The first federal Superintendent of Immigrants for NY Harbor was appointed in 1890. For most of NY's history, anyone could enter the British colonies or the young United States. Around the turn of the 19th century, medical check-ups, with possible quarantine on Staten Island was the first attempt to supervise the flow. Later, in 1855, a reception center was established at Castle Garden in the Battery. Over time, convicts, prostitutes, Chinese contract laborers, idiots, paupers, and polygamists were barred. On January 1, 1892, Ellis Island was opened. It could process 15,000 people per day. It would be the point of welcome for 15 million Americans before it closed in the 1950's. They all came with dreams.
The Dutch came to New Amsterdam in 1624. Trade in furs was the city's first business. Over the 60 years of Dutch rule, six thousand immigrants, many indentured servants, came to the New World. The colony became New York in 1664. It would take until the early 18th century for NY to be Anglicized and for there to be more English than Dutch speakers. The English and later Scotch immigrants were of a higher caliber than those that went to many of the other colonies. They were not indentured servants and often were businessmen from London. Anglicization was accompanied by a vast and diverse flow of immigrants from throughout Europe. Tolerance was a watchword. A visitor observed that residents "seemed not concerned what religion their neighbor is of, or whether hee hath any or none". Only Papists and Jews were not free to openly live their faiths.
The last census before the Revolution showed 22,000 people in NY in 1771. Thousands fled before the British arrived in August, 1776. In the end there were only 5,000 residents left in the city. Tories rallied to the city and by Yorktown, there were 33,000 in NY. Evacuation Day came on November 25, 1783. Only after Waterloo, though, did British immigration to NY pick back up. It took until 1824, the 200th anniversary of New Amsterdam, for the population to exceed 100,000. From that point on, NY added 100,000 people per decade. Even before the famine, the Irish were the largest group of immigrants to the city. Unskilled laborers were the dominant percentage of the Irish immigrants. In 1845, 36% of the residents were foreign born and of those, there were more Irish than all the other nationalities combined. A decade later, there more foreign born than native. The famine caused 1.5 million people to leave Ireland and two-thirds of them came to NY. "The famine Irish were the most impoverished immigrants to ever arrive in the US and the least prepared for life in NY." They were totally lacking in any skills and many did not speak English.
Although at times it seemed to be an Irish metropolis, between 1852-4, the city was flooded with Germans. There were 120,000 German New Yorkers on the eve of the Civil War. The residents of Kleindeutschland were skilled laborers and not day workers. They and the Irish found common political cause in the 1850's with their opposition to temperance and nativist movements. Both immigrant groups were indifferent to abolition and opposed to Lincoln, who did not carry the city. Notwithstanding their position, they believed in the US and rallied to the flag. The Irish in particular hoped that supporting the Union would show their commitment to America and overcome prejudice. The famous 69th regiment was part of the Irish Brigade, and after Antietam and Fredericksburg, their casualties were so high that they began to believe they were being sacrificed for the northern cause. The announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation followed. In the spring 1863, the Union defeat at Chancellorsville necessitated Lincoln's announcement of a draft*. On the 13th of July, the city's Irish led the 4 day draft riots that remain the most significant outbreak of civil violence in American history. The city's lack of enthusiasm for the war was again reflected in the 1864 elections. Lincoln garnered one-third of NY's vote and significantly less of the Irish. Notwithstanding the politics of the war, the city celebrated victory and deeply mourned the 16th President.
After the war, the proportion of German and Irish immigrants arriving in NY dropped to 53% in 1875, 43% in 1885 and 22% in 1895. The Statue of Liberty rose in NY harbor in 1887 and, because of the poem by Emma Lazarus - "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - it came to symbolize a welcoming of immigrants to America. In the 1880's, fleeing pogroms, the Jews of the Russian Empire came, and a decade later, the Italians would outnumber all else who came. On the eve of WW1, Jews and Italians outnumbered Irish and German immigrants by a ratio of 9:1. "Hunger, political oppression, and a lack of economic opportunity drove most of the immigrants to the United States, just as these same factors had pushed the Irish and Germans to America before them." Racial hatred, violence and poverty were the primary motivating factors for eastern Europe's Jews. For the four million Italians who arrived between 1880 and 1914, grinding poverty was the impetus. Ellis Island was the welcoming point from 1892 onward. The processing at Ellis Island was the most important step in the progress of the immigrants and the story remembered and retold for life.
Like the Germans and Irish before them, it was to the Lower East Side that the Jews and Italians went. It was almost always the first step in America. Many of the immigrants to America came in serial fashion; i.e. one, followed by another and eventually, the rest of the family. However, the Jews came as families and thus, there were more women and children, leading to tremendous crowding on the Lower East Side. Up until the 1892 banning of garment work in the tenements, the crowding was compounded by all those working at home. The garment workers and peddlers desired more and moved up to become cigar makers, butchers, bakers and painters. They began to move to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. By 1920, 1.6 million Jews lived in NY, three-quarters of them in Brooklyn and the Bronx. "Yet until their dying day, the city's eastern European Jewish immigrants considered their years on the Lower East Side their formative American experience."
Across the Bowery to the west was 'Little Italy'. There, and in east Harlem, the Italians began the upward climb from punishing poverty and overcrowded tenements just as the Jews and Irish had before them. However, because trans-Atlantic crossings were now cheap and fast, many Italians would work in the warm weather and return to Italy in the winter. As they became assimilated, they too moved to the outer boroughs, and because they apparently cared much more about what they ate than their predecessors, the boroughs provided an opportunity to tend gardens and grow fresh vegetables, thus ameliorating some of the pains of being in the city.
Reform in the lives of NY's immigrants started with Jacob Riis' 'How the Other Half Lived', a book filled with photographs raising the premise that it was the horrid conditions of the tenements, and not their occupants, that were behind the poverty, violence and depravity of the slums. Housing codes were passed, various groups started settlement houses, hospitals were built, parks were squeezed into the neighborhoods, unions were formed, and after the tragedy of the Triangle Waist Company fire in 1911, the Progressives acted to improve working conditions in New York State. Unfortunately, nativist principles and the 'otherness' of the recent arrivals along with a post-war outbreak of anarchy, led to the National Origins Act of 1924 which reduced by 95% immigration from eastern and southern Europe. It was one of the most significant laws ever passed in America. Immigration was capped at 150,000 and a country of origin system was enacted. The 'huddled masses' were barred. "Over the course of the next forty years, until Congress repealed the act, immigrants would play a diminishing role in New York." Immigration was so sparse that Ellis Island was closed in 1954.
Immigration in the 50's picked up when hundreds of thousands of Americans from Puerto Rico came to NY. Meanwhile the quota system was increasingly attacked and actually was touted by the communists as a symbol of American hypocrisy. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act imposed a quota of 150,000 for the western hemisphere and 170,000 for the eastern. Family members of citizens were exempt and further exceptions were made for those fleeing communism, thus, in both instances, significantly increasing the number of Asians entering the country. In NY, Dominican, Chinese and West Indians dominated the new wave. Of the three, the Chinese story is most similar to those of their predecessors. Many were illegal, smuggled into the country as part of an extensive and elaborate system. Fujianese succeeded Cantonese and spread out throughout the city. They worked in restaurants and hard as it is to believe, they did piece work at home, like the Jews a hundred years earlier and re-established NY's garment industry. The Dominicans and West Indians were quicker to the outer boroughs and now dominate Brooklyn and Queens#. As it has for almost four centuries, the city continues to change, evolve and process people like a great machine from dreams to becoming Americans.
"Today, 3.2 million of NY's 8.5 million residents, 37 percent of the total, are immigrants." That's the same percentage as in 1900. For the record, the percentage in 1851 was 55%, the all-time high. "Today's immigrants are no different from previous generations of newcomers." Many are suspected and feared. The author, grandson of Jewish immigrants, points out that every single argument made today against Muslims was made for a hundred years about the Irish Catholics. Fear of the new and unknown is part of our tradition. That said, "New York is the promised land, looking green, fat, luscious and joyous from the outside; the promised land flowing with milk and honey." I hope it never changes.
I am a third generation American. My great, great-grandfather came to NY, with his wife and son in tow, sometime in the 1850's, approximately a hundred years before I was born. How is it then that the immigrant experience is such a part of my take on the world? I suspect some of it is that my parents, dutifully told the stories of those who came before. I also think that a significant part of it is that in those first hundred years, no one had made the step up from the immigrant experience, still living lives of blue collar poverty, very close to the neighborhoods they arrived in. Thus, this book resonates for me and touches upon my greatest interest and fascination with America and our history. American stories - how people came from everywhere and how they strived to achieve the dream - has always, and will always fascinate me.
*I believe my great-grandfather, David Barry, entered the Union Army in 1863. Although he may have been drafted, it is more likely that he accepted the bonuses that were behind the enlistment of the immigrants, as only citizens were eligible for the draft.
#The community my family lived in for 14 years, Cambria Heights, in Queens, is now a West Indian and Haitian enclave. Flushing, also in Queens, where I lived and worked for 7 years, is now almost exclusively Korean and Chinese. Ironically, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I started school is still almost all working-class white ethnics.
The Dutch came to New Amsterdam in 1624. Trade in furs was the city's first business. Over the 60 years of Dutch rule, six thousand immigrants, many indentured servants, came to the New World. The colony became New York in 1664. It would take until the early 18th century for NY to be Anglicized and for there to be more English than Dutch speakers. The English and later Scotch immigrants were of a higher caliber than those that went to many of the other colonies. They were not indentured servants and often were businessmen from London. Anglicization was accompanied by a vast and diverse flow of immigrants from throughout Europe. Tolerance was a watchword. A visitor observed that residents "seemed not concerned what religion their neighbor is of, or whether hee hath any or none". Only Papists and Jews were not free to openly live their faiths.
The last census before the Revolution showed 22,000 people in NY in 1771. Thousands fled before the British arrived in August, 1776. In the end there were only 5,000 residents left in the city. Tories rallied to the city and by Yorktown, there were 33,000 in NY. Evacuation Day came on November 25, 1783. Only after Waterloo, though, did British immigration to NY pick back up. It took until 1824, the 200th anniversary of New Amsterdam, for the population to exceed 100,000. From that point on, NY added 100,000 people per decade. Even before the famine, the Irish were the largest group of immigrants to the city. Unskilled laborers were the dominant percentage of the Irish immigrants. In 1845, 36% of the residents were foreign born and of those, there were more Irish than all the other nationalities combined. A decade later, there more foreign born than native. The famine caused 1.5 million people to leave Ireland and two-thirds of them came to NY. "The famine Irish were the most impoverished immigrants to ever arrive in the US and the least prepared for life in NY." They were totally lacking in any skills and many did not speak English.
Although at times it seemed to be an Irish metropolis, between 1852-4, the city was flooded with Germans. There were 120,000 German New Yorkers on the eve of the Civil War. The residents of Kleindeutschland were skilled laborers and not day workers. They and the Irish found common political cause in the 1850's with their opposition to temperance and nativist movements. Both immigrant groups were indifferent to abolition and opposed to Lincoln, who did not carry the city. Notwithstanding their position, they believed in the US and rallied to the flag. The Irish in particular hoped that supporting the Union would show their commitment to America and overcome prejudice. The famous 69th regiment was part of the Irish Brigade, and after Antietam and Fredericksburg, their casualties were so high that they began to believe they were being sacrificed for the northern cause. The announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation followed. In the spring 1863, the Union defeat at Chancellorsville necessitated Lincoln's announcement of a draft*. On the 13th of July, the city's Irish led the 4 day draft riots that remain the most significant outbreak of civil violence in American history. The city's lack of enthusiasm for the war was again reflected in the 1864 elections. Lincoln garnered one-third of NY's vote and significantly less of the Irish. Notwithstanding the politics of the war, the city celebrated victory and deeply mourned the 16th President.
After the war, the proportion of German and Irish immigrants arriving in NY dropped to 53% in 1875, 43% in 1885 and 22% in 1895. The Statue of Liberty rose in NY harbor in 1887 and, because of the poem by Emma Lazarus - "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" - it came to symbolize a welcoming of immigrants to America. In the 1880's, fleeing pogroms, the Jews of the Russian Empire came, and a decade later, the Italians would outnumber all else who came. On the eve of WW1, Jews and Italians outnumbered Irish and German immigrants by a ratio of 9:1. "Hunger, political oppression, and a lack of economic opportunity drove most of the immigrants to the United States, just as these same factors had pushed the Irish and Germans to America before them." Racial hatred, violence and poverty were the primary motivating factors for eastern Europe's Jews. For the four million Italians who arrived between 1880 and 1914, grinding poverty was the impetus. Ellis Island was the welcoming point from 1892 onward. The processing at Ellis Island was the most important step in the progress of the immigrants and the story remembered and retold for life.
Like the Germans and Irish before them, it was to the Lower East Side that the Jews and Italians went. It was almost always the first step in America. Many of the immigrants to America came in serial fashion; i.e. one, followed by another and eventually, the rest of the family. However, the Jews came as families and thus, there were more women and children, leading to tremendous crowding on the Lower East Side. Up until the 1892 banning of garment work in the tenements, the crowding was compounded by all those working at home. The garment workers and peddlers desired more and moved up to become cigar makers, butchers, bakers and painters. They began to move to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. By 1920, 1.6 million Jews lived in NY, three-quarters of them in Brooklyn and the Bronx. "Yet until their dying day, the city's eastern European Jewish immigrants considered their years on the Lower East Side their formative American experience."
Across the Bowery to the west was 'Little Italy'. There, and in east Harlem, the Italians began the upward climb from punishing poverty and overcrowded tenements just as the Jews and Irish had before them. However, because trans-Atlantic crossings were now cheap and fast, many Italians would work in the warm weather and return to Italy in the winter. As they became assimilated, they too moved to the outer boroughs, and because they apparently cared much more about what they ate than their predecessors, the boroughs provided an opportunity to tend gardens and grow fresh vegetables, thus ameliorating some of the pains of being in the city.
Reform in the lives of NY's immigrants started with Jacob Riis' 'How the Other Half Lived', a book filled with photographs raising the premise that it was the horrid conditions of the tenements, and not their occupants, that were behind the poverty, violence and depravity of the slums. Housing codes were passed, various groups started settlement houses, hospitals were built, parks were squeezed into the neighborhoods, unions were formed, and after the tragedy of the Triangle Waist Company fire in 1911, the Progressives acted to improve working conditions in New York State. Unfortunately, nativist principles and the 'otherness' of the recent arrivals along with a post-war outbreak of anarchy, led to the National Origins Act of 1924 which reduced by 95% immigration from eastern and southern Europe. It was one of the most significant laws ever passed in America. Immigration was capped at 150,000 and a country of origin system was enacted. The 'huddled masses' were barred. "Over the course of the next forty years, until Congress repealed the act, immigrants would play a diminishing role in New York." Immigration was so sparse that Ellis Island was closed in 1954.
Immigration in the 50's picked up when hundreds of thousands of Americans from Puerto Rico came to NY. Meanwhile the quota system was increasingly attacked and actually was touted by the communists as a symbol of American hypocrisy. The 1965 Hart-Celler Act imposed a quota of 150,000 for the western hemisphere and 170,000 for the eastern. Family members of citizens were exempt and further exceptions were made for those fleeing communism, thus, in both instances, significantly increasing the number of Asians entering the country. In NY, Dominican, Chinese and West Indians dominated the new wave. Of the three, the Chinese story is most similar to those of their predecessors. Many were illegal, smuggled into the country as part of an extensive and elaborate system. Fujianese succeeded Cantonese and spread out throughout the city. They worked in restaurants and hard as it is to believe, they did piece work at home, like the Jews a hundred years earlier and re-established NY's garment industry. The Dominicans and West Indians were quicker to the outer boroughs and now dominate Brooklyn and Queens#. As it has for almost four centuries, the city continues to change, evolve and process people like a great machine from dreams to becoming Americans.
"Today, 3.2 million of NY's 8.5 million residents, 37 percent of the total, are immigrants." That's the same percentage as in 1900. For the record, the percentage in 1851 was 55%, the all-time high. "Today's immigrants are no different from previous generations of newcomers." Many are suspected and feared. The author, grandson of Jewish immigrants, points out that every single argument made today against Muslims was made for a hundred years about the Irish Catholics. Fear of the new and unknown is part of our tradition. That said, "New York is the promised land, looking green, fat, luscious and joyous from the outside; the promised land flowing with milk and honey." I hope it never changes.
I am a third generation American. My great, great-grandfather came to NY, with his wife and son in tow, sometime in the 1850's, approximately a hundred years before I was born. How is it then that the immigrant experience is such a part of my take on the world? I suspect some of it is that my parents, dutifully told the stories of those who came before. I also think that a significant part of it is that in those first hundred years, no one had made the step up from the immigrant experience, still living lives of blue collar poverty, very close to the neighborhoods they arrived in. Thus, this book resonates for me and touches upon my greatest interest and fascination with America and our history. American stories - how people came from everywhere and how they strived to achieve the dream - has always, and will always fascinate me.
*I believe my great-grandfather, David Barry, entered the Union Army in 1863. Although he may have been drafted, it is more likely that he accepted the bonuses that were behind the enlistment of the immigrants, as only citizens were eligible for the draft.
#The community my family lived in for 14 years, Cambria Heights, in Queens, is now a West Indian and Haitian enclave. Flushing, also in Queens, where I lived and worked for 7 years, is now almost exclusively Korean and Chinese. Ironically, the neighborhood in Brooklyn where I started school is still almost all working-class white ethnics.
No comments:
Post a Comment