Section 5.1

Immigration

“Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

What motivated them to come?

• “Observe immigrants, you are struck by the fact that from ten to twenty percent are hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously low mentality…they clearly belong in skins, in wattled huts at the close of the Ice Age.”

• Professor Edward A. Ross sociologist

Which description best represents the true picture of immigration into America

at the turn of the century?

Both

ObjectivesAt the end of this lesson you should

be able to:

• Describe the change in immigration after 1890 (demography, culture, religion)

• Define assimilation and describe problems associated with it for immigrants

• List social problems faced by city dwellers

What is your ethnicity?• When did your ancestors

(grandparents, great-grandparents) come to America? What year (about)? Where did they live? Occupation? What made them come here?

Describe how immigration changed after 1890.

• 1880 US population was 50 million• Immigration always part of America’s growth• Greatly increased 1880-1920

– 25 million• Demographic shift

– Northern and Western Europe (Great Britain, Ireland, Germany) before 1890• Protestant

– 1890-1920• Southern and Eastern Europe• Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia• New Faiths (Catholic, Jewish)• Poor and uneducated

What problems did they encounter?• Assimilation

– Polish immigrant quote pg. 154

• Eugenics– The Passing of the Great Race

(1916)• “lesser breeds” will

“mongrelize” America• Nativism/Xenophobia

– Henry Bowers• Protective Association• Immigration Restriction

League• Literacy Tests

Who wants the flow of immigration to continue?

• Factory Owners

• Why?

• Cheap Labor

How did people in art

react to these new

problems?

George Bellows

Alfred Stieglitz

What about today? How open should our borders be?