Racial Immigregation In America During The Gilded Age

In the eyes of the early American colonists and the founders of the Constitution, the United States was to represent the ideals of acceptance and tolerance to those of all walks of life. When the immigration rush began in the mid-1800's, America proved to be everything but that. The millions of immigrants would soon realize the meaning of hardship and rejection as newcomers, as they attempted to assimilate into American culture. For countless immigrants, the struggle to arrive in America was rivaled only by the struggle to gain acceptance among the existing American population.

Many people from all over the world saw America as a place to create a better life for them and their family. America was a place full of many job opportunities, ones that were not available anywhere else in the world. It was in America that people from different nations saw the chance to escape the place they originally lived because of unfair government or as a chance to have money to send back to their family in their homeland. The period after the civil war was an era of tremendous migration from southern and eastern Europe as well as from China, because of all the opportunities that were available here that were not available anywhere else. Migration was also prominent within America when African Americans

In the late 1800s , America became the land of new opportunities and new beginnings and New York City became the first landmark for immigrants. New York City was home to Ellis Island, the area in which migrants were to be handed for freedom to enter the nation. Living in New York City gave work and availability to ports. In time the city gave the chance to outsider's to construct groups with individuals from their nation , they were classified as new and old settlers. Old outsiders included Germans, Irish and, English. The new outsiders incorporated those from Italy, Russia, Poland and Austria-Hungary. In 1875, the New York City populace was a little 1 million individuals contrasted with the 3,5 million it held when the new century

In the United States, there were many problems and solutions that the city dwellers and immigrants faced during the Gilded Age. During this time, most immigrants that came from Asia, Mexico, Europe, Ireland and others country were uneducated and unskilled. This led them to many problems that need to be solved for them to survive in America. One of the problems that immigrants faced was finding a job because most immigrants had a language barrier of not speaking English. The solution to their problem was ethnic neighborhood because a person who understands both languages can translate the information to find them a job. However, the job was difficult to find because there were too many immigrants looking for a job; therefore, there was less job available for them. In this oppose solution, there is some immigrant that will have to face poverty until they can keep seeking for the job available for them.

Immigration through out the late 1800’s and early 1900’s created nativism throughout the United States. Millions of immigrants flocked to the United States trying to find a better way of life to be able to support their families. Industrialization in the United States provided a labor source for the immigrants. Native born Americans believed immigrants were a “threat to the American way of life” (ATF chapter 11) Social and economic fault lines developed between natives and immigrants, through out the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, going unnoticed until the late 1920’s when the Sacco and Vanzetti case brought awareness of issue to much of the United States.

Ever since the creation of the human race, human beings have been prone to moving place to place for new opportunities and beginnings. People who move from one country to another are called immigrants. As nations started to form, their were rules and laws set on who could and could not live in a specific country. Most of these laws included immigrants to go through a lengthy process to get approved to go into the country they desired. However, even after the lengthy process is completed, the country still has the right to deny their entrance. In fear of being rejected, many immigrants decided to illegally cross the borders of other countries causing many problems with the country's society, specially the United States of America. Historians saw a great example of this in the 1920s. The 1920s in America unfolded the greatest wave of immigration in American history; more than 25 million foreigners, also known as immigrants, arrived on American shores (Shmoop). Before the 1920s, immigration in the United States had never been systematically restricted by federal law, however that changed with the 1921 Emergency Quota Act and the 1924 Immigration Act. For the first time in American history, these acts imposed a limit on the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States which eventually caused many to enter illegally. Today America is faced with some similar issues with immigration as they did in the 1920s, for example, the number of illegal immigrants in

In the years following the Civil War, The United States changed dramatically. During the late 19 century also known as the Gilded Age, the population in America was greatly increased and the industry changed in the country. The reason why the industry in the United States was improved is because of the immigrants which made to benefit as workers. Therefore, there had a lot of factory jobs that made interesting for the immigrants to move to the United States. According to the pie graph in document 1, only 11.9 percentage of people came for jobs and the rest of percentage came for their families or relatives. It’s clear that most immigrants came for the jobs, however the graph shows that some immigrants came for their families, even though they needed the jobs for their living, but they still tell that they came to the United States for their families. Immigrants came to the United States in many reasons between 1870- 1920 because they wanted the freedom of religious, racial and political persecution and lack of economic opportunities.

“There should be no discrimination against languages people speak, skin color, or religion,” said Malala Yousafzai (BrainyQuotes). Separation was one of the huge parts of the 1800's through the 1900s that had many individuals talking and even had an action set against it. Though the act tried to help get rid of it, it did not go as planned. People are mainly against individuals who are much different than what the norm is. Discrimination mainly focused on racism and the act of believing what someone else does is wrong. Along with immigration and sexism to go with everything else.

The 1840s and 50s experienced a massive escalation in the number of immigrants from Europe especially from Ireland, and Germany, arriving on U.S shores in densely populated urban areas (Arenson, 2011). Most of them afterward became vigorous in domestic politics, much to the aggravation of old-stock, authentic Americans. The consequence was a renaissance in the formation of “nativistic” societies (small, indistinct, anti-foreign and anti-catholic organizations), some which banded together in the early 1850s to form the American Party (Arenson, 2011). Commonly referred to as the “Know-Nothing,” the party rode a wave of racial intolerance as well as racism into the mid-1850s.

“It is a time when one’s spirit is subdued and sad,” wrote Mark Twain in his bitter, nihilistic satire on the post-Reconstruction era of the United States: The Gilded Age. “[T]he past seems a storm-swept desolation…What is the use of struggling, and toiling and worrying anymore?” Such was the mood of the late 1800s; the racism and prejudice that had festered in the pre-Civil War South had not abated, and progress in civil rights was undermined by indifference among Northerners and Southerners alike. The deep sectional divisions from the War had not yet been repaired, and the struggle between justice and unity was bloody and heated. The deadly tug-of-war between the two culminated in a win for unity; Reconstruction ended not with the blessings and consent of freedmen, but with a quiet compromise between apathetic bureaucrats.

In the early 1900’s there was a dramatic increase in the number of immigrants coming to the eastern shores of America. Many were pulled to America because of its economic opportunity, freedom, need for labor and its beautiful country. Immigrants were excited to come to America and were pushed from their home countries because of food shortages, overpopulation, war and political instability. This was going on in an important era in American history called the “gilded age”. It was a time of economic growth, and industrialization but also had high percentages of poverty mainly in urban environments. The majority of the immigrants intended to advance out west but actually settled in the eastern cities. In the book The Jungle, Jargis and his

Black Americans faced several harmful social, economic, and political conditions in the United States of America during the Gilded Age. One of the unfair social conditions they faced was segregation. For example, in Florida, Kentucky, and Mississippi, the Jim Crow Laws required separate schools for white children and children of color. In Georgia, blacks barbers were not allowed to serve white women or girls. In Virginia, theaters that attended by white and black people had to separate the two races into different sections of the theater. Many argued that the two races were separate but equal, however that could not be further from the truth. Separate does not equal equality. There was a racial pyramid in the country with white people at the

Throughout the years of 1866-1905 there was countless events that happened, many changed American in plenty of ways. The reconstruction and rise of the Ku Klux Klan, the Great Strike of 1877, a collision of cultures at Wounded Knee and immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries are major events that happened during this time period. Every one of the events made an effect on how the United States is today. Even though some of the events ended up in losing some people, they were all fighting for a huge cause that they believed in.

Throughout the history of the United States, the Gilded Age is regarded as a period that spanned the last three decades of the 19th century. This period starts from the Civil War came to an end in the 1865 up to 1900. The term Gilded Age was formulated by writers Charles Warner and Mark Twain in The Gilded Age: A Tale of Toady in 1873. They did this since they believed it to be an era that would be characterized by a variety of severe social problems that were camouflaged by a minute gold gilding.

During the 1920’s the United States really became a country of immigrants, even though not everyone was on board. In this time we saw immigration numbers that would far exceed the decades that would come after it and only to be surpasses by the decade that came before in a 40 year span. Almost 4.3 million people came to the US in the 1920’s and they spanned from far and wide to come to the US. Numbers would dip in the coming decades and would not surpass the million mark for at least two decades. These numbers saw drops that would relate to immigrant life and US immigration tactics.