"The Problem of the West"

Frederick Jackson Turner

• 1893 Significance of the Frontier in American History
  
• frontier was cause of democracy, progress, character
  
• not "germ" theory of Herbert Baxter Adams
  
• 1890 census, depression, Haymarket, Homestead
  
• new expansion must replace the old closed frontier
  
• 1896 essay "The Problem of the West" - "It is one of the profoundest lessons that history has to teach, that political relations are inextricably connected with economic relations" - informal empire not enough
  
• U.S. must expand for a historical reason
  

Brooks Adams

• 1895 Law of Civilization and Decay
  
• cycles of barbarism and civilization; outward-growing energy and inward-collapsing decay; builder soldier and exploitive banker
  
• U.S. needed Asia to energize; elect martial leaders (such as TR)
  
• 1896 Bryan silver better than McKinley gold
  
• own family in crisis - emotional breakdown 1882, 1895
  
• wife Evelyn Davis, daughter of Adm. Charles Davis, sister of wife of Henry Cabot Lodge
  
• with Theodore Roosevelt and Henry C. Lodge, were the "three musketeers in a world of perpetual war."
  
• U.S. must expand for a survival reason
  

Josiah Strong

• 1885 Our Country for Amer. Home Mission Society
  
• Americans were "chosen people" to rule and civilize
  
• but manifest destiny "no longer drift with safety"
  
• sense of urgency - many threats to Protestantism
  
• "Perils" of immigration, mormonism, intemperance, wealth, cities, socialism
  
• new peril of romanism added for 1891 edition
  
• Social Gospel - a religion of action
  
• U.S. must expand for a religious reason
  

John Burgess

• 1890 Political Science and Comparative Constitutional Law - read by TR at Columbia
  
• social darwinism = anglo-saxonism + scientific evolution + Horatio Alger
  
• The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin 1859
  
• a nation is an organism that must change according to the laws of natural selection, survival of the fittest
  

Ferdinand Putnam & Daniel Burnham

• 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition - popularized darwinism, racism, imperialism
  
• Harvard's Anthropology Building - Putnam's "ideal" humans
  
• Midway - African villages farthest from White City
  
• Dahomey Village, belly dancers, "child-like" Samoans
  
• word "equality" not in Socialist Baptist minister Francis Bellamy's Pledge of Allegiance
• "World's Columbian Exposition: Idea, Experience, Aftermath"masters thesis from Julie Rose
• U.S. must expand because of the law of evolution
  

Francis A. Walker

• 1891 birth rate theory - native stock declining
  
• New Immigration from S. & E. Europe - 21 million
  
• 1891 Ellis Island - to separate, classify by federal standards
  
• Ellis Island from the i-channel
• Ellis Island and immigration photos from California Museum of Photography
• U. S. Bureau of Immigration established 1906
• U.S. must expand to stop the melting pot
  

Henry Cabot Lodge

• 1907 Immigration Commission - 42-volume report
  
• used "science" of C. Davenport, William Z. Ripley
  
• Charles Davenport's Eugenics Record Office
  
• to measure racial characteristics - cephalic index
  
• William Z. Ripley's Races of Europe - 3 head shapes
  
• Teutonic, Alpine, Mediterranean
  
• intermixing would produce "reversion"
  
• Lodge sought scientific evidence for restriction
  
• literacy test added 1917: aliens over 16 to read "not less than 30 nor more than 80 words in ordinary use" in any language
  
• Quota Act of 1924 - maximum quota for each nationality to be 164,447 (half of 1921 quota 357,803) or 2% of 1890 census (not 1921 law 3% of 1910 census); exceptions were Canada and Latin America, ministers, professors, college students; all immigration stopped for Japanese as "aliens ineligible to citizenship."