3) Thursday, January 25. Immigration and Shifting Electorates

Story Line:
As they settled in a great variety of ethnic neighborhoods, immigrants responded to the call of Democratic bosses and came to dominate urban politics. Protesting farmers also joined the Democrats. Ethnic life in cities and on the farm eventually gave meaning to the early-twentieth-century ideology of cultural pluralism, and direction to the process of assimilation.

Review Questions for Discussion II

 

[Lecture 2] Outline [Lecture 4]

Readings for lecture 3

  • Bossism: Document Number: DJ2306200108
  • Ellis Island Immigration Station Established, 1892 - 1910; Document Number: DJ2105240554
  • Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives, 1890
  • Abraham Cahan, Grandma Never Lived in America, 1898
  • Populist Omaha Platform, 1892
  • Willa Cather, My Ántonia, 1918

Images for lecture 5:


Tweed Ring
Biggest Fear
Climbing into America

Russian immigrant girl
East Side, New York City
Street Market, Lower East Side, New York City, c.1895
Lecture Outline [return to top]

Introduction: cultural pluralism and assimilation

I. New York City as a microcosm and a magnifier of key changes

amalgamation of the five boroughs in 1898, NY became the most populous city in the world after London: 3.5 million people, 36% of them FB (41% fb in 1910).

II. The Tweed Ring

or the encounter of Democratic politics and immigration

Pictorial Interlude

III. The Lower East Side as seen by Protestant Reformers and other outsiders

One way to understand immigrants is to look at them through the eyes of the people who wanted to assimilate them.

IV. The Lower East Side as seen by Immigrant Jews

Another way is to look at the life of immigrant communities.

V. Horace Greeley's Advice: "Go West Young Man"

Immigrants and Western politics

 

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