By 1900, the majority of men in Manhattan over 21 were foreign-born. Those coming ashore at Ellis Island were no longer from Northern Europe, but Eastern and Southern Europe and the Russian Empire. Nor were they Protestants, but Jews, Catholics, and Eastern Orthodox. Nativist Americans, alarmed by the influx, favored mass deportations. Novelist Henry James, reflecting public sentiment, wrote of his disgust with “swarming” Jewish immigrants on the Lower East Side, who reminded him of “small, strange animals … snakes or worms.” Read more about anti-immigrant sentiment a century ago in On the Shore (see NOVELS).
