To make matters worse, famine devastated India from 1899 to 1902. Thus, large-scale !.
immigration began in 1906, when six hundred Asians applied to enter the United States (Millis 32). These families became the basis for the new East Indian communities. They had come to the United States with high hopes, expecting to make their fortunes, but they discovered that life in America was unexpectedly challenging. Some found it hard to get work. Moreover, those who had jobs lived a life very different from the life they have known in India (Karitala 2). Instead of belonging to a settled community of families, they traveled from place to place with their work gangs. And although most of them had been farmers of farm laborers in the Punjab region of India, in America they often had to turn to other kinds of work (Dayes 22). Many of them encountered prejudice, born of ignorance and fear. White sometimes associated the Asian Indian immigrants with blacks, Chinese, or Japanese (22). Often the Asian Indians were lumped together with other Asian peoples as "Asiatics," whom prejudices whites considered unfit to be part of American society (22). Samuel L. Gompers, a leader of the American Labor Movement, said, "Sixty years' contact with the Chinese, and twenty-five years' experience with the Japanese and two or three years' acquaintance with Hindus should be sufficient to convince any ordinarily intelligent person that they have no standards (Brass 45)" The Asians were often blamed for the violence directed against them by whites, who knew nothing of Asian peoples and often misinterpreted their behavior. "In all cases, we may say the Oriental is at fault," declared the Asiatic Exclusion League, an organization whose goal was to keep Asian immigrants out of western states (Pavri 24). The Indian poet, Rabindranath Tagore, a winner of the Nobel Prize in literature, traveled to North America. When he applied for entry to the United States, Tagore encountered difficulties and when he finally made it to the country, he experienced racial prejudice in Los Angeles.
