History Quiz - Immigration/City Life

The Push Pull Factors of Immigration

• The push-pull factors of immigration are those that drive people away from a place and draw them to a new location.

• Push factors are often forceful, demanding that a certain person or group of people leave one country for another, or at least giving that person or people strong reasons to want to move—either because of a threat of violence or the loss of financial security.

• Pull factors, on the other hand, are often the positive aspects of a different country that encourage people to immigrate to seek a better life.

Push Factor:

• Factors which essentially force a population or person from one country to seek refuge in another country

• Conditions that drive people to leave their homes: sub-standard level of living, food shortage, land or job scarcity, famine or drought, political or religious persecution, pollution, or even natural disasters.

Pull Factor:

• Reasons to migrate somewhere

• reasons that help a person or population determine whether relocating to a new country would provide a significant benefit

• attract populations to a new place largely because of what the country provides that is not available to them in their country of origin

Examples of push and pull factors:

• Wealth

• Better Life

• Leave crop failures

• Shortage of Land and jobs

• Rising taxes

• Famine

• Religious/Political Persecution

Hopes and Dreams:

• Getting Rich

• Securing Free Land: Homestead Act

• Personal Freedom:

  • Everyone goes to school

  • Shortened army service

  • freely take part in a democratic government

Crossing the Ocean:

• Most immigrants traveled in steerage

  • the part of a ship providing accommodations for passengers with the cheapest tickets

• Conditions

  • Limited bathroom facilities

  • No privacy

  • Poor food

  • But…Cheap tickets

• Travel was anywhere from 1 – 3 weeks

Where would they arrive?

• Several Port Cities:

  • Boston

  • Philadelphia

  • Baltimore

  • San Francisco

  • Seattle

• 70% came through New York

  • The “Golden Door”

New York: Primarily from Europe

• Throughout most of the 1800’s, immigrants arrived at the Castle garden Depot near Manhattan

• 1892 Ellis Island opened

  • Reception center

  • Statue of Liberty opened in 1886

  • “Liberty Enlightening the World”

  • Symbol of the U.S. as a place of refuge and hope

Physical Exams

• 1892 – Government required all new immigrants to undergo a physical exam

• Those with Contagious diseases

  • Ex: Tuberculosis

  • Faced Quarantine

  • Faced Deportation

• Separation among families was common

Where Immigrants Settled:

• Communities established by previous settlers from their homelands

• Ports of entry and inland cities

  • Many urban neighborhoods became Ghettos

  • Many chose to live near others of their ethnic group: Familiarity

  • Reflected Culture of their homeland

• Looking for Work

  • Employers took advantage

  • Paid less than other workers

Boston specifically:

• Boston became a city of immigrants in the 19th and early 20th centuries, shaping its neighborhoods, culture, and economy

• During this time, waves of immigrants from Ireland, Italy, Eastern Europe, and beyond arrived in Boston seeking jobs, safety, and a better life. Many settled in crowded neighborhoods like the North End and South Boston, working in factories, construction, and domestic service.

• These newcomers faced discrimination and tough living conditions, but they also built strong communities, churches, and schools. Over time, they transformed Boston into a vibrant, diverse city. Their legacy lives on in the city’s food, festivals, and family histories.

(look at packet of work on the different cultures and where they settled)

Immigrants from Asia

• West Coast Ports

  • Chinese and Japanese were the largest groups from Asia

• Very different from Americans AND Europeans

  • Targets of suspicion and Hostility

• Acceptance was very difficult

  • racially defined as “ineligible for citizenship

Angel Island Immigration Station

• San Francisco

  • Main immigration facility on the West Coast of the United States from 1910 to 1940

• Many immigrants from Asian countries were detained there for extended periods

  • discriminatory immigration laws

Early Anti-Asian Immigration Laws

• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882-1943)

  • targeted Chinese immigrants for restriction: severely limited legal entry and ineligibility for citizenship

• Gentleman’s Agreement (1907-1908)

  • Informal agreement

  • Japan promised to stop its people from moving to the United States. In return, the US agreed not to create new laws against Japanese immigrants already living there: School bans

• Web Alien Law (1913):

  • prevented noncitizen Asians from owning land

Chinese Immigrants incentives to move to the United States:

• Gold Rush (1849)

• Transcontinental Railroad: Thousands of laborers were needed

  • Chinese Railroad Laborers

  • About 250,000

• Although most of the companies' railroad workers were initially from Ireland and Union Pacific employed some native-born American soldiers, the vast majority of workers for Central Pacific were Chinese immigrants by the time the railroad was finished. These immigrants faced particularly poor working conditions and fierce discrimination, but their efforts were crucial to the construction of the railroad and to the full development of the West.

• Even though Chinese workers worked longer hours than workers of European descent, the Central Pacific paid them the same wage or less. Additionally, Chinese workers were required to pay for their food, lodging, and tools to work, which the railroad companies provided to white workers at no cost. Historians estimate that between 50 and 150 Chinese workers died constructing the transcontinental railroad

The Chinese Exclusion Act

• An immigration law passed in 1882 that prevented Chinese laborers from immigrating to the United States. Also excluded Chinese nationals from eligibility for United States citizenship.

  • The first immigration law that excluded an entire ethnic group.

  • Signed by President Chester A. Arthur in 1882

  • The Geary Act of 1892 extended and reinforced it

• Impacted the legal halt of Chinese laborer immigration, resulted in the denial of naturalization for Chinese immigrants, and the creation of discriminatory laws based on race and nationality.

Urbanization

• Number and size of cities increase dramatically

  • More Cities and urban areas

  • Population

  • By 1920 more Americans lived in urban areas than rural areas, for the first time

• Caused by:

  • Industrialization

  • Migration

  • Immigration

  • Cities provided both laborers for factories and a market for factory-made goods

People in the Cities:

• Immigrants

• People leaving Farms

  • Need for farm hands went down

  • Machines replaced manual labor

  • Floods and Boll Weevil destroying crops

  • Population shift fell

• African Americans

• segregation and discrimination in the south increasing

Growing Upward: Skyscrapers

• The first true skyscraper was built in Chicago in 1885:10 stories high

• Now possible because:

  • Steel Frames (Bessemer Process)

  • Otis Elevator

  • Central Steam-heating system with radiators

Growing Outward: Suburbs

• New/better Transportation systems

• Streetcar cities

• Subways

• Bridges (ex: brooklyn Bridge)

• Effects: Income segregation

  • Upper/Middle class moved to streetcar suburbs to escape, pollution, poverty and crime of the city

  • Older sections of the city were left to the working poor

• Reflected/Contributed to the class, race, ethnic and cultural divisions in American history

Residential Neighborhoods in the City

• Due to poverty, overcrowding, and neglect, neighborhoods declined

• Buildings were typically Multi-Family

• Tenements

  • low cost apartment buildings designed to house as many families as the owner could pack in

  • typically dirty and run down

• Ghettos

  • areas in which one ethnic or racial group dominated

• Restrictive Covenants

  • agreements among homeowners not to sell real estate to certain groups of people

Conditions:

• Threat of fire

• Poor ventilation

• Disease

  • Cholera, typhoid, tuberculosis

  • Example: In one district in NY 6 out of 10 babies died before their first birthday

• Light and Air

• Water

  • Diseases linked to this

Light, Air and Water

• In 1879 New York laws required an outside window in every room (disease linked to air)

• Dumbbell Tenement Created:

  • Designed by an architect, shaped as a dumbbell

  • Each building narrowed in the middle and gaps on either side formed air shafts to bring light and air inside rooms

• 1901 NY Law

  • Hallway bathrooms replace backyard outhouses

  • Small bathtubs and sinks were installed

Jacob Riis:

• Who was he? 

• What did he take photographs of?

• What was the impact?

He was a danish immigrant, crime reporter, and photographer who had previoulsy lost his job in an economic crash.

He took photographs of the hell of tenements, slum life, and bad living conditions of people living in cities in the 1800s.

He shocks Americans, which leads to new laws, like proper ventilation, being created.

Jacob Riis’s lectures:

Jacob A. Riis delivered his first lecture, "How the Other Half Lives and Dies in New York," on January 25, 1888, at the Society of Amateur Photographers of New York. Using an early form of projector known as a stereopticon to display images of the slum and its residents, Riis took his audience on a visual tour of the tenements. The lecture's success resulted from his ability to entertain with colorful anecdotes while simultaneously delivering a spiritual message.

What does this quote mean. “Long ago it was said that ‘one half of the world does not know how the other half lives.’ That was true then. It did not know because it did not care. The half that was on top cared little for struggles and less for the fate of those who were underneath, so long as it was able to hold them there and keep its own seat.” – Jacob Riis

The people at the top didn’t care about those living at the bottom so they would continue being at the top. The rich tried to stay rich.