Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age in two minutes
- More than 12 million immigrants arrived between 1865 and 1898, and arrivals rose and fell with the economy, dropping after the panics of 1873 and 1893.
- Through the 1880s most immigrants came from Germany, Ireland, Britain, and Scandinavia, but by the mid-1890s most came from southern and eastern Europe, including Italy, Austria-Hungary, and the Russian Empire.
- Push factors included scarce land in southern Italy and anti-Jewish pogroms and the May Laws in Russia, and pull factors were jobs, letters and prepaid tickets from relatives, and faster steamships.
- Castle Garden handled New York arrivals until 1890, the federal government opened Ellis Island on January 1, 1892, and inspectors admitted most immigrants after questions and a medical exam.
- Most newcomers stayed in cities, where they crowded into tenements, built neighborhoods such as Little Italy, Chinatown, and the Lower East Side, and founded newspapers, churches, synagogues, and mutual-aid societies.
- Americans moved too: farm children took city jobs, while Black Southerners moved to Atlanta, Birmingham, and some Northern cities. Chicago grew from about 300,000 in 1870 to over a million in 1890.
- On the exam: expect causation questions on push and pull factors and comparisons of old and new immigrants; the topic connects to urbanization in Period 6 and to restriction in the 1920s.
Topic 6.8 key terms
- Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
The first federal law to bar immigrants because of their nationality. It suspended Chinese labor immigration for ten years. Congress renewed it in 1892, extended it without an end date, and did not repeal it until 1943.
- Naturalization
The legal process of becoming a U.S. citizen. Since 1790 it had been limited to "free white persons" (Africans were added in 1870). Section 14 of the 1882 act named the Chinese and shut them out.
- Statue of Liberty (1886)
Liberty Enlightening the World: a gift from the people of France, designed by Frédéric Bartholdi with an iron frame by Gustave Eiffel, and dedicated on Bedloe's Island on October 28, 1886. Americans raised the money for the pedestal.
- Push and pull factors
The forces that pushed people to leave home (poverty, crop failure, persecution, army service) and the ones that pulled them to the United States (factory wages, cheap farmland, railroad and steamship company recruiting).
- Mass-circulation newspapers
Cheap, high-volume papers of the 1880s and 1890s, like Pulitzer's World, that used crusades and human-interest stories to reach working-class and immigrant readers.
- "The New Colossus"
Emma Lazarus's 1883 sonnet, written to raise money for the pedestal. It was not placed on the pedestal until 1903, and only later did Americans read it as a welcome to immigrants.
- Suffrage
The right to vote. In 1886 most American women could not vote in national elections, and suffragists used public events like this one to demand it.
- Statue of Liberty
Liberty Enlightening the World: a gift from France, dedicated in New York Harbor in 1886 and paid for on the American side by public donations. Over time it became a symbol of welcome to immigrants.
- “Old” and “new” immigrants
Historians’ labels for a shift in origins. “Old” immigrants came mostly from northern and western Europe, the majority through the 1880s. “New” immigrants came from southern and eastern Europe, the majority by the mid-1890s, and more of them were Catholic, Orthodox or Jewish.
- Push factors
Conditions that drove people out: poverty, landlessness, overcrowding, religious persecution, military conscription, and no chance to rise.
- Birds of passage
Migrants, mostly young men, who came to work for a season or a few years and went home with their savings.
- Pull factors and chain migration
Pull factors drew people in: jobs, wages, freedom to worship, and relatives already here. In chain migration, one family member went first, then sent money or prepaid tickets for the next.
- Internal migration
Movement within a country. In these years: farm families moving to cities, and Black Southerners moving from the rural South to Southern and Northern cities.
- Public charge
A person likely to depend on public money. The Immigration Act of 1882, the first general federal immigration law, barred anyone likely to become one. The phrase is still in U.S. law today.
- Ellis Island
The federal government's immigration station in New York harbor, opened January 1, 1892. Doctors and inspectors examined arrivals there, and nearly all were admitted.
- Ship's manifest
The passenger list each steamship had to complete before arrival, with every immigrant's answers to the questions set by law in 1893. Inspectors checked the answers.
- Castle Garden
New York State's immigration station at the southern tip of Manhattan, 1855–1890. It handled about three-quarters of all U.S. immigrants in those years, until the federal government took over.
- Foran Act (Alien Contract Labor Law), 1885
Made it illegal to bring immigrants to the United States under a labor contract signed abroad. Backed by the Knights of Labor, who feared wage-cutting and strikebreakers.
- Dumbbell tenement
A five- or six-story New York tenement built after the 1879 law, pinched in the middle around a narrow air shaft so every room had a “window.” The shafts brought little light and carried noise, smells and fire.
- Ethnic neighborhood (enclave)
A city district where one immigrant group clustered, keeping its language, faith, food and organizations. Crowded and poor, but also a base for jobs, credit and politics.
- Mutual-aid society
A club of immigrants, often from the same town or region, that pooled dues to pay for sickness, burial, loans and help finding work.
- Ward boss
A city machine’s neighborhood fixer: a job, a bucket of coal, and a favor now for a vote in November. More in Cross of Gold.
- Assimilation
Taking on the language, dress and customs of the new country. Most immigrants negotiated a compromise, keeping some old ways and adopting some new ones.
Transcript
Quotes are from the historical record and name their source. Lines marked Dramatized are reconstructions.
Two Harbors
1882 · 1886
Key terms: Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), Naturalization, Statue of Liberty (1886), Push and pull factors
On May 6, 1882, President Chester Arthur signed a law that shut Chinese laborers out of the United States. It also barred every Chinese immigrant from ever becoming a citizen.
That year, while Congress argued, nearly forty thousand Chinese immigrants arrived, more than in any year before.
October 28, 1886 New York harbor
Four years later, in New York harbor, the sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi held a cord tied to a French flag. The flag hid his statue's face. When Senator William Evarts finished his speech, Bartholdi would pull.
Some tellings say Bartholdi pulled too soon: the senator had only paused for breath. The official record says the speech was over. Even this moment has two versions.
Two harbors, four years apart. One law shut a door. One statue lifted a lamp.
Between 1865 and 1898, more than twelve million people came anyway. Who got to become American? And who got to decide?
Emma Lazarus
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles.
The Lamp
1871–1886
Key terms: Mass-circulation newspapers, "The New Colossus", Suffrage, Statue of Liberty
Her full name was Liberty Enlightening the World.
The idea is credited to Édouard de Laboulaye, who led France's anti-slavery society. At her feet, Bartholdi put a broken chain. From the ground, it's barely visible.
Joseph Pulitzer, a Hungarian immigrant, printed every donor's name in his newspaper, the World. By August 1885, the fund passed $100,000. Most gave under a dollar.
Back in 1883, the poet Emma Lazarus wrote a sonnet to help. Her family had been New Yorkers since colonial times. She helped Jewish refugees from Russia.
President Cleveland accepted her in the rain.
Grover Cleveland
We will not forget that Liberty has here made her home; nor shall her chosen altar be neglected.
At the dedication, nobody read her poem. Nobody mentioned immigrants.
Only two women were allowed on the island. So suffragists chartered a boat and spoke among the warships. Liberty was a woman. Most American women couldn't vote.
Downtown, office workers threw ticker tape out the windows: New York's first ticker-tape parade.
In 1886 the statue meant France, America and liberty. The people sailing past her would give her a new meaning.
Last Residence
1865–1898
Key terms: “Old” and “new” immigrants, Push factors, Birds of passage, Pull factors and chain migration, Internal migration
Before anyone became American, they had to leave somewhere.
From 1865 to 1898, more than twelve million immigrants arrived. They followed the jobs. Arrivals sank after the panics of 1873 and 1893.
Through the 1880s, most came from Germany, Ireland, Britain and Scandinavia. By 1896, most came from southern and eastern Europe: Italy, Austria-Hungary, the Russian Empire.
In southern Italy, farmers had too little land and too many taxes. Young men sailed for work, and as many as half went home.
In the Russian Empire, pogroms in 1881 and the May Laws of 1882 pushed Jews from villages and trades. In 1891, Moscow expelled thousands of Jewish families.
The pull came by mail: letters about jobs, and tickets paid for by relatives already here. Steamships cut the crossing to a week or two.
Steerage, the cheapest class, cost about twenty-five dollars from Naples.
Americans moved too. Farm children left for city jobs. Black Southerners, pushed by debt and terror, moved to Atlanta and Birmingham. Some went north.
Chicago grew from three hundred thousand people in 1870 to over a million in 1890. Four in ten had been born abroad.
Industry got the workers it wanted: Slovaks and Hungarians in Pennsylvania steel, Poles in Chicago’s packinghouses. French Canadians in New England mills. Italians on railroad crews. The industrial workforce grew bigger, and far more mixed.
Whether a Polygamist
1882–1893
Key terms: Public charge, Ellis Island, Ship's manifest, Castle Garden, Foran Act (Alien Contract Labor Law), 1885
In August 1882, Congress passed its first general immigration law. Fifty cents a head. And no entry for anyone likely to become a 'public charge.'
In 1890, Washington took over New York's immigration station. On January 1, 1892, a new one opened on Ellis Island.
The first immigrant registered was Annie Moore, seventeen, from Cork. The commissioner gave her a ten-dollar gold piece.
From 1893, every ship had to ask every immigrant the same questions. Name. Age. Calling. Able to read or write. Who paid the passage. Whether in possession of money.
Whether a polygamist.
Doctors from the Marine Hospital Service looked each arrival over. Most were through in a few hours. About one in a hundred, or fewer, went back.
The legend says Ellis Island clerks changed people's names. They didn't. Ship's clerks wrote the names at the port of departure. Inspectors only checked them.
Rose Cohen
…we stood scanning the faces of a group of Americans divided from us by iron gates.
Rose Cohen was twelve. She remembered landing at Castle Garden, which had closed two years before. Memory is evidence, and it can slip.
Workers wanted rules too. In 1885, backed by the Knights of Labor, Congress banned imported contract labor.
In 1891, Congress added contagious diseases and polygamists to the list. For Europeans, the gate stayed open.
Final Destination
1879–1894
Key terms: Dumbbell tenement, Ethnic neighborhood (enclave), Mutual-aid society, Ward boss, Assimilation
Most newcomers stayed in the cities, where the ships docked and the jobs were. In 1890, four in ten New Yorkers had been born in another country.
Landlords cut old houses into rooms and built new tenements behind the old ones. An 1879 law said every room needed a window. Builders answered with the dumbbell: a window onto an air shaft only a few feet wide.
Every group built a neighborhood of its own: Chinatown, Polish Downtown, Little Italy, the Jewish Lower East Side. In Tampa’s cigar factories, the rollers paid a reader to read them newspapers and novels as they worked.
They started newspapers, churches, synagogues and theaters. Hometown societies paid for a doctor, a loan or a funeral.
In the winter of 1893, ten people shared three small rooms on Cherry Street. The oldest daughter, Rahel, was thirteen. Years later, as Rose Cohen, she wrote it all down.
It’s Friday, near sundown. Four things in this room tell how the family got here, and what it cost.
Leaving, working, crowding in, arguing over a beard and a kerchief. Almost every immigrant family had that argument. Most settled somewhere in between.
Her first summer here, before her mother came, Rose climbed to a tenement roof and looked up.
Rose Cohen
The sky is the same everywhere. There is only one.