Transcript Ellis Island, New York

Immigration, 1877-1924
U.S. History II
A Century of Immigration: 1820 - 1920
 5,907,893 Germans
 16.4% of all immigrants
 25-36% between 1830-1890
 4,578,941 Irish
 12.7% of all immigrants
 35-45% between 1830-1860
 4,195,880 Italians
 3,000,000 between 1901-1920
 2,147,859 Scandinavians
Why They Left – Push Factors
 Lack of jobs
 Agriculture no longer
viable
 Escaping persecution
 Dodging the draft
Irish Tenants Evicted
Why They Came – Pull Factors
 Wages 2-3 times higher in
U.S.
 Friends & relatives already
here
 Greater economic, social,
& political freedom
Immigrants on board
How They Came – Means
 Recruitment
 Padrones
 Steamships
 “Birds of Passage”
HMS Majestic, White Star Line, 1889
Cabin vs. Steerage Accommodations
Ellis Island, New York
Covered Entrance
Great Hall
Inspection
Hearing Room
Where Immigrants Settled
Urban Immigrants
Ethnic Ghettoes
 Never completely
homogenous
 Dumbbell tenements
 Created organizations to
preserve culture
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Churches
Schools
Benevolent associations
Singing clubs
Mulberry St., Manhattan
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000
Tenement Sweatshop
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2000
Nativist Attacks
 Nativists distinguished between good “old
immigrants” & bad “new immigrants”
 “old” immigrants hailed as pioneers who settled as
families on the land, assimilated & became citizens
 “new” immigrants were single men who worked
in factories, lived in slums, & were less intelligent &
more degenerate
 Immigrants blamed for evils of urban,
industrial America
 Conservatives claimed they were labor radicals –
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Anti-immigrant cartoon from
The Ram’s Horn, 10/31/1896
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socialists, anarchists
Unions saw them as strikebreakers
Social workers decried their unsanitary living
conditions
Academics claimed they were racially inferior
TR warned of danger of “race suicide”
Immigration Restriction Legislation
 Page Act (1875) – prostitutes & convicts excluded from entry
 Asian Exclusion:
 1882 – Chinese Exclusion Act
 1907 – Gentlemen’s Agreement with Japan
 1917 – Asiatic Barred Zone created
 1924 – all “aliens ineligible to citizenship” excluded
 Foran Act (1885) – contract labor outlawed (except
professionals)
 1891 – federal Immigration Bureau created
 Federal inspection centers like Ellis Island built
 Courts ruled that immigration decisions were administrative – not
subject to due process or judicial review
Restrictive Legislation, continued
 1882, 1891, 1903 & 1907 acts excluded
those with a variety of physical or mental
defects
 1917 act imposed literacy test on all
immigrants
 “Emergency” Quota Act (1921) – quotas set
at 3% of 1910 census figures for each nationality
 Reed – Johnson National Origins Act
(1924)
 Initial quotas set at 2% of 1890 census figures
 In 1929 “national origins” quotas took effect, based
on estimates of ethnic heritage of white population