Immigrants In The 19th Century

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2. Immigrants came from all over the world to the United States from 1870 to 1900, they aspired to start a new life and live the American dream. However, upon arrival to the United States the American dream they had once longed for was far from their reach. Immigrants came to live in cities because that was were the most opportunities were at, many immigrants remained in the cities that they had originally entered such as New York City. Many of the immigrants lived in small apartments or tenements with multiple other families. The apartments were not only small but often times did not have windows, were unclean and had bad odors. The buildings often times lacked basic amenities like running water and sanitation systems. Their close living conditions in addition to sanitation problems led to an increased spread of disease. Following their arrival to the United States, the …show more content…
Many industries employed children and paid them next to nothing to work. It wasn’t uncommon to see an entire family working together at a factory because that was the only way the could make ends meet. In addition to the poor living and working conditions immigrants were subject to discrimination. Nativists believed that the immigrants were inferior to the natural born Americans. Nativism were nervous about immigrants taking their jobs so they stimulated proposals to restrict immigration, which led to things like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. Immigrants of the time had to fight attempts to restrict immigration. Also, ideas such as the Gospel of Wealth and Social Darwinism spread the impression that poverty was a character flaw and only the fittest, who were the wealthy, would survive. Overall, the immigrants coming to America had dreams to work hard and fulfill their goals, however regardless of their hard work they were treated poorly and were given many barriers to getting ahead. Even though immigration helped shape our country, immigrants much like back then are
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