Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 11.djvu/543

 THE LITERARY INTERESTS OF CHICAGO $ 2 7

in the first numbers. In editorials, and in a department headed "Americanisms," Mr. Thompson hammered away continually in favor of the restriction of immigration and of limiting the influence of the Roman Catholic church in American affairs.

The literary character of the weekly faded away with the twenty-third number. By mutual agreement, Mr. Taylor retired, and Mr. Thompson became sole editor and publisher. In an editorial announcement, Mr. Thompson remarked that there would be "no deviation from the high literary entertainment," and then laid all emphasis on a statement that America would

continue to urge the restriction of all immigration by consular inspection and a per capita tax, the making of citizenship essential to the privilege of suffrage, and the limitation of the right to vote to citizens who can read and write;

and other propositions for the protection of "America's free schools, American morality, and American nationality." To enforce these ideas, in some of the later numbers there was a use of cartoons, the first and only illustrations published in America. One of these was sublined, " America for the Irish." Another, a lurid thing with much black ink, done by the famous Thomas Nast, was called " Foreign Thrones among Us." But the advocacy of such sentiments did not prove popular enough to bring large business returns, and with the number of Septem- ber 24, 1891, the transfer of America and all that pertained to it, except the " personal opinions of the editor," was announced by Mr. Thompson. In penning his farewell editorial he said : " In respect to several subjects too much slighted in the daily press, America has been a voice crying in the wilderness ; " and declared that the policy had been to put forth " a firm but moderate opposi- tion to the political and educational policy of the Roman Catholic church in the United States," and to give expression to faith in the American common school as an "alembic" for the varied nationalities represented in American population.

While the mixture of representative American literature and national political policy in America makes it stand as an index of the growing metropolitan spirit of Chicago in the eighties, it was this mixture, and the gradual increase of the political element