Analyze the causes and effects of the new immigration and urbanization in the late nineteenth century, including push and pull factors, the growth of cities, nativism, and political machines (Louisiana Student Standards for Social Studies, US History Standard 2: Western Expansion to Progressivism).

What this topic is asking

The factories of the Gilded Age needed workers, and millions of immigrants answered the call, crowding into cities that grew faster than anyone could manage. Standard 2 (Western Expansion to Progressivism) wants you to analyze who came and why (push and pull factors), how cities changed, and the reactions, the rise of nativism and the political machine. LEAP often uses a photograph of a tenement, an immigration chart, or a cartoon about immigrants as the source you must read.

Old immigration and new immigration

The exam expects you to distinguish two waves:

• "Old" immigration (before about 1880) came mostly from northern and western Europe: Britain, Ireland, Germany, and Scandinavia. Many were Protestant and spoke English or assimilated quickly.
• "New" immigration (after about 1880) came mostly from southern and eastern Europe, Italy, Russia (including many Jews fleeing persecution), Poland, and Greece, plus Asian immigrants on the West Coast. They were more often Catholic, Orthodox, or Jewish, and faced sharper hostility.

The growth of cities

Immigrants and rural Americans alike poured into cities, which grew faster than housing, water, or sanitation could keep up. New arrivals crowded into tenements, cramped and often unsafe apartment buildings, and clustered in ethnic neighborhoods where they could speak their language and keep their customs. Cities offered jobs, electricity, streetcars, and skyscrapers, but also disease, fire, crime, and pollution. This urban crisis would become a central target of the Progressive reformers in the next module.

Nativism and exclusion

Not everyone welcomed the newcomers. Nativism, the belief that native-born Americans were superior and that immigrants threatened jobs, wages, and culture, grew with each wave.

Political machines

In the overcrowded cities, political machines filled the gap left by weak government.

A machine such as Tammany Hall in New York, run by a "boss," provided immigrants with jobs, housing, food, and help dealing with the law or with officials. In return, those immigrants gave the machine their votes, keeping the boss in power. The machines were a double-edged thing the exam loves to test: genuinely useful to people with nowhere else to turn, and deeply corrupt, skimming public money through graft and rigged contracts. The reaction against machine corruption helped drive Progressive political reforms (see Progressive presidents and reform).