The Changing Role Of Immigrants In The 19th Century

Between 1850 thru 1920 approximately 25 million immigrants entered into the United States. This wave of immigrants was known as the new wave coming from eastern, central, and southern Europe unlike their earlier predecessors of immigrants who migrated from the British Isles or northern Europe. Many fleed because of crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine. Economic, personal freedoms and religious persecution inspired many immigrants to migrate to the United States with the promise of economic wealth was the prize for the immigrants. The United States was known as the land of opportunity. Not all immigrants who entered the country remained. There were many immigrants who settled for just enough time to earn and save
money and returned to their homeland.
Between 1910 and 1914, more than 400,000 Italian immigrants left the United States these were usually single men. This caused anger toward those immigrants who lived the American Dream, only to return with American made money to their homelands. During the 19th century, the population in Europe experienced an enormous growth but the job market couldn’t meet the needs of that growth. By the end of the 1800’s major cities like New York and Chicago were comprised of a large percentage of immigrants. When immigrants migrated to New York which was known as the golden door they came by the way of the Castle Garden depot near the tip of Manhattan. In 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration processing center on Ellis Island in the New York harbor. When the immigrants arrived they were poor so they lived in what was called tenements because they were cheap. Tenements were single-family homes carved up into multi-family dwellings or apartment buildings. Each apartment had only three rooms: a living or front room, a kitchen, and a tiny bedroom. Every so often seven or more people lived in each apartment. Not only was the tenement crowded, but there were no bathrooms inside until 1905.
Residents of the
IMMIGRATIONtenements also did not have electric power until after 1918.(Library of Congress) New York passed the Tenement House Act in 1867 which required landlords to basic sanitation and health, and that each tenement had adequate ventilation and one outhouse for every twenty people.For an immigrant coming to New York City, getting a job was fairly simple. The jobs which they were given were always some of the dirtiest and dangerous jobs at a low wage. Immigrant men made about ten dollars a week and woman and children mad less. The work was factory work, ditch-digging, burying gas pipes and stone cutting. In New York City, immigrants are responsible for digging the first inter-borough subway tunnels, laying cables for Broadway street lights, the bridges on the East River, and constructing the Flatiron Building.(Novotny, 1971) During the late 1900’s many immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, and eastern European countries especially Poland and Lithuania made their way to Chicago. Roman Catholicism and Judaism were the main faiths of these immigrants, many of whom were fleeing religious harassment as well as severe adversities in earning a living. Chicago had big steel mills, stockyards, and meatpacking plants, which attracted a vast number of these immigrants. Chicago was seen as the place where new ideas and new technology, could be tried out. Many of these immigrants lacked any workable skills because of previous jobs on farms. Many unskilled and non-English speaking immigrants were subjected to work in low paying and very dangerous jobs which required manual labor such as stockyards, meatpacking plants, and steel mills. The immigrants usually lived near their workplaces and tried to recreate cultural and social lives they once had in their homelands. Chicago was particularly attractive to the Polish community because there were many people of polish decent so they had their own community. They were
IMMIGRATIONable to establish a culture and started building their own institutions. The Archdiocese of Chicago started creating Polish friendly parishes and schools.Great Irish Famine of the 19th century is why European immigrants arrived in Boston Mass. by way of the Port of Boston. The Irish who arrived during the famine years were among the poorest and least welcome immigrants in Boston. When the first wave of immigrants arrived as indentured servants, merchants, sailors, or tradesmen. As early as 1654, on the ship Goodfellow, is how the Irish arrived and were sold into indentured servitude and some came by way of being kidnapped by pirates. When the Irish settled in Boston they arrived poor and unskilled from rural areas and settled in the slums of the North End, the South Cove, and Fort Hill. Many arrived sick with typhus from the trip over on the ships. To contain the health risk, a quarantine hospital and almshouse were built on Deer Island, where hundreds of immigrants died and were buried in unmarked graves. To make matters worse, in 1849 a cholera epidemic swept through Boston. The North End was very poor while living in crowded and unsanitary conditions on the waterfront, this area was the hardest hit; when over 500 Irish died. March 17, 1737, a group of Irish Protestants met in Boston to organize the Charitable Irish Society after a bitterly cold winter to help take care of the elderly, sick or in need of help Irish this is known as the first St. Patrick’s Day. Many Irish women became domestic servants; by 1860, two-thirds of the servants in Boston were Irish. Most Irish men worked in construction, in quarries, or on the docks. Irish laborers helped build up the business district behind Faneuil Hall, built townhouses on Beacon Hill, cleared land for North Station, and filled in the South End; others worked on the waterfront as fish cutters and stevedores.(Novotny, 1971)
IMMIGRATIONThe incredible flood of immigrants between 1870 and 1930 brought people with strong backs and a willingness to work hard were qualities that were needed in Cleveland’s steel mills, petroleum refineries, coach factories, lumberyards and canal boats.
In the mid 19th century the Polish, the Czechs, Germans, and Italians migrated to Cleveland, Oh. The immigrants were drawn to Cleveland because of the work with the rolling steel mills along the Cuyahoga River and the woolen mills. The Czechs, settled in the area surrounding the Cuyahoga Valley now known as Slavic Village, the Polish settled in the area known as Slavic Village, and the Italians settled in an area then called Big Italy around Woodland and East 30th Street. The Czechs are one of the largest and oldest of Cleveland's ethnic groups. These immigrants, made up of Bohemians, Moravians, and Silesians, began arriving in the late 19th century. Early Czechs settled in a section by the waterfront today called the Flats. Later Czech arrivals moved further out from the city where they would be able to purchase land to grow vegetables, settling around Broadway and Fleet Avenue and near West 41st Street and Clark Avenue. The Polish celebrate its heritage each May Day with a parade and each August at the Harvest Festival. St. Stanislaus Church, was founded in 1888, it was an early influence on this community and helped to support new arrivals. Later in the 19th century, the second group of Italians settled in the
area south of Euclid, near Mayfield, that is still known as Little Italy. The new wave of Italians were stonemasons who carved monuments for the Lake View Cemetery. Early German immigrants arrived in Northeast Ohio they had come from Eastern states and were offsprings of those who came to the United States during the American Revolution. The German immigrants were skilled craftsmen, brewers, jewelers, and tailors. The first wave of Lithuanian immigrants arrived in Northeast Ohio in the late 19th century, drawn by jobs in the manufacturing sector. The second wave of Lithuanian refugees arrived in Cleveland at the end
IMMIGRATIONof World War II as the Soviet Union annexed their homeland. These arrivals created a community around East 185th St. Today, the Lithuanian culture can be found at the annual East 185th Street Festival. There is also a Lithuanian collection for viewing at Kent State University.Cleveland became a major center for industrialization in the nation and world. When the Ohio and Erie Canal was completed in 1832 was followed by the growth of railroads and lake transportation, which combined to give Cleveland an edge over many other cities. Immigrants weren’t paid very much but they were able to make more money than in their native counties. Many men traveled alone lived frugally to save money to bring their families over. Boarding houses were the way to live for single men. These men could live well for $5-$8 a month with a bed and regular meals throughout the day and into the night. If the house had a woman in it she would do the cooking, cleaning, and changing of the beds in the families boarding house. They struggled to learn the language of English. It was difficult to raise their families in this new land but they educated their children, founded businesses from the pennies they saved and helped create a new, stronger American society.