Following anti-Semitic violence in Russia during the 1880s, thousands of Jews fled to the United States. Almost a quarter million came between 1881 and 1890, the majority settling in New York City. These poverty-stricken newcomers posed problems for New York’s assimilated Jews, most of whom were German- or American-born. Community support networks were quickly overwhelmed; New York’s United Hebrew Charities almost went bankrupt. Jewish leaders watched with dismay the expansion of tenement wards. They worried that the presence of so many Eastern European “beggars,” as one Reform rabbi put it, would heighten American anti-Semitism.

In 1901, New York’s Jewish leaders founded an Industrial Removal Office (IRO) to help disperse Jewish newcomers. By 1922 the office sent over 79,000 Eastern European Jews to locations across the country. IRO correspondence provides a window on how newcomers sought to negotiate places in America’s industrial economy. Note that most of the letters are translated from Yiddish. As one immigrant noted, inability to speak English could limit employment opportunities and cause “great distress.”

Alex Grubman

Letter from Portland, Oregon, 1905

I write you how fortunate I am in being placed in one of the largest dry goods houses in Oregon by Hon. Sig Sichel. … He went personally with me until he procured the present position for me as inside salesman and to start at $60 a month. … [Many people here] wish me to thank the I.R.O. for helping them to success. … Mr. Lvov or Lvovsky, a tinsmith sent out direct 2 years ago has a stove and hardware store. M. Kaplan a tailor is earning $20–25.00 a week. Mr. Nathan Siegel who arrived only a few days ago is already employed as a clerk earning $10.00 for a start.

Barnet Marlin

Letter from Atlanta, Georgia, 1906

Dr. Wildauer secured a place for me to work, at wooden trunks. … I could not earn more than 60 cents a day and was working harder than a horse. … Atlanta does not pay to work, especially for a foreigner. … Several weeks passed by and at the end I was in debt. …

During that time I became acquainted with a Jewish policeman and he was the only one who took pity on me. … I told my friend the policeman that I had $15.00 (sent to me by my brother) and he advised me to go out peddling. He took me to a store and told the storekeeper to furnish me for over $30.00 worth of goods. He also acted as my reference and prepared me with everything. I went out peddling and gradually I earned enough money to pay all my debts; and so I kept on peddling. I earned enough money and bought a horse and wagon. I now convey goods from the city to the country and sell them there. I thank you very much for sending me to Atlanta.

Raphael Gershoni

Letter from Atlanta, Georgia, 1905

Why do you sent people to Atlanta? You give them eight days worth of food and then you let them starve in the street among Negroes. … I was given a job to work in a restaurant kitchen, to wait on Negroes, and to clean the Negroes’ closets, for three dollars a week. … I was then given ten dollars for goods so that I might go around and peddle in Atlanta. But out of this ten dollars, I have to pay four dollars for lodging and three dollars a month for a place just to lay my head. … It is hopeless to work in Atlanta. The highest wage is 75 cents a day. And for what kind of work?… The competition is difficult here. Why should anyone hire a white greenhorn when they can get a black Negro, who is strong as iron. … Everyone says that the only choice here is to go out into the countryside and peddle. But one needs 40–50 dollars worth of goods. How do I get the money?… I would like to ask you to help me out. Help me crawl out of black Atlanta and go to Chicago. There I have friends and can make out better.

Charles Zwirn

Letter from La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1913

[Mr. Goldfish] took me into his house and gave me a very nice welcome. He then led me to the synagogue and introduced me to all the members. Mr. Goldfish is a Jew with a real Jewish heart. He is religiously inclined and the biggest businessman in the city. If any controversy arises, it is always settled by Mr. Goldfish. … [He] took me to a shop and they paid me $6 more than I earned in New York. When I wanted to thank him, he said that the only thing he expects of me is that I conduct myself properly and go on the right path so I can eventually succeed. This, he said, was the best reward I can give him. I did as he told me and saved a few hundred dollars. …

Another man sent here had been in the country two months. … He was sent to Mr. Goldfish, who found him a job sorting corks for $2 a day. … He then left. By the way,… would you be so kind as to send to me a boy to drive a milk wagon on Mr. Jacob’s farm and an older man to work at junk? They must be honest and respectable people.

Mary Rubin

Letter from New Orleans, Louisiana, 1905

You have sent us out here to starve for hunger and live in the streets. … We have arrived in New Orleans about 12 o’clock in the night, and there was nobody to await us there, and we had to go around alnight and look for the address which you had given. … They put the nine of us all in one room, with out a bed or a pillow to sleep on. … Then they took Mr. Rubin and his wife up to the cigar factory and gave them both a job. Mrs. Rubin is getting about four ($4) a week and Mr. Rubin five ($5). Now we will ask you if a family man can make a living with that. And Mr. Rosenthal they told if he wants work he will have to look for it himself. … When he found work, they told him to bring his tools and come to work. He went to the office and asked for the tools; they told him that he can’t have them.

… [The local Committee] sent mama to be a cook for $4 a month, which she had never done before, and if she wanted to be a cook in N.Y. she could have gotten 3 times that much or more, but it did not suit us to let our mother be a cook, and now we should have to do.

Nathan Toplitzky

Letter from Detroit, Michigan, 1908

I, Nathan Toplitzky, sent to the above city 5 months ago, wish to inform you that a great misfortune has happened to me. Your committee has placed me to work in a machine factory where I have earned $.75 a day, and being unskilled I have had 4 of my fingers torn from my right hand. I now remain a cripple throughout my life. For six weeks my sufferings were indescribable.

When the condition of my health improved a little, I called on the Committee and they advised me to go back to the old employer. I went back to him and he placed me to work at the same machine where the accident occurred. Having lost my fingers I was unable to operate the machine. … Kindly write to your Committee to find a position for me.

S. Klein

Letter from Cleveland, Ohio, 1905

In the past week something terrible has happened here. Two men sent here by the Removal Office committed suicide out of despair. One took poison and the other hanged himself. … That shows the deplorable condition of those who are sent here by the Removal Office. The Cleveland Removal Office is managed by an inexperienced young man who maintains his position merely through favoritism. … It was told to me that the one who hanged himself came to this agent and implored him with tears in his eyes to provide some kind of employment.

Source: Industrial Removal Office letters as they appear in Robert A. Rockaway, Words of the Uprooted: Jewish Immigrants in Early 20th Century America (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1998). Used by permission of the American Jewish Historical Society.