1. Chapter 15: Urban America
Section 1

2. Objectives
1. Analyze the circumstances surrounding the great wave of immigration after the Civil War.
2. Evaluate how nativism affected immigration policies.

3. Did You Know?
It is estimated that the ancestors of almost one-half of all the people living in the United States today passed through Ellis Island as immigrants. Today Ellis Island is open to the public. It contains the Ellis Island Immigration Museum.

4. I. Europeans Flood Into the United States
''The flood of immigrants into the United States in the late 1800s and labor wars that racked the nation for decades mobilized a national movement to restrict immigration. In this 1891 political cartoon, a judge scolds Uncle Sam that "If Immigration was properly Restricted you would no longer be troubled with Anarchy, Socialism, the Mafia and such kindred evils!" After he resigned from the Supreme Court in 1880, Justice William Strong became president of the National Association to Secure the Religious Amendment of the Constitution, which sought to restrict the influx of Catholic and Jewish immigrants and to declare the United States a “Christian nation.”

5. I. Europeans Flood Into the United States
By the late 1800s, most European states made it easy to move to America. By the 1890s, eastern and southern Europeans made up more than half of all immigrants. Of the 14 million immigrants who arrived between 1860 and 1900, many were European Jews. America offered immigrants employment, few immigration restrictions, avoidance of military service, religious freedom, and the chance to move up the social ladder.
Most immigrants took the difficult trip to America in steerage, the least expensive accommodations on a steamship. The 14-day trip usually ended at Ellis Island, a small island in New York Harbor. It served as a processing center for most immigrants arriving on the East coast after 1892.

6. Ellis Island
Great Hall at Ellis Island

7. I. Europeans Flood Into the United States
Most immigrants passed through Ellis Island in a day. However, some faced the possibility of being separated from family and possibly sent back to Europe due to health problems.
Most immigrants settled in cities. They lived in neighborhoods that were separated into ethnic groups. Here they duplicated many of the comforts of their homelands, including language and religion.
Immigrants who learned English, adapted to American culture, had marketable skills or money, or if they settled among members of their own ethnic group tended to adjust well to living in the United States.

8. Discussion Question
What helped immigrants adjust to living in the United States?
Immigrants tended to adjust well to living in the United States if they quickly learned English and adapted to the American culture. Skilled immigrants, those who had money, or those who lived among their own ethnic group also tended to adjust more successfully.

9. II. Asian Immigration to America
Severe unemployment, poverty, and famine in China; the discovery of gold in California; the Taiping Rebellion in China; and the demand for railroad workers in the United States led to an increase in Chinese immigration to the United States in the mid- 1800s.
B. In Western cities, Chinese immigrants worked as laborers, servants, skilled tradesmen, and merchants. Some opened their own laundries.

10. II. Asian Immigration to America
Between 1900 and 1919, Japanese immigration to the United States drastically increased as Japan began to build an industrial economy and an empire.
In 1910 a barracks was opened on Angel Island in California. Here, Asian immigrants, mostly young men and boys, waited sometimes for months for the results of immigration hearings.

11. Angel Island
Angel Island, 1916

12. Discussion Question
What caused the increase in Japanese immigrants between and 1910?
Japanese immigration to the United States increased because Japan started to build an industrial economy and an empire. The economy of Japan was disrupted and caused hardship for the Japanese people.

13. III. The Resurgence of Nativism
The increase in immigration led to nativism, an extreme dislike for foreigners by native-born people and the desire to limit immigration. Earlier, in the 1840s and 1850s, nativism was directed towards the Irish. In the early 1900s, it was the Asian, Jews, and eastern Europeans that were the focus of nativism.
Nativism led to the forming of two anti-immigrant groups. The American Protective Association had 500,000 members by The party’s founder, Henry Bowers, disliked Catholics and foreigners. He wanted to stop immigration. In the 1870s, Denis Kearny, an Irish immigrant, organized the Workingman’s Party of California. This group wanted to stop Chinese immigration. Racial violence resulted.

14. Workingman’s Party of California
Denis Kearny
Henry Bowers
The famous slogan "The Chinese must go!" of the Workingman's Party along with aims against Chinese immigrant labor for the Central Pacific Railroad found support among white people in America. This eventually led to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882; the era's most racist legislation.

15. III. The Resurgence of Nativism
In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act that barred Chinese immigration for 10 years and prevented the Chinese already in America from becoming citizens. This act was renewed by Congress in 1892, made permanent in 1902, and not repealed until 1943.

16. Discussion Question
Why did nativists oppose eastern European immigrants? Nativists thought the large influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland would give the Catholic Church too much power in the American government. Labor unions feared that immigrants would work for lower wages and take work as strikebreakers.