The Twenties - Southwest Career and Technical Academy

71193_23_ch23_p0800-0843 4/12/10 4:21 PM Page 819THE TWENTIES, 1920–1929 CHAPTER 23 819Capone himself shrewdly used the rhetoric of the Republican new era to defendhimself: “Everybody calls me a racketeer. I call myself a businessman. When I sellliquor it’s bootlegging. When my patrons serve it on a silver tray on Lake Shore Drive,it’s hospitality.”Organized crime, based on its huge profits from liquor, also made significantinroads into legitimate businesses, labor unions, and city government. By the timeCongress and the states ratified the Twenty-first Amendment in 1933, repealingProhibition, organized crime was a permanent feature of American life. Prohibitiondid, in fact, significantly reduce per capita consumption of alcohol. In 1910, annualper capita consumption stood at 2.6 gallons; in 1934, the figure was less than a gallon.Yet among young people, especially college students, the excitement associatedwith speakeasies and lawbreaking contributed to increase drinking during Prohibition.Immigration RestrictionSentiment for restricting immigration, growing since the late nineteenth century,reached its peak immediately after World War I. Antiimmigrant feeling reflected thegrowing preponderance after 1890 of “new immigrants”—those from southern andeastern Europe—over the immigrants from northern and western Europe, who hadpredominated before 1890. Between 1891 and 1920, roughly 10.5 million immigrantsarrived from southern and eastern Europe. This was nearly twice as many as arrivedduring the same years from northern and western Europe (see Figure 23-3).The “new immigrants” were mostly Catholic and Jewish, and they were darkerskinnedthan the “old immigrants.” To many Americans, they seemed more exotic,more foreign, and less willing and able to assimilate the nation’s political and cultural1,000,000900,000800,000Number of Immigrants700,000600,000500,000400,000300,000200,000100,00001860 1865 1870 1875 1880 1885 1890 1895 1900 1905 1910 1915 1920 1925 1930YearImmigration from northern and western EuropeImmigration from southern and eastern EuropeImmigration from Latin America and the CaribbeanImmigration from AsiaImmigration from CanadaFIGURE 23-3Annual Immigration to United States, 1860–1930