Immigration, Urbanization, Industrialization 1860-1920

1. Immigration, Industrialization, Urbanization

2. Immigration

Why?
 A chance to improve
 “Rags to Riches”
 Golden opportunity
 NYC=“Golden Door”
 Free land
 Homestead Act
 School, no forced time in
military, could take part in
democracy, increased
freedom
Who?
 EXAMPLES:
 Potato famine in Ireland
(1845-1852)
 Ireland loses 25% of its
population
 Germans from Russia
 Pogroms, violent massacres
of Jews, in Russia (1880s)
 2 million emigrated
 Italy, fleeing rural poverty &
high taxes
 More than 4 million came to
U.S. between 1880 & 1924

3. Immigration

Old Immigration (Thru 1880)
 Northern or western
Europe
 Irish & German
 Mostly Protestant
 Literate & skilled
 Mostly families
 Quick to assimilate
 Experience w/ democracy
New Immigration (1880-1920)
 Southern or eastern Europe
 Fewer Protestants; more
Catholics & Jews
 Many were illiterate &
unskilled
 “Birds of passage”
 Young, single men, planning
to return
 Less willing to assimilate;
more “clannish”
 Often poor

4. Immigration

 1882—Chinese Exclusion Act
 1886—Statue of Liberty put in place in NY Harbor
 1890—Roughly 10 million immigrants have arrived
since the end of the Civil War
 1892—Ellis Island opens
 1892—Gov’t requires all immigrants to pass physical
exam
 1910—Mexican Revolution leads to increased # of
immigrants from Mexico

7. The Usual Irish Way of Doing Things

9. Uncle Sam’s Boarding House

11. OMAHA
1860 1,883
1880 30,518
1900 102,555

14. The “Great American Desert”

 “Rain follows the plow”
 New states
 Kansas (1861), Nebraska (1867), Colorado (1876), North
Dakota & South Dakota (1889), Montana (1889), Oklahoma
(1907)
 Land taken from Indians through war & declared “public
domain”
 Buffalo Soldiers
 Little Bighorn, AKA “Custer’s Last Stand (1876)
 Indian Wars are over after Wounded Knee Massacre (1890)
 Turner Thesis declares that frontier is closed (1893)

17. The Shores Family in Custer County, Nebraska

18. Cherry County Homesteaders
Near Broken Bow
Hilton Family; Custer County

19. Results

 BY 1900:
 U.S. population triples between 1850 & 1900
 23 million to 76 million
 Frontier closed; Indians forced to assimilate
 Increased diversity in the Plains & West
 Looking for a new frontier
 Increased urbanization leads to problems….
 Overcrowding, tenements, sanitation issues, crime, corruption, poverty
 Nativism/anti-immigration
 Push for assimilation
 Salad bowl or melting pot?
 U.S. becomes industrial giant, but…
 Low wages, long hours, increase in strikes/protests
 Need for reform
 Lack of government involvement/regulation; “laissez-faire”