SECTION 8
IMMIGRATION AND
CITIZENSHIP
“America has been settled by people of all nations.”—Herman Melville
During the United States’ first century
successive waves of immigrants, mostly from northwestern Europe,
arrived in America to seek citizenship
and the American dream:
THE DREAM OF FINDING FREEDOM AND OPPORTUNITY TO BE WHO YOU ARE
AND BECOME WHAT YOU MIGHT BE AS A HUMAN BEING.
Immigration peaked after the Civil War, with 35,000,000 immigrants
coming to America’s shores between 1865 and 1914.
The 1880s witnessed a new wave of immigrants
from southeastern Europe.
Many were welcomed by
the new Statue of Liberty,
symbol of the American dream.
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H
BECOMING A UNITED STATES CITIZEN
“You who have been born in America, I wish I could make you understand what it is like not to be an American—
not to have been an American all your life—and then suddenly with the words of a man in flowing robes to be one,
for that moment and forever after. One moment you belong with your fathers to a million dead yesterdays—
the next you belong with America to a million unborn tomorrows.”—George Magar Mardikian
The United States welcomes as citizens those who fulfill naturalization requirements—including
a five-year residency, good moral character, and a knowledge of United States history and
government— and take the OATH OF ALLEGIANCE to the United States. Constitution.
I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and
abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state
or sovereignty, to whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or
citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the
United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic;
that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by
law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the armed forces of
the United States when required by law; that I will perform work of
national importance under civilian direction when required by law, and
that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or
purpose of evasion; so help me God.
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HÿÿJANE ADDAMS AND THE NEW SOCIAL SERVICES
CHICAGO IN THE 1890s
While Jacob Riis publicized and improved slum conditions in New York City in the
1890s, Jane Addams began to do the same in Chicago.
Lincoln Steffens in Shame of the Cities (1904), described Chicago as a city “first in
violence, deepest in dirt; loud, lawless, unlovely, ill-smelling, new; an overgrown
gawk of a village, the teeming tough among cities.”
In 1890 about one-third of Chicago’s population were immigrants, and most of
them lived in slum conditions. Jane Addams, a fifth generation, college-educated
American chose to settle among them and make their lives better and, above all, show
that someone cared.
JANE ADDAMS FOUNDS A SETTLEMENT HOUSE—HULL HOUSE
Jane Addams (1860-1935) was born in Cedarville, Illinois. After graduating in 1881 from Rockford Female
Seminary, she toured Europe and visited Toynbee Hall, a settlement house in the slums of London. Social settlements, such as Toynbee Hall, started in London in the 1880s as a means of alleviating poverty caused by industrialization and urbanization. They spread to other industrialized countries, including America.
JANE
ADDAMS
1889 Jane Addams, inspired by Toynbee Hall, bought a 30-year-old house
at 800 South Halsted Street in Chicago. Built in better days by a wealthy
businessman named Hull, in 1889 Hull House—as Jane named it—
was in a densely populated neighborhood of tenements and
factories. Nearby were 7 churches and 225 saloons.
Jane and her friend Ellen Gates Star opened Hull House to some
2,000 people a week who enjoyed free lunches and child-care services,
belonged to clubs, danced at parties, and attended classes in nutrition,
sewing, English, art, philosophy, history, music, and other subjects.
The purpose as stated in the Hull House charter: “to provide a center
for a higher civic and social life, to institute and maintain educational
and philanthropic enterprises, and to investigate and improve the
conditions in the industrial districts of Chicago.”
By 1900 Hull House was one of 100 settlement houses in the United States. Among the best known were
Hull House and Henry House Settlement, founded by Lillian Wald in New York City in 1893.
THE SOCIAL GOSPEL MOVEMENT AND THE SALVATION ARMY
Settlement houses were part of a broader movement in urban social services that included religious as well as
secular institutions. Among these were the Salvation Army (founded in London in 1878; in the U.S. by 1880) and
the Social Gospel Movement, both aiming to make Protestant Chrisianity responsive to needs of the urban poor.
Leaders of the Social Gospel Movement, sometimes called Christian socialism, included three men. Walter
Rauschenbusch, pastor of Second German Baptist Church in New York, decided evangelical Christianity did not meet
the needs of the poor in his congregation. In 1892 he formed the non-denominational Brotherhood of the Kingdom,
composed of ministers who sought to “infuse the religious spirit” into social justice activities for the poor. “It is not a
matter of getting individuals into heaven,” he said, “but of transforming the life on earth into the harmony of heaven.”
Washington Gladden, a minister from Columbus, Ohio, expressed the Social Gospel Movement in the title of his book,
Applied Chrisianity. William Bliss ministered among the Knights of Labor and the Socialist party.
The Movement paved the way for 20th century progressivism with its moral tone, but it achieved little social justice.
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