Description

Immediate dispatch from Somerset. Nice older book in good condition. Pages in great condition. No notes or highlighting. See images. Fantastic book.

About the book >.>.> Whether on landing many of them could have formulated anything so coherent as an expectation. Did they believe that wide-open spaces were there for the taking? There were indeed such spaces to be had; but they were far from New York and Boston where the immigrants landed; and clearing virgin lands required a toughness and resource of body and spirit which the undernourished and demoralized im- migrants simply did not possess. Besides the assembled sharks who met the immigrant ships were there largely to ensure that the new arrivals did not leave the city for the continent beyond. Touts for boardinghouses would gather up a family’s bags and belongings- and disappear with them. Self-appointed guides from the immi- grants’ homeland would collect their money for the journey by rail- way and canal boat to some far-off destination-and leave the party stranded if not in the port itself then not far outside it. Thousands and thousands of these poor immigrants were thus left without money work or prospects in the cities of the eastern seaboard-above all in New York. If they had believed the tales back home about the streets of New York being paved with gold the realities of life in the city disabused them of such notions within a very few days. There were slums in New York to rival any city in the world. The Five Points between Broadway and the Bowery might said Dickens in his American Notes. (LL)