Chapter 12 Presis—taken from A History of Women in America
“Immigrant Mothers and Daughters”
By Carol Hymowitz & Michaele Weissman
Chapter 12—taken from A History of Women in America
THESIS OF THE ARTICLE: 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.
SALIENT POINTS OF READING INTEREST:
When epidemics struck, women often nursed entire neighborhoods.
Working at home, women could alternate paid chores with everyday household tasks or do both at once. They would spread out bundles on the kitchen table, and between cooking and cleaning they would sew, press flowers, or roll cigars. They kept their children busy and supervised by putting them to work with them.
Social service agencies, such as United Hebrew Charities and United Charities of Chicago, found the most common reasons for desertion by immigrant husbands to be “another woman”; “immorality of husband or wife or both”; “temperamental incompatibility”; “shiftlessness and drunkenness”; “economic factors like unemployment and financial depression”; “illness”; and “family interference.
In the old country a child who did not obey or respect his parents
By Carol Hymowitz & Michaele Weissman
Chapter 12—taken from A History of Women in America
THESIS OF THE ARTICLE: 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.
SALIENT POINTS OF READING INTEREST:
When epidemics struck, women often nursed entire neighborhoods.
Working at home, women could alternate paid chores with everyday household tasks or do both at once. They would spread out bundles on the kitchen table, and between cooking and cleaning they would sew, press flowers, or roll cigars. They kept their children busy and supervised by putting them to work with them.
Social service agencies, such as United Hebrew Charities and United Charities of Chicago, found the most common reasons for desertion by immigrant husbands to be “another woman”; “immorality of husband or wife or both”; “temperamental incompatibility”; “shiftlessness and drunkenness”; “economic factors like unemployment and financial depression”; “illness”; and “family interference.
In the old country a child who did not obey or respect his parents