Directions: Read the following section from the article below and answer the following questions. After answering the questions, discuss your findings with the person directly across from you and inform them of your findings. DON’T give any answers you wrote down to your partner. Instead, build on key information from the text to come to a consensus.
Immigration and Migration
By: Hasia Diner
“The United States emerged in the last third of the nineteenth century as an industrial powerhouse, producing goods that then circulated around the world. People in distant countries used American-made clothes, shoes, textiles, machines, steel, oil, rubber, and tools, among other finished products. They also ate foods grown in American soil and relied upon America’s iron ore, coal, and lumber, all transported from the hinterlands to the great shipping ports by American-built railroads. This frenzy of production transformed the United States in the decades following the Civil War, making it the most dynamic economic engine in the world.
None of this could have happened without a work force that sewed the clothing, dug the coal, forged the steel, operated the railroads, and stoked the fires of the many thousands of factories, mills, mines, and workshops that spread over the United States. The industrialization of America stimulated the vast expansion of its own domestic business and agricultural sectors as well. Workers in factories and mines needed food, housing, and a range of consumer goods. As factory employment grew and the population expanded, businesses responded by selling their wares to the workers, enabling them to then go out and work and keep the economy on its course. Not limited to the Northeast, which had been the center of industry earlier in the nineteenth century, industrialization transformed America, in no small measure as a result of massive immigration.
Those newcomers came primarily from Europe and constituted the bulk of the laborers who made industrialization possible. Statistics tell part of the story. In the decade from 1871 until 1880 more than 2,800,000 arrived, while the following ten-year period brought in over 5,000,000. In the subsequent two decades well over thirteen million arrived, with the period from 1901 to 1910 being the single largest decade of immigration. Clearly with numbers like this immigration was a serious issue in American life and became the focus of much political debate and contention. These numbers have to be thought of in percentage terms as well. As a point of contrast, in 1850, the foreign born made up 9.7 percent of the American population; by 1890 that figure stood at 14.7 percent. The story of immigration to the United States in the industrial era also should be thought of in terms of where the immigrants came from. In the 1870s migration tended to come primarily from central and northern Europe, the countries of Scandinavia, Germany, England, Ireland (which although part of Great Britain had a unique and separate immigration history), and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. By 1900 migration gradually shifted to the east and the south and most immigrants hailed from Italy, the Czarist empire, Roumania, and other places in southern and eastern Europe. Catholics predominated, with a significant influx of Eastern Orthodox also adding to America’s religious diversity. Immigration of the industrial era also saw the size of America’s Jewish population grow exponentially. In 1870 about 250,000 Jews lived in the United States, but the new migration that extended into the 1920s brought in an additional 3,000,000 Jews…
…To many native-born Americans the influx of so many millions of foreigners, mostly Catholics and Jews, and most relatively poor and speakers of myriad languages, seemed threatening to the way of life they considered authentically American. A quick summary of the major developments of the years from the middle of the 1870s until 1900 shows how much the concern over immigration came to dominate national politics.
…In the early twentieth century during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, a few more categories of potential immigrants got added to the list of the undesirables, including the "feeble-minded," "imbeciles," carriers of various diseases, and anarchists. …This last category, anarchists, had a very specific origin, and tells us much about the rise of industrial America. In 1901 Leon Czolgosz, the son of immigrants and an anarchist, assassinated President William McKinley. This shocking event stoked American fears about political turbulence and radicalism, which they saw as a threat to the basic stability of the nation, and one associated with foreigners…”
1. American industry ran on migrant labor. Name at least three manufactured goods that were produced by migrant workers in American factories?
______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ ______________________________________________________________________ 2. European immigrants came to work and live in the United States. However, they were seen as second-class citizens by many Americans. According to the article, why were many European immigrants frowned upon by American citizens?
3. Before the turn of the century, European immigrants were already seen in a negative light by a substantial portion of Americans. What tragic event led to nativism becoming a dominant policy in government and amongst the people?
Interuniversitary Consortium on Migration and Integration: Qualitative Research Part Migrants’ Political and Social Participation in Belgium The case of Visé (Liège Province, Wallonia) and Antwerp (Antwerp, Flanders)
Interuniversitary Consortium on Migration and Integration: Qualitative Research Part Migrants’ Political and Social Participation in Belgium The case of Visé (Liège Province, Wallonia) and Antwerp (Antwerp, Flanders)
