Preview

The Role Of Immigration And The Industrial Revolution In The Twentieth Century

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
692 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
The Role Of Immigration And The Industrial Revolution In The Twentieth Century
Immigration and the Industrial Revolution in the Twentieth Century
The influx of immigrants in the late nineteen hundreds was the factor most directly responsible for the Industrial Revolution in the United States at the turn of the century. As the poor immigrants of Europe flooded America, they quickly needed jobs and transportation. To supply these to needy immigrants, more and more factories were needed, leading to the rise of industrialism in America.
Following the Civil War, the United States saw rapid growth in industrial manufacturing. With the readily available presence of Southern cotton, Northern textile mills became widely occurrent, however, these mills required a workforce mainly found not in American citizens but recent immigrants (The Rise…).
…show more content…
These Irish immigrants came to America following the Irish Potato Famine, hoping for a better life than theirs back in Ireland. However, since most Irish immigrants were poor, the area that they entered upon entering the United States was typically where they ended up living; this was the Northern East Coast (Bryant). As more and more poor immigrants migrated to America, Northern cities began to become hubs of culture with many factions, also requiring industrial enhancement to provide for this accelerated growth in city population (City…). Even though these neighborhoods gave new immigrants a chance to feel at home, they still needed to find jobs.
Due to the readily available workforce of immigrants in cities and the demand for laborers in factories, many immigrants began to work in nearby urban mills and factories. However, the German immigrants at the time tended to be wealthier than the Irish and many moved inland to states such as Pennsylvania in hopes of finding farmland (Bryant). Nonetheless, transportation to the inland parts of the country was still difficult to find

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Throughout the entirety of the history of our nation, there have been a multitude of factors that widely contributed to the success of America. Many have argued that the Frontier was the vital element, while ours may argue that immigration was the key to success. Immigration in the 19th century was imperative as immigrants from Germany, England, and Ireland became prevalent in our country. The Frontier was a thesis based on the opinions of Frederick Jackson Turner in the 1890s, who stated that the biased idea of expansion westward would provide opportunities to citizens. During the 1800s, immigration was the preeminent factor of America’s success that shaped the overall way we live today due to the influence on industrial growth and the impact…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    -1830-1860, Germans immigrated to America from hardships. Germans owned a lot, were more educated than Americans, and didn’t like slavery.…

    • 657 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    1860 Dbq Analysis

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages

    In 1860, the United States was primarily a land that contained small towns and farms. At the time, Americans had discovered that living on farms were more beneficial than factories, since the amount of land was immense, affordable, and labor was high-priced due to its insufficiency. However, in a matter of forty years, the nation had made an evolution and became the greatest industrial country in the world. Ever since the rapid increase production of raw materials, farm laborers had departed to work in factories and our population immensely developed from six million to over thirty million. Between the years from 1860 through 1900, many factors supported to promote the growth of America’s industry.…

    • 629 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Ghost of Duffy's Cut

    • 2153 Words
    • 9 Pages

    There were several factors that caused an influx of Irish immigrants to migrate to America. Some of these factors include poverty, and unemployment. For example, “Most of them came because of civil unrest, severe unemployment or almost inconceivable hardships at home,” (Irish and German Immigration). The Irish immigrants believed that coming to America would offer an escape of the poor living conditions and the harsh reality of being unable to care for oneself or family. The general hope was that America would offer peace, stability, job opportunities, and an overall better future. For instance, it is recorded that, “From 1820 to 1870, over seven and a half million immigrants came to the United States — more than the entire population of the country in 1810,” (Irish and German Immigration).…

    • 2153 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    There are lots of immigrants coming to the United States from all over the world between 1815 and 1920. United States becomes the land of emerging economy. The Italian, Greeks and Chinese saw the opportunity of a better life, planning to make enough money and return home and buy some land. But many immigrants like Irish and Jewish immigrants had no intention of returning to their homelands. The Jews of Eastern Europe were often escaping persecution and did not plan on returning. The Irish might have been in the same position, except they were escaping poverty and English rule.…

    • 1204 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Apush

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The new world experienced high immigration rates of German and Irish decent during the 1830’s to 1860’s. Many comparable hardships were given to them which caused them to leave it all behind to hopefully find a future in the prosperous America. Both of these German and Irish races moved to America because they were forced to leave under harsh times and for economic prosperity.…

    • 423 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    The Irish Impact on the American Economy The Great Famine of the mid 19th century caused a mass exodus of Irish immigrants to the United States. According to Kevin Kenny, roughly 2 million immigrants traveled to the Americas within 10 years. This massive influx of immigrants had various sociopolitical effects, but arguably the largest impact was on the American economy, which was prime for the industrial revolution. Manifest Destiny was a major domestic policy at the time, where the United States was looking to expand their borders westward to the pacific, and Irish workers were ready to take on that challenge.…

    • 1777 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    It is not a surprise that immigrants were discriminated for their different cultures. But, immigrants were mostly discriminated due to their poor class. During their time in America most immigrants were not taken seriously. This is shown when Jurguis was on trial for beating Connor…

    • 259 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Better Essays

    In the nineteenth century a series of innovations in transportation and economic expansion transformed our economy from an agricultural standpoint to one now mainly focused on new methods of production and having an endless commercial ambition. Previously most american families would produce what they needed at home for subsistence and sold anything left over to local stores but, now our country has slowly shifted to an industrial economy where a bountiful of economic opportunities for the “common man” has emerged due to western expansion and the emergence of Northern trade through new ways of transportation. Farmers began to grow for profit and not self sufficiency and many factories and cities began to flourish.…

    • 1199 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Only among the Irish and Scandinavian immigrants were there numbers of young, single women who settled in America on their own. While some of the early arrivals, especially Scandinavian and German families, were able to fulfill their dreams, by the end of the 1800s, as the Western frontier filled and the price of land rose, new immigrants discovered that they had come too late or were too poor to buy farms. The new immigrants changed the landscape of the United States. 2 Millions of immigrants turned such towns as Milwaukee, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo into cities, and such cities as New York, Chicago, and Boston into huge urban centers. Each shipload of immigrants provided factory owners with a new supply of workers. Immigrant women did not work in heavy industry , the mines, or construction, but like immigrant men they became part of the lowest class of industrial labor. The gap between immigrant mothers and their daughters was especially acute.…

    • 430 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the essay, Immigration and MIgration, author Hasia Diner discusses the effect of immigrants on the United States during the late nineteenth century, especially with regard to their effect on industrialism. The late 1800s was a time of immense industrialization and the outbreak of monopolies controlled by robber barons like Andrew Carnegie, JP Morgan, and John D. Rockefeller. Diner argues that although these individuals controlled the industry, immigrants played an immense role in industrialization in that they provided the huge labor force which was required to run factories. Even with the development of technology which could help expedite the process of producing goods, a labor force was still required to run the machines. Immigrants during this era were flowing in by the millions from every corner of the globe. Diner…

    • 444 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    In the late nineteenth century, the need for factory labor increased and so did the industrial workforce. Immigration was a big part of expansion. The new immigrants were coming to America to get away from troubles in their homelands…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Industrial Revolution itself refers to affects from social, cultural and economic conditions. Throughout the years, changes have taken place in the home production to machine and factory and now modern technology. The Industrial Revolution (1820-1870) was of great importance to the economic development of the United States. In the late 18th century, Britain and Europe began the first Industrial Revolution. After sometime, the development centralized on the United States and Germany.…

    • 478 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Immigration was a huge part of the industrial revolution, some migrated legal, some illegal. Either way, many immigrants came to the United States searching for a dream, the American dream to be precise. This leads to the question; Why did people immigrate to America? There can be many answers to this question, but some of the most important answers are: political, others economic, while yet others religious, whatever the case was, the United States became a mix of different cultures. However, the main reason for immigration was because of the “Industrial Revolution” Industrial Revolution is basically the changes in industry from the 18th century to the 19th century that started in Britain and then other Western European countries and spread to the Unites States.…

    • 813 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    By 1850 43% of the immigrants that lived in America were Irish. 90% of the Irish living in America still lived in cities, and the other 10 percent lived in the country mostly on farms. The Irish stayed the closest of all the immigrants. One reason was to try to stay close like they were in Ireland, and another was because the Irish were the poorest, and wanted to stay close to help each other out.…

    • 441 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays