Distant Magnet: European Immigration to the U. S. A.

by Philip Taylor

Book Overview

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• Format: Mass Market Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0061316563
• ISBN13: 9780061316562
• Release Date: January 1972
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Weight: 0.82 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A romantic story soberly told

The story of the great waves of immigration into the United States in the 19th century is one of the great romantic episodes in the historyt of that country. Those splendid words of Emma Lazarus evoked an age that was closing even as they were inscribed on the base of the Statue of Liberty in 1886: "Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to be free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me." From the fjords of Norway, the crowded farmlands of Germany, the ghoettoes of Eastern Europe, the suppressed nationalities of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the stagnant hopelessness of Sicilian villages, millions of Europeans crowded into the wooden carriages of the new railways and then into the cramped steerage quarters, first of sailing ships and then of steam ships. Always they ran the gauntlet of unscrupulous agents, porters, and confidence tricksters. At last they reached the land of liberty and opportunity of which they had dreamed so long. The energetic ones moved into the open lands in the interior, cleared the soil and became sturdy farmers. Others fill the insatiable demands of the factories and sweatshops of the great cities. Some find it impossible to meet the challenges of a ruthless and thrusting society and drift into squalor and despair. The first two or three generations maintained a fierce attachment to the language and the cusoms of the land of their birth; and they send remittances to their families or subscriptions to political causes back home. Not all that much melting takes place at first in the so-called melting pot of the United States. On the one hand, many immigrants cling to their traditions; on the other there was always a streak of hostility towards them from native-born Americans, especially when the newcomers were Catholic, Eastern European, or Asiatics. The Asians were the first to have the "golden door" locked against them. More and more categories of immigrants were excluded after 1882, though it took until the 20th century before literacy tests and then quota systems reduced the mighty flow of newcomers to a mere trickle. This is the story told in Philip Taylor's scholarly book. A bibliography of 25 pages shows the immense amount of work that has gone into it. The first three chapters, describing the Europe from which the immigrants came, are on the whole rather heavy going. Like the immigrants, the reader may well feel liberated once he leaves the stifling background. After that, the sense of adventure, of enterprise and of hardship in pursuit of an attainable goal takes over. These later chapters contain a wealth of statistical information which is valuable, but perhaps rather wearisome at ties. Mr Taylor's tone is sober rather than romantic; but his restrained pages are full of information that invites the imagination to linger; and the splendid illustrations, especially the old photographs of Lewis Hine, capture the human spiri