By 1900 America’s industrial growth had transformed the U.S. into a world power. The nation’s wealth and population were growing rapidly. Yet poverty, corruption and economic instability were widespread. Responding to these problems, Americans created a new and more active form of government that would shape American life for the next 100 years.
The importance of reform efforts from the 1890s through the 1910s has led historians to call this period “the Progressive Era.†History texts often focus on Presidents and exceptional individuals who sought to “clean up†the cities and modernize government. Immigrants are usually shown only as passive recipients of – or even obstacles to – reform and change, but recent research suggests that immigrants also played active roles in reform campaigns. Collective action between immigrants and middle-class activists created new solutions to social problems, and thereby changed the way in which the government related to society.
Framed by the 1909 New York shirtwaist strike, the documentary Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl presents a panoramic portrait of immigrant working women in the turn-of-the-century city. A series of vignettes explores the experiences of young Jewish and Italian working women, and addresses issues of immigration, intergenerational conflict, courtship, ethnic tension, racial discrimination, industrial conflict, and the creation of a new consumer and entertainment culture.
Ida and Angelica, the film’s fictional co-stars, are representative of the millions of immigrants who flooded U.S. cities in the early 20th century. In New York, where the garment industry dominated the local economy, 70% of the workforce was female, and about half of those women were under the age of 20. Jewish and Italian women comprised 90% of the workers.
In 1909, immigrant shirtwaist workers like Ida and Angelica led a major strike – the “Uprising of the 20,000†– that revealed to the public the low pay, harsh supervision, and unsafe conditions that plagued garment workers. The Triangle Shirtwaist Company was one of the largest employers of garment workers in New York City. In 1911, a fire at the Company claimed the lives of 146 people, mostly young women, and brought renewed attention to unsafe industrial working conditions. Thus, through strikes and tragedy in the early 1900s, women laid the groundwork for further reform movements that would continue to change the workplace, and a woman’s place in it, during the course of the 20th century.
Students will identify ways that women participated in movements for social change before they earned the right to vote
Students will explain the ways workers challenged the effects of industrial capitalism
Students will analyze differing conceptions of womanhood in the early twentieth century
This activity supports the following Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.6-8.2. Determine the central ideas or information of a primary or secondary source; provide an accurate summary of the source distinct from prior knowledge or opinions.
RHSS.6-8.7. Integrate visual information with other information in print and digital texts.
Step 1: Split students into two groups and hand out Heaven Vocabulary sheet.
Step 2: Explain that we will watch the first clip twice; the first time students should take "mental notes" and the second time they should take actual notes. Hand out "Setting the Scene" Active Viewing worksheet.
Step 3: Play the introduction to Heaven (2 minutes 30 seconds). Lead a quick discussion of the students' impressions.
Step 4: Play the introduction again and have students take notes on the "Setting the Scene" Active Viewing worksheet.
Step 5: Write the following questions on the board and instruct students to keep them in mind as they watch the next chapters of the video.
What makes the job hard and unfair?
How does the fact that the girls are earning their own money create conflict for them and also give them new opportunities for freedom?
Play chapters 2-5 (2:45-16:20).
As a group discuss the two preview questions. To reinforce the topic of factory working conditions, you can use Working Conditions for Factory Girls: Matching worksheet.
Step 6:Â Have students read Progressive Era Activists Call for Trade Unions and complete the accompanying worksheet. As a group, discuss what the Women's Trade Union League saw as the best way to solve the problems of factory girls and how the document's language conveys its point of view.Â
Step 7:Â Hand out and/or project the Seal of the National Women's Trade Union League and lead students in a discussion of its language, concepts, and symbols: Â
Note that the WTUL was founded in 1903; could women vote in 1903? Â
Review key vocabulary, ex. trade union [an organized group of workers who work in a factory or have a specific skill; they work together to protect their common interests and improve working conditions.]
Ask students to identify and discuss what images they see:
What do the two women represent (fighter with armor; mother with baby; two different kinds of power that women can have.)
Factory in the background
Rising sun (optimism; new day is coming)
Shield with the word victory
Discuss the WTUL's goals:Â
eight hour day
living wage
to guard the home
Discuss:
How do the words and images in the seal express the organization's reform goals?
What ideals does it communicate about womanhood?
Step 8: View the last 2 chapters of Heaven (16:21-27:00). As a group, revisit the Women's Trade Union League seal and review how the image communicates ideals about womanhood and work. Contrast that view to the ways that male representatives of the government (i.e., the judge and the police) viewed the strike. Refer to the following quotes:
"To them a working girl's just another tramp."
"You are a criminal…. Your strike is a strike against God."
Thousands of immigrants of poor physique are recorded as such by the medical inspectors at Ellis Island, and a card to this effect sent to the registry clerk or immigrant inspector with the immigrant, but this mere note of physical defect carries little significance under the present law, and the vast majority of them are admitted by the immigration authorities, because it does not appear that the physical defect noted will make the immigrant a public charge. . . .Â
The real danger to the public health from immigration lies in that class of immigrants whose physique is much below American standards, whose employment is in the sweat-shop, and whose residence is the East Side tenement in New York City. The Mediterranean races, Syrians, Greeks and southern Italians, who are unused to a cold climate, and who often have insufficient clothing, also establish in their crowded quarters splendid [centers] for the dissemination of disease. The Hebrews, Syrians, Greeks, and southern Italians invariably crowd the most insanitary quarters of the great centers of population. And the various filthy and infected, though perhaps picturesque, foreign quarters constitute to-day the greatest existing menace to the public health.
Students will synthesize data presented in charts, tables, and graphs to write a narrative about the immigrant experience in the Ellis Island era.Â
Students will develop skills for reading and understanding quantitative data.Â
This activity supports the following Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.6-8.7. Integrate visual information with other information in print and digital texts.
RHSS.9-10.7. Integrate quantitative or technical analysis with qualitative analysis in print or digital text.
NOTE: The directions for this activity include modifications for elementary students. "MS/HS" denotes when sources or strategies are suggested for middle school and high school students only. Â "Elementary" indicates that the strategy or source is designed for elementary students. Depending on the level of the students, the teacher may want to use some or all of the charts and strategies conveyed, regardless of grade level.Â
Step 1: Tell students that today they will be using graphs, charts, and tables to understand the lives of Ellis Island immigrants in the first decade of the 20th century. All of the information that they will be using is taken from the 1910 census and a special Congressional report compiled in 1911. (As needed, explain what the census is and what types of information it records.) At that time in U.S. history, the largest proportion of the population was either foreign-born or the children of foreign-born residents (about 1/3 total; by comparison, in 2010, about 23% were immigrants or children of immigrants).Â
Begin by passing out "Immigrants by Nationality and Gender." Note with students the color-coding of the charts (German=orange, Irish=green, etc.) Read the description out loud and then discuss the following:
What information in conveyed in these charts? Â (Which groups were arriving between 1899 and 1910, the relative number of men and women arriving in five different immigrant groups)
What observations about this wave of immigration can you gain from this chart? What were the biggest groups arriving? Which groups had more men than women? More women than men? What is new or surprising? Â
Step 2: Next students will learn more about the immigrants who arrived here.  Pass out "Immigrants' Connection to the United States" and "Money Shown on Admission to the United States" (MS/HS only). Examine charts together and discuss the following:
What information do these charts convey?Â
What is surprising or new information from these charts? What other observations can you make?Â
What do these charts convey about the challenges and opportunities for Ellis Island immigrants?Â
MS/HS only: Pass out "Immigrant Household Relationships by Gender and Ethnicity" and discuss:
What information do these charts convey? What is new or surprising? Other observations?
How does work and family account for the differences between different ethnic groups and genders? (Polish and Italian men arrived by themselves and thus were more likely to live as boarders; Jews tended to migrate as families and so did not live as boarders; Irish women were much more likely to live as servants in someone else's home; etc.)
Step 3: Next students will look at the types of jobs immigrants worked. Pass out "Chart of First Generation of Male/Female Immigrant Occupations." Discuss the following:
What kind of information is being conveyed in these charts?Â
What is new or surprising information from these charts? Other observations?
KEY IDEA: Many immigrant women did not work; this chart only measures the occupations of working women.
KEY IDEA: Workers in the 1910 census were anyone ages 10 and older. How would this be different today? Â
What factors might have accounted for such stark concentration among certain groups in certain industries? Â (Chain migration and family/friend connections to help getting a job; immigrants' skills or lack of skills for an industrial economy; niche markets)
Step 4: Finally, students will look at educational attainment. For MS/HS, pass out "Comparison of School Enrollment..."; for elementary, pass out "Percentage of Teens Ages 14-18 Enrolled in School." Discuss:
Who was most likely to attend school? Who was least likely?
How does immigrant educational attainment compare to native-born white Americans?
What factors might account for these differences? (Need to work, different ideas about the necessity of educating women, etc.)
Step 5: Now students will synthesize this data.
For MS/HS: Pass out "Immigrants by the Numbers Situation" sheet. Read through the directions together. Randomly pass out immigrant identity cards to each student and assign them to write a narrative (length depending on level of students) in the voice of their character based on the information gleaned from the charts. Teachers can modify this activity by asking lower-level students to answer only some of the items listed under "The Task" and limiting the charts the student works from. When finished, ask students to share their narratives with a partner or with the whole class.Â
For elementary: Pass out the "Immigrants by the Numbers I Statements" sheet, the immigrant characters sheet, scissors and paste to each student. Students should read each statement and decide for whom it was true. Students then cut out that immigrant's picture and paste it under the statement. Teachers may want to tell lower-level students how many "correct" answers go with each statement.Â
Students will analyze debates over immigration in the early twentieth century to understand the tension between the need for labor and anxiety over immigrants' political and cultural qualifications for citizenship.Â
As the 20th century began, millions of immigrants from southern and eastern Europe poured into Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and other U.S. cities. In New York, the nation's largest city, more than half of the population was foreign-born. Many immigrants came in search of economic opportunity, fleeing depressed economies, high land prices or prejudices in their old countries.Â
Immigrant labor powered the rapid industrialization of the late 19th and early 20th century. Employers were eager to hire the new immigrants and happy to pay them less than most American-born workers would accept. Many politicians wooed new voters with favors and jobs in exchange for votes; consequently, political machines exercised great power in urban areas with large immigrant populations.Â
Other native-born Americans, however, were wary and often hostile towards new immigrants. They worried that cheap labor undercut their own economic security. They feared their diminished political power. And they were often prejudiced against the darker complexions and unfamiliar religions--the great majority of "new" immigrants were Catholic or Jewish--of the newcomers. Â
Debates for and against immigration played out for decades, finally culminating in a nativist push to restrict immigration from southern and eastern Europe. U.S. Congress passed quota laws in 1921 and 1924 that remained in place until 1965. Â
Step 1: (Optional: The teacher may want to introduce the topic by reviewing current immigration debates and push/pull factors for immigrants, documented and undocumented, to the United States today.) Pass out copies of the cartoon analysis worksheet and the cartoon. Also project the cartoon on overhead or Smartboard. Ask a volunteer to read the description of the cartoon out loud and the title/caption. Ask for volunteers to read each of the quotes from the cartoon (typed out on the worksheet in Part I) from each of the various characters: contractor, politician, etc.
Step 2: Allow students to work individually or in pairs to complete Part II of the worksheet by analyzing the cartoon. After students have had time to complete the worksheet, lead a share-out and discussion of the cartoon, making sure that everyone understands its content. Before moving to Step 3, review the key points:
In the early twentieth century, people did not agree about whether immigration was good or bad for the United States.
In the early twentieth century, people were unsure whether or not new immigrants were "fit" for citizenship.Â
Step 3: Now pass out the two written documents, the anti-immigration pamphlet and the speech from President Cleveland. Ask students to underline or highlight specific arguments for and against immigration in each document. (The teacher may vary this portion by giving half the students one document and half the other, or by reading both documents aloud with students as they highlight arguments.) Ask students to share out what pro and con arguments they found. After reading the documents, discuss:
Given that there were so many objections to immigration at the time, why do you think it took legislators until 1924 to restrict immigration?
How was the immigration debate of the 1900s different than the immigration debate today (especially considering today's idea of "illegal" or "legal" immigrants)? Â
Step 4: After reading and discussing the documents, ask students to individually respond to the question on the back of the worksheet (Part III): Given that there were so many objections to immigration at the time, why do you think it took the U.S. Congress until 1924 to restrict immigration from Europe?
Students will analyze how earning wages created opportunities and challenges for young immigrant women.Â
Students will dramatize the conflict between immigrant parents and children over working children's wages. Â Â
This activity supports the following Common Core Literacy Standards in History/Social Studies:
RHSS.6-8.1. Cite specific textual evidence to support analysis of primary and secondary sources.
This activity also supports the following Common Core Speaking and Listening Standard for grades 6-8:
SL.7.4. Present claims and findings, emphasizing salient points in a focused, coherent manner with pertinent descriptions, facts, details, and examples; use appropriate eye contact, adequate volume, and clear pronunciation.
SL.6.3. Delineate a speaker’s argument and specific claims, distinguishing claims that are supported by reasons and evidence from claims that are not.
Step 1: Divide the group into two equal groups: one group to play mothers and one group to play daughters. Pass out copies of the Pay Envelope worksheet describing the situation and go over the parts of the role play carefully.Â
Step 2:Â Pass out copies of the character planning worksheets to every student, as well as the primary and secondary documents and accompanying worksheet. (For some students, it may be more appropriate to use the Background Essay and Worksheet on Immigrant Working Women, which is a shorter, more scaffolded version of the Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars reading.) In each group, either daughters or mothers work together to prepare for the role play, which will develop as follows:Â
The daughter arrives home from work with her pay envelope and speaks first, telling her mother she will no longer turn over her entire paycheck. Â The mother then responds, and give-and-take follows. Â
In preparing for the role play, students should review the readings and select evidence and information they wish to include in this exchange. Students should consider the arguments and evidence the character would use, and how she would counter the arguments of the opposing family member. Â
Step 4:Â The groups of mothers and daughters should each choose one member to play the role for the group. Â The designated mother and daughter present the role play to the class. Pass out the Scene Assessment Rubric and go over directions for completing it as they actively listen to the role play; as students watch the role play, they should take notes about the main points of each character and the sources the actors used to create their dialogue. Â
Step 5: After concluding the role play, members of the group should be prepared to comment to the class on the mother's and daughter's perspectives. (These questions are also on the Scene Assessment Rubric, which may be completed prior, during, or after the class discussion.) Â
How did they see the issues differently, and why? Â
How did the perspectives of individual group members vary, depending on what role they played and how they interpreted the role and readings? Â
Since the foundations of the American commonwealth were laid in colonial times over 300 years ago, vigorous complaint and more or less bitter persecution have been aimed at newcomers to our shores. Also the congressional reports of about 1840 are full of abuse of English, Scotch, Welsh immigrants as paupers, criminals, and so forth.
Old citizens in Detroit of Irish and German descent have told me of the fierce tirades and propaganda directed against the great waves of Irish and Germans who came over from 1840 on for a few decades to escape civil, racial, and religious persecution in their native lands.
The “Know-Nothings,†lineal ancestors of the Ku-Klux Klan, bitterly denounced the Irish and Germans as mongrels, scum, foreigners, and a menace to our institutions, much as other great branches of the Caucasian race of glorious history and antecedents are berated to-day. All are riff-raff, unassimilables, “foreign devils,†swine not fit to associate with the great chosen people—a form of national pride and hallucination as old as the division of races and nations.
But to-day it is the Italians, Spanish, Poles, Jews, Greeks, Russians, Balkanians, and so forth, who are the racial lepers. And it is eminently fitting and proper that so many Members of this House with names as Irish as Paddy’s pig, are taking the floor these days to attack once more as their kind has attacked for seven bloody centuries the fearful fallacy of chosen peoples and inferior peoples. The fearful fallacy is that one is made to rule and the other to be abominated. . . .
 In this bill we find racial discrimination at its worst—a deliberate attempt to go back 84 years in our census taken every 10 years so that a blow may be aimed at peoples of eastern and southern Europe, particularly at our recent allies in the Great War—Poland and Italy.
Jews In Detroit Are Good Citizens
Of course the Jews too are aimed at, not directly, because they have no country in Europe they can call their own, but they are set down among the inferior peoples. Much of the animus against Poland and Russia, old and new, with the countries that have arisen from the ruins of the dead Czar’s European dominions, is directed against the Jew.
We have many American citizens of Jewish descent in Detroit, tens of thousands of them—active in every profession and every walk of life. They are particularly active in charities and merchandising. One of our greatest judges, if not the greatest, is a Jew. Surely no fair-minded person with a knowledge of the facts can say the Jews or Detroit are a menace to the city’s or the country’s well-being. . . .
Forty or fifty thousand Italian-Americans live in my district in Detroit. They are found in all walks and classes of life—common hard labor, the trades, business, law, medicine, dentistry, art, literature, banking, and so forth.
They rapidly become Americanized, build homes, and make themselves into good citizens. They brought hardihood, physique, hope, and good humor with them from their outdoor life in Sunny Italy, and they bear up under the terrific strain of life and work in busy Detroit.
One finds them by thousands digging streets, sewers, and building foundations, and in the automobile and iron and steel fabric factories of various sorts. They do the hard work that the native-born American dislikes. Rapidly they rise in life and join the so-called middle and upper classes. . . .
 The Italian-Americans of Detroit played a glorious part in the Great War. They showed themselves as patriotic as the native born in offering the supreme sacrifice.
In all, I am informed, over 300,000 Italian-speaking soldiers enlisted in the American Army, almost 10 percent of our total fighting force. Italians formed about 4 percent of the population of the United States and they formed 10 percent of the American military force. Their casualties were 12 percent. . . .
Â
Detroit Satisfied With The Poles
I wish to take the liberty of informing the House that from my personal knowledge and observation of tens of thousands of Polish-Americans living in my district in Detroit that their Americanism and patriotism are unassailable from any fair or just standpoint.
The Polish-Americans are as industrious and as frugal and as loyal to our institutions as any class of people who have come to the shores of this country in the past 300 years. They are essentially home builders, and they have come to this country to stay. They learn the English language as quickly as possible, and take pride in the rapidity with which they become assimilated and adopt our institutions.
Figures available to all show that in Detroit in the World War the proportion of American volunteers of Polish blood was greater than the proportion of Americans of any other racial descent. . . .
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Every American Has Foreign Ancestors
 The foreign born of my district writhe under the charge of being called “hyphenates.†The people of my own family were all hyphenates—English-Americans, German-Americans, Irish-Americans. They began to come in the first ship or so after the Mayflower. But they did not come too early to miss the charge of anti-Americanism. Roger Williams was driven out of the Puritan colony of Salem to die in the wilderness because he objected “violently†to blue laws and the burning or hanging of rheumatic old women on witchcraft charges. He would not “assimilate†and was “a grave menace to American Institutions and democratic government.â€
My family put 11 men and boys into the Revolutionary War, and I am sure they and their women and children did not suffer so bitterly and sacrifice until it hurt to establish the autocracy of bigotry and intolerance which exists in many quarters to-day in this country. Some of these men and boys shed their blood and left their bodies to rot on American battle fields. To me real Americanism and the American flag are the product of the blood of men and of the tears of women and children of a different type than the rampant “Americanizers†of to-day.
My mother’s father fought in the Civil War, leaving his six small children in Detroit when he marched away to the southern battle fields to fight against racial distinctions and protect his country.
. . . I learned more of the spirit of American history at my mother’s knee than I ever learned in my four years of high school study of American history and in my five and a half years of study at the great University of Michigan.
All that study convinces me that the racial discriminations of this bill are un-American. . . .
. . . Then I would be true to the principles for which my forefathers fought and true to the real spirit of the magnificent United States of to-day. I can not stultify myself by voting for the present bill and overwhelm my country with racial hatreds and racial lines and antagonisms drawn even tighter than they are to-day. [Applause.]