The factories and mills drew workers from farms and from across the ocean. Cities grew fast: Chicago went from a small town in the 1840s to more than a million people by 1890.
Key idea
From the 1880s, most immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia and Greece), many through Ellis Island (opened 1892). Cities filled with crowded tenements, political machines such as Tammany Hall, and settlement houses such as Jane Addams's Hull House (1889). The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) barred most Chinese laborers.
| "Old" immigrants (before about 1880) | "New" immigrants (about 1880 to 1920) | |
|---|---|---|
| From | Ireland, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia | Italy, Austria-Hungary, Russia, Greece, Poland |
| Religion (most) | Protestant; many Irish and German Catholics | Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Jewish |
| Arrived at | Castle Garden (New York) and other ports | Ellis Island (from 1892); Angel Island in the West (from 1910) |
Why it works
Why did they come? "Push" factors: poverty, crop failures, and in Russia attacks on Jewish communities. "Pull" factors: jobs in American industry, letters from relatives, cheap steamship tickets. In the cities, political machines traded help (jobs, coal in winter, help with the law) for votes, and leaders such as Boss Tweed of Tammany Hall stole public money. Settlement houses, run mostly by educated young women, offered English classes, child care and clubs, and pushed for better laws.
Many native-born Americans feared the newcomers would take jobs or change the culture; this nativism grew. On the West Coast, hostility toward Chinese workers led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first federal law to bar a group of immigrants by nationality. It was not repealed until 1943. Photographer Jacob Riis showed the crowded tenements in How the Other Half Lives (1890).
Work it through
Worked example: Push or pull?
Sort these reasons for an Italian farmer to leave for New York in 1900: poor harvests at home; a cousin's letter about jobs; high taxes; cheap steamship fares.
- Push factors drive people out of their home country: poor harvests, high taxes.
- Pull factors draw them to the new one: the cousin's news of jobs.
- Cheap fares made the trip possible; most historians count them as a pull.
Answer: Push: harvests, taxes. Pull: the letter about jobs, cheap fares.
Common mistake
A popular story says Ellis Island officials changed immigrants' names. Passenger lists were made at the port of departure, and inspectors checked names against them. Most name changes came later, made by the immigrants themselves, often to sound more American at work or school.