Eastern+and+Southern+Immigration+-+1880s

**Overview:** During the turn of the twentieth century, an immigration boom occurred in the United States. Over 20 million immigrants  entered the United States. Most of these immigrants came from Eastern and Southern Europe. These immigrants made up 15% of the total United States population.

**Settled:** Many immigrants stayed in the port cities where they had landed. Others went on to other cities and regions, including New York and Massachusetts. Also, Tens of thousands of Eastern European immigrants, most of them Polish, arrived in the Connecticut River Valley beginning in the 1880s. Lured by rich soil and the promise of jobs in cities like Holyoke and Springfield, these immigrants improved the agricultural and industrial economies.

**Worked:** The Eastern European Immigrants worked effectively and diligently in the United States. Some took jobs in factories whi le others found work as agricultural laborers. Through their diligence and hard work, many had started their own businesses and had purchased  farms of their own. The farms bought by the Eastern Europeans were previously owned by the United States citizens. However, the previous owners dismissed the land as old and ravished.

**Religion:** Before the immigrants came, The Evangelical Protestantism remained the dominant form of religious well into the 1800s. By the turn of the twentieth century however, the religious dominance of the Protestant Church changed dramatically. The Catholic Church became the largest church in the nation. Its exponential growth was almost entirely due to the immigrants. Many American Protestants reacted to change in religious dominance with anti-Catholicism and even stronger anti-immigration views. The American Catholic Church itself struggled repeatedly to resemble various immigrant groups Cath olic beliefs and traditions. The Irish were the first large Catholic group of immigrants to arrive. Naturally the Irish dominated the Catholic Church in the United States. However, they only dominated the Catholic Church for several decades. The newly arrived German Catholics successfully challenge Irish control and gain a place in the Church hierarchy. Almost immediately, new conflict spurred within the Church with the arrival of millions of Polish immigrants.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">**American reactions:** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">Americans reacted with anxiety and hostility towards the increasing numbers of immigrants. These feelings of prejudice were shar <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 120%;">ed by most United States citizens not only the uneducated citizens. However, American employers wished harness the labor and energy of this latest natives. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"> <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">**Primary Source Documents:** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 16px; line-height: 23px;">Here is the ship manifest and a picture of the ship that a Polish immigrant named Menasha Siegel used to immigrate to the United States. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[|**Ship Manifest 1899**] <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">[|**Palatia 1899**]