I’m getting a really clear picture of what it was like to be an immigrant coming to America, and it wasn’t pretty. Each week as I read more and more about what it was like, I learn more about the struggles immigrants faced to live here. First we read about the difficult and dangerous journey of coming to America, staying alive throughout the long and unsanitary boat rides and staying healthy enough to be permitted into the country and not be turned away. Then we read about the awful living conditions immigrants lived with once they got here- we read about the dirty, disgustingness of Five Points tenements, the murders, prostitution and drinking, the lack of toilets and showers, or even beds, for multiple families. Now we move on to read about the horrendous working conditions immigrants had to put up with! As Jackie, Eden and many other people wrote, immigrants took whatever jobs they could find in order to make a living, and worked under awful conditions and were fired as soon as their employers found workers who would work for cheaper wages. To me this seems like it would lead to a downward spiral- everyone would keep accepting lower wages to get a job, but as people accepted smaller and smaller wages, they wouldn’t be making enough to live off and eventually someone would work for so little money that its be virtually free labor.
As other people mentioned, I thought it was really nice how some immigrants helped others find jobs. It was truly risky to introduce a new immigrant to employers because the employer could either 1. Hire the new immigrant instead of you, or 2. Fire you for introducing them to a bad worker. I don’t know if I would have taken the risk, but its nice to know that some people did.
Referring to Eden’s question about gender roles during migration to New York, I think that forcing women to contribute to household income and start working in low-paying jobs had multiple outcomes, and they are all relative. I think that at the time, it appeared that working women had lower statuses than women who stayed and cared for the household, because back then, being a housewife was the expected, ideal role for women. Being poor enough and “lowered” into working caused women to give up their “ideal” role as caregiver and so they were looked down upon. Later, as working became the norm for women, and women rose in abilities and job positions and became professional equals to men, then women’s status was raised. I do agree with ToniAnn that if it hadn’t been for times like this, where women were forced to work out of necessity due to poverty or war, then it could be very possible that none of the people in our class (aside from Prof Vellon + the two boys in our class) would be here learning, because we would probably all have 5 kids by this point and would be home making dinner and doing laundry. One last point about women- I don’t think that since women were given jobs with lower wages that an inferior rank was reinforced because at first, these were the only jobs women could possess- they had no prior experience, and couldn’t do manual labor like men, so they had to take what they could get. Later it evolved into an inferior rank due to the labels we put one everything.
