ABSTRACT
Many American cities grew from small town to city in the nineteenth century in part because of the immigration of large numbers of people from other countries seeking the promise of economic success or relief from political persecution. * Urban residents, most of whom were themselves the children or grandchildren of immigrants, viewed the invasion with alarm. Their concern led in 1924 to a strict immigration law that restricted the flow of immigrants by imposing an annual quota of people permitted to enter from each country and barred people from Asia, who had been declared ineligible for citizenship.
