Analyze the causes and effects of the new immigration from southern and eastern Europe, the growth of cities, nativism and the Chinese Exclusion Act, political machines, and the push and pull factors that drove migration (NGSSS SS.912.A.3, Reporting Category 1).

What this topic is asking

Industrial growth pulled millions of people into American cities, and the NGSSS benchmark SS.912.A.3 wants you to analyze who came, why they came, where they settled, and how Americans reacted. This is a core Reporting Category 1 topic that the Florida EOC loves to test with a chart, a map, or a photograph of a tenement or city street. Watch for the geography lens: migration, settlement patterns, and population change.

Old immigration and new immigration

Push and pull factors

For the new immigrants, the push came from rural poverty, crowded land, and persecution (Jewish families fleeing Russian pogroms are a classic example). The pull was the promise of industrial jobs, land in the West, and freedom. The Florida EOC frequently asks you to classify a given condition as a push or a pull factor.

Urbanization and its problems

The new immigrants, along with Americans leaving farms, crowded into rapidly growing cities. Living conditions were often grim: families packed into tenements (cramped, poorly built apartment buildings) with little light, fresh air, or sanitation. Cities struggled with disease, fire, crime, and pollution. At the same time, cities offered jobs, public transportation, and vibrant immigrant communities. Settlement houses such as Hull House, founded by Jane Addams, offered classes, childcare, and aid to help immigrants adjust.

Nativism and the Chinese Exclusion Act

Nativism grew with the new immigration. Workers feared immigrants would take jobs and lower wages; others feared the newcomers' religions and customs. The clearest legal result was the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882), which banned almost all immigration from China, the first US law to exclude a group purely by nationality. Nativism would surge again in the 1920s with strict immigration quotas.

Political machines

In the cities, political machines ran local government through patronage. A machine, led by a boss such as William "Boss" Tweed of Tammany Hall, provided immigrants with jobs, housing, food, and help with officials, exactly the help newcomers most needed. In return, those immigrants gave the machine their votes, keeping the boss in power. Machines delivered real services but were also riddled with corruption, graft, and rigged contracts, which made them a target of later Progressive reformers.

Try this

Q1. Identify the regions of Europe the "old" and "new" immigration came from. [2]

• Cue. Old immigration: northern and western Europe (Britain, Germany, Ireland). New immigration: southern and eastern Europe (Italy, Russia, Poland, Greece).

Q2. Explain how political machines won the loyalty of immigrant voters. [2]

• Cue. They provided practical services (jobs, housing, food, help with officials) to immigrants with few other options, and in return those immigrants voted for the machine's candidates, keeping the boss in power.