Page 337 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Mass immigration begins
13.1 The incentive to mechanize northern industry and agriculture came in part from a

shortage of cheap labor. Compared to the industrializing nations of Europe, the econ-
omy of the United States in the early nineteenth century was labor-scarce. Since it was
13.2 difficult to attract able-bodied men to work for low wages in factories or on farms,
women and children were used extensively in the early textile mills, and commercial
farmers had to rely on the labor of their family members. Labor-saving machinery
eased but did not solve the labor shortage. Factories required more operatives. Railroad
builders needed construction gangs. The growth of industrial work attracted many
European immigrants during the two decades before the Civil War.
Between 1820 and 1840, an estimated 700,000 immigrants arrived in the United
States, mainly from the British Isles and German-speaking areas of continental Europe.
During the 1840s, this substantial flow became a flood. No fewer than 4.2 million people
crossed the Atlantic between 1840 and 1860, and about 3 million of these arrived between
1845 and 1855. This was the greatest influx in proportion to total population—about
20 million—that the nation has ever experienced. (See Figure 13.1). The largest single
source of the new mass immigration was Ireland, but Germany was not far behind.
Smaller contingents came from Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
The massive transatlantic movement had many causes; some people were
“pushed” out of their homes; others were “pulled” toward America. The push fac-
tor that caused 1.5 million Irish to forsake the Emerald Isle between 1845 and 1854
was the great potato blight, which brought famine to a population that subsisted on
this single crop. The low fares then prevailing on sailing ships bound from England
to North America made escape to America possible. Ships involved in the timber
trade carried their bulky cargoes from Boston or Halifax to Liverpool; as an alter-
native to returning to America partly in ballast, they packed Irish immigrants into
their holds. The squalor and misery in these steerage accommodations were almost
beyond belief.
Because of the ports involved in the lumber trade—
Boston, Halifax, Saint John’s, and Saint Andrews—the
Thousands Irish usually arrived in Canada or the Northeast. Immo-
450
427,833 bilized by poverty and a lack of the skills required for
pioneering in the West, most of them remained in the
400 Northeast. By the 1850s, they constituted much of the
371,603
total population of Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and
369,980
350 many smaller New England and Middle Atlantic cities.
Forced into low-paid menial labor and crowded into fes-
tering urban slums, they were looked down on by most
300
Total immigration native-born Americans. Their devotion to Catholicism
250 for indicated year aroused Protestant resentment and mob violence. Rac-
ists even doubted that the Irish were “white” like other
200,877 northern Europeans. (See Chapter 14 for a discussion of
200 nativism and anti-Catholicism.)
The million or so Germans who also came in the
150 153,640 late 1840s and early 1850s were more fortunate. Most
114,371 of them were also peasants, but unlike the Irish, they
100 84,066 had fled hard times rather than outright catastrophe.
Changes in German landholding patterns and a fluctu-
ating market for grain squeezed small farmers. Those
50 23,322 whose mortgages were foreclosed—or who could no
8,385 longer make the regular payments to landlords that were
the price of emancipation from feudal obligations—
1820 1830 1840 1850 1860 frequently immigrated to America. Again, unlike the
Irish, they often escaped with a little capital to make a
fiGURe 13.1 immiGRAtion to tHe United StAteS, 1820–1860 fresh start in the New World.

304