on Irish agriculture, and the cultural-folkloristic reaction (including the development of the “American wake”) to the mass exodus are recounted. The “constructive opposition” to the Swedish emigration has been described by Franklin Scott.^[28]

Mack Walker has authored a thorough study of the German emigration of the nineteenth century.^[29] Rather than being of one piece the Auswanderung affected the various regions of Germany at different times. Walker analyzes the interplay of population growth, land tenure, technical innovations, and state policy in determining the rates and directions of the outward movement. John S. MacDonald has argued that the differential rates of emigration among the various regions of Italy are related to the various patterns of land ownership and to the resulting ethos of the peasantry.^[30] In areas where landownership was widely distributed and an individualistic outlook prevailed, emigration rates were highest; while in those areas characterized by large estates and collective forms of action on the part of agricultural laborers, emigration rates were lowest. Depending on the character of the rural social structure then, militant working-class organization and migration were alternative responses of the cultivators to poverty.

Historians have also been interested in the American influences which filtered back to the homeland through the emigration process. In their article on “The Immigrant and the American Image in Europe, 1860-1914,” Merle Curti and Kendall Burr emphasized the role of emigration promotional literature, as well as “America letters,” as media through which information and misinformation regarding the United States reached the common folk.^[31] Ingrid Semmingsen explored similar influences at work, particularly in Norway, finding that the “America letters” and the returned emigrants were often the agents of change, introducing new ideas regarding agricultural methods, politics and social relationships.^[32] However, she observed that, as in the case of the Irish, the conservative milieu in some countries was not receptive to impulses from America. Shrier’s study confirmed that the “returned Yank” had little impact upon Ireland; American money, he concluded, was more important than the repatriate in effecting changes in Irish society.^[33]

Since perhaps as many as a third of the immigrants returned to their homelands, the phenomenon of repatriation is important in evaluating the significance of the transatlantic migration for both the United States and Europe. Theodore Saloutos was a trailbreaker in this field with his study of returned Greek-Americans.^[34] Primarily through interviews, Saloutos studied a group of repatriates, analyzing their motives and attitudes, their readjustment and status in the Old Country. While many were well-to-do, he found an ambivalence in their feelings toward both Greece and America, as well as a generally negative attitude toward the repatriates on the part of other Greeks. Saloutos has also written a useful summary article on the repatriation in the twentieth century.^[35] In a volume suggestively entitled Emigration and Disenchantment, Shepperson sketched the portraits of some seventy-five English returnees.^[36] While he found great diversity among them, his general conclusion was that those Britons who had migrated to escape change were disillusioned by their failure to find stability in America. Another study by Shepperson deals with the return of British working class immigrants.^[37] The heavy return migration of the Italians has been the subject of studies by George R. Gilkey^[38] and Francesco Cerase.^[39] Gilkey found that the americani with their new ideas and dollars had a disruptive effect upon their native villages, but did not effect basic changes in the oppressive conditions of southern Italy. A similar conclusion was arrived at by Cerase: “Their reabsorption into the life of the community has had no consequence of innovation on the economic or political patterns of behavior in the community itself.” Other studies of repatriation are needed to fill out this dimension of the history of the Atlantic migration.

The Making of Americans

The making of Americans has been a basic theme in the writing of American immigration history. What was to be the significance of this “foreign invasion” for the emerging American nationality? Was America a “Melting Pot” in which all diverse elements would be fused into a new human type or was it a mosaic composed of distinct ethnic groups? These issues have long been debated, and the echoes of these debates resound in the writings of historians and social scientists. The ideologies are themselves a part of the history of immigration, since they shaped attitudes and public policies. Philip Gleason’s article, “The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?”, traced the changing content, use and meaning of this metaphor.^[40] In his work, Assimilation in American Life, Milton Gordon summarized three contending ideologies of ethnic group relations; Anglo-Conformity; the Melting Pot; and Cultural Pluralism.^[41] Gordon then offered his own theory of assimilation, one which envisioned the persistence of structural pluralism, in terms of inter-personal relations, along with a pervasive cultural assimilation in terms of language, manners, values, etc. Seeking to explain the “religious revival” of the 1950’s, Will Herberg proposed the concept of the “triple Melting Pot” as an explanatory hypothesis.^[42] While rejecting ethnic definitions, the grandchildren of the immigrants were manifesting the phenomenon of “third generation return” by affirming their identities as Protestants, Catholics, or Jews.

Other writers impressed by the persistence of ethnic groups have offered theories to explain the continuing pluralistic character of America. In their influential work, Beyond the Melting Pot, Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan declared: “The point about the melting pot is that it did not happen.”^[43] Based on an analysis of five ethnic groups in New York City, the authors found that ethnicity pervaded all spheres of life. The explanation they suggested was that ethnic groups were not only a source of individual identity, they had also become interest groups by which persons sought to defend or advance their position in society.

In his groundbreaking study, Language Loyalty in America, Joshua Fishman advanced the theme of cultural maintenance as a neglected aspect of ethnic history.^[44] Contrary to the notion that the immigrants gladly shed their native heritage, Fishman argued that they made strenuous efforts to sustain their cultures and languages. Detailed studies of the German, French Canadian, Spanish, and Ukrainian groups document their resistance to pressures for total cultural assimilation. Despite the steady inroads of “de-ethnization”, Fishman demonstrated that the immigrants’ struggles to keep alive their native tongues and cultures is a vital and neglected aspect of American social history.

A contrary view has been advanced by Timothy L. Smith.^[45] Rather than being victims of a coercive Americanization policy, Smith has depicted the immigrants as eagerly pursuing assimilation as a means of advancing their fortunes and those of their children. Espousing Hansen’s dictum that “they were Americans before they landed,” Smith contends that the newcomers shared with the natives basic values of hard work, thrift, and individual ambition. Advocating “new approaches,” Smith has chosen to stress “assimilation, both cultural and structural, rather than ethnic exclusiveness” as the key to understanding immigration history.

Nativism and Immigration Policy

While the response of native Americans to immigrants ranged from cordial to hostile, it has been xenophobia which has attracted the most attention from historians. An early and still useful work in this vein is Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800-1860.^[46] Focusing on the intense anti-Catholic sentiment of the ante-bellum years, Billington interpreted the antipathy toward the Irish and Germans as stemming primarily from deep-seated religious prejudice. While noting ethnic rivalries over jobs and politics, the volume concentrates on the manifestations of anti-Catholicism ranging from literary slander to physical violence. A psychological interpretation has since been forwarded by David Brion Davis.^[47] Viewing nativism as stemming from fear of internal subversion, Davis attributed this conspiratorial mentality to the insecurities engendered by “bewildering social change.” In his analysis of anti-Catholic, anti-Mason and anti-Mormon literature, Davis found that all shared a common rhetoric and view of reality. Richard Hofstadter has found this fear of conspiracy, which he styled “the paranoid style of American politics,” recurring in time of stress.^[48]

The major work on nativism in post-Civil War America, John Higham, Strangers in the Land, also espouses a psychological interpretation.^[49] Defining nativism as a form of nationalism,  Higham identified three major ideologies of xenophobia: anti-Catholicism; anti-radicalism; and racialism. During periods of national well-being, nativist fears declined, but with a crisis of confidence brought on by economic depression and war, hostility toward foreigners welled up again. While the threat was viewed at various times as Popery, anarchism and racial degeneracy, all of these phobias fueled the ultimately successful drive for immigration restriction. Higham has had the rare satisfaction of being his own revisionist. Taking a second look at nativism, he pointed out that intergroup conflict could profitably be analyzed from a sociological perspective.^[50] The “status rivalries” among ethnic groups in their competitive quest for power and place resulted in recurring friction and hostility. E. Digby Baltzell applied Higham’s analysis in his interpretation of the emergence of a “Protestant Establishment.”^[51] Threatened by the rise of new groups, particularly the Jews, the American upper class responded with exclusionary practices based on ethnic and social prejudice. Baltzell describes in detail the development of an ideological defense of caste and of institutions to defend caste priveleges by the WASP aristocracy.

Nativism has also been the subject of specialized studies dealing with particular facets of the phenomenon. Barbara M. Solomon analyzed the role of New England Brahmins in developing a rationale for immigration restriction based on an ideology of race.^[52] Focusing on the history of the Immigration Restriction League, she found its roots in the anxieties caused by the changes which were undermining the New England way of life. A parallel study by Charlotte Erickson contends that the opposition of organized labor to the southern and eastern European immigration was inspired by racial prejudice rather than real economic competition.^[53] In her definitive study of the contract labor controversy, Erickson demonstrates convincingly that by the 1880’s few immigrants were coming to America under formal labor contracts. From the debate on the Foran Act on, race prejudice rather than practical considerations determined the views of American labor leaders on the immigration question.

The resurgence of anti-Catholicism in the 1890’s and its primary manifestation, the American Protective Association, have been described by Donald L. Kinzer.^[54] Fear of the Roman Catholic Church and of its alleged political ambitions caused Protestants to rally to the APA. Seeking to deprive the Church of new recruits and votes, the APA advocated immigration restriction as well as a stiffening of naturalization requirements. Robert K. Murray’s Red Scare is a study of the post-World War I hysteria regarding an anticipated radical uprising in the United States.^[55] Fears of Bolshevism fed by labor strikes and general social unrest created a mood in which official and vigilante violence directed against radicals and aliens was generally applauded.

In a psychological interpretation of the “Red Scare,” Stanley Coben located its sources in the insecurity caused by the social and economic dislocations of the postwar years.^[56] Seeking to eradicate “foreign” threats to American institutions and values, the nativists raised the standard of “One Hundred Percent Americanism.” The development and enforcement of federal policies concerning immigrant radicals have been thoroughly examined by William Preston, Jr.^[57] His study is severely critical of the federal government because of the frequent violations of civil rights and injuries inflicted upon persons who were. often innocent of any wrong.

The development of American immigration policy to the enactment of the restrictive legislation of the 1920’s can best be followed in Highman, Strangers in the Land. Higham has also written a brief summary essay on the subject.^[58] The story of American immigration policy from 1924-1952 has been told by Robert A. Divine.^[59] A dispassionate legislative history, the study traces Congressional and executive policymaking from the enactment of the national origins statute to the passage of the McCarran Act. While recording lobbying activities and public debate on specific issues, its perspective is that of Capitol Hill and the White House.

The efforts by public and private agencies to facilitate the adjustment and assimilation of the immigrants have been little studied. Edward Hartmann, The Movement to Americanize the Immigrant, focuses on the governmental and voluntary programs during the period of World War 1.^[60] Although inspired by the wartime zeal for national unity, not all of the attention paid to the foreign born was coercive or mean-spirited. The teaching of the English language and “American ideals” was a primary activity, but there were also sympathetic attempts to safeguard the immigrants from economic exploitation and to assist them to achieve a better life. Another perspective on the Americanization movement is provided by Gerd Korman’s account of the response of industrial management to its polyglot labor force.^[61] Moved by considerations of improved efficiency and productivity, enlightened industrialists introduced welfare and safety programs in their factories. To these were added during the First World War Americanization classes for the immigrant workers. Under this regime of “benevolent paternalism”, as Korman describes it, a group of safety and welfare experts emerged as agents of social control. A recent article on the Illinois Immigrants’ Protective League by Robert L. Buroker also emphasizes the role of professional social workers animated by a vision of an efficient, harmonious social order.^[62]

A particular episode in the history of American immigration policy has been the subject of several books in recent years. The policy pursued by the United States with respect to Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany has been examined critically by Henry L. Feingold^[63] and David S. Wyman.^[64] Both studies agree that a combination of factors, bureaucratic inertia, congressional opposition, public indifference and anti-Semitism, prevented any effective response to the plight of the Jews. While critical of Franklin D. Roosevelt for not doing more, the authors recognize that the domestic political climate appears to have made any intercession by the United States impossible.

There were the fortunate few who did escape from the tyranny of Hitler and Mussolini and who found refuge in America. Among them were many of Europe’s most brilliant scholars, scientists and artists. Their story is told with grace and authority by Laura Fermi, herself one of them, in Illustrious Immigrants.^[65] The impact of this intellectual migration is the subject of Perspectives in American History (1968).^[66] Chapters by various contributors, some of them participants in the migration, detail the extraordinary influence exerted by this band of emigres upon the arts and sciences in America.

Studies of Particular Ethnic Groups

By its very nature, immigration history lends itself to studies of particular ethnic groups. The “America fever” struck the various countries of Europe at different times; the arriving immigrants sharing a common language, culture, and sometimes religion formed ethnic communities in the United States. The histories of single ethnic groups tend to follow a common pattern; they begin by examining the causes of the emigration in the Old Country; they trace the routes of migration and patterns of settlement; and conclude with a discussion of the social, economic and cultural adjustments to American conditions. Such single group studies have the merit of permitting the analysis of the migrant experience in depth, but they are open to the criticism that they neglect the common aspects of that experience which transcend ethnic differences.

Although studies of the British in colonial America abound, historians have only recently taken note of the large emigration from the British Isles in the nineteenth century. Rowland T. Berthoff has written about the English, Scots, Welsh and Ulstermen, who came to man America’s burgeoning industries.^[67] Their occupational and cultural skills facilitated their economic and social assimilation. Yet Berthoff points out the difficulties they sometimes experienced, as well as their retention of particular identities and customs. From their hostile encounters with the American Irish emerged a sense of their common British identity. Frank Thistlethwaite has also described the cultural continuity in the communities of British merchants and artisans.^[68] The potters who migrated from the Five Towns of Staffordshire carried on their traditional way of life as well as their craft in Trenton, New Jersey and East Liverpool, Ohio. The role of British immigrants in the American labor movement has been traced by Clifton K. Yearley, Jr.^[69] Following the careers of some fifty labor leaders of British origins, Yearley found their Chartist and trade union experience an important influence during the formative period of labor organization in America.

The British agrarian immigration has received less attention. Wilbur Shepperson described the establishment of various agricultural settlements,^[70] while Charlotte Erickson has studied the expectations of those British immigrants who sought in America a pastoral Utopia.^[71] Prairie Albion by Charles Boewe tells the story of an early English settlement in Illinois.^[72] The migration of British Mormon converts to Utah is the subject of P.A.M. Taylor, Expectations Westward.^[73] The study concentrates on the Mormon proselytizing, the planned emigration and the journey, rather than on the immigrants’ settlements in Utah. Recently the ethnic minorities within the British emigration have found their historians. Edward G. Hartmann celebrates the achievements of the Welsh,^[74] while A.L. Rowse performs the same function for the Cornish.^[75]

The Catholic Irish immigration has been the subject of a separate and extensive historical scholarship. Carl Wittke, The Irish in America, is the most thorough treatment of the subject.^[76] Individual chapters deal with the Irish and the Church, politics, business, etc. More interpretive and provocative are the works by George W. Potter^[77] and William V. Shannon.^[78] The harsh urban conditions the Irish encountered and their successful adaptation are depicted by Oscar Handlin, Robert Ernst, and Earl F. Niehaus for Boston, New York and New Orleans, respectively.^[79] James P. Shannon, Catholic Colonization on the Western Frontier recounts the largely unsuccessful efforts of the Church to settle the Irish immigrants on farms in Minnesota.^[80]

The Irish reputation for violence was reinforced by the mayhem allegedly committed by the Molly Mcguires. Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., has interpreted the pattern of violence in the Pennsylvania anthracite fields as an expression of the heritage of secret societies and terrorist tactics brought over by the Irish miners.^[81] The American Irish were also involved in the long struggle to free Erin from British rule. The origins and character of Irish-American nationalism are the subject of an astute study by Thomas N. Brown.^[82] The nationalist movement served as a school for the Irish in which they cultivated an appetite and aptitude for politics which made them a force in American public life. Brian Jenkins has reexamined the episode of the Fenian Brotherhood, particularly in terms of its effect upon Anglo-American relations.^[83] The policies of Woodrow Wilson with respect to Ireland and the reactions of Irish Americans have been analyzed in articles by William M. Leary, John B. Duff, and Joseph P. O’Grady.^[84]

Although the Germans figured as the largest element in the nineteenth century immigration, the historical literature dealing with them is quite slim. John A. Hawgood, The Tragedy of German-America remains the only general overview of the subject.^[85] Accounts of the Germans in New York, Chicago and Milwaukee can be found in the works by Ernst, Bessie Pierce and Bayard Still.^[86] The Germans of New Orleans are the subject of a monograph by Joseph F. Nau,^[87] while the Cincinnati Germans have been studied by G.A. Dobbert.^[88] Despite the fact that many Germans entered agriculture, there has been little written about their rural settlements. Terry G. Jordon has studied the relative success of the Germans as farmers in Texas,^[89] and Hildegarde Binder Johnson has analyzed the pattern of German settlement in the Midwest.^[90]

Carl Wittke’s writings are a major contribution to an understanding of various aspects of the German immigration. His study of the German “Forty-Eighters” describes the influence and careers of these political refugees who served as “the cultural leaven and the spiritual yeast for the whole German element.”^[91] Wittke’s history of the German language press in America, a definitive treatment of the subject, concludes that the newspapers served both as instruments of cultural maintenance and as agencies of Americanization.^[92] The role of German Americans in the Catholic Church has been assessed by Colman J. Barry.^[93] Focusing upon the “Cahenslyism” controversy of the late nineteenth century, Barry dissected the ethnic rivalries between the Irish and the Germans. Another valuable study of the German American Catholics is Philip Gleason’s history of the Central-Verein a national federation of German-American Catholic societies.^[94] Gleason interprets the involvement of the Central-Verein in social reform as a “creative response to a critical phase of the process of assimilation.” Utilizing quantitative methods, Frederick L. Luebke traced the changing patterns of political behavior of German-Americans in Nebraska in the closing decades of the nineteenth century.^[95] Ethnocultural rather than economic issues had the major impact upon voting patterns, and political behavior reflected the diversity, particularly religious, among the Germans. Of the other Germanic groups, the Dutch immigrants have been the subject of a comprehensive history by Henry S. Lucas.^[96]

While reference is commonly made to the Scandinavian immigration, its historiography is compartmentalized within national lines. William Mulder’s excellent study of the Mormon migration is an exception in that it encompasses Danes, Norwegians, and Swedes.^[97] Some 30,000 Scandinavian converts, the greater part from Denmark, came to Utah between 1850 and 1905. Mulder discusses the factors causing the emigration, as well as the pioneering life of the immigrants in the “New Zion.”

The Norwegian Americans have been particularly fortunate in their historians. Blegen’s two volumes remain the classic work on the Norwegian immigration.^[98] Carlton C. Qualey’s analysis of Norwegian settlement patterns is also a study of enduring value.^[99] The volume and character of the Norwegian emigration are succinctly summarized in an article by Ingrid Semmingsen.^[100] Einar Haugen’s linguistic history of the Norwegian Americans is an impressive work of scholarship.^[101] Two volumes by Kenneth G. Bjork add yet other dimensions to Norwegian American history. Saga in Steel and Concrete is a thorough study of Norwegian immigrant engineers and architects and of their contributions to American technology,^[102] while West of the Great Divide tells the story of the Norwegians who settled on the Pacific Coast.^[103] The history of the Lutheran Church among the Norwegian Americans is fully presented by E. Clifford Nelson and Eugene L. Fevold.^[104]

By contrast, the Swedish immigration has been little studied until recent years. Stephenson’s work is a notable exception.^[105] James I. Dowie has written about Swedish pioneering on the sodhouse frontier.^[106] He has also coedited with Ernest M. Espelie a volume of essays which discuss various facets of Swedish American life.^[107] A monograph by Finis Herbert Capp analyzes the attitudes of the Swedish-American press toward the foreign policy of the United States, finding there a propensity for isolationism and conservatism.^[108]

Three major works on the Swedish immigration, all by Swedish historians, were published in 1971. Lars Ljungmark’s meticulous study of the post-Civil War efforts to promote emigration from Sweden to Minnesota concludes that these schemes were largely unproductive.^[109] Breaking with the rural emphasis of previous writings, Ulf Beijbom has written an important study of the Swedes in nineteenth century Chicago.^[110] Beijbom exploited manuscript census records, church lists, and city directories for his analysis of demographic and social patterns. An equally valuable work by Sture Lindmark focuses upon the maintenance phenomenon among Swedes in the Midwest for the years 1914-1932.^[111] Analyzing the activities of ethnic churches, organizations, and press, Lindmark concluded that contrary to prevailing opinion the Swedes nourished a strong desire “to preserve their national identity, their cultural heritage, and their institutions.”

The Finnish immigration, set apart by cultural and linguistic differences, has had its own distinctive history. The most comprehensive study is A. William Hoglund, Finnish Immigrants in America, 1880-1920.^[112] Reviewing the development of Finnish American organizations, Hoglund’s thesis is that the immigrants sought a better life through collective effort rather than individual enterprise. A history of the Finns in Wisconsin, by John I. Kolehmainen and George W. Hill, supports this conclusion.^[113]

Since the emigration from Denmark was the smallest among the Scandinavian countries, it is to be expected that its history should also be the least studied. Paul C. Nyholm, The Americanization of the Danish Lutheran Churches, has been the one substantial work available.^[114] A recent volume by Kristian Hvidt offers a detailed analysis of the emigration from Denmark prior to 1914.^[115] Based largely on computer-processed data, the study provides a profile of the socio-economic characteristics of the Danish emigrants. Hvidt also investigates the “international system of emigrant promotion” established by shipping companies which he concludes served as a vital link between the “push” and “pull” factors.

The literature on the Jews in America, while voluminous, tends to be sociological rather than historical. No comprehensive history of the Jewish immigration has been written, although the surveys by Oscar Handlin and Rufus Learsi are useful.^[116] Nathan Glazer, American Judaism is a brilliant synthesis of religious and ethnic history.^[117] Since American Jews have been predominantly urbanities, studies tend to take the form of histories of particular communities. Less attention has been given to the early German immigration, but Bertram Wallace Korn has written about the Jews in antebellum New Orleans.^[118] Moses Rischin, The Promised City^[119] delineates the encounter between New York City and the East European conditions of urban life, the Jews created a new consciousness and institutional network to cope with this new environment. The search for community is also the theme of Arthur Goren’s history of the Kehillah experiment.^[120] Although it ultimately failed, this was a significant attempt to transplant this European communal organization in order to sustain Jewish life on American soil. Allon Schoener, Portal to America: the Lower East Side 1870-1925 brings to life the panorama of immigrant life through photographs and documents.^[121] Other Jewish communities have been written about by competent historians: Buffalo by Selig Adler and Thomas E. Connolly; Milwaukee by Louis J. Swichkow and Lloyd P. Gartner; Los Angeles by Max Vorspan and Gartner; and Rochester by Stuart E. Rosenberg.^[122] A history of agricultural settlements in New Jersey by Joseph Brandes, tells the story of the efforts to transform Jewish immigrants into farmers.^[123] Brandes traces the evolution of these communities from 1882 to the present.

The role of the Jewish immigrants in the American labor movement has received less attention than it deserves. An important work by Elias Tcherikower and others, The Early Jewish Labor Movement in the United States, is particularly valuable for its descriptions of sweatshop conditions and labor organization in the garment industry.^[124] A useful introductory work is Melech Epstein, Jewish Labor in USA, 1882-1952.^[125] Two interpretive articles on the Jewish labor movement have been authored by Hyman Berman and Moses Rischin.^[126]

Antisemitism, treated in passing by many of the previously mentioned works, has generated considerable scholarly discussion. Historians have debated its sources and causes: was it rooted in Christian theology or racist ideology? was it a rural or urban phenomenon? was it an expression of status rivalries or economic conflict? Charles Herbert Stember, Jews in the Mind of America, presents essays from a variety of historical and sociological perspectives as well as an analysis of a quarter century of survey data.^[127] In several articles, John Higham has contended that anti-semitism in America can best be understood as stemming from status rivalries such as those which resulted from the social climbing of newly wealthy Jews in the Gilded Age.^[128] Much attention has centered on the issue of the alleged antisemitism of the Populists. Richard Hofstadter initiated the controversy by identifying an antisemitic strain in the Populist psyche. Among others, Norman Pollack and Walter T.K. Nugent have taken exception to this interpretation, while Irwin Unger and Leonard Dinnerstein have supported it.^[129] Dinnerstein’s history of the Leo Frank case provides a full account of this southern outburst of antisemitism.^[130]

The eastern and southern European groups, those of the so-called “new immigration,” have only in recent years begun to be the subject of historical study. The Italians, although second in numbers only to the Germans in the post-colonial immigration, were virtually ignored in earlier writings. In 1971 two general histories of the Italian Americans appeared. That by Luciano J. lorizzo and Salvatore Mondello is a brief survey which treats various phases of the Italian immigration in knowledgeable fashion.^[131] A more ambitious study is Alexander DeConde, Half Bitter, Half Sweet, which takes as its subject the full sweep of relationships between Italy and the United States from colonial times to the present.^[132] Cultural, literary, and diplomatic contacts, as well as migration, are woven skillfully into a synthesis of Italian American history. Both volumes emphasize the intense prejudice which the Italians encountered as well as their efforts to transcend that barrier. A useful collection of articles dealing with various aspects of the Italian experience in America has been edited by Silvano M. Tomasi and Madeline H. Engel.^[133]

Though city dwellers like the Jews, the urban communities of the Italians have been the subject of few studies. Rudolph J. Vecoli and Humbert S. Nelli have both written about the Italians in Chicago. Vecoli stressed the continuing influence of Old World culture in the lives of the immigrants,^[134] while Nelli argued that the Italians achieved rapid assimilation and upward mobility.^[135] The successful adjustment of the Italians in the trans-Mississippi West is the theme of Andrew F. Rolle, The Immigrant Upraised.^[136] Rolle describes the agricultural settlements of Italians in the western states; otherwise little attention has been paid to these immigrants in rural surroundings. An exception is Robert L. Brandfonls study of the employment of Italian labor in the cotton plantations of the Mississippi Delta.^[137]

The clash of religio-cultural traditions resulting from the encounter between the Italian immigrants and the American Catholic Church has been described by Vecoli,^[138] while Tomasi has emphasized the role of the national parish as a nucleus for the formation of Italian American communities.^[139] The coming of age of the Italians in the politics of New York City is a theme of Arthur Mannis splendid biography of Fiorello LaGuardia.^[140] The story of LaGuardia’s successor, Vito Marcentonio, as the spokesman for the Italians of East Harlem, has been told by Salvatore LaGumina.^[141] In his excellent study of the American response to the rise of Mussolini, John P. Diggins interprets the pro-Fascist attitude of most Italian Americans as an expression of ethnic pride rather than political ideology.^[142] Diggins has also written about the Italian American opposition to Il Duce.

The role of the Italians in the American labor movement has been analyzed by Edwin Fenton.^[143] Fenton concluded that the Italians were just as susceptible to organization as other nationalities given favorable conditions in their particular occupations. Nonetheless, Italians were often viewed as wagecutters by American workers and their coming sometimes incited a hostile reception. Herbert G. Gutman has written a full account of an early episode of labor violence directed against the Italians.^[144] The striking differences in the part played by Italian immigrants in the labor movements of Argentina, Brazil, and the United States have been studied by Samuel L. Baily.^[145] In a study of the Italian immigrant family, Virginia Vans McLaughlin noted the manner in which cultural values conditioned the employment patterns of wives and daughters.^[146]

Among the stereotypes of the Italian immigrant was that of the violent anarchist. It was vindicated for some by the trial and conviction of Sacco and Vanzetti. Almost a half century after their execution the battle of the books over their guilt or innocence continues. Among recent writers, David Felix^[147] argues for the prosecution and Herbert B. Ehrmann^[148] for the defense, while Francis Russell^[149] contends that Vanzetti was innocent, but Sacco guilty. Another source of prejudice against the Italians has been the enduring belief in their involvement in secret criminal organizations. Long dominated by journalistic writings, the subject has recently been dealt with in a solid work of scholarship by Joseph L. Albini.^[150] Rather than being an importation from Sicily, Albini holds that the history of organized crime in the United States long antedated the coming of the Italians. The participation of Italian Americans and other ethnic elements in criminal activities was to be understood in terms of the limited opportunities open to such groups for legitimate careers. These are essentially the conclusions of other recent studies.^[151]

Historians have hardly begun to study the Slavic immigration. No general work encompassing this vast subject has yet been attempted. Certain aspects of the history of Slavic immigrants have been explored by Victor R. Greene. The Slavic Community on Strike emphasizes the militant participation of Polish, Slovak, and Lithuanian miners in the labor struggles in anthracite.^[152] Greene has also analyzed the relationship between the origins of ethnic consciousness and religious faith among the Polish immigrants.^[153]

Among the few studies dealing with particular Slavic groups, Joseph A. Wytrwal, America’s Polish Heritage is a general history, most useful for its description of the Polish ethnic organizations.^[154] A similar work is Gerold G. Govorchin, Americans from Yugoslavia, which describes the causes of the emigration as well as the achievements of the South Slav immigrants.^[155] George J. Prpic, The Croatians in America, is a comprehensive history of this Slavic group.^[156] Among the non-Slavic peoples of the Balkans, only the Greeks have been the subjects of a full-scale history. In a deeply researched work, Theodore Saloutos has written an authoritative account of the Greeks in America.^[157] While following the economic and social lot of the immigrants, Saloutos stresses the continuing involvement of the Greeks with developments in their homeland and the resulting controversies which often rent the Greek American communities. The struggle between Hellenism and Americanism subsided as the Greeks overcame early obstacles of poverty and prejudice to achieve respectability and well-being.

Topical Studies

While the bulk of the writings in immigration history deal with specific ethnic groups, a growing literature addresses itself to issues which encompass two or more groups. Surprisingly few efforts have been made to write the ethnic history of particular states. One of these is Rudolph J. Vecoli, The People of New Jersey, which delineates the successive tides of migration into the Garden State and the persistent ethnic influences on religion, politics, and other spheres of life.^[158] Wilbur S. Shepperson, Restless Strangers, portrays the extraordinary mix of Nevada’s population during the early years and its reflection in Nevada literature.^[159] Other studies have focused upon certain cities. In addition to the works by Handlin and Ernst, Donald B. Cole describes the changing ethnic composition of Lawrence Massachusetts, over the course of three-quarters of a century.^[160] The concepts of the “immigrant cycle” and the “immigrants’ search for security” are the synthetic themes which unify Cole’s account of life and work in this mill town.

The question of social mobility in America has attracted the attention of an increasing number of historians. Armed with the methodology of quantitative analysis, they have attempted to measure mobility in terms of such variables as occupation, property ownership, and education. The populations analyzed invariably include a variety of immigrant groups and the differentials in mobility among them become one of the phenomena noted if not explained.

In The Making of an American Community, Merle Curti sought to test the Turner thesis regarding the democratizing influence of the frontier by the intensive study of a Wisconsin county.^[161] Changes in property ownership, office holding, intermarriage, and other socioeconomic characteristics were computed over the course of several decades. Curti concluded that in Trempeleau County at least the frontier did make for a diffusion of economic and political power among the various ethnic groups. But the evidence for Turner’s assertion that the frontier was a crucible in which “the immigrants were Americanized, liberated, and fused into a mixed race,” was at best inconclusive.

Stephan Thernstrom’s study of social mobility among Irish unskilled laborers and their sons in Newburyport, Massachusetts, discovered little upward occupational mobility for either generation.^[162] Thernstrom, however, noted a significant increase in property ownership which he concluded validated the mobility ideology for these workers. In his later studies of occupational mobility in Boston, Thernstrom found that there were dramatic differences not only between immigrants and natives, but among newcomers of different nationalities as well.^[163] While the British and the Jews scored a significant rise in occupational status, the Irish and the Italians tended to lag behind. Such differences among various ethnic groups were also discerned by Clyde Griffen in his study of Poughkeepsie.^[164]

A new sensitivity to group difference has also inspired an ethnocultural analysis of American political history. A critical review of this literature is presented in an article by Robert P. Swierenga.^[165] Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics, pioneered the ethnic interpretation in this study of recent political developments.^[166] In a volume on Massachusetts politics in the 1920’s, J. Joseph Hutchmacher stressed the role of changing loyalties of immigrants groups in bringing about a political realignment in the Bay State.^[167] A leading proponent of the ethnocultural approach, Lee Benson, in his reassessment of “the concept of Jacksonian democracy,” concluded that ethnicity was more closely related to party affiliation than was economic class.^[168] Benson ventured the proposition that “at least since the 1820’s… ethnic and religious differences have tended to be relatively more important sources of political differences.” Study of ethnic influences upon political behavior has also been called for by Samuel P. Hays.^[169]

Students of Benson and Hays as well as other have pursued the ethnocultural analysis of political history in recent years. Several works which exemplify this approach are Michael Holt’s study of the formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, Paul Kleppner’s analysis of midwestern politics in the second half of the nineteenth century, John M. Allswang’s history of ethnic politics in Chicago, and Frederick C. Luebke’s investigation of the politics of Nebraska Germans.^[170] All employ a social analysis of political behavior and all agree on the importance of ethnoreligious identity as a determinant of voting patterns. A specific issue, the influence of the immigrant vote in the election of 1860, has been the subject of numerous articles; these have been compiled in a volume edited by Luebke.^[171]

While the impact of Old Country issues on immigrant communities is discussed in many of the studies previously mentioned, the only general treatment of the relationship between ethnic groups and American foreign policy is Louis Gerson, The Hyphenate in Recent American Politics and Diplomacy.^[172] Focusing on the periods of the world wars and the “Cold War,” Gerson describes the efforts of immigrant lobbies to influence the conduct of American foreign relations. These activities are more thoroughly examined for the World War I period in Joseph P. O’Grady, ed., The Immigrant’s Influence on Wilson’s Peace Policies.^[173] Essays are devoted to the activities of the various nationalities which tried to promote their homeland’s cause, but the overall conclusion is that the immigrants had little influence on Wilson’s decisions regarding the peace settlement.

As yet little effort has been made to deal with the religious dimension of the immigrant experience in a collective fashion. Will Herberg briefly reviewed the history of the three major immigrant religions as background for his thesis that the religious revival of the 1950’s was caused by an affirmation of religious identity on the part of the third generation.^[174] Herberg viewed the assimilation process as culminating in a “triple melting pot” of religious communities. Historians of Catholicism in America have by and large accepted this view of the Church as an agency for the assimilation of immigrants into a de-ethnicized Catholic population. The concept of a Catholic “melting pot” has been challenged by Harold J. Abramson.^[175] Noting the persistence of distinctive ethnic styles of religious behavior among American Catholics, Abramson sought an explanation through a comparative analysis of the backgrounds of six ethnic groups. He concluded that societal competition among different religio-cultural traditions in the country of origin “is a positive correlate of the degree of religio-ethnic activity and consciousness.” The concept of societal competition was utilized by Timothy L. Smith to explain the development of sectarianism not only among, but also within, immigrant nationalities.^[176] Citing the example of the Finns and other groups, Smith concluded that the immigrant denomination, competing with other religious and non-religious organizations for members, became an ethnic sect. In a more recent article, Smith has argued that the immigrants from central and southern Europe brought with them traditions of lay initiative and responsibility which facilitated their adaptation to the religious voluntarism of America.^[177] Further, the national ethno-religious organizations formed to unite scattered congregations fit the American pattern of denominational pluralism. Rather than the clash of dissimilar religio-cultural traditions, Smith finds in the religious history of the immigrant groups a confirmation “of the social consensus of which the nation’s religious institutions are but one facet.”

Smith has pressed his thesis of a broad social consensus among newcomers and native Americans in his discussion of immigrant social aspirations and American education.^[178] The value system of the immigrants, he asserts, centered on their aspirations for money, education, and respectability, goals consonant with the “Protestant Ethic.” Education also served the immigrant’s need to create a new structure of family and communal life and their search for a new ethnic identity. These aspirations, according to Smith, “account for the immense success of the public school system, particularly at the secondary level, in drawing the mass of working-class children into its embrace.”

A quite different assessment of the relationship between the American educational system and the children of the, immigrants has been advanced by David K. Cohen^[179] and Colin Greer.^[180] Basing their studies on historical evidence of school performance, Both concluded that more important than the differences in educational achievement as between native and immigrant children were the differences among children of various ethnic origins. While Scandinavian, British, German, and Jewish youngsters tended to be as successful in school as those of native parentage, the children of non-Jewish central and southern European immigrants had much higher rates of failure. On every index of educational attainment, children from these nationalities fared much worse than the others. While recognizing the influence of cultural differences on motivation and aptitude, both Cohen and Greer suggest that the problem may have been “the inability of public education to overcome the educational consequences of family poverty, and to recognize the legitimacy of working class and ethnic cultures.”

Conclusion

Clearly the historical literature on European Americans is rich in variety and high in quality. Yet as this review has demonstrated, there are many gaps in our knowledge, many questions unanswered, and many issues undecided. This is not the place to itemize these lacunae, but one can mention the most glaring deficiencies. The eastern, central and southern European immigrations with the few exceptions noted are terra incognita. Even for better known groups such as the Germans, further studies of the patterns of adjustment, particularly of the internal development of ethnic communities, are needed. Little is known about the interaction of ethnic and racial groups in various geographical and institutional settings. Community, mobility, and political behavior studies should be extended to medium sized cities and small towns. The history of the immigrant family and the immigrant woman remain to be written. The impact of mass immigration upon the educational system, the churches, the political system, and popular culture, all deserve further investigation. Aside from the nativist response, the reception of the immigration, particularly the role of voluntary agencies which sought to assist the newcomers, has been insufficiently studied.

Recent writings have advanced challenging hypotheses regarding the relationship between immigration and societal development in the United States. Additional studies must provide the data for testing these concepts. Much research which addresses itself to these questions is now in progress. The scholarship of this decade will surely yield answers to many of these questions and will undoubtedly raise as many new ones.

Taken from International Migration Review, 6 (Winter, 1972), 404-434 with the permission of the author and the Center for Migration Studies of New York, Inc.