Innovation & Wealth › The Gilded Age › First globalization: trade, migration, empire
Mass migration to the Americas
c. 1880–1914· Event· Society: who gained, who lost
Well documentedSolid records, texts or physical evidence.
Between about 1880 and 1914 roughly 30 million people, mostly Europeans, moved to the Americas, over 20 million of them to the US.
See it on the Innovation & Wealth map →What happened
Cheap steamship fares, rural poverty, pogroms and higher wages drew Italians, Poles, Jews from the Russian Empire, Hungarians, Greeks and others to New York, Buenos Aires, São Paulo and Toronto. US arrivals peaked at about 1.3 million in 1907, many processed at Ellis Island (opened 1892). In 1903 the first organized group of Korean laborers reached the sugar plantations of Hawaii, then a US territory. Meanwhile the US barred Chinese workers from 1882. War and quota laws in 1921 and 1924 ended the wave.
Impact on society and the economy
Migrants often doubled or tripled their earnings and sent money home. Wages rose in Europe as workers left, while newcomers held down wage growth for some American workers.
How we know
Ship manifests and Ellis Island records, US census data, and studies by economists Timothy Hatton and Jeffrey Williamson on migration and wages. Totals are estimates.
Still debated
How much immigrants lowered native-born wages is debated, then and now. Return rates were high for some groups, such as Italians, but exact figures are uncertain.
Connections (2)
▸First globalization: trade, migration, empire included Mass migration to the AmericasWell documented
The connection
The same steamships and railways that carried cheap grain also carried people. Falling fares, letters and money from relatives abroad, and New World wages often double Europe's drew millions. Cheap American grain also hurt European farmers, pushing many off the land and into emigration.
When and how
Atlantic world, about 1870–1914, from ports such as Liverpool, Hamburg, Bremen and Naples to New York and Buenos Aires.
How we know
Migration and wage data analyzed by Timothy Hatton and Jeffrey Williamson link emigration rates to wage gaps and falling transport costs.
Debates
How much people left for economic reasons versus persecution, as for Jews in Russia, or simply followed relatives varies by group and is debated.
▸Mass migration to the Americas supplied much of the labor for Second Industrial Revolution: steel, oil, electricityWell documented
The connection
American steel mills, coal mines, meatpacking plants and garment shops depended on immigrants, often unskilled newcomers from southern and eastern Europe. By about 1910 the foreign-born made up more than half the workers in iron and steel and in coal mining, filling dangerous jobs at low wages.
When and how
Pittsburgh, Chicago, New York and the mining regions of Pennsylvania and the Midwest, about 1880–1914.
How we know
The US Immigration Commission (Dillingham Commission, 1907–11) surveyed industrial workforces and found immigrants made up most workers in several key industries.
Debates
Whether immigrant labor sped American industrialization or simply let employers keep wages low and delay mechanization is debated.