Large, steam-powered ships took to the seas after 1880, replacing the older, slower sailing
ships, which meant it was suddenly much faster - and cheaper - to cross the ocean, making
the dream of a journey to America more accessible to many around the world.
“Processed and ticketed, they waited for their ship.
They boarded in many parts of Europe and in many kinds of vessels.
Most to New York and some to other ports.
But they had one thing in common—they were traveling steerage, and the steamship companies
understood the profit in numbers.”
[Chart] Before long, millions of immigrants were arriving
on America’s shores.
They passed through immigration processing stations like Ellis Island in New York and
Angel Island in San Francisco Bay.
This wave was much more diverse than before.
Coming mainly from Southern Europe, it was led by Italians, Poles, Greeks, Swedes, Norwegians,
Hungarians, Jews, Lebanese, and Syrians.
“It was as if god’s great promise had been fulfilled.
I’m going into a free land.
I don’t think I ever can explain the feeling I had that time.
It’s not my native land, but it means more to me than my native land—it means more
to me than my native land…Any country on earth this never happen.
And become a human being again--it’s a miracle...everybody had hopes.
And one thing I was sure, and thousands like me: that the degradation, and the abuse, and
the piration that we had in Europe, we wouldn’t have here.”
This group was young, most were under 30 years old, mainly because an entire generation of
the children of farmers and factory workers in Europe and the Russian empire couldn’t
find work because the owners of the farms and factories preferred to have an efficient
machine - that they didn’t have to pay - do the work instead of a human being.
Well, this was fine by America, whose steel, coal, automobile, textile, and garment production
industries were booming.
It happily took in this pool of eager, hard workers and put them to work in its growing
industrial cities.
“As mills and factories sprouted across the land, cities grew up around them.
In turn, the cities beckoned to workers by the millions from the American countryside
and from overseas to fuel the burgeoning industrialization.
What was once a rural nation was rapidly becoming an urban state.
From 1860 to 1910, the urban population grew from over 6 million to over 44 million.”
The United States also took full advantage of Europe’s paralyzation during the first
World War.
With millions dying in the midst of the bloodiest struggle the European continent had ever seen,
every country there had to completely focus its industries on producing all the supplies
- the guns, the uniforms, the tanks, the boats, the bullets - all the stuff needed to carry
on and win the fight.
But with many of its working-aged men on the front lines, in hospitals or at home after
horrific injuries - or dead - the factories of Europe couldn’t meet all the demand,
so US factories made up for the shortfall in production.
Before long, the United States had leapt to the front ranks of the world’s economic
giants.
And when the Americans entered the conflict themselves in 1917, US industry was now tasked
with supplying its own soldiers too.
It was during this 50-year immigration wave, from about 1870-1920, when many well-off,
white, native-born Americans began to consider mass immigration a danger to the health and
security of the country.
They started actively organizing to exert political power to slow it down.
The first immigration law in American history was known as the Asian Exclusion Act.
It was passed in 1875 and - you guessed it - outlawed Asians, specifically Asian contract
laborers, from stepping foot on American soil, plus any other people considered convicts
in their own countries.
In 1921, Congress pushed through a law that marked a turning-point in American immigration
policy--a law that passed the Senate 78-1.
The Emergency Quota Act set strict limits on the amount of immigrants who would be allowed
into the country each year.
It was very effective.
The number of new immigrants let in fell from over 800,000 in 1920 to just over 300,000
admitted in 1921.
[CHART] If the pace of immigration had been like a
raging river, this law acted like a dam.
But that drop off in the flow of persons into America still didn’t satisfy the anti-immigration
crowd who, just three years later in 1924, forced congress to tighten the quota even
more, established the border patrol, and stated that any undocumented immigrants who entered
the country were subject to deportation.
It’s during this time that the definition of “illegal alien” was born, a term that
would be used to stigmatize the next group the anti-immigration community’s crosshairs
became fixed on: latin-american migrants living and working in the US Southwest.
Thank you for watching this fourth part of our examination of America’s history of
immigration.
Click the screen to watch part five, or start with part one, you can also watch our documentary
on the 10 most incredible infrastructure megaprojects under construction throughout the world, or
our most recent video.
For TDC, I’m Bryce Plank.
The other half of our team is Brendan Plank, the editor of these videos.