The Changing Role Of Immigrants In The 19th Century

Between 1850 thru 1920 approximately 25 million immigrants entered into the United States. This wave of immigrants was known as the new wave coming from eastern, central, and southern Europe unlike their earlier predecessors of immigrants who migrated from the British Isles or northern Europe. Many fleed because of crop failure, land and job shortages, rising taxes, and famine. Economic, personal freedoms and religious persecution inspired many immigrants to migrate to the United States with the promise of economic wealth was the prize for the immigrants. The United States was known as the land of opportunity. Not all immigrants who entered the country remained. There were many immigrants who settled for just enough time to earn and save
Between 1910 and 1914, more than 400,000 Italian immigrants left the United States these were usually single men. This caused anger toward those immigrants who lived the American Dream, only to return with American made money to their homelands. During the 19th century, the population in Europe experienced an enormous growth but the job market couldn’t meet the needs of that growth. By the end of the 1800’s major cities like New York and Chicago were comprised of a large percentage of immigrants. When immigrants migrated to New York which was known as the golden door they came by the way of the Castle Garden depot near the tip of Manhattan. In 1892, the federal government opened a new immigration processing center on Ellis Island in the New York harbor. When the immigrants arrived they were poor so they lived in what was called tenements because they were cheap. Tenements were single-family homes carved up into multi-family dwellings or apartment buildings. Each apartment had only three rooms: a living or front room, a kitchen, and a tiny bedroom. Every so often seven or more people lived in each apartment. Not only was the tenement crowded, but there were no bathrooms inside until 1905.
In the mid 19th century the Polish, the Czechs, Germans, and Italians migrated to Cleveland, Oh. The immigrants were drawn to Cleveland because of the work with the rolling steel mills along the Cuyahoga River and the woolen mills. The Czechs, settled in the area surrounding the Cuyahoga Valley now known as Slavic Village, the Polish settled in the area known as Slavic Village, and the Italians settled in an area then called Big Italy around Woodland and East 30th Street. The Czechs are one of the largest and oldest of Cleveland's ethnic groups. These immigrants, made up of Bohemians, Moravians, and Silesians, began arriving in the late 19th century. Early Czechs settled in a section by the waterfront today called the Flats. Later Czech arrivals moved further out from the city where they would be able to purchase land to grow vegetables, settling around Broadway and Fleet Avenue and near West 41st Street and Clark Avenue. The Polish celebrate its heritage each May Day with a parade and each August at the Harvest Festival. St. Stanislaus Church, was founded in 1888, it was an early influence on this community and helped to support new arrivals. Later in the 19th century, the second group of Italians settled in the