Objective social problems alone do not generate nativism without organized agitation

Evidence

Certainly there was much in American life to justify uneasiness: corruption, peculation, undisciplined wealth, rural blight, and urban squalor on perhaps an unprecedented scale. But the only organized, sustained protest-that of farmers in conflict with the railroads-failed to shake the general public or to touch on problems related to immigration. This was a day when complacency ruled college and pulpit, when labor remained largely unorganized and politicians largely undisturbed. — John Higham, Strangers in the Land, 110

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the reader’s hypothesis that manufactured/elevated grievance, not real grievance, produces scapegoating. The one organized protest (grangers vs railroads) failed precisely because it did not touch immigration. — connects to: Nativism requires domestic cleavage and agitation, not mere hardship or influx — John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of…, 109