Flesh and Blood So Cheap

The history of immigration to the United States is divided into two categories: old and new. Old immigration took place during the pre-independence colonial era and consisted mostly of people from Western and Northern Europe. Most of these people were English speakers and Protestant Christians. The 1880s marked the shift from old to new immigration; people began arriving from places in Eastern and Southern Europe. These immigrants were largely Italian Catholics and Russian Jews.

The Italians immigrating were primarily from southern Italy, which was experiencing widespread poverty and a restrictive landlord/peasant system. Southern Italy was taxed heavily, but little of that money found its way back to the people or infrastructure; instead, the taxes were spent on improvements in northern Italy. Southern Italians were discriminated against by their northern counterparts; they were called “black Italians” in a racist attempt to show their inferiority. In addition to social and economic challenges, there were environmental disasters. Overcutting of forests led to soil infertility, crop failure, and famine. Swamps formed, breeding mosquitos that spread malaria into an epidemic. In 1905, a series of earthquakes led to casualties; a year later, the volcano Mount Vesuvius erupted, killing hundreds and causing over 150,000 residents to flee. In 1908, a tsunami swept through the Strait of Messina, killing 100,000 people and destroying hundreds of villages. These factors led to mass immigration; approximately 4.5 million immigrants traveled to the United States between 1880 and 1921.

Another significant immigrant group were the Russian Jews, who had been segregated and oppressed by the religious hatred of the Eastern Orthodox Russians. Before Russia acquired what is now known as eastern Poland in the late 1700s, Jewish people had been forbidden to enter Russia. With the acquisition of eastern Poland, Russia also acquired its many Jewish citizens. To keep this population segregated, Russia founded a territory called the Pale of Settlement, to which Jews were restricted by threat of imprisonment. A few thousand Jewish merchants and skilled artisans were permitted to live in Russian cities, but by the year 1900, 4.8 million Jews were living in the Pale.

In the Pale, most Jewish people lived in the shtetls, or small villages. They mostly spoke three languages: Hebrew, the language of their home country; Yiddish; and a dialect of German. The Russians severely oppressed the Jews: “[L]aws limiting Jewish rights filled a book of nearly a thousand pages” (17). Moreover, Jews were scapegoated, with government officials encouraging Russians to blame their troubles on the Jewish people. Many Jews, including children and babies, were killed in pogroms, or targeted massacres of Jewish people: “A single month, November 1905, saw no fewer than six hundred pogroms, an average of twenty a day” (18). The United States, with its constitutional guarantee of religious freedom, was an appealing option for many.

Immigrants traveled to America on ships. These trips could last anywhere from six to 17 days at sea. The conditions on the ships were terrible and unsanitary, with as many as 400 people sharing only two toilets, and no bathing facilities. It was a very difficult journey, but immigrants were rewarded at the end by the sight of the Statue of Liberty as their ships entered New York.