Introduction to Immigration from 1870–1905

Over fourteen million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1870 and 1905. In the 1870s and early 1880s, the majority of European immigrants to the United States came from Ireland, Britain, and Germany. By 1890, New York City alone had a German population equal to that of Hamburg, Germany. The demographics of immigration then underwent a dramatic shift. By 1900, most who arrived in the United States emigrated from southern and eastern Europe.

The first residence of many European immigrants was New York City, especially in the Five Points district and surrounding areas. The busy neighborhoods garnered an exaggerated reputation for violence and vice, partially stemming from prejudiced ethnic stereotypes and negative public opinion about some immigrant groups. The tenements were at once an arena for hope and despair, abuse and opportunity, poverty and possibility; they were both flourishing and crumbling. The population of these neighborhoods changed with the tide of immigration. Blocks once populated by recent immigrants from Ireland or Germany became Italian, Russian, and Jewish ethnic enclaves. Several articles in this chapter chronicle the stories of these nineteenth-century immigrant neighborhoods and their inhabitants. "Italian Life in New York," "From Russia to the Lower East Side in the 1890s," and the "The English Lesson" convey immigrant and outside perceptions of these communities. "The Mixed Crowd," is an excerpt from social reformer Jacob Riis's influential How the Other Half Lives, the work of essays and photographs that stirred public outcry against the squalor, abuses, and poverty of tenements. In response, the city razed the notorious slums.

Immigration was not limited to the East coast, nor were all immigrants Europeans. Included in this chapter is also a look at non-Western immigration. While railroad and mining companies relied on inexpensive Chinese labor, Chinese immigrant populations on the West coast faced increasing discrimination. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, included in this chapter, severely restricted immigration, curtailing the ability for Chinese to immigrate with their families and excluding those permitted entry from becoming citizens. "Is it Right for a Chinaman to Jeopard a White Man's Dinner?" illustrates the racist and economically motivated underpinnings of anti-Chinese laws.

Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty, two U.S. landmarks associated with immigration, were constructed in this period. Ellis Island attained its greatest fame during the period of mass immigration beginning in 1905 and is thus profiled in the next chapter. While Ellis Island was from its creation a landmark of immigration, the Statue of Liberty was not originally intended for such a role. A poem enshrined on the statue's pedestal best captures—and debatably created—the statue's role as a welcoming beacon for immigrants. In the United States, the words form an indelible part of the national consciousness as a nation of immigrants, "Give me your tired, your poor/Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." The full text of Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus," is the heart of this chapter and this volume.