The Promised Land, 1860-1900
. . . "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!"
Those words from the poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus
have become famous as the inscription on the Statue of Liberty,
which has welcomed countless people to the United States.
Throughout the last half of the 19th century, immigrants flooded into
New York harbor. From New York, they traveled west by boat
through the Erie Canal to the ports of Milwaukee, Chicago, and
Duluth. Others rode the new transcontinental railroad or traveled in
wagon trains. The train that carried Abraham Lincoln's body west to
his tomb in Illinois also carried new life to the West.
Pushed by Poverty and Prejudice
Immigrants came to the United States to escape hardship and death.
Germans left their country to escape from decades of mandatory
military service. Jews from Russia and throughout eastern Europe
fled pogroms and discrimination. Agricultural failures in the 1860s left
many Swedes hungry for new land and new opportunities. The Irish,
too, fled famine and persecution.
Borrowing from family and friends, immigrants scraped up enough
money for passage in the lower decks of a ship. Many left families
behind, and they promised to send money or to bring their loved
ones to America later.
Pulled by Promises
The promise of jobs drew many immigrants to U.S. cities. Once
there, they found themselves in crowded tenements and working
from sunup to sundown in clattering factories. Husbands, wives, and
children all worked and saved every spare penny. They saved to
send money home to those they left behind. They saved to start
businesses of their own. They saved to send a son through school
for an education that would mean more opportunities. They saved to
send for family members left behind in the old country.
The Homestead Act of 1862 promised land to those who would work
for it. Family farms in Europe had been divided among heirs for
generations. The farms were now too small to support families, and
the promise of new land was a powerful incentive to immigrate.
Race, Racism, and Immigration
Immigrants faced discrimination in the United States. Signs
advertising jobs said "No Irish Need Apply." Jews, Italians, Germans,
Swedes, and Norwegians all faced prejudice. In 1914, social scientist
Edward Alsworth Ross showed those prejudices in his description of
immigrants as "hirsute, low-browed, big-faced persons of obviously
low mentality."
Chinese immigrants faced particularly vicious prejudice. By law, only
white immigrants could become citizens. Therefore, Chinese
immigrants could not gain citizenship, vote, hold political office, own
land, or file mining claims. In California, laws kept Chinese-American
children out of public schools. In 1882, Congress passed the Chinese
Exclusion Act. The law forbade Chinese laborers from entering the
United States. In addition, Chinese laborers were forbidden to bring
their wives to join them in the United States. The Chinese Exclusion
Law remained in effect until 1943.
Still the Promised Land
Despite prejudice and problems, immigrants still found in the United
States a promised land of opportunity. Those sailing into New York
were awed by the Statue of Liberty. One Polish immigrant reported
being "overcome" by "the bigness of Mrs. Liberty." "No one spoke a
word," he said, "for she was like a goddess and we knew she
represented the big, powerful country which was to be our future
home
"The Promised Land, 1860-1900 (Overview)." American History. ABC-CLIO,
2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.
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Shame of the Cities, 1860-1900
As millions of new immigrants flooded into the United States, many
settled in already-crowded cities. Housing was desperately scarce.
When people found jobs, they paid little. Factory work was sun-up to
sun-down. Those who could not find factory jobs worked wherever
they could—blacking boots, selling vegetables on the street, picking
rags. Those who could not find any work begged or stole or starved.
The Tenement
The poor lived in tenements, many created from older mansions.
Landlords now divided the buildings into ever-smaller apartments
and rooms. Entire families shared one or two rooms. Many rooms
lacked windows or ventilation of any sort. Jacob Riis vividly described
the typical New York tenement: It is generally a brick building from
four to six stories high on the street, frequently with a store on the
first floor which, when used for the sale of liquor, has a side opening
for the benefit of the inmates and to evade the Sunday law; four
families occupy each floor, and a set of rooms consists of one or two
dark closets, used as bedrooms, with a living room twelve feet by
ten. The staircase is too often a dark well in the center of the house,
and no direct through ventilation is possible, each family being
separated from the other by partitions. Frequently the rear of the lot
is occupied by another building of three stories high with two families
on a floor.
Sanitation
A single privy behind a tenement might serve several families. Sewer
systems were neglected, overloaded, or ignored. Crude, open
garbage bins in front of each building added to the stench of the
streets.
Besides people, the cities were home to herds of animals. Horses, of
course, were used for transportation and had to be stabled
somewhere. People kept chickens and pigs to eat and cows for milk.
In 1867, a New York law finally ordered pig-owners to keep their
animals from running loose in the streets.
In 1867, New York passed a law requiring that all rooms have
ventilation. Saws came out, and holes were cut for windows,
connecting room to room. Newer buildings were constructed around
air shafts so that windows opened onto a small, blank space in the
center of the building.
Home Work
Many new immigrants worked at home rather than in factories. They
did "piece work," for which they were paid by the piece rather than by
the hour. A woman might take home pants to sew and be paid seven
cents for each pair she finished. Working at home, she soon enlisted
the help of every other person in the household, including children.
Because the piece work rate was low, every person's work was
needed to earn enough to pay the rent.
Growing Rich(er)
The owners of tenements and the employers of piece workers
profited from the rents paid and the work done by the immigrant poor.
As the 19th century drew to a close, the division between poor and
rich was sharp. Only 44 families earned more than $1 million in a
year. Most workers earned $500 per year, or even less.
"Shame of the Cities, 1860-1900 (Overview)." American History.
ABC-CLIO, 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.
Machine Politics and Bossism, 1860-1900
The Society of St. Tammany was founded in 1788, the same year
George Washington was first elected president. "St. Tammany" was
not a saint, but a famous Delaware Indian chief. The white men who
joined the society called themselves "braves" and called their
meeting place a "wigwam." The Society of St. Tammany had nothing
to do with saints or Indians; from the beginning, its focus was politics.
Soon called Tammany Hall, this political club quickly became a New
York institution. Most of its members were Irish Americans who were
excluded from the city's older and more traditional clubs because of
their Irish and working-class backgrounds. Tammany Hall became
their club and slowly took over their political party, New York's
Democratic Party.
How the Machine Works
George Washington Plunkitt was a New York State senator and a
Tammany chief. Politics made him both wealthy and powerful.
Plunkitt described how he kept people voting for him and supporting
him:
What tells in holdin' your grip on your district is to go right down
among the poor families and help them in the different ways they
need help. I've got a regular system for this. If there's a fire in Ninth,
Tenth, or Eleventh Avenue, for example, any hour of the day or night,
I'm usually there with some of my election district captains as soon
as the fire engines. If a family is burned out I don't ask whether they
are Republicans or Democrats, and I don't refer them to the Charity
Organization Society, which would investigate their case in a month
or two and decide they were worthy of help about the time they are
dead from starvation. I just get quarters for them, buy clothes for
them if their clothes were burned up, and fix them up till they get
things runnin' again. It's philanthropy, but it's politics, too—mighty
good politics. Who can tell how many votes one of these fires bring
me? The poor are the most grateful people in the world, and, let me
tell you, they have more friends in their neighborhoods than the rich
have in theirs.
Graft
Plunkitt acknowledged that the money to keep his political machine
going came from graft and that graft made him personally wealthy.
But, he insisted, his money came from "honest" graft, not from
"dishonest" graft. Dishonest graft, according to Plunkitt, was
"blackmailin' gamblers, saloon-keepers, disorderly people, etc."
Honest graft, on the other hand, meant using your political
connections to find out about where the city was going to build a new
bridge or a new park, then buying up the land, and reselling the land
to the city at a big profit. "Ain't it perfectly honest to charge a good
price and make a profit on my investment and foresight?" asked
Plunkitt. "Of course, it is. Well, that's honest graft."
According to Plunkitt, and according to Tammany, honest graft was
part of political life. Who could oppose it?
Forty Thieves
In 1871, the New York Times took issue with Tammany's "honest"
graft. "Gigantic Frauds of the Ring Exposed" announced the July 22
headline. The story described a group that came to be called the
"forty thieves," who made money from contracts for the city's new
courthouse. Of course, the thieves came from Tammany.
At that time, the average worker made $1 a day. Contractors building
the courthouse charged the city $400,000 for safes, $175,000 for
carpets, and $7,500 for thermometers. The total cost for the
courthouse exceeded $13 million. The head of Tammany Hall,
William Marcy Tweed, and several of his henchmen were tried,
convicted, and jailed in the scandal.
Tammany Continues
The trial of one man, or even of several men, could not stop the
Tammany political machine. John Kelly had served as sheriff and
earned the nickname "Honest John," though the wealth he
accumulated probably meant that the nickname was undeserved. In
1868, unsatisfied with Tweed's leadership, Kelly had run against
Tweed's candidate for mayor as a "reform" candidate. He lost the
election but became head of the Tammany organization after Tweed
went to jail. While Kelly threw out many Tweed associates, he also
ran Tammany Hall as a political machine. After his death in 1886,
Tammany was headed by George Croker. The machine continued to
run New York City for most of a century.
Tammany Hall was the best-known political machine in the United
States, but hardly the only one. Other large cities had their own
political machines, and many of these machines continued to hold
power throughout 19th century and well into the 20th century. Later
political bosses, following the example of Tweed, included Richard J.
Daley in Chicago, James Michael Curley in Boston, and Thomas
Prendergast in Kansas City, Missouri.
Tammany Hall could help or hurt. A machine political worker might
find a poor family or a new immigrant a place to live, which would
earn their gratitude. The machine might also take a kickback from the
landlord for bringing renters. If a landlord was uncooperative or
insufficiently grateful, the political worker might show up with a city
building inspector at his side; the inspector would be sure to find
costly violations. Through its vast network of political workers, the
machine had its hand in every aspect of city life. The official
government of the cities, overwhelmed by the rapid growth of the
population, could not compete with the machines in supplying
services to the needy.
"Machine Politics and Bossism, 1860-1900 (Overview)."
American History. ABC-CLIO, 2012. Web. 27 Sept. 2012.
THE GILDED AGE
CHAPTERS 3 AND 4
Ellis Island
Vertical Integration
Angel Island
Horizontal Integration
melting pot
Laissez-Faire
nativism
Trust
Chinese Exclusion Act
Monopoly
Gentlemen’s Agreement
Labor Union
urbanization
Party Boss
Americanization Movement
Philanthropy
tenements
Poll Tax
mass transit
Segregation
political machine
Industrialist
graft
civil service
Booker T. Washington
W.E.B. Du Bois
Jim Crow laws
Plessy v. Ferguson
Life in American Cities
1850-1900
Newly arrived immigrants wait in line to be processed at Ellis Island. Processing could take 5 hours or more; 20 percent of
immigrants waited a day or more to be inspected by a doctor. [National Park Service] 1. Problems caused by the building of railroads and how it affected different groups. 2. The relationship between the government and big business: laissez‐faire, corruption 3. How does a “political machine” work? 4. Explain Populism and how the movement hoped to help its members. 5. Explain the Gold Standard. 6. Reasons for the founding of labor unions and what they wanted to get for their members. 7. Impact of new technology on farming and industry 8. How were the immigrants of the late 1800’s different from immigrants in early U.S. History? 9. What were some of the hardships faced by early immigrants? 10. Why did immigrants continue to come to the United States despite these hardships? 11. Describe the problems faced by cities in the late 1800’s 12. How did the Plessy v. Ferguson case impact the early 1900’s? 13. Compare and Contrast Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois.