Lauren Gaertner

Mr. Widenhofer
AP United States History
16 January 2018
“The experience of the new immigrants in the late 19th century was little different from the
experience of preceding groups of immigrants to the United States.” Assess the validity of this
statement.

In the 19th century, the United States was experiencing massive growth and urbanization.

Improvements in communication, transportation, and mechanization helped to catapult the

country into the Second Industrial Revolution. Many people began moving into cities and

working in factories. The United States was beginning to shift from a more agrarian society to an

urban population. This led to an increase in immigration. The prompt is only partially valid; it is

valid because the reactions toward both types of immigrants and their reasons for coming were

similar, but only partially because there were major cultural, economic, and numeric differences

between the two groups.

There were similarities between the Old and New immigrants. People previously living in

the US often times had negative reactions towards them. The Old immigrants were opposed by a

group called the Nativist or Know-Nothing Party. This party was against immigrants and spread

fear and negativity about them. The Nativist Party was a political force and even ran a candidate

for president. The New immigrants were opposed by the APA (American Protective Association)

a group who urged its followers to vote against any Catholic running for office. Many New

immigrants were Catholic, and the APA tried to outvote and outnumber them. Along with

similarities in reaction, the Old and New immigrants had similar reasons for coming to the US.

The immigrants flocked to America for job opportunities, land, freedom from a military draft,
social flexibility, freedom from political oppression, and to escape violence. Many thought that

they would just make enough money and leave, but oftentimes they stayed in the United States

for the rest of their lives. A group of New immigrants, the Jews, were unique in the fact that they

came to escape for their safety and livelihood from targeted violence against them, called

pogroms. The Old and New immigrants had major differences, which makes the prompt only

partially valid.

The Old and New immigrants were drastically different in regard to culture, money, and

the scale in which they came. Old immigrants came from North and West Europe and many were

Protestant, except for the Irish. The Old immigrants were usually literate and bilingual in both

their native language and English, so assimilation was not as challenging. However, New

immigrants who mainly came from Southern and Eastern Europe tended to be Roman Catholic.

They also were not literate in English and could only speak their native language. This made

cultural assimilation a lot more difficult. Economically speaking, Old immigrants tended to have

a little bit more money and were able to move west and purchase land. New immigrants, unable

to speak the language, flocked to cities and lived in specific parts of the city with their fellow

countrymen. Old immigrants had a wider range of jobs, whereas New immigrants were primarily

used as factory workers and strike breakers. Finally, the sheer number of immigrants that came

was different. In their prime, the Irish and other Old immigrants only came about 1,000 per day.

New immigrants, however, came in huge numbers and from 1900-1910 about 5,000 came a day.

The number of differences but some similarity between the Old and New immigrants makes the

prompt only partially valid.

Similarly to the fear spread by the Nativists and APA, fear of immigrants rose during the

Red Scare. Dislike of foreign ideas such as anarchism, communism, and socialism paralyzed the
American people. In result of that in 1921 the Emergency Quota Act was passed by Warren G.

Harding, which highly restricted the amount of immigrants allowed into the US. Also, in 1924

the National Origins Act was passed which limited the amount of immigrants from each country,

especially those from Southeastern Europe.