Immigration to America in the Early 1900’s

Looking for the American Dream

Objective

By the end of the lesson, SWBAT analyze why immigrants came to America.

Lightning Round Review

1. How did the Spanish American War make the U.S. stronger?

2. How did the Panama Canal help business?

Vocabulary

Immigrant - a person who moved from one country to a different country.

Famine - Not enough food in an area which leads to starvation and death.

Immigrants

Why would a person want to leave their home country and travel to the United States?

Reasons

Famine

Possibility of Work

Escaping Religious Persecution

Escape of War

Promise of a Better Life

Immigrants

Between the years 1900-1910 over 9,000,000 immigrants came to America from around the world!

Europe

Famine

In the early 1900’s there were places in Europe where people were starving.

Crops were diseased and people were hungry and dying of starvation and diseases such as cholera.

The Great Potato Famine

An example of a famine was in Ireland: The Great Potato Famine

Over 1,000,000 people died of starvation.

Many people had no choice but to leave Ireland and emigrate to different countries to look for food.

Famine

Work

Many immigrants that came to America came because they heard about all of the booming business that was happening in America.

Steel, textiles, banking!

Work

There were recruiters in Europe who would encourage people to come to America with the promise of a better life.

Work

Hungarians, Poles, Slovaks - Worked in Coal Mines

Russians, Greeks - Worked in the textile industry

Many rail road companies advertised the open farm land that was cheap out in the west.

Escaping from Religious Persecution

There were many places in Europe where people were discriminated against because of their religion.

Especially in Russia and Eastern Europe.

Pogroms- organized massacre of a group

of people.

The government police officers and army would come into small villages where a lot of Jewish people lived and destroy their property and even kill them.

Pogroms

Pogroms

Many Russian Jews were afraid for their lives so they left for America where there was a promise of them being able to practice their religion without being bothered by the government.

War

Wars in Europe destroyed land, villages, and many many lives!

People were forced to leave their homes because they were destroyed or it was not safe to stay there.

Many people escaped to the United States especially during World War I

War

The American Dream

Many immigrants came to America because they heard about all of these people that made it rich.

They heard that America was a place where anybody could become rich, no matter what class you were born in!

The American Dream was born!

Conclusion

In the early 1900’s floods of immigrants came to the United States looking for a better life.

They came because of famine, for jobs, to escape persecution, and to cash in on the American Dream!