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Population

The 1880 Chinese Exclusion Act takes effect, barring entry of Chinese laborers into the United States for a period of 10 years (see 1884). The first U.S. legislation designed to exclude a group of immigrants on the basis of race, it will remain in effect until its repeal in 1943. Congress passes the first U.S. act restricting general immigration (see 1875). It excludes convicts, paupers, and defectives and imposes a head tax on immigrants.

Crop failures in southern Japan bring widespread starvation. Recruiting agents sent by planters persuade peasants to emigrate to Hawaii's sugar fields; 100,000 Japanese workers and their families will move in the next 30 years.

U.S. immigration from Germany reaches its peak.

The world's first birth-control clinic opens at Amsterdam. Aletta Jacobs has been won over by neo-Malthusians on a visit to London (see medicine, 1878); now 33, she equips women with the Mensinga Pessary, which will come to be called the "Dutch cap," but because it requires medical fitting it will never be popular with working-class women (see 1880; Bradlaugh and Besant, 1877; Sanger, 1914).

1881 1882 1883 1884 1885 1886 1887 1888 1889 1890