Name _____________________________ Class _________________ Date __________________
Immigrants and Urban Life
Section 1
MAIN IDEAS
1. U.S. immigration patterns changed during the late 1800s as new immigrants
arrived from Europe, Asia, and Mexico.
2. Immigrants worked hard to adjust to life in the United States.
3. Some Americans opposed immigration and worked to restrict it.
Key Terms and People
old immigrants people who arrived from northern Europe in the mid-1800s
new immigrants people who arrived from southern and eastern Europe in the late
1800s
steerage an area below a ship’s deck where immigrants often traveled
benevolent societies organizations that offered help to immigrant families
tenements poorly built, overcrowded apartment buildings
sweatshops workplaces in small shops with poor working conditions and low pay
Chinese Exclusion Act law banning immigration by Chinese people for ten years
Academic Vocabulary
advocate to plead in favor of
Section Summary
CHANGING PATTERNS OF IMMIGRATION
During the mid-1800s, millions of immigrants came
to the United States from northern Europe. Many of
these old immigrants were skilled workers or
farmers. Most were Protestants. Later, many new
immigrants came from different places, including
southern and eastern Europe. These immigrants
came from many different cultures and religions.
Immigrants usually faced a difficult journey by
ship to America, often travelling in steerage. Then
they faced the challenge of actually getting into the
United States. Many European immigrants entered
at Ellis Island in New York Harbor. On the West
Coast, many Chinese immigrants entered the United
States through Angel Island near San Francisco. In
Where did most of the new
immigrants come from?
_______________________
_______________________
Underline two major points
of entry for immigrants to
the United States in the late
1800s.
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Section 1, continued
the Southwest, Mexican immigrants came to the
United States through El Paso, Texas.
ADJUSTING TO A NEW LIFE
After entering the United States, immigrants had to
adjust to life in a different country. They had to
learn new customs and a new language. Many of
them moved into neighborhoods with other people
from the same country. Immigrant neighborhoods
often had schools, clubs, newspapers, shops, and
banks. These helped people start their new lives.
Benevolent societies helped families in case of
sickness, unemployment, or death.
Many new immigrants came from rural areas.
They lacked the skills to work in modern
manufacturing or industrial work. As a result, many
of them had to take low-paying unskilled
manufacturing jobs in large factories and
sweatshops. Their low-paying jobs often forced
them to live in tenements.
OPPOSITION TO IMMIGRATION
Some Americans welcomed new immigrants.
Others feared that immigrants would take away jobs
from native-born Americans. Nativists believed that
too many immigrants were being allowed into the
country. This led to a growth in anti-immigrant
feelings in the late 1800s.
Some people advocated laws to limit
immigration. Congress passed the Chinese
Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from
China for ten years. A later law restricted convicts,
people who had certain diseases, and those likely to
need public assistance. Immigrants continued to
arrive in large numbers.
Why did many immigrants
have to take low paying
jobs in sweatshops?
_______________________
_______________________
What was the purpose of
the Chinese Exclusion Act?
_______________________
_______________________
CHALLENGE ACTIVITY
Critical Thinking: Write to Influence Write a
letter to the editor of a newspaper in the late 1880s.
Explain your opinion about limiting the number of
immigrants to the United States.
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Section 1, continued
benevolent societies
old immigrants
Chinese Exclusion Act
tenements
steerage
new immigrants
sweatshops
DIRECTIONS Match the terms in the first column with the correct
definitions from the second column by placing the letter of the correct
definition in the space provided before each term.
_____ 1. Chinese Exclusion Act
a. immigrants from northern Europe
_____ 2. sweatshop
b. an area below a ship’s deck where
steering mechanisms were located
_____ 3. benevolent societies
c. poorly built, overcrowded apartment
buildings
_____ 4. steerage
_____ 5. old immigrants
_____ 6. new immigrants
_____ 7. tenements
d. a law that banned Chinese people from
immigrating to the United States for
10 years
e. workplaces in which employees
endured long hours and hot, unhealthy
working conditions
f. organizations that offered immigrant
families help in cases of sickness,
unemployment, or death
g. immigrants from southern and eastern
Europe
DIRECTIONS Use the seven words or phrases from the word list to
write a summary of what you learned in the section.
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
____________________________________________________________________
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Immigrants and Urban Life
Section 2
MAIN IDEAS
1. Both immigrants and native-born Americans moved to growing urban areas
in record numbers in the late 1800s and early 1900s.
2. New technology and ideas helped cities change and adapt to rapid
population growth.
Key Terms and People
mass transit public transportation designed to move a large number of people
suburbs residential neighborhoods outside of downtown areas
mass culture leisure and cultural activities shared by many people
Joseph Pulitzer publisher of New York World newspaper
William Randolph Hearst publisher of New York Journal newspaper
department stores large retail stores that sell many different types of goods
Frederick Law Olmsted landscape architect who designed Central Park in New
York City
Academic Vocabulary
factor cause
Section Summary
GROWTH OF URBAN AREAS
During the late 1800s many native-born Americans
and immigrants moved to cities. By 1900, about 40
percent of Americans lived in cities. The people
moving into large cities included new immigrants
and rural residents looking for work. Farm
equipment replaced workers in rural areas. African
Americans from the rural South moved to northern
cities. They wanted to escape discrimination and
find better opportunities.
Between 1850 and 1900, Chicago grew from
30,000 people to 1.7 million. Many of the new
residents were immigrants from southern and
eastern Europe. One factor in the growth of
Why did many African
Americans move from
southern farm areas to
northern cities?
_______________________
_______________________
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Section 2, continued
Chicago was its location on new railroad lines.
These rail lines placed Chicago in the center of the
trade in lumber, grain, and meat.
CHANGING CITIES
New technology helped cities grow quickly and
changed the look of American cities. One way to
find space for people to live and work was to build
taller buildings. The steel industry grew in the late
1800s. Steel beams became inexpensive enough to
use in frames of tall buildings. The invention of the
safety elevator made skyscrapers practical.
Skyscrapers made it possible for more people to
work and live in the cities. Mass transit developed,
allowing people to travel in large numbers. Mass
transit let many middle-class residents move to
suburbs.
As the publishing industry grew, mass culture
developed in the United States. Big cities often had
many competing newspapers. The New York World,
published by Joseph Pulitzer and the New York
Journal, published by William Randolph Hearst,
fought for readership in New York City. Huge
department stores changed the way people
shopped for goods in cities.
The demand for public entertainment led to large
fairs and the creation of amusement parks. People
also needed open public space in large cities.
Frederick Law Olmsted became famous for
designing Central Park in New York City, as well as
many state and national parks.
How did the development
of mass transit lead to
growth of suburbs?
_______________________
_______________________
List some examples of
things that are part of
today’s mass culture.
_______________________
_______________________
_______________________
Underline the sentence that
explains why large fairs
and amusement parks were
developed.
CHALLENGE ACTIVITY
Critical Thinking: Analyze During the second half
of the nineteenth century, new inventions made
farming much more efficient. How did these
inventions promote the growth of cities?
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Section 2, continued
DIRECTIONS Write two phrases that describe the term given. Include
details you’ve learned from the chapter.
1. department stores __________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
2. Frederick Law Olmsted _____________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
3. Joseph Pulitzer ____________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
4. mass culture ______________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
5. mass transit _______________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
6. suburbs __________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
7. William Randolph Hearst ___________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
DIRECTIONS Write a sentence using the word factor as a noun
8. _________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
_________________________________________________________________
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Immigrants and Urban Life
Section 3
MAIN IDEAS
1. Crowded urban areas faced a variety of social problems.
2. People worked to improve the quality of life in U.S. cities.
Key Terms and People
Jacob Riis journalist and photographer who exposed the horrible conditions in
New York City tenements
settlement houses neighborhood centers in poor areas that offered education,
recreation, and social activities
Jane Addams founder of Hull House
Hull House Chicago’s most famous settlement house
Florence Kelley Chicago reformer who worked to pass child labor laws
Section Summary
URBAN PROBLEMS
Even with new technology, many cities were not
ready for the population growth of the late 1800s.
There was a shortage of affordable housing which
led to overcrowding and poor living conditions.
Many poor families were squeezed into tiny
tenement apartments. Jacob Riis became famous
for his articles and photographs that exposed the
horrible conditions in the tenements.
The overcrowding caused sanitation problems
and unsafe living conditions. Garbage collection
systems were not efficient, so garbage piled up in
the cities. Indoor plumbing was scarce, and water
supplies became polluted. Fires could spread
rapidly, but fire escapes were often blocked.
These conditions caused the spread of diseasecausing bacteria. There were outbreaks of diseases
such as typhoid, cholera, influenza, and
tuberculosis. As a result, about half of the babies
born died before the age of five. The overcrowded
living conditions and the manufacturing industries
also caused serious air pollution problems.
What did Jacob Riis do to
help change conditions in
tenement apartments?
_______________________
_______________________
Underline the sentences
that describe the sanitation
problems caused by
crowded conditions in
cities.
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Section 3, continued
City governnments worked to reduce these
problems by hiring firefighters and police officers.
New sewage and drinking water purification
systems helped reduce the sanitation problem.
IMPROVING CITY LIFE
Reformers worked to improve living conditions in
the tenements. In 1901, new laws in New York
State required better ventilation and running water
in new buildings. Other states followed New York’s
lead.
Private organizations also helped the urban poor.
Some people developed settlement houses in
neighborhoods to provide education, recreation, and
social activities. These settlement houses had
professionals and volunteers on staff, including
educated women from wealthy families. Some of
these houses are still active today.
Jane Addams founded Hull House in Chicago,
the most famous settlement house. Addams and
Ellen Gates Starr moved into a rundown building
and turned it into Hull House. The staff served the
needs of immigrant families. It provided English
classes, day care, cooking and sewing classes, and
other services.
The Hull House staff also worked for reforms to
improve conditions for poor families. Florence
Kelley visited sweatshops and wrote about the
problems she saw there. She helped convince
lawmakers in Illinois to pass a law limiting work
hours for women and preventing child labor. She
later became the chief factory inspector for the state
and helped enforce the law.
What did cities do to
relieve the health and
safety problems caused by
crowding?
_______________________
_______________________
Were the settlement
houses founded by public
or private organizations?
_______________________
_______________________
CHALLENGE ACTIVITY
Critical Thinking: Analyze As the cities grew
rapidly, crowded conditions created many
problems. Why didn’t the people just move away
from the cities to find better conditions?
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Section 3, continued
settlement houses
Jane Addams
Hull House
Jacob Riis
Florence Kelley
tenements
DIRECTIONS On the line provided before each statement, write T if a
statement is true and F if a statement is false. If the statement is false,
write the correct term on the line after each sentence that makes the
sentence a true statement.
_____ 1. Jacob Riis became famous for exposing the horrible conditions in New
York City tenements.
___________________________________________________________
_____ 2. Settlement houses were neighborhood centers in poor areas that offered
education, recreation, and social activities.
___________________________________________________________
_____ 3. Few to no windows, little to no running water or plumbing, broken or
blocked fire escapes, and unclean water were typical of most settlement
houses.
___________________________________________________________
_____ 4. An important reformer at Hull House who visited factories and wrote
about the problem of child labor was Florence Kelley.
___________________________________________________________
_____ 5. The most famous settlement house, Hull House, was founded by Jacob
Riis and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889.
___________________________________________________________
_____ 6. Jane Addams received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1931 for her work with the
Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom.
___________________________________________________________
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Literature
Immigrants and Urban Life
The Jungle
by Upton Sinclair
ABOUT THE READING The Jungle focused
the nation’s attention on immigrant workers
in the meatpacking industry. Upton Sinclair’s
novel showed bosses forcing human beings
to live and work like jungle animals. He also
described, in shocking detail, how meat was
handled. Sinclair published his book in 1906.
Later that same year, the government passed
the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat
Inspection Act. Many Americans even gave up
eating meat for a while.
As you read note how the details affect your
senses.
There was never the least attention paid to what was
cut up for sausage; there would come back from
Europe old sausage that had been rejected, and that
was mouldy and white—it would be dosed with
borax and glycerine, and dumped into hoppers,
and made over again for home consumption. There
would be meat that had tumbled out on the floor,
in the dirt and sawdust, where the workers had
tramped and spit uncounted billions of consumption germs. There would be meat stored in great
piles in rooms and the water from leaky roofs would
drip over it, and thousands of rats would race about
on it. It was too dark in these storage places to see
well, but a man would run his hand over these piles
of meat and sweep off handfuls of the dried dung
of rats. These rats were nuisances, and the packers
would put poisoned bread out for them and they
would die, and then rats, bread, and meat would go
into the hoppers together . . . There was no place
VOCABULARY
borax white powder used
in manufacturing and
cleaning
glycerine sweet, sticky
liquid
hoppers containers
consumption the process
of eating or consuming
ladled added with a large
spoon
gelatine material obtained
from animal tissues;
gelatin
Consumption has another
meaning in addition to the one
in the Vocabulary box above.
Consumption was once used to
refer to tuberculosis, a highly contagious disease that usually affects
the lungs. Now tuberculosis is
treated with antibiotics, but years
ago it was often fatal.
Source: From The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. New York Doubleday,
Page & Company 1906, pp. 161-162.
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Immigrants and Urban Life
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Literature
The Jungle, continued
for the men to wash their hands before they ate
their dinner, and so they made a practice of washing them in the water that was to be ladled into the
sausage.
There were the butt-ends of smoked meat, and
the scraps of corned beef, and all the odds and ends
of the waste of the plants, that would be dumped
into old barrels in the cellar and left there. Under
the system of rigid economy which the packers
enforced, there were some jobs that it only paid to
do once in a long time, and among these was the
cleaning out of the waste barrels. Every spring they
did it; and in the barrels would be dirt and rust
and old nails and stale water—and cartload after
cartload of it would be taken up and dumped into
the hoppers with fresh meat, and sent out to the
public’s breakfast. Some of it they would make into
“smoked” sausage—but as the smoking took time,
and was therefore expensive, they would call upon
their chemistry department, and preserve it with
borax and color it with gelatine to make it brown.
All of their sausage came out of the same bowl, but
when they came to wrap it they would stamp some
of it “special,” and for this they would charge two
cents more a pound.
List at least three improvements
in working conditions that would
result in safer meat.
The Meat Inspection Act required
the federal government to inspect
all meat that was shipped across
state lines.
ANALYZING LITERATURE
1. Main Idea What details does Sinclair use to support his main idea about unhealthy
working conditions?
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Immigrants and Urban Life
Name
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Date
Literature
The Jungle, continued
ANALYZING LITERATURE, continued
2. Critical Thinking: Analyzing Information The Jungle helped bring about the passage
of food inspection laws. Sinclair commented, “I aimed at the public’s heart and by
accident I hit it in the stomach.” What do you think he meant?
3. Activity Write a speech for President Theodore Roosevelt announcing the Pure
Food and Drug Act, which Congress passed in 1906.
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10
Immigrants and Urban Life