popular movements, even in democracies, are ineffectual in the absence of leadership provided by elites or elite aspirants, and the political developments during the 1850s conformed to this rule. Even though the wellbeing of urban commoners was declining and curtailing immigration could reverse this trend (as happened much later, after the Immigration Acts of the 1920s; this will be discussed in a later chapter), nativism disintegrated as a political movement.
