1875-1910 Immigration History

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The period in American history between 1875 and 1910 was one of incredible upward mobility in terms of industrialization, urbanization, and immigration. This increased rate of agricultural production due to the growing momentum of technological innovation, an outdated rural labor workforce battled against the up and coming nature of industrial and diverse cities.New inventions paved the way for better sanitary standards and overall public health, new lifestyles in emerging cities, and a faster-paced way of life for all. These innovative timed marked a profound shift in American identity, how individuals associated with the idea of property, and an overall class system that developed to stratify new immigrants among the old workforce. There …show more content…

Over-production in rural areas due to these new production technologies meant many left for big cities in hope of a new life. This sweeping shift in American life, although disrupting the centuries-old ways of many communities, was presenting opportunities rich with hope for many people. Individuals who had traditionally struggled to earn enough to live on as farmers were now able to learn a vast array of trades and move into developing cities such as New York, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Americans, however, were not the only people banking on this prospect of the urbanized and prosperous American Dream. From far corners of the world, as far as China and Europe, floods of immigrants in hopes of improving their peasant lives from back in their old country. The American workforce was forever changed between the years of 1875 and 1910. Old and new immigrants more times than not faced intense friction and squabbles, and in a sense fought to re-define what it meant to be an American. Old world ideologies about identity, religion, and politics were to gradually give way to a new and encompassing national identity of American pluralism. They came seeking liberation from the stifling class systems and monarchies of the old world, as peasants and small craftsmen, they could never even hope to own their land let alone make a decent living for themselves. These

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