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Examine the websites provided below to determine how the creation of Angel Island affected the lives of new immigrants.

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Examine the sources below. Complete Part VI on your worksheet.

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Working Conditions: A photographic journey

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Working Conditions: A photographic journey

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Examine the photographs in the following file. Think about what working conditions were like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

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Examine the websites provided below to determine how the creation of Ellis Island affected the lives of new immigrants

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Examine the reading and video below and respond to the questions on your worksheet Immigrants

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Read the first hand account of Sadie Frowne. 

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Read the first hand account of Sadie Frowne. 

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A newly arrived immigrant describes working in a sweatshop.

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Read about the story of what historian refer to as the worst industrial tragedy in the history of the United States.

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a fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Factory in New York City. Within 18 minutes, 146 people were dead as a result
of the fire.

This site includes original sources on the fire held at the ILR School's Kheel Center, an archive of historical material on labor and industrial relations.

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Cornell University - ILR School - The Triangle Factory Fire

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a fire broke out at the Triangle Waist Factory in New York City. Within 18 minutes, 146 people were dead as a resultof the fire. This site includes original sources on the fire held at the ILR School's Kheel Center, an archive of historical material on labor and industrial relations.

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*A run-down and often overcrowded apartment house,

**Poor sanitary conditions

***Shared bathrooms with several families, (often only 1 bath per floor)

****Working class immigrants and the poor often subjected to this type of living conditions…

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Examine the article on this site, only read the beginning section on disease and the section on the New Immigrants.

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As American cities industrialized throughout the nineteenth century, infectious diseases emerged as a real threat. The introduction of new immigrants and the growth of large urban areas allowed previously localized diseases to spread quickly and infect larger populations. Towns grew into cities as industrialization sparked urban migration from rural communities in both the United States and Europe. The increased demand for cheap housing by urban migrants led to poorly built homes that inadequately provided for personal hygiene. Immigrant workers in the nineteenth century often lived in cramped tenement housing that regularly lacked basic amenities such as running water, ventilation, and toilets. These conditions were ideal for the spread of bacteria and infectious disease. Without organized sanitation systems, bacteria easily passed from person to person through the water and sewage. As a result, many of America's largest urban areas like New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington DC fell prey to a rash of infectious diseases in the middle and end of the nineteenth century.

"Old" Immigrants (1820-1870)

The nineteenth century was a time of massive population growth for the United States. In 1800, slightly over five million people called America home. By 1900, that number skyrocketed to seventy-five million. A large portion of this extraordinary growth can be attributed to European immigrants. Europeans hit America's shores in two different waves: "old" and "new." "Old" immigrants were those who migrated to the United States between the 1820's and 1870's. It was during this time that many Britons, Germans, and those of Scandinavian descent crossed the Atlantic and landed in America. These immigrants were typically English speaking, literate, Protestant or Jewish-except for the Irish Catholics-and could blend fairly easily into American society. "New" immigrants, however, did not merge into American culture as easily. Instead, they faced a variety of struggles that will be discussed later on in the article.

For "old" Irish immigrants, America was the land of opportunity. Especially in rural communities, Irish immigrants were generally welcomed and easily found work. An 1870's book by an Irish-Catholic priest encouraged Irish immigration by explaining to Irish immigrants the ease of obtaining land and traveling in the United States:

"From Chicago and St. Louis to New York, it now takes less than two days in time and not more than twenty-five dollars in money; and from San Francisco, the trip is made in six or seven days, at a total expense of about one hundred and fifty dollars. The inference is plain that the emigrant of today has many advantages over his predecessor of some years back. But the advantages here alluded to are trifling when compared with the increased facilities of obtaining good and cheap land in every State and Territory of the Union."

German immigrants were similarly encouraged to immigrate to the United States. In his Report on a Journey to the Western States of North America, Prussian lawyer Gottfried Duden detailed the advantages of life in America and described how American life avoided many of the societal and political problems that were present in nineteenth century German society. Duden preached that America was a bastion of cheap and available land, especially in the western states and territories. He encouraged Germans to escape the political chaos and limited economic opportunities of Germany to start a new, freer life on the American prairie.

"New" Immigrants (1870-1920)

The "new" wave of immigrants came to America between the 1870's and the 1920's. These immigrants came in large numbers from southern and eastern European countries such as Italy, Greece, Poland, and Russia as well as Asian nations like China. "New" immigrants were typically poorer and less educated than earlier immigrants. Moreover, these immigrants were very different than the typical American because they were overwhelmingly Catholic or Greek Orthodox, or Jewish, and unfamiliar with democratic government. These cultural differences prevented the "new" wave of immigrants from fully assimilating into American culture. Instead, "new" immigrants often congregated in close-knit communities that consisted only of members of their ethnicity.

The large influx of Catholic immigrants into the United States in the mid to late nineteenth century drastically changed the perception of Catholicism in America. In the early 1800's, the American Catholic population was a small sect of English Catholics who were generally well educated and wealthy. However, following the Irish potato famine of the 1840's and the immigration of Eastern European Catholics later in the century, the American Catholic population became a much more diverse group who came from many different countries and spoke many different languages. In the 1850's, Catholics accounted for only five percent of all Americans, but by 1910 they consisted of seventeen percent of the total population and were the largest religious group in the United States. As Catholics became a large part of the American populace, they also began to face increased discrimination from Nativist and pro-Protestant societies. To combat this discrimination, many American Catholics took refuge in the Catholic Church.

Another group that came to America in large numbers in the late nineteenth century were Jews. Between 1870 and 1920, Jewish migration to America shifted from Central Europe to Eastern Europe. Over two and a half million Eastern European Jews were forced out of their homelands by government persecution and economic hardships. Like other "new" immigrants, this new wave of Jews found homes in large cities and settled in "Jewish" areas of town where they spoke Yiddish and operated Jewish businesses.

The Immigration Act of 1882

Prior to the 1880's, there were very few restrictions on immigration into the United States. Starting in the 1870's, though, the federal government faced increasing pressure from the American people to restrict the flow of immigrants-particularly Chinese laborers entering into California. Americans began to associate many of the societal ills related to urbanization-such as overcrowding, the spread of disease, and lack of jobs-with incoming immigrants. In 1882, the federal government attempted to address those concerns by reforming immigration policy with the Immigration Act of 1882. The Immigration Act of 1882 provided the basis for future federal immigration policy as it detailed what types of "undesirable" people would be blocked from entering the United States. The directive prohibited the entry of "any convict, lunatic, idiot, or any person unable to take care of himself or herself without becoming a public charge." This notion of "becoming a public charge" denied foreigners entry who could not demonstrate the ability to financially support themselves. Those who failed to show this were shipped back to their homelands. The Immigration Act of 1882 did, however, made an exemption for political refugees. This was consistent with the American tradition of acting as a safe haven for those persecuted by other governments.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882

The second piece of immigration legislation that Congress passed in 1882 was the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. This directive banned the immigration of all Chinese peoples into the United States and called for a one-year prison sentence and $500 fine for any person attempting to smuggle Chinese laborers into the country. An 1882 newspaper article from the Wisconsin State Journal outlines much of the racial motivation behind the legislation:

"(Nevada Senator John P. Jones') final conclusion was that the Chinese race is as obnoxious to us and as impossible for us to assimilate with as was the negro race. His race has outlived every other because it is homogeneous, and for that reason alone it has imposed its religion and peculiarities upon its conquerors and still lived. If immigration is not checked now, when it is within manageable limits, it will be too late to check it.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 also had economic motives. As Senator John Franklin Miller explains in another 1882 newspaper article from the San Francisco Bulletin, the presence of Chinese workers in the United States was harmful to the American worker:

"The effect of the presence of this persistent race upon the more impressible American, should be considered. Already, in California, the white farm laborer who is forced into competition with them, adopts their nomadic habits, and has no home in the family he serves, but is a "blanket man" who works in the fields during planting and harvest seasons, and roams the remainder of the year in search of other employment. His shelter is the straw stack and his food is anything that he can get. The great wheat growers, in their immense operations, are thus relieved from employing continuous labor, and the result is large farming to the exclusion of small American homes. In the manufacturing districts the result is hoodlumism, which drives the young of both classes to idleness in the street."

There was, of course, a second side to this argument. In an 1882 article from the Worcester Daily Spy, an explanation is given as to why the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 was a symbol of American hypocrisy and against American interests:

"Suppose that, upon the enactment of the anti-Chinese bill now pending, the Chinese government should close the ports of the empire to American citizens and American commerce... Apparently the Chinese might make as good an argument for the exclusion of our people from their country as we can for their exclusion from ours. Americans in China are aliens in race and religion; they are not homogeneous, as Senator Edmunds would say; they do not assimilate; they do not become the subjects of the empire, and are not even willing to submit to its laws and local authorities."

Despite such objections, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the Immigration Act of 1882 both passed through Congress easily and ushered in a new era of American immigration policy of exclusion. Many powerful organizations supported the passing of these bills. Nativist societies-such as the American Protective Association and the Native American Mutual Protection Association-vehemently opposed the movement of Catholics and Asians into the United States. These organizations contested the immigration of different ethnicities for cultural and economic reasons, but also because of rising health concerns. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, many of Nativist groups viewed immigrants as the cause of America's increasingly dirtier and unhealthier cities.

Urban Disease and New York City

Large waves of immigration in the nineteenth century, made New York City America's largest and most diverse city, but also its most unhealthy, as the large spike in population made it more susceptible to disease. Compared to other large urban areas, such as Boston or Philadelphia, New York's death rate due to disease was considerably higher. It was not until the middle of the century that New Yorkers realized that their poor living conditions might be the cause of the city's poor health. By the 1840's high rates of disease were ascribed to the housing many of New York's poverty-stricken immigrants lived in. Fear spread that while disease was rooted in the polluted living conditions of New York's poorer communities, disease could easily spread to the more well off citizens too. Public health officials realized that the city's soiled streets and polluted sewers were a health risk to all New Yorkers. In the mid-nineteenth century, New York possessed a primitive sewage system. Poorly planned sewers spanned the city, but most citizens' homes did not connect to these pipes. Instead, most New Yorkers relied on outdoor outhouses and privies. These outhouses were usually poorly maintained and covered in filth. Poorer families did not even have the luxury of an outhouse. They simply dug a small trench into the ground outside of their homes. Trenches and outhouses were both unsavory solutions as waste was rarely removed from them and frequently flowed into the streets of the city.

Because of the high levels of unmanaged waste, epidemics of infectious diseases were commonplace in New York. The city battled outbreaks of smallpox, typhoid, malaria, yellow fever, cholera, and tuberculosis. In 1849, a rash of cholera struck the city, killing more than five thousand people.A wave of typhoid in the mid-1860's resulted in a similar amount of deaths. Port cities and transportation hubs, like New York, were especially prone to outbursts of infectious diseases because of the high volume of travelers that passed through the city. Cholera, for instance, was never a problem in New York until the overseas shipment of goods and persons between Asia and New York drastically increased in the mid-nineteenth century.

These epidemics were particularly deadly to children. In 1840, almost two percent of New York's newborns failed to reach their first birthday. Especially in the summer months, infants and children were extremely susceptible to diarrheal diseases. These infections led to severe dehydration and frequently death. Young adults also faced many health risks. Between 1840 and 1870, nearly twenty-five percent of twenty year olds did not make it to the age of thirty. People in their twenties were often the most exposed to infectious diseases because of the long hours and dirty conditions they were expected to work in. The high death rate for children and young adults also had an impact on how nineteenth century parents planned their families. Urban families realized that most likely at least one of their children would not reach the age of five. It was even more unlikely that parents would have most of their children survive their twenties to have children of their own. As a result, many working-class families adopted a sense of fatalism and planned on having large families so that at least some of their children would survive.

This fatalist attitude was largely caused by the fact that Americans realized that they were contracting and dying from infectious diseases at an alarming rate, but weren't entirely sure of why or how. The answers to these questions came later in the nineteenth century with the emergence of germ theory.

The Spread of Germ Theory

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, people sought to better understand and manage infectious diseases. A large part of this process was the widespread acceptance of germ theory. It was evident that poor living conditions-polluted water, overcrowding, spoiled food, etc.-were contributing to the spread of disease, but the science behind this could not be explained. It seemed that the only way to solve New York's health problems was a massive investment in social programs for better housing and sewage systems, but also an expressed emphasis on personal hygiene. By stressing personal hygiene, however, responsibility for sickness was placed on the individual. This caused many people to blame the poor and infected for spreading their diseases.

It was not until the 1870's and 1880's that Americans began to realize that an individual was not entirely to blame for the spread of a disease. As scientists analyzed transmission patterns of infectious diseases, they began to understand how specific pathogens were the causes of specific diseases. At first, many doctors doubted that something as small as a single bacterium could cause such deadly diseases. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, germ theory gained widespread acceptance in the medical community. The work of scientists such as Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch helped convince doctors and the public that the ideas proposed by germ theory were in fact true. Their work focused on testing the spawning of infections from bacteria, proving that specific pathogens were the causes of specific diseases. Convinced of the science behind germ theory, doctors and public health officials began testing water, food, and blood samples for traces of specific diseases. Using this data, government officials scrapped the old plan that emphasized simply ridding cities of waster and introduced a new strategy based on germ theory. Highlighting that diseases were often spread by individual contact, the new public health strategy focused on educating people on how they could prevent the transmission of diseases. These practices included recommendations as simple as frequent hand washing and ensuring that food was fully cooked before serving. The introduction of germ theory shifted the focus of public health and disease prevention away from citywide waste control towards an emphasis on personal contact and the individual spread of disease.

"Typhoid Mary"

The most infamous case of germ theory at work is the story of "Typhoid Mary." Typhoid fever was a common problem in many nineteenth century urban areas. A water and food borne bacteria, the disease spread easily and caused about a ten percent fatality rate. Typhoid typically struck hardest in cities without proper water sanitation systems, such as New York. However, by the end of the nineteenth century, when most American cities had built water treatment facilities, typhoid fever was still an issue and public health officials did not understand why. The answer was that many people remained typhoid carriers, without showing symptoms of the disease. Carriers of the disease showed no signs of illness themselves, but were host to the typhoid bacteria and could spread the disease to others.

Mary Mallon, otherwise known as "Typhoid Mary," is the most famous of these carriers. An Irish immigrant cook living in New York City, Mary was the first recorded carrier of typhoid fever. As a cook, Mary unknowingly spread the disease to many of the wealthy families she worked for across the city. In 1906, Mary began working in a summer rental home for a New York banker. Over the summer typhoid fever struck over half the persons living in the home and the banker became worried that he would not be able to rent out the house again until he found the source of the disease. The banker hired George Soper to investigate the outbreak. Soper determined that none of the food or water was contaminated so it must have been a cook who spread the disease. After tracing Mary's work records all the way back to 1900, Soper realized that Mary not only infected this family, but many others as well. Soper attempted to explain the situation to Mary, but she refused to believe him. In 1907, Soper turned over his findings to the New York City health department. The health department proceeded to apprehend Mary and quarantine her in a hospital. By this point, Mary was extremely untrusting of any health officials and frequently acted aggressively towards them. Tests performed on Mary confirmed the assumption that she was a carrier. For three years Mary was forcibly held in health department custody so that she could not spread the disease any further. Mary was eventually released under the condition that she never cook again. However, she was recaptured shortly thereafter when another outbreak of typhoid was traced to her kitchen. Mary lived in forced isolation for the rest of her life, until her death in 1938.

The story of "Typhoid Mary" has remained popular to this day, not because Mary Mallon was terribly unique as a carrier of typhoid fever, but because her tale epitomizes an entire era. Mallon was the first known healthy carrier of typhoid fever, but definitely not the last. At the beginning of the twentieth century, approximately one hundred New Yorkers became carriers of the disease each year. Also, Mallon was neither the most deadly carrier nor the only carrier to disobey the health department's guidelines. Another carrier, Tony Labella, is attributed with spreading typhoid fever to almost three times as many people as Mary and Alphonse Cotils, a bakery owner and typhoid carrier, crossed the health department and continued to operate his bakery against their will. "Typhoid Mary", though, has found a prominent place in America's history books because her story is the same story of thousands of others in the late nineteenth century. Mallon immigrated across the Atlantic to America's largest city in search of a better life. What she found was a dirty and crowded city that offered work that came with low pay and long hours. Mary's contraction and subsequent spread of typhoid fever is the perfect example of the cramped living quarters, poor working conditions, and poor hygiene that many late nineteenth century immigrants faced.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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Immigrants, Cities, and Disease - US History Scene

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Spreading Diseases As American cities industrialized throughout the nineteenth century, infectious diseases emerged as a real threat. The introduction of new immigrants and the growth of large urban areas allowed previously localized diseases to spread quickly and infect larger populations. Towns grew into cities as industrialization sparked urban migration from rural communities in both the...

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Read the introduction article and the one on Jane Addams to learn how this movement affected immigrant groups.

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by John E. Hansan, Ph.D.
One of the most influential organizations in the history of American social welfare was the "settlement house." The establishment and expansion of social settlements and neighborhood houses in the United States corresponded closely with the Progressive Era, the struggle for woman suffrage, the absorption of millions of new immigrants into American society and the development of professional social work.

Settlements were organized initially to be "friendly and open households," a place where members of the privileged class could live and work as pioneers or "settlers" in poor areas of a city where social and environmental problems were great. Settlements had no set program or method of work. The idea was that university students and others would make a commitment to "reside" in the settlement house in order to "know intimately" their neighbors. The primary goal for many of the early settlement residents was to conduct sociological observation and research. For others it was the opportunity to share their education and/or Christian values as a means of helping the poor and disinherited to overcome their personal handicaps.

What actually happened was that residents of settlements learned as much or more from their neighbors than they taught them. The "settlers" found themselves designing and organizing activities to meet the needs of the residents of the neighborhoods in which they were living. While trying to help and uplift their neighbors - organizing classes, clubs, games and other educational and social activities - settlement house residents and volunteers experienced first hand the powerlessness of the poor, the pervasive abuse of immigrants, the terrible conditions in which men, women and children were required to work in factories and sweatshops, the failure of public officials to enforce laws, the dangers of unsanitary conditions and the debilitating effects of tuberculosis and other diseases. Settlement house residents soon learned that the low standards of living and unsafe working conditions that were the usual lot of poor people in the neighborhoods were most often not the result of choice but of necessity.

When neighborhood conditions and individual or social problems seemed too pressing to be ignored, settlement workers tried to meet them. Their efforts often led to confrontations with local and state officials. At other times, bringing about a change required becoming advocates for a specific cause or acting as spokespersons appealing to a wider public for understanding or support for a proposed civic matter or political measure. From their advocacy, research and sometimes eloquent descriptions of social needs afflicting their neighbors, lasting contributions were made by residents of settlement houses in the areas of education, public health, recreation, labor organizing, housing, local and state politics, woman's rights, crime and delinquency, music and the arts. Settlements soon became renown as the fountainhead for producing highly motivated social reformers, social scientists and public administrators, including such early notables as
Background: The Early Years
The settlement house movement started in England in 1884 when Cannon Samuel A Barnett, Vicar of St. Jude's Parrish, founded Toynbee Hall in East London. The settlement idea, as formulated by Cannon Barnett, was to have university men "settle" into a working-class neighborhood where they would not only help relieve poverty and despair through their good works but also learn something about the real world from living day-to-day with the residents of the slums. According to an early Toynbee Hall report, it was "...an association of persons, with different opinions and different tastes; its unity is that of variety; its methods are spiritual rather than material; it aims at permeation rather than conversion; and its trust is in friends rather than in organization."

Several Americans visited Toynbee Hall and were so influenced by the English experiment they decided to organize similar "settlements" in the United States. Among them:

Stanton A. Coit who founded the first American settlement in 1886 - Neighborhood Guild - on the Lower East Side of New York City (Note: the name was later changed to University Settlement)

Christina Isobel MacColl and her friend Sarah Carson founded Christodora Settlement House in the slums of New York City's Lower East Side

Jane Addams and her college classmate, Ellen Gates Starr, founded Hull House on the West Side of Chicago in 1889

Vida D. Scudder and Jean Fine organized College Settlement in New York City

Robert A. Woods established Andover House in Boston (the name was later changed to South End House.

The settlement idea spread rapidly in the United States. By 1897 there were seventy-four settlements, over a hundred in 1900, and by 1910 there were more than four hundred in operation. Most settlements were located in large cities (40 percent in Boston, Chicago, and New York), but many small cities and rural communities boasted at least one settlement house. In the early years settlements and neighborhood houses were financed entirely by donations; and the residents usually paid for their own room and board.

The American settlement movement diverged from the English model in several ways. More women became leaders in the American movement; and there was a greater interest in social research and reform. But probably the biggest difference was that American settlements were located in overcrowded slum neighborhoods filled with recent immigrants. Working with the inhabitants of these neighborhoods, settlement workers became caught up in searching for ways to ease their neighbor's adjustment and integration into a new society. Settlement house residents often acted as advocates on behalf of immigrants and their neighborhoods; and, in various areas, they organized English classes and immigrant protective associations, established "penny banks" and sponsored festivals and pageants designed to value and preserve the heritage of immigrants.

It is important to note that settlements helped create and foster many new organizations and social welfare programs, some of which continue to the present time. Settlements were action oriented and new programs and services were added as needs were discovered; settlement workers tried to find, not be, the solution for social and environmental deficits affecting their neighbors. In the process, some settlements became engaged in issues such as housing reform, factory safety, labor organizing, protecting children, opening health clinics, legal aid programs, consumer protection, milk pasteurization initiatives and well-baby clinics. Others created parks and playgrounds or emphasized the arts by establishing theaters and classes for the fine arts and music education. A number of settlement leaders and residents conducted research, prepared statistical studies, wrote reports or described their personal experiences in memoirs (e.g., Hull-House Maps and Papers, Robert Woods's City Wilderness, Jane Addams's Twenty Years at Hull-House, and Lillian Wald's House on Henry Street).

Early settlement house residents did not escape the prejudice nor completely overcome the ethnic stereotypes common to their generation and social class; they tried consciously to teach middle-class values, often betraying a paternalistic attitude toward the poor. On the other hand, and this was typical of progressives, most settlements were segregated. Although Hull-House and other settlements helped establish separate institutions for Black neighborhoods, pioneered in studying Black urban communities, and helped organize the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Blacks were not welcome at the major settlements.
The Contributions of "Living" in a Settlement House
A distinctive feature of the early years of the settlement movement was "residency." By design, staff and volunteers lived communally in the same house or building, sharing meals and facilities, working together and spending some or all of their leisure time together. This arrangement fostered an exciting environment in which university-educated and socially motivated men and women enjoyed the opportunity to share their knowledge, life experiences, ideas and plans for the future. Working and living together, even for short periods, the residents of a settlement house bonded around specific projects, collaborated on social issues, formed close friendships and experienced lasting impressions they carried with them for a lifetime.

How to Cite this Article (APA Format): Hansan, J.E. (2011). Settlement houses: An introduction. Social Welfare History Project. Retrieved [date accessed] from https://socialwelfare.library.vcu.edu/settlement-houses/settlement-houses/

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by John E. Hansan, Ph.D. One of the most influential organizations in the history of American social welfare was the "settlement house." The establishment and expansion of social settlements and neighborhood houses in the United States corresponded closely with the Progressive Era, the struggle for woman suffrage, the absorption of millions of new immigrants into American society and the development of professional social work.

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A silent video depicting the journey to Ellis Island

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When the ship landed at Ellis Island in February 1930, an uncle failed to appear with the necessary $500 bond. "We spent the night at Ellis Island, where there were 40 cots in each room but no sheets," says Belarsky in her taped account. "We were fed a bowl of soup and allowed 10 minutes of fresh air. They counted us every time we entered or left a room." After a thorough physical examination and a hearing before a judge, the family was allowed to go.

For years, the oral histories were available only to visitors to the Ellis Island Immigration Museum, where they can still be heard. Each history is unique, says Diana Pardue, chief of the Museum Services Division. "We've all read the story of immigration, but it's a radically different experience when people talk about their family, sing early childhood songs or tell about their adventures on the boat or the train," she adds.
Memories pour out
Although the Ellis Island Oral History Program still seeks participants, the numbers of immigrants who are able to visit the museum's broadcast-quality studio are dwindling. At first many participants profess to remember nothing, Pardue says, but after a few questions, memories pour out. "Once you get them started it's hard to get them to stop," she adds. "Many cry because it's the first time they've ever talked about this part of their life."

In one recording Lawrence Meinwald's voice begins to crack as he remembers his first sight of the Statue of Liberty in 1920 as a young Polish boy. "My father and I dressed and went to the deck. There were people of all denominations, some on their knees making the sign of the cross, Jews in their prayer shawls as we were passing the Statue of Liberty." By the end of the story, Meinwald, who has since died, is sobbing.

On a recent trip to Ellis Island, Terri Hooper, 49, of Port St. Lucie, Fla., was unable to find records of her Irish ancestors but was fascinated by the oral histories of other Emerald Isle immigrants. Single women, she learned listening to accounts, were required to marry or have a man meet them before being released. "A lot of them married right there on Ellis Island," she says. "Can you imagine traveling all that way, your family spending so much money and then you weren't accepted [into the country]? You couldn't just pick up the phone and call someone to say come pick me up at the dock."

Many Americans who passed through Ellis Island retain a warm regard for the place, despite the hardships of the immigrant experience. And that samovar in Isabel Belarsky's apartment? "It's the only treasure we brought with us to America," she says. "And when the time comes, I plan to donate it to the Ellis Island museum."
Elizabeth Pope is a writer in Portland, Maine.

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Ellis Island Immigrants Stories, Memories, Own Words, Oral Histories, ...

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When the ship landed at Ellis Island in February 1930, an uncle failed to appear with the necessary $500 bond. "We spent the night at Ellis Island, where there were 40 cots in each room but no sheets," says Belarsky in her taped account.

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As a historian and researcher who frequently relies on census data for information, nothing frustrates me more than the fact that nearly all of the 1890 Federal Census records were lost. For those who don't know the story, the 1890 census was destroyed in a fire in 1921 in the basement of the Department of Commerce building in Washington, D.C. The source of the fire was never determined, but it resulted in the loss of priceless information on the United States population at a critical moment in our nation's history, when immigration, especially in New York, was reaching unprecedented heights. The one upside of this tragedy was that it provided the catalyst for the creation of our National Archives.

Fortunately for those interested in New York population data and history, there is a workaround! Well before the demise of this documentation, Frank E. Pierce and the 1894 Tenement House Committee (also known as the Gilder Committee after the Committee's chair, Richard Watson Gilder) placed data based upon the information from the 1890 census on a map of Manhattan which they created to illustrate the need for housing reform in New York City. While it made this argument well, it also preserved an otherwise unattainable window into the population patterns of Manhattan at the time of the 1890 census.

Interestingly, the map's origins have nothing to do with census data. In the winter of 1893/94, the East Side Relief Work Committee (ESRWC) hired workers to clean out and whitewash tenement house cellars, alleyways, air shafts, and living rooms. The ESRWC had been formed earlier that year by prominent New York City philanthropists, churches, synagogues and charitable organizations seeking to provide work to those who had lost their jobs during the deep national depression which struck that year. ESRWC formulated a plan and raised funds to get men jobs cleaning the streets of New York. By the end of November, the Committee arranged for the participating charities, unions, churches and settlement houses to distribute "work tickets," entitling each bearer to one hour's work per day sweeping the streets. By late December, the ESRWC had employed "about 150 men in cleaning streets."

One element of the cleanup involved the removal of thousands of barrels of trash as well as decomposing dead animals and spoiled food. ESRWC also generated a report documenting the conditions they found, and succeeded in lobbying the New York State Legislature to authorize the Governor to appoint a Tenement House Committee to do something about them. Jacob Riis served as the unofficial advisor to the Committee, and among his recommendations to the Committee was the creation of a map documenting population density and the nationalities of Manhattan's neighborhoods in Manhattan.

The maps shown above is the result, and one of the most useful records of the largely lost data from the 1890 census. The top map illustrates population density in 1890 with the darkest shading representing the most densely populated areas. The densities on the Lower East Side, including today's East Village, were the greatest anywhere in the city. Perhaps most strikingly, the single densest precinct, which straddles Houston Street from 2nd to Rivington Street, between the numbers 11 and 13 on the map, and which includes parts of today's East Village as well as areas south of Houston Street, is shown with a density of between 900 and 1000 residents per acre.

For those who can't visualize an acre, it's about 43,500 square feet, and there are exactly 640 of them in a square mile; a typical Manhattan block is about 5 acres. Looking at it another way, today New York City with its record high population of 8.55 million has a population density of about 43 people per acre. That makes the population density of this precinct in 1890 more than twenty times as great as New York City's today. Even when compared to today's East Village and Lower East Side with approximately one hundred fifty people per acre, which is considerably denser than New York City as a whole, that precinct was still about six and a half times as densely populated (and that density increased considerably for the next two or more decades before finally declining due to slum clearance, urban renewal, street widenings, and construction of the subways and the Williamsburg and Manhattan bridges, which both allowed overcrowded Lower East Side residents to move farther out to less crowded areas and resulted, with their construction, in the demolition of scores of buildings to accommodate their approaches, foundations, and towers).

The lower map is no less fascinating. It illustrates ethnic makeup of different areas in Manhattan. As you can see, in 1890, Germans and Irish still dominate, with "Natives" (meaning native-born Americans) close behind. You can however see a signficiant concentration of "Negroes" still to be found in what is today the South Village, in what was then known as "Little Africa." By the 1920s that community would disappear, and the Germans and Irish would be overtaken by Italians and Jews (represented on the map by "Russians and Poles," "Hungarians," and to a lesser extent "Germans") as the most numerous immigrant group in Manhattan. To view these maps in more detail, go to The Library of Congress website, click HERE.

The maps were published in Harper's Weekly along with an article by Frank Pierce in which he explained the approach to the Nationality Map. The nationality of the residents was determined by descent from the mother. He explained that this was appropriate since "at the time of the census over seventy-six per cent of the whole population had foreign-born mothers and over forty percent were foreign-born themselves." Within each area depicted, only those nationalities were represented which made up two-thirds of the population so that within each district usually two and sometimes three nationalities were shown. The width of the bands spoke to the proportion of the population of each group within each area. Obviously this approach provided for a more dramatic depiction of the immigrant communities in areas such as the East Village, Lower East Side and South Village. Pierce explained that not all groups were represented: "The Scotch, English, Welsh, Scandinavian, and Canadians have not collected in colonies, but are scattered over the city. These being in small numbers, and perhaps less foreign than the others, were disregarded. They appear in the unclassified in the diagram at the foot of the map."

The maps were also included in a 600 page report published by the 1894 Tenement House Committee which detailed the city's housing issues and made recommendations regarding the condemnation of unfit housing, improved construction, fire safety, prevention of overcrowding, enforcement, inspections, etc. The Committee wrote legislation which it submitted to the New York State Legislature based on its recommendations. In May of 1895 Gilder made a public announcement that all of its legislation had been enacted.

While the 1890 maps do not provide the same complete information that the 1890 census would have, the do provide a window into the shifting ethnic kaleidoscope that was Manhattan, and especially the Village and East Village at the time, and the almost unimaginably crowded conditions that people lived under in these areas.

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1890 Census Map: A Window Into our Incredibly Crowded and Diverse Immigrant Past - GVSHP | Preservation | Off the Grid

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As a historian and researcher who frequently relies on census data for information, nothing frustrates me more than the fact that nearly all of the 1890 Federal Census records were lost. For those who don't know the story, the 1890 ...

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Ellis Island Interactive Tour With Facts, Pictures, Video | Scholastic.com

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Learn about immigration on Ellis Island in this interactive, virtual tour. Facts about immigration, pictures of Ellis Island, oral histories, and videos help explain the immigration process to kids.

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Based on the conditions at Ellis Island, do you think these immigration stations were meant to deter immigrants from coming to America?

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Printable Version It was called the "Ellis Island of the West." Located in San Francisco Bay, Angel Island was also a check point for immigrants in the early years of the 20th century. But only a small proportion of the 175,000 people who arrived at Angel Island were allowed to remain in the United States. Angel Island was a detention center for Chinese immigrants. It was surrounded by barbed wire.

Thirteen-year-old Jack Moy and his mother sailed to the United States in 1927. The two spent a month in the detention center separated from one another. Immigration officials asked insulting personal questions, such as whether their mother had bound feet or how many water buffalo a village had or "who occupies the house on the fifth lot of your row in your native village." Discrepancies in an answer could mean deportation to China. Immigration officials marked down every identifying mark, including scars, boils, and moles.

To join her husband in the United States, Suey Ting Gee had to pretend that she was the wife of another man. Under a U.S. law in effect from 1882 to 1943, the Chinese wives of resident alien laborers could not join them in this country.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version It was called the "Ellis Island of the West." Located in San Francisco Bay, Angel Island was also a check point for immigrants in the early years of the 20th century. But only a small proportion of the 175,000 people who arrived at Angel Island were allowed to remain in the United States.

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children of legal chinese immigrant are detained for two years at angel island

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Children of legal Chinese immigrant are detained for two years at Angel Island, 1930 - Newspapers.com

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Clipping found in Oakland Tribune in Oakland, California on Feb 23, 1930. Children of legal Chinese immigrant are detained for two years at Angel Island, 1930

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Description of Angel Island Immigration Station

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Description of Angel Island Immigration Station

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Angel Island Immigration Station was an immigration station located in San Francisco Bay which operated from January 21, 1910 to November 5, 1940, where immigrants entering the United States were detained and interrogated.

The island was originally a fishing and hunting site for Coastal Miwok Indians, then it was a haven for Spanish explorer Juan Manuel de Ayala. Later, it was developed as a cattle ranch, then, starting with the Civil War, the island served as a U.S. Army post. During the island's Immigration Station period, the island held hundreds of thousands of immigrants, the majority from China, Japan, India, Mexico and the Philippines.

Learn more about the Angel Island Immigration Station through historical newspapers from our archives. Explore newspaper articles, headlines, images, and other primary sources below.

Articles and Clippings about the Angel Island Immigration Station

Topics Age of American Imperialism, Industrial & Gilded Ages
The views and opinions expressed in these newspaper articles and clippings are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Newspapers.com or Ancestry.

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Angel Island Immigration Station - Topics on Newspapers.com

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Angel Island Immigration Station was an immigration station located in San Francisco Bay which operated from January 21, 1910 to November 5, 1940, where immigrants entering the United States were detained and interrogated. The island was originally a fishing and hunting site for Coastal Miwok Ind

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Examine the website (only the section on Orchard Street) for details on living in cities at the turn of the century.

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Since 1888, 103 Orchard has stayed in the same place. However, the way people have referred to the neighborhood has changed. The Lower East Side in the 1900s, Loisaida in the 1960s, and Chinatown in the 1980s. These communities overlapped, and this site offers a glimpse of the families and cultures that defined the neighborhood.

The Turn of the Century

The Lower East Side has always been an immigrant neighborhood. And while many people associate it with East European Jews and Italians who arrived at the turn of the 20th century, the neighborhood has been home to an incredibly diverse set of immigrants and migrants. These waves of newcomers have shaped the area and the cultural heritage of New York City.

By the 1900s, the Lower East Side was the most densely populated area in the country. Pedestrians, peddlers, fishmongers, hagglers, horses and pushcarts vied for space on the tenement-flanked streets.

Inside the tenements, it wasn't uncommon for a family of ten to live in a 325-square foot apartment. As a result, Italian and Jewish immigrants clamored to escape the neighborhood, making use of bridges and subways to move to Brooklyn or the Bronx.

At this time, it was relatively easy to enter this country if you were European. But in 1924, Congress passed the Johnson-Reed Act which severely restricted immigration. It became especially difficult to enter the country if you came from Southern or Eastern Europe, and Asian immigration was banned outright. In the 1920s, the Lower East Side's population decreased for the first time, with 160,000 leaving and 100,000 remaining.

In the 1940s, Puerto Ricans, who had been US Citizens since the 1917 Jones Act, started to come en masse to New York. Fleeing the unemployment caused by rapid industrialization, they came to New York in search of work. And just like the Italians and Jews who preceded them, they found it in the garment industry, making new homes in the tenements on the Lower East Side.

In the late 1940s, a small stream of Holocaust survivors found their way to the neighborhood, attracted to the Jewish infrastructure and the network of synagogues and shops.

On an October morning in 1965, at the feet of the Statue of Liberty, President Lyndon Johnson signed the Hart-Celler act. This abolished the quota system from the 1924 National Origins Act, and immediately opened America's doors to newcomers from Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

103 Orchard Street

Since 1888, 103 Orchard has stayed in the same place. However, the way people have referred to the neighborhood has changed. The East Side or Jewish Ghetto in the 1900s, the Lower East Side in the 1930s, Loisaida in the 1960s, and the eastern border of Chinatown in the 1980s. These communities overlapped, and this site offers a glimpse of the family cultures and the complicated relations among them that defines the neighborhood.

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Since 1888, 103 Orchard has stayed in the same place. However, the way people have referred to the neighborhood has changed. The Lower East Side in the 1900s, Loisaida in the 1960s, and Chinatown in the 1980s. These communities overlapped, and this site offers a glimpse of the families and cultures that defined the neighborhood.

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What is the cartoon depicting about tenement housing? What kind of living environments were these?

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Read the poem below written about an immigrant's experience to Angel Island. 

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Read the poem below written about an immigrant's experience to Angel Island. 

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Translation
Sitting alone in the customs office,
How could my heart not ache?
Had my family not been poor,
I would not have traveled far away from home.
It was my elder brother who urged me
To embark on a voyage to this shore.
The black devil* here is unjust-
He forces the Chinese to clean the floor.
Two meals a day are provided,
But I wonder, when will I be homeward bound?

- Lee from Toishan District, September 4, 1911

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Click on the link/icon below to access the video

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Growth, Cities, and Immigration | Crash Course US History #25 | PBS LearningMedia

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In which John Green teaches you about the massive immigration to the United States during the late 19th and early 20th century. Immigrants flocked to the US from all over the world in this time period. Millions of Europeans moved to the US where they drove the growth of cities and manned the rapid industrialization that was taking place.

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Printable Version Some 334,203 immigrants arrived in the United States in 1886, the year of the statue's dedication. A Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti, wrote: "Irishmen, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Germans freed from tyranny or want--all hail the monument of Liberty because to them it seems to incarnate their own uplifting."

The immigrants who would catch a glimpse of the statue would mainly come from eastern and southern Europe.

In 1900, 14 percent of the American population was foreign born, compared to 8 percent a century later. Passports were unnecessary and the cost of crossing the Atlantic was just $10 in steerage.

European immigration to the United States greatly increased after the Civil War, reaching 5.2 million in the 1880s then surging to 8.2 million in the first decade of the 20th century. Between 1882 and 1914, approximately 20 million immigrants came to the United States. In 1907 alone, 1.285 million arrived. By 1900, New York City had as many Irish residents as Dublin. It had more Italians than any city outside Rome and more Poles than any city except Warsaw. It had more Jews than any other city in the world, as well as sizeable numbers of Slavs, Lithuanians, Chinese, and Scandinavians.

Unlike earlier immigrants, who mainly came from northern and western Europe, the "new immigrants" came largely from southern and eastern Europe. Largely Catholic and Jewish in religion, the new immigrants came from the Balkans, Italy, Poland, and Russia.

Copyright 2019 Digital History

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Printable Version Some 334,203 immigrants arrived in the United States in 1886, the year of the statue's dedication. A Cuban revolutionary, Jose Marti, wrote: "Irishmen, Poles, Italians, Czechs, Germans freed from tyranny or want--all hail the monument of Liberty because to them it seems to incarnate their own uplifting."