A Century of Immigration: 1820 - 1924 by James Lincoln Collier

Author:James Lincoln Collier
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: AudioGO
Published: 2000-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

As late as the 1920s, when this picture was taken, peasants in Italy were still tilling the soil using primitive wooden plows at the cost of much sweat, as their forefathers had done for generations.

Unfortunately, during the years of the early waves of immigration to America, various Italian laws forbade emigration. Then, late in the 1800s, these laws were, for complex reasons, liberalized, and suddenly there was an explosion of Italian immigrants coming to America. In 1880, 12,000 Italians had come; in 1907, 286,000 came. Between 1880 and 1913, more than 4.1 million Italians entered the United States.

Many Italian families came to America after spending generations without traveling much beyond the sound of the church bell in the village church. Others—perhaps most—came from cities, large and small. But none had ever seen anything like the great metropolises of the eastern seaboard of the United States. Such "vertical" cities of skyscrapers, elevators, and tenement houses did not exist in Italy.

This was especially true of New York, where by the 1890s the majority of immigrants first landed. Some of them have described their feelings when they first saw New York City. One Rumanian immigrant said: "I was bewildered at the sight of trains running overhead, under my very feet, trolleys clanging, thousands upon thousands of taxis tearing around corners, and millions of people rushing and pushing through the screaming noise day in and day out. To me this city appeared as a tremendous overstuffed roar, where people just burst with a desire to live."

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