key development in shutting down the wealth pump was the passage of the immigration laws of 1921 and 1924. Although much of the proximate motivation behind these laws was to exclude “dangerous aliens,” such as Italian anarchists and Eastern European socialists, their broader effect was a reduction in labor oversupply, something that business elites were well aware of. Shutting down immigration reduced the labor supply and provided a powerful boost to real wages for many decades to come.
