ABSTRACT
As the nineteenth century became the twentieth, the United States experienced an unprecedented surge in immigration. A progression of restriction laws were passed in the late teens and early twenties, starting with literacy tests, giving immigrants from northern and western Europe an advantage for admittance over those from other areas, and culminating with a stringent quota system based on census ratios from years prior to the new immigration. Many restrictionists and assimilationists agreed that the nation's greatness was very much the product of its old-immigrant heritage and that the inherited culture was well worth preserving. However, the assimilationists felt that new immigrants could conform to the culture developed by this stock while the restrictionists felt that barriers such as the new immigrants' innate inferiority, their vast numbers, or their ethnic pride were too overwhelming for assimilation to occur. In reality, immigrant children assimilating at a much quicker pace than their parents led to significant inter-generational trouble.
