APUSH - Topic 6.8 Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age

Explain how cultural and economic factors affected migration patterns over time

Growth of Immigration

• US population more than tripled from 1850-1900

  • many were immigrants

  • Chicago with a city of immigrants

Push Factors for immigration (Europeans)

• political turmoil and new machinery displaced farmers

• overcrowding and joblessness in Europe because of population growth

• religious persecution

  • eg. Jews in eastern Europe

Pull factors for Immigration (Europeans)

• US had reputation for political, religious freedom, many economic opportunities

• relatively inexpensive one-way passage in new large steamships

“Old” Immigrants from Europe"

1880s

• Northern, Western Europeans

• mostly Protestant

• mostly English-speaking, high level occupational skills

  • blended in easily

• Roman Catholics faced discrimination (Irish, some Germans)

“New” Immigrants from Europe

began in 1890s

• southern, eastern Europe

• mostly poor, illiterate

• from autocratic countries, not used to democracy

• mostly not protestant

• lived in poor ethnic neighborhoods

“birds of passage”

• immigrants who came to the US to earn money

• would go back to their country when they had earned enough

Chinese Exclusion Act

1882

• many chinese immigrants after first California gold rush in 1848

• completely ended Chinese migration to the states

• immigration restrictions later passed on other asian countries

Growth of cities

• more and more people lived in cities

• people left farms, sought opportunities in cities

• many African Americans resettled in cities

Patterns of Urban Development

• poor people began to live in cities

• more wealthy people lived in streetcar suburbs

  • communities along transit routes leading to city

  • escape pollution, poverty, crime + often didn’t want to live with immigrants (racism/nativism)

Ethnic neighborhoods

• where immigrants from the same place would settle and maintain their language, culture, and more

Tenement apartments

• windowless, crowded apartments, often housing immigrants

• NYC passed law that required all bedrooms to have a window (1879)

• dumbbell tenements

  • ventilation shafts as windows

• overcrowding and filth lead to spread of many deadly diseases