Migrant Crisis: Then and Now

During the past two years much has been said and written about immigration at America’s southern border. Unable to house, feed, and care for the thousands entering the country, governors have bussed many to sanctuary cities. In New York City, the mayor was forced to put up migrants in police stations for lack of housing. Such a crisis isn’t new to America. During the 1890s, New York City’s police housed as many as 148,000 immigrants in their barracks each year. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, Chicago’s population increased by 54% from 1890 to 1900. City commissioners quickly constructed ramshackle tenements for the enormous wave of immigrants that poured into their cities. Thirteen-foot rooms were often occupied by as many as a dozen men. Flophouses charged 25 cents for a cot, locker, and screen. Many who could not afford that amount were forced to use a hammock for 7 cents or a spot on the floor for five. Others slept in the streets despite cold and snow. Unemployment was rampant.

Jacob Riis Photo of Tenements
Courtesy of Library of Congress

There was little or no safety net for those who were weakened by hunger and disease. Saddest of all were the orphaned children who were frequently cared for and fed by the police. What prompted the first change in these enormous slums? It was the work of Jacob Riis. An immigrant himself, Riis came to the United States from Denmark in 1870. Ten years later, he found work as a police reporter and saw, wrote about, and photographed the filth, squalor, poverty, and overcrowded slums. His book “How the Other Half Lives” threw light on the misery of New York City’s poverty-stricken, homeless immigrants. More than his words, it was his photographs of the crowded tenements that effected change. Theodore Roosevelt, then the city’s police commissioner, said “I have read your book and have come to help.” And help he did! 

Tenements were torn down and replaced with decent housing for the city’s population of which a quarter were mired in poverty. Streets were cleaned up. Reformers and missionaries opened day nurseries and schools for thousands of homeless children. “Out placing” by the Children’s Aid society began the Orphan Train Movement that found homes, some good and some ruinous, for more than 200,000 children. Nearly 8,000 were settled in Ohio. (See 2012 post "Following the Orphan Train Riders.")

Roosevelt once said he hoped that coming to the “new land would be a turning point in their lives; wished that they might find there all their dreams had painted for them; and how earnestly he, as a citizen of the great republic; welcomed them to it.” It took years of reform and constant effort to make that promise a reality.