"Nature Wars, Culture Wars"

Monday, October 19th, 2015

Recently, we welcomed environmental historian Dr. Adam Rome to the TR Site’s ongoing speaker series.  His presentation was called “Nature Wars, Culture Wars,” and it focused largely on how immigration and immigrants were viewed by American environmental reformers during the early years of the twentieth century.  Based on his research, Dr. Rome has concluded that many native-born Americans had a much more complex view of nature than is generally acknowledged by historians.  He went on to say that those attitudes were reflected in various ways, including a variety of laws aimed at new arrivals.  To illustrate his point, Dr. Rome spoke about how native-born perspectives on nature and the environment influenced four common reactions to immigrants during the Progressive Era.

            Native-born hunters and sportsmen were extremely critical of pothunters – people who killed for food (that is, to fill the proverbial cooking pot).  By the turn-of-the-twentieth-century, popular usage of the term came with connotations of class and nationality.  A stereotypical pothunter was poor and recently-arrived from Italy, or perhaps a “Slavic” country.  They were loudly criticized for what was seen as the wanton destruction of valuable resources.  In particular, pothunters had a reputation for being willing to shoot anything – from a deer to a chipmunk, from a goose to a robin.  There was great concern that immigrants would decimate the population of songbirds as well as insect-eating birds (which were considered highly important in the days before chemical insecticides protected crops from pest damage).  According to many fish-and-game-officials, indiscriminate hunting by immigrant pothunters posed the greatest threat to wildlife conservation and management.  Some states tried to address this problem by publishing the details of hunting laws in foreign-language newspapers.  Other states, however, passed laws designed to limit immigrants’ ability to hunt by instituting exorbitant license fees for non-citizens or prohibiting them from owning shotguns/rifles. 

            While hunting, immigrants were condemned by native-born critics as pothunters, but in cities and towns, they were often scorned as “peasants”.  Reformers were horrified to see new immigrants walking around their homes barefoot or living in close proximity to farm animals.  Investigations into tenement districts routinely mentioned chickens living on the sidewalk or in back lots.  Pigs, goats and cows could also be found in immigrant neighborhoods – or even living in a family’s cellar!  To the critics, who preached orderliness and cleanliness, such conditions were seen as proof that new immigrants were uninterested in improving or caring for their environment.  So-called peasants were generally viewed as being too comfortable with nature, and the “wrong” kind of nature at that.

            Another aspect of immigrant life that disturbed Progressive reformers centered on open-air markets that were commonplace in urban neighborhoods.  Peddlers were ever-present and their wares included everything from food and clothing to household goods and other items.  Typically, peddlers hawked their wares from carts and by the end-of-the-nineteenth-century, anti-pushcart campaigns were a noticeable trend.  Peddlers were disliked for various reasons, but Dr. Rome suggested that there is an often-overlooked environmental component to the criticism.  As with the living conditions tolerated by peasant immigrants, reformers described open-air markets as dirty and disorderly.  Food available from peddlers could be stale, spoiled, or plain old rotten.  Critics claimed that only uncivilized persons would consider buying such food, and consuming it was unthinkable.  The messiness of nature (ie, decaying food) had no place in civilized society.

            Finally, Dr. Rome explored how pedagogy was used to shape the way that immigrant children viewed and interacted with the natural environment.  As part of the larger effort to Americanize immigrants in the early 1900s, many public schools -- especially those in cities -- added nature study to their curriculum.  Instruction sought to instill an appreciation of natural beauty and impart an understanding of how nature worked.  By teaching young immigrants how nature worked, it was hoped that they would be prepared -- as adults -- to exercise control over nature and avoid the disorder/messiness that native-born critics despised.   While most nature study took place in the classroom, school gardens and summer “vacation schools” offered some students other ways to connect with the natural world.

            Dr. Rome concluded his remarks by reminding the audience that environmental issues did not drive the debate that took place over immigration in the last century.  But, as native-born Americans began equating a love of nature with the ability and inclination to control nature (or, at least, its messy bits), their views of immigrants also reflected this subtle shift.

--Lenora Henson, Curator

                                                      This blog and the TR Site’s “Artifact-of-the-Month” program is part of a larger project made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

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