Immigration and Cities

Immigration and the Growth of Cities

New Americans, crowded tenements, city bosses and reformers, about 1870 to 1920

Between about 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants came to the United States (an estimate; counts from the time are incomplete). Most settled in cities, where factories needed workers. In 1870 about one American in four lived in a town or city. By the 1920 census, for the first time, more than half did.

In this unit we follow the newcomers from the moment they arrived to the neighborhoods where they settled: why they came, how they were received, where they lived and who ran the cities they built. Some Americans welcomed them, and others tried hard to keep them out. You will read voices from both sides and decide how well the country lived up to the words on the Statue of Liberty.

The New Immigration

Before about 1880, most immigrants came from Northern and Western Europe: Ireland, Germany, Britain and Scandinavia. After that, the largest numbers came from Southern and Eastern Europe: Italians, Poles, Jews from the Russian Empire, Greeks, Slovaks, Hungarians and many more. Historians call this the new immigration. Smaller numbers came from China, Japan, Mexico, the Middle East and the Caribbean.

Push factors drove people out. Farms in southern Italy could no longer feed growing families. Jews in the Russian Empire faced harsh laws and violent attacks called pogroms. Others fled military service, high taxes or crop failures. Pull factors drew them in: factory and construction jobs, letters from relatives already settled, cheap steamship tickets and the hope of freedom. Many, especially young men, planned to earn money and go home, and a large share did.

By 1910 about 15 percent of people living in the United States had been born in another country. In some big cities, a majority of residents were immigrants or the children of immigrants.

Ellis Island and Angel Island

Ellis Island, 1892

The federal immigration station in New York Harbor opened on January 1, 1892, close to the Statue of Liberty, which had been dedicated in 1886. Most steerage passengers spent a few hours there: a quick medical check, questions about work and money, and then the ferry to the city. About 2 percent were turned away, often for illness. Roughly 12 million people passed through by 1954 (an estimate).

Angel Island, 1910

The station in San Francisco Bay opened on January 21, 1910. It processed people from dozens of countries, but it was built largely to enforce Chinese exclusion. Chinese arrivals faced long, detailed questioning to prove they had a legal right to enter, and many were held for weeks or months, a few for nearly two years. Some carved poems about their longing and anger into the wooden walls of the barracks. Many of those poems survive.

Chinese Exclusion

Chinese immigrants had come to California since the Gold Rush of 1849 and did much of the hardest work building the Central Pacific Railroad. As jobs grew scarce in the 1870s, white workers and politicians blamed them for low wages, and mobs attacked Chinese neighborhoods. The Page Act of 1875 was an early step: it was used to keep out most Chinese women, which made it hard for Chinese men to start families in the United States.

The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 went much further. It suspended the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years and barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship. It was the first federal law to bar a group by nationality. Congress renewed it in 1892, extended it in 1902 and made it permanent in 1904. Chinese Americans fought back in court, and in United States v. Wong Kim Ark (1898) the Supreme Court ruled that a man born in San Francisco to Chinese parents was a U.S. citizen. Exclusion did not end until 1943.

Nativism

Nativists wanted to protect what they saw as the country’s character from newcomers. Some feared that Catholic and Jewish immigrants would not fit into a mostly Protestant country. Some workers feared competition for jobs. Some educated Americans used theories, now discredited, that ranked Europeans by “race.” In 1894 a group of Boston men founded the Immigration Restriction League, which pushed for a literacy test. Congress passed one in 1917 over President Wilson’s veto.

Restriction did not stop there. The Immigration Act of 1924 set national-origin quotas that sharply limited arrivals from Southern and Eastern Europe and barred almost all immigration from Asia. That law belongs to the 1920s, but the arguments behind it took shape in these years.

Cities Grow Up and Out

Chicago had about 300,000 people in 1870 and about 1.7 million in 1900. New technology made such growth possible. Safety elevators, first sold by Elisha Otis in the 1850s, and steel frames let buildings rise ten stories and more. Electric streetcars, beginning in Richmond, Virginia, in 1888, let workers live miles from their jobs, and the first streetcar suburbs spread outward. The Brooklyn Bridge, opened in 1883, joined two of the country’s biggest cities with a steel-wire suspension span.

Not all the newcomers were foreign-born. Young people left farms for city jobs, and starting in the 1910s, the Great Migration brought hundreds of thousands of Black Southerners to northern cities such as Chicago, Detroit and New York, escaping segregation and violence and looking for factory work.

Tenements

Most immigrants rented rooms in tenements, narrow buildings five or six stories tall, packed side by side. Many rooms had no window to the outside. A whole floor might share one toilet in the hall, and families often took in boarders to pay the rent. New York’s Lower East Side was among the most crowded places on earth. Diseases such as tuberculosis spread quickly, and fires were deadly.

Reporters and photographers such as Jacob Riis made these conditions hard to ignore. New York’s Tenement House Act of 1901 required new buildings to have windows to the outdoors in every room, better fire protection and a toilet in each apartment. It did not fix the older buildings, but it became a model for housing laws in other cities.

Political Machines

City governments were not ready for so many people. Political machines filled the gap. A machine was a party organization, led by a “boss,” that won elections by trading favors for votes. Ward leaders found jobs for newcomers, helped families after a fire and fixed problems with the police. In return they expected loyalty at the polls, and they often took a cut of city contracts.

New York’s Democratic machine, Tammany Hall, was the most famous. Under William M. “Boss” Tweed in the late 1860s and early 1870s, the Tweed Ring stole an enormous sum from the city; estimates range from about $30 million to $200 million. Cartoonist Thomas Nast attacked Tweed again and again in Harper’s Weekly. Tweed was convicted in 1873, escaped to Spain, was caught and returned, and died in jail in 1878. Tammany itself lasted for decades, partly because many immigrant voters saw it as the only part of government that helped them.

Settlement Houses

Reformers offered a different kind of help. In 1889 Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr opened Hull House in an immigrant neighborhood on Chicago’s Near West Side. Residents, most of them young, college-educated women, lived in the house and ran a kindergarten, a day nursery, English and citizenship classes, a gym, a public bath and an art gallery. They also studied the neighborhood and lobbied for laws on child labor, factory safety and sanitation. By 1910 there were more than 400 settlement houses across the country (an estimate). Addams later won the Nobel Peace Prize, in 1931.

Settlement workers respected their neighbors more than many reformers did, but they also wanted immigrants to adopt American ways. Some immigrants welcomed the help; others resented being told how to live. And many settlement houses served only white residents, so Black reformers founded their own.

Timeline, 1875 to 1924

Click or tap (or Tab to) an event and press Enter to open it. Use the buttons to show only one kind of event.

Dot colors: arrivals restriction cities and technology politics and reform

  1. 1875 Page Act restriction

    Congress bars the entry of immigrants from Asia brought for forced labor and of women it suspects of prostitution (March 3). In practice, officials use it to keep out most Chinese women.

  2. 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act restriction

    Congress suspends the immigration of Chinese laborers for ten years and bars Chinese immigrants from becoming citizens (May 6).

  3. 1883 Brooklyn Bridge opens cities and technology

    The longest suspension bridge in the world at the time links Brooklyn and Manhattan (May 24).

  4. 1883 “The New Colossus” arrivals

    Emma Lazarus writes her sonnet to help raise money for the statue’s pedestal (November 2).

  5. 1885 An early skyscraper cities and technology

    Chicago’s Home Insurance Building, about ten stories tall, uses a metal frame to hold up its walls. It is often called the first skyscraper.

  6. 1886 Statue of Liberty dedicated arrivals

    The statue, a gift from France, is dedicated in New York Harbor (October 28).

  7. 1888 Electric streetcars cities and technology

    Frank Sprague’s electric streetcar system opens in Richmond, Virginia. Within a few years, cities across the country switch from horse-drawn cars.

  8. 1889 Hull House politics and reform

    Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr open a settlement house in an immigrant neighborhood of Chicago (September 18).

  9. 1890 How the Other Half Lives politics and reform

    Jacob Riis publishes his photographs and reporting on New York tenements.

  10. 1892 Ellis Island opens arrivals

    The federal immigration station in New York Harbor opens on January 1. Annie Moore, a teenager from Ireland, is the first person processed.

  11. 1892 Geary Act restriction

    Congress extends Chinese exclusion for ten more years and requires Chinese residents to carry certificates proving they are in the country legally.

  12. 1894 Immigration Restriction League restriction

    A group of Boston men founds the league to push for a literacy test for immigrants.

  13. 1897 America’s first subway cities and technology

    Boston opens the first underground streetcar line in the United States (September 1).

  14. 1901 Tenement House Act politics and reform

    New York requires new tenements to have windows facing outdoors, better fire protection and a toilet in each apartment.

  15. 1902 Exclusion extended restriction

    Congress extends Chinese exclusion in 1902 and makes it permanent in 1904. It is not repealed until 1943.

  16. 1907 Peak year at Ellis Island arrivals

    More than a million immigrants enter the United States in a single year, the most for decades to come.

  17. 1910 Angel Island opens arrivals

    The immigration station in San Francisco Bay opens on January 21. Many Chinese arrivals are detained there for weeks or months.

  18. 1916 The Great Migration gathers speed arrivals

    Black Southerners move north in large numbers to escape segregation and violence and to find factory jobs.

  19. 1917 Literacy test restriction

    Congress passes a reading test for adult immigrants over President Wilson’s veto.

  20. 1924 Immigration Act of 1924 restriction

    Congress sets national-origin quotas that sharply limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe and bar almost all immigration from Asia.

Activity: Who Helped the Newcomers?

Either answer can be defended with evidence. For each piece of evidence, decide whether it suggests the machine, the settlement house or the reform law mostly helped immigrants, mostly worked against them, or could support either view. You can change your mind at any time.

Primary Sources

5 short excerpts from public-domain texts, checked word for word against the online copies listed below. Ellipses (…) mark skipped text.

“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!”
Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus,” November 2, 1883, closing lines

Lazarus wrote the sonnet to help raise money for the statue’s pedestal. It got little attention at the time. In 1903 it was put on a plaque inside the pedestal, and over time it changed what many people thought the statue meant: not only liberty, but welcome.

“Whereas in the opinion of the Government of the United States the coming of Chinese laborers to this country endangers the good order of certain localities within the territory thereof …”
Chinese Exclusion Act, preamble, May 6, 1882

This was the first federal law to bar a group of immigrants by nationality. Supporters, especially in California, said Chinese workers drove down wages. Many Chinese Americans fought the law in court, and some won. The law was not repealed until 1943.

“The Settlement then, is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of the social and industrial problems which are engendered by the modern conditions of life in a great city.”
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), chapter 6, “The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements”

Addams and other residents lived in the neighborhood they served. They ran a kindergarten, classes in English and citizenship, a public bath and a gym, and they pushed the city for better garbage collection and laws against child labor.

“The streets are inexpressibly dirty, the number of schools inadequate, sanitary legislation unenforced, the street lighting bad, the paving miserable and altogether lacking in the alleys and smaller streets, and the stables foul beyond description.”
Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910), chapter 5, “First Days at Hull-House”

Addams blamed city officials who waited to be pushed before doing their jobs. In the same passage she called the newcomers “densely ignorant of civic duties,” a judgment many immigrants would have disputed. Read her as a sympathetic outsider.

“There’s an honest graft, and I’m an example of how it works. I might sum up the whole thing by sayin’: ‘I seen my opportunities and I took ’em.’”
George Washington Plunkitt, in William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905), chapter 1, “Honest Graft and Dishonest Graft”

Plunkitt was a Tammany Hall leader in New York. “Honest graft,” he explained, meant using inside knowledge, such as where the city planned to build, to make money legally. He insisted he never took bribes. Riordon, a newspaper reporter, wrote down the talks, and Plunkitt’s spoken style is kept in the spelling.

Key Terms

New immigration
The wave of immigrants from about 1880 to 1920 who came mostly from Southern and Eastern Europe, such as Italy, Poland, Russia, Greece and Austria-Hungary.
Push factor
Something that drives people to leave home, such as poverty, crop failure, war or persecution.
Pull factor
Something that draws people to a new place, such as jobs, land, freedom of religion or family already there.
Steerage
The cheapest, most crowded part of a ship, below deck, where most immigrants traveled.
Nativism
Favoring people born in the country over immigrants, often with hostility toward newcomers.
Chinese Exclusion Act
The 1882 law that stopped Chinese laborers from immigrating and barred Chinese immigrants from citizenship.
Urbanization
The growth of cities as people move from farms and small towns.
Tenement
A crowded, low-cost apartment building, often with little light, air or plumbing.
Political machine
A party organization that controlled a city government by trading jobs, favors and help for votes.
Graft
Using a public office to make money dishonestly.
Settlement house
A community center in a poor neighborhood, where middle-class reformers lived and offered classes, child care and other services.
Great Migration
The movement of millions of Black Southerners to cities in the North and West, beginning in the 1910s.

Discussion Questions

  1. Lazarus called immigrants “huddled masses.” The Immigration Restriction League called many of them undesirable. How can the same people be described in such different ways?
  2. Chinese immigrants faced a ban that European immigrants did not. Why do you think Congress singled them out?
  3. Political machines were corrupt, but many poor immigrants voted for them again and again. Why might that be?
  4. Settlement house workers wanted to help immigrants and also wanted them to change. Where is the line between helping people and telling them how to live?
  5. Think of a city near you that is growing or changing quickly. Which problems from this page does it share with cities of the 1890s?

Test Yourself

10 questions on immigration and cities. Click an answer to check it.

Newcomers and Cities

Sources and Further Reading

Primary sources quoted

  1. Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus” (1883). Text from the National Park Service, Statue of Liberty National Monument.
  2. Chinese Exclusion Act, May 6, 1882. National Archives, Chinese Exclusion Act.
  3. Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull-House (1910). Project Gutenberg #1325.
  4. William L. Riordon, Plunkitt of Tammany Hall (1905). Project Gutenberg #2810.

Further reading

Interpretation

  1. John Higham, Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism, 1860–1925 (1955).
  2. Erika Lee and Judy Yung, Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America (2010).
  3. Tyler Anbinder, City of Dreams: The 400-Year Epic History of Immigrant New York (2016).
  4. Louise W. Knight, Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy (2005).