American History

It is evident that in current days, there are many immigrants from Africa venturing abroad or to the western countries searching for greener pastures. The United States and Canada offers a green card program that enables African and other immigrants to acquire citizenship, free entry and exit into these highly regarded countries as lands of green pastures. Having this document is the dream of many Africans who anticipate the good job, nice houses and smooth life. They believe success in getting the green card spells a bright future and no more suffering.  It is said to be a direct ticket to this land full of opportunities. An in-depth analysis into this trend reveals it as a practice that began in the early times of the twentieth century. The immigration level has been high as people continue to search for better opportunities. But the labor conditions have been horrible since those times, and still into the twentieth century they have not improved much. In this essay, the writer tries to address this rise of immigration levels from the years of 1865 until the mid 1900s. The author tries to analyze the reasons that led to these migrations and if they were achieved.

Immigration in the Period 1865 to Mid 1900s
Immigration to the United States increased the population of America by nearly 10 million and resulted into expansion of their territories. Though many immigrants were going to America because of political and religious reasons, the largest number came to improve their life conditions. Irish and German immigrants were the most in this category. They settled mostly in the urban areas of the northeastern and north-central states since they would benefit from positions of labor in building the canals and railroads connecting the cities. Most of the immigrants were Jews.

Sinclair in his book talks of the hopes that Jurgis had. He thought that if he went to America he would work and earn a lot of dollars and become rich. He also thought it was a land of freedom whether one was poor or rich.

In the 1890s there was an influx of immigrants from northern and western Europe who were joined by immigrants from the southern and eastern Europe and Armenians from Middle East. This led to the increase of foreign population in America by more than 18 million. This resulted to the growth of slums and ghettos since the population was big and was made of many poor people.

Labor Conditions
Labor conditions in the American countries in the early 1900s were very atrocious and in their worst conditions. The wages were often very low and working hours were very long. The employers were ruthless making their workers toil for a meager pay. During the mid 1800s, employers from the coal industry sourced for cheap labor from Europe.

In the beginning of the 1900 the government, through the coal workers unions urged the passage of laws that prohibited this type of solicitation. In Eastern Europe most of the poor peasants worked for landowners for wages of fifteen to thirty cents per day. And the mine workers were paid five cents per hour and they worked for twelve hours a day. An Increase in the wages was only two cents an hour if one found a good job. It is true that there were jobs in America but the conditions were adverse. Though the wages were high, every thing else was higher and they found themselves in a rat trap. The packers and people in general were becoming fed up with the system. This is as portrayed by Upton Sinclair in his book The Jungle.

His fiction book talks of the Lithuanian Immigrant who went to America seeking a higher wage than his homeland. Upton Sinclair creates a fiction story of Jurgis Rudkus in the book making his children to work to increase the household income. He moves with his family and also his children are forced to work to contribute to the household. This is enough evidence that the immigrants in this period had high hopes of getting better living conditions and job opportunities but they were disappointed by the systems of the day. Sinclair portrays the rugged system where little Stanislovas goes to look for work and he gets the job, but long working hours in adverse conditions. It is said that he leaves in the dark and comes back home in the dark.

This idea of the economic system is reflected in the book the jungle by Sinclair where he claims capitalism to be the source of all evils.  He conveys the idea that capitalism caused wage slavery. This is the situation where people work for long hours to make only enough to eat and survive. This is made a fact by the rising inequality between the rich and the poor. The inequalities were great in the cities with a small fraction of people owning almost seventy percent of the wealth. This followed with the rise of splendid residences and social clubs set apart for the rich. The poor Americans depended on their childrens labor to meet expenses and they had little resources to cater for health needs and suffered from unemployment. In the book this is well manifested by the economic debate where Dr Schlieman explains how the capitalist will develop and kill communism. He shows more preference to socialism. He says it will be a competitive world where the rich will be rich but making the poor poorer since people will only survive by working and satisfying markets of particular interests. In Boyers book, unskilled and skilled workers alike worked up to twelve hour shifts and also faced grave hazards to their health and their safety. There was a rise in industrial accidents from various exposures to unfit working conditions and the rapid process of production.

Transformation of the Society
 There were a series of strikes in America during this period because of the working conditions. This was followed by a steady rise of trade unions and workers associations to protect their interests. This was in a bid to fight for better working conditions and welfare of the workers and need to restore the conditions they once enjoyed. Terrible labor clashes in the end of the century continued and from 1881 to 1905 it was estimated that there was a total of 37,000 strikes in which more than 7 million workers participated.

Urbanization in the United States took place in the period of 1860- 1900 and can be regarded as one of the direct impacts of immigration in the United States. Due to immigration in the late nineteenth century, there was conflict between the many workers and the rich bosses who controlled the economy. This is attributed to the increase in education levels and thus many people had gained knowledge because of the increased enrollment into colleges.  American urbanization is widely attributed to the high numbers of immigrants during this period. Hence, immigration played a great role in American urbanization this urban growth fueled by the immigrants influx led to stimulated economic growth, and mushrooming of cities, new jobs and markets that stimulated economic expansion making it a harbor of opportunity for many more to come in to the country

But we see that instead of the society to offer hope to the immigrants, it goes ahead to take all they have. This is what Upton Sinclair refers to in his book. The economic system punishes the workers since everything costs more than it should, and business people take advantage of the ignorance of the masses. There are lots of labor opportunities but the remuneration is agonizing.

Conclusion
This trend of immigration has continued over the years with Africans moving from the continent to settle in America. However, the working conditions have long been improved. The modernization of this economy led to a small change, but some issues have not been adequately addressed. The issue of inequality in the society has been continually worsening with the rich getting a chance to amass more wealth as the poor perish in poverty. The United States continues to solicit for skilled labor from immigrants into America. This has changed since the 1800s. It was the unskilled labor that was more sourced and the good jobs were for Americans and whites. Therefore, immigrants who ventured into the American economy in the period 1800 to late 1900s were highly disappointed with the turn of events as they never succeeded. But those who ventured later on continue to enjoy good reward. Though still after American civilization, segregation is still practiced. But it is minimal and not severe. Success came but is being enjoyed by another generation.