3.3 Immigration and Urbanization

Main Idea
After the Civil War, millions of immigrants from Europe and Asia settled in the United States.
During the three decades following the Civil War, the United States transformed rapidly from a rural nation to a more urban one.

Vocabulary
nativism, tenement, political machine, graft

Reading Objectives

1. Analyze the effects of immigration on national policy.
2. Evaluate the changes that cities experienced because of the increased population.

Immigration

• By 1900, eastern and southern Europeans made up more than half of all immigrants. Of the 14 million immigrants who arrived between 1860 and 1900, many were European Jews. America offered immigrants employment, few immigration restrictions, avoidance of military service, religious freedom, and the chance to move up the social ladder.
• Most immigrants took the difficult trip to America in steerage, the least expensive accommodations on a steamship. The 14-day trip usually ended at Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. It served as a processing center for most immigrants arriving on the East Coast after 1892.
• Most immigrants passed through Ellis Island in a day. However, some faced the possibility of being separated from family and possibly sent back to Europe due to health problems.
• Most immigrants settled in cities. They lived in neighborhoods that were separated into ethnic groups. Here they duplicated many of the comforts of their homelands, including language and religion.
• Immigrants who learned English, adapted to American culture, had marketable skills or money, or if they settled among members of their own ethnic group tended to adjust well to living in the United States.
• Severe unemployment, poverty, and famine in China; the discovery of gold in California; the Taiping Rebellion in China; and the demand for railroad workers in the United States led to an increase in Chinese immigration to the United States in the mid-1800s.
• In Western cities, Chinese immigrants worked as laborers, servants, skilled tradesmen, and merchants. Some opened their own laundries.
• Between 1900 and 1908, Japanese immigration to the United States drastically increased as Japan began to build an industrial economy and an empire.
• In 1910 a barracks was opened on Angel Island in California. Here, Asian immigrants, mostly young men and boys, waited sometimes for months for the results of immigration hearings.
• The increase in immigration led to nativism, a preference for native-born people and the desire to limit immigration. Earlier, in the 1840s and 1850s, nativism was directed towards the Irish. In the early 1900s, it was the Asian, Jews, and eastern Europeans that were the focus of nativism.
• Nativism led to the forming of two anti-immigrant groups. The American Protective Association was founded in 1887. The party’s founder, Henry Bowers, disliked Catholicism. He wanted to stop Catholic immigration. In the 1870s, Denis Kearny, an Irish immigrant, organized the Workingman’s Party of California. This group wanted to stop Chinese immigration. Racial violence resulted.
• In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that barred Chinese immigration for 10 years and prevented the Chinese already in America from becoming citizens. This act was renewed by Congress in 1892, made permanent in 1902, and not repealed until 1943.

Urbanization

• The urban population of the United States grew from about 10 million in 1870 to over 30 million by 1900.
• Immigrants remained in the cities, where they worked long hours for little pay. Still, most immigrants felt their standard of living had improved in the United States.
• Farmers began moving to cities because of better paying jobs, electricity, running water, plumbing, and entertainment.
• Housing and transportation needs changed due to the increase in the amount of people living in cities.
• As the price of land increased, building owners began to build up. Skyscrapers, tall steel frame buildings, were constructed for this reason.
• In the late 1800s, various kinds of mass transit developed to move large numbers of people around cities quickly. Beginning with the horsecar, and later to the more sophisticated electric trolley cars and elevated railroads, engineers created ways to move the ever-expanding population around the city.
• Definite boundaries could be seen between where the wealthy, middle class, and working class people lived.
• Wealthy families lived in the heart of the city where they constructed elaborate homes.
• The middle class, which included doctors, lawyers, engineers, and teachers, tended to live away from the city.
• The majority of urban dwellers were part of the working class who lived in city tenements, or dark and crowded multi-family apartments.
• The growth of cities resulted in an increase in crime, fire, disease, and pollution. From 1880 to 1900, there was a large increase in the murder rate. Native-born Americans blamed immigrants for the increase in crime.
• Alcohol contributed to crime in the late 1800s.
• Contaminated drinking water from improper sewage disposal resulted in epidemics of typhoid fever and cholera.
• A new political system was needed to cope with the new urban problems. The political machine, an informal political group designed to gain and keep power, provided essentials to city dwellers in exchange for votes. Party bosses ran the political machines.
• The party bosses had tight control of the city’s money. Many of the politicians became wealthy due to fraud or graft—getting money through dishonest or questionable means.
• The most famous New York Democratic political machine was Tammany Hall. During the 1860s and 1870s, Tammany Hall’s boss was William M. Tweed. Tweed’s corruption sent him to prison in 1874.
• Opponents of political machines, such as Thomas Nast, blasted bosses for their corruption. Defenders, though, thought machines supplied necessary services and helped to assimilate the masses of new city dwellers.