Author: Donald B. Cole Publisher: UNC Press Books ISBN: 1469640163 Category : Social Science Languages : en Pages : 263
Book Description
The violence and radicalism connected with the Industrial Workers of the World textile strike of 1912 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, left the popular impression that Lawrence was a slum-ridden city inhabited by un-American revolutionaries. Immigrant City is a study of Lawrence which reveals that the city was far different. The book opens with an account of the strike of 1912. It then traces the development of Lawrence from the founding of the city in 1845, when its builders hoped to establish a model mill town, through its years of immigration and growth of 1912. Donald Cole puts the strike in its proper perspective by examining the history of the city, and he emphasizes the immigrant's constant search for security and explores the very important question of whether the immigrant, from his own point of view, found security. The population of Lawrence was almost completely immigrant in nature; in 1910, 90 per cent of its people were either first or second generation Americans, and they represented nearly every nation in the world. The period covered by the book--1845 through 1921--is the great middle period of American immigration, which began with the Irish Famine and ended with the Quota Law of 1921. While Immigrant City concentrates on one American city, it reveals much about American immigration in general and demonstrates clearly that, in spite of the poverty that most immigrants fought, life for the foreign-born in America was not as grim as some writers have suggested.
Author: Helen Turvill Publisher: Theclassics.Us ISBN: 9781230455969 Category : Languages : en Pages : 20
Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1906 edition. Excerpt: ... Chapter 1. EARLY IMMIGRATION, 1820-45. The first division in the history of immigration in Massachusetts is characterized by no distinct wave. The amount is relatively unimportant; yet its steady increase is evident, its effects apparent, and the problems, whose solution is later to become of so much importance, have their beginnings in these years. The accompanying table shows the principal nationalities among the arrivals of alien passengers who came by sea to the Massachuaetts ports. It leaves out of account those who came by way of Canada, and for whom no statistics can now be obtained. Immigrants who landed at other seaports, especially at New York, and csme thence to Massachusetts are also neglected. A few of the foreigners returned and reduced the actual number of immigrants by 2/3 to 1 per-cent.( 1). The assumption that the number of aliens arriving at the ports of Massachusetts represents the number settling in the state, is not quite accurate. But in the early period it is truer than later, since immigrants who desired to rettle in Massachuaetts Young, Special Report on Immigration. XVI1. would probably sail for the nearest port. After 1837 the officials of Boston provided for a careful inspection of vessels bringing immigrants to that port. The table on pages 6 and 7 indicates clearly the character of the immigration prior to 1845. The only nationalities of importance are the Irish, English, and natives of the British Provinces in America. Of these the Irish have the greatest number. Since in several annual reports the number from Great Britain was not differentiated as to the several nationalities constituting the United Kingdom, the exact amount of the Irish immigration cannot be given. During the first five years..
Author: Conrad Edick Wright Publisher: Northeastern University Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 296
Book Description
For hundreds of thousands of immigrants, coming to Massachusetts has meant exchanging one community for another in multiple ways that are often overlooked. Whether home was originally an Irish tenant farm or the slave quarters of a Southern plantation or an Eastern European ghetto, whether its mention evoked warm memories or nightmares, immigration has required adopting a new identity consonant with new circumstances. Men who considered themselves Milanese moved to Boston's North End and became Italian Americans; women who identified themselves with County Cork turned into Irish Americans when Worcester became their hometown. The identities that immigrants adopted demarcated the outlines of their new communities.This collection of essays explores some of the communities that Massachusetts immigrants created for themselves in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Contributions investigate how individual immigrant settlements came about and how groups interacted with one another as well as how newcomers were received. The essays also assess how immigration affected those who experienced it, the men and women who gave up the rhythms of their birthplaces in favor of the pulsing beat of their adopted homeland. Because the Bay State was a primary destination for immigrants during the social reorganization caused by industrial and urban development, the volume offers important case studies, with national significance, of how newcomers and natives adjusted to each other and reshaped the boundaries of American communities. The collection explores the common aspects of community creation and development that linked their various ethnic experiences-Irish, French Canadian, Jewish, Italian, Swedish, and African American.
Author: Marilynn S. Johnson Publisher: ISBN: 9781625341471 Category : Boston (Mass.) Languages : en Pages : 0
Book Description
Among the most consequential pieces of Great Society legislation, the Immigration Act of 1965 opened the nation's doors to large-scale immigration from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. A half century later, the impact of the "new immigration" is evident in the transformation of the country's demographics, economy, politics, and culture, particularly in urban America. In The New Bostonians, Marilynn S. Johnson examines the historical confluence of recent immigration and urban transformation in greater Boston, a region that underwent dramatic decline after World War II. Since the 1980s, the Boston area has experienced an astounding renaissance-a development, she argues, to which immigrants have contributed in numerous ways. From 1970 to 2010, the percentage of foreign-born residents of the city more than doubled, representing far more diversity than earlier waves of immigration. Like the older Irish, Italian, and other European immigrant groups whose labor once powered the region's industrial economy, these newer migrants have been crucial in re-building the population, labor force, and metropolitan landscape of the New Boston, although the fruits of the new prosperity have not been equally shared.