During the 1800s, most
poor immigrants had to
live in awful conditions.
Most lived in the innercity in places called
ghettoes. A ghetto was
a neighborhood where a
particular ethnicity
group lived. For
example, there was an
Italian ghetto, an Irish
ghetto, a Polish ghetto,
Paul Corleone and his family
a Jewish ghetto, and
several other ghettos all in New York City. These neighborhoods were
usually filled with run-down housing that served as living quarters for
the poor immigrants. Below is the story of Paul Corleone, an Italian
immigrant living in New York City in the late 1800s.
My family
and I first
came to the
United
States in
1870,
because all
of our crops
died. We
had no way
of surviving.
Ellis Island
We took what little money we had, and a bought a ticket to come to
America to seek better opportunities there. We sat on the bottom deck
of the ship for two weeks, with almost no sunlight and fresh air. But,
when we arrived in New York City, the ship’s captain allowed all of the
immigrants to come to the top deck to see the Statue of Liberty. The
ship stopped at Ellis Island, a small island across from New York City
where all immigrants are processed. My wife, my two children, and I
stood in line for hours. The clerk at the front asked us where we were
from and where we were going. They gave us a quick medical
examination, and then cleared us to go. We took a short ferry ride to
New York City. How great it felt to step into America for the first time!
My family had to stay in New York, because
we had absolutely no money at all to travel
anywhere else. We eventually found our
way to the Italian ghetto, and managed to
find a place a stay. It wasn’t very nice, but it
was all
we
Check-in at Ellis Island
could
afford. Somebody in my
neighborhood helped me get a job
working in a shoe factory that pays
75¢ a day. It isn’t much, but it keeps
us alive. To be able to afford our
rent, we share our two room
apartment with three other
families. Our apartment is in the
the lines at Ellis Island
middle of the building, so we don’t
have any windows to let in fresh air, and sometimes our apartment
smells like dirty diapers (there are three babies living there). None of
the apartments in our building have bathrooms, so we have to go
outside to use the public toilets. The toilets are overwhelmed with all
the people that are crammed into our apartment building, and often
the sewers overflow with people’s waste (the sewers we built a long
time ago, and weren’t made to hold so many people’s waste), and our
entire neighborhood smells worse than I can describe. Our
neighborhood is also overrun with crime. People constantly break into
businesses and homes to steal. Most of the crooks are only turning to
crime to get enough money to feed their families, but it still hurts
everyone else. New York City doesn’t have nearly enough police, and
the poor neighborhoods suffer the most, because the police rarely
come by to protect us. I usually work about 14 hours a day, and only get
to spend time with my family on Sundays, my one day off. My life in
America isn’t as great as I dreamed it would be, but at least we’re all
still alive.
a New York City ghetto