Gilded Age Immigration, Urbanization, Corruption, and Inequality

This summary describes immigration trends between 1870 and 1916.

More than 25 million people migrated to the United States between 1870 and 1916. Immigration, along with natural increase, caused the U.S. population to grow dramatically, rising from about 40 million to about 100 million during this time period.

Why was the population boom at the turn of the twentieth century important to American industrialization?

• It increased jobs in the fields of marketing and advertisement

• It resulted in increased use of natural resources

• It provided a large labor force and consumer market

• It encouraged a variety of cultural influences in economic innovation

Which Congressional action is it making reference?

• The Web-Alien Land Law

• The Gentlemen's Agreement

• Restrictive Covenants

• The Chinese Exclusion Act

Which group of people made up the majority of immigrants to America before 1870?

• Scandinavian Catholics

• South American Jews

• Chinese Buddhists

• European Protestants

Which statement describes a common pattern in the immigrant experience?

• Immigrants saved their earnings in order to invest in stocks

• Immigrants purchased land in plantation regions

• Immigrants tended to be concentrated in ethnic neighborhoods

• Immigrants desired work in professional careers

This is an excerpt from a poem entitled "The New Colossus", by Emma Lazarus.

Give me your tired, your poor

Your huddle masses yearning to breathe free

The wretched refuse of your teaming shores

Send there, the homeless, the tempest-toss to me.

This poem is reflective of what idea?

• Immigrants were pulled to the U.S. with hopes of better lives

• Quotas ensured that only well educated immigrants entered the country

• Immigrants faced minimal challenges to starting their new lives

• Public welfare and education programs helped immigrants to transition to life in America.

The first reliable streetcars were powered by

• animals

• coal

• gasoline

• electricity

Traditionally, immigrants had come to America for economic opportunity and

• superior education

• social equality

• police protection

• religious freedom

What is taking away the right to vote?

• De Jure Segregation

• De Facto Segregation

• Jim Crow Laws

• Disenfranchisement

Where did immigrants from Central, Eastern, and Southern Europe tend to settle after they arrived in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s?

• The majority settled in Eastern and Midwestern cities to work in factories

• Most tended to settle in rural areas of the Atlantic Coast states where they became farmers

• Most settled in the coastal South to work in the fishing industry

• The majority moved to the West to work on the railroads and in the mines

This excerpt is from a memoir of a Chinese immigrant to Mississippi.

"Imagine how hard it must have been for the first ones who came to Mississippi stranger; strangers in another land; separated from....family and home; and isolated by race, culture, and language."--Sung Gay Chow, "A Personal View of the Mississippi Chinese"

Which pull factor explains why immigrants would be attracted from China to Mississippi?

• Political advancement

• Social connections

• Religious freedom

• Economic opportunity