American Ethnic Culture: Immigration, Identity & Race

What Is an American? The Americanization Movement

Progressive Era Americans from different backgrounds defined the meaning of being American in strikingly different ways. Stephen Meyer, writing in Efforts at Americanization in the Industrial Workplace, 1914–1921, argued that Americanization "involved the social and cultural assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream of American life," but that the process was also "a unique and distinctly American method for the resolution of a key industrial problem — the problem of work-discipline and of the adjustment of new workers to the factory environment" (p. 323).

Meyer describes the Americanization campaign as "voluntary, benevolent and educational" (p. 323). However, these programs emerged from within factories and carried negative connotations as well. The tensions involved were not simply about national or ethnic cultural differences, but also about "pre-industrial and industrial cultures, and even class cultures" (p. 323). Americanization was, in Meyer's view, an important movement for adjusting immigrant workers to a new industrial environment and to the conditions of urban America. The American work ethic was grounded in the ideal of advancement as a reward for the worker's "patience, self-denial, and hard work" (p. 324).

Meyer further argues that the Ford Americanization program introduced new methods and techniques of production that "drastically diluted the skills necessary for factory operations" (p. 324). These complications were compounded by immigrants' unfamiliar styles, non-American work habits, and discipline patterns. Older Americans believed that immigrant work habits were inefficient, a concern reinforced when factory productivity fell short of desired levels. The Ford workforce was dramatically reshaped by modern mass production.

The work of Jon Gjerde relates the story of Josiah Strong, a Protestant clergyman who reflected on the perceived perils of immigration and its influence on American morals. Gjerde considered immigration "demoralizing" to America, arguing that the roots of a man cannot hold him upright "by the strength of his own roots" alone — a man's roots join with the roots of others to form society, which includes laws, customs, and public opinion (Gjerde, 1998, paraphrased). Gjerde also addressed immigrant crime, noting that higher pay produced "larger means of self-indulgence" and observing that "the hoodlums and roughs of our cities are, most of them, American born of foreign parentage" (Gjerde, 1998).

Gjerde further noted that immigration had fueled the liquor trade and that immigrants failed to honor Sunday as a day of worship. He also claimed that immigration fed the growth of Mormonism and socialism. The core problem, in Gjerde's view, was that many residents of America were not "Americanized" — they preferred their native languages and customs and carried their national identity "as a distinct factor" into American political life. This produced a "mass of men" unaccustomed to American institutions who would act together, driven by "their appetites and prejudices" (Gjerde, 1998, p. 310).