AMSCO 6.8 Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age

Overview

AMSCO Topic 6.8, Immigration and Migration in the Gilded Age, covers the massive wave of immigration that transformed the United States between 1865 and 1898, plus the internal migration of rural Americans (including African Americans leaving the South) into rapidly growing cities. The numbers are staggering: the U.S. population more than tripled from about 23.2 million in 1850 to 76.2 million in 1900, fueled by 16.2 million immigrants in the second half of the 19th century. This chapter explains why people came (push and pull factors), who came (the shift from "old" to "new" immigrants), and how cities changed to absorb them, from streetcar suburbs to dumbbell tenements.

AMSCO opens with the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago, where more than 12 million visitors saw a city that had exploded from fewer than 4,000 people to over a million in six decades. By 1893, more than three-fourths of Chicago's population was foreign-born or the children of the foreign-born. That's the chapter in one image: industrial America was an immigrant America.

Why Immigration Exploded: Push and Pull Factors

Migration to the U.S. surged because negative conditions pushed people out of their home countries while positive conditions pulled them toward America.

Push factors (what people were fleeing):

• Poverty among displaced farmworkers, driven off the land by political turmoil and the mechanization of farm work
• Overcrowding and joblessness in European cities caused by population growth
• Religious persecution, especially against Jews in eastern Europe

Pull factors (what attracted them to the U.S.):

• America's reputation for political and religious freedom
• Economic opportunity from the settling of the West and the abundance of industrial jobs in cities

Two practical details mattered too. Immigration tracked the economy, so prosperous years drew more immigrants than depression years. And large steamships with cheap one-way steerage passage made the trip affordable for millions of poor people for the first time.

For exam purposes, remember the bigger picture: the industrial workforce expanded and diversified through both international immigration and internal migration. The growing factories described in AMSCO 6.6 on industrial capitalism needed exactly the labor these migrants supplied.

"Old" Immigrants vs. "New" Immigrants

The chapter's most testable distinction is the shift in where immigrants came from, starting in the 1890s.

"Old" Immigrants (through the 1880s)

• Came from northern and western Europe: the British Isles, Germany, and Scandinavia
• Mostly Protestant
• Largely English-speaking, with high literacy and occupational skills
• Blended relatively easily into a mostly rural American society
• Exception: Irish and German Roman Catholics faced significant discrimination

"New" Immigrants (1890s to 1914)

• Came from southern and eastern Europe: Italians, Greeks, Croats, Slovaks, Poles, and Russians
• Many were poor, illiterate peasants from autocratic countries, so they were unaccustomed to democratic traditions
• Largely Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, or Jewish, not Protestant
• Crowded into poor ethnic neighborhoods in New York, Chicago, and other major cities
• An estimated 25 percent were "birds of passage": young men contracted for unskilled factory, mining, and construction jobs who planned to return home once they'd saved enough money for their families

That last point is a great detail for essays. Not everyone came to stay, which complicates the simple "huddled masses seeking a new life" narrative from Emma Lazarus's 1883 poem "The New Colossus" (later inscribed on the Statue of Liberty).

Immigrants from Asia

The first large Asian migration came from China after gold was discovered in California in 1848. Then restriction hit early and hard:

• The Chinese Exclusion Act (1882) ended immigration from China
• Japanese, Korean, and Filipino immigrants still found work in Hawaii, and some settled in California and other states
• The first South Asian immigrants arrived in the early 1900s
• Congress passed restrictions in 1917 and 1924 that almost completely stopped immigration from the entire continent of Asia
• The exception: Filipinos could still immigrate because the U.S. took possession of the Philippines in 1898

Notice the pattern. Restriction against Asian immigrants came decades before restriction against European immigrants. The backlash story continues in AMSCO 6.9 on responses to immigration.

Immigration and the Growth of Cities

Urbanization and industrialization fed each other. Cities supplied laborers for factories and a market for factory-made goods, so each one accelerated the other.

The shift from rural to urban was steady and measurable:

• By 1900, almost 40 percent of Americans lived in towns or cities
• By 1920, for the first time, more Americans lived in urban areas than rural areas (urban then meant places with 2,500+ people)

City growth came from two streams, and you should be able to name both:

1. International immigrants, especially the "new" immigrants from southern and eastern Europe
2. Internal migrants from the rural United States. Millions of young Americans left farms for industrial and commercial jobs, and few returned. Among them were African Americans leaving the South: between 1897 and 1930, nearly 1 million Black Southerners resettled in northern and western cities.

Both groups were moving for similar reasons: to escape poverty, persecution, or limited opportunity for social mobility where they started. That parallel between international and internal migration is exactly the kind of comparison APUSH loves.

How Cities Changed: Suburbs, Tenements, and Ethnic Neighborhoods

Late 19th-century cities didn't just get bigger. Their internal structure changed, and the new layout sorted people by class, race, and ethnicity.

Streetcar Suburbs and Class Segregation

Mass transportation segregated urban workers by income. The upper and middle classes moved to streetcar suburbs, communities that grew along transit routes leading into the urban center, to escape the city's pollution, poverty, and crime. Their exit left the older sections of the city to the working poor, many of them immigrants. Residential patterns both reflected and deepened the class, race, ethnic, and cultural divisions in American society.

Tenements and Dumbbell Tenements

As affluent residents moved out of housing near the business districts, the poor moved in. Landlords chasing profit carved inner-city housing into small, windowless rooms. The resulting slums and tenement apartments could cram more than 4,000 people into a single city block.

New York City tried to fix this with an 1879 law requiring every bedroom to have a window. Landlords found the cheapest possible compliance: dumbbell tenements, buildings with open ventilation shafts in the center so every room technically had a window. It didn't work. Overcrowding and filth continued to spread deadly diseases like cholera, typhoid, and tuberculosis.

Ethnic Neighborhoods

Inside crowded tenement districts, immigrant groups built distinct ethnic neighborhoods where each group maintained its own language, culture, church or temple, and social club. Many groups supported their own newspapers and schools.

Here's the nuance worth quoting in an essay: these neighborhoods (sometimes called "ghettos") were often crowded, unhealthy, and crime-ridden, yet they also served as springboards for ambitious immigrants and their children to pursue their version of the American Dream. They provided real cultural opportunities, not just hardship.

The chapter ends with foreshadowing. The explosive post-1865 immigration renewed protests to restrict immigrants who differed in ethnicity, language, and religion from the "old" immigrants, building on earlier opposition to Irish, Italian, and Chinese immigration. That nativist backlash is the focus of the next chapter.

Key Terms to Know

Practice and Next Steps

Review the 6.8 Immigration and Migration course topic study guide for the College Board framing of this material, then continue to AMSCO 6.9 on responses to immigration to see the nativist backlash this chapter sets up. The full set of APUSH AMSCO notes covers every chapter in the unit.

To check your understanding, work through APUSH guided practice questions, and try writing about immigration patterns with FRQ practice that gives instant scoring. The old vs. new immigrant comparison and the causes of urbanization show up constantly in both multiple choice and essays.