This Is Where I Came From

Immigration in the Early 20th Century

Immigration in the Early 1900s

After the low of the 1890s, immigration jumped from a low of 3.five million in that decade to a high of 9 1000000 in the first decade of the new century. Immigrants from Northern and Western Europe connected coming as they had for three centuries, but in decreasing numbers. Later on the 1880s, immigrants increasingly came from Eastern and Southern European countries, likewise as Canada and Latin America. By 1910, Eastern and Southern Europeans made upwardly lxx pct of the immigrants entering the country. After 1914, immigration dropped off because of the war, and later because of immigration restrictions imposed in the 1920s.

The reasons these new immigrants made the journey to America differed lilliputian from those of their predecessors. Escaping religious, racial, and political persecution, or seeking relief from a lack of economic opportunity or famine still pushed many immigrants out of their homelands. Many were pulled hither by contract labor agreements offered by recruiting agents, known as padrones to Italian and Greek laborers. Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks, Bohemians, and Italians flocked to the coal mines or steel mills, Greeks preferred the textile mills, Russian and Polish Jews worked the needle trades or pushcart markets of New York. Railroad companies advertised the availability of free or cheap farmland overseas in pamphlets distributed in many languages, bringing a handful of agricultural workers to western farmlands. But the vast majority of immigrants crowded into the growing cities, searching for their gamble to make a better life for themselves.

Immigrants entering the United States who could non afford first or second-form passage came through the processing centre at Ellis Island, New York. Built in 1892, the center handled some 12 million European immigrants, herding thousands of them a twenty-four hour period through the barn-like structure during the summit years for screening. Authorities inspectors asked a list of twenty-ix probing questions, such as: Have you money, relatives or a task in the United states of america? Are you a polygamist? An agitator? Side by side, the doctors and nurses poked

Medical examination Ellis Island, 1910

and prodded them, looking for signs of disease or debilitating handicaps. Usually immigrants were just detained 3 or 4 hours, and then free to leave. If they did not receive stamps of blessing, and many did non because they were deemed criminals, strikebreakers, anarchists or carriers of illness, they were sent back to their identify of origin at the expense of the shipping line.

For the newcomers arriving without family, some solace could be constitute in the ethnic neighborhoods populated by their fellow countrymen. Hither they could converse in their native tongue, practice their religion, and take office in cultural celebrations that helped ease the loneliness. Often, though, life for all was not easy. Nigh industries offered hazardous conditions and very depression wages--lowered further afterward the padrone took out his share. Urban housing was overcrowded and unsanitary. Many found it very difficult to accept. An old Italian saying summed upwards the disillusionment felt by many: "I came to America because I heard the streets were paved with gilt. When I got hither, found out three things: Outset, the streets weren't paved with golden; 2nd, they weren't paved at all: and third, I was expected to pave them." In spite of the difficulties, few gave upward and returned dwelling.

References:
Kraut, Alan, The Huddled Masses: The Immigrant in American Society, 1880-1921 (1982); Handlin, Oscar, The Uprooted (1951).

How To Cite This Commodity:
"Immigration in the early on 1900s," EyeWitness to History, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2000).

Source: http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/snpim1.htm

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