Vickie Rozell

Director/Dramaturg, Author, Editor

In the United States, the 1880s were a time of great change. Photography became available to the masses. Doctors removed the appendix from a patient for the first time. Labor unrest was rampant, including sometimes violent rallies and strikes to get the work day reduced to eight hours. Engineers found a way to reinforce buildings allowing them to rise above 10-stories and both the Washington Monument and the Statue of Liberty were dedicated.

In addition, there was a wave of immigrants appearing at the Castle Garden immigration station (replaced by Ellis Island in 1892), hoping for a better life. Immigration from Europe and Asia had been growing during the 1800s, including a major influx of Chinese around 1820, which exploded during the Gold Rush in mid-century. Once the Civil War ended in 1865, people again began to look to the US for a new life. One of the major reasons for this was the Homestead Act (1862) which granted 160 acres at a very reasonable price to anyone who settled and cultivated the unoccupied land for at least five years.

During this period, much of Europe was in turmoil. Better sanitation and food handling made populations soar; industrialization further upset the precarious economic balance, throwing peasants’ lives into chaos when cottage industries were overtaken by factories, leaving them no way of making a living. Huge numbers migrated to cities, and many eventually made their way to the US.

Before 1880, most immigrants to the US were from Northern and Western Europe and were politically and religiously similar to the existing population. A wave of “new immigrants” began arriving in 1880 as people from Southern and Eastern Europe tried to escape poverty, political upheaval, and religious persecution.

People were encouraged to immigrate from all sides. In addition to the Homestead Act, steamship companies employed agents to encourage prospective immigrants to come to the US. Probably more important were letters from people who had already immigrated which circulated within communities telling of a better life. Many of these letters exaggerated the new life of their authors to allay the worries of those left behind. As a result, those who followed sold everything to finance a one way journey and had no money to return if things were not as expected.

Many immigrants ended up in cities and could find only menial work because they could not speak English. Others took trains westward (the transcontinental railway was completed in 1869) to settle on the plains. There they could acquire large tracts of land to farm but would live in a sod house and face a struggle against the elements to survive.

These immigrants from Eastern Europe had very different political, religious, and economic backgrounds from their western counterparts. This made them significantly different from the Americans among whom they lived, and whose language they did not speak. As a result, racially and ethnically motivated prejudices were not uncommon, in the cities or out on the prairie.

The immigrants of the 1880s left a difficult situation at home looking for a better life, only to find a different but equally difficult one here. Most left all they had behind, and had to learn a new language, culture, and occupation. Many learned English, assimilated, and were successful, others lived in poverty all of their lives, wishing they had never left their homeland.

© Vickie Rozell, All Rights Reserved

Reproduction only with permission