Cities Immigrants and Machines

  1. Immigration in this era was virtually wide open.  American borders had an organized Check in system at two different American ports of entry:

    1. Ellis Island_ In New York City was the main port of entry for immigrants on the East Coast

    2. Angel Island in San Francisco was the main port of entry for immigrants on the West Coast

  2. Immigration in this era (1870-1920) can historically be divided into two different sub eras with different groups found in each.  

    1. “Old” Immigrants (1870-1900) Consisted of three major groups

      1. Chinese Settled mostly in California and faced the most amount of discrimination of all immigrant groups while they built the Western Half of the RR.  

      2. Irish Settled mostly in Boston (Think Basketball!!) and worked on the Eastern half of the RR.

      3. Germans Settled mostly in Upper Mid-West 

    2. “New” Immigrants

      1. Italians Settled mostly in East Cost (Northern NY and NJ)

      2. Russians Settled mostly in NY

      3. Polish Settled mostly in NY and Chicago_.  Both of these last two groups included a significant number of Jews.

  3. Of all these groups it is the Chinese that faced the most discrimination including the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882.  In 1893 the Wong Kim Ark case established the birthright citizenship that many immigrants sought for their children

  4. Many of these immigrants moved into cities and lived with prior immigrants who made the trip to America forming “_ethnic enclaves_” around the country, i.e. Little Italy or Chinatown.

  5. While immigration was generally “open” in this era there was of course nativism which has been around for generations blaming the immigrants for taking jobs and spreading crime.  Additionally there were other reasons immigrants could be sent home from Angel/Ellis Island before they even entered such as 

    1. Public Charge

    2. Political Radical

    3. Contraband

    4. Criminal Record

    5. Illness Physical or Mental

  6. This immigration hit at an opportune time for the United States and in particular the _____ who were just getting their industries up and running and the _____ who used the votes of immigrants to control major American cities.

  7. Robber Barons such as:

    1. Vanderbilt who controlled rr__

    2. Rockefeller who controlled oil

    3. Carnegie who controlled steel

    4. Morgan who controlled banks and electricity__.  All four used cheap labor from immigrants to drive down the wages of all workers in the American economy paying only subsistence wages, which are simply enough to work and come back the next day because you need the check.

  8. Other Factory/Industry owners also benefited from the cheap labor of the era and some owners even created “_company towns_” where they owned all the buildings in the town and made it a job condition that you HAD to live in their town.  

  9. In this era of lezze faire__ there was no minimum wage nor benefits or sick time on most jobs as few workers had a “salary” most simply were paid by the hour.

  10. In this environment it is no surprise that unions__ grew as workers were tired of being exploited.  They used tools such as strikes__ to organize and push back against corporate greed.  With many earning the right to ___collectavly bargin__ contracts with Ownership.

  11. Despite the limited success of unions the government in this era consistently favored ownership as they contributed to political campaigns.  This can clearly be seen in three strikes of the era:

    1. Haymarket

    2. Pullman__

    3. Homestead