However, this was not the case. Many Immigrants were flocking to America to escape from poverty, persecution and revolutions in their home countries. This created a lot of hostility as Americans feared that immigrants coming into the United States would have an effect on american society, socially, religiously, economically and politically. Historians have argued over what was the main cause was for growing hostility. Contributing factors are; the changing nature of immigration and entrenched WASP racism, pre-existing legislation before 1920s, WWI and isolationism, economic fears, social and religious fears, and political fears.
With this new credit system, people felt for the first time that they could get anything they wanted. What they didn’t realize though, is that many were getting into debt from borrowing too much money, and their overuse of credit would soon lead to a decade of great depression. The KKK was originally a terror group against African Americans. It had faded for a number of years, but it reemerged after the war with new targets, Jews, Catholics, and other types of radicals. Members of the KKK believed that only “white” America is the true America.
To what extent was Racism the main reason for changing attitudes towards Immigration in the 1920s It can be argued that racism was the main reason for changing attitudes towards immigration in the USA in the 1920s. The three immigration acts put tighter restrictions on who was deemed worthy enough to live and work in the USA. Other factors included political fears of Eastern European ideologies such as communism and anarchism, economic factors such as jobs and housing, and social factors such as crime, religion and culture. All of these created much hostility and discrimination towards many hopeful immigrants. They were a precursor to violence and rioting in what was a fundamentally racist society.
Because of this, close to two million refugees fled Western Europe to come to North America to try to escape the famine that ravaged their homelands. Nearly one million of these immigrants came from Ireland where the impact of the blight was felt the hardest. From the moment the Irish landed in Boston, they were subject to poor living conditions and inability to earn a livable wage. In New York, they faced a better reception, but were often taken advantage of by “runners,” or people who promised them aid when they came into the country. The immigrants were promised a place to stay, food to eat, and a place to house their belongings but received only horrible living conditions that were torn away from them when their money ran out and their possessions were retained as
The substantial increase in population due to immigration that occurs during this time goes on to affect the nation in positive and negative ways. Some of the adverse affects of such a rapid growth in population were overcrowding in cities, lack of jobs, and occasional food shortages. But the hard working spirit and work ethic that the immigrants brought, along with a determined will to succeed, were an overarching positive were crucial to the country becoming what it is today. In the late 1800s, people in many parts of the world decided to leave their homes and emigrate to the United States. Immigrants entered into the United States through several
Efforts to pass further national legislation met with the same fate. Even though the reformers lost at the national level, reformers succeeded in forcing legislation banning child labor and setting maximum hours in nearly every state. By 1920, the number of child laborers was nearly cut in half from what it had been in 1910. Most states passed minimum working age laws Progressive Era 2 The Progressive Era The progressive movement began to emerge in the late 1800 s. It was a time for change in America as well as a time for reform. ... and prohibited children from working more than 10 hours per day, but enforcement was difficult to achieve.
Capitalist development and economic downturn eroded American workers sense of pride and progress throughout the sixty years leading up to 1840. Beginning after 1844, mass immigration from Europe to the United States gave American business owners and employers a new source of cheap human labor, which further undermined organized American labor. Most of these immigrants were unskilled Catholic Irish and German agricultural workers. American working class Protestants despised them for their faith and heritage, in addition to their poverty. Likewise, by the 1840s, the free black population in the U.S. had expanded due to the emerging belief that slavery was immoral.
The student to teacher ratio for primary schools in Bolivia is 22 to one among the 14, 504 primary schools, however about one in seven children do not complete it. In 2004, according to The Statesman’s Yearbook the Politics, Cultures and Economies of the World, (Turner, pg. 216) the rate of attendance for primary education was 79.5% in 2004. Children in rural places have it much harder than those in urban areas. Many schools don’t have bilingual education, which causes many students to drop out.
Treatment of African Americans as second class citizens was still bad regarding economics in the north, but not as severe as in the south. For example, a mass migration of brought two million blacks to northern cities to seek out better economic opportunities. Also, unemployment in the north fell from almost one million to around 150000 by 1945. This was due to the creation of jobs in factories during World War 2, when it became easier for blacks to get jobs (although not as easy as it was for whites). In the
The United States does have a strong history of hostility towards specific immigrant groups such as the Nativists who opposed Irish immigration around 1850 and systematic bias against Japanese and German immigrants just before and after the second world war. Jews were also popular targets in the 20th centuary. These days most hostility is geared towards the Latin American immigrants as they are seen to be the largest group of immigrants entering the United States today. Some Americans have not completely adjusted to the largely non-European immigration and racism does occur. Hostility towards people of middle-eastern descent has also become apparent after the September 11th attacks conducted by an Islamic extremist group known as Al Qaeda.