The “New” Immigration 491was far from common. Carnegies
were rare. A study of the family
backgrounds of 200 late-nineteenth-
century business leaders revealed that
nearly all of them grew up in well-
to-do middle-class families. They were
far better educated than the general
run, and most were members of one
or another Protestant church.
The unrealistic expectations
inspired by the rags-to-riches myth
more than the absence of real oppor-
tunity probably explains why so many
workers, even when expressing dis-
satisfaction with life as it was, contin-
ued to subscribe to such middle-class
values as hard work and thrift—that
is, they continued to hope.The “New” Immigration
Industrial expansion increased the
need for labor, and this in turn power-
fully stimulated immigration. Between
1866 and 1915 about 25 million for-
eigners entered the United States. Industrial growth
alone does not explain the influx. The launching in 1858
of the English linerGreat Eastern, which was nearly
700 feet from stem to stern and weighed about
19,000 tons, opened a new era in transatlantic travel.
Although most immigrants traveled in steerage, which
was cramped and almost totally lacking in anything
that could be considered an amenity, the Atlantic
crossing, once so hazardous, became safe and speedy
with the perfection of the steamship. Competition
between the great packet lines such as Cunard, North
German Lloyd, and Holland-America drove down the
cost of the passage, and advertising by the lines further
stimulated traffic.
“Push” pressures as well as these “pull” factors
had much to do with the new patterns of immigra-
tion. Improvements in transportation produced unex-
pected and disruptive changes in the economies of
many European countries. Cheap wheat from the
United States, Russia, and other parts of the world
poured into Europe, bringing disaster to farmers
throughout Europe. The spreading industrial revolu-
tion and the increased use of farm machinery led to
the collapse of the peasant economy of central and
southern Europe. For rural inhabitants this meant the
loss of self-sufficiency, the fragmentation of landhold-
ings, unemployment, and for many the decision to
make a new start in the New World.
Political and religious persecutions pushed still
others into the migrating stream, but the main reasonJacob Riis’s photograph of a class on the Lower East Side of New York City. At Riis’s death,
Theodore Roosevelt called him “the staunchest, most efficient, friend the children of New
York City have ever had.”
when the twenty-odd students were not needed in the
fields. “Few, if any, of my teachers reached the standard
now required,” he wrote, adding that his own younger
sister had obtained a teaching certificate and actually
taught a class when she was only twelve.
Thereafter, steady growth and improvement took
place. Attendance in the public schools increased
from 6.8 million in 1870 to 15.5 million in 1900, a
remarkable expansion even when allowance is made
for the growth of the population. More remarkable
still, during a time when prices were declining
steadily, public expenditures for education nearly
quadrupled. A typical elementary school graduate, at
least in the cities, could count on having studied,
besides the traditional “Three Rs,” history, geogra-
phy, a bit of science, drawing, and physical training.
Industrialization created many demands for voca-
tional and technical training; both employers and
unskilled workers quickly grasped the possibilities.
Science courses were taught in some of the new high
schools, but secondary education was still assumed to
be only for those with special abilities and youths
whose families did not require that they immediately
become breadwinners. As late as 1890 fewer than
300,000 of the 14.3 million children attending public
and private schools had progressed beyond the eighth
grade and nearly a third of these were attending pri-
vate institutions.
Education certainly helped young people to rise
in the world, but progress from rags to real riches