INSCRIBED BY ANTI-IMMIGRANT LEADER. The Alien in Our Midst or "Selling Our Birthright for a Mess of Pottage". The Written Views of a Number of Americans, (present and former) on Immigration and its Results

New York: The Galton Publishing Co., Inc., 1930. First edition.

1930 COMPILATION OF VIRULENT ANTI-IMMIGRATION ESSAYS WITH SELECTIONS FROM FOUNDING FATHERS INSCRIBED FROM ONE LEADING AMERICAN ANTI-IMMIGRATIONIST TO ANOTHER.

13x20.5 cm hardcover, green pebbled cloth binding, gilt title to cover and spine, inscribed on front free endpaper to "Mr. James K. Fisk, Chairman California Joint Immigration Committee--California's effective organization resisting asiatic invasion. from V.S McClatchy S.F. May 15/30", [7], 238 pp. Corners bumped, 3 small spots to cover, Masonic library stamp & previous owner's sticker on front pastedown, Masonic library stamp to back pastedown, minor browning to page edges, binding tight, very good in custom archival mylar cover. CONTENTS include chapters by racists and eugenicists (including Madison Grant, V. S. McClatchy, Charles Davenport, Harry Laughlin, Henry Fairfield Osborn, Paul Popenoe, and Lothrop Stoddard) and by founding fathers (Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and George Washington).

MADISON GRANT (1865 – 1937) was an American lawyer, zoologist, anthropologist, and writer known for his work as a conservationist, eugenicist, and advocate of scientific racism. Grant is less noted for his far-reaching achievements in conservation than for his pseudoscientific advocacy of Nordicism, a form of racism which views the "Nordic race" as superior. As a white supremacist eugenicist, Grant layed an active role in crafting immigration restriction and anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. Grant advocated restricted immigration to the United States through limiting immigration from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe, as well as the complete end of immigration from East Asia. He also advocated efforts to purify the American population through selective breeding. He served as the vice president of the Immigration Restriction League from 1922 to his death. Acting as an expert on world racial data, Grant also provided statistics for the Immigration Act of 1924 to set the quotas on immigrants from certain European countries.

CHARLES STEWART DAVISON (1855 – 1942) After a year's study at Harvard, Davison received his bachelor's degree in 1876 at Cambridge, England, his law degree at Columbia, and his master's degree at Cambridge in 1914. Fourteen years later he became an honorary fellow of Magdalene College, Cambridge. In New York, the city of his birth, he hung out his shingle in 1877, and practiced here for sixty-five years. Although he specialized for the most part in commercial and constitutional law, he wrote several papers on points of international law.

PROVENANCE: The CALIFORNIA JOINT IMMIGRATION COMMITTEE (CJIC) was a nativist lobbying organization active in the early to mid-twentieth century that advocated exclusion of Asian and Mexican immigrants to the United States. The California department of the American Legion was concerned by potential Japanese aggression and had maintained an anti-Japanese position since its founding. Legion Adjutant JAMES K. FISK was Chairman of the CJIC. The CJIC was a successor organization to the JAPANESE EXCLUSION LEAGUE, which was itself a successor to the Asiatic Exclusion League (JEL), originally known as the Japanese and Korean Exclusion League. Significant anti-Asian prejudice in the United States manifested first against Chinese laborers during the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the 1860s. The Japanese Exclusion League was a pressure group representing the interests of nativists, veteran's organizations, women's clubs, labor unions, and farmers. Its operations were led and largely financed by its volunteer special representative VALENTINE S. McCLATCHY, a former newspaper publisher. McClatchy and his friend Hiram Johnson, the senior U.S. senator for California, were the leading figures in the effort to block Japanese immigration to the United States, which was realized with the passage of the Immigration Act of 1924. McClatchy, accompanied by California Attorney General Ulysses S. Webb and former U.S. Senator James D. Phelan, testified before the Senate Committee on Immigration prior to the passage of the act. After the passage of the 1924 Immigration Act, McClatchy took formal leadership of the Japanese Exclusion League, which was reorganized and renamed the California Joint Immigration Committee, in part because of "the prejudice which the name of the [earlier] organization created." McClatchy regarded the new law as an insufficient means to combat the pro-Japanese "organized propaganda" directed by church activities. He thus formed the CJIC as an authorized and representative committee with an executive force and permanent office. The general aim of the CJIC at this early stage was to gain broad support for the maintenance of the new law, which did not allow for a quota of immigrants from Japan.