Discuss the problems of immigration that America's urban centers faced and were unable to solve between the 1830s and the 1850s.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

The ideal answer should include:
- Crowding: Irish immigrants lacked money to move inland and remained in miserable housing; lived in cheap rented housing; high mobility rate within a city; rookeries in slums housed immigrants, free African Americans, the poor, and criminals
- Urban poverty: Irish were desperate to work for any type of wage; economic discrimination-"No Irish Need Apply"; gap between rich and poor widened; performed cheap unskilled labor; depended on multiple incomes to survive; free African Americans and Irish immigrants competed for low-paying jobs
- Racism: native-born Americans were suspicious of ethnic neighborhoods; perceived slums to be the homes of strange and foreign people who deserved less; Catholic churches and neighborhoods destroyed; Catholic priests and nuns were attacked
- Municipal services: cities lacked municipal water supplies, sewers, and garbage collection; basic infrastructure was too expensive; lack of services encouraged residential segregation and slums developed (New York's Five Points)
- Disease: contaminated water resulted in epidemics of sanitation-related diseases, including yellow fever, cholera, and typhus
- Crime and violence: small-scale rioting often led to greater violence (Astor Place Riot); street gang fights between Irish and anti-Catholic groups in slums; rowdy expressions of opinion such as the New York City New Year's Eve parade were criminalized by authorities; permanent police force created to keep the poor in order; urban riots against Irish Catholics and free African Americans in northern cities
- Political corruption: unskilled white workers, free African Americans and women excluded from general unions; new blocs of immigrant workers were quickly naturalized by urban political machines before the legal three years' residency requirement to get their votes