Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse

Ethnic and Class Dynamics during the Era of American Industrialization

Robert F. Zeidel

• Publisher: Northern Illinois University Press
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781501748325
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Robber Barons and Wretched Refuse explores the connection between the so-called robber barons who led American big businesses during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and the immigrants who composed many of their workforces. As Robert F. Zeidel argues, attribution of industrial-era class conflict to an "alien" presence supplements nativism—a sociocultural negativity toward foreign-born residents—as a reason for Americans' dislike and distrust of immigrants. And in the era of American industrialization, employers both relied on immigrants to meet their growing labor needs and blamed them for the frequently violent workplace contentions of the time.

Through a sweeping narrative, Zeidel uncovers the connection of immigrants to radical "isms" that gave rise to widespread notions of alien subversives whose presence threatened America's domestic tranquility and the well-being of its residents. Employers, rather than looking at their own practices for causes of workplace conflict, wontedly attributed strikes and other unrest to aliens who either spread pernicious "foreign" doctrines or fell victim to their siren messages. These characterizations transcended nationality or ethnic group, applying at different times to all foreign-born workers.

Zeidel concludes that, ironically, stigmatizing immigrants as subversives contributed to the passage of the Quota Acts, which effectively stemmed the flow of wanted foreign workers. Post-war employers argued for preserving America's traditional open door, but the negativity that they had assigned to foreign workers contributed to its closing.

Table of contents

• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Capitalists and Immigrants in Historical Perspective, 1865–1924
• 1. Harmonic Dissidence: Immigrants and the Onset of Industrial Strife
• 2. No Danger among Them: Asian Immigrants as Industrial Workers
• 3. Alien Anarchism: Immigrants and Industrial Unrest in the 1880s
• 4. Confronting the Barons: Immigrant Workers and Individual Moguls
• 5. Into the New Century: Economic Expansion and Continued Discord
• 6. Turmoil Amid Reform: Immigrant Worker Protest and Progressivism
• 7. Effects of War: Immigrant Labor Dynamics during the Great War
• 8. Addressing the Reds: Immigrants and the Postwar Great Scare of 1919–1921
• 9. Restricting the Hordes: Implementation of Immigrant Quotas
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index