Selections from Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States
Immigration:
Congress, in the twenties, put an end to the dangerous, turbulent flood of immigrants (14 million between 1900 and 1920) by passing laws setting immigration quotas: the quotas favored Anglo-Saxons, kept out black and yellow people, limited severely the coming of Latins, Slavs, Jews. No African country could send more than 100 people; 100 was the limit for China, for Bulgaria, for Palestine; 34,007 could come from England or Northern Ireland, but only 3, 845 from Italy; 51, 227 from Germany, but only 124 from Lithuania; 28, 657 from the Irish Free State, but only 2, 248 from Russia" (1980: 373)
Congress, in the twenties, put an end to the dangerous, turbulent flood of immigrants (14 million between 1900 and 1920) by passing laws setting immigration quotas: the quotas favored Anglo-Saxons, kept out black and yellow people, limited severely the coming of Latins, Slavs, Jews. No African country could send more than 100 people; 100 was the limit for China, for Bulgaria, for Palestine; 34,007 could come from England or Northern Ireland, but only 3, 845 from Italy; 51, 227 from Germany, but only 124 from Lithuania; 28, 657 from the Irish Free State, but only 2, 248 from Russia" (1980: 373)
Women's Suffrage:
"Women has finally, after long agitation, won the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, but voting was still a middle-class and upper-class activity. Eleanor Flexner, recounting the history of the movement, says the effect of female suffrage was that “women have shown the same tendency to divide along orthodox party lines as male voters" (1980: 375)
"The Klu Klux Klan revived in the 1920s, and it spread into the North. By 1924 it had 4½ million members. The NAACP seemed helpless in the face of mob violence and race hatred everywhere. The impossibility of the black person’s ever being considered equal in white America was the theme of the nationalist movement led by Marcus Garvey. He preached black pride, racial separation, and a return to Africa, which to him held the only hope for black unity and survival. But Garvey’s movement, inspiring as it was to some blacks, could not make much headway against the powerful white supremacy currents of the postwar decade.
"Women has finally, after long agitation, won the right to vote in 1920 with the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, but voting was still a middle-class and upper-class activity. Eleanor Flexner, recounting the history of the movement, says the effect of female suffrage was that “women have shown the same tendency to divide along orthodox party lines as male voters" (1980: 375)
"The Klu Klux Klan revived in the 1920s, and it spread into the North. By 1924 it had 4½ million members. The NAACP seemed helpless in the face of mob violence and race hatred everywhere. The impossibility of the black person’s ever being considered equal in white America was the theme of the nationalist movement led by Marcus Garvey. He preached black pride, racial separation, and a return to Africa, which to him held the only hope for black unity and survival. But Garvey’s movement, inspiring as it was to some blacks, could not make much headway against the powerful white supremacy currents of the postwar decade.
There was some truth to the standard picture of the twenties as a time of prosperity and fun—the Jazz Age, the Roaring Twenties. Unemployment was down, from 4,270,000 in 1921 to a little over 2 million in 1927. The general level of wages for workers rose. Some farmers made a lot of money. The 40 percent of families who made over $2,000 a year [approx.. $26,853.92 in today’s money] could buy new gadgets: autos, radios, refrigerators. Millions of people were not doing badly—and they could shut out of the picture the others—the tenant farmers, black and white, the immigrant families in the big cities either without work or not making enough to get the basic necessities.
But prosperity was concentrated at the top. While from 1922 to 1929 real wages in manufacturing went up per capita 1.4 percent a year, the holders of common stocks gained 16.4 percent a year. Six million families (42 percent of the total) made less than $1,000 a year [approx. $13,426.96 in today’s money]. One-tenth of 1 percent of the families at the top received as much income as 42 percent of the families at the bottom, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. Every year in the 1920s, about 25,000 workers were killed on the job and 100,000 permanently disabled. Two million people in New York City lived in tenements condemned as firetraps.
But prosperity was concentrated at the top. While from 1922 to 1929 real wages in manufacturing went up per capita 1.4 percent a year, the holders of common stocks gained 16.4 percent a year. Six million families (42 percent of the total) made less than $1,000 a year [approx. $13,426.96 in today’s money]. One-tenth of 1 percent of the families at the top received as much income as 42 percent of the families at the bottom, according to a report by the Brookings Institution. Every year in the 1920s, about 25,000 workers were killed on the job and 100,000 permanently disabled. Two million people in New York City lived in tenements condemned as firetraps.
During the presidencies of Harding and Coolidge in the twenties, the Secretary of the Treasury was Andrew Mellon, one of the reichest men in America. In 1923m congress was presented with the “Mellon Plan,” calling for what looked like a general reduction in income taxes, except that the top income brackets would have their taxes lowered from 50 percent to 25 percent, while the lowest-income group would have theirs lowered from 4 percent to 3 percent…The Mellon Plan passed. In 1928 La Guardia toured poorer districts of New York and said: “I confess I was not prepared for what I actually saw. It seemed almost incredible that such conditions of poverty could really exist" (1980: 373-75)
"Few political leaders spoke out for the poor of the twenties. One was Fiorello La Guardia, a Congressman from a district of poor immigrants in East Harlem…In the mid-twenties he was made aware by people in his district of the high price of meat. When La Guardia asked Secretary of Agriculture William Jardine to investigate the high price of meat, the Secretary sent him a pamphlet on how to use meat economically. La Guardia wrote back
"Few political leaders spoke out for the poor of the twenties. One was Fiorello La Guardia, a Congressman from a district of poor immigrants in East Harlem…In the mid-twenties he was made aware by people in his district of the high price of meat. When La Guardia asked Secretary of Agriculture William Jardine to investigate the high price of meat, the Secretary sent him a pamphlet on how to use meat economically. La Guardia wrote back
"'I asked for help and you send me a bulletin. The people of New York City cannot feed their children on Department bulletins…You bulletins…are of no use to the tenement dwellers of this great city. The housewives of New York have been trained by hard experience on the economical use of meat. What we want is the help of your department on the meat profiteers who are keeping the hard-working people of this city from obtaining proper nourishment'" (1980: 375).
How The Other Half Lives
Jacob Riis
"This pioneering work of photojournalism by Jacob Riis focused on the plight of the poor in the Lower East Side, and greatly influenced future "muckraking" journalism. Riis mostly attributed the plight of the poor to environmental conditions, but he also divided the poor into two categories: deserving of assistance (mostly women and children) and undeserving (mostly the unemployed and intractably criminal). He wrote with prejudice about Jews, Italians, and Irish, and he stopped short of calling for government intervention. Still, the catalyst of his work was a genuine sympathy for his subjects, and his work shocked many New Yorkers" (http://www.authentichistory.com/1898-1913/2-progressivism/2-riis/index.html)
For access to Riis' work click HERE.
For access to Riis' work click HERE.
Tenement History
Maggie Blanck's webpage is a detailed account of tenement life in NYC in the decades leading up to the 1920s. Her page has a wealth of images as well as quotes from several helpful and enlightening primary source documents. Give it a look HERE.
Oral History from the Tenement Museum
Click the button below to hear Josephine Baldizzi's memories of growing up in a tenement building on NYC's Lower East Side form 1928-1935
To find out more about tenement life explore the Tenement Museum's website here: http://www.tenement.org
Below are some selections from the website:
Below are some selections from the website:
Education
Overview:The 1920s brought many changes in American education. The post—World War I baby boom led to dramatic increases in the numbers of students attending school and a marked rise in the demand for teachers. Social and economic factors produced such phenomena as the Red Scare, religious controversy, and political strife, which in turn influenced education in the United States. New classes in the sciences, physical education, home economics, geography, and industrial arts expanded the curriculum from the traditional focus on the Three Rs (readin', ritin', and' arithmetic).
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
"By 1900 the United States was becoming increasingly urban. Cities were crowded with immigrants arriving from every part of the globe. Between 1890 and 1930, over 22 million came to the United States, including almost three million children. For them, school was the place where the American dream was nurtured, and the future itself took shape… So powerful was the lure of education that on the day after a steamship arrived, as many as 125 children would apply to one New York school. Thousands of students attended school part time for lack of space. Some classrooms were as crowded as tenements. Yet for many other children, school was nothing more than a mysterious building passed on the way to work. In 1900, only 50 percent of America’s children were in school, and they received an average of only five years of schooling. The remaining children could often be found at work.
…
In the face of massive immigration, progressives claimed that schools could help to preserve the American way of life. The new Gary (Indiana) curriculum reached into areas like health and hygiene that had little to do with the three Rs.
…Leaders of industry hoped that progressive education would socialize students and their families at a time of widespread labor unrest. 'The argument is made that the reason there are labor riots and strikes is because the family can’t manage their [sic] budget,” explains Joel Spring, historian. “So home economics becomes a big issue. If the woman learns how to cook and the worker goes to work well fed and works hard, and knows that there will be a good meal when he returns home, he doesn’t stop at the saloon and he comes directly home. And we will have industrial peace through home economics. So the school was suddenly the panacea for everything that was going on in society'" (http://www.pbs.org/kcet/publicschool/photo_gallery/index.html)
To find out more about how Public Education in the U.S. has changed from the late 19th Century to today click HERE.
Local School Districts:
As Howard A. Dawson and M. C. S. Noble Jr. report in Handbook on Rural Education, "A national high in numbers of school districts may have been reached in the 1920s with 189,227 one-room schools reported." The movement from the farm to the cities and suburbs and the development of the motorcar supported a national movement toward school-district reorganization. This movement was led by such figures as Ellwood P. Cubberley and Howard Dawson of the National Education Association's Department of Rural Education, along with Professors Julian Butterworth and E. N. Ferriss of Cornell University. Particularly noteworthy programs for school reorganization were begun in New York State in 1925 and in Arkansas in 1928. By the end of the 1920s the number of public-school districts had been reduced by consolidation to approximately 130,000. Simultaneously, the average number of school days in session per year increased from 161.9 to 172.7, and the average annual teacher's salary rose from $871 in 1920 to $1,420 in 1930. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
Religion in Schools
The issue of separation of church and state loomed large but was not conclusively settled in the 1920s. Readings from the Bible and generally fundamentalist religious instruction remained a common part of public-school curricula. A huge conflict over the teaching of evolutionary theory arose, particularly in the South and Southwest, and culminated in the famous Scopes Trial of 1925. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
New Teaching Methods
The Dalton Plan and the Contract Plan, two new approaches to teaching developed in the 1920s, enjoyed worldwide and enduring popularity (both plans are still used in the mid 1990s). The Dalton Plan required students to work on longterm individualized projects in a laboratory setting; the Contract Plan emphasized an individualized assignment agreed to by student and teacher in a written contract. This contract defined requirements to be fulfilled in order to earn a particular letter grade. Both plans emphasized individualized instruction and student responsibility.
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
"By 1900 the United States was becoming increasingly urban. Cities were crowded with immigrants arriving from every part of the globe. Between 1890 and 1930, over 22 million came to the United States, including almost three million children. For them, school was the place where the American dream was nurtured, and the future itself took shape… So powerful was the lure of education that on the day after a steamship arrived, as many as 125 children would apply to one New York school. Thousands of students attended school part time for lack of space. Some classrooms were as crowded as tenements. Yet for many other children, school was nothing more than a mysterious building passed on the way to work. In 1900, only 50 percent of America’s children were in school, and they received an average of only five years of schooling. The remaining children could often be found at work.
…
In the face of massive immigration, progressives claimed that schools could help to preserve the American way of life. The new Gary (Indiana) curriculum reached into areas like health and hygiene that had little to do with the three Rs.
…Leaders of industry hoped that progressive education would socialize students and their families at a time of widespread labor unrest. 'The argument is made that the reason there are labor riots and strikes is because the family can’t manage their [sic] budget,” explains Joel Spring, historian. “So home economics becomes a big issue. If the woman learns how to cook and the worker goes to work well fed and works hard, and knows that there will be a good meal when he returns home, he doesn’t stop at the saloon and he comes directly home. And we will have industrial peace through home economics. So the school was suddenly the panacea for everything that was going on in society'" (http://www.pbs.org/kcet/publicschool/photo_gallery/index.html)
To find out more about how Public Education in the U.S. has changed from the late 19th Century to today click HERE.
Local School Districts:
As Howard A. Dawson and M. C. S. Noble Jr. report in Handbook on Rural Education, "A national high in numbers of school districts may have been reached in the 1920s with 189,227 one-room schools reported." The movement from the farm to the cities and suburbs and the development of the motorcar supported a national movement toward school-district reorganization. This movement was led by such figures as Ellwood P. Cubberley and Howard Dawson of the National Education Association's Department of Rural Education, along with Professors Julian Butterworth and E. N. Ferriss of Cornell University. Particularly noteworthy programs for school reorganization were begun in New York State in 1925 and in Arkansas in 1928. By the end of the 1920s the number of public-school districts had been reduced by consolidation to approximately 130,000. Simultaneously, the average number of school days in session per year increased from 161.9 to 172.7, and the average annual teacher's salary rose from $871 in 1920 to $1,420 in 1930. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
Religion in Schools
The issue of separation of church and state loomed large but was not conclusively settled in the 1920s. Readings from the Bible and generally fundamentalist religious instruction remained a common part of public-school curricula. A huge conflict over the teaching of evolutionary theory arose, particularly in the South and Southwest, and culminated in the famous Scopes Trial of 1925. (http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
New Teaching Methods
The Dalton Plan and the Contract Plan, two new approaches to teaching developed in the 1920s, enjoyed worldwide and enduring popularity (both plans are still used in the mid 1990s). The Dalton Plan required students to work on longterm individualized projects in a laboratory setting; the Contract Plan emphasized an individualized assignment agreed to by student and teacher in a written contract. This contract defined requirements to be fulfilled in order to earn a particular letter grade. Both plans emphasized individualized instruction and student responsibility.
(http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3468300763.html)
Radio
Elizabeth McLeod on "Amos N' Andy":
"As a result of its extraordinary popularity, Amos 'n' Andy profoundly influenced the development of dramatic radio. Working alone in a small studio, Correll and Gosden created an intimate, understated acting style that differed sharply from the broad manner of stage actors – a technique requiring careful modulation of the voice, especially in the portrayal of multiple characters. The performers pioneered the technique of varying both the distance and the angle of their approach to the microphone to create the illusion of a group of characters. Listeners could easily imagine that that they were actually in the taxicab office, listening in on the conversation of close friends. The result was a uniquely absorbing experience for listeners who in radio's short history had never heard anything quite like Amos 'n' Andy.
While minstrel-style wordplay humor was common in the formative years of the program, it was used less often as the series developed, giving way to a more sophisticated approach to characterization. Correll and Gosden were fascinated by human nature, and their approach to both comedy and drama drew from their observations of the traits and motivations that drive the actions of all people: While often overlapping popular stereotypes of African-Americans, there was at the same time a universality to their characters which transcended race.... Beneath the dialect and racial imagery, the series celebrated the virtues of friendship, persistence, hard work, and common sense, and as the years passed and the characterizations were refined, Amos 'n' Andy achieved an emotional depth rivaled by few other radio programs of the 1930s.
Above all, Correll and Gosden were gifted dramatists. Their plots flowed gradually from one into the next, with minor subplots building in importance until they took over the narrative, before receding to give way to the next major sequence, and seeds for future storylines were often planted months in advance. It was this complex method of story construction that kept the program fresh, and enabled Correll and Gosden to keep their audience in a constant state of suspense. The technique they developed for radio from that of the narrative comic strip endures to the present day as the standard method of storytelling in serial drama" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_'n'_Andy).
"As a result of its extraordinary popularity, Amos 'n' Andy profoundly influenced the development of dramatic radio. Working alone in a small studio, Correll and Gosden created an intimate, understated acting style that differed sharply from the broad manner of stage actors – a technique requiring careful modulation of the voice, especially in the portrayal of multiple characters. The performers pioneered the technique of varying both the distance and the angle of their approach to the microphone to create the illusion of a group of characters. Listeners could easily imagine that that they were actually in the taxicab office, listening in on the conversation of close friends. The result was a uniquely absorbing experience for listeners who in radio's short history had never heard anything quite like Amos 'n' Andy.
While minstrel-style wordplay humor was common in the formative years of the program, it was used less often as the series developed, giving way to a more sophisticated approach to characterization. Correll and Gosden were fascinated by human nature, and their approach to both comedy and drama drew from their observations of the traits and motivations that drive the actions of all people: While often overlapping popular stereotypes of African-Americans, there was at the same time a universality to their characters which transcended race.... Beneath the dialect and racial imagery, the series celebrated the virtues of friendship, persistence, hard work, and common sense, and as the years passed and the characterizations were refined, Amos 'n' Andy achieved an emotional depth rivaled by few other radio programs of the 1930s.
Above all, Correll and Gosden were gifted dramatists. Their plots flowed gradually from one into the next, with minor subplots building in importance until they took over the narrative, before receding to give way to the next major sequence, and seeds for future storylines were often planted months in advance. It was this complex method of story construction that kept the program fresh, and enabled Correll and Gosden to keep their audience in a constant state of suspense. The technique they developed for radio from that of the narrative comic strip endures to the present day as the standard method of storytelling in serial drama" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amos_'n'_Andy).
Immigration
Take a look at this map that shows the ethnic ancestry of every one of the 317 million people who call the melting pot of America home. Notice the geographical distribution of certain groups. It looks like the New York City counties have large populations of people with either Irish or Italian ancestry. Read the whole article HERE.
Immigration to the U.S., 1880-1930
By the 1880s, steam power had shortened the journey to America dramatically. Immigrants poured in from around the world: from the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Souther and Eastern Europe, and down from Canada.
The door was wide open for Europeans - In the 1880s alone, 9% of the total population of Norway emigrated to America. After 1892 nearly all immigrants came in through the newly opened Ellis Island.
One immigrant recalled arriving at Ellis Island: "The boat anchored at mid-bay and then they tendered us on the ship to Ellis Island… We got off the boat…you got your bag in your hand and went right into the building Ah, that day must have been about five to six thousand people. Jammed, I remember it was August. Hot as a pistol, and I'm wearing my long johns, and my heavy Irish tweed suit."
Families often immigrated together during this era, although young men frequently came first to find work. Some of these then sent for their wives, children, and siblings; others returned to their families in Europe with their saved wages.
The experience for Asian immigrants in this period was quite different. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, severely restricting immigration from China. Since earlier laws made it difficult for those Chinese immigrants who were already here to bring over their wives and families, most Chinese communities remained "bachelor societies."
The 1907 "Gentlemen's Agreement" with Japan extended the government's hostility towards Asian workers and families. For thousands, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay would be as close as they would ever get to the American mainland.
For Mexicans victimized by the Revolution, Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, and Armenians escaping the massacres in Turkey, America provided refuge.
And for millions of immigrants, New York provided opportunity. In Lower New York, one could find the whole world in a single neighborhood.
Between 1880 and 1930 over 27 million people entered the United States - about 20 million through Ellis Island. But after outbreak of World War I in 1914, American attitudes toward immigration began to shift. Nationalism and suspicion of foreigners were on the rise, and immigrants' loyalties were often called into question. Through the early 20s, a series of laws was passed to limit the flow of immigrants. (SOURCE: http://www.ellisisland.org/immexp/wseix_5_3.asp)
By the 1880s, steam power had shortened the journey to America dramatically. Immigrants poured in from around the world: from the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Souther and Eastern Europe, and down from Canada.
The door was wide open for Europeans - In the 1880s alone, 9% of the total population of Norway emigrated to America. After 1892 nearly all immigrants came in through the newly opened Ellis Island.
One immigrant recalled arriving at Ellis Island: "The boat anchored at mid-bay and then they tendered us on the ship to Ellis Island… We got off the boat…you got your bag in your hand and went right into the building Ah, that day must have been about five to six thousand people. Jammed, I remember it was August. Hot as a pistol, and I'm wearing my long johns, and my heavy Irish tweed suit."
Families often immigrated together during this era, although young men frequently came first to find work. Some of these then sent for their wives, children, and siblings; others returned to their families in Europe with their saved wages.
The experience for Asian immigrants in this period was quite different. In 1882 Congress passed the Chinese Exclusion Act, severely restricting immigration from China. Since earlier laws made it difficult for those Chinese immigrants who were already here to bring over their wives and families, most Chinese communities remained "bachelor societies."
The 1907 "Gentlemen's Agreement" with Japan extended the government's hostility towards Asian workers and families. For thousands, the Angel Island Immigration Station in San Francisco Bay would be as close as they would ever get to the American mainland.
For Mexicans victimized by the Revolution, Jews fleeing the pogroms in Eastern Europe and Russia, and Armenians escaping the massacres in Turkey, America provided refuge.
And for millions of immigrants, New York provided opportunity. In Lower New York, one could find the whole world in a single neighborhood.
Between 1880 and 1930 over 27 million people entered the United States - about 20 million through Ellis Island. But after outbreak of World War I in 1914, American attitudes toward immigration began to shift. Nationalism and suspicion of foreigners were on the rise, and immigrants' loyalties were often called into question. Through the early 20s, a series of laws was passed to limit the flow of immigrants. (SOURCE: http://www.ellisisland.org/immexp/wseix_5_3.asp)
Check out this INTERACTIVE MAP
that allows you to track how immigrants have settled in the U.S.
from 1880-2000
that allows you to track how immigrants have settled in the U.S.
from 1880-2000
Read more about the wave of immigration to the U.S. from 1880-1930 below:
NYC History
The Living City: NYC is a richly detailed online timeline of New York City history. Each decade (1860s-1920s) is divided up into themes. Themes for the 1920s include "Tenements" and "Water and Waste." Click on "exhibits" at the top of the page for a series of slideshows about life in NYC. Click the button below to go to the site: