NAME ____________________________________
Date: __________________
U.S. History
AIM: What Problems Did Farmers and Workers Face?
Immigration
“…Give me your tired, your poor,
Your Huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed, to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Emma Lazarus’s poem inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty
Henry Cabot Lodge, Senator from Massachusetts (1894)
The mass of immigration…continues, of course, to come from the United Kingdom and from
Germany, but relatively the immigration from these two sources is declining rapidly in comparison with
the immigration from Italy and from the Slavic countries of Russia, Poland, Hungary, and Bohemia
[Austria]…Thus…immigration to this country…is making its greatest relative increase from races most
alien to the body of the American people and from the lowest and most illiterate classes among those
races.
…The continued introduction into the labor market of 400,000 persons annually, half of whom have no
occupation and most of whom represent the rudest form of labor, has a very great effect in reducing the
rates of wages and disturbing the labor market…Moreover, the shifting of the sources of immigration is
unfavorable, and is bringing to the country people whom it is very difficult to assimilate and who do not
promise well for the standard of civilization in the United States.
Rena M. Atchison, author (1894)
[First,] no immigrant should be permitted to land upon our shores who cannot read and write his native
language. This restriction alone would cut off the large mass of illiterate immigrants whose presence in our
republic is a menace, socially, industrially, and politically.
[Second,] every immigrant should be compelled to…have sufficient money to insure him from
becoming a burden to the state for a period of at least six months…
[Third,] any immigrant who upon registration or afterward shall be found to have been a criminal in
any prison or the inmate of any workhouse or almshouse in his native land within a short time previous to
his immigration to America should be deported at the expense of the steamship importing him, and the
exportation of criminals and paupers to the United States should be made an international offense.
If foreign immigration continues at the present rate and such immigration continues to come from
middle, southern, and northeastern Europe, in 1900 the Anglo-Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon institutions will no
longer be the dominant powers in molding American life and legislation.
1. What expressions of racial/ethnic prejudice do you find in Lodge’s and Atchison’s statements?
2. Why do you think immigrants from eastern and southern Europe found it difficult to assimilate?
3. Of what are Lodge and Atchison afraid?
NAME ____________________________________
Date: __________________
U.S. History
AIM: What Problems Did Farmers and Workers Face?
Immigration
Directions: Brainstorm a list of “push” forces that cause people to leave their countries and come
to America. Then think of “pull” forces that draw people to America. You may use page 116 of
your notes for assistance.
Directions: Use the information from your notes to complete the following
comparison matrix of groups of immigrants who came to America.
Colonial Immigrants
When
Who
Why
Where
Contributions
Problems
Old Immigrants
New Immigrants
NAME ____________________________________
Date: __________________
U.S. History
AIM: What Problems Did Farmers and Workers Face?
Immigration
Directions: In the spaces provided, illustrate the three theories of what happens to immigrants
when they come to the United States.
Melting Pot Theory
Assimilation
Social Pluralism (Salad Bowl Theory)
NAME ____________________________________
Date: __________________
AIM: What Problems Did Farmers and Workers Face?
U.S. History