1. Describe immigration during the Gilded Age
Describe immigration during the Gilded Age? How does it compare to the previous time period?
49 year time period – go from about 7 million immigrants to about 27 million immmigrants
Those additional people were the workers taken advantage of – bc of those immigrants gilded age leaders were able to thrive (lots of labor/cheap/high supply low pay)

2. A Ride Across the Ocean and then…
NYC
First lower Manhattan
Then Ellis Island – 75% processed here!
Medical examination
Questioning/Paperwork
Not a criminal; able to work; some money
San Francisco
Angel Island
Much harsher
Longer
Dirtier
$25 after 1909 Roughly 20 percent of immigrants passing through Ellis Island were set aside for further inspection, while the rest passed through Ellis Island without incident. Overall, only about 2 percent of immigrants were excluded from entering the country and sent back to Europe. Part of the reason for such a low figure was that steamship companies had an economic incentive not to bring immigrants who might run afoul of immigration laws, since the companies were forced to pay the costs of returning these rejected migrants back to Europe. In 1905 alone, it was estimated that steamship companies at Bremen had refused to sell tickets to some 8,000 potential Americans.
Ellis Island commissioner William Williams. Immigrants from southern and eastern Europe, Williams wrote in one of his annual reports, “have very low standards of living, possess filthy habits, and are of an ignorance which passes belief. Types of the classes referred to representing various alien races and nationalities may be observed in some of the tenement districts of Elizabeth, Orchard, Rivington, and East Houston Streets.”[

3. Where do immigrants go??? 2/3 immigrants went to major cities
NYC, Boston, Chicago or Philadelphia
lived in ethnic communities
Why?
Turn into “hyphenated Americans”
Is this still the case today??? All except farm laborers although some did come to major cities because of housing boom (suburbs)
Immigrant versus emigrant / push versus pull factors

4. Is immigration that simple?
Read through your document packets and answer the corresponding questions.
Doc 1
Doc 2
Doc 3
Doc 4
Doc 5
Putting it together
If we were talking about immigration today, would we just say how many and were they went? Who were they? How were they treated?

5. Doc 1

6. Document 2
five cents a day
$1/month

7. Living Conditions Most urban immigrants lived in tenements
low rent apartments built in the poorest parts of town called slums
Poorly built
Lacked ventilation, running water, toilets
Also served as workplace for some
Cigar makers, seamstresses, et cetera
Many urban poor developed lung disease or tuberculosis; About 60% of immigrant babies died before their first birthday

8. Dumbbell tenements

9. Other Conditions: Infectious Diseases Sanitation Water Fire
60% of immigrant babies died before their first birthday
Typhoid Mary, an Irish immigrant of course
Sanitation
Water
Cholera, Typhoid
Fire
Limited water, wood, candles, overcrowding
Chicago Fire 1871

10. Document 3
“A house to house visit to Mulberry street [the city’s burgeoning Little Italy], in New York, will satisfy any one that there are thousands of people in this country who should never have been allowed to land here Many of the Russian Jews who inhabit other streets in New York, and other cities, are of no better class than the Italians just referred to.”
The Chicago Post wrote, "The Irish fill our prisons, our poor houses...Scratch a convict or a pauper, and the chances are that you tickle the skin of an Irish Catholic. Putting them on a boat and sending them home would end crime in this country.”
Similar feelings today??? First line sound like anyone?? Trump is this fair???
Trump

11. Document 4

12. Document 5

13. Five Points NYC L4

14. How will the conditions of cities impact attitudes towards new immigrants?

15. “Destroying” America Spread disease Increase in crime
Less intelligent America
Changing American culture
Lowering our wages (how?)
Taking over government (why?)
Asian immigrants viewed even more negatively** why?
Nativism – Native born superior
Xenophobia – fear of foreigners
Spread disease bc dirty & bringing their diseases over here increase crime bc not moral / bad people making unintelligent bc lazy & inferior change our culture bc not assimilating staying in communities
Lowering wages bc work for anything take over government bc vote once citizens Asians most different religiously and appearance wise (highest incomes today)

16. Social Darwinism Social Darwinism – survival of the fittest
This means what …?
Immigrants to blame for their position in life

17. Anti-Immigration Groups/Legislation
Anti-Catholic groups
Literacy tests*** (vetoed)
Chinese Exclusionary Act, !
Students, teachers, vacationers, gov.
Gentlemen’s Agreement (Japanese), 1907
End SF segregation, limit unskilled immigrants
Americanization movement
Discrimination in hiring, social clubs, housing, et cetera
**only want British, German, Scandinavian “stock”**
Still an issue today??? What parts?? Language? Religion with some? Retaining culture/mcdonald’s ad in spanish /

19. Why is it ironic that native born had such distain for new immigrants?
How did immigrants make the Gilded Age possible? How did they make it “gilded”?

20. Housing