Impact of Immigration on Urban Growth

Okay, this is another lecture on immigration in cities. This is the first of, in fact, actually about probably two lectures on late 19th century, early 20th century growth of the United States in the form of immigration and that movement to the city. So I guess as we begin today, we're actually going to look first and foremost at the city itself and more particularly who's coming to these cities. The story of moving to the city is as old as it can be. And in fact, actually, urbanization is not just an American phenomenon, but every Western city, every Western nation is going to go through spouts and bouts of urbanization. In fact, actually, really since the times of the 1700s, if not before, you'll even see that happening in London and in Berlin and Paris, France, and so on. But when we talk about moving to the city, who's coming? United States are really having two groups. One that is as old as the idea of urbanization itself, moving to the city. You'll see a lot of young men and a lot of young women come out for the farm after the Civil War is over and find their way to the city. They were doing it before, but now they're really doing it after the fact. In fact, actually, you'll see them come in such numbers that they're really going to grow American cities. The obvious ones like a New York city, but let's see. less obvious like a Chicago or Kansas City or some other upstart city. But that's part of the story of America. But secondly, the other growth in American cities can also be seen in the form of immigration to those great American cities. Pittsburgh, I've already said Cleveland and Kansas City and Chicago, but Pittsburgh would be in there as well. To give you an idea how much growth of the cities at the expense of the rural America would be found, let's take a look. a look at some statistics and I would invite you to put those in your notes. First of all, well I guess the question I could ask is when does America become an urban nation? The answer is 1920 officially, at least in the census. Reality is it probably happened a few years before that and after the 1910 census. But let's back up a little bit here and kind of give you an idea of how fast, in a sense, it comes and how much the momentum picks up. So when we talk about a city versus a rural or small town, we're saying the cutoff line is $8,000. If you're talking about a town, what is a town versus a city? 8,000 persons or more. So in 1790, for every one person who lived in a town of 8,000 or more, 30 Americans lived in the country or lived in a small village. By 1840, that is changing and changing more and more. By 1840, it's 1 and 12, 1 to the city, 12 to the country. By 1870, you can see it has accelerated a lot in just 30 years. And in 1870... it's one American for every four country boys, one American in the city for every four country boys. In 1900, another 30 years, it's one in three. Again, you're seeing that continuing along. In 1900, it's one in three. By 1910, it's even, you can see the explosion of immigration all the more. One in the city, in 1900, it's one in the city for every three in the country. Then by 1910, it's one in the city for two who were in the... one and two are in the two Americans, it's almost 50%. And so by the time you get to 1920, there you go with the majority of Americans living in the city. So those folks who come are going to come for various reasons. Some were looking for, most are going to be looking for a better life, new life, a fresh start, the allure of living in the city. And a few of you watching this probably actually would agree with that in the sense that you come from a smallish town, perhaps, and I don't mean, I don't mean 8,000. or less would be a good cutoff line for our purposes here. But you come from a small town and living in the city like a Dallas or Houston or even just an Austin's a big city too. But even something like a Corpus Christi or even Brian called station is an advance because I can think of the time I growing up where I did, you couldn't pick the phone up and get delivered pizza. And the first time I could get delivery pizza when I wanted it, I thought it was like manna from heaven. But that's the point is people are going to grow and it's going to grow a lot. So when we talk about this growth of these cities, we'll go into more specific cities in just a minute, but they're going to be coming. And so who's coming? Well, in the other case, we're going to talk about immigrants. We'll talk about the immigrants. And what we're seeing with immigration is that it has been a story or part of the American story for years. But immigration in the mid-19th century was big. Five million from 1850 to 1815, excuse me, to 1860. you will have approximately 5 million immigrants, most of whom, or at least half of whom, were English or English Isles, which would include Ireland, and then another good portion of them would have been German. But from 1865 to 1890, only a 25-year window, you're going to have 10 million immigrants, many of whom were still from Western Europe, including England. Not most, but many. And from 1890 to 1914, you're going to have another 50 million immigrants, 15 million immigrants. Now, these will come from the south of Europe and from eastern Europe as well. So, in the form of 49 years, just simply 49 years, which is less than a lifetime, less than the life expectancy of an American in 1920, in 49 years, you will have seen 25 million Americans immigrate to the United States. Again, those years are 1865 at the end of the war, all the way up to 1914, the beginning of the war in Europe. And so, that is... is a lot, a lot of immigration. And it profoundly transforms the nation. And what we would call that in our history is the great migration, the great immigration, the great migration. Some of you watching this today are going to say that's part of my family heritage because you come from that great migratory wave. Whether you came out of Romania or you came from Russia or you came from France or something like that, some of you will find your heritage will go that direction. So anyways, most of the Most of the people who come to America in this time period, during this great migration wave, they're going to be commoners. They're not going to be high-born individuals for the most part. Most of these people are the proverbial, give us your poor, your tired, your weak and huddled masses and so forth, yearning to be free. That's part of the great story of the Statue of Liberty. That is the welcoming and beckoning of America. And it's also fair to remember that there is no real immigration policies in the United States prior to about the end of the 19th century. about 1885 or so. And only in the latter part of the 19th century do you see the U.S. government start to impose restrictions on immigration, and mostly that's going to be in the form of those who cannot, who would be, potentially could not take care of themselves, those who are obviously diseased, and so on. To be fair and true, most of the people who come, basically 95-96% of the individuals who come during this great migratory wave, in fact, maybe a little higher than that, The thing is, the vast, vast majority of immigrants to the United States in the post-Civil War era, all the way to 1914, they get in and they may be detained or held up for a couple of few days or three days, but for the most part, they're brought in and they will be waved through. And in some areas, and if it's early enough, there is no stopover point. Can you just get here? Well, you're fine. Come on. So the United States, for the longest time, has had an open-door policy toward immigrants. immigration it is closed at times in the 20th century and it has been controversial here in the 21st century but in the 19th century certainly and in the early 20th century the United States had generally speaking an open door policy but and so to be clear most of those immigrants coming especially in the second half of the great migratory wave would be Italian you'll see a lot of Russian Jews who come you'll see a lot of Poles Lithuanians Estonians Latvians Hungarians Armenians and on and on. And if you just travel to old American cities, now old American cities, but cities such as, say, Chicago, for example, you will find all these little immigrant enclaves or what was the remnants now of those immigrant enclaves. So in a sense, really, you're talking about the 1860s or 70s. What were some of the first migrants to come to America? Well, let's start pointing out that some of the earliest immigrants were males, really only males, which is not unusual in our history. take, for example, the Virginia Cavaliers in the 1600s. They were males for the most part, at least initially, and then the women catch up. Later on, it'll be more families and more balanced as far as a male-female ratio. But these early immigrants are going to be known as birds of passage. You probably ought to remember that, the birds of passage, such as Italian young men who would come and work for a season. and work in the fields around maybe Ohio, maybe New York or whatever. But they are laborers who are here for a season of, say, three months or six months, and they make money, save it, take it back to Italy with them, which is actually not unusual today. You'll see a lot of, at least at one point in time, I think it's still largely true, but you used to see a whole lot of immigrants come to the United States. In the last 25 years or 30 years, they would come for a season and work in the fields or do whatever jobs, maybe work construction in Houston or something, save a bunch of money and then go back to Mexico or go back to Costa Rica, go back to Guatemala, wherever they come from. from and just pay bills, pay family, whatever the case may be. That's an old story in American history is my point. And so the birds of passage, the old Italians who did that, in a sense, they're some of the first. I want to actually tell you something else and keep you in mind with is that when we talk about these immigrants who come, it should tell you that it's fairly simple to get across the Atlantic Ocean by this point in time. By 1870 or 1900, I don't want you thinking about this like the Mayflower boys holding on for dear life to get across the Atlantic Ocean. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the mid to late 19th century and into the 20th century is frankly fairly simple. It may not be always comfortable. and if you get seasick, certainly not then, but as far as safe is concerned, it's pretty much safe. I mean, as long as you don't get caught up in a hurricane or pop a, bust your hull on a iceberg, you're okay, and of course, I'm alluding to the Titanic, which is one of the more spectacular events because it was unexpected. It would be like saying this aircraft is, this is a rally-hooped aircraft. It can't go down. It won't go down, and then, of course, it burns. goes down in flames. In the case of the Titanic, it can't go down, it won't go down until it does on its maiden voyage. But it was spectacular, and it was unusual to say the least. But it's really about a two to three week journey, normally about two weeks, maybe even 10 days if it's a faster vessel. And you get across, and it's not that expensive. I mean, like I said, you may be down in steerage in the bottom, and I wouldn't call that a Hilton or anything. But at the same time, it's comfortable enough, and it is kind of leaky and cold. cold, and hopefully you don't get sick from somebody who was sick, you know, an infectious disease sort of thing. But at the same time, you come on, you get across, you get to the United States, you get to New York probably, you get off the boat, and you go on about your business, and you go to work. Now, you have those birds of prey, or birds of passage, excuse me. And then, however, you're going to have some other early immigrants to the United States, and you'll see them come on at times more and less, but you're going to see a lot of Russian Jews come to North America. North America come to the United States during this period of time. Unlike the Italian birds of passage, these Russian Jews, generally speaking, come and they don't go home. If you think that the Germans are the only folks in the history of the world who have put the thumb down on the children of Israel, you would be sorely mistaken. If you look in Russian history, there is a lot of history that shows examples of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish pogroms. that are designed to disfranchise, take property away, crush, hurt, kill, in some cases, their Russian subjects. And so one of the ways that the Russians would do it, and you'll see this elsewhere, is you scapegoat a minority, and the minority were the Russian Jews. And so ultimately, in fact, actually to go to the communists in the 1950s, Stalin, right before he died, was working up, it was called the Jewish doctor's plot. It was all fictitious, but he was working up to eradicate the Jews. in the Soviet Union, it looked like. But death intervened and took Stalin out and saved the lives of, frankly, probably thousands and thousands of Jews still in Russia or the Soviet Union at that point in time. Well, anyways, many, many Russian Jews come to the United States, and frankly, one of the things they find is that the United States is glad to have them. Going back to the beginning of the country, you can find actually one of the more poignant notes about religious toleration in American history from President Washington when he writes to a synagogue and the rabbi of the synagogue, I believe it was in Rhode Island, may have been in Connecticut, but it's one of those little tiny New England states. The thing is, is that President Washington basically says, we're glad to have you. We welcome you. We love you. And all intents and purposes, you have nothing to fear about being in the United States. You're good here. One of the things I hasten to add when I talk about restrictions. and immigrant restriction coming into North America is that there were no restrictions on religion. There was none that said, oh, by the way, you can't come here if you are Jewish or you're Muslim or you're an atheist or you're whatever. There was no religious test. That was never imposed, and I would argue, at least, and this is me interjecting my opinion, it should never be imposed as far as immigration restrictions. So anyways, all that to say, though, is that... The, uh... The immigration is going to come and come in big numbers. And when they do come, it depends on who you're talking about, depends on where they go. So those who are more skilled may end up working in some of the textile factories in New York City or put out shops in New York City or other East Coast cities. You'll find Italians sometimes work as agricultural laborers. You see that actually around here in Brazos County in Texas. You see a lot of the great Italian families. They came here in the 1870s, and they stayed, and they took the farms over. In addition to that, you'll find them in New York City. and a longshoreman and so on. Others like Poles, who oftentimes had little skill but willing hands and a strong back, you will find them working in cities such as Cincinnati, for example, or Pittsburgh as unskilled laborers. And the thing about the 19th and 20th century in the United States, the economy had a place for the man who had willing hands and a strong back. It's not until much later that that really, in the 20th century... that is, that really kind of goes away. But the idea of the strong hands and the willing hands and the strong back, you could find a place to go. And it's always been true, though, however, if you have skills, you get paid more. But still, you'll see a lot of these groups live together. And we talk about diversity, yet it is not just this one on top of the other diversity that you might see in your neighborhood today. For some of you who come from Houston, and when I say Houston, I mean interior Houston, like inside the loop. Over the years, I have seen in, meaning late 20th, now 21st century, the diversity of those communities, not always true. You can find these enclaves that are predominantly black or predominantly white or predominantly whatever, these neighborhoods, but they're also neighborhoods. It's just a hodgepodge and a potpourri. Now, diversity in the 19th century may mean diversity of immigration. You're going to get, again, a lot. lot of, if I mentioned the Chinese coming out of, obviously, China in helping to build the transcontinentals, you're going to get a lot of diversity in your immigration, and done in many different ways. In fact, you can say, to talk about diversity, it can mean take on different forms. But when they got here, ultimately, what you'll find is that a lot of those individuals will live in neighborhoods and in cities with their own, because oftentimes, as the wave of immigration grows, grows and grows to a crescendo and eventually hits the zenith and apex and comes back down again, you'll find that wherever a community is started up, there will be letters sent back to the home country inviting people to come and they will settle amongst themselves. Frankly, I find nothing wrong with that. It's a proverbial birds of the same feather flock together idea. My family were German, so we were ahead of this. We came in the 1850s. However, we knew that there were Germans settling in central. Texas and we settled amongst our own. And you probably have family members who could say the same. When you talk about getting off the boat, initially, like I said, there was really nothing that just stood out and said, oh, by the way, we, you know, you've got to come here, you've got to go there sort of deal. The thing is, is that when you talk about American immigration, really what we're looking first and foremost now is, is that by about 1892, the United States government realized that there was a need for them to really. step in and do some sort of sorting and some sort of check on who's coming to the country. Not necessarily, as I've said already, not necessarily to stop the, to throw up the road block and turn people around at the door for the vast, vast majority, but you wanted to see who's coming and you wanted to get a handle on the numbers and at least get an idea at it. So from 1892, July of 92 to 1924, when it is effectively closed, you're going to see over Over 12 million individuals from 92 to 24 pass through Ellis Island. And those of you who have been to New York City will have probably gone to Ellis Island. And if you haven't, you really should have. Hopefully, you had an opportunity to go. If you went to the Statue of Liberty, you probably ought to just go on to Ellis Island because there are many, many individuals who pass through that territory. Like I said, 12 million. And just think, about 12 million pass through Ellis Island. Probably some of you have answered. ancestors, probably many of you have ancestors who passed through Ellis Island in that time period, even if you don't know it. But the thing is, is that, like I said, they mostly got through there. And you have these waiting areas. And even to this day, those who have been there, when they redid Ellis Island and they preserved it, you can see on the walls where it was written, you know, notes and stories and comments and so forth. One man wrote, quite honestly, he said, damned is the day, he was an Italian immigrant in the late 1800s, 1890s. He said, damned is the day I left my homeland because he was getting poked and prodded and checked for obvious signs of disease and infection. And he didn't like it. like it. He's like, man, why did I do this? Why did I submit myself to taking my clothes off and getting examined? Almost like perhaps going to the airport in Austin or Houston and having to take your shirt off and getting the extra special treatment from the TSA boys. But most of the time, it's not that. In fact, actually, this one other fellow's name is Myron Surnock, S-U-R-N-O-C-H. Myron Surnock said it like this. He said, at Ellis, meaning at Ellis Island, nobody changed my name. Nobody bothered me. Right away, I liked America. I made money, and I felt good. And for a lot of Americans, whether they come from a German background or a Polish background or a Mexican background or a Chinese background, whatever it is, that has often been the statement and has been true. Sometimes it's not always been perfect. I know that. But at the same time, for the vast majority, that has been true. They didn't change my name all that much, or if they did, the guy couldn't spell and just... stuck. Luckily, I guess for Giesner Slug, they didn't change my name. But at the same time, I liked America. They left me alone for the most part. I made money and it was okay. So anyways, that works out pretty well. Anyways, as these folks come and they start to settle, they're going to be individuals meeting them at Ellis Island. Some who are family waiting on them, others who are conmen, and individuals who are... So, yeah, when we talk about these immigrants settling in North America, settling in the United States, they're often going to live amongst themselves. And so that idea of birds of the same feather flock together is really a true thing. A couple of ideas that we need to keep in mind when we go about immigration and discuss immigration is where do they go? Mostly to cities. But you also should say this in your notes, too, is that there are going to be good amounts of immigrants, especially in the 19th century, who are going to be going. to the Midwest, who are going to populate in Minneapolis and Minnesota, who are going to populate there on the plains. All that stuff we talked about before about railroads drawing folks to the Americas, well, here it is. Some of the reason people come isn't just for, because something's shoving them out the door like a Russian pogrom for the Jews who come from Russia, but the promise of free or cheap land in the United States promised by railroads, trying to get them to move on to the plains. You see a lot of of Scandinavians, for example, in the upper Midwest, you're going to become wheat farmers or settlers or millers in Minneapolis, for example, because Minneapolis is going to be known for flour, F-L-O-U-R. So anyways, all that to say, though, is that there's going to be a lot of folks coming, some to the country, most to the city, but still the United States is going to be absorbing lots and lots of individuals. If they come, they bring, of course, their language, and let's talk about language. language for a moment. And I suspect what I'm going to say next is probably going to resonate with some of you, because you could probably say, that's my family. What I mean by that is that many of you perhaps have ancestors. All of us have ancestors in this sense. In my case, it would be German. But some of you may have grandparents or great-grandparents who moved to the United States, and they did not speak English and may never have spoke much English at all when they died, if they're not still living. But what we... found in this great migration is that the first generation will identify as Prussian, or if you're talking about, that's a German thing. If you're talking about Venetian, if you're talking about Italy or something, you're going to identify with a locality. By the second generation, you start to call them Italians or Italian-Americans, and eventually, hopefully, just becomes American. And as far as language is concerned, that first generation is going to speak almost exclusively or mostly the home tongue. So it would be Italian or German or Pole or Polish or whatever. The thing is, however, by the time you get to the second generation, especially the generation that was born, meaning the first generation to be born in the United States, is you'll find them being able to speak both Spanish and English, German or English, Czech or English, Russian or English, Yiddish or English, or Polish or English. You get the picture. And some of you are like, that's my family. Grandpa can't speak much English. English, but my father, second generation, first born in this country, can't. And then by the third generation, sometimes it's the fourth, but you get the idea it's a progressing pattern. You're going to find the third or maybe the fourth generation who can't speak any of the old language, can't speak any Russian or can't speak any Yiddish or can't speak any German, Spanish or whatever. The fact of the matter is that all they can speak, like me, all they can speak is English. And in the case of my family, it was about. the fourth generation. My father would be the fourth generation. I'm the fifth. But my father can't speak a lick of German. My grandfather really couldn't speak much at all himself because it had broken down by that point in time. So anyways, all of which is to say, which is to say is that yes, there's a progressing pattern where you find the English language becoming the dominant language for the immigrants as well. And part of that has to do, this is really particularly true, you don't really have the connection. back to the homeland that you might have thought you did. I'm not saying you give up all your culture or so forth. That's clearly not the case. But one of the things that crossing the Atlantic Ocean has to do to people, and the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific on the West Coast has this effect, is that it really acts as a geographical slice or a cleaving, like a big meat cleaver cuts into a roast or what have you. But what I mean by that is the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean had the... this effect upon these immigrants of saying, okay, I'm leaving the past behind. Sometimes quite literally, other times quite figuratively, but by saying is that you can't pick yourself up very easily, especially if you've moved the family and so on, you can't pick up very easily and move back to the home country because maybe you were leaving oppression. Maybe you were leaving hardship and you really don't want to go there. So what it had the effect of doing this crossing the Atlantic Ocean. and the pervasive dominant American culture was is that, to use the old phrase, it tends to create this melting pot idea. You take your old culture and you drop it in. You maintain parts of it, but it melts into the larger American culture that is out there. Again, you're going to have, say, you're going to have festivals and bazaars in Italian enclaves and neighborhoods where you still hear a lot of Italian spoken even as late as 1920 or so. yet that drops down by 1940, by 1960. It's largely a thing of the past. So, and you'll find all these little communities and all these little cultures still having their own festivals and their own way of doing things, especially the first, the immigrant generation and the first born generation, but even that too, that starts to drop away. These communities are oftentimes, and I would make a note of this, they're going to be centered around something. In say, Texas 2020 to today, small town Texas is probably centered around the football stadium. And I don't mean that as a dig. I just mean that as a fact. And if you come from a small town in Texas, you may not get it, but the football stadium, yeah. But if you're talking about, say, Houston, I don't know, maybe it is the football stadium at Houston. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's, I don't know, whatever it is. But these communities in these big cities are going to have their own little bubble, as it were. And it is very exclusive. I mean, if you're an Italian and you go trolling into an Irish community in Chicago, there's a very good chance that you will be asked, maybe politely, maybe not, to get out. And the thing that was the hub of these communities is that oftentimes it's going to be the religious aspect. It's going to be the religious community. What I mean by that is it's going to be the Catholic Church. If it's Poles or Italians, it's going to be, again, the synagogue. If it's Russian Jews or it's going to be an Orthodox Church. if they're Latvian or Lithuanian or Russian. The thing is, is that it's going to be the church or a worship center, if you want to say it like that. And so that will be the hub. So even though some of you are watching this are Catholic and may be thinking, well, can't I, if I was an Italian and I happen to be in a Polish community, couldn't I go to church there? I guess you could. But the reality is as soon as you opened your mouth and out comes Italian or broken English and the priest is giving his homily in Polish, though the mass will be in Latin, of course, basically you separate it out. Those little communities police themselves in a way. of the same feather flock together idea. Are there Romeo and Juliet exceptions? Of course. But for the most part, the rule is that these little enclaves had their own way of doing things, and they were exclusive to each other. Yet at the same time, the overarching American culture does draw them in and helps start, breaks down the old ways and brings up the American idea. So when we talk about this culture and the settlement of these cities, Probably no city is better as an example of this modern, new America, this growing and expanding America, leaving behind, as it were, the old colonial America, the old pre-antebellum America, and this new America, none better than the city of Chicago. Chicago predates the Civil War, surely. But in the span of one lifetime, as I'm fond of talking about it seems like, but from, say, 1830 roughly to about 1900, roughly, you're going to see Chicago go from a city of about 1,500 individuals or a town of 1,500 individuals, which is basically the city of Somerville, to by the time you get to the year 1900, 70 years later, you will find Chicago being a city of a million and a half and still growing. And so Chicago, which is a really kind of a trading post prior to the Civil War, especially in the 1830s, it's a crossroads there close to the Lake Michigan. It's on Lake Michigan. Michigan. You'll see its name, Chicago, is meant to be like a fetid swamp, putrid waters, malarial swamp. It's something along those lines. It's an Indian name that we don't exactly know, but we kind of have an idea. And so, by the way, if you ever thought about naming your child Chicago, don't. So you wouldn't want to name your little girl Chicago and her name actually mean putrid swamp or fetid waters. But all that to say, though, is that Chicago is a very, very Chicago's nickname is the Windy City. Some of it has to do certainly with the wind of Chicago, if you've ever been there, because it's kind of on the plains. The prairie state is Illinois. The wind coming off of that lake can be awfully cold in the wintertime. However, Chicago is also not only just the Windy City for its wind, but more particularly, was initially given that name because of all the hyperbole and the yap, yap, yap, yap, yap of come to Chicago. to Chicago, live in Chicago, the city of the broad shoulders, blah, blah, blah. And so Chicago is going to be this great attraction because partially you're going to have the railroads. Seemingly, if you ever see a map of Chicago in the late 19th century, you'll see all these railroads coming into Chicago. It looks like a wad of spaghetti that is all tangled up and it flings out in all different directions. Chicago is clearly a railroad hub. And because it's a And because, as we talked about before, all that Texas cattle and that Texas beef coming up and out of South Texas and elsewhere headed toward the railheads at Abilene and Dodge City, and then later on as the railroads expand, that bypasses it. Lots and lots of beef, whether it's from Texas or elsewhere, is going to find its way to two principal cities, one which is Chicago, and I'll come back to that more in a second. The second, I'd write these down, by the way, is Kansas City. stockyards are almost as well known as the Chicago stockyards. But both cities, Kansas City, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, are going to be home and to the death of millions and millions of animals. You're going to see in Chicago especially millions of cattle killed every year, and you're going to see millions of hogs killed every year as well. By the way, another American city that was an animal processing mecca in the 19th and early 20th century, maybe less. less today is Cincinnati. Cincinnati. It was nicknamed Porkopolis because it was the primary hub for processing pork, meaning pig. Back to Chicago and its stockyards. Can you imagine living in Chicago in that time period, or frankly any American city or any world city, but let's talk about America. Can you imagine living in Chicago with all those cows and all those pigs and all those chickens? some of which are in the stockyards, some of which are just free-range roaming around. You'll have the butcher shops on the street corner and so on. It is a cacophony of loudness and sounds and smells. is not pleasant. And if you've ever had this misty-eyed notion, this almost dreary-eyed notion that living in the distant past would have been so much more preferable and so much more humane and so much better for the environment, living in Chicago in 1890 was unpleasant. And so what you'll find in some of these cities is that the infant mortality rate in these cities could be awfully high at times. Yet overall, the mortality rate in the United States is going down, or at least people... People are living longer. But in Chicago, for example, just think about all those cows. And here's, I'm going to get a little grotesque probably, but think about all the feces that those cows are going to produce, all the feces that those pigs produce. I mean, manure from those two animals alone is bad enough, not to mention your horses, not to mention your mules which pile it up, not to mention your human beings who sometimes throw it out the window or often throw it out the window. And so, And then that, because it's all hodgepodge and all over top of each other, you may not have the best water system in the world and you may not have the best sewage system. In fact, you don't. Even by the day standards, you didn't back then. But just imagine you had a shallow draft well that was dug into the ground there somewhere near Chicago, that's, you know, in that old malarial swamp, as they used to say. And then you draft up that water that has been contaminated with runoff from cow feces and so forth. or pig or whatever, it's bad. I mean, it makes people sick. It kills them. I mean, you'll see in some American cities and districts in Chicago, for example, you'll see infant mortality rates in the 70% territory for that first year of the child's life in the late 19th century. It's bad. And it's true also for New York in a slightly different way because you're going to see New York, you're going to have just population density. I mean, it's a small area, and people are hemmed on top of each other. other. In 1910, the population density in New York City was so tight, it made Calcutta blush. And Calcutta is, gosh, I can't remember the modern name of Calcutta. It's not that anymore. It's in India, of course. But Calcutta is known, and rightly so, as a dense city. But New York City at its height was even more dense than that. But the thing about whether it's New York or Chicago or some other growing American city is... is it stunk. It stunk to high heaven. It burned your nostrils. This man's name is H.L. Minkin, and Minkin was a writer in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially the early 20th century. He was a newspaper man. H.L. Minkin made a career out of skewering politicians. He hated Woodrow Wilson. He hated Republicans. He hated Democrats. He hated Christians. He hated fundamentalist Christian Baptists. He hated most people. He was just a man who drank bile for breakfast. He was one of those sorts of columnists. He could sling invective with the best of them, and he was actually quite funny. But anyways, all that to say is he grew up in Baltimore, and he wrote for the newspapers in Baltimore for most of his life. And he said growing up in Baltimore, it smelt like in the summertime, smelt like a billion dead polecats. A billion dead polecats in the summertime in Chicago. Or excuse me, in Baltimore. But excuse me. But that, at the end of the day, could be said about Chicago or Cincinnati or Memphis, Tennessee or whomever. It was a dangerous proposition to live in an American city. It was on top of each other. And, of course, when you talk about Chicago, you're going to have those communities. And if you've ever been there, they're still in remnant form to this day. Chicago, too, however, is you're going to have some really good food there, I would argue. But so. Beyond Chicago, let me think of anything else I want to say about that city. Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. I think I'm good on that. But when we talk about Chicago, oh, yes, I do. I can't leave this behind because this is, in a sense, maybe make Chicago. You know, sometimes out of catastrophe and disaster comes opportunity. And when we talk about Chicago, really what I should hasten to add for your notes is the Chicago Fire of 1871. The Chicago Fire of 1871. So let me get my note just like where I want it. On October 7th, 1871, Chicago is going to be suffering through a dry, dry fall. In Chicago in 1871, is still a city that is growing. It hasn't reached a million and a half yet, but it's in hundreds of thousands easily. And Chicago in 1871 is topsy-turvy. It's all over top of each other. Those wide, broad... boulevards that I talked about in a previous lecture that you found in other cities, not Chicago, they're all on top of each other. You're going to have cattle in people's lots because they'll be milked. The thing is that you're going to have just a primitive but growing city. But it was dry. And if you know anything about Chicago, as I've already said, it's a windy city. It has a justly earned reputation for that. Well, what ends up happening is that it's a cow, Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, is going to, the way the story goes, kick over a lamp. And they live on the southwest side of Chicago. So in the wind, the prevailing wind was coming up off of the continent, off of the plains and blowing southwest and northeast. And so what happens is it sits on the not the far southwest side, but on the southwest side of Chicago. And that wind or rather that cow kicks over that lantern. A fire starts in the. barn and that cow in the barn catches on fire and everything's on top of each other and so the fire starts and the wind just starts driving the fire. If you've ever seen wind drive a fire it is an awesome sight to behold. It is a fearful sight to behold and Chicago is going to burn. At least 300 will be killed when it's all said and done. Over 100,000 Chicagoans will be without homes. It burns over 17,450 buildings. Looting was rampant in the city. 2,124 acres of the city itself burned to the ground and was turned to char. And it cost approximately $200 million in their money. And so Chicago will be, it's the Great Chicago Fire of October 7th, 1871. And people who kept falling back from the fire, they kept falling back and eventually they got to the water's edge, meaning Lake Michigan's edge. And it was to the kind of the do or die moment, you started to get into the water and you hope basically that. that you don't drown and somehow you can survive the heat because it was throwing off so much heat and you could survive there in the water. People did. Obviously, some did not. But the thing is, Chicago is going to be reborn and Chicago will be rebuilt after the fire. And in that sense, the modern Chicago that you know today is that after the fire. In the heart of Chicago, the elevated train system, or the L as they call it, the subway system, not subway, but that train system, mass transit, all that that is famous for Chicago, and of course New York too, I know. The thing is, is that was post-fire 1871, and Chicago looked upon it as an opportunity to rebuild itself in a modern image in a way she galloped, in a way she galloped. And so when we talk about the Chicago of 1900, it is 29 years after the Chicago fire which transformed the city from a hodgepodge to a more organized mess. I should say also to add this too, and I keep going on about Chicago, you're going to have a lot of meatpacking plants in Chicago. Some of you are familiar with a book that is a horrible book. I would never, if any of you desire to be a teacher, and if you teach American literature or you teach American history, never compel anybody to read this book. And that book's title is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Upton Sinclair was a socialist and he had a longing desire to see socialism become the familiar political practice in the United States. and that book, The Jungle, is really a book on socialism. Now some of you may be thinking, oh my gosh, wasn't there some stuff in there about working in meatpacking plants and how dirty and foul it was? The answer is, oh yeah, I mean it's about 15 pages. is all, but it's like 500 pages of drudgery to get to those 15 pages. Sinclair's not a good writer. It's really a thin story. I've read it or tried to read most of it while I was, when I was 16 years old, and I haven't really tried again, I suppose, but all that to say is that, yeah, it was not good, but what happened was is that Sinclair, he's a muck, they term is a muckraking journalist around the turn of the 20th century, and he worked for a while in these meatpacking plants in Chicago. Chicago, and so he got firsthand knowledge. It's kind of like an expose. And so what he saw was, and it disturbed him. and it disturbed a lot of others who read the book or at least choked it down. What disturbed Sinclair was that the meatpacking plants were filthy. I mean, but to be fair, anytime you cut up a carcass like those big cattle or whatever, it's going to be dirty, but it's going to be extra filthy. Even by those day standards, they didn't try to clean it up. You'll have some famous stories out of the jungle. One fella... you know, rats everywhere, rats getting caught up into the meat grinder for hamburger meat and all just coming out into the wash. Some rats eating the bait, then dying and then getting sucked in, that sort of stuff. Men cutting up meat in these conveyor belts as they go by and they cut their finger and it gets infected. And so you lose your hand or you lose your finger, but you can't work. and part of his appeal is to say, well, this shouldn't happen. And then, of course, the two famous such incidents, the last famous incident was this one fellow who was walking along a gangplank next to the bologna maker, which is the vaccine. out of acid, really. Bologna, if you don't know what bologna is, it doesn't bother me a bit, but some of you may not like bologna. It is the leavens of the leavens. And so you press it all together. It's the queen of the congealed meats. Oscar Mayer had an old jingle, my bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. My bologna has a last name, it's M-A-Y-E-R. Anyways, it goes on from there. Well, anyways, maybe this is where they got Oscar Mayer from, but this guy, the way way Sinclair told the story, and he might have been telling the truth, or he might have been embellishing a whole lot. I don't know. But this guy slips and falls into the vat of acid, and his body is dissolved before they can fish him out. And by that point in time, well, you might as well just keep making the baloney. And so there you go. So Sinclair himself realized the shortcoming of his book, though also it is an impactful book in the sense that you get some real legislation that's going to try to clean up, and it mostly does. clean up the meatpacking industry in the early 1900s. He himself said it like this, Sinclair said, I aimed to change the hearts and minds of the American people, but I missed. Instead, I made them sick to their stomach. Well, Chicago, and we'll leave Chicago, though we could continue on, but where would you live if you were an immigrant in, say, New York City? And we talk about how dense New York was. Chicago was not as dense, but it had its moments. and say you didn't have a house or the community that you were in was really more of apartments and so on. Especially in New York City, you're going to have what are called dumbbell tenement houses. And the reason they're called dumbbell tenements is because they're going to be used as a place to live. because if you look down at them from an aerial view, they look like a dumbbell, and that you would just pick down, reach and pick up, and so on. They're not air-conditioning. They might have running water. They probably don't. They certainly don't have any electricity to speak of, at least initially. They'll be wired after the turn of the 20th century. And the way that they were ventilated was by the creation of these big air shafts. These big air shafts were supposed to bring air up and through. and clearing the air in these buildings. The problem is that human beings being human beings, well, sometimes people can be lazy, and these air shafts were open, and so let's say for an immigrant, a Hungarian immigrant tells his boy to go take the trash out and get rid of the trash. Well, the boy just throws the trash down the air shaft. And so can you imagine here having all those flies and all that fly? and rotted food and rotted refuse sitting in the bottom of those air shafts, and there you are jammed into those tenement houses, those dumbbell tenements. It was a real mess, and so that left a lot to be desired. But as I keep saying, though, is that these cities are growing, and they are really the heart and soul of this emerging America. And they can be corrupt. New York City, with Boss Tweet, I invite you to read up on that. But those cities are certainly all there. And then on top of that, when we talk about these cities, the fact remains is that you're going to have these cities have meanings in a sense. So each city was in a sense was meant for, it was associated with something. Chicago with meatpacking and actually agricultural produce and railroads and this and that. It was so big. But in addition to that, you'll see Kansas City, like I said, meatpacking in its own right. Porkopolis of Cincinnati. Then also I'll just rattle these off to you. I bridge. Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is an older city, of course, but it was known for making corsets. Corning, New York, some of you have heard of Corningware, which is a glassware for cooking and such. Grand Rapids, Michigan, was known for its furniture production. Hershey, Pennsylvania, known as the sweetest place on earth because of chocolate. Pittsburgh, famously loud and dirty and foul. I mean, you wanted to go deaf in this first week you were there. You lived downtown close to where they got all the stadiums. Now. Now, Pittsburgh, today Pittsburgh's a beautiful town, but back 120 years ago, 1900, Pittsburgh's a foul place in its own right. But it was, of course, steel, and the Steelers, the football team, alludes to that. Tampa, Florida, famously for cigars. Dayton, you're going to have cash registers, Dayton cash registers. So anyways, there we go. These cities are growing. There's opportunity to be had. Even still, I should say this, I hasten even to add this, is that you're going to have even mail order opportunities. Montgomery Wards and Sears Roebuck, Sears Roebuck out of Chicago and Montgomery Ward was, I'd like to say, I'm going to better hold off on that, but I will say this, is their mail order. And you could order anything from a gun to a house or a pair of underwear. from Sears Roebuck. But anyways, it's a land of opportunity for all its warts and problems and riots and looting and fighting and so on. You're going to see a lot of Americans moving to cities, and this continues on to the present day in many respects. As I'll close with this, if you want to think about it, you're talking about moving to cities. Texas has got the reputation by amongst others, meaning other states and other nations as being cowboys and cowpunches and... and all that sort of stuff, but the reality is the vast majority of you watching this come from urban Texas, and very few of you are like me who live out in the middle of nowhere, which is, I say nowhere, but I'm in rural Texas, and I fit the stereotype Texan far better than most people do, but that's the story, people moving to the city, and that's where the jobs are, that's where the opportunity is, that's where the excitement is, that's where the future lies, it seems like. Whether it's true or not. We come to find that out. But the thing is that it's a story as old as the United States. Go from the country, move to the city. Some do it, some don't. Some could never conceive of going back, and others are like, why did I leave? But for the most Americans, it certainly is the opportunity. Like I said a minute ago, just for all the problems, it's been a very good land of opportunity in that sense. So I'm going to stop right there, and we'll pick up, and we'll talk about something. something else next time. Probably some more about cities and living in the cities, maybe, but we'll do it a little differently. Maybe talk about it more in the form of philosophy or what have you. Have a good day.

And in fact, actually, urbanization is not just an American phenomenon, but every Western city, every Western nation is going to go through spouts and bouts of urbanization. In fact, actually, really since the times of the 1700s, if not before, you'll even see that happening in London and in Berlin and Paris, France, and so on. But when we talk about moving to the city, who's coming?

United States are really having two groups. One that is as old as the idea of urbanization itself, moving to the city. You'll see a lot of young men and a lot of young women come out for the farm after the Civil War is over and find their way to the city.

They were doing it before, but now they're really doing it after the fact. In fact, actually, you'll see them come in such numbers that they're really going to grow American cities. The obvious ones like a New York city, but let's see. less obvious like a Chicago or Kansas City or some other upstart city.

But that's part of the story of America. But secondly, the other growth in American cities can also be seen in the form of immigration to those great American cities. Pittsburgh, I've already said Cleveland and Kansas City and Chicago, but Pittsburgh would be in there as well. To give you an idea how much growth of the cities at the expense of the rural America would be found, let's take a look. a look at some statistics and I would invite you to put those in your notes.

First of all, well I guess the question I could ask is when does America become an urban nation? The answer is 1920 officially, at least in the census. Reality is it probably happened a few years before that and after the 1910 census.

But let's back up a little bit here and kind of give you an idea of how fast, in a sense, it comes and how much the momentum picks up. So when we talk about a city versus a rural or small town, we're saying the cutoff line is $8,000. If you're talking about a town, what is a town versus a city? 8,000 persons or more. So in 1790, for every one person who lived in a town of 8,000 or more, 30 Americans lived in the country or lived in a small village.

By 1840, that is changing and changing more and more. By 1840, it's 1 and 12, 1 to the city, 12 to the country. By 1870, you can see it has accelerated a lot in just 30 years.

And in 1870... it's one American for every four country boys, one American in the city for every four country boys. In 1900, another 30 years, it's one in three.

Again, you're seeing that continuing along. In 1900, it's one in three. By 1910, it's even, you can see the explosion of immigration all the more. One in the city, in 1900, it's one in the city for every three in the country.

Then by 1910, it's one in the city for two who were in the... one and two are in the two Americans, it's almost 50%. And so by the time you get to 1920, there you go with the majority of Americans living in the city. So those folks who come are going to come for various reasons. Some were looking for, most are going to be looking for a better life, new life, a fresh start, the allure of living in the city.

And a few of you watching this probably actually would agree with that in the sense that you come from a smallish town, perhaps, and I don't mean, I don't mean 8,000. or less would be a good cutoff line for our purposes here. But you come from a small town and living in the city like a Dallas or Houston or even just an Austin's a big city too.

But even something like a Corpus Christi or even Brian called station is an advance because I can think of the time I growing up where I did, you couldn't pick the phone up and get delivered pizza. And the first time I could get delivery pizza when I wanted it, I thought it was like manna from heaven. But that's the point is people are going to grow and it's going to grow a lot.

So when we talk about this growth of these cities, we'll go into more specific cities in just a minute, but they're going to be coming. And so who's coming? Well, in the other case, we're going to talk about immigrants.

We'll talk about the immigrants. And what we're seeing with immigration is that it has been a story or part of the American story for years. But immigration in the mid-19th century was big.

Five million from 1850 to 1815, excuse me, to 1860. you will have approximately 5 million immigrants, most of whom, or at least half of whom, were English or English Isles, which would include Ireland, and then another good portion of them would have been German. But from 1865 to 1890, only a 25-year window, you're going to have 10 million immigrants, many of whom were still from Western Europe, including England. Not most, but many. And from 1890 to 1914, you're going to have another 50 million immigrants, 15 million immigrants. Now, these will come from the south of Europe and from eastern Europe as well.

So, in the form of 49 years, just simply 49 years, which is less than a lifetime, less than the life expectancy of an American in 1920, in 49 years, you will have seen 25 million Americans immigrate to the United States. Again, those years are 1865 at the end of the war, all the way up to 1914, the beginning of the war in Europe. And so, that is...

is a lot, a lot of immigration. And it profoundly transforms the nation. And what we would call that in our history is the great migration, the great immigration, the great migration. Some of you watching this today are going to say that's part of my family heritage because you come from that great migratory wave.

Whether you came out of Romania or you came from Russia or you came from France or something like that, some of you will find your heritage will go that direction. So anyways, most of the Most of the people who come to America in this time period, during this great migration wave, they're going to be commoners. They're not going to be high-born individuals for the most part.

Most of these people are the proverbial, give us your poor, your tired, your weak and huddled masses and so forth, yearning to be free. That's part of the great story of the Statue of Liberty. That is the welcoming and beckoning of America.

And it's also fair to remember that there is no real immigration policies in the United States prior to about the end of the 19th century. about 1885 or so. And only in the latter part of the 19th century do you see the U.S. government start to impose restrictions on immigration, and mostly that's going to be in the form of those who cannot, who would be, potentially could not take care of themselves, those who are obviously diseased, and so on.

To be fair and true, most of the people who come, basically 95-96% of the individuals who come during this great migratory wave, in fact, maybe a little higher than that, The thing is, the vast, vast majority of immigrants to the United States in the post-Civil War era, all the way to 1914, they get in and they may be detained or held up for a couple of few days or three days, but for the most part, they're brought in and they will be waved through. And in some areas, and if it's early enough, there is no stopover point. Can you just get here?

Well, you're fine. Come on. So the United States, for the longest time, has had an open-door policy toward immigrants. immigration it is closed at times in the 20th century and it has been controversial here in the 21st century but in the 19th century certainly and in the early 20th century the United States had generally speaking an open door policy but and so to be clear most of those immigrants coming especially in the second half of the great migratory wave would be Italian you'll see a lot of Russian Jews who come you'll see a lot of Poles Lithuanians Estonians Latvians Hungarians Armenians and on and on.

And if you just travel to old American cities, now old American cities, but cities such as, say, Chicago, for example, you will find all these little immigrant enclaves or what was the remnants now of those immigrant enclaves. So in a sense, really, you're talking about the 1860s or 70s. What were some of the first migrants to come to America? Well, let's start pointing out that some of the earliest immigrants were males, really only males, which is not unusual in our history.

take, for example, the Virginia Cavaliers in the 1600s. They were males for the most part, at least initially, and then the women catch up. Later on, it'll be more families and more balanced as far as a male-female ratio. But these early immigrants are going to be known as birds of passage.

You probably ought to remember that, the birds of passage, such as Italian young men who would come and work for a season. and work in the fields around maybe Ohio, maybe New York or whatever. But they are laborers who are here for a season of, say, three months or six months, and they make money, save it, take it back to Italy with them, which is actually not unusual today.

You'll see a lot of, at least at one point in time, I think it's still largely true, but you used to see a whole lot of immigrants come to the United States. In the last 25 years or 30 years, they would come for a season and work in the fields or do whatever jobs, maybe work construction in Houston or something, save a bunch of money and then go back to Mexico or go back to Costa Rica, go back to Guatemala, wherever they come from. from and just pay bills, pay family, whatever the case may be. That's an old story in American history is my point. And so the birds of passage, the old Italians who did that, in a sense, they're some of the first.

I want to actually tell you something else and keep you in mind with is that when we talk about these immigrants who come, it should tell you that it's fairly simple to get across the Atlantic Ocean by this point in time. By 1870 or 1900, I don't want you thinking about this like the Mayflower boys holding on for dear life to get across the Atlantic Ocean. Crossing the Atlantic Ocean in the mid to late 19th century and into the 20th century is frankly fairly simple.

It may not be always comfortable. and if you get seasick, certainly not then, but as far as safe is concerned, it's pretty much safe. I mean, as long as you don't get caught up in a hurricane or pop a, bust your hull on a iceberg, you're okay, and of course, I'm alluding to the Titanic, which is one of the more spectacular events because it was unexpected.

It would be like saying this aircraft is, this is a rally-hooped aircraft. It can't go down. It won't go down, and then, of course, it burns.

goes down in flames. In the case of the Titanic, it can't go down, it won't go down until it does on its maiden voyage. But it was spectacular, and it was unusual to say the least. But it's really about a two to three week journey, normally about two weeks, maybe even 10 days if it's a faster vessel. And you get across, and it's not that expensive.

I mean, like I said, you may be down in steerage in the bottom, and I wouldn't call that a Hilton or anything. But at the same time, it's comfortable enough, and it is kind of leaky and cold. cold, and hopefully you don't get sick from somebody who was sick, you know, an infectious disease sort of thing.

But at the same time, you come on, you get across, you get to the United States, you get to New York probably, you get off the boat, and you go on about your business, and you go to work. Now, you have those birds of prey, or birds of passage, excuse me. And then, however, you're going to have some other early immigrants to the United States, and you'll see them come on at times more and less, but you're going to see a lot of Russian Jews come to North America. North America come to the United States during this period of time. Unlike the Italian birds of passage, these Russian Jews, generally speaking, come and they don't go home.

If you think that the Germans are the only folks in the history of the world who have put the thumb down on the children of Israel, you would be sorely mistaken. If you look in Russian history, there is a lot of history that shows examples of anti-Semitism and anti-Jewish pogroms. that are designed to disfranchise, take property away, crush, hurt, kill, in some cases, their Russian subjects.

And so one of the ways that the Russians would do it, and you'll see this elsewhere, is you scapegoat a minority, and the minority were the Russian Jews. And so ultimately, in fact, actually to go to the communists in the 1950s, Stalin, right before he died, was working up, it was called the Jewish doctor's plot. It was all fictitious, but he was working up to eradicate the Jews. in the Soviet Union, it looked like. But death intervened and took Stalin out and saved the lives of, frankly, probably thousands and thousands of Jews still in Russia or the Soviet Union at that point in time.

Well, anyways, many, many Russian Jews come to the United States, and frankly, one of the things they find is that the United States is glad to have them. Going back to the beginning of the country, you can find actually one of the more poignant notes about religious toleration in American history from President Washington when he writes to a synagogue and the rabbi of the synagogue, I believe it was in Rhode Island, may have been in Connecticut, but it's one of those little tiny New England states. The thing is, is that President Washington basically says, we're glad to have you. We welcome you.

We love you. And all intents and purposes, you have nothing to fear about being in the United States. You're good here.

One of the things I hasten to add when I talk about restrictions. and immigrant restriction coming into North America is that there were no restrictions on religion. There was none that said, oh, by the way, you can't come here if you are Jewish or you're Muslim or you're an atheist or you're whatever.

There was no religious test. That was never imposed, and I would argue, at least, and this is me interjecting my opinion, it should never be imposed as far as immigration restrictions. So anyways, all that to say, though, is that... The, uh... The immigration is going to come and come in big numbers.

And when they do come, it depends on who you're talking about, depends on where they go. So those who are more skilled may end up working in some of the textile factories in New York City or put out shops in New York City or other East Coast cities. You'll find Italians sometimes work as agricultural laborers. You see that actually around here in Brazos County in Texas. You see a lot of the great Italian families.

They came here in the 1870s, and they stayed, and they took the farms over. In addition to that, you'll find them in New York City. and a longshoreman and so on. Others like Poles, who oftentimes had little skill but willing hands and a strong back, you will find them working in cities such as Cincinnati, for example, or Pittsburgh as unskilled laborers.

And the thing about the 19th and 20th century in the United States, the economy had a place for the man who had willing hands and a strong back. It's not until much later that that really, in the 20th century... that is, that really kind of goes away. But the idea of the strong hands and the willing hands and the strong back, you could find a place to go.

And it's always been true, though, however, if you have skills, you get paid more. But still, you'll see a lot of these groups live together. And we talk about diversity, yet it is not just this one on top of the other diversity that you might see in your neighborhood today. For some of you who come from Houston, and when I say Houston, I mean interior Houston, like inside the loop.

Over the years, I have seen in, meaning late 20th, now 21st century, the diversity of those communities, not always true. You can find these enclaves that are predominantly black or predominantly white or predominantly whatever, these neighborhoods, but they're also neighborhoods. It's just a hodgepodge and a potpourri.

Now, diversity in the 19th century may mean diversity of immigration. You're going to get, again, a lot. lot of, if I mentioned the Chinese coming out of, obviously, China in helping to build the transcontinentals, you're going to get a lot of diversity in your immigration, and done in many different ways.

In fact, you can say, to talk about diversity, it can mean take on different forms. But when they got here, ultimately, what you'll find is that a lot of those individuals will live in neighborhoods and in cities with their own, because oftentimes, as the wave of immigration grows, grows and grows to a crescendo and eventually hits the zenith and apex and comes back down again, you'll find that wherever a community is started up, there will be letters sent back to the home country inviting people to come and they will settle amongst themselves. Frankly, I find nothing wrong with that. It's a proverbial birds of the same feather flock together idea. My family were German, so we were ahead of this.

We came in the 1850s. However, we knew that there were Germans settling in central. Texas and we settled amongst our own.

And you probably have family members who could say the same. When you talk about getting off the boat, initially, like I said, there was really nothing that just stood out and said, oh, by the way, we, you know, you've got to come here, you've got to go there sort of deal. The thing is, is that when you talk about American immigration, really what we're looking first and foremost now is, is that by about 1892, the United States government realized that there was a need for them to really. step in and do some sort of sorting and some sort of check on who's coming to the country. Not necessarily, as I've said already, not necessarily to stop the, to throw up the road block and turn people around at the door for the vast, vast majority, but you wanted to see who's coming and you wanted to get a handle on the numbers and at least get an idea at it.

So from 1892, July of 92 to 1924, when it is effectively closed, you're going to see over Over 12 million individuals from 92 to 24 pass through Ellis Island. And those of you who have been to New York City will have probably gone to Ellis Island. And if you haven't, you really should have. Hopefully, you had an opportunity to go.

If you went to the Statue of Liberty, you probably ought to just go on to Ellis Island because there are many, many individuals who pass through that territory. Like I said, 12 million. And just think, about 12 million pass through Ellis Island. Probably some of you have answered.

ancestors, probably many of you have ancestors who passed through Ellis Island in that time period, even if you don't know it. But the thing is, is that, like I said, they mostly got through there. And you have these waiting areas.

And even to this day, those who have been there, when they redid Ellis Island and they preserved it, you can see on the walls where it was written, you know, notes and stories and comments and so forth. One man wrote, quite honestly, he said, damned is the day, he was an Italian immigrant in the late 1800s, 1890s. He said, damned is the day I left my homeland because he was getting poked and prodded and checked for obvious signs of disease and infection.

And he didn't like it. like it. He's like, man, why did I do this?

Why did I submit myself to taking my clothes off and getting examined? Almost like perhaps going to the airport in Austin or Houston and having to take your shirt off and getting the extra special treatment from the TSA boys. But most of the time, it's not that. In fact, actually, this one other fellow's name is Myron Surnock, S-U-R-N-O-C-H.

Myron Surnock said it like this. He said, at Ellis, meaning at Ellis Island, nobody changed my name. Nobody bothered me. Right away, I liked America. I made money, and I felt good.

And for a lot of Americans, whether they come from a German background or a Polish background or a Mexican background or a Chinese background, whatever it is, that has often been the statement and has been true. Sometimes it's not always been perfect. I know that. But at the same time, for the vast majority, that has been true.

They didn't change my name all that much, or if they did, the guy couldn't spell and just... stuck. Luckily, I guess for Giesner Slug, they didn't change my name.

But at the same time, I liked America. They left me alone for the most part. I made money and it was okay. So anyways, that works out pretty well.

Anyways, as these folks come and they start to settle, they're going to be individuals meeting them at Ellis Island. Some who are family waiting on them, others who are conmen, and individuals who are... So, yeah, when we talk about these immigrants settling in North America, settling in the United States, they're often going to live amongst themselves. And so that idea of birds of the same feather flock together is really a true thing.

A couple of ideas that we need to keep in mind when we go about immigration and discuss immigration is where do they go? Mostly to cities. But you also should say this in your notes, too, is that there are going to be good amounts of immigrants, especially in the 19th century, who are going to be going.

to the Midwest, who are going to populate in Minneapolis and Minnesota, who are going to populate there on the plains. All that stuff we talked about before about railroads drawing folks to the Americas, well, here it is. Some of the reason people come isn't just for, because something's shoving them out the door like a Russian pogrom for the Jews who come from Russia, but the promise of free or cheap land in the United States promised by railroads, trying to get them to move on to the plains.

You see a lot of of Scandinavians, for example, in the upper Midwest, you're going to become wheat farmers or settlers or millers in Minneapolis, for example, because Minneapolis is going to be known for flour, F-L-O-U-R. So anyways, all that to say, though, is that there's going to be a lot of folks coming, some to the country, most to the city, but still the United States is going to be absorbing lots and lots of individuals. If they come, they bring, of course, their language, and let's talk about language.

language for a moment. And I suspect what I'm going to say next is probably going to resonate with some of you, because you could probably say, that's my family. What I mean by that is that many of you perhaps have ancestors. All of us have ancestors in this sense. In my case, it would be German.

But some of you may have grandparents or great-grandparents who moved to the United States, and they did not speak English and may never have spoke much English at all when they died, if they're not still living. But what we... found in this great migration is that the first generation will identify as Prussian, or if you're talking about, that's a German thing. If you're talking about Venetian, if you're talking about Italy or something, you're going to identify with a locality.

By the second generation, you start to call them Italians or Italian-Americans, and eventually, hopefully, just becomes American. And as far as language is concerned, that first generation is going to speak almost exclusively or mostly the home tongue. So it would be Italian or German or Pole or Polish or whatever.

The thing is, however, by the time you get to the second generation, especially the generation that was born, meaning the first generation to be born in the United States, is you'll find them being able to speak both Spanish and English, German or English, Czech or English, Russian or English, Yiddish or English, or Polish or English. You get the picture. And some of you are like, that's my family. Grandpa can't speak much English. English, but my father, second generation, first born in this country, can't.

And then by the third generation, sometimes it's the fourth, but you get the idea it's a progressing pattern. You're going to find the third or maybe the fourth generation who can't speak any of the old language, can't speak any Russian or can't speak any Yiddish or can't speak any German, Spanish or whatever. The fact of the matter is that all they can speak, like me, all they can speak is English. And in the case of my family, it was about. the fourth generation.

My father would be the fourth generation. I'm the fifth. But my father can't speak a lick of German. My grandfather really couldn't speak much at all himself because it had broken down by that point in time. So anyways, all of which is to say, which is to say is that yes, there's a progressing pattern where you find the English language becoming the dominant language for the immigrants as well.

And part of that has to do, this is really particularly true, you don't really have the connection. back to the homeland that you might have thought you did. I'm not saying you give up all your culture or so forth.

That's clearly not the case. But one of the things that crossing the Atlantic Ocean has to do to people, and the Atlantic Ocean or the Pacific on the West Coast has this effect, is that it really acts as a geographical slice or a cleaving, like a big meat cleaver cuts into a roast or what have you. But what I mean by that is the crossing of the Atlantic Ocean had the... this effect upon these immigrants of saying, okay, I'm leaving the past behind. Sometimes quite literally, other times quite figuratively, but by saying is that you can't pick yourself up very easily, especially if you've moved the family and so on, you can't pick up very easily and move back to the home country because maybe you were leaving oppression.

Maybe you were leaving hardship and you really don't want to go there. So what it had the effect of doing this crossing the Atlantic Ocean. and the pervasive dominant American culture was is that, to use the old phrase, it tends to create this melting pot idea.

You take your old culture and you drop it in. You maintain parts of it, but it melts into the larger American culture that is out there. Again, you're going to have, say, you're going to have festivals and bazaars in Italian enclaves and neighborhoods where you still hear a lot of Italian spoken even as late as 1920 or so.

yet that drops down by 1940, by 1960. It's largely a thing of the past. So, and you'll find all these little communities and all these little cultures still having their own festivals and their own way of doing things, especially the first, the immigrant generation and the first born generation, but even that too, that starts to drop away. These communities are oftentimes, and I would make a note of this, they're going to be centered around something.

In say, Texas 2020 to today, small town Texas is probably centered around the football stadium. And I don't mean that as a dig. I just mean that as a fact.

And if you come from a small town in Texas, you may not get it, but the football stadium, yeah. But if you're talking about, say, Houston, I don't know, maybe it is the football stadium at Houston. Maybe it's not. Maybe it's, I don't know, whatever it is. But these communities in these big cities are going to have their own little bubble, as it were.

And it is very exclusive. I mean, if you're an Italian and you go trolling into an Irish community in Chicago, there's a very good chance that you will be asked, maybe politely, maybe not, to get out. And the thing that was the hub of these communities is that oftentimes it's going to be the religious aspect. It's going to be the religious community.

What I mean by that is it's going to be the Catholic Church. If it's Poles or Italians, it's going to be, again, the synagogue. If it's Russian Jews or it's going to be an Orthodox Church. if they're Latvian or Lithuanian or Russian. The thing is, is that it's going to be the church or a worship center, if you want to say it like that.

And so that will be the hub. So even though some of you are watching this are Catholic and may be thinking, well, can't I, if I was an Italian and I happen to be in a Polish community, couldn't I go to church there? I guess you could. But the reality is as soon as you opened your mouth and out comes Italian or broken English and the priest is giving his homily in Polish, though the mass will be in Latin, of course, basically you separate it out. Those little communities police themselves in a way.

of the same feather flock together idea. Are there Romeo and Juliet exceptions? Of course.

But for the most part, the rule is that these little enclaves had their own way of doing things, and they were exclusive to each other. Yet at the same time, the overarching American culture does draw them in and helps start, breaks down the old ways and brings up the American idea. So when we talk about this culture and the settlement of these cities, Probably no city is better as an example of this modern, new America, this growing and expanding America, leaving behind, as it were, the old colonial America, the old pre-antebellum America, and this new America, none better than the city of Chicago.

Chicago predates the Civil War, surely. But in the span of one lifetime, as I'm fond of talking about it seems like, but from, say, 1830 roughly to about 1900, roughly, you're going to see Chicago go from a city of about 1,500 individuals or a town of 1,500 individuals, which is basically the city of Somerville, to by the time you get to the year 1900, 70 years later, you will find Chicago being a city of a million and a half and still growing. And so Chicago, which is a really kind of a trading post prior to the Civil War, especially in the 1830s, it's a crossroads there close to the Lake Michigan.

It's on Lake Michigan. Michigan. You'll see its name, Chicago, is meant to be like a fetid swamp, putrid waters, malarial swamp. It's something along those lines.

It's an Indian name that we don't exactly know, but we kind of have an idea. And so, by the way, if you ever thought about naming your child Chicago, don't. So you wouldn't want to name your little girl Chicago and her name actually mean putrid swamp or fetid waters.

But all that to say, though, is that Chicago is a very, very Chicago's nickname is the Windy City. Some of it has to do certainly with the wind of Chicago, if you've ever been there, because it's kind of on the plains. The prairie state is Illinois. The wind coming off of that lake can be awfully cold in the wintertime.

However, Chicago is also not only just the Windy City for its wind, but more particularly, was initially given that name because of all the hyperbole and the yap, yap, yap, yap, yap of come to Chicago. to Chicago, live in Chicago, the city of the broad shoulders, blah, blah, blah. And so Chicago is going to be this great attraction because partially you're going to have the railroads.

Seemingly, if you ever see a map of Chicago in the late 19th century, you'll see all these railroads coming into Chicago. It looks like a wad of spaghetti that is all tangled up and it flings out in all different directions. Chicago is clearly a railroad hub.

And because it's a And because, as we talked about before, all that Texas cattle and that Texas beef coming up and out of South Texas and elsewhere headed toward the railheads at Abilene and Dodge City, and then later on as the railroads expand, that bypasses it. Lots and lots of beef, whether it's from Texas or elsewhere, is going to find its way to two principal cities, one which is Chicago, and I'll come back to that more in a second. The second, I'd write these down, by the way, is Kansas City. stockyards are almost as well known as the Chicago stockyards.

But both cities, Kansas City, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, are going to be home and to the death of millions and millions of animals. You're going to see in Chicago especially millions of cattle killed every year, and you're going to see millions of hogs killed every year as well. By the way, another American city that was an animal processing mecca in the 19th and early 20th century, maybe less. less today is Cincinnati. Cincinnati.

It was nicknamed Porkopolis because it was the primary hub for processing pork, meaning pig. Back to Chicago and its stockyards. Can you imagine living in Chicago in that time period, or frankly any American city or any world city, but let's talk about America.

Can you imagine living in Chicago with all those cows and all those pigs and all those chickens? some of which are in the stockyards, some of which are just free-range roaming around. You'll have the butcher shops on the street corner and so on. It is a cacophony of loudness and sounds and smells.

is not pleasant. And if you've ever had this misty-eyed notion, this almost dreary-eyed notion that living in the distant past would have been so much more preferable and so much more humane and so much better for the environment, living in Chicago in 1890 was unpleasant. And so what you'll find in some of these cities is that the infant mortality rate in these cities could be awfully high at times.

Yet overall, the mortality rate in the United States is going down, or at least people... People are living longer. But in Chicago, for example, just think about all those cows. And here's, I'm going to get a little grotesque probably, but think about all the feces that those cows are going to produce, all the feces that those pigs produce. I mean, manure from those two animals alone is bad enough, not to mention your horses, not to mention your mules which pile it up, not to mention your human beings who sometimes throw it out the window or often throw it out the window.

And so, And then that, because it's all hodgepodge and all over top of each other, you may not have the best water system in the world and you may not have the best sewage system. In fact, you don't. Even by the day standards, you didn't back then. But just imagine you had a shallow draft well that was dug into the ground there somewhere near Chicago, that's, you know, in that old malarial swamp, as they used to say.

And then you draft up that water that has been contaminated with runoff from cow feces and so forth. or pig or whatever, it's bad. I mean, it makes people sick. It kills them. I mean, you'll see in some American cities and districts in Chicago, for example, you'll see infant mortality rates in the 70% territory for that first year of the child's life in the late 19th century.

It's bad. And it's true also for New York in a slightly different way because you're going to see New York, you're going to have just population density. I mean, it's a small area, and people are hemmed on top of each other. other. In 1910, the population density in New York City was so tight, it made Calcutta blush.

And Calcutta is, gosh, I can't remember the modern name of Calcutta. It's not that anymore. It's in India, of course.

But Calcutta is known, and rightly so, as a dense city. But New York City at its height was even more dense than that. But the thing about whether it's New York or Chicago or some other growing American city is... is it stunk. It stunk to high heaven.

It burned your nostrils. This man's name is H.L. Minkin, and Minkin was a writer in the late 19th and early 20th century, especially the early 20th century.

He was a newspaper man. H.L. Minkin made a career out of skewering politicians. He hated Woodrow Wilson. He hated Republicans.

He hated Democrats. He hated Christians. He hated fundamentalist Christian Baptists. He hated most people. He was just a man who drank bile for breakfast.

He was one of those sorts of columnists. He could sling invective with the best of them, and he was actually quite funny. But anyways, all that to say is he grew up in Baltimore, and he wrote for the newspapers in Baltimore for most of his life. And he said growing up in Baltimore, it smelt like in the summertime, smelt like a billion dead polecats. A billion dead polecats in the summertime in Chicago.

Or excuse me, in Baltimore. But excuse me. But that, at the end of the day, could be said about Chicago or Cincinnati or Memphis, Tennessee or whomever. It was a dangerous proposition to live in an American city.

It was on top of each other. And, of course, when you talk about Chicago, you're going to have those communities. And if you've ever been there, they're still in remnant form to this day. Chicago, too, however, is you're going to have some really good food there, I would argue.

But so. Beyond Chicago, let me think of anything else I want to say about that city. Chicago, Chicago, Chicago. I think I'm good on that.

But when we talk about Chicago, oh, yes, I do. I can't leave this behind because this is, in a sense, maybe make Chicago. You know, sometimes out of catastrophe and disaster comes opportunity.

And when we talk about Chicago, really what I should hasten to add for your notes is the Chicago Fire of 1871. The Chicago Fire of 1871. So let me get my note just like where I want it. On October 7th, 1871, Chicago is going to be suffering through a dry, dry fall. In Chicago in 1871, is still a city that is growing. It hasn't reached a million and a half yet, but it's in hundreds of thousands easily.

And Chicago in 1871 is topsy-turvy. It's all over top of each other. Those wide, broad... boulevards that I talked about in a previous lecture that you found in other cities, not Chicago, they're all on top of each other. You're going to have cattle in people's lots because they'll be milked.

The thing is that you're going to have just a primitive but growing city. But it was dry. And if you know anything about Chicago, as I've already said, it's a windy city. It has a justly earned reputation for that. Well, what ends up happening is that it's a cow, Patrick and Catherine O'Leary, is going to, the way the story goes, kick over a lamp.

And they live on the southwest side of Chicago. So in the wind, the prevailing wind was coming up off of the continent, off of the plains and blowing southwest and northeast. And so what happens is it sits on the not the far southwest side, but on the southwest side of Chicago. And that wind or rather that cow kicks over that lantern. A fire starts in the.

barn and that cow in the barn catches on fire and everything's on top of each other and so the fire starts and the wind just starts driving the fire. If you've ever seen wind drive a fire it is an awesome sight to behold. It is a fearful sight to behold and Chicago is going to burn.

At least 300 will be killed when it's all said and done. Over 100,000 Chicagoans will be without homes. It burns over 17,450 buildings. Looting was rampant in the city.

2,124 acres of the city itself burned to the ground and was turned to char. And it cost approximately $200 million in their money. And so Chicago will be, it's the Great Chicago Fire of October 7th, 1871. And people who kept falling back from the fire, they kept falling back and eventually they got to the water's edge, meaning Lake Michigan's edge. And it was to the kind of the do or die moment, you started to get into the water and you hope basically that.

that you don't drown and somehow you can survive the heat because it was throwing off so much heat and you could survive there in the water. People did. Obviously, some did not.

But the thing is, Chicago is going to be reborn and Chicago will be rebuilt after the fire. And in that sense, the modern Chicago that you know today is that after the fire. In the heart of Chicago, the elevated train system, or the L as they call it, the subway system, not subway, but that train system, mass transit, all that that is famous for Chicago, and of course New York too, I know. The thing is, is that was post-fire 1871, and Chicago looked upon it as an opportunity to rebuild itself in a modern image in a way she galloped, in a way she galloped. And so when we talk about the Chicago of 1900, it is 29 years after the Chicago fire which transformed the city from a hodgepodge to a more organized mess.

I should say also to add this too, and I keep going on about Chicago, you're going to have a lot of meatpacking plants in Chicago. Some of you are familiar with a book that is a horrible book. I would never, if any of you desire to be a teacher, and if you teach American literature or you teach American history, never compel anybody to read this book.

And that book's title is The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Upton Sinclair was a socialist and he had a longing desire to see socialism become the familiar political practice in the United States. and that book, The Jungle, is really a book on socialism.

Now some of you may be thinking, oh my gosh, wasn't there some stuff in there about working in meatpacking plants and how dirty and foul it was? The answer is, oh yeah, I mean it's about 15 pages. is all, but it's like 500 pages of drudgery to get to those 15 pages. Sinclair's not a good writer. It's really a thin story.

I've read it or tried to read most of it while I was, when I was 16 years old, and I haven't really tried again, I suppose, but all that to say is that, yeah, it was not good, but what happened was is that Sinclair, he's a muck, they term is a muckraking journalist around the turn of the 20th century, and he worked for a while in these meatpacking plants in Chicago. Chicago, and so he got firsthand knowledge. It's kind of like an expose.

And so what he saw was, and it disturbed him. and it disturbed a lot of others who read the book or at least choked it down. What disturbed Sinclair was that the meatpacking plants were filthy. I mean, but to be fair, anytime you cut up a carcass like those big cattle or whatever, it's going to be dirty, but it's going to be extra filthy.

Even by those day standards, they didn't try to clean it up. You'll have some famous stories out of the jungle. One fella...

you know, rats everywhere, rats getting caught up into the meat grinder for hamburger meat and all just coming out into the wash. Some rats eating the bait, then dying and then getting sucked in, that sort of stuff. Men cutting up meat in these conveyor belts as they go by and they cut their finger and it gets infected.

And so you lose your hand or you lose your finger, but you can't work. and part of his appeal is to say, well, this shouldn't happen. And then, of course, the two famous such incidents, the last famous incident was this one fellow who was walking along a gangplank next to the bologna maker, which is the vaccine.

out of acid, really. Bologna, if you don't know what bologna is, it doesn't bother me a bit, but some of you may not like bologna. It is the leavens of the leavens. And so you press it all together.

It's the queen of the congealed meats. Oscar Mayer had an old jingle, my bologna has a first name, it's O-S-C-A-R. My bologna has a last name, it's M-A-Y-E-R. Anyways, it goes on from there. Well, anyways, maybe this is where they got Oscar Mayer from, but this guy, the way way Sinclair told the story, and he might have been telling the truth, or he might have been embellishing a whole lot.

I don't know. But this guy slips and falls into the vat of acid, and his body is dissolved before they can fish him out. And by that point in time, well, you might as well just keep making the baloney.

And so there you go. So Sinclair himself realized the shortcoming of his book, though also it is an impactful book in the sense that you get some real legislation that's going to try to clean up, and it mostly does. clean up the meatpacking industry in the early 1900s. He himself said it like this, Sinclair said, I aimed to change the hearts and minds of the American people, but I missed.

Instead, I made them sick to their stomach. Well, Chicago, and we'll leave Chicago, though we could continue on, but where would you live if you were an immigrant in, say, New York City? And we talk about how dense New York was.

Chicago was not as dense, but it had its moments. and say you didn't have a house or the community that you were in was really more of apartments and so on. Especially in New York City, you're going to have what are called dumbbell tenement houses. And the reason they're called dumbbell tenements is because they're going to be used as a place to live. because if you look down at them from an aerial view, they look like a dumbbell, and that you would just pick down, reach and pick up, and so on.

They're not air-conditioning. They might have running water. They probably don't.

They certainly don't have any electricity to speak of, at least initially. They'll be wired after the turn of the 20th century. And the way that they were ventilated was by the creation of these big air shafts. These big air shafts were supposed to bring air up and through. and clearing the air in these buildings.

The problem is that human beings being human beings, well, sometimes people can be lazy, and these air shafts were open, and so let's say for an immigrant, a Hungarian immigrant tells his boy to go take the trash out and get rid of the trash. Well, the boy just throws the trash down the air shaft. And so can you imagine here having all those flies and all that fly? and rotted food and rotted refuse sitting in the bottom of those air shafts, and there you are jammed into those tenement houses, those dumbbell tenements.

It was a real mess, and so that left a lot to be desired. But as I keep saying, though, is that these cities are growing, and they are really the heart and soul of this emerging America. And they can be corrupt.

New York City, with Boss Tweet, I invite you to read up on that. But those cities are certainly all there. And then on top of that, when we talk about these cities, the fact remains is that you're going to have these cities have meanings in a sense.

So each city was in a sense was meant for, it was associated with something. Chicago with meatpacking and actually agricultural produce and railroads and this and that. It was so big.

But in addition to that, you'll see Kansas City, like I said, meatpacking in its own right. Porkopolis of Cincinnati. Then also I'll just rattle these off to you.

I bridge. Bridgeport, Connecticut, which is an older city, of course, but it was known for making corsets. Corning, New York, some of you have heard of Corningware, which is a glassware for cooking and such.

Grand Rapids, Michigan, was known for its furniture production. Hershey, Pennsylvania, known as the sweetest place on earth because of chocolate. Pittsburgh, famously loud and dirty and foul. I mean, you wanted to go deaf in this first week you were there. You lived downtown close to where they got all the stadiums.

Now. Now, Pittsburgh, today Pittsburgh's a beautiful town, but back 120 years ago, 1900, Pittsburgh's a foul place in its own right. But it was, of course, steel, and the Steelers, the football team, alludes to that. Tampa, Florida, famously for cigars.

Dayton, you're going to have cash registers, Dayton cash registers. So anyways, there we go. These cities are growing. There's opportunity to be had.

Even still, I should say this, I hasten even to add this, is that you're going to have even mail order opportunities. Montgomery Wards and Sears Roebuck, Sears Roebuck out of Chicago and Montgomery Ward was, I'd like to say, I'm going to better hold off on that, but I will say this, is their mail order. And you could order anything from a gun to a house or a pair of underwear. from Sears Roebuck. But anyways, it's a land of opportunity for all its warts and problems and riots and looting and fighting and so on.

You're going to see a lot of Americans moving to cities, and this continues on to the present day in many respects. As I'll close with this, if you want to think about it, you're talking about moving to cities. Texas has got the reputation by amongst others, meaning other states and other nations as being cowboys and cowpunches and... and all that sort of stuff, but the reality is the vast majority of you watching this come from urban Texas, and very few of you are like me who live out in the middle of nowhere, which is, I say nowhere, but I'm in rural Texas, and I fit the stereotype Texan far better than most people do, but that's the story, people moving to the city, and that's where the jobs are, that's where the opportunity is, that's where the excitement is, that's where the future lies, it seems like.

Whether it's true or not. We come to find that out. But the thing is that it's a story as old as the United States. Go from the country, move to the city. Some do it, some don't.

Some could never conceive of going back, and others are like, why did I leave? But for the most Americans, it certainly is the opportunity. Like I said a minute ago, just for all the problems, it's been a very good land of opportunity in that sense. So I'm going to stop right there, and we'll pick up, and we'll talk about something. something else next time.

Probably some more about cities and living in the cities, maybe, but we'll do it a little differently. Maybe talk about it more in the form of philosophy or what have you. Have a good day.

Transcript for:Impact of Immigration on Urban Growth

Transcript for:
Impact of Immigration on Urban Growth