TEACHING AMERICAN HISTORY PROJECT – 2009-2012

Lesson Title – Immigrant Children in Industrial America From Debra St Jean

Grade - 8 Length of class period – two or three 45 minute classes Inquiry – (What essential question are students answering, what problem are they solving, or what decision are they making?) What was life like for immigrant children growing up in New York and other big cities during the Industrial Age, and how does their experience compare with children of today? Objectives (What content and skills do you expect students to learn from this lesson?) Students will:

• learn why many immigrants came to America during this time period (late 1800s to early 1900s).

• learn what it was like to travel to America on crowded ships with difficult, unsanitary, and uncomfortable conditions.

• learn about the immigrant child’s life at home, school, work and play. • summarize, compare and contrast the content, especially as it relates to them as a

child of the 21st Century. Materials (What primary sources or local resources are the basis for this lesson?) – (please attach)

1. The primary sources include personal accounts of immigrants who came to America through Ellis Island during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Excerpts and quotes can be found in:

• Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman. Copyright © Russell Freedman, 1980. Puffin Books

• Island of Hope by Martin W. Sandler, Copyright © 2004 by Martin W. Freedman. Scholastic Inc.

• Tenement Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side by Raymond Bial. Copyright © 2002 by Raymond Bial.

• The photographs are from the Library of Congress: Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC). Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

2. Student worksheet for documenting information about immigrant children living

in American cities. Activities (What will you and your students do during the lesson to promote learning?)

• In small groups, students will study photos and read personal accounts from the following categories of immigrant children’s lives:

o why families made the difficult journey to America o on the ship and through Ellis Island o at home o at school o at work o at play

• Students will document the information on their worksheets. • Students will answer questions to process the information they have studied. • The teacher will move about the room, listening to the discussions, prompting

students to think more critically about the material. How will you assess what students learned during this lesson? The teacher will use the worksheets, discussions and questions to assess what students have learned. Connecticut Grade Level Expectations-

• Students will analyze and draw conclusions on immigration’s impact on the United States at different stages in its history.

• Students will evaluate the positive and/or negative impacts of mass human migration on both people and a nation/region.

It is my intent to adhere to copyright guidance. The use of these materials is intended ONLY for face-to-face instruction. The following excerpts and personal accounts are from: Island of Hope by Martin W. Sandler. Copyright © 2004 by Martin W. Sandler. Scholastic Inc. Immigrant Kids by Russell Freedman. Copyright © Russell Freeman, 1980. Published in Puffin Books, 1995. TENEMENT Immigrant Life on the Lower East Side by Raymond Bial. Copyright © 2002 by Raymond Bial. Houghton Mifflin Company. The photographs are from the Library of Congress: Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC). Rights Advisory: No known restrictions on publication.

COMING TO AMERICA There were almost as many reasons for coming to America as there were people who came. Between 1880 and 1920, so many immigrants came to the United States that their numbers in each decade were far larger than the entire population of the nation in 1776. Most came to escape intolerable conditions in their homelands. In Ireland, a disease wiped out the potato crop upon which many people depended, and more than a million people died of starvation.

“In many places, ” a visiting American priest observed, “the wretched people were seated on the fences of their decaying gardens, wringing their hands and wailing bitterly the destruction that had left them foodless.”

In other European countries, years of drought led to similar conditions.

“We lived through a famine… [so] we came to America,” explained one young boy. “My mother said she wanted to see a loaf of bread on the table and then she was ready to die.”

In many countries, oppressive governments had eliminated freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and other time-honored legal rights. Many of these governments had begun to carry out massacres called pogroms, designed to eliminate minority groups, particularly Jews.

“We had taken shelter in the attic of a house because a pogrom was raging in our town, and we were hiding,” young Sophie Trupin later wrote. “My father at that time was in the cheese business… and he had a long cheese knife. He decided that before he and his family were killed he would kill as many of the attackers as he possibly could. It was up in the attic, surrounded by his terrified family, that my father vowed that he would leave this accursed Russia and make a new life for himself and his family in America.”

Given all of these horrors, it was not surprising that so many risked everything to seek a new life in a strange land. As one Italian immigrant explained:

“If America did not exist, we would have had to invent it for the sake of our survival.”

By the late 1800s, the United States had achieved a worldwide reputation as a

nation offering personal freedom and unlimited opportunity. European newspapers were filled with accounts that portrayed America as the “golden land.” Somewhere across the ocean was a place where all could travel around and worship as they pleased. Not all the immigrants were convinced that these claims were true. But as conditions continued to get worse, even the most doubtful came to believe that life had to be better in America. The first challenge was saying good-bye to relatives and friends.

“I can remember only the hustle and bustle of those last weeks in Pinkst, the farewells from the family, the embraces and the tears,” Russian immigrant, Golda Meir, later recalled. “Going to America then was almost like going to the moon... We were all bound for places about which we knew nothing at all and for a country that was totally strange to us.”

Fifteen-year-old Polish immigrant, Louis Sage, carrying all the belongings he could pack into one piece of luggage, prepares to board the ship that will take him to America. He described his and his neighbors’ feelings about, what they had been told, was a golden land far across the ocean.

“America was on everyone’s lips. We talked about America; we dreamt about America. We all had one wish – to be in America.”

Most of the immigrants lived in remote areas, and the trip to the nearest port from which ships bound for America departed was the first major journey of their lives. Some traveled by wagon, others on donkey or even foot.

“My father,” an Italian immigrant remembered, “put my valises (suitcases) on the old mule, Old Titi, and we went up to the railroad station. It was pitch dark, early in the morning. From the cracks in the shutters over here and there I could see the yellow light of the oil lamps. The streets were empty. I could smell the air like when the hay is damp… My father did not speak all the way to the train. I don’t know when he said it to me, my father, he said, ‘Make yourself courage.’ And that was the last time I saw my father.”

Thousands of females came to America after having their passage paid for by men anxious to find a wife. This woman was particularly fortunate, since the fiancé she had never seen or met had sent her a first-class ticket…

The vast majority of immigrants…were far too poor to afford first- or second-class tickets. They were herded together in the dim, damp section called steerage that was far below the decks. The accommodations there were horrendous.

“The unattended vomit of the seasick, the odors of not-too-clean bodies, the reek of food, and the awful stench of the nearby toilet rooms make the atmosphere in steerage such that it is a marvel that human flesh can endure it,” exclaimed one government report. “Most immigrants lie in their berths for most of the voyage, in a stupor caused by the foul air. The food often repels them….It is almost impossible to keep personally clean. All of these conditions are naturally aggravated by the crowding.”

There were fierce ocean storms that many ships encountered on their way across the Atlantic. Bertha Devlin, a young Irish immigrant, had her own terrifying experience:

“Oh God, I was sick,” she recalled. “Everybody was sick. I don’t ever want to remember anything about that old boat. One night I prayed to God that it would go down because the waves were washing over it. I was that sick. I didn’t care if it went down or not. And everybody else was the same way.”

On calm days, steerage passengers were allowed to escape the foul air of their quarters by going up to what was called the steerage deck. Still, the steerage experience was one that no immigrant would ever forget.

Between 1880 and 1920, so many immigrants came to the United States that their numbers in each decade were far larger than the entire population of the nation in 1776.

ELLIS ISLAND The great majority of immigrants landed in New York City, at America’s busiest port. They never forgot their first glimpse of the Statue of Liberty. Edward Corsi, who later became United States Commissioner of Immigration, was a ten-year-old Italian immigrant when he sailed into New York harbor in 1907.

“My first impression of the New World will always remain etched in my memory, particularly that hazy October morning when I first saw Ellis Island. The steamer Florida, fourteen days out of Naples, filled to capacity with 1600 natives of Italy, had weathered one of the worst storms in our captain’s memory, and glad we were, both children and grown-ups, to leave the open sea and come at last through the Narrows into the Bay.

My mother, my stepfather, my brother, Giuseppe, and my two sisters, Liberta and Helvetia, all of us together, happy that we had come through the storm safely, clustered on the foredeck for fear of separation and looked with wonder on this miraculous land of our dreams.

Giuseppe and I held tightly to Stepfather’s hands, while Liberta and Helvetia clung to Mother. Passengers all about us were crowding against the rail. Jabbered conversation, sharp cries, laughs and cheers- a steadily rising din filled the air. Mothers and fathers lifted up babies so that they too could see, off to the left, the Statue of Liberty…”

Before they could be admitted to the United States, immigrants had to pass through Ellis Island, which became the nation’s chief immigrant processing center in 1892. There they would be questioned and examined. Those who could not pass all the exams would be detained; some would be sent back to Europe. And so their arrival in America was filled with great anxiety. Among the immigrants, Ellis Island was known as “Heartbreak Island.”

Louis Sage recalled:

“I had run away from uniforms. My reason for coming to America was that uniformed men had forced my brothers into the terrible Russian army. Then, even though I was only fifteen, they came looking for me. The sight of all those uniforms at Ellis Island, I’ll tell you, was terrifying.”

The immigrants were examined by two doctors of the United States Health Service. One doctor looked for physical and mental abnormalities. When a case aroused suspicion, the immigrant received a chalk mark on the right shoulder for further inspection: L for lameness, H for heart, X for mental defects, and so on. The second doctor watched for contagious and infectious diseases. He looked especially for infections of the scalp and eyelids for symptoms of trachoma, a blinding disease. Since trachoma caused more than

half of all medical detentions, this doctor was generally feared. He stood directly in the immigrant’s path. With a swift movement, he would grab the immigrant’s eyelid, pull it up, and peer beneath it. If all was well, the immigrant was passed on. …[many] were put through humiliating experiences.

“I had to open my trousers and fly and they checked me for venereal disease or hernia or whatever they were looking for, “ recalled Emmanuel Steen. “I was in good shape, you know, but just the same I felt this was demeaning, even then. I mean, it’s terrible with women, young girls, and everyone you know. And we had to line up in front of them… Years later I thought they didn’t have to do it that way. But this was the height of immigration. We were coming in by the thousands…”

The writer, Angelo Pellegrini, has recalled his own family’s detention at Ellis Island:

“We lived there for three days – Mother and we five children, the youngest of whom was three years old. Because of the rigorous physical examination that we had to submit to, particularly of the eyes, there was this terrible anxiety that one of us might be rejected. And if one of us was, what would the rest of the family do? My sister was indeed momentarily rejected; she had been so ill and had cried so much that her eyes were absolutely bloodshot, and Mother was told, ‘Well, we can’t let her in.’ But fortunately, Mother was an indomitable spirit and finally made them understand that if her child had a few hours’ rest and a little bite to eat she would be all right. In the end we did get through.”

Louis Sage recalls his feelings after leaving the inspection hall on Ellis Island:

“I wish I had the words to describe exactly how I felt when I went through those doors and was at last out of that inspection hall. I recall going down a set of stairs to the floor below, and all the time I was remembering that other set of stairs I climbed when we first got to this building and how frightened I was. I had my landing card in my pocket with my hand clutched around it. I never took my hand out of that pocket until the ferry that took us off the island landed in New York. I still didn’t know what was ahead for me. But one thing was for sure. I had made it through Ellis Island.”

HOME

Many immigrants made their way from the Atlantic coast to the mines and

factories of Pennsylvania, Ohio, and other industrial states. However, over the course of a century, hundreds of thousands settled in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Boston, Providence and other large, growing cities. Having nowhere else to live, they moved into their own poor neighborhoods, where they crowded into rundown buildings known as tenements. ….immigrants usually lived – and often worked – in tenements in New York, and other large cities.

Usually made of brick, with stone trim around the windows and doors, early tenements were built side by side on narrow lots. Typically, each lot was just twenty-five feet wide and one hundred feet long. With little or no space between the jumble of buildings and few windows, tenements were dark and airless. From their quarters,

inhabitants scarcely ever felt the warmth of the sun, drew a breath of fresh air, or glimpsed the sky overhead. Russian immigrant, Anzia Yezierska, poured out her heart to her diary:

“Again the shadow fell over me. In America were rooms without sunlight; rooms to sleep in, to eat in, to cook in, but without sunshine. ….Could I be satisfied with just a place to sleep in and eat in, and a door to shut people out, to take the place of sunlight? Or would I always need the sunlight to be happy? And where was there a place in America for me to play? I looked out into the alley below and saw pale-faced children scrambling in the gutter. ‘Where is America?’ cried my heart.”

A family gathered together on Christmas Eve.

Around 1889, this family struggled to survive in the two small, dark rooms of their rat-infested tenement. The father earned just five dollars a week as a coal heaver unloading ships in New York Harbor. “It was so damp, so dirty, it’s a wonder we survived.”

With little space for a yard, front or back, and no parks in the neighborhood, children grew up in a paved landscape of cement, with no trees or grass. A tenement flat was usually no more than two rooms. One typically served as kitchen and living space, and the other as a bedroom.

Sydney Taylor, author, about life on the Lower East Side:

“There was no running brook in which children might splash on hot summer days,” “But there was the East River. Its waters stretched out wide and darkly green, and it smelt of fish, ships, and garbage.”

During the summer, the unventilated rooms became unbearably hot and children often sought refuge out on the fire escape. Here, several boys have built a makeshift tent from sheets and blankets.

…children often ventured on the fire escape or the roof, which became known as the “tar beach.”…During the sweltering heat and humidity of summer, people often slept on the roofs or fire escapes, where they could catch an occasional breeze. So many babies died, especially during the hot summers, that the tenements came to be known as “infant slaughterhouses.” Jacob Riis wrote:

“When the white badge of mourning flutters from every second door, sleepless mothers walk the streets in the gray of early dawn, trying to stir a cooling breeze to fan the brow of the sick baby.”

Leonard Covello has described his family’s first American home and his mother’s reaction to running water in the hallway:

“Our first home was a tenement flat near the East River at 112th Street…The sunlight and fresh air of our mountain home in Lucania [southern Italy] were replaced by four walls and people over and under and on all sides of us, until it seemed that humanity from all corners of the world had congregated in this section of New York City…

The cobbled streets…The endless, monotonous rows of tenement buildings that shut out the sky….The clanging of bells and the screeching of sirens as a fire broke out somewhere in the neighborhood. Dank hallways. Long flights of wooden stairs and the toilet in the hall. And the water, which to my mother was one of the great wonders of America – water with just the twist of a handle, and only a few paces from the kitchen. It took her a long time to get used to this luxury….

It was Carmelo Accurso who made ready the tenement flat and arranged the welcoming party with relatives and friends to greet us upon our arrival. During this celebration my mother sat dazed, unable to realize that at last the torment of the trip was over and that here was America. It was Mrs Accurso who put her arm comfortingly about my mother’s shoulder and led her away from the party and into the hall and showed her the water faucet. ‘Courage! You’ll get used to it here. See! Isn’t wonderful how the water comes out?’ Through her tears my mother managed a smile.”

Many tenants worked in “sweatshops” at home, [where] everyone had to work if the family was going to get by. Here, a Jewish family diligently makes clothing in one of the rooms in their flat.

AT WORK Stricken by poverty, thousands of immigrant parents were forced to send their young children out to work full-time in order to help the family survive. Nearly two million youngsters age six to fourteen worked ten hours a day or more in the nation’s factories, mines, quarries and canneries. In 1907 the National Child Labor Committees, seeking reform, mounted a campaign aimed at persuading Congress to pass anti-child labor laws…Photographer Lewis Hines captured thousands of images of youngsters working amid huge, dangerous textile machinery. He witnessed them struggling miles underground in the lung-destroying …coal mines and laboring in canneries where sharp clam and oyster shells continually cut through young fingers. In 1916, thanks in great measure to the pictures, Congress passed the first of several acts that set a minimum age for workers and a maximum age for the number of hours youngsters under sixteen could work. Pauline Newman was an immigrant child who worked in a New York City clothing factory:

“Somehow the employer knew when the inspector was coming. Materials came in high wooden cases, and when the inspectors came we were put into them and covered with shirtwaists. By the time he arrived, there were no children. In the busy season, we worked seven days a week. That’s why the sign went up on the freight elevator: IF YOU DON’T COME IN ON SUNDAY, DON’T COME IN ON MONDAY.”

Group of sweatshop workers in shop of M. Silverman. 30 Suffolk St., N.Y. The journalist Jacob A. Riis described a sweatshop district on the Lower East Side.

“Five men and a woman, two young girls, not fifteen, and a boy who says unasked that he is fifteen, and lies in saying it, are at the machines sewing knickerbockers….The floor is littered ankle-deep with half-sewn garments. In the alcove, on a couch of many dozens of “pants” ready for the finisher, a bare-legged baby with a pinched face is asleep. A fence of piled-up clothing keeps him from rolling off on the floor. The faces, hands, and arms to the elbows of everyone in the room are black with the color of the cloth on which they are working.”

Young boy working for Hickok Lumber Co. Location: Burlington,Vermont.

John Gannon (14 years old) 104 Cherry St. John cannot secure an employment certificate because he lacks weight and cannot pass the physical test; he is also under sized for his age; has passed the school requirements. Mother is a widow, does day’s work and earns $3 a week. Mary, oldest daughter, fields envelopes at $4 a week. Two children in orphan asylum. Mother struggling hard to get office cleaning, so that she may take the children out and have a home of her own, as at present they are lodging with friends.

1:00 am. Pin boys working in Subway Bowling Alley, B’klyn, N.Y. every night.

3 small boys were kept out of the photo by Boss.

Boys in packing room. S.W. Brown Manufacturing Co.

Boys working with double circular saws. N.Y. Dimension Supply Co., Location: Evansville, Indiana.

Young bootblacks, carrying homemade shoeshine kits.

1-legged boy. Neil Gallagher, Wilkes Barre, Pa. Born January 14, 1891. Went to work at about 9 years. Injured May 2, 1904. Leg crushed between [coal] cars. Amputated at Mercy Hospital, Wilkes Barre. In hospital 9 weeks. Amputated twice. No charge. Received nothing from company.

Breaker boys sort coal near South Pittston, Pennsylvania, in 1911. The breaker boys would sit on wooden seats, perched over chutes and conveyor belts, picking slate and other impurities out of the coal. Breaker boys worked 10 hours a day for six days a week. The work was hazardous. Breaker boys were forced to work without gloves so that they could handle the slick coal better. The slate, however, was sharp, and boys would leave work with their fingers cut and bleeding. Many breaker boys lost fingers to the rapidly moving conveyor belts, while others, moving about the plant, had their feet, hands, arms, and legs amputated when they moved among the machinery and accidentally slipped under the belts or into the gears. Many died when they fell into the gears of the machinery, their bodies only retrieved at the end of the working day. Others were caught in the rush of coal, and crushed to death or smothered. (Wikipedia)

SCHOOL LIFE …one of the main reasons so many of the immigrants had come to American was to build better lives for their children than they had experienced… In most Old World countries, there was no such thing as free public education, and only the wealthy could afford to send their youngsters to school. Mary Antin wrote:

“A little girl from across the alley came and offered to [take] us to school. This child who had never seen us till yesterday, who could not pronounce our names… was able to offer us the freedom of the schools…No applications made, no questions asked, no examinations…no fees. The doors stood open for every one of us. The smallest child could show us the way….Father himself conducted us to school. He would not have delegated that mission to the President of the United States. He had awaited the day with impatience equal to mine….I think [the teacher] guessed what my father’s best English could not convey. I think she [saw] that by the simple act of delivering our school certificates to her he took possession of America.”

Most immigrant families tried to keep their children in school until the age of fourteen, when a youngster could obtain full-time working papers. During hard times, kids had to drop out of school early. Kids who were already working full time could attend night classes … but after a ten- or twelve-hour day, it wasn’t easy to sit in class and stay alert.”

Working Girls of all Nationalities Making the Best of their Spare Evening Hours. Pupils, Teacher of the Steamers Class in the Washington School. Location: Boston, Ma. A young Sicilian immigrant had vivid recollections of long days and evenings…

“…We’d work until midnight but never after one. At least I wouldn’t, for I had to go to school in the morning. Yet sometimes I would hear my mother get up because she could not sleep. And then my father would holler at her, ‘Bimbabita, you will kill yourself.’ and my mother would answer ‘Sh-hhh, the children are sleeping.’”

Rooftop playground (Washington School; Boston, MA) Sophie Ruskay has recalled the grammar school she attended on the Lower East Side:

“When teacher called out in her sharp, penetrating voice, ‘Class!’ everyone sat up straight as a ramrod, eyes front, hands clasped rigidly behind one’s back. We strived painfully to please her. With a thin smile of approval on her face, her eyes roved over the riff, rigid figures in front of her. Beautiful script letters across the huge blackboard and a chart of the alphabet were the sole adornments of the classroom. Every day the current lesson from our speller was meticulously written out on the blackboard by the teacher who, whatever else she lacked, wrote a lovely, regular hand. We spent hours over our copybooks, all conveniently lined, as we

laboriously sought to imitate this perfection. We had to learn our lessons by heart, and we repeated them out loud until we memorized them. Playgrounds were nonexistent, toilets were in the yard, and gymnasiums were an unheard-of luxury.”

A gym class; New York City, 1910

PLAY When kids had free time to meet friends, play games, or just hang out, they took to the streets. Irving Howe has recalled:

“The streets were ours. Everyplace else- home, school, shop – belonged to the grown-ups... We would roam through the city tasting the delights of freedom, discovering possibilities far beyond the reach of our parents. The streets … gave us our first clear idea of what life in America was really going to be like.”

Pitching pennies; Providence, Rhode Island. *The object of this game is to toss the pennies closest to the wall. A variation of the game: coin is thrown in the air and before the coin lands the player shouts out “heads or tails.” The winner is the one whose side of the coin appears. (Wikipedia)

Late at night. Street boys.. (Jest hanging around.) Location: Boston, Massachusetts.

Playing handball on street. Street play- probably not working boys. Location: Fall River, Massachusetts.

These children have gathered at a place known as Mullin’s Alley around 1888-1889… streets and rooftops were the only places where children could play outside.

Boys picking over garbage “the Dumps.” Location: Boston, Massachusetts.

The Dumps Turned Into A Children’s Playground. Boston, Massachusetts.

Street gang – corner of Margaret and Water Street – 4:30 pm. Boston, Ma.