Italian And Slavic Immigrants Without Industrial Skills example essay topic

An outburst in growth of America's big city population, places of 100,000 people or more jumped from about 6 million to 14 million between 1880 and 1900, cities had become a world of newcomers (551). America evolved into a land of factories, corporate enterprise, and industrial worker and, the surge in immigration supplied their workers. In the latter half of the 19th century, continued industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force. The country's transformation from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation attracted immigrants worldwide. As free land and free labor disappeared and as capitalists dominated the economy, dramatic social, political, and economic tensions were created.

Religion, labor, and race relations were questioned; populist and progressive thoughts were developed; social Darwinism and nativism movements were launched. The influx of immigrants created availability for cheap labor, which in turn led to corrupt business practices, urban political machines, and 'white slavery'. To curtail these 'evils' present in society, progressivism was developed. The goals of progressivism were simple: to decrease poverty levels, to establish local charities, to fight for social justice, and to bring back good government practices. Between 1870 and 1890, in just 20 years, the population increased from 40 million to 60 million.

Part of this increase was due to the high birth rate, but a significant portion of the increase was due to immigration. A handful of capitalists and entrepreneurs saw profit from heavy industrialization. However, the success of their companies resided in the availability of a working class. Immigrants to the United States, willing to do anything to set a foothold in the nation, accepted cheap labor as employment. Large corporations used this to their advantage. Profit oriented leaders did little to make suitable working conditions.

With the aid of Muckrakers, journalists who exposed the underside of American life, the nation began to understand the 'evils' of industrialization (599). More and more did Americans escalate their concern for reforms. The reformists promoting the ideals of Progressivism were moralists and championed the ideals of human rights. Progressivism embraced a widespread, many-sided effort after 1900 to build a better society (598). Some of the reforms include the New York State Factory Commission developing a remarkable program of labor reform: 56 laws dealing with fire hazards, unsafe machines, industrial homework, and wages and hours for women and children (608). Likewise, the government began to play an active role as there was a burst of enthusiasm for scientific investigation.

Statistical studies by the federal government of immigration, child labor, and economic practices; social research by privately funded foundations delving into industrial conditions; vice commissions in many cities looking in prostitution, gambling, and other moral ills of an urban society (598). Not only did a big portion of the urban working class experience unsuitable working conditions, but their pay and skill level was often not enough to promote them out of industrial employment. Employees found themselves trapped with employers and earning low wages, with many hovering in the poverty range. Reform was necessary to help the poor. Now, with the strife-torn 1890's behind them, reform became an absorbing concern of many Americans (597). As the nation came to grips with what mechanization had done to the labor force, the progressivists took an active approach to correct problems they encountered.

They began a tax on corporations (612). Roosevelt was troubled by the threat posed by big businesses to competitive markets (615) and showed disdain for those who sought profit by betraying the public (613). They aimed to strip power of the employers and sought to advance the undermined working class in their work environment and conditions. In such occurrences, liability rules, based on common law, so heavily favored employers that victims of industrial accidents rarely got more than token compensation (611). With success, the progressivists created a reform that anyone injured by monopoly or illegal restraint of trade could sue for damages (615). With the continued success in progressivism, on a larger scope, political and social advances were made enabling citizens to have issues placed on ballots and a recall empowered them to remove officeholders who had lost the public's confidence (605).

As a result, through the advances and reforms made by Progressivism, immigrants of the labor intensive working class would no longer be subjugated to the same harsh working conditions. However, there still was a high demand for jobs as the immigration rate steadily grew, leaving not enough to go around. The constant outpour of immigrants were then left to compete with each other along with blacks for these low wage earning jobs. The United States population was swelled by immigration, jumping from 40 million in 1870 to over 60 million in 1890, as the lack of national borders in the US market impeded the flow of goods (511). The latter half of the nineteenth century, had seen a drastic economic change affecting the working people's wages (514). As the rural population refused to work in factories, the United States could not rely primarily on its own rural population for a supply of workers, except for the South.

There a low-wage industrial sector emerged after Reconstruction as the south tried to compete with the north (515). In pursuit to find work, modest numbers of blacks did migrate out of the South, settling in industrial cities where work was available, but not for them. Blacks would soon be juxtaposed in competition over wages with the equally eager newly immigrant workers. Employers turned black applicants away, because immigrant workers already supplied companies with as much cheap labor as they needed (516). Blacks had only seen the beginning of what would be an eventual takeover of low-wage earning jobs by the increasing growth of immigrants. As peasant economies began to fail all throughout Europe, Europe's industrial districts sent many seasoned workers who were lured by higher American wages (516).

In even more competition with African Americans, the ethnic immigrants seemed to arrive with skills of their own, putting blacks at another disadvantage. Ethnic origin largely determined the work the immigrants took in America. Seeking to use skills they already had, the Welsh labored as tin-plate workers, the English as miners, the Germans as machinists, the Belgians as glass workers, and Scandinavians as seamen on Great Lakes boats. Increasingly, as mechanization advanced, the demand for ordinary labor skyrocketed. The sources of immigration began to shift, and by the early twentieth century arrivals from southern and Eastern Europe far outstripped immigrants form Western Europe. Italian and Slavic immigrants without industrial skills flooded into American factories.

As more and more immigrants piled into the ever growing ports of the US, heavy, low-paid labor became the domain of the recent immigrants (517). As eager to find work as African Americans, the immigrants took the worst jobs and were always available when they were wanted. For the new industrial order, they made an ideal labor supply (519). Still, African American migration continued to pour into the northern cities from the rural south. The increase in black population of New York made it only second to Washington, D.C., as a black urban center. Not only were African Americans not seen as skillful as their immigrant counterparts but they endured prejudices as well.

Race prejudice in the industrial cities cut down job opportunities for African Americans. Two-thirds of blacks in 1910 worked as domestics and day laborers, with little hope of moving up the job ladder. In the face of pervasive discrimination, urban blacks built their own communities (552). Thus, the influx in immigration that were more than willing to accept menial wages were in direct competition with blacks of the south in the growing industrial cities, causing economic tension amongst those on the lower rungs of the social ladder. Immigrants suffered economic constraints as they were forced to squander over whatever remainder jobs were offered, likewise, they, too, would endure social endeavors as well. Relative to the ideas of the Gilded Age, many Americans firmly believed in individualism, the idea that within oneself one has the power to create his or her own future.

Social Darwinism, another powerful idea of the era, reinforced individualism and suggested that only the fittest people within a society would survive. Drawing on Darwin, the British philosopher Herbert Spencer spun out of elaborate analysis of how human society had evolved through competition and "survival of the fittest". ". And who are the fittest?

"The millionaires, regarded as the naturally selected agents of society. They get high wages and live in luxury, but the bargain is a good one for society (572)". As justification for their forceful business practices Industrialists embraced Social Darwinism. The hundred largest companies controlled roughly a third of the nation's total productive capacity. The day of small manufacturers had not passed. But the dominant form of industrial organization had become, and would long remain, large-scale enterprise (514).

The economy was growing at an unsurpassable pace. Industrialists went through such lengths to find a manageable cheap working labor force. Such means as the family system of mill labor developed, with a labor force that was half female and very young. By the 1880's a quarter of all southern textile workers were under fifteen years of age (515). Soon after, as mechanization advanced, the demand for ordinary labor skyrocketed (517). Industrialists were now in search for a cheaper labor force to exploit.

An ideal supply of labor for the industrialists, immigrants willingly accepted the worst jobs (519). Immigrants as they intensified the growth in the industrial revolution, sparked the greed in industrialists, who then promoted social Darwinism to justify these means of exploitation. Although, immigrants were not the only workers to endure such horrid working conditions; as stated by a low-waged earner, "Corporations manage to get men, at starvation wages, and put them on a hack, and put a livery on them with a gold band and brass buttons, to show that they are slaves, I beg pardon; there are no slaves in this country now, to show that they are merely servants (525) ". As working conditions did not alleviate, workers organized and formed labor unions, fighting for causes such as the eight-hour workday. Fighting for different reasons, the Knights claimed more leisure was desirable because workers had duties "to perform as American citizens and members of society". However, Trade unionists took a more hard-boiled view: the eight-hour day would spread the available jobs among more workers, protect them against overwork, and give them an easier life (527)".

At times successful and at times met with attrition, as long as their was a continual supply of immigrants working conditions for the most part remained stagnant and Social Darwinism prevailed, as long as there was a constant supply, the immigrants. In the Gilded Age native-born, conflicts were often centered on the question of growing racial and ethnic pluralism. Another belief evoked by the increase in immigration into America was nativism. Within forty years, the nation had witnessed a dramatic change in the amount of Jews and Catholics residing in America. Many Protestants withdrew in horror when confronted with a continuing influx of Catholic immigrants from Ireland and southern and Eastern Europe.

Protestant Americans continued to struggle with immigrants, especially Catholic, both over matters of religion and culture. By the 1850's native-born Protestant and their distaste for immigration and Catholicism had turned to the American Party's (or Know-Nothings') nativism. Holding the ideals that mainstream society could not absorb their large numbers and foreign customs. This sentiment, termed nativism, was widely shared. Nativist animosity everywhere fueled a new drive against immigration (709). Soon immigrants were blamed for more than just religious disagreement.

Nativist had plagued up the supposed association of the immigrants with radicalism and labor unrest, charging the southern and eastern European Catholics and Jews as incapable of becoming true Americans. Acts were crated privileging older immigrant groups whose "national origins" were northern and western European at the expense of more recent southern and eastern Europeans (709). As extreme forms of nativism expanded, in the 1920 there was a revival of the Ku Klux Klan, an organization of racist group of southerners; "Native, white Protestant supremacy", they protested (712). Thus, Social Darwinism and Nativism were beliefs promoted during the latter half of the nineteenth century, in response to the continual growth in immigration. Social Darwinism as one of the many popular ideas at the time, along with the Gilded Age and Individualism, prevailed as justification for successful industrialists to continue aggressive business acts.

These forceful business acts by powerful industrialists would continue as long as the industrial sector pervaded, in turn, the industry would continue to grow as long as their was a consistent supply of cheap labor, hence the influx of immigration by increasing industrial activity evoked Social Darwinism. With the startling growth of immigration, in what seemed like overnight, immigrants were met with hostility as they were the target of religious differences as well as labor unrest, the promoted sentiment was termed, nativism. As the continuation of industrialization and urbanization sparked an increasing demand for a larger and cheaper labor force; an influx in immigrants from all over Europe, migrated in pursuit of higher wages. As the industrial revolution progressed, the country evolved from a rural agricultural society into an urban industrial nation. Capitalists now dominated the economy, sparking dramatic social, political, and economic tensions for immigrants. Although, the progressivism movement assisted immigrants by alleviating work conditions, immigrants were still left to face social and economic tension as they became the new competition for low wage earners and were ostracized for religious differences.