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The
Later Nineteenth Century
Towards the end of the nineteenth century, Indiana was swept by a strong wave of industrial growth that was to transform it into a more predominantly urban, industrial state by 1920. Growth during this period of expansion was focused primarily on heavy industry, especially in the Calumet region of northwestern Indiana. As part of this expansion, a new surge of of immigration began in 1880s, peaking only as war was declared by Great Britain and Germany (1914). By the early 20th century, up to a million people were arriving in the United States each year. Census figures indicate that about 6 million Germans, 4.5 million Irish, 4.75 million Italians, 4.2 million people from England, Scotland and Wales, approximately the same number from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, 2.3 million Scandinavians, and 3.3 million people from Russia and the Baltic states entered the United States.
Their reasons for coming to the United States are much the same as in every other era of our history: to find work; to escape disease, famine and natural disasters; to leave behind religious and political persecution or government-sanctioned oppression; in short, to achieve a better life. For example, Italian immigration increased following decade-long epidemics of cholera and malaria and a massive earthquake which destroyed much of the Sicilian provinces of Messina and Calabria in 1908. Millions of Jewish immigrants arrived from the Ukraine, Poland, Galicia, Rumania, Hungary, Lithuania, and Russia between 1881 and 1914 in order to escape severe economic discrimination and pograms, violent attacks on their neighbourhoods. Similarly, hundreds of thousands of Armenians left their homeland during that era to avoid armed conflict with Turkey. Irish immigration was also heavy beginning in the 1880s, a decade marked by severe famine in western Ireland and increasing political and religious strife throughout the rest of the country. It's often been said that Ireland's greatest export has been its own people; indeed, more than 60 million Americans trace their ancestry to Ireland which has currently a population of less than 4 million. Click HERE to read an account of Irish settler John Kennedy's travels from Mayo County, Ireland to Ellis Island in 1900.
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