This paper examines the complex, evolving meaning of American identity from the Progressive Era through the early twenty-first century. Drawing on sources including Stephen Meyer, Jon Gjerde, and Ronald Takaki, it covers the Americanization movement in industrial workplaces, the reasons many European immigrants returned to their homelands, and the transformations in immigrant family roles during rapid urbanization. The paper also compares immigration statistics from 1910 to 2005, traces the origins of the civil rights movement in World War II, and analyzes how racial divisions have gradually blurred in contemporary America. Together, these threads illustrate how immigration and ethnicity have continuously reshaped American culture and society.
Progressive Era Americans from different backgrounds defined the meaning of being American in strikingly different ways. Stephen Meyer, writing in Efforts at Americanization in the Industrial Workplace, 1914–1921, argued that Americanization "involved the social and cultural assimilation of immigrants into the mainstream of American life," but that the process was also "a unique and distinctly American method for the resolution of a key industrial problem — the problem of work-discipline and of the adjustment of new workers to the factory environment" (p. 323).
Meyer describes the Americanization campaign as "voluntary, benevolent and educational" (p. 323). However, these programs emerged from within factories and carried negative connotations as well. The tensions involved were not simply about national or ethnic cultural differences, but also about "pre-industrial and industrial cultures, and even class cultures" (p. 323). Americanization was, in Meyer's view, an important movement for adjusting immigrant workers to a new industrial environment and to the conditions of urban America. The American work ethic was grounded in the ideal of advancement as a reward for the worker's "patience, self-denial, and hard work" (p. 324).
Meyer further argues that the Ford Americanization program introduced new methods and techniques of production that "drastically diluted the skills necessary for factory operations" (p. 324). These complications were compounded by immigrants' unfamiliar styles, non-American work habits, and discipline patterns. Older Americans believed that immigrant work habits were inefficient, a concern reinforced when factory productivity fell short of desired levels. The Ford workforce was dramatically reshaped by modern mass production.
The work of Jon Gjerde relates the story of Josiah Strong, a Protestant clergyman who reflected on the perceived perils of immigration and its influence on American morals. Gjerde considered immigration "demoralizing" to America, arguing that the roots of a man cannot hold him upright "by the strength of his own roots" alone — a man's roots join with the roots of others to form society, which includes laws, customs, and public opinion (Gjerde, 1998, paraphrased). Gjerde also addressed immigrant crime, noting that higher pay produced "larger means of self-indulgence" and observing that "the hoodlums and roughs of our cities are, most of them, American born of foreign parentage" (Gjerde, 1998).
Gjerde further noted that immigration had fueled the liquor trade and that immigrants failed to honor Sunday as a day of worship. He also claimed that immigration fed the growth of Mormonism and socialism. The core problem, in Gjerde's view, was that many residents of America were not "Americanized" — they preferred their native languages and customs and carried their national identity "as a distinct factor" into American political life. This produced a "mass of men" unaccustomed to American institutions who would act together, driven by "their appetites and prejudices" (Gjerde, 1998, p. 310).
The reasons European immigrants returned to their homelands during the Progressive Era were varied. After 1880, most immigrants settled in larger industrial cities. Urban immigrant populations were predominantly Jewish, Italian, and Slavic, and they tended to "cluster together in neighborhoods along with their fellow countrymen where they could be at ease with a familiar language and customs." By 1920, occupational patterns in New York reflected these ethnic concentrations: Jewish women dominated the garment trade; Italian women comprised 93 percent of individuals doing hand embroidery; and Slovak males made up 69 percent of coal miners (Mujica, n.d.).
According to Mujica's American Immigration: An Overview, most immigrants to the United States initially intended to stay only temporarily — to work for several years, save wages, and return home with improved financial standing for their families. Although the majority ultimately remained permanently in the United States, departure rates for various groups were substantial:
Croatians, Poles, Serbs, and Slovenes each returned at a rate of approximately 35 percent; Greeks at 40 percent; Hungarians, Slovaks, and Italians at over 50 percent; and Asian immigrants at more than two-thirds (Mujica, n.d., p. 1).
The entire face of American society was transformed during the Progressive Era as cities became crowded with immigrants and crime rates rose rapidly. Illiteracy and unemployment among many immigrants added to these pressures. The expanding diversity of urban America contributed to the formation of local organized crime networks, alarming many American citizens. Immigrants frequently encountered disappointment when the reality of American life failed to match their expectations — they were alternately welcomed and despised, blamed for existing social ills, and taken advantage of economically.
Immigrant children labored alongside adults for long hours under poor conditions, and health standards in immigrant neighborhoods were frequently unsanitary. The gap between the imagined America and the lived experience of immigrants was wide and painful.
The roles of family members in immigrant households underwent profound changes within the new American urban environment — some positive, others negative. Ethan Lewis, in The Vitality and Turmoil of Urban Life, 1877–1920, identifies factors responsible for the high proportion of nuclear families and examines how households expanded and contracted in response to changing circumstances. Societal changes altered individual and family lifestyles significantly. For example, rising life expectancy increased the presence of older adults within families. Additionally, adolescence and childhood "became more distinct stages of life… People's roles in school, in the family, on the job, and in the community came to be determined by age more than any other characteristic" (Lewis, 2008, p. 575).
The encyclopedia entry on Family Patterns notes that during the 1920s the older generation increasingly began to live separately from the rest of the family, quietly signaling a structural change in household composition. As prosperity grew, childhood in working-class families was extended. Across all socioeconomic classes, children were gradually withdrawn from the labor force and enrolled in schools, entering the workforce at a later age and living at home longer than before. The Second World War then disrupted all aspects of family life — economically and emotionally — "due to separation, death and financial hardship" (Lewis, 2008, p. 576). Men went to war, women entered the workforce, and children "were forced to mature more precipitously" (Lewis, 2008, p. 576).
Ayers, Gould, and Oshinsky (2008) write in American Passages: A History of the United States that child-rearing in prosperous families who did not rely on child labor "became more organized and systematic" (p. 576). Kindergartens came to be viewed as the proper preparation for formal schooling. Women's status also shifted during the Progressive Era: some young women delayed marriage in favor of college, though fields such as law, medicine, and higher education remained largely closed to them. Women entered mills, factories, and garment sweatshops, working under harsh conditions. As women gained greater independence, the institution of marriage itself changed — women sought more from it than before, including "companionship and sexual pleasure" (Ayers, Gould, and Oshinsky, 2008, p. 577).
The government promoted family cohesion through initiatives such as the designation of Mother's Day as a national holiday. Divorce became more common: approximately four out of every thousand marriages ended in divorce in 1900, but that number grew faster than the rate of population growth, rising from 56,000 divorces in 1900 to 100,000 in 1914 (Ayers, Gould, and Oshinsky, 2008, paraphrased).
Societal changes affected not only immigrant families but American society at large, as the country navigated the growing pains of industrialization, war, and mass immigration simultaneously. The impacts on families, individuals, and communities were both profound and enduring.
"Statistical comparison of immigrant origins across decades"
"WWII origins of the civil rights movement"
"Takaki's argument on blurring racial boundaries in America"
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