Economic appetite, not prior precedent, drove postwar America’s welcoming of immigrants
Evidence
The fact that an earlier generation had cleared the paths they trod undoubtedly eased the immigrants’ reception, but the basic condition of their popularity was the appetite for material growth and achievement that dominated postwar America. … The headlong growth of business made the city, the machine, and the capitalist the controlling forces in American culture. … ‘The very real economic exploits of the age underwrote its booster spirit. … And business leaders, marveling that population growth kept pace with economic opportunities, saw in the flow of immigration the workings of one of the grand laws of nature.” — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 96
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Postwar geopolitics shifted US immigration policy toward selective inclusion — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 97; American immigrant workers aspired to become capitalists rather than a laboring class; Postwar prosperity and labor hunger smothered nativism for two decades — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 88
Broader Connections
- Postwar prosperity and labor hunger smothered nativism for two decades
#corroborates(0.82) — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 88 - Postwar geopolitics shifted US immigration policy toward selective inclusion
#qualifies(0.75) — Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, 97 - American immigrant workers aspired to become capitalists rather than a laboring class
#expands(0.72)