America had a problem. Immigration had stretched America’s cultural ties to the breaking point. The country’s lax immigration policies had opened the door for more than 25 million immigrants to flood America’s shores between 1880 and 1924. A vast majority of these immigrants fled from Europe for various reasons—famines, exorbitant taxes, wars, or political or religious persecution. To immigrants, America was the “city on a hill.” To Americans, the city was crumbling.
Philander Claxton, the U.S. commissioner of education, articulated concerns about the influx of immigrants:
“In 1910 there were in the United States approximately 13,000,000 foreign-born persons, and about 20,000,000 more with one or both parents born in foreign countries. About 3,000,000 of the foreign-born over ten years of age could not speak English and about 1,650,000 could not read or write in any language. Nearly 50 per cent of the foreign-born population were males of voting age, but only 4 in every 1,000 attended school to learn our language and citizenship.”…