An Historical Look at Patterns Between Immigration and Industrialization

Between 1870 and 1900, America made the transformation from an agricultural nation to an almost completely industrial nation. Due to new technology, new companies, and new products, factory work became a huge part of daily life in urban populations, with thousands of workers at each factory in many cases. Because the large corporations that fed America jobs also fed investors stock and turned to banks to do every day business, every part of the economy in America grew very rapidly.

Across the world, there were nations and nations of people suffering in poverty and turning to America for new lives. Whole families and villages migrated to America to escape pogroms, religious persecution, racism, and extreme poverty. Russian Jews, Chinese, Japanese, and Mexican citizens all hoped to come to America to work for a year or more to return to their families and help financially, but many times after staying, they brought their whole families to America instead. By 1900 the number of women immigrants was the same number as male immigrants. Most of these immigrants did not have the best jobs. Japanese laborers worked in farms, Chinese laborers worked on railroads and mines, Mexicans worked on ranches and cotton farms.

These immigrants faced extreme discrimination. The federal government prohibited Chinese immigration in the 1880s, and cities such as Los Angeles banned Mexicans from any other job but building rail lines. Japanese were only allowed to live in parts of town that native Americans didn't want anymore, but were able to make that work for them, and eventually became a huge part of the agricultural force. Even previous immigrants had their own stereotypes against the new immigrants. Though the divisions between Americans started to grow, resulting in discriminated neighborhoods and urban areas, the American Dream was still alive in each citizen, including immigrants.