Themes in American History

A tour to The Ellis Island Immigration Museum

Ellis Island is the site of the first Federal immigration station. It is known as the historical Museum because it documents the story of over twelve million immigrants entered the United States from 1892 to 1954. Ellis Island is a small island in New York Harbor and it is located in the upper bay just off the New Jersey coast. View from afar; it is like a secular and isolated island, an island can be reached only by vessels. It seems to me it plays a role of defending the country. As the important gateway to the United States, it helps to select the qualified immigrants as new members of the country.

This was my second time to Ellis Island.  The feeling between the first tour and the second visit is obviously different. Remember that my first time to Ellis Island was led by our summer class teacher. At that time, for an unenlightened boy who just immigrant to the United States, I was interested in all the new things in America, and there is no other feeling.  I just followed the mass and did not really pay attention to those historic relics. But now, I must admit to feeling ashamed of my conduct at the time.

When the first time I saw this picture, I just felt that the person who contributed this photo wall is awesome. But now, I will think it as the history. The wall that records those immigrants came to the United States in the early period. They were the people who brought more color and prosperous to the country. I carefully viewed this flag with head photos from different sides, and wanted to keep in mind that all these people who brought effects to the city we are living right now.

While there were many reasons to immigrate, the United States becomes the popular choice for them, especially during the time period 1892 to 1954.

From the picture, we can see that the luggages are old and heavy. When looking at them, the questions that come out in my mind, like “how many stuff they can bring with them to come to the U.S.;” “did these heavy luggages affect their speed to move on when they were in the confusion period?” These suitcases is a symbol, it symbolizes their new life in a foreign country. They record the immigration story from people. For me, these boxes filled with not only their property and their clothing, but more with tear for the not living from their hometown.

I realize and know more immigrant stories of our ancestors through to participate in this class. Although I did not experience their hardships, when I get into the Museum, those objects with historical meaning make me think of their plight and frustration they had at the time.

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In Savannah and the Low country of Georgia, a legacy of decorative art among African Americans, including carvings, canes, quilts, baskets, furniture, and grave decorations, continued into the early twentieth century. During the 1930s and early 1940s, a period in which regional cultures were emphasized in literature, music, and the arts, the less conventional works of southern, self-taught artists, especially African Americans, were exposed to a wider audience and received greater appreciation. Trained artists in the Savannah area often collected the work of self-taught artists. (http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org)

Street Scene, Savannah

Margaret Augusta Murphy, the daughter of Savannah artists Lucile Desbouillons and Christopher P. H. Murphy, painted the watercolor Street Scene, Savannah between 1930 and 1940.

 By 1914 New York City had become the center of Modernist art. Characteristically, modernist art has a tendency to abstraction, is innovative, aesthetic, futuristic and self-referential. It includes visual art, literature, music, film, design, architecture as well as life style. It reacts against historicism, artistic conventions and institutionalization of art. In this period, art was not only to be dealt with in academies, theaters or concert halls, but to be included in everyday life and accessible for everybody.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_modernism)

http://www.chicagomaroon.com/2008/5/30/new-york-changes-before-sloans-eyes

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I asume most of the classmates use subway as their major transportation to either go to school, work, shopping, etc. It surelyapplies to most of the New Yorker today. In the 20th century, one of the many aspects that improved in the New York City was the transportation. In 1904, the subway system started to operate underground, managed by the private company Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT). The IRT was bought by the New York City in 1940, and the subway system was operated under the city’s operation. The subway system in Boston was also improving in the 20th century. The Tremont Street Subway was operated in 1901, the first actively operated subway in the United States. Because of the additional capacity and methods of the transportation, the both subway systems improved the transportation speed and cleaned up the mess and delays on the streets. The subway system is now very essential for most people in the both cities, and still can improve its system to avoid any problem with the transportation.

"Bell Mouths Under Tremont Street- Boston Subway" from nycsubway.org

"The New York Subway Souvenir" from nycsubway.org

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Image depicts the idea of the quota laws set forth during the 1920's in the United States. Original Source: American Isolationism Cartoon, 1921 (Library of Congress)

During the 1920s many American cities saw quota laws that limited or completely stopped a group of people from entering into the United States. One of the cities that was affected by these quota laws was NYC which saw a great decline of immigration during the 1920s. The congressional acts of 1921, 1924, and 1929 limited greatly the amount of immigrants coming from southern and eastern Europe places where the majority of immigration came from to NY (Chudacoff & Smith 206). On the other hand these laws did not limit the immigration coming from the Western Hemisphere therefore, during the 1920’s the majority of the immigrants entering the country where Mexicans. While some of them moved up to some of the northern cities like Chicago and Detroit many of them resided in southwestern cities. For example during this decade Mexicans where a little more than 50% of the population in El Paso, a little less than 50% of the population in in San Antonio and 20% of the population in Los Angeles (Chudacoff & Smith 206). This influx of Chicanos provided a large body of labor as they worked in steel mills, tanneries, meat-packing industries, automobile factories, etc. However these Chicanos were also faced issues in the United States such as segregation a negative aspect of their time here.

Image of a Mexican immigrant couple during the 1920's. Original Source: UC Berkeley Bancroft Library

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As result of the great depression, many factories in New York were forced to closed, and half of New York’s manufacturing plants were canceled.  New York City was one of cities in the united state which was hit in seriously.  People began to lose their jobs and their houses; they lived in streets as wanderers who had nothing to do.  In order to exist, they started to steal and rob from others. Criminal Rate had increased quickly. Some of them waited for the aids from government to help them overcome the hardest time.

At the same time, Agriculture in the Midwest also suffered. Most of the Great Plains, from Texas to North Dakota, had been turned into a “Dust Bowl.” This name referred to the stripped landscape that was a result of windstorms that blew away millions of tons of topsoil. The reason the windstorms made such an impact can be contributed to the over-planting and stripping of lands to plant wheat after World War I. Many farms were abandoned and many families relocated in California.

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The twentieth century brought about great changes for America, especially in New York.  New York had shown great progression economically, culturally, and architecturally. There was growth in every aspect of New York life from informal to professional subjects. However, there were also changes taking place in other parts of America and not all of those changes ended as good as New York. One of those places are Miami, Florida. In the mid 1920s, Florida was facing a land boom. Miami was looked at as a tropical paradise and people from all over America decided to invest in land. There was easy credit access and the prices of the land were quickly increasing. This led to the brokers and dealers ordering large amounts of supplies and causing a big problem with the railroads, some of them even being stranded en route. In result, there was a negative news feed about investing in Florida real estate.

Although the railroads were messed up, there was still ways of transporting goods by waterway. That was used until 1926, when a ship sank at the base of the port, making impossible to reach by any other ships, killing every way of transporting goods at the time from January until May. But by that time, Miami was no longer a place people wanted to go. Later that year, Miami faced a huge hurricane and left most developers bankrupt. After facing another big hurricane two years later then the stock market crash in 1929, Florida was no longer looking like the paradise it had initially been. The great depression and the invasion of mediterranean fruit flies left Florida with a bad economy that wasnt fixed until after World War II. Although New York faced economic depression as well, nothing was as bad as having your resources cut off and actually ruining your land.

[caption id=”attachment_2086″ align=”alignnone” width=”600″ caption=”photo from "Miami: Then

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Twentieth-century New York City public schools were characterized by their ability to educate the “whole child” and they had to act as parents, psychologists, doctors, and social workers in order to adjust to the changes of the city. The influx of immigrants in the late nineteenth-century introduced a class of the “immigrant child” – a child who was of the lower class, who did not exhibit the proper health etiquette, and who was certainly not American. Progressive reformers quickly saw the potential of delinquency that these children possessed and through their efforts, public school education became “a fostering, a nurturing, and a cultivating process”. The main purpose of the beneficial changes to the school system was to counter-act the poor living conditions of these children and to ultimately turn immigrant children into American citizens.(www.fordham.edu)

                              On the other hand in the South of Boston around this time School attendance, particularly in rural areas, tended to be erratic, and Virginia had one of the lowest rates of attendance in the nation in the years before World War II. Black schools, however, were so underfunded that most of them were overcrowded.Many whites did not want blacks to become educated, fearing they would challenge white supremacy and not be content with jobs working in the fields or in domestic service. Black schools therefore received far less financial support than did white schools. Black schools had fewer books, worse buildings, and less well paid teachers. Ramshackle, segregated schools marked black Virginians with a stigma of inferiority and the status of second-class citizenship that they would have to endure throughout their lives. (www.vahistorical.org)                                                                       Courtesy Library of Congress.

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While New York City was the capital of many kinds of consumer goods manufacturing such as clothing, furniture and so forth, Detroit became automobile capital in twentieth century. By that time Ford, General Motors and Crysler were considered as three big automakers. When industry moved out of the urban city, most of white collar workers come after to be near their jobs. At the same time, the development of automobile industry brought enormous number of immigrants and migrants into Detroit in beginning of twentieth century. One another reason that people started to move to suburban is many american car  companies produced cheaper one, so that even low wage job workers could afford to get one. While people in New York City tended to  use public transportation , for instance subway or streetcars, people in other suburban started to drive a car to the city for work.

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The Great Depression began with the crash of the New York Stock Exchange of October, 1929 and it rapidly spread worldwide.  The market crash manifest the beginning of a decade of high unemployment, poverty, deflation, diminishing farm incomes, and lost opportunities for economic growth. In the Great Depression the American dream had become a nightmare. What was once the land of opportunity became the land of desperation. Unemployment rose and wages fell for those who continued to work. Thousands of banks and businesses failed and millions were homeless.

In Virginia the economic impact of the Great Depression was less harsh. While the state suffered industrial reverses, unusual unemployment, and much hardship, Virginians did not experience, in the same degree, the extensive hardship that the rest of the nation endured. Virginia had a delayed reaction to the financial catastrophe. The state’s manufacturing did not include the heavy production of steel and automobiles that sustained huge national losses. A major part of Virginia’s industry was consumer oriented; producing the sort of necessities that even a poor person could not do without, such as food and clothing. While these buffers eventually broke down, they minimized the depression’s effect on Virginia and contributed to its more rapid recovery by 1935. Virginia was fairly better off than most other states during the depression, with industrial production and employment rising in the last 10 years.

Depression: Breadlines: long line of people waiting to be fed: New York City

(Picture from the Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.)

Depression: Breadlines: long line of people waiting to be fed: New York City: in the absence of substantial government relief programs during 1932, free food was distributed with private funds in some urban centers to large numbers of the unemployed. (Circa February 1932)

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Although cities such as New York and Cleveland could boast of hundreds of miles of sewer pipe as early as the 1890s, most cities simply dumped their collected sewage into downstream waterways. In the first decade of the twentieth century many cities still provided unfiltered water that was unfit to drink. Between 1900 and 1910 many cities added sand filters and chlorination devices to their water systems resulting in a marked reduction in disease. The extensive water systems of American cities permitted widespread installation of flush toilets and bathtubs in American homes at the beginning of the twentieth century. Provision of such admirable municipal systems led outlying areas to seek annexation by central cities to obtain these services.

original source: Sylmar, Los Angeles, 29 September 2008

For example, New York City and Los Angeles began the water supply system around the same period of time in the 20^th century. The first Los Angeles aqueduct system was under construction in 1908. The Catskill Aqueduct, part of the New York City water supply system began in 1907. Also, Later improvements in sewer and water systems during the Great Depression and after the Second World War, combined with the application of effective filtration and chemical treatment systems, led to America’s reputation for having the safest public water supply systems in the world.

Courtesy of New York Public

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In the 20th century, suburban domesticity became the idealized life for Americans. Many servicemen returning from World War II had difficulties finding a home in the cities. The Serviceman’s Readjustment Act of 1944, also known as the GI Bill, made home loans available to these military veterans; this act, along with mortgage insurance allowed the suburban real estate development to increase. Populations of the suburbs grew ten times faster than the city populations. Since 1950, Chicago and New York City had lost population while their suburban rings grew by 117 percent and 195 percent respectively (Chudacoff & Smith, pg 223).

Suburban Legend

Levittown, NY, gets its name from its builder, the firm of Levitt & Sons, Inc. founded by William Levitt. William Levitt is considered the father of modern suburbia. Levittown was the first truly mass-produced suburb and is widely regarded as the archetype for postwar suburbs throughout the country (Wikipedia).

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CREDIT: Gottscho, Samuel H., photographer. "The Empire State Building. From south," 1934.

Courtesy of "Chicago and Its Makers" (Chicago: Felix Mendelsohn, 1929).

Skyscrapers offered visual proof of progress in twentieth-centuries cities, skyscrapers. Corporate offices, along with banks, law offices, and advertising agencies that served them, now towered over downtown streets. Chicago’s 36-story Tribune Tower, and New York’s 102-story Empire State Building represented the reorientation of downtown space in the transition from industrial to corporate city. Chicago tribune tower construction started in 1923 and completed in 1925 is 462 feet tall.  When the Empire State Building opened on May 1, 1931, it was the tallest building in the world – standing at 1,250 feet tall. This building not only became an icon of New York City, it became a symbol of twentieth century man’s attempts to achieve the impossible.

Source: New York Documentary directed by Ric Burns

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As we saw in the Scortsese’s movie, gangs and history of crime is dated way before 1920’s. Figures like “Bill the Butcher” successfully run “Five Points,” making New York a violent place to live. But at that time, the crime was not yet organized and gangs didn’t have “specialties.” The idea of having a family that will look after you began in 1920’s and was innate by most famous mobsters – the Italian Mafia.

I would like to distinctive two cities, well known from organized crime networks: New York and Chicago. The gangsters started to play an important role in cities life after January 16, 1920, when the selling alcohol was banned through the United States. Illegal liquor distribution became very popular in both cities, because gangsters were able bribe the police, judges and politicians. Later on: crime, illegal gambling, drugs trafficking, infiltrating the construction businesses began to dominate ordinary city life. Very important aspect that differentiates Chicago and New York City mafia was a structure. In Chicago there was only one criminal organization called “The Chicago Outfit” which at certain point (between 1925 and 1932) was controlled by famous All Capone who had a monopoly on the crime world. He was suspected of ordering hundreds of murders and his income in 1927 was estimated at $105,000,000. The Outfit controlled not only Chicago, but also Iowa, Wisconsin and other areas in Mid West. The gang had 300-400 members and 1000 associates. In contrary, New York was ruled by “Five Families” who compete with each other to control New York. What’s more “The Outfit” was more diverse and had had other ethnic groups, while Five Families were strictly Italian. What is interesting, the mafia established national Commission, which was a governing body of American Mafia, and each of the five New York families received a vote on the Commission, while the heads of the families in Chicago revived only one vote.

I found very interesting movie about New York Mafia on You Tube which includes interviews with former mobs members with covered faced because of witness protective program.

http://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AWQpVMY1a0&feature=player_embedded#at=74

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With the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in the nineteenth century, came a reformation of American culture. It was only a matter of time before new technology too over the world. New Yorkers saw it coming; however, they were not aware of how quickly it would revolutionize the country. By the 1920s, the New York was fl0urishing beyond belief. Goods were now advertised by people trying to sell them. Production of those goods increased. This mass-consumer culture which characterized the United States (Chudacoff 186) was centered in New York. “Leisure activities were another type of consumption mostly supported by city dwellers. A mania for sports, movies, and music gripped every city. Passionate interest in sports had been building since the late nineteenth century. In 1923, 300,000 fans attented the six-game Wold Series of baseball between the New  York Yankees and New York Giants” (Chudacoff 186). Baseball became a popular sport and was practiced by most people  in sandlots, beaches, tennis courts and golf links. In addition, motion pictures drew large crowds as it became a popular attraction with an average attendance of 110 million people per week in a nation with a population roughly over 120 million people.

One of the greatest baseball players to ever play the game, Babe Ruth.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People crowd New York City's Warners' Theatre for the showing of Don Juan.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOSOYSLDuQE&feature=related

During 1970’s; despite the rapid growth of  industrialization, immigration, and business competition in New York City, the over population and poverty tended some New Yorkers to be involved  in a gangster and smuggling. After watching the movie “Gangster of New York”  and watching the segregation, murder, discrimination of power within the people in a movie where regulation and security wasn’t strong, I thought of the movie, ” American Gangster” based on the life of heroin dealer and organized crime boss Frank Lucas (African American) operated in Harlem during 1960s and 1970s. The movie was based on the true story directed by Ridley Scott.

Although the freedom, rules and an equality came among Americans and others, the movie, “American Gangster”  made me thought that some impacts of the “five points” history still somehow exist in our present lives in a different names and techniques. The only difference we can see in this present movie is the presence of  rules and regulations, security, equality, integrity, disciplined etc. among  people and society. For the people suffering poverty, smuggling comes to be the short-cut way of obtaining success and prosperity as Lucas did by making $1 million per day selling drug.

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The American Industrial Revolution (1870-1920) changed the United States citizens from an agricultural people to one that is highly industrialized. They began to performed much of their work in factories and on machines. This transition took fifty years and caused a dramatic change in the nation’s economic history. In the second industrial revolution from (1860-1920), unskilled immigrant laborers were the dominant factory manufacturing labor force. Industrial development in the United States exhibited two major production technologies: factory- assembly (1820-1920), and factory continuous (1920-). By far the greatest reason for new immigration was for employment. The Southern and Eastern European Nations most new immigrants fled were in dire economic times with high unemployment and limited opportunity. The stunning growth in the US industrial development fueled a seemingly endless demand for workers, which the desperate immigrants seemingly fulfilled.

Many newly arrived immigrants found themselves at the mercy of corrupt political forces like Boss Tweed’s Tammany Hall in New York City. Political machines such as these used the votes of newly arrived immigrants to dominate and corrupt the political process in many of America’s growing cities.

The contributions of the new immigrants were transformative to America. The ethnic diversity of the immigrants changed America into a more multi-cultural society with varied language, traditons and practices. The cultural contributions of the new immigrants can be seen in the art, food, music and culture of modern America. (Direct Essays, regentsprep.org, www.mcgill.ca)

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The city, not the farm, had become the place of national experience. By 1920, four-fifths of the country’s African Americans living outside the South lived in the cities. During the 1920s, urbanization took place on a wider front than ever before. Maturing industrial economies increased the populations of many areas, particularly steel, oil, and automobile centers. Social and cultural diversity continued to be a unique quality of urban life that distinguished cities most sharply from the relative homogeneity of rural and small-town social relations. Leisure activities were another type of consumption mostly supported by city dwellers. In 1923, 300,000 fans attended the six-game World series of baseball between the New York Yankees and the New York Giants. The increase of show business paralleled the rise of sports, maturing with the growth of cities. In the 1920s motion pictures also attracted huge crowds. During 1927-1929, weekly movie attendance reach an estimated 10 million people when at that time nations total population was just over 120 million and total weekly attendance to church was under 60 million. Movies helped to popularize urban culture as nation culture by showing scenes involving diverse city people. In 1920s radio also brought the new world of entertainment and advertising directly into urban homes.

Suburban expansion in the 1920s owed much to the automobile and its related industries. Real estate interests, the construction industry, the auto rubber, and oil industry joined automobile owners in pressing for new roads to facilitate high-speed travel. The building of expressways and parkways encouraged still more suburban migration. In 1920, the growth rate of suburbs exceeded that of the cities for the first time. Many were residential communities for the upper and the middle classes, and others were industrial and mixed-use suburbs where factory workers constituted a fifth or more of the population. 1920s was also witnessed the country’s first suburban shopping center. Due to all of these developments in the 1920s helped the cities to become modern.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xmqc_wJN4_M&feature=related

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One thing that was very important to New York City in the mid 1800s was that the city need a source of water for its growing inhabitance. Likewise Boston and other major cities faced a simular situation. Chudacoff wrote on page 50 “In 1835, New York voters solidly approved a project to bring water to the city through an aqueduct form the Croton River.” And then later “In 1845, an act passed by the Massachusetts General Assembly enable Boston to construct it’s own water system.” I believe that New York set the standard for the growth of most large cities with its implmentation of a necessitiy such as running water. This increase the standards of public health and contrubute considerably to the population growth in both New York and Boston.

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Slavery existed in both cities -New York and South Carolina. During 19th century, cities are growing in the North. The slaves in northern cities like New York worked primarily as domestic servants, while the slaves in the South Carolina were working in the plantations. In 1810 African American had constituted over 10 percent of the population in New York City. (Chudacoff p66) Agriculture was very important to the South’s economy. In South Carolina, most of the plantations grew cotton and those plantations required large numbers of slaves. Compared to the South Carolina, the North’s economy was based on trade and merchandising. The households in New York City were wealthier so they could hire one or two slaves as servants. In New York City there was more numbers of slave-owners but in South Carolina there was more numbers of slaves working there. Slavery was officially abolished in New York in 1827. On the other hand it became nearly impossible to free a slave in South Carolina after 1820. The state had one of the most stringent slave codes in the country. The slavery even kept expanding in South Carolina in 1840s. (Lesesne p457) Slavery existed in America for more than 200 years, until the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution was passed in 1865. After that, slavery was definitely abolished throughout the country.

The photograph was taken on Smith's Plantation, Beaufort, South Carolina.

Lesesne, H. (2003). South Carolina. In S. I. Kutler (Ed.)Dictionary of American History, (Vol. 7). (3rd ed., pp. 453-457) New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons Retrieved June 16, 2011,
from Gale Virtual Reference History Collection

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Similarity:  1. The success of transportantion in NYC and Philadephia made other imitators to follow: For the transportation,  the first turnpike–Philadelphia-Lancaster Turnpike was built by private stock companies and financed by private investments and toll revenues, opened in 1794 between Lancaster and Philadelphia. Due to successof the turnpike, it caused many imitators to follow. In New York alone, privately operated turnpike companies had completed 4,000 miles of toll roads by 1820. (Chudacoff p.36). Similarly, Eirc Canal was under construction from 1817 to 1825 and officially opened on October 26, 1825.  It proved an enormous success upon its completion in 1825. Shipping costs from Lake Erie to New York dropped by more than  90%. The success of Erie Canal  spawned may imitators to follow as well as the turnpike. Two thousand miles of canals were built during the 1830s, include a ridiculously expensive Main Line from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh.

2. In New York, the upper 4 percent owned 49 percentof the wealth in 1828 and 66 percent in 1845. SImilar concentrations of wealth could be found in Philadephia. (Chudacoff p.44).

3.  The proportion of  African Americans diminished in NYC and Philadelphia: African Americans had contributed over 10 percent of the population in New York City in 1810; by 1860, they represented only 1.5 percent of all New Yorker. In Philadelphia, more than 12 percent of the population was black in 1830; by 1860, that proportion had dropped to less than 4 percent.  (Chudacoff p.66)

Differnence: Under pressures reulting from the yellow fever epidemics, Philadelphia constructed the country’s first major PUBLIC waterworks. while other cities included NYC which purchased water from PRIVATE companies. and the quality of the water system was low because few private corporations were willing to commit huge amounts of captial to the construction and mainltenance of an elaborate water system.

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