Immigrant Experience Story 1 An Italian immigrant, Joseph Baccardo, tells of his experiences upon coming to the United States in the early 1900s. My father was born in 1843, and when he got to be a young man, he had to go into the army. There was a war on then between Italy and Austria. After the war, he went back to Sicily and got married there, but there wasn t much work. So finally he decided to come over to the United States to try to better his condition. But he never had any luck. We rented two rooms in an old house and bought some furniture from a young couple who were moving out. They sold us a little stove, four chairs, a table, a few pots and pans, and a bed for my mother and father. They bought a couple of folding cots for us and we slept in the kitchen. That s all we had for about ten years. He suffered over here and we suffered over there, because he wasn t able to send us very much. We had to do the best we could. Finally my father came back to us to bring us to this country. He brought a little money with him, and we all came back the cheapest way steerage. At that time passage was very slow. It took a couple of weeks. My mother was sick most of the time. Finally, we came to Ellis Island, and then to New York to visit some friends. Pop was doing manual work; that s all he knew. He used to get up at 2:00 am on Monday and walk to the job. It s about ten miles. That first summer I got a job there, too, as a water boy. We stayed in a shanty during the week, and then Saturday night we walked back home. I was getting 40 cents a day for ten hours, and dad was getting $1.10 a day. When it was time for me to go to school, I didn t know anybody. Some of the boys took my hat and started to have some fun with it. I started to cry. That was the last day of that school for me. 1 (Story 1): perspective, does America live up to its founding ideals? Partners Responses: Use the M&M s to guide your response (agree, disagree, interesting, surprising, confusing, question) Response 1: Respond to 1 s statement in the middle box.
Immigrant Experience Story 2 Russian-Jewish immigrant, Michael Gold, describes his experiences in the early 1900s I left Russia because of the pogroms. The pogroms were slave camps where the Russian leader forced Jews to live. They called us dirty and robbers, who tainted the Russian race. I wonder, did God make bedbugs? One steaming hot night I couldn t sleep cause of the bedbugs. They crawl slowly, bloated with blood, and the touch and smell of these parasites wakens every nerve to disgust. It wasn t a lack of cleanliness in our home. My mother was as clean as any German housewife; she slaved, she worked herself to the bone keeping us fresh and neat. What was the use; nothing could help it; it was Poverty, it was the Tenement. When I woke in the morning, I was never greatly surprised to find in my bed a new family of immigrants in their foreign baggy underwear. They looked pale and exhausted. They smelled of the disinfectant that they had been soaked in at Ellis Island, where the ships deposited the immigrants. The stink sickened me. When I first set foot on the Lower East Side, I stepped into a Jewish world. The earliest Eastern European Jews to settle there had quickly established synagogues, mutual-aid societies, libraries, and stores. For me in a new, strange country, this familiar world, around people who shared my common language, faith, and background, was profoundly reassuring. For all the comfort that this shared heritage brought, however, the Lower East Side was still a very difficult place to live--and a crowded one. Many Americans refused to interact with us and called our communities ghettoes. 2 (Story 2): perspective, does America live up to its founding ideals? Partners Responses: Use the M&M s to guide your response (agree, disagree, interesting, surprising, confusing, question) Response 1: Respond to 1 s statement in the middle box.
Immigrant Experience Story 3 In 1903, a Chinese immigrant, Lee Chew, wrote the following account of his experience as an immigrant in the United States. I came to America because of all the so-called opportunities that awaited me. When I first opened a laundry, it was in company with a partner, who had been in the business for some years. We went to a town about 500 miles inland where a railroad was being built. We worked for the men employed by the railroads. We had to put up with many insults and scams, as men would come in and claim items that did not belong to them, saying they had lost their tickets and would fight if they did not get what they asked for. We were often taken to court and fined for losing shirts that we had never seen. But we were making money. Our customers were rough and prejudiced against us, but not more so than in the big eastern cities. In New York, street boys are still breaking the windows of Chinese laundries all over, while the police seem to think it a joke. We hard a hard time when we went to the mines to make money. Many miners who carried revolvers would come into our place to shoot and steal shirts for which we had to pay. One of these men hit his head hard against a flatiron and all the miners came and destroyed our store, chasing us out of town. We lost all of our property and $365 in money. 3 (Story 3): perspective, does America live up to its founding ideals? Partners Responses: Use the M&M s to guide your response (agree, disagree, interesting, surprising, confusing, question) Response 1: Respond to 1 s statement in the middle box.
Immigrant Experience Story 4 In 1903, an Irish immigrant, Delia O Toole, wrote the following account of his experience as an immigrant in the United States. I was 17 years old when I left County Galway in Ireland for Boston, Massachusetts. The famine in Ireland made it nearly impossible to live there. America was a land of hope and opportunity. By 1900, the number of Irish immigrants coming to America made up 43% of the total immigrant population. I had a one-way ticket and 25 cents in my pocket. When I stepped off the ship, the Bostonians laughed at my clothes that were twenty years out of fashion. I settled in an Irish enclave near the Boston waterfront in the North End. As soon as I arrived in America, I got to work immediately. I washed floors on my hands and knees, cooked, and took care of other people s children. I tried my best to learn English as soon as possible- I wanted to become American in every way. My brother found unskilled work cleaning yards and stables, unloading ships, and pushing carts. The Bostonians did not welcome us. Our landlord charged Irish families up to $1.50 a week to live in a single room with no water or windows. Bostonians called our homes slums and it kind of was since we were squished into a single room in such horrible conditions. A lot of the men worked all day and night. The Irishmen got a bad reputation as rowdy drinkers. Bostonians also didn t like that we were Catholic. Also, since there were only a limited number of unskilled jobs available, an intense rivalry developed between Irish immigrants and Bostonians over these jobs. The anti-irish and anti-catholic groups began to rally against us. Their resentment led to No Irish Need Apply signs being posted in shop windows, factory gates and workshop doors. 4 (Story 4): perspective, does America live up to its founding ideals? Partners Responses: Use the M&M s to guide your response (agree, disagree, interesting, surprising, confusing, question) Response 1: Respond to 1 s statement in the middle box.