I'm currently reading the non-fiction book Flesh & Blood So Cheap by Albert Marrin. It's about the triangle fire and its legacy. I'm not that far into the book so i'm just going to talk about the first two chapters. I think that the central idea of the first chapters is that people came to America because they weren't accepted in their native lands. The author talked specifically about Russian Jews and a little about Italians.
The author says that the Russian Jews lived a horrible life. They were attacked by priests and other Jew haters no fewer than 600 times one month in November of 1905. The book says that "From 1903 to 1906, during the reign of Czar Nicholas II, some 3,100 Jews lost their lives in pogroms." This really shows how unsafe Russia was for these people. Tons of people just opted to take the long horrendous journey to America and live a happier life.
Although America seemed like a place of new oppertunity, it obviously wasn't much improvement. Yes, it was accepting to many cultures and religions but the housing and money situation was horrible. In the book they quote a young boy who says about the tenements that, "a place so dark it seemed as if there weren't no sky." They also quote Rose Halpern or Stanton Street, "I was washing my hands in the sink and a ra dropped right into my hands."
In conclusion, many people came to America filled with hopes and dreams. They were accepted, but kept in horrible conditions where only a few people end up succeeding. It was a harsh reality many of these immigrants faced and this book gets down to the gritty details.
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