US Immigration (1877-1890)

Question 1

Types & Numbers of US Immigrants

Answer 1

• Approximately 10 million immigrants arrived in the US during the Gilded Age, ‘new immigration’
• Some were prosperous farmers who had cash to buy land and tools, in the Plains especially
• Many were poor peasants looking for the American Dream in unskilled manual labour in mills, mines and factories
• Out of the 10 million who crossed the Atlantic, majority came from Britain, Ireland, Germany, Scandinavia, Switzerland

Question 2

Pull Factors

Answer 2

• Advertisements in guidebooks, pamphlets and newspapers, e.g. ‘Where to Emigrate and Why’ guidebook, described journeys by land and sea, calculated the cost and reported on wages in the US
• Seen for economic opportunity, political equality and religious tolerance
• Steamship was the main form of travelling across the Atlantic
• Steamship. companies did lots to promote the benefits of immigration to the USA
• Ads also emphasised future prospects
• Some historians claim that railroads were the most significant promotional agencies, e.g. Kansas Pacific
• Had vasts tracts of land to dispose of and were able to offer transport reach it

Question 3

Push Factors

Answer 3

• Political, economic and religious discontent in Europe
• 19th century: industrial/agricultural revolutions had transformed European society
• More German immigrants arrived more than any other ethnic group, 1854-1894
• Agricultural/industrial depression for Britain, Norway and Sweden
• Ireland: unemployment and poverty
• Russia: Jews were fleeing persecution, assassination of Tsar Alexander II set off riots
• 1885: Japanese immigration, emperor revoked a ban on emigration, rapid population growth
• Chinese immigration, Taiping Rebellion
• 1880s: 106,000 Chinese men, introduction of 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act

Question 4

US Hostility to Chinese Immigration

Answer 4

• Immigrants became a strength and drain on American resources, especially in the East
• Labour Unions strongly opposed the presence of Chinese labour due to competition for jobs
• Congress banned further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882

Question 5

US Hostility to English Immigration

Answer 5

• New York Herald Tribune, 1879: new European workmen ‘must change their habits if they are to make good in the US’
• Magazines had a great deal of ethnic jokes, prejudiced against newcomers
• Irish depicted as ugly, brawling drunkards
• Italians were assumed to be involved in organised crime

Question 6

US Hostility to Jewish Immigration

Answer 6

• Received lots of abuse
• Anti-Semitism wasn’t new to the USA, barred from voting since the mid-19th century
• Famous example of social ostracism: exclusion of the Jewish banker, Joseph Seligman, from the Union Hotel in Saratoga, NYC, 1877
• Hotels, clubs and colleges began to turn Jews away
• Some displayed signs such as ‘No Jews or dogs admitted here’

Question 7

Growth of US Nativism

Answer 7

• Widening gap between native plutocracy and and foreign working class
• US was becoming 2 nations separated by language and religion, residence and occupation
• Americans began to lose confidence in the process of immigration and integration
• Main groups of nativism agitation: Labour Unions, afraid of threat to organised labour; social reformers, believed immigrants exacerbated the problems of the cities and WASP conservatives, dreaded supposed threat to Nordic WASP supremacy
• Skilled workers feared immigrants would lower their wages
• Protestant extremists joined secret societies, pledged to defend the school system against the enrolment of Catholic children, many from immigrant families