Immigration 1865-1914“America! The country where

everyone could find work! Where wages were so high no one had to go hungry! Where all men were free and equal

and where even the poor could own land! But now we were so

near it seemed too much to believe.”

-Rosa Cristoforo (1884)

Immigration Factors

• Scarce land

• Farm jobs lost to new

machines

• Political and religious

persecution

• Revolution

• Poverty and hard lives

• Promise of freedom

and a better life

• Family or friends

already settled in the

United States

• Factory jobs

available

Arrival in America

• Immigrant receiving stations

• Long wait• Medical inspection• Names changed

Old Immigrants• Protestants from

Northern and Western Europe

• Irish, English, Germans, Scandinavians

• Spoke English

• Little discrimination

1%

3%

2%

2%

92%

Northern and Western EuropeSouthern and Eastern EuropeAmericasAsiaAll Others

New Immigrants• Spoke different

languages• Celebrated special

holidays• Ate different foods• Looked different• Wore different

clothes• Faced

discrimination (Nativists, Chinese Exclusion Act, American Protective Association)

59%

33%

6%

1%

1%

Northern and Wetern EuropeSouthern and Eastern EuropeAmericasAsiaAll Others

Urbanization

80

74

72

65

60

54

49

20

26

28

35

40

46

51

0 50 100

1860

1870

1880

1890

1900

1910

1920

UrbanPopulation

RuralPopulation

• Gradual

movement of

people from farms

to cities

• Immigrants settled

in cities

• Factory jobs

Population Growth in Ten Cities

City Population in 1870

Population in 1900

New York 1,478,103 3,437,202

Chicago 298,977 1,698,575

Philadelphia 674,022 1,293,697

St. Louis 351, 189 575,238

Boston 250, 526 560,892

San Francisco 149, 473 342,782

New Orleans 191, 418 287,104

Denver 4,759 133,859

Los Angeles 5,728 102,479

Memphis 40,226 102,320

Immigrant Life in America

• Ethnic neighborhoods• Tenements, cities• Settlement houses Jane Addams & Hull House• Religious organizations to help the poor• Assimilation

Segregation & Discrimination

• Racist attitudes have been developing since the introduction of slavery in America

• Many whites felt they were superior to African Americans, Asians, Native Americans, and Latin Americans.

• Led to discrimination• Jim Crow Laws• Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) “separate but

equal”• NAACP formed to help end segregation

City Look Transformed• Skyscrapers• Public transportation

(trolleys, subways)• Open spaces (zoos,

gardens, parks)• Shopping areas

remodeled into Department Stores (1902 R.H. Macy opened a 9-story building with 33 elevators in New York)

City Life Transformed• Daily Newspaper• Yellow journalism “less

news more scandal”• Vaudeville’s (variety

shows)• Ragtime• Baseball• Basketball• Football

Baseball, Basketball, Football

Education• Growth of schools• Industry grew = needed an educated work

force• Typical school day 8:00 am-4:00 pm• Learned “three R’s: reading, ‘riting,

‘rithmetic”• Memorized and recited passages• Emphasized discipline and obedience• After 1870 towns building high schools-by

1900 6,000• Universities built• Adult education• New reading habits: dime novels, Harper’s

Monthly, The Nation

New Writers and Artistic Style• Realists showed the

harsh side of life• Used local color to

make stories realistic• Artists also painted

realistic everyday scenes by capturing the local color and “gritty” side of modern life

THE END

Immigrants…Welcome to America