John Gruchacz

Dr. Elaine Turney

Emergence of Modern America
Families Enter America

Immigration during the Gilded Age was very prominent in not only helping
this country to grow, but also to add to the diversity that this country always has
been viewed with. Immigrants during this time period were beginning to be viewed
as a problem more than anything else, but people did not really understand that
this country was mostly built by immigrants. The West would have never had a
railroad if it was not for the Chinese immigrants who came over here and built a
vast majority of the railroads out West. People who immigrated in to the United
States during this time were met with a lot of discrimination just because they were
not from the United States. In the essay, Families Enter America, John Bodnar
explains that families that were migrating from other parts of the world to the
United States were doing so in a very thought out, calculated manner. Families were
not just waking up one morning and deciding to move to the United States, this was
a very thought out process in which both the people moving from their home
country, to their new country, were always in close contact with other members of
their home community that had moved abroad in search of better opportunities, but
they were almost always met with discrimination. Discrimination lead to immigrants
moving in to ethnic communities and the thought by many Americans that
immigrants would not assimilate in to society, and that they would become a threat
to the American Dream.

Bodnar goes in to great depth when talking about many different European
citizens who go through a process when they are going to emigrate from their
homeland to a new land. Bodnars thesis is that the process in which people where
immigrating to this country came from familiar patterns cultivated over years
dealing with vagaries of economic systems, social relationships, and human
desires. He talks about how families, friends, and associates area always in close
contact with each other regarding information on work and other opportunities.
Bodnar talks about how each move was very calculated, and had a lot of time put in
for information. These moves wouldnt be a random act, people would not just wake
up one morning and decide to move. Bodnar also goes very in to depth about the
economics behind the family. It is not like people from Europe didnt want to come
to the United States, because that is not the case at all. Many families wanted to
immigrate to the United States because they know that it was the land of
opportunity, and it was going through an industrial boom. Bodnar writes how people
who immigrated in to this country came mostly by being recruited by people who
were already working here.
Immigrants, while being in constant contact with friends, family, and
associates, also were being sometimes recruited to come work. Labor agents were
common during this time to direct immigrants to certain cities for work and in return
they received a small fee for everyone recruited. Many of these individuals had the
same heritage and language which allowed a large number on individuals to be
recruited by one particular recruiter. This makes it sound like the recruiter is a part
of the process for a long time, but in reality they were only a part of it for a short
period of time, which is mostly the time that they are coming to the United States.
Immigrants who came to the United States during the Gilded Age were always met

with a lot of discrimination. Immigrants were forced to live in very low income
housing, normally in very small apartments or shantys that would have to house
many more people than they were supposed to. There were many pieces of
legislature that were passed during this time to try and limit the number of people
who were emigrating in to the United States, and the citizens were not very happy
that these people were moving in either.
During this time, immigrants did have to live in very poor housing conditions.
During research, there are images upon images of there being families or groups of
people from six people on up, that were in a one room apartment or shack. The
government did not step in a help out with this problem until the 1910s where they
started passing building code acts to help reduce the amount of people living in one
area, and to help with sanitation issues that arouse from all these people living in
one area. It was also very common for immigrants to turn within their own
communities when being face with a lot of discrimination. In Fink chapter 5, there is
a newspaper article that was written to the Jewish Daily talking about a lot of
discrimination that a family was facing and what they should do. Immigrants would
often turn to other immigrants within their community to see how they would deal
with discrimination and what potential solutions and advice that they could offer to
them in return.
Discrimination came from everywhere whether it was direct or indirect. Teddy
Roosevelt gave a speech to the National Congress of Mothers on March 13, 1905 on
American motherhood. In the speech, Roosevelt basically said that American born
mothers were not having enough children and he encouraged them to start having
more children to help keep the American population higher than that of the
immigrant population. Roosevelt mentions that the American life is made

unpleasantly evident by the statistics as to the dwindling families in some

localities. Basically he is saying that in some areas the immigrant population is
becoming larger than the local population which is not good for the American
dream, and this is coming from the President of the United States. Discrimination
was also evident in cartoon drawings in the papers. There was a published cartoon
add in which depicts two Chinese immigrants approaching a white man from behind
with the intent of beheading him, their swords were labeled with chop sticks, and
cheap labor. The white man is shown with a halo over his head indicating that he
is an angel and has done nothing wrong. There is obvious racism in the photo
because the label on one of the swords is chop sticks, but this just shows that
people were viewing immigrants as a very low class of people, and that did not
really matter what race they were if they were not American.
From the research gathered, the author was indeed correct that immigrants
move to the United States was indeed calculated and sometimes entire families
were recruited to come work in the United States. Most of the time these moves
were based on communication with a family, friend, or associate who lived in the
United States at the time. However, with these moves came discrimination,
sometimes to the extreme point, which forced many of these immigrants to live in
ethnic communities, which brought even more discrimination upon them. American
citizens believed that these immigrants would not assimilate in to society, and that
they threatened the American Dream.