Mass immigration

During the second half of the 19th century influxes of immigrants­ crowded into New York in search of a new and better life. The potato famine in Ireland and revolutionary ferment in Central Europe brought the Irish and Germans, who were soon followed by Italians, Poles, and Hungarians. The first important wave of Jews fleeing the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe arrived in the 1880s. Over 2 million newcomers landed in the city be­tween 1885 and 1895, welcomed (after 1886) by the Statue of Liberty.

Lower East Side

The Lower East Side went by many names: “the typhus ward,” “the suicide ward,” “the crooked ward,” or simply “Jewtown.” The irregular rectangle of tenements and sweatshops crammed between the Bowery and the East River were the New World’s ghetto.

Between 1880 and 1920, more than 2 million Eastern European Jews came to the United States, and over 500,000 settled in New York City, mostly on the Lower East Side. With 330,000 people per square mile and primitive sanitation, yellow fever and cholera were constant threats, and child labor and exploitation were facts of life. Families of six or seven often slept, cooked, ate, and worked in a small room – in hallways, in basements, in alleyways – anywhere they could huddle. Rents were extortionate.

The first sweatshops

The “needle trade” was a keystone of the economy, and piles of half-sewn clothes cluttered the rooms. Pay was by quantity, hours were long, and the pace was fast and relentless. Sewing machines were typically whining by 6am and droned far into the night.

For the sweatshop workers, ­conditions were appalling: employees were charged for needles and thread, for lockers and chairs, and fined for damaged material at two or three times its regular value. Wages were minimal – maybe $8 or $10 a week for a family of five or six people, or $14 or $15 for the exceptionally productive. Survival was hand-to-mouth, and every penny saved was precious.

Writer Michael Gold remembered, “On the East Side people buy their groceries a pinch at a time; three cents’ worth of sugar, five cents’ worth of butter, everything in penny fractions.” Compassion for friends had a high personal cost. “In a world based on the law of competition, kindness is a form of suicide.”

Jewish community

At the center of the neighborhood was Hester Street market, where Jews not in the garment trade sold meat, produce, or cheap ­clothes from pushcarts. The area was nicknamed “the Pig Market,” probably, as campaigning photo-journalist Jacob Riis said, “in ­derision, for pork is the one ware that is not on sale.”

Eastern European Jews put a high value on education and political organization, and community members were active in the labor movement. Unions were ­regularly organized, but “strike-busters” were hired by the bosses to intimidate them with threats and violent acts. Organizations like the Educational Alliance sponsored lectures and demanded libraries; Yiddish theater blossomed on Second Avenue; and religious observances ­continued as they had in the old country.