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IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN DREAM. Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted. NEWS FROM THE NEW WORLD.
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IMMIGRATION AND THE AMERICAN DREAM Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history. Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted
NEWS FROM THE NEW WORLD America was in everybody’s mouth. Businessmen talked of it over their accounts; the market women made up their quarrels that they might discuss it from stall to stall; people who had relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters for the enlightenment of less fortunate folk…children played at emigrating; old folks shook their heads over the evening fire and prophesied no good for those who braved the terrors of the sea and the foreign goal beyond it; all talked of it, but scarcely anyone knew one true fact about this magic land. Mary Antin
Brochure distributed in Norway by a steamship company, encouraging Norwegians to emigrate to America
AN ITALIAN IMMIGRANT: I knew of only one person who had gone from our small city to North America. He came to visit our village when I was a boy, and his visit left certain distinct impressions upon my mind. He had lived in America for several years…When he finally came back I was much impressed. He could not speak our dialect any more. What little of the language he spoke was the pure Italian, which he had learned in America. I recall also his purple, showy necktie, and a stickpin with brilliants. What impressed me most of all was the white collar which he wore. These things were great luxuries in our town, worn only by the well-to-do, and not by the common folks, to which he belonged.
Oscar Handlin: Without reserves of any kind these people were helpless in the face of crisis. The year the crops failed there was famine. Then the alternative to flight was death by starvation. In awe the peasant saw his fields barren, yielding nothing to sell, nothing to eat. He looked up and saw the emptiness of his neighbor’s lands, of the whole village…He would leave now, escape. Give up this abusive land that his fathers never really mastered…He would become a stranger on the way, pack on back, lead wife and children toward some other destiny. For all about was evidence of the consequences of staying. Any alternative was better.
MARY ANTIN DESCRIBES SOME OF THE “PUSH” FACTORS “It was not easy to live (in the Pale), with such bitter competition as the congestion of population made inevitable…Outside the Pale a Jew could only go to certain designated localities, on payment of prohibitive fees, augmented by a constant stream of bribes; and even then he lived at the mercy of the local chief of police.” “Somebody would start up that lie about murdering Christian children, and the stupid peasants would get mad about it, and fill themselves with vodka, and set out to kill the Jews. They attacked them with knives and clubs and scythes and axes, killed or tortured them, and burned their houses. This was called a ’pogrom.’… People who saw such things never smiled any more, no matter how long they lived.”
MARY ANTIN: There was an elation, a hint of triumph, such as had never been in my father’s letters before. I cannot tell how I knew it. I felt a stirring, a straining in my father’s letter. It was there, even though my mother stumbled over the strange words, even though she cried, as women will when somebody is going away. My father was inspired by a vision. He saw something—he promised us something. It was this “America.” And “America” became my dream.
An Italian immigrant remembers traveling in steerage: All us poor people had to go down through a hole to the bottom of the ship. There was a big dark room down there with rows of wooden shelves all around where we were going to sleep—the Italian, the German, the Polish, the Swede, the French—every kind…The girls and women and the men had to sleep all together in the same room. The men and girls had to sleep even in the same bed with only those little half-boards up between to keep us from rolling together.
Then one day we could see the land! My and my paesani stood and watched the hills and the land come nearer. Other poor people, dressed in their best clothes and loaded down with bundles, crowded around. America! The country where everyone could find work! Where wages were so high no one had to go hungry! Where all men were free and equal and where even the poor could own land! But now we were so near it seemed too much to believe. Everyone stood silent—like in a prayer.
“I CAME TO AMERICA BECAUSE I HEARD THE STREETS WERE PAVED WITH GOLD. WHEN I GOT HERE I FOUND OUT THREE THINGS. FIRST, THE STREETS WERE NOT PAVED WITH GOLD. SECOND, THEY WEREN’T PAVED AT ALL. AND THIRD, I WAS EXPECTED TO PAVE THEM.”
TOOLS OF AMERICANIZATION • American language, clothing and customs. • The public schools. • The settlement houses. Immigrants gathered at Jane Addams’ Hull House in Chicago
An Italian woman recalls her days at a settlement house: They used to tell us that it’s not nice to drink beer, and we must not let the baby do this, and this…So after we had about an hour, or an hour and a half of the preaching, they would pull up the circle and we’d play games together. All together we played the games—the Norwegian, the German, the English, and me. Then we’d have some cake and coffee and the goodnight song…. Pretty soon they started the classes to teach us poor people to talk and write in English. The talk of the people in the settlement house was different entirely than what I used to hear. I used to love those American people, and I was listening and listening how they talked. That’s how I learned to talk such good English…They had the clubs for the children too. And after a few years when they started the kindergarten, my Louie was one of the first children to go in…
AN IMMIGRANT ON THE PRESSURE TO AMERICANIZE: How unkind, how cruel are the methods sometimes used in connection with our so-called Americanization program. Think of our saying to these foreign peoples, some of whom have been in this country for perhaps a brief period: Forget your native land, forget your mother tongue, do away with your inherited customs, put from you as a cloak all that inheritance and early environment made you and become in a day an American par excellence. This was precisely the talk I used to hear when I first came to this country. “Either become an American citizen or get out,” was in substance the attitude of certain people. But how was I to choose so suddenly?
An immigrant reflects on the problem of juvenile delinquency among immigrant children: Is it not true that, as the immigrant child goes to school and learns English he becomes estranged from his parents, becomes disrespectful and causes trouble in the home and the community? And is it not also true that as these children get a smattering of American ideas and ideals they become so independent as to be uncontrollable? And is it not this class, and not the immigrant himself, who fill the juvenile courts and swell the number of our delinquency cases in the houses of correction?
