s of the International Workers of the World (I.W.W.), which Johnson strongly opposed. After leading the local opposition to the I.W.W., Johnson declared his Republican candidacy for the congressional seat in his district in 1912, espousing immigration restrictions and minimum wages/maximum hours laws as the main planks of his platform. He won the election by 1300 votes (Hillier 198-99).
Throughout his tenure in Congress, Johnson never strayed very far from his original platform opposing unrestricted immigration. The issue was hotly debated throughout the country at that time and most American citizens sided with those who opposed continued mass immigration. There were two basic reasons for opposition to unrestricted immigration. First, working- and middle-class Americans feared that the large numbers of immigrants who were arriving each year from Europe were taking jobs which might otherwise be held by native-born citizens. Second, upper-class Americans feared the loss of the Anglo-Saxon character and culture of the United States. Since most of the new immigrants were leaving countries in southern and eastern Europe which were thought to be authoritarian and corrupt, many Americans feared that they would transport these practices to the United States, destroying much of what had been conceived by the founding fathers and nurtured by the Anglo-Saxon settlers who had built the country up until that time (Garis 203-25; Higham 35-105).
Much of this thought, although expressed as a fear for the loss of democracy, was really based upon a racist fear that the United States was going to be overtaken by the inferior races of Europe (and Asia). The idea of Anglo-Saxon racial supremacy achieved what was probably its pinnacle of acceptance during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries. This idea was supported by the amazingly popular pseudo-science of eugenics, whose adherents stressed that a race must weed out its weak ...