Immigration and migration in the Gilded Age | Period 6: 1865-1898 | AP US History | Khan Academy

- [Instructor] Here's a graph
showing the population growth

in four US cities from 1860 to 1900.

In 1860, before the Civil War,

New York City was the biggest
city in the United States,

but even it didn't have
more than a million people.

There wasn't a single city
of more than a million

in the whole country at that point.

Compare that to just 40
years later when not one,

but three cities had
passed the million mark,

and New York had nearly
3.5 million residents.

Proportionally, Chicago's
population growth

was even more drastic,

from only about 100,000 residents in 1860,

it got 17 times bigger by 1900,

with about 1.7 million residents.

Traditionally,

Americans had been a pretty
rural farming people,

but starting in the late 19th century,

there was a rapid shift
towards urbanization.

By 1920, urban residents would
outnumber country dwellers

in the United States for the first time.

And today, more than 80% of
Americans live in cities.

So what led to this explosion
in the population of cities

in the decades after the Civil War?

The major factors behind this shift

were industrialization,
immigration, and migration.

Now we've been talking
about those three things

in various forms in American
history up until this point,

from the cool inventions of
the first industrial revolution

to the influx of Irish and
German immigrants in the 1840s

to the movement of
Americans ever westward.

So industrialization,
immigration, and migration

weren't new forces in American society,

but there were unique aspects of all three

of these processes during the Gilded Age

that contributed to the
development of cities in this era.

One thing that changed was the nature

of work that people did.

During the Gilded Age,

there was a tipping point in
the American labor market.

In 1880, for the first time ever,

the number of people who worked
for someone else for wages,

people who had a boss and needed

to do what they said to get paid,

outnumbered Americans who
worked for themselves,

like farmers who could
decide for themselves

when to sow or harvest their crops.

The second industrial revolution,

which began after the Civil War,

was a booming era of expansion
and industrial production.

So there were a lot of
factory jobs available,

and most of those jobs were
for unskilled laborers,

that is workers who don't require any kind

of special training
before they start a job.

So there was an overall
transition from farm work that

was self-directed to unskilled
factory work done for a boss.

Another change during the Gilded Age

was in who was doing the
immigrating and migrating.

Until the 1840s,

most immigrants to the United States

had been Protestant Christians

from northern and western Europe,

and they were relatively
well off financially.

After the Civil War, a
variety of factors abroad,

combined with the wide availability

of jobs in the United States,

brought different types of
immigrants to American cities.

These new immigrants, as they were called,

tended to be from southern
and eastern Europe,

Mexico, and Asia,

and they differed from old
immigrants in that they tended

to be poorer, have darker complexions,

and practiced Catholicism or Judaism

instead of Protestantism.

In addition in this era,

African Americans from the south began

to migrate to northern
and mid-western cities.

All of these immigrants and migrants

created a large industrial workforce.

But why did they all move to the city?

Let's take a look at some
of the push and pull factors

that prompted people to uproot themselves

and head to American cities
during the Gilded Age.

First, there were push
factors, or things that were

pushing people out of their
previous living situations.

A big one was poverty and just a lack

of financial mobility at home.

Farmers in many countries were
hit hard by the mechanization

of agriculture, which
happened in this time period.

About a third of the people
moving to cities were Americans

leaving farms and heading to
the city for industrial jobs.

Another push factor was persecution

and discrimination at home.

The Russian government

took an increasingly intolerant
position towards Jews

in this time period,

who were subject to mob violence

and campaigns of ethnic
cleansing in Europe.

In the American south, the
emergence of Jim Crow laws

and an increase in lynchings
were among the reasons

that African Americans elected
to leave after the Civil War.

But what were the pull factors
that landed them in cities?

For one thing, many struggling
immigrants from abroad

didn't have the money to go anywhere else.

So after they arrived,
they just stayed put.

But the main reason that
people moved to cities

is because that's where the jobs were.

With the development of steam
power and electrification,

factories no longer had to
be located next to waterways.

So cities developed as industrial hubs.

Often cities would develop as the center

for one specific industry,
like steel in Pittsburgh,

meat packaging in Chicago,
or clothing in New York.

People also found communities
of support in cities.

Earlier immigrants might
send money and information

to their families and friends back home,

helping them to move and get established.

This facilitated the development
of urban neighborhoods,

where people from similar backgrounds

spoke the same language,
ate the same food,

and provided each other with assistance.

In these ethnic enclaves,

people could get newspapers and even go

to see theater performances
in their native languages.

So let's finish by taking a look

at two narratives of immigrants

arriving in American
cities in this time period.

The first one is from
Lee Chew, who immigrated

to San Francisco from China
at age 16 in the year 1880.

He wrote,

"When I got to San Francisco,

"which was before the
passage of the Exclusion Act,

"I was half starved, because I was afraid

"to eat the provisions of the barbarians.

"But a few days living
in the Chinese quarter

"made me happy again.

"A man got me work as a house servant

"in an American family.

"When I went to work for
that American family,

"I could not speak a word of English,

"and I didn't know
anything about housework.

"I did not understand
what the lady said to me,

"but she showed me how to
cook, wash, iron, sweep, dust,

"make beds, wash dishes, clean
windows, paint and brass,

"polish the knives and forks, et cetera.

"In six months,

"I had learned how to do the
work of our house quite well,

"and I was getting $5 a week and board

"and putting away about $4.25 a week.

"I had also learned some English.

"I sent money home to comfort my parents.

"But though I dressed well and
lived well and had pleasure,

"going quite often to the Chinese theater

"and to dinner parties in Chinatown,

"I saved $50 in the first six months."

The second one is from Mary Antin,

who immigrated to Boston
from what is now Belarus

at the age of 13 in the year 1894.

She wrote,

"The first meal was an object
lesson of much variety.

"My father produced several
kinds of food ready to eat,

"without any cooking, from little tin cans

"that had printing all over them.

"He attempted to introduce us to a queer,

"slippery kind of fruit,
which he called banana,

"but had to give it up for the time being.

"On our second day, a little
girl from across the alley

"came and offered to conduct us to school.

"My father was out, but we five between us

"had a few words of English by this time.

"We knew the word school.

"We understood.

"This child who had never
seen us 'til yesterday,

"who could not pronounce our names,

"who was not much better dressed than we,

"was able to offer us the
freedom of the schools of Boston.

"We had to visit the stores and be dressed

"from head to foot in American clothing.

"We had to learn the
mysteries of the iron stove,

"the washboard, and the speaking tube,

"and above all, we had to learn English.

"With our despised immigrant clothing,

"we shed also our impossible Hebrew names.

"A committee of our friends,

"several years ahead of
us in American experience,

"put their heads together

"and concocted American names for us all."

So what similarities and
differences do you see

between the experiences of
Lee Chew and Mary Antin?

Why do you think they
immigrated to American cities,

and what do you think
their lives would be like

going forward in the Gilded Age?