“We still have plenty of room for those who come to us, provided they are the right kind of people.”

That line appeared in a Pottsville, Pennsylvania newspaper editorial in the late 1880s, part of a growing backlash against the newest wave of immigrants arriving in the United States as the 19th century drew to a close.

By that time, tens of thousands of men and women were crossing the Atlantic from Italy, Poland, and regions across Eastern Europe, drawn by the promise of work in America’s coal mines, factories, and railroads. The editorial below captures the language and anxieties of American nativism in its 19th century form – fearful, suspicious, and convinced that the latest arrivals were somehow different from the immigrants who came before them.

At the time, the United States essentially had nearly open borders (except for Chinese immigrants, who were barred entry in 1882 under the Chinese Exclusion Act). Steamships unloaded thousands of newcomers each week at ports like New York, and many made their way to industrial regions like Pennsylvania’s Coal Region in search of opportunity.

Yet as the numbers grew, hostility grew with them. Italians in particular were described in the editorial as “not, as a rule, very desirable immigrants,” while the crowded immigrant neighborhoods of American cities were portrayed as dangerous “plague spots.”

Similar attacks were directed at Poles and other Eastern European immigrants in the decades around the turn of the 20th century – groups that would eventually become deeply woven into the social and cultural fabric of places like Pottsville, Shenandoah, Hazleton, and the wider Coal Region.

Reading this piece today offers a reminder of how American immigration debates have echoed and rhymed across generations.

The rhetoric may change slightly, the target groups may shift, but the themes – fear of newcomers, suspicion of their motives, warnings about culture and public health – remain strikingly familiar.

This editorial shows what nativism looked like in the late 19th century, at the very moment when thousands of immigrants were arriving in the United States seeking the same thing generations before them – and those who have come since – sought: the chance for a better life.

From the Pottsville Republican, December 10, 1888:

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ITALIAN IMMIGRATION. 

There was a time, and it is not very long ago, either, when we boasted of the vast crowds of immigrants who flocked to us from the overcrowded countries of Europe. A year which brought an unusual number was something to boast of. It was regarded as an unusually favorite one and we were all glad of it. But things have changed in recent years.

We still have plenty of room for those who come to us, provided they are the right kind of people. But here is the rub. A quarter of a century ago Germany and Ireland were the principal reservoirs from which our immigrants came. There were some Swedes and Norwegians, Swiss and French, all men who had in them the making of good citizens. But times have changed.

Italians, Hungarians, Turks and Arabs are now the people who come to seek their fortune in the New World, They do not come here with the intention of becoming citizens, and they seldom take out naturalization papers; they come to better their condition, to save a few hundred or a few thousand dollars and then return to their native land, having left this country not richer and better for having lived in it, but worse. 

Let us state a few facts. Between January 1st of this year to June 15th, 23  steamers have arrived at New York from Mediterranean ports, bringing with them 34,439 Italian immigrants, or about as many during the first five and a half months of 1888 as came during the whole of 1887. 

It is to be said for many of these poor people that they do not come to us of their own volition, but are induced to do so through the misrepresentations that there is plenty to do here, and that fortunes can be accumulated rapidly.

The steamship companies allow agents three dollars for every passenger they secure and these agents the means they believe will be most effective in securing immigrants. Without going into particulars it suffices to say that the Italians are not, as a rule, very desirable immigrants. 

Their pursuits are not those of the best class immigrants of other nationalities. We could do well without them. But it is their manner of living over which the health authorities of New York are now bothering.

There is an “Italian district” in that city which has not its equal anywhere in the world. They crowd into tenement houses in almost incredible numbers. They live like dogs and sleep on the floors in layers. Often there is no water either for drinking or washing.

The condition of this “district” has been bad for several years, but it is infinitely worse now, because of the new swarms that have crowded into it. 

Nothing even in Italian cities, or anywhere in Europe, can equal the dirt, filth and overcrowding seen here. The health authorities are alarmed at the existing condition of things. They say that if cholera or some other epidemic should break out among these people it would be next to impossible to check it, and it might sweep over every other portion of the city. It is a menace of dreadful import to the entire city.

It is a veritable plague spot, which grows more dangerous from day to day. There seems no remedy except to stop this indiscriminate immigration, and the time seems at hand when it should be done.

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Read more about Italians in the Coal Region

Italian immigrants protested discrimination and racial hatred in Schuylkill County | 1926

Relief efforts in Hazleton organized to help Italian refugees in 1944

Funeral for World War II airman killed in Muenster air raid over Germany | June 10, 1949

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