How Did Immigration Impact The American Industrial Worker

The American industrial workers kept America progressing and expanding industrially in the late 1800’s. The life of one was difficult in the conditions in factories and cities. However, what of the influences that impacted the American industrial worker such as, immigration, labor unions, and technology changes. Immigration barely affected the American industrial worker of the 1850’s, but at the end of the Civil War, the greatest influx of immigrants yet was just beginning. The only way the immigrated worker impacted the “American” one, is that they outright replaced them. Obviously not every single American industrial worker was fired and swapped for foreign workers, but many were so anyway. This is due to foreign industrial workers usually settling for a lower wage, and, in the case of Chinese ethnics, they practically did

Indeed, these qualities did not shape or radically change the American industrial workers, but simply changed their demographic, or replaced them. Due to this, however, racial tensions began to emerge in a number of industries such as,; Chinese, Mexican, Anglo-Americans, and African Americans all vied for jobs in the West, while Southern and Eastern Europeans were hired for textile factory and mining jobs, instead of the accustomed British and Irish workers who were practically assimilated Americans. By 1900, the second or possibly even the third generation of many of those immigrant workers would be entering the workforce themselves. Immigration only impacted the industrial worker within its own sphere, but labor unions changed them in the eyes of the American public and possibly beyond. Labor unions were mostly weak and powerless until the 1870’s, and by then they barely exercised any sort