Immigration and Urbanization

Document-Based Questions

Document-Based Essay

Part ADIRECTIONS Analyze the following documents. Use the documents and your knowledgeof American history to answer the questions that follow each document. Your answerswill help you to write a short essay related to the documents.

Document

SHIFTING PATTERNS OF IMMIGRATION

1a. What group accounted for the greatest increase in immigration between 1840–60 and1880–90?

1b. What was the reaction of many Americans to the changing patterns of immigrationto the United States?

Source: Historical Statistics of the United States

Where ImmigrantsCame From, 1880–1900

Where Immigrants Came From, 1840–1860

Place of originNorthern and western Europe

Eastern and southern Europe

Asia All other areas

North and South America

93%1%3%1%2%

61%

31%6%

1.5%.5%

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Document 2

We began to make inquiries about jobs and were promptly informed thatthere was plenty of work at “pick and shovel.” We were also given to under-stand by our fellow-boarders that “pick and shovel” was practically the onlywork available to Italians. . . . I practiced for a day until I could say “peek”and “shuvle” to perfection. . . .

One morning . . . we saw a fat man coming toward us. “Buon giorno[good morning], padrone,” said one of the men. “Padrone?” I said to myself.Now the word “padrone” in Italy is applied to a proprietor, geerally arespectable man. . . . This man not only showed no signs of good breedingin his face, but he as unshaven and dirty and his clothes were shabby. . . .

The “padrone” came up to our group and began to wax (talk) eloquentand to gesticulate (gesture) . . . about the advantages of a certain job. . . .“It is not very far, only twelve miles from Boston. . . . The company has a ‘shantee’ in which you can sleep and a ‘storo’ where you can buy your‘grosserie’ all very cheap. Buono paga (good pay) . . . $1.25 a day, and youonly have to pay me fifty cents a week for having gotten you this ‘gooda jobbaz.’. . .

On reaching our destination we were taken to the “shantee” where wewere introduced to two long open bunkss filled with straw. The “storo” . . .was at one end of the shanty. . . . We began to do some simple figuring anddiscovered that when had paid for our groceries . . . for the privilege ofsleeping in the shanty, and the fifty cents to the “padrone” for having beenso condescending as to employ us, we would have nothing left but sore armsand backs.

—Constantine Panunzio came to the United States in 1902.

2a. What kinds of jobs were available to many immigrants to the United States at the endof the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s according to the passage?

2b. Was the “padrone” fair to Panunzio and his friend? Explain your answer.

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Document 3

I dreamed of golden stairs leading to the top of the American palace wherefather was supposed to live. (I) went “home” to . . . an ugly old tenement inthe heart of the Lower East Side. There were stairs to climb but they werenot golden.

—Anonymous immigrant girl

3a. What was the difference between the immigrant girl’s dream of America and thereality she encountered?

3b. What type of help was available to immigrants to deal with the realities of Americanlife? Who provided the assistance?

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Document 4

Look at the “dens of death” in Baxter Street . . . says the health inspector,“into which the sunlight never enters . . . that are dark, damp, dismalthroughout all the days of the year, and for which it is no exaggeration to saythat the money paid to the owners as rent is literally the ‘price of blood.’”. . .The mortality officially registered in those “dens of death” was 17.5 percentof their population. . . . Bedrooms in tenements were dark closets, utterly without ventilation. There couldn’t be any. The houses were built like hugesquare boxes, covering nearly the whole of the lot. Some light came in at theends, but the middle was always black. Forty thousand windows, cut by orderof the Health Board that first year, gave us a daylight view of the slum: “dampand rotten and dark,” walls and banisters sticky with constant moisture.

—Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890)

4a. Why does Riis describe the tenements in which many immigrants live as “dens ofdeath”?

4b. What were living conditions like in many tenements as described by Riis?

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Document 5

5a. What is happening in the political cartoon above?

5b. Do you think that the cartoonist supported increased immigration? Explain youranswer.

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Document 6

When I was sixteen, I was supposed to marry a man in Italy, but I didn’twant him. My mama tell me, “Either you marry this guy or you go toAmerica.” But I told her, “I don’t like him.” She say, “Then you go toAmerica.” That’s why I came to America. There was nothing in Italy,nothing in Italy. That’s why we came. To find work, because Italy didn’t have no work. Mama used to say, “America is rich, America is rich.”

—Carla Martinelli

6a. Why did Martinelli leave Italy to go to the United States?

6b. Why did Martinelli’s mother tell her to move to the United States?

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Document 7

7a. How does the cartoon above make fun of the nativist response to Chinese immigration?

7b. Why did many nativists oppose Chinese immigration?

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Document 8

The Settlement then, is an experimental effort to aid in the solution of thesocial and industrial problems which are engendered [created] by the mod-ern conditions of life in a great city. It insists that these problems are notconfined to any one portion of a city. It is an attempt to relieve, at the sametime, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution[poverty] at the other; but it assumes that this overaccumulation and desti-tution is most sorely felt in the things that pertain to social and educationalprivileges. From its very nature it can stand for no political or social propa-ganda. It must, in a sense, give the warm welcome of an inn to all suchpropaganda, if perchance one of them be found an angel. The only thing tobe dreaded in the Settlement is that it lose its flexibility, its power of quickadaptation, its readiness to change its methods as its environment maydemand. It must be open to conviction and must have a deep and abidingsense of tolerance. It must be hospitable and ready for experiment. . . . Itmust be grounded in a philosophy whose foundation is on the solidarity ofthe human race, a philosophy which will not waver when the race happensto be represented by a drunken woman or an idiot boy. Its residents must beemptied of all conceit of opinion and all self-assertion, and ready to arouseand interpret the public opinion of their neighborhood. They must be con-tent to live quietly side by side with their neighbors, until they grow into asense of relationship and mutual interests.

—Jane Addams, Twenty Years at Hull House,describing the Settlement House movement

8a. According to Addams, what is the source of the great poverty that can be found in thecities?

8b. Why does Addams argue that the Settlement has to be adaptable?

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Document-Based Essay

Part BDIRECTIONS Using the information in the documents provided and your knowledge ofhistory, write a well-organized essay that includes an introduction, a body of severalparagraphs, and a conclusion.

HISTORICAL CONTEXTPrior to 1880 most immigrants came to the United States from countries with culturessimilar to the United States. For the most part, they came from Northern and WesternEurope, spoke English, were skilled workers, and were accustomed to a constitutionaldemocracy. Therefore, they assimilated easily into the fabric of American life.

TASK

Using information in the documents and your knowledge of U.S. history,write an essay in which you:Describe the hardships and obstacles encountered by immigrants arrivingafter 1880, as well as the opportunities available for their future. In youressay, include a discussion of changing immigration patterns and increasedanti-immigrant sentiments that eventually led to restrictive legislation.Also examine the difference between the hopes and dreams of the newimmigrants and the realities they faced upon arriving and living in theUnited States.

GUIDELINES

Be sure to:

• Address all aspects of the Task by accurately analyzing and interpreting at least four ofthe documents.

• Use information provided in the documents in the body of your essay.

• Incorporate relevant outside information in your essay.

• Support your arguments with facts and information that address the theme.

• Be sure to organize your essay in a clear and logical way.

• Establish a framework that is beyond a simple restatement of the Task or HistoricalContext.

• Conclude the essay with a summation of the theme.

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