Exclusive Progression: The Struggles of U.S. Immigrants During the Progressive Era

Exclusive Progression:

The Struggles of U.S. Immigrants During the Progressive Era

J.M. Rogers

. . .

       In the first two decades of the twentieth century, the people of the United States saw an unprecedented expansion of their economy and a swelling of their population.[1] As manufacturing centers like Boston, New York, Cleveland, and Chicago, sought to meet the production demands of an expanding middle class, the newly minted Americans streaming through Ellis Island provided a cost-effective solution. Between 1901 and 1913, 13 million of these “new immigrants” entered the country from Southern and Eastern Europe, ballooning the worker base in the aforementioned manufacturing centers to numbers that exceeded 70% of their city populations. [2]  Most of these workers, including men, women, and children, were relegated to unskilled, contract labor that provided wages well below the newly burgeoning American standard of living. [3] The money that immigrants earned in exchange for long shifts, unsafe working conditions, and brutal manual labor was only enough to ensure their day-to-day survival amongst the filthy tenements of the Lower Eastside, where modern comforts like electricity and indoor toilets were often non-existent.[4] These strains, paired with a lack of a political voice, led to decades of social inequality, largely influenced by the established hegemony, which sought to minimize the power and influence of all non-Americans.[5] Thus, despite the promise of economic freedom and personal prosperity, immigrants in the United States during the Progressive Era saw their political rights marginalized, their wages exploited, and their living conditions inhibited by way of exclusory voting laws and corporate/political corruption.

            Between 1840 and 1914, approximately 40 million immigrants entered the United States, with 20 million others immigrating to other regions of the Western Hemisphere, such as Canada, Argentina, and Western Europe.[6] This global outflow of foreign-born peoples dramatically altered the social and economic landscape of the U.S., creating divides between native-born peoples and foreigners in both the workplace and daily life. These divides were compounded by the unsavory practices of corporate bosses, which highlighted the ongoing consolidation of economic and political power.[7] As corporations gained increasing leverage due to their financial and political sway, greedy bosses openly exploited low-cost labor, and inexpensive production means at the expense of their workers.[8] The resulting consumer products and services created through this exploitation of immigrant labor provided a new American standard of life for native-born citizens.

        Access to such living standards remained elusive to impoverished foreigners, whose deplorable living conditions provided little improvement to the economic and political disparities that had driven them out of their own home countries.[9]  Evidence of this economic inequality was made obvious to the general public through the organized strikes and boycotts of worker’s unions like the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) and the International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union (ILGW).[10] As exhibited by the “Uprising of 20,000”, such pre-meditated labor strikes were centered around the demands for collective bargaining agreements that included better wages, hours, and working conditions. In addition to these public displays, tragedies like the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire of 1911, which culminated in the death of some 150 seamstresses who had been locked in their workspace, helped raised national concern over the inhumane work practices that immigrants were subject to.[11] However, native-born citizens enjoying the comforts of modern Americanism were loathed to fill, or over-compensate, the low-skilled positions those new immigrants were relegated to. As such, labor strikes remained commonplace throughout the Progressive Era.

        Workplace issues were not the only hardships that new immigrants faced in America, though. Many of them endured their first experience of social exclusion within minutes of reaching U.S. soil.[12] As mentioned, most immigrants who came to the United States sought a reprieve from poverty, illiteracy, and political corruption, but what they found was a separatist society that allotted only a marginal improvement of these conditions. Across the nation, state laws actively sought to limit voter participation following the passage of the 17th Amendment, which would greatly hinder the ability of new immigrants to affect the popular vote. [13] In addition to altering voting laws, native-born citizens also pushed for the Americanization of immigrants, a demand that advocated the abandonment of their traditional cultures in favor of the “American Way.” [14] These outside social pressures contributed to the growth of insular, ethnic neighborhoods, which often printed newspapers, maintained storefronts, and operated community organizations that reflected immigrants’ traditional cultures and language.[15] This revealed the deep ties that many immigrants still had to their home countries, countries that “birds of passage” often returned to once securing ample funds to purchase land.[16] For those immigrants who chose to remain in the U.S., the strains of adjusting to social life were compounded by the expanding realm of female autonomy, an expansion that challenged the patriarchal family systems that predominated old-country thinking.[17]

        The Progressive Era was a period of American history representing some of its highest highs and the lowest lows. Amidst an economic boom that led to the propulsion of the native white worker into the middle and upper classes, dire poverty and inhumanity racked the low-class sectors of urban centers. The lives of millions of newly immigrated peoples exhibited the deplorable reach of human greed and grossness of inhumanity that ultimately led to the aggressive reform of social legislation and economic production. Rather than coming to the United States to steal jobs or malign society, most immigrants came seeking a reprieve from the hardships of rural countries that had fallen behind in the industrial rat race. What they found were opportunistic economic policies that sought to relegate them to the lowest wage brackets among all Americans. Sadly, those lured to the U.S. by the promise of economic freedom and personal prosperity were rewarded with the marginalization of their political voice, the exploitation of their right to “free labor,” and the degradation of their living conditions. All these things were made possible by implementing exclusory voting laws and a political body complicit with corruption and corporate buyouts.

           

Works Cited

Foner, Eric. Give Me Liberty. 5th ed. Vol. 2. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.