r 1880. Whereas the earlier immigration had originated primarily in northern and western Europe, the later groups of immigrants came largely from s southern and eastern Europe--from Italy, Poland, and Russia in particular. In the popular imagination of America, as well as in the halls of power, these "new immigrants," as they were called (Kraut, 1982, p. 2), seemed to be a national menace, and there was a nativist, xenophobic reaction. What Kraut describes as the primitive research methods of the day had much authority. One Professor Edward Alsworth Ross that "immigrants were subcommon and that they would racially cripple the American population if permitted unrestricted entry" (Kraut, 1982, p. 152-3). There were dire predictions of a "progressive degradation" of the working class. The subtext was that such a degradation could threaten the integrity of the middle class--as it were pull down the middle class socially. Indeed, that analysis was borne out in a systematic psychology study undertaken in the early 1920s, which concluded that concludes that the "new [Mediterranean, Negro] immigrants" are less intelligent than the "old [Nordic, Alpine] immigrants" (Bri
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