Immigration, 1877–90 (AQA A-Level History): Revision Notes
Immigration, 1877–90
Overview of immigration during the Gilded Age
Between 1877 and 1890, the United States experienced mass immigration on an unprecedented scale. This period formed part of what historians identify as the "new immigration" of the Gilded Age, contrasting with the "old immigration" that characterised earlier arrivals. During the Gilded Age overall (1860–1890), approximately 10 million immigrants entered the country, fundamentally reshaping American society and fuelling industrial expansion.
The distinction between "old" and "new" immigration reflects changing patterns in immigrant origins and composition. The new immigration brought different ethnic groups and settlement patterns compared to earlier waves, with far-reaching consequences for American society.
The composition of this immigration wave differed from earlier patterns. The majority arrived from Britain and Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia, Switzerland and Holland. Few immigrants settled in the poverty-stricken South. Instead, most sought opportunities in northern cities or on the expanding western frontier. Many were poor peasants pursuing the American Dream through unskilled manual labour in mills, mines and factories, though some prosperous farmers possessed sufficient capital to purchase land and tools in the Plains states.
Immigration figures reveal the dramatic increase during this period:
| Years | Number of immigrants |
|---|---|
| 1866–70 | 1,513,101 |
| 1871–80 | 2,812,191 |
| 1881–90 | 5,246,613 |
Reasons for immigration
Historians analyse immigration causes through the framework of push factors (conditions forcing people to leave their homeland) and pull factors (attractions drawing them to America).
Understanding Migration Through Push and Pull
The push-pull framework remains one of the most useful tools for analyzing migration patterns. Push factors create unfavorable conditions in the homeland, while pull factors offer attractive opportunities in the destination country. During the Gilded Age, both forces operated simultaneously to create the largest wave of immigration in American history.
Push factors
Political, economic and religious discontent throughout Europe drove emigration during the nineteenth century. Industrial and agricultural revolutions transformed European society, creating additional population pressure that spurred emigration. These changes originated in Western Europe and progressively spread eastward as the century advanced.
Agricultural depression alongside industrial depression formed strong push factors for immigrants from Britain, Norway and Sweden. In Ireland, the root cause lay in agricultural mismanagement by absentee landlords, perpetuating unemployment and poverty.
German immigrants arrived in larger numbers than any other ethnic group during most years between 1854 and 1894, driven by both agricultural and industrial upheaval.
Religious Persecution as a Push Factor
For Russian Jews, migration stemmed as much from political and religious persecution as from economic hardship. Anti-Semitic riots erupted in southern and western Russia following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II in 1881. The number of Jewish immigrants to America rose dramatically from 5,000 in 1880 to 90,000 in 1900, representing the greatest exodus from Russia during this period.
Anti-Semitism refers to hostility towards or discrimination against Jews as a religious group or race.
Pull factors
Prospective immigrants encountered extensive promotional material in guidebooks, pamphlets and newspapers. Published sources described American journeys by land and sea, calculated costs, and reported wage levels, emphasising economic opportunity alongside political equality and religious tolerance.
Steamship companies played a major role in advertising immigration to the USA. However, states and railroads bore an even greater responsibility for stimulating immigration. State bureaus concentrated promotional efforts on Britain, Germany and Scandinavia. Their pamphlets and newspaper advertisements emphasised future prospects rather than current conditions.
Railroad Promotion Strategies
Railroad companies possessed vast land tracts to dispose of and required transport passengers to make their lines profitable. Their promotional efforts were extensive and sophisticated:
- The Kansas Pacific, Santa Fe and Wisconsin Central all distributed promotional pamphlets
- The Santa Fe appointed a European agent who visited Russia in 1875 to promote immigration
- Railroad inducements included:
- Reduced fares by sea and land
- Loans at low interest rates
- Classes in farming
- Funding for church and school construction
- Minnesota claimed in 1878 it could support five million people
Historians debate whether railroads constituted the most important promotional agencies, given their extensive landholdings and transport capacity.
Chinese and Japanese immigration
Like European immigrants, Chinese arrivals were primarily motivated by economic factors. The Taiping Rebellion beginning in 1848 devastated south-east China. High wages on the railroads enticed men from Guangdong province. Chinese workers comprised an overwhelming majority of labourers who laid the Central Pacific railroad track through the Sierra Nevada mountains during the 1860s. The 1870 census recorded 63,000 Chinese men (with few women) throughout the entire US population. This number grew to 106,000 by the 1880s.
Japanese immigration began in 1885 after the emperor revoked an emigration ban. Japan's population growth exceeded that of any Western country. During the 1880s and 1890s, most Japanese immigrants travelled to Hawaii to work on American sugar plantations as contract labourers.
Economic impact of immigration
Without mass immigration, the USA would not have developed industrially at the rate it achieved. By 1890, 56 per cent of the labour force in manufacturing and mechanical industries was of foreign birth or foreign parentage. Immigrants themselves selected the Statue of Liberty on Staten Island in New York harbour as a symbol of welcome and promise. The gigantic statue, unveiled before President Cleveland on 28 October 1886, was a gift from France.
Immigration as an Economic Necessity
Immigration provided the workforce essential for America's rapid industrial expansion during this period. The availability of cheap immigrant labour enabled factories, mines and railroads to operate at the scale necessary for economic growth. Without this massive influx of workers, American industrialisation would have proceeded at a much slower pace.
Reactions to immigration
Economic anxiety fueled ethnic prejudice. Immigrants came to be regarded not as a source of strength but as a drain on American resources. This proved especially true in the East, where most immigrants arrived and where the social system operated harshly and rapidly.
Labour unions, led by Samuel Gompers and the American Federation of Labor, strongly opposed Chinese labour presence because of competition for jobs. Congress responded by banning further Chinese immigration through the Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882. The Act prohibited Chinese labourers from entering the United States, though some students and businessmen gained admission on a temporary basis.
Anti-Semitism
Systematic Discrimination Against Jewish Immigrants
No immigrant group received as much abuse as Jews. Anti-Semitism was not new to the USA, as Jews had been barred from voting until the mid-nineteenth century. Social ostracism continued, with hotels, clubs and colleges turning Jews away. Some establishments even displayed signs stating "No Jews or dogs admitted here".
The Joseph Seligman Incident (1877)
The most notable example of anti-Semitic discrimination occurred when Jewish banker Joseph Seligman was excluded from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, in 1877. This highly publicized incident marked a turning point, after which hotels and clubs across the country began systematically excluding Jewish patrons.
Even English immigrants faced criticism. The New York Herald Tribune wrote in 1879 that English workmen "must change their habits if they are to make good in the United States". During the 1880s, magazines such as Harper's and Atlantic Monthly included numerous ethnic jokes, all prejudiced against newcomers. The Scots were depicted as mean and the Irish as ugly, brawling drunkards. Commentary assumed all Italians were involved in organised crime.
Nativism
Immigration during these years increasingly divided US society. A great gulf opened between a predominantly native plutocracy (wealthy, white Americans who controlled government) and a predominantly foreign working class. The USA was becoming two nations separated by language and religion, residence and occupation.
Nativism refers to the policy of protecting the interests of native-born or established inhabitants against immigrants. The new tide of immigration depressed wages whilst also closing the frontier and settling available western land, sealing off the traditional escape route for discontented easterners. Americans began losing confidence in the process of immigration and integration. The outcome was nativism.
Three Sources of Nativist Sentiment
Nativist agitation was the work of three distinct groups:
- Unions that regarded unskilled immigrants as a threat to organised labour
- Social reformers who believed the influx of immigrants exacerbated the problems of cities
- Protestant conservatives who dreaded the supposed threat to Nordic (Caucasian race characteristics including tall stature, long head, light skin and hair, blue eyes, originating in Scandinavia) supremacy
Skilled workers had most to fear from immigration. After skilled Belgian and British glass workers were brought under contract to work for lower wages in Baltimore and Kent, Ohio, two unions of glass workers amalgamated. The new union, Local Assembly 300, was set up in 1882 and pledged to oppose contract labour. In 1885, Congress passed a bill banning foreign contract labour, although this did not extend to skilled workers needed for new industries.
Protestant extremists joined secret societies pledged to defend the school system against the enrollment of increasing numbers of Catholic school children, many from immigrant families. The most powerful organisation was the American Protective Association, set up in Clinton, Iowa, in 1887 by lawyer Henry F. Bowers.
Key figure: Samuel Gompers
Samuel Gompers was an English immigrant of Dutch-Jewish ancestry who left London in 1863 at the age of thirteen. He spent his adolescence in the cigar-making shops of the Lower East Side of New York, absorbing the political discussions he heard among fellow workers and developing an interest in labour organisation. His prime concern was the status of skilled labour. Under his leadership, the American Federation of Labor attained greater stability than ever before.
The American Federation of Labor
The union that came to play a central role in the labour movement was the American Federation of Labor (AFL), set up by Samuel Gompers in 1885. Less a single union than a federation of semi-independent craft associations, the AFL admitted only skilled white men. Its objectives were comparatively limited; the federation focused only on achieving higher wages and shorter workdays for its members, forsaking the larger social objectives that had motivated the Knights of Labor.
AFL Structure and Strategy
The AFL learned from the discontent provoked by the Knights and determined to avoid its mistakes. Key features included:
- Recognition of the autonomy of each trade within the federation
- No interference by the executive council in internal affairs of member unions
- A tax levied on member unions to create a strike fund
- Formation of central and state federations to promote labour legislation
- A policy of collective bargaining first, striking only when negotiations failed
Gompers was elected as its first president in 1896 and served in that capacity until his death in 1924. The AFL grew substantially; by 1892 it claimed more than a quarter of a million members.
Gompers and the AFL strongly opposed Chinese immigration because of competition for jobs, reflecting the nativist attitudes of skilled white workers during this period. This demonstrates how even immigrant-led organisations could participate in anti-immigrant sentiment when economic interests were at stake.
Key legislation and events
1877: Joseph Seligman excluded from the Grand Union Hotel in Saratoga, New York, marking a notable example of anti-Semitic discrimination.
1881: Anti-Semitic riots erupted in southern and western Russia following the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, triggering mass Jewish emigration.
1882: Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, prohibiting Chinese labourers from entering the United States. Local Assembly 300 was formed, pledging to oppose contract labour.
1885: Samuel Gompers established the American Federation of Labor. Congress passed a bill banning foreign contract labour, though skilled workers needed for new industries were exempted. Japanese exodus began after the emperor lifted the emigration ban.
1886: The Statue of Liberty was unveiled in New York harbour on 28 October, symbolising welcome to immigrants.
1887: The American Protective Association was founded in Clinton, Iowa, by lawyer Henry F. Bowers, representing Protestant nativist opposition to Catholic immigrants.
Key Points to Remember:
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Between 1877 and 1890, over 5 million immigrants arrived in the USA, primarily from Britain, Ireland, Germany and Scandinavia, driven by both push factors (European economic hardship, persecution) and pull factors (American economic opportunity, railroad and steamship promotions).
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By 1890, 56 per cent of the manufacturing labour force was foreign-born, demonstrating immigration's essential role in American industrial expansion, though this also generated competition for jobs and economic anxiety.
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Chinese immigration faced the strongest opposition, resulting in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, whilst Jews experienced widespread social discrimination including exclusion from hotels and clubs.
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Nativism emerged as a powerful force combining union fears about job competition, social reformers' concerns about urban problems, and Protestant conservatives' anxiety about Catholic immigration, culminating in organisations like the American Protective Association (1887).
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The American Federation of Labor, founded by Samuel Gompers in 1885, represented skilled white workers and opposed Chinese immigration, reflecting how organised labour contributed to anti-immigrant sentiment during this period.