preview

Immigration In The 19th Century

Decent Essays

Many of the factors that led to the flood of immigrants into the country during the nineteenth century were due to technological innovations. The steamboat especially shorted travel time and made it cheaper for the common folk to travel between their home country and America. Another reason was the rapid mechanization of agriculture which forced many people from the traditional farming based jobs and into the cities around the world for work. The book describes that this as an extension to the trends before that, where European laborers would migrate around the continent during the harvest seasons looking for working as well as later on to enter the rising industries. The fact that steam travel had decreased travel time by so much simply made …show more content…

Stories of the streets being paved in gold were common, leaving many immigrants shocked when they actually arrived in America and found unpaved roads along with the expectation that they would pave them. Still, the fact that wages were much higher in America and there were greater freedoms made up for this. Those who struck good work would return to their home country a far richer person than they began, leading their fellow neighbors to make the voyage themselves. Through this large immigration process, the faces of American cities were changed as demographics shifted and immigrant communities established. Several ethnic enclaves quickly formed in cities as people from the same country or village chose to live near each other. They often attempted to turn their new homes into something familiar by mixing their old customs along with American cultures. Later on they established organizations to provide support for newly arrived immigrants in the form of resources, mutual aid events, and also festivals. Other things immigrants did upon arrival was to set up their own places of worship, separate from other places run by other group of the same

Get Access