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Strangers in the Land: Urbanization and Immigration

Strangers in the Land: Urbanization and Immigration. Q: Was the experience of “Second Wave” immigrants significantly different from that of earlier immigrants?.

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Strangers in the Land: Urbanization and Immigration

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  1. Strangers in the Land: Urbanization and Immigration Q: Was the experience of “Second Wave” immigrants significantly different from that of earlier immigrants?

  2. Compare and contrast the attitudes of THREE of the following toward the wealth that was created in the United States during the late nineteenth century. Andrew Carnegie; Horatio Alger; Ida M. Tarbell; Eugene V. Debs; Booker T. Washington (94) • Analyze the impact of any TWO of the following on the American industrial worker between 1865 and 1900.: Government actions; Labor Unions; Immigration; Technology changes (98) • Identify and analyze the factors that changed the American city in the second half of the nineteenth century. (02B) • Americans have been a highly mobile people. Describe and account for the dominant population movements between 1820 and 1900. (82) • Although the economic growth of the United States between 1860 and 1900 has been attributed to a governmental policy of laissez-faire, it was in fact encouraged and sustained by direct governmental intervention. Assess the validity of this statement. (88)

  3. I. Overview • Cities = source of hope, conflict, adjustment, especially for “New Immigrants” • New urban environment created challenges • Farm=self-sufficient, city=buy everything (food); sprawl (unplanned growth, cost center city); mass transit suburbs; inadequate housing (tenements crime, disease) • City central to US life (Esp. true new immigrants) • 51% of Americans urban (1920) • Source of diversity & pluralism (class, race, ethnicity) • Cities = centers of industrial growth • Provided capital, workers, & consumers • Often specialized in 1 product (NYC: clothing; Chicago: meat)

  4. II. Urban Population Growth A. Internal Migration • 1870: 10 million Americans in cities; 1920: 54 million (550% increase) • Biggest factor = migration countryside + immigration • Rural populace declined: Low crop prices & high debts (sharecropping) Jobs & escape isolation (blacks + Hispanics: hopes for rights) • Blacks: limited to service jobs (esp. women) • Hispanics: unskilled labor, esp. construction

  5. B. Second Wave Immigration • 1820-1860: 5 million immigrants (95% N+W Europe) very little restriction • 1890-1914: 15 million (S+E Europe) • Push: pop., land redistribution, & industrialization, religious persecution (esp. Russian Jews: pogroms) • Pull: “streets paved with gold” propaganda • Foreign-born & native-born of foreign parents formed majority in many US cities • Many native-born whites (old immigrant heritage) resented “new” immigrants

  6. C. The Melting Pot • Initial crowding multi-ethnic “urban borderlands” • But, white immigrants move up + out (limited mobility) • Movies, newspapers, magazines, sports, circuses, vaudeville, education, consumerism (American= buying) mass culture

  7. But native language papers, ethnic stores, internal social services pluralism • Racism urban segregation (restrictive covenants): ghettos w/few jobs • Race riots: Atlanta (1906); East St. Louis, IL (1917) • Hispanics lose land barrios far from center • Nativists: “failure” melting pot restrict immigration

  8. D. Nativism • Who? 1) Labor unions, 2) “reformers”: Immigration Restriction League (1894 Harvard grads): literacy test weed out potential criminals + welfare cases (pass 1917) Rationales • 1. Anti-Catholicism, Anti-Semitism • 2. Anti-Revolution: fear of radicalism (esp. socialists + anarchists): 1886 Haymarket; 1892 H. Frick attacked some businessmen join anti-immigration • Almost all strikes/violence/radical politics led by + made up of native born • 3. Social Darwinism: “race suicide”: immigrants’ high birth rate drown out WASPs

  9. Restrictions • 1. Asian Exclusion: • Chinese: 1849-1882: 250,000 Chinese (RxR + mining) organized labor leads charge gov’t caves (despite promise to China) 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (10 yr suspension, ineligible citizenship) • Japanese: 1907 SF School Board order: segregated schools • 1908: Gentleman’s Agreement: TR gets J to agree to ban migration

  10. 2. Quotas • Quota Act, 1921: 3% total # from country in 1910 census • Immigration Act, 1924: 2% total # from country in US based on 1890 census fewer S+E • 1907: 685,000+ from S+E • 1924 and on: approx. 20,000/year • Did not affect Canada or Mexico greater % immigration (esp. 1910 Mexican Revolution)

  11. III. Gilded Age Politics A. The Machine • Politics reflected pluralism; different groups competed for power & formed fragile coalitions • Native-born Protestants (Republican) active government-enforced morality (Sabbath laws); immigrants + Catholics (Democrat) opposed personal freedom • National: equilibrium focus swing states (CT, NY, NJ, OH, IN, IL), voter fraud, spoils system, factionalism • Local: party machine dominance—organize voters: bribery, graft, violence, gambling, prostitution, construction, jobs, social services, police protection, ethnic/racial bias enormous loyalty despite/because corruption (Boss Tweed, Tammany Hall)

  12. B. Civic Reform • Disorder, corruption, poverty, high taxes (costs inflated by corruption) middle/ upper classes opposed bosses run city like a company: city managers & city commissions to create efficient government run by experts • Little success late 1800s: loyalty to boss b/c boss helped w/ real problems [e.g. built needed infrastructure (water, sanitation, housing), although at high cost] • Major issue of Progressives

  13. C. Social Reform • Traditional belief: poor= lazy & immoral, aid dependence • New attitude: 1) Sociology: urban environment + capitalism systemic poverty gov’t action to solve social problems (later vanguard Progressives) • 2) Social Gospel: apply teachings of Jesus to society (spread to other religions) • Reformers: young, middle class, often female (rise college education of women) • Tried to help urban newcomers w/ problems (housing, poverty) and Americanize them (education)

  14. 1. Housing • Jacob Riis (photojournalist, How the Other Half Lives): environment dehumanizing, focus social services on children • Rear house tenements: mortality rate 61.97/1,000; infant morality 204.54/1,000 (29.03/1000 mortality for single home on a lot) • 1901 NYC outlaws dumbbell tenements (poor ventilation, no light, terrible fire protection)

  15. Riis: “If there is an open space between them, it is never more than a slit a foot or so wide, and gets to be the receptacle of garbage and filth of every kind; so that any opening made in these walls for purposes of ventilation becomes a source of greater danger than if there were none…The sun cannot reach them. They are damp and dark, and the tenants, who are always the poorest and most crowded, live ‘as in a cage open only toward the front.’”

  16. 2. Settlement Houses • Jane Addams & Hull House (Chicago): education, health care, public playgrounds/parks • Often seen as outsiders (mid/upper class, WASP, undermine bosses), but made advances • Acceptable avenue for college-educated women: still “in the home” but active, outside male control the “New Woman” • Influence over social policy expand to higher levels of gov’t + politics

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