Source Collection: Migration
Document 1
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Author |
Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) (1835–1910) |
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Date and location |
1870–1871, United States of America |
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Source type |
Primary source – semi-autobiographical travel book |
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Description |
Mark Twain is one of the most famous American authors. In his book, Roughing It, he writes about his travels into the American West. During these travels, he came across Chinese immigrant enclaves; an enclave is a part of a country or city where the population has a different religion, culture, or nationality than the surrounding area. The excerpt details Mark Twain’s impression of the Chinese immigrants. Note that Twain’s writings contain nineteenth-century stereotypes and terminology that would not be used today. |
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Citation |
Twain, Mark. Roughing It. American Publishing Company, 1872. |
Of course there was a large Chinese population in Virginia [City, Nevada]—it was the case with every town and city on the Pacific coast...
There are seventy thousand (and possibly one hundred thousand) Chinamen on the Pacific coast. There were about a thousand in Virginia [City]. They were penned into a “Chinese quarter”—a thing which they do not particularly object to, as they are fond of herding together… The chief employment of Chinamen in towns is to wash clothing... Their price for washing was $2.50 per dozen—rather cheaper than white people could afford to wash for at that time... The house servants, cooks, etc., in California and Nevada, were chiefly Chinamen. There were few white servants and no Chinawomen so employed. Chinamen make good house servants, being quick, obedient, patient, quick to learn and tirelessly industrious. They do not need to be taught a thing twice, as a general thing...
… In California he gets a living out of old mining claims that white men have abandoned as exhausted and worthless—and then the officers come down on him once a month with an exorbitant swindle to which the legislature has given the broad, general name of “foreign” mining tax, but is usually inflicted on no foreigners but Chinamen.
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Glossary Chinamen/Chinawomen: older terms once used to refer to people from China; reflects the language of the time but are now considered outdated and offensive |
Document 2
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Author |
J. C. Fletcher (1823–1901) |
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Date and location |
1893, Los Angeles, California |
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Source type |
Primary source – newspaper article |
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Description |
J. C. Fletcher submitted an article to the Los Angeles Times on 28 March 1893. In the article, he responds to analysis from Europe about California’s gender imbalance. He argues that the gender imbalance is worse in other states, and he gives his proposed solution to the issue. |
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Citation |
Fletcher, J.C. “The Sexes: Dearth of Women In the State of California. Thirty-four States Have More Men Than Women—The Remedy: More Marriages and Less Immigration.” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 1893. |
THE SEXES
Dearth of Women in the State of California
Thirty-four States Have More Men Than Women – The Remedy: More Marriage Less Immigration
A friend in Paris sent me... a very sarcastic article based on a statement made in some American Journal that the disproportion between the number of men and women was so great in California that no decent woman could arrive from the east without having thirty or forty suitors immediately [asking] for her hand in marriage. Furthermore, women are represented as so scarce in some parts of the “Bear Flag” State, that men will make long journeys to get a peep at one... I wish to call attention to the fact that California is not the only state in our union... that has a larger proportion of men than women...
Of the forty-four states composing our union, thirty-four have a great[er] number of men than women. By the last census (1890), .... there were 191,988 more men than women, in California. If a census could be taken next June it will be found that in three years the disproportion has been considerably lowered. Each year more mothers, wives, sisters and daughters are coming to California...
What is the remedy for this disproportion? The answer most apparent is, “more marriages.” ... Within the last two decades, perhaps, 200,000 wifeless foreigners have come into our country, and, into Massachusetts, New York and Rhode Island, have poured many thousands of husbandless women. Let wise laws limit immigration, and in a decade the sexes would lose their present disproportion.
J. C. Fletcher
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Glossary Sarcastic: trying to be funny or mocking by saying the opposite of what you mean |
Document 3
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Author |
Various authors |
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Date and location |
Nineteenth century, Hawaii |
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Source type |
Primary source – folk songs |
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Description |
Holehole Bushi is the name of the folk songs sung by Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. These workers tended to the cane sugar fields. The work was often backbreaking. These songs, 4 lines each, were passed down from generation to generation and act as a record of the experiences of those early immigrants in the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth century. |
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Citation |
Odo, Franklin. Voices from the Canefields: Folksongs from Japanese Immigrant Workers in Hawai’i. Oxford University Press, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199813032.001.0001. |
Beloved homeland
Staring into the sky
Who crosses that bridge
Into the void?
In a light drizzle
The wake-up bell clangs
Plantation cops crack
Their whips
A real look at the
Man I am to marry
This picture bride system is
Despicable
So early in the morning
Lunch pail on my shoulder
Once more holehole work
To put food on the table
Off to work so early to our
Konpan cane fields
Oh, to return to our homes
But when?
All that greasy sweat
Money from the konpan harvest
At home they wait impatiently
For the remittance
The workers keep coming
Overflowing these Islands
But it’s only middleman Nakayama
Who rakes in the dough
“Go head, go ahead!”
The luna barks at us to work faster
I trashed the bastard
In my dream
Hawai’i, Hawai’i
I come, chasing a dream
Now my tears flow
In the cane field
After one or two contracts
The poor bastards who don’t go home
End up in Hawai’i
Fertilizer for sugar cane
When my contract ends
I’ll send for her
If we are patient
We will have money
Money trees were
In my thoughts when I came but
Hawai’i turned out to be a
Living hell
My husband cuts the cane
While I do holehole
With sweat and tears
Together we get by
With but one willow trunk
I arrived, a lone bachelor
Now I have children and grandchildren
And even great-grandchildren
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Glossary Picture bride: a woman who immigrated to marry a man she had never met |
Document 4
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Author |
C. C. Monero, Henry J. Jackson, Stephenson, and T. V. Powderly |
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Date and location |
January 1891, US Congress |
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Source type |
Primary source – Congressional record |
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Description |
At a joint committee set up by Congress, testimony is given regarding the Italians in the United States. Specifically, it describes the Padrone system of workers’ contracts and the impact on Italian immigrants. |
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Citation |
Monero, C.C., Henry J. Jackson, Stephenson, and T. V. Powderly, testamony to “Some of the evils of immigration: Uncovered by the Joint Committee of Congress …” The Independent… Devoted to the Consideration of Politics, Social and Economic Tendencies, History, Literature, and the Arts (1848–1921) 43, issue 2235 (Oct 1, 1891): 5. |
C. C. Monero:
If Italian immigration should come into this country free it would be welcomed on the part of this country. … But if the Italians should be permitted to come under the Padroni system of slavery it would be a curse to this country and a permanent disgrace.
The Padroni system of slavery began in the year 1867. … [T]he padroni… have found a way to get around [the outlawing of the system]. [They] have carried on the slavery just as before, and… made it very lucrative; but it has dishonored… the Italian race.
I am sorry to say that… tens of thousands [of Italians] are kept in the most abject slavery by the cruel padroni… [they] grow fat on the sweat and blood of their unfortunate countrymen, the Italian slaves, men, women, and children. …
Henry Jackson:
Q. In your observation of these different classes, who are the least desirable of the immigrants?
A. I should say the Italians.
Commissioner of Immigration Stephenson
The Italians... are virtually under a contract before they even come here. A large portion of them have their passage paid there, which they agree to pay back, and 100, and in some cases 200 per cent of it in addition. … Every one of [the Italians] is identically alike. They have their leaders with them: they take them direct to the mines. Now, they do not come at haphazard. It is evident that the inspectors are unable to catch them under this law.
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Glossary Padroni: system by which powerful people brought Italian migrants to the United States on condition the immigrants pay part of their wages to them; Italian word for “boss” |
Document 5
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Author |
Various authors |
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Date and location |
Data representations produced 2010-2017 |
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Source type |
Charts |
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Description |
These visualizations represent data about immigrants the societies they entered, mainly in the 19th century. |
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Citation |
Various Data on Immigration. Selected Years. |
Document 6
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Author |
Jacob Riis |
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Date and location |
1890, New York City |
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Source type |
Book |
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Description |
In this book Jacob Riis, a Danish American journalist and photographer, describes working and living conditions for immigrants to New York City. |
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Citation |
Riis, Jacob. Chapter III “The Mixed Crowd” in How the Other Half Lives. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/45502/45502-h/45502-h.htm |
It is not to be assumed, of course, that the whole body of the population living in the tenements… is to be classed as vicious or as poor in the sense of verging on beggary.
New York’s wage-earners have no other place to live… They are truly poor for having no better homes; waxing poorer in purse as the exorbitant rents to which they are tied, as ever was serf to soil, keep rising… The German rag-picker of thirty years ago, quite as low in the scale as his Italian successor, is the thrifty tradesman or prosperous farmer of to-day.
The Italian scavenger [has] exclusive control of the corner fruit-stands, while his black-eyed boy monopolizes the boot-blacking industry… The Irish hod-carrier… has become a brick-layer… while the Chinese coolie is in almost exclusive possession of the laundry business. The reason is obvious. The poorest immigrant comes here with the purpose and ambition to better himself and, given half a chance, might be reasonably expected to make the most of it. To the false plea that he prefers the squalid homes in which his kind are housed there could be no better answer. The truth is, his half chance has too long been wanting, and for the bad result he has been unjustly blamed.
As emigration from east to west follows the latitude, so does the foreign influx in New York distribute itself along certain well-defined lines that waver and break only under the stronger pressure of a more gregarious race or the encroachments of inexorable business…
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Glossary Tenements: low-cost apartments, often poorly built and crowded |
Document 7
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Author |
Emma Lazarus |
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Date and location |
1883, United States |
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Source type |
Primary – poem |
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Description |
Emma Lazarus was commissioned to write a poem to raise funds for the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty. The resultant 1883 sonnet on the plight of immigrants, “The New Colossus,” was eventually engraved on the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in 1903. |
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Citation |
Emma Lazarus: Selected Poems and Other Writings (2002). The Poetry Foundation. https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/46550/the-new-colossus |
“The New Colossus”
By Emma Lazarus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “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-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
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Glossary Brazen: bold |