“The Great Migrations 1880s-1912” (A History of Multicultural America)

“A History of Multicultural America” is a volume in a series comprising 8 total books: “The Great Migrations 1880s-1912” is the book I’m reviewing here. It’s a small 96 page book which covers 20 different categories of late 19th and early 20th century immigrants from Italians, to Baltics, to Japanese, to Slavs, and much more. It’s quite interesting!

“The Great Migrations 1880s-1912” Review

In 1886 the United States dedicated the infamous Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Our Lady of Liberty is one of several Statues of Liberty around the world, the primary sister to ours residing in Paris, France. The Statue of Liberty is in the same vicinity as Ellis Island and Castle Garden.

According to author William Loren Katz in his introduction: “In the 1880s more people landed on American soil than the thirty years before the Civil War” (p.6). Totals during the period of 1880 and 1912 were around 22 million people! So why were they all rushing to come here?

It’s called the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION. As companies built large-scale mines, skyscrapers, railroads, and the like, other businesses on the east coast of the United States were set up to support this huge rise in industry and workers were needed to fill positions by the droves. Those droves during the 1880s and early 1900s mostly came from Eastern and Southern Europe.

Unlike the prior wave of Northern and Western European immigrants looking to settle on wide acreage of land ‘out west,’ these new waves of families were forced into an urban existence. Many people had no idea what they were in for and the impending problem was that they were about to enter into an all-out cultural clash!

Most of these people were themselves from small farms and villages and the toll and shock of living in crowded urban environments did not often play out well. Raised in isolated, homogeneous countries, these newly-arrived men and women were quickly forced to accept a new social reality.

The impetus to travel out of their home countries ran both ways. Not only did the US offer wages that could not be found at home, but home for many was war-torn and poverty-stricken. Things were not going to get any better for many Europeans at the onset of WWI either.

Although Germans and Italians seem to have far outstretched every other immigration group during this period, smaller enclaves of Lithuanians, Albanians, Greeks, Jews, Slovaks, and later settlers from Asia and India dotted the urban landscape of the north Atlantic seaboard all the way to Chicago.

Even though this book talks about the separate struggles of each immigration group, there are stories of hope and success as well. Every country brought different traditions, culture, and world view; they also brought varying linguistic attitudes as well as food!

“The Great Migrations 1880s-1912” is a fascinating look at the origins and individual contributions of the 20 or so different cultural perspectives that became the heart of cities like New York, New Jersey, Chicago, and even New Haven.

One of the most important aspects of this book is its discussion of the rise of labor unions as a result of the treatment of many of these men, women, and children who were forced to work in utterly dire conditions. Quite simply, this book documents the plight of our ancestors.

SOURCE:

• Katz, William Loren. 1993. “A History of Multicultural America – The Great Migrations 1880s-1912.” Austin: RSVP.
• ISBN-13: 978-0811429153
• Amazon Link.