Also, along with the immigrant themselves comes their culture and way of living, which may be totally different from the natives' and more than they are willing to accept. In American cities, the more established immigrant groups; Irish-Americans, French Canadian-Americans and German-Americans, tended to look down on the more recent Italian and Eastern European immigrants. In turn these immigrants had nothing but disapproval for blacks and Mexicans, at the foot of the 'scale'. After a while, because of their unwillingness, even refusal to live along side one another, ghettos, small areas of one hig... ... middle of paper ... ... poetry. However, for most it was still not clear sailing, many black people still lived in abject poverty.
Jacob Riis' How the Other Half Lives In How the Other Half Lives, the author Jacob Riis sheds light on the darker side of tenant housing and urban dwellers. He goes to several different parts of the city of New York witnessing first hand the hardships that many immigrants faced when coming to America. His journalism and photographs of the conditions of the tenant housing helped led the way of reformation in the slums of New York. His research opened the eyes of many Americans to the darker side of the nation's lower class. Though it seems that he blamed both the victims and the board forces of society, I believe that he placed more of the blame on the board forces for the conditions that many immigrants faced.
Moon Shadow states, "There was plenty of money to be made among the demons, but it was also dangerous" (1). This states that though there are many job opportunities in America, the lives of Chinese people are sometimes put at risk. This would almost certainly not have been the case if an American were to have the same job. This demonstrates the prejudice which exists against Tang men. The book also mentions that Americans often assume Chinese people are greedy, that they are after Americans' money.
Even working in the lower class jobs they were discriminated by the white people they were working with. Making it hard enough to keep the low paying job they had already. In response to this the 1868 Burlingame Treaty was created for equality between the Chinese and white laborers (Rivero, Chen, Huynh, Peterson, Lasky, 2010). Even with the passing of this treaty it did not change much for Chinese immigrants. They still dealt with discrimination while at work causing a lot of them to lose or quit their jobs (Rivero, Chen, Huynh, Peterson, Lasky, 2010).
This made a lot of Americans angry because they were sending U.S. dollars overseas. This anger led to racism, separation, and organizations like the Ku Klux Klan that Handlin mentioned. Lastly, the immigrant’s homesickness for their homeland was a major cause for the remigration. They realized that no matter how much money they made, that they would still miss their families. Most immigrants would earn enough money in America so that they could go back and have an improved life in their homeland.
He explained the terrible and unsafe working conditions workers in the US were subjected to and the increasing rate of corruption, which created the feeling of hopelessness among the working class. Many impoverished people immigrated to America in hopes of achieving the American Dream but instead were faced with dangerous working conditions while the factory and corporation owners increased their wealth and profit by exploiting this cheap means of labor. Upton Sinclair succeeded to show the nature of the wage slavery occurring in America in the beginning of the twentieth century. People felt distressed and unimportant in the community because they were being used by the wealthy to generate capital leading the industry for the future success and efficacy in the market. Upton Sinclair was an American journalist who incorporated his personal research of the meatpacking industry conditions and people’s life, as well as the structure of the present business into the novel under analysis.
The reality of this book hit the people of New York right between the eyes. Riis was once ascribed the label of lower class society, but worked his way up the ladder of success and entered into a higher class among humanity. Riis tried to write this book with pure objectivity but given his background and emotional connection to the tenement dwellers it was hard to keep that objectivity throughout his book. The references he uses to describe some of the immigrant live-ins were negative and very much stereotypical. For example on page 92 when he’s referring to Italians and their ability to speak, English.
“The fact that tens of millions of workers will still be trapped in low-wage hell while a sliver of Americans live better than the kings of old will seem like a minor detail.” (David Callahan) Hard working individuals are treated unequally in retrospect to the little amount of income they receive compared to the 1% community and the limited amount of work they need to complete to be considered the 1%. Income inequality causes big businesses... ... middle of paper ... ...dangerous level, and the government has turned a blind eye to this issue. The government should step in and do more to fix this issue because income inequality is causing controversy and discrimination between the 1% of wealthy individuals and the not so much, poorer less fortunate 99% of America 's working class citizens. With income inequality on the rise, it is slowly but surely killing our country from the inside out. It is causing the middle class to slowly dissipate into a false reality with endless hope for recovery and modification.
A world filled with fear and suspicion caused by the tension inherent within such societal division. The same tensions that either gave rise to a massive conspiracy to destroy the town of New York or gave credence to a nightmare constructed by the minds of the people and fed by individuals’ self-serving nature. Regardless, eighteenth century New York was a troubled place and Horsmanden’s Journal of the Proceedings gives us a partial but valuable insight to the lives and interactions of colonial New York’s peoples.
With that knowledge, he later wrote his first novel – a book in which the main protagonist, a nameless rebel, hate the upper-class people. In fact, middle-class hatred of the upper-class used to erupt regularly in Britain. From 1815 to