Immigration restriction, ‘Americanization’ and the Playground Movement

ABSTRACT

How did Joseph Lee hold to the contradictory ideas of immigration restriction and a willingness to use playgrounds as a means for assimilating immigrants into American cultural and civic traditions; how did he reconcile them in his own mind? The political climate and context of the Progressive Era are described to set the stage for the events Lee involved himself in – immigration restriction as a negative eugenic practice and ‘Americanization’ of immigrants as an expression of his upper class duty to the less fortunate. Lee’s active role in the Immigration Restriction League and his unwavering commitment to the Playground Movement are reported in sharp contrast to one another. Finally, several explanations are offered for Lee’s contradictory views on immigrants; the most likely explanation is that he saw both restriction and Americanization as two sides of the same ‘coin’ – what to do with people once they are born (and within America).

KEYWORDS:

• Eugenics
• immigration restriction
• Joseph Lee
• Playground Movement
• Nativism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 “It is the same with the body politic. It will assimilate the immigrant only as it wants him as a citizen. If the desire is purely for a machine, it is only a machine that it will get. Citizenship is not a matter of naturalization papers or laying on of hands, nor does it result automatically from physical presence within national boundaries. If you have not received him as a member, the alien is an alien still, a foreign body in a social system” (Lee 1920). Quoting Lee from the Harvard Alumnae secretary’s request for activities since graduation. “My obsession since 1913 has been, as always, with social work—dealing with who gets born and what happens to him afterwards, generally known as selection and education.”

In selection I have done little but help to finance Prescott Hall and Robert DeCourcy Ward … in securing laws that have cut down on the annual European influx of about 500,000 by two-thirds. The quota system and the Depression have resulted in a negative immigration, lowering the birth rate of ‘chocolate races’ (Burrage 1937, 533).

2 Conservatively speaking, if that total amount was all donated in 1937 (the year of Lee’s death) were translated into its 2018 value, the total would amount to $6,310,975.

3 The Binet intelligence Test was developed in France and eventually transformed into the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Test by Lewis Terman of Stanford University.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kenneth E. Mobily

Kenneth E. Mobily is a Professor at the University of Iowa; he is coordinator of the Therapeutic Recreation Program and Coordinator of the Disabilities Studies Program.