Dangers Of Cities Dbq

Opposition to immigration during the early twentieth century intensified in the United States when the majority of immigrants did what?

From the era of Reconstruction to the late of 19th century, the United States experienced a significant economic growth and a large number of immigrants, who were lured by enormous job opportunities. The big business starting growing rapidly due to a combination of new technology, more efficient management and access to enormous resources. From 1870 to 1900, the expansion of big corporations caused mass production and high demands of unskilled workers in the United States, while resulting more difficult situations for workers and intense political corruption. The Americans responded actively to such conditions. Some of them organized strike in order to threatened their employers and ask for better treatments, while others participated in many

The rapid growth of industrial corporations and urban world from the late 1800s to the early 1900s caused many changes in the lives of the American people. Unable to keep up with the swiftly changing world, many political, social, and economic problems arose during this time. Political problems like monopolies influencing government affairs and arguments over how much the government should be able to regulate and control society. Social problems like women’s rights, the working conditions of factory workers, living conditions of people living in cities and slums. Economic problems such as big corporations monopolizing industries, providing workers with a living wage, and implementing taxes. New parties formed to try to solve some of the

The book Out of This Furnace is a work of historical fiction written by Thomas Bell, in which the lives of four different individuals are told and woven together, and consequentially describe the changes taking place in different generations of immigrant workers in America. Beginning with Kracha, then leading to Mike, then Mary, and finally Dobie, this book does an excellent job of showing how the American immigrant's life changed mid 1800s to the 1920s. As seen in each generation, immigrants became as a whole more and more liberal in their beliefs and lifestyles. Many of their beliefs change, however, one of the most interesting is the development of the labor unions, and how they are viewed by the workers in that time period.

Economically, they filled a significant need for cheap labor in booming American industries. The large numbers of immigrants helped keep labor cost down for Big Business and different groups were often put against each other in competition for the cheapest workers. Politically, different immigrant groups became active members of various labor organizations and unions, pushing to change pro-business laws and establish regulations governing working conditions and wages. And socially, American culture as it is known now was formed by this influx of immigrants. People from all over the planet brought with them not only their labor but also their cultures, helping to contribute to the mosaic that is the American way of life. These immigrants, as shown by the prejudice and discrimination directed towards them, were not always welcome. In economic hard times, immigrants were blamed for job shortages and family hardships, used as scapegoats for larger problems. Nativist movements were directed against the Chinese, Japanese, Italians, and others, especially during the 1880s and 90s. As evidenced by the Chinese Exclusion Act and later legislation that limited immigration from Japan and other regions, this anti-immigrant sentiment went as high up as the nation's capital. This history was simply a repeat of the nativism and hatred directed against the Irish and Germans of the 1840s and 1850s and is similar to that experienced in America today by immigrants from Mexico and Latin America. In the area of immigration, history repeats

The formation of unions helped workers of similar nature band together and demand better wages for their work. Many workers went on-strike, demanding higher wages, but living paycheck to paycheck it was difficult to weather out an entire strike. With the onset of industrialization and the automation of many factory jobs, the amount of jobs available decreased and further dumbed down the jobs, requiring less education to operate effectively, and further increasing the market for competition. Immigrants just wanted to sustain a good job that can make them enough money to support their family and live comfortably, but had a tough time being affluent in America while working wage-labor shifts in poor working

In the first half of the 19th Century the working class in the newly industrializing American society suffered many forms of exploitation. The working class of the mid-nineteenth century, with constant oppression by the capitalist and by the division between class, race, and ethnicity, made it difficult to form solidarity. After years of oppression and exploitation by the ruling class, the working class struck back and briefly paralyzed American commerce. The strike, which only lasted a few weeks, was the spark needed to ignite a national revolt by the working class with the most violent labor upheavals of the century.

By 1900, the United States had become the number one industrial power in the world. One factor that allowed the country to climb to its prime position was its abundant labor supply, largely composed of immigrants who had arrived between 1865 and 1900. However, the spot came at a cost; laborers were working long hours for low wages under poor conditions for the dominating monopolies of the time. Hoping to better these undesirable situations, multiple labor unions would form in the last half of the nineteenth century. Despite the continual efforts of these organizations little change was experienced from 1875 to 1900 due to disharmony among those competing to represent the laborer, the long-standing negative

These benefits were greatly needed as seen in the working conditions experienced by the Italian immigrants of this time. These groups were organized locally which also led to their downfall because of too much local power rather than a form of national leadership. The American Federation of Labor, founded in 1185, was unique in that it restricted its membership to only skilled workers and was also organized by trade instead of locality. For this reason it “became known as the “aristocracy” of labor” (Additional Links: The War between Capital and Labor). The Italian immigrants, for example, were not commonly found in the American Federation of Labor because they were unskilled and were not unionizing. President of the American Federation of Labor, Samuel Gompers believed in the power of the strike and most importantly the belief of the eight-hour workday. In Chicago, over one thousand people gathered at the West Randolph Street Haymarket, where people bought hay for their horses. Originally it was a peaceful gathering until someone threw a bomb into the crowd. The police responded by shooting into the crowd. An unknown number of demonstrators were killed or wounded. “Sixty police officers were injured and eight eventually died. Politicians and the press blamed radicals for the violence, although there was no evidence linking specific people to the bomb” (Lecture

Immigrating to America during the mid-1800s to the early-1900s was a very difficult and important change to an immigrant's life. Immigrants came to America because of political and religious issues, economic opportunities from the Great Plains, and employment. These reasons are called pull factors, these encouraged many immigrants from different countries to leave their homeland and travel to America. Immigrants also believed in the American Dream. The American Dream has many meanings, for the immigrants they believed that this was a pursuit of big opportunities and living a stable life. Immigrants also had terrible issues back at their homeland which gave them the motive to leave, these are called push factors. Some push factors were poverty,

An outburst in growth of America’s big city population, places of 100,000 people or more jumped from about 6 million to 14 million between 1880 and 1900, cities had become a world of newcomers (551). America evolved into a land of factories, corporate enterprise, and industrial worker and, the surge in immigration supplied their workers. In the latter half of the 19th century, continued industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force. The country's transformation from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation attracted immigrants worldwide. As free land and free labor disappeared and as capitalists dominated the economy, dramatic social, political, and economic

Industrial civilization was a tedious transition for both native born and immigrant Americans; they were faced with many obstacles both at work and in their everyday lives. Farmers and tradesmen were forced into unskilled labor positions during the industrial revolution. These poor conditions and new forms of labor led the way into the formation of trade unions and helped us get to where current unions stand today.

The market revolution brought another racial conflict into America as the “demand for labor… increased immigration from abroad.” The competition for wage and the need for native born whites to distance themselves from foreign crowds led to the rise of Nativism. White supremacy was not absolute, as European immigrants were quickly categorized as inferior

Americans were unsettled by the overwhelming amount of new immigrants. The new immigrants came in such massive quantities that in 1900 immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe made up as much as 70 percent of all immigrants. This is a dramatic increase considering that in midcentury these immigrants only made up 1 percent of the immigrant population. This overhaul of new immigrants led to severe hostility, bias, and nativism. Nativism is the belief that native-born white Americans were superior to newcomers. Competition for jobs and housing had never been higher in the late 19th century. America was in an economic recession and most immigrants were willing to work for much lower wages than natural born citizens which as a result put them out of work and ultimately housing. This however was only one problem, religion was another. American Protestants were suspicious of Catholicism which was the religion of many new immigrants including the Irish, German, Italian, and Polish. The majority of white Protestants would not hire, vote for, or even work with Catholics or Jewish people. In severe cases Americans would even sign contracts agreeing not to

Immigrants coped with the conditions as they found them in America’s brimming cities in two major ways. First, and less importantly, they often connected to the political machines that dominated cities in those days, around the 1890s. These machines eased the workload placed upon the immigrants and made the environment more suitable to thrive in; in return, the immigrants voted for the machinery. Some workers would look at the machinery and call them “wonderful monsters, strong enough to lift mountains.” Second, and more importantly, immigrants organized their own communities. Due to the physical conditions, language barriers, and psychological strains of moving to a new country, immigrants tended to group together with people of their home-country. Small “enclaves” formed in many cities where everyone spoke their language and had similar customs. (QUOTE