Topic 11 - The Progressive Era (1865-1920)

Lesson 1 - A New Wave of Immigration

Between 1865 and 1915, more than 25 million immigrants poured into the United States. They came full of hope and excitement but also with some anxiety.

GET READY TO READ

Start up

Look at the image of new arrivals. Imagine yourself aboard that ship and write a few sentences about how you feel. Include one or more sensory details—sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste.

Guiding Questions

How did America’s population grow after the Civil War?
Why did immigrants make the difficult trip to the United States?
What problems did immigrants face in the United States?

Vocabulary

push factor
pull factor
pogrom
steerage
acculturation
nativist
Chinese Exclusion Act

Academic Vocabulary

persecution
undergo

Why Did People Immigrate?

O. E. Rölvaag, who came from Norway, captures a new immigrant’s anxiety:

Primary Source

“New York is a terribly large city. Imagine the difficulties a poor immigrant woman meets with there—one who can neither speak nor understand the language! And this woman hadn’t a single friend in all America. When she landed, and saw the great throngs of people, and looked at the whirlpool of traffic, she got terribly frightened, poor soul!”

—O. E. Rölvaag, Giants in the Earth: A Saga of the Prairie,1927

Immigrants such as RÖlvaag came to the United States for many reasons. Push factors are conditions that drive people from their homes. Pull factors are conditions that attract immigrants to a new area. For example, an industrial boom in the United States had created a huge need for workers and that drew many immigrants.

Push Factors

European immigrants were often small farmers or landless farmworkers. As European populations grew, land became scarce. Small farms could barely support the families that worked them. In some areas, new farm machines replaced farmworkers.

Political or religious persecution drove many people from their homes. In Russia, the government supported multiple waves of pogroms (poe-gruhmz), or organized anti-Jewish riots that left thousands dead or injured. In the Ottoman Empire (now Turkey), the genocide committed against them led many Armenian Christians to leave their homes.

Political unrest was another push factor. After 1910, a revolution erupted in Mexico. Many Mexicans came to the United States.

Pull Factors

Industrial jobs were the chief pull factor for immigrants. American factories needed labor. Factory owners sent agents to Europe and Asia to hire workers at low wages. Steamship companies offered low fares for the ocean crossing. Railroads posted notices in Europe advertising cheap land in the American West.

Often, one family member—usually a young, single male—made the trip. Once settled, he would send for other family members. As immigrants wrote home describing the “land of opportunity,” they pulled other neighbors from the “old country.” For example, one out of every ten Greeks immigrated to the United States in the late 1800s.

The promise of freedom was another pull factor. Many immigrants were eager to live in a land where police could not arrest or imprison them without a reason and where freedom of religion was guaranteed.

Analyze Images The prospect of jobs lured immigrants to the United States in great numbers. This 1900 photo shows women working in a paper factory in Massachusetts.

What skills did these women need to do this work?

READING CHECK

Identify Supporting Details Name two push factors and two pull factors.

What Was an Immigrant’s Journey Like?

Leaving home required great courage. The voyage across the Atlantic or Pacific was often miserable. Most immigrants could afford only the cheapest berths. Shipowners jammed up to 2,000 people in steerage, the airless rooms below deck. On the return voyage, cattle or cargo filled the same spaces.

In such close quarters, disease spread rapidly. An outbreak of measles infected every child on one German immigrant ship. The dead were thrown into the sea “like cattle,” reported a horrified passenger.

Analyze Images The Statue of Liberty greeted immigrants as their ships entered New York harbor.

Infer What feelings do think this statue inspired in new arrivals?

Ellis Island

For most European immigrants, the voyage ended in New York City. Sailing into the harbor, they were greeted by the giant Statue of Liberty. Dedicated in 1886, it became a symbol of hope and freedom. A poem of welcome was carved on the base:

Primary Source

“Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me: I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

—Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”

In 1892, a new receiving station opened on Ellis Island. Here, immigrants had to undergo a dreaded medical inspection. Doctors watched newcomers climb a long flight of stairs. Anyone who limped or appeared out of breath might be stopped. Doctors also examined eyes, ears, and throats. The sick had to stay on Ellis Island until they got well. A small percentage who failed to regain full health were sent home.

Whether people's names were misspelled on the ships' passenger lists or purposely changed later in an effort to fit in to the new American culture, the names of many new immigrants changed on or shortly after their arrival in the United States. Krzeznewski became Kramer. Smargiaso ended up as Smarga.

Lucky immigrants went directly into the welcoming arms of friends and relatives. Many others stepped into a terrifying new land whose language and customs they did not know.

Angel Island

Chinese immigrants had come to California in great numbers starting in the late 1840s. Other Asian groups followed later. Many Koreans, Japanese, and Filipinos sought jobs as agricultural laborers, as did Hindus and Sikhs. The California gold rush and the building of the transcontinental railroad also attracted immigrants. Some found work first in Hawaii before immigrating to the mainland.

After 1910, many of these Asian immigrants were processed on Angel Island in San Francisco Bay. Because Americans wanted to discourage Asian immigration, new arrivals often faced long delays. Asian immigrants sometimes used the walls of the rooms in which they were housed to scratch poetry about their feelings:

Primary Source

“Lin, upon arriving in America, Was arrested, put in a wooden building, And made a prisoner. I was here for one autumn.The Americans did not allow me to land. I was ordered to be deported.”

—Daoist from the Town of Iron

Despite such obstacles, many Asians were able to make a home in the United States. However, they often faced a difficult adjustment.

READING CHECK

Summarize What was the voyage to the United States like for most immigrants?

What Was the Immigrant Experience in America?

Many immigrants had heard stories that the streets in the United States were paved with gold. Once they arrived, they had to adjust to reality. “First,” reported one immigrant, “the streets were not paved with gold. Second, they were not paved at all. Third, they expected me to pave them.”

Newcomers immediately set out to find work. European peasants living off the land had had little need for money, but it took cash to survive in the United States. Through friends, relatives, labor contractors, and employment agencies, the new arrivals found jobs.

Immigrants often stayed in the cities where they landed. Cities were the seats of industrial work. City slums soon became packed with poor immigrants. By 1900, one neighborhood in New York’s Lower East Side had become the most crowded place in the world.

Surrounded by their belongings, immigrants on Angel Island wait.

A New Wave Brings New People

Immigration patterns changed in the late 1800s. Most earlier immigrants had been Protestants from northern and western Europe. Those from England and some from Ireland already spoke English. The early wave of English, Irish, Germans, and Scandinavians became known as “old immigrants.” At first, Irish Catholics and other groups faced discrimination. In time, they were drawn into American life.

After 1885, millions of “new immigrants” arrived from southern and eastern Europe. They included Italians, Poles, Greeks, Russians, and Hungarians. Their labor helped turn the United States into an industrial powerhouse.

On the West Coast, a smaller but growing number of Asian immigrants arrived, mostly from Japan. A few immigrants also arrived from Korea, India, and the Philippines. Many of them labored on California farms or ran farms themselves. They contributed greatly to the construction of the irrigation systems that helped agriculture flourish in the state.

Few of the new immigrants spoke English. Many of the Europeans were Catholic, Jewish, or Eastern Orthodox. Immigrants from Asia might be Buddhist or Daoist. Set apart by language and religion, they found it harder to adapt to a new life.

Analyze Images While waiting on Angel Island, some Asian immigrants carved poetry into the walls.

Cite Evidence How different were the experiences of Angel Island immigrants from those who came through Ellis Island?

Home Away from Home

Immigrants eased into their new lives by settling in their own neighborhoods. Large American cities became patchworks of Italian, Irish, Polish, Hungarian, Greek, German, Jewish, and Chinese neighborhoods. Within these neighborhoods, even while trying to “Americanize,” newcomers spoke their own language, celebrated special holidays, and prepared foods as in the old country. Jews established many communal philanthropic organizations and enjoyed thriving Yiddish theatre.

Religion stood at the center of immigrant family life. Houses of worship both united and separated ethnic groups. Catholics from Italy, Ireland, and Poland, for example, worshipped in their own neighborhood parishes. Jewish communities largely belonged to three major religious movements, or branches: Orthodox, Reform, and Conservative.

Bridging Cultures

As newcomers struggled to adjust, they were often torn between old traditions and American ways. The first generation to arrive went through a process of acculturation. Acculturation is the process of adapting to a new culture and making changes while holding on to older traditions. Immigrants learned how to use American institutions such as schools, factories, and the political system. At the same time, they tried to keep their traditional religions, family structures, and community life.

In their effort to adapt, immigrants blended old and new ways. For example, some newcomers mixed their native tongues with English. Italians called the Fourth of July “Il Forte Gelato,” a phrase that actually means “the great freeze.” In El Paso, Texas, Mexican immigrants developed Chuco, a blend of English and Spanish.

Children adapted to the new culture more quickly than their parents. They learned English in school and then helped their families speak it. Because children wanted to be seen as Americans, they often gave up customs that their parents honored. They played American games and dressed in American-style clothes.

Analyze Graphs Compare the graphs showing the proportion of immigrants by place of origin.

Summarize trends reflected in these graphs.

READING CHECK

Compare and Contrast What was one main difference between “old” and “new” immigrants?

Why Did Nativists Oppose Immigration?

Even before the Civil War, Americans known as nativists sought to limit immigration and preserve the country for native-born, white Protestants. As immigration boomed in the late 1800s, nativist feelings reached a new peak.

Nativists argued that immigrants would not fit into American culture because their languages, religions, and customs were too different. Many workers resented the new immigrants because they took jobs for low pay. Others feared them because they were different.

Wherever new immigrants settled, nativist pressure grew. Nativists targeted Jews and Italians in the Northeast and Mexicans in the Southwest. On the West Coast, nativists worked to end immigration from China.

GEOGRAPHY SKILLS

This 1895 map shows a Chicago city block and uses a color key to identify the residents of each building.

Interaction What must it have been like to live on this block?

Infer Do you think the immigrant children played together? Why or why not?

Chinese Exclusion

Since the California Gold Rush, Chinese immigrants had helped build the West. Most lived in cities in tight-knit communities called “Chinatowns.” Others farmed for a living. One Chinese immigrant, Ah Bing, spent decades working on a farm in Oregon, where he had a variety of cherry named after him. Today, the Bing cherry is the most widely produced cherry in the United States.

Most Americans did not understand Chinese customs. Also, some Chinese did not try to learn American ways. Like many other immigrants, they planned to stay only until they made a lot of money. They hoped to then return home to live out their lives as rich and respected members of Chinese society. When that dream failed, many Chinese settled in the United States permanently.

As the numbers of Chinese grew, so did the prejudice and violence against them. Gangs attacked and sometimes killed Chinese people. Congress responded to this anti-Chinese feeling by passing the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. It barred Chinese laborers from entering the country. In addition, no Chinese person who left the United States could return , including cherry farmer Ah Bing, who went to China in the 1880s and was barred from returning to the United States.

The Chinese Exclusion Act was the first law to exclude a specific national group from immigrating to the United States. Congress renewed the original 10-year ban several times. It was finally repealed in 1943.

Analyze Images Merchants tend their wares in a shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown, around 1890.

Draw Conclusions How did settling in ethnic neighborhoods make immigrants’ lives easier?

Congress Limits Immigration

In 1887, nativists formed the American Protective Association. The group campaigned for laws to restrict immigration. Congress responded by passing a bill that denied entry to people who could not read their own language.

President Grover Cleveland vetoed the bill. It was wrong, he said, to keep out peasants just because they had never gone to school. Three later Presidents vetoed similar bills. However, in 1917, Congress overrode President Woodrow Wilson’s veto, and the bill became law.

READING CHECK

Identify Main Ideas What was the main goal of the nativists?

Lesson Check

Were the expanding industries of the United States a pull factor or a push factor for immigrants? Explain.
Would a nativist have believed that immigrants could achieve acculturation? Why or why not?
Summarize What challenges did immigrants face, starting with their journey to the United States?
Analyze Information What was the significance of the Chinese Exclusion Act?
Writing Workshop: Generate Questions to Focus Research At the end of the topic, you will write a research paper on a significant change in American culture or society. Once you have a general topic, write some “What,” “Why,” and “How” questions related to it. Your goal is a single question that will focus your research.

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