In the nineteenth century, millions of migrants moved thousands of miles from their homelands. The vast distances traveled and the permanent relocation of these migrants were among the issues generating a wide range of responses. Among observers, government officials, migrants themselves, and those they left behind, reactions varied from acceptance and enthusiasm to opposition and anger. The conflicting reactions appeared in official reports, local newspapers, poems, and personal letters. While officials pointed to the benefits of emigration (Excerpt 1), others in the home country had mixed views and opinions (Excerpt 2). Migrants themselves had vastly differing experiences, adding to the debate over migration (Excerpts 3, 4, and 5).
1. The Government View
The preamble to the Hungarian census for 1890 was blunt and unambiguous on the subject of migration at a time when population growth was said to be a good thing. It offered a clear assessment of emigration from the government’s point of view.
Emigration has proved to be a veritable boom. The impoverished populace has been drawn off to where it has found lucrative employment; the position of those left behind, their work opportunities and standard of living, have undoubtedly improved thanks to the rise in wages, and thanks to the substantial financial aid coming into the country: sums of from 300,000 to 1,500,000 florints.
Source: Quoted in Julianna Puskas, “Consequences of Overseas Migration for the Country of Origin: The Case of Hungary,” in Dirk Hoerder and Inge Blank, eds., Roots of the Transplanted: Late 19th Century East Central and Southeastern Europe (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), 1:397.
2. Those Left Behind
Teofila Borkowska, from Warsaw, Poland, reacted to her husband’s resettlement in the United States in two letters from 1893 and 1894. Stripped of a family group, Borkowska struggled to survive, and her husband, Wladyslaw Borkowski, never did return or send for her.
1893. Dear Husband: Up to the present I live with the Rybickis. I am not very well satisfied, perhaps because I was accustomed to live for so many years quietly, with you alone. And today you are at one end of the world and I at the other, so when I look at strange corners [surroundings], I don’t know what to do from longing and regret. I comfort myself only that you won’t forget me, that you will remain noble as you have been. . . . I have only the sort of friends who think that I own thousands and from time to time someone comes to me, asking me to lend her a dozen roubles.
1894. Up to the present I thought and rejoiced that you would still come back to Warsaw, but since you write that you won’t come I comply with the will of God and with your will. I shall now count the days and weeks [until you take me to America]. . . . Such a sad life! I go almost to nobody, for as long as you were in Warsaw everything was different. Formerly we had friends, and everybody was glad to see us, while now, if I go to anybody, they are afraid I need something from them and they show me beforehand an indifferent face.
Source: Letters from Teofila Borkowska to Wladyslaw Borkowski, July 21, 1893, and April 12, 1894, in William I. Thomas and Florian Znaniecki, The Polish Peasant in Europe and America, Vol. 2, Primary-Group Organization (Boston: Gorham Press, 1920), 348–49.
3. Migration Defended
In some cases, emigrants were said to be unpatriotic and cowardly for leaving their homeland just to avoid hard economic times. To charges against Swedish emigrants, journalist Isador Kjelberg responded with the following explanation.
Patriotism? Let us not misuse so fine a word! Does patriotism consist of withholding the truth from the workingman by claiming that “things are bad in America”? I want nothing to do with such patriotism! If patriotism consists of seeking, through lies, to persuade the poorest classes to remain under the yoke, like mindless beasts, so that we others should be so much better off, then I am lacking in patriotism. I love my country, as such, but even more I love and sympathize with the human being, the worker. . . . Among those who most sternly condemn emigration are those who least value the human and civic value of the workingman. . . . They demand that he remain here. What are they prepared to give him to compensate the deprivations this requires? . . . It is only cowardly, unmanly, heartless, to let oneself become a slave under deplorable circumstances which one can overcome.
Source: Quoted in H. Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840–1940 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 72–73.
This anonymous Swedish poem combined a political explanation of migration with an economic one.
I’m bound for young America,
Farewell old Scandinavia.
I’ve had my fill of cold and toil,
All for the love of mother soil.
You poets with your rocks and rills
Can stay and starve—on words, no frills.
There, out west, a man breathes free,
While here one slaves, a tired bee,
Gathering honey to fill the hive
Of wise old rulers, on us they thrive.
In toil we hover before their thrones,
While they take to slumber, like lazy drones.
Drunk with our nectar they’ve set us afright,
But opportunity has knocked, and we’ll take our flight.
Source: Quoted in H. Arnold Barton, A Folk Divided: Homeland Swedes and Swedish Americans, 1840–1940 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994), 137.
4. The Perils of Migration
A contrasting view of emigration to the United States appeared in the following Slovak song.
My fellow countryman, Rendek from Senica, the son of poor parents
Went out into the wide world. In Pittsburgh he began to toil.
From early morning till late at night he filled the furnaces with coal.
Faster, faster, roared the foreman, every day. . . .
Rendek toiled harder
So as to see his wife.
But alas! He was careless
And on Saturday evening late
He received his injuries. At home his widow waited
For the card which would never come.
I, his friend, write this song
To let you know
What a hard life we have here.
Source: Quoted in Frantisek Bielik, Horst Hogh, and Anna Stvrtecka, “Slovak Images of the New World: ‘We Could Pay Off Our Debts,’” in Dirk Hoerder and Inge Blank, eds., Roots of the Transplanted: Late 19th Century East Central and Southeastern Europe (Boulder: East European Monographs, 1994), 1:388.
5. The Lure of Latin America
The following letter, written in 1883 by an English migrant to his family, shows why, despite hardship, Europeans fled their homelands for places such as Argentina, where this immigrant settled. Original spelling has been preserved.
SAUCE GRANDE, SOUTH AMERICA, MARCH 28, 1883
MY DR BROTHER AND SISTERS
I received your kind and welcome letters and was glad to hear from you after so long a time. Since I last wrote you I have left my situation where I was for three years past and have sold my share of sheep which counted 300 at 34$ pr head I have also got my Wool and sheepskins for sale in Buenos Aires for which I expect to get about 8.000$. Last year I made about 13.000$ clear money.
I suppose you know that one thousand dollars amount to about 8£ in English money. Sheep are very cheap and plentiful in this country. Thousands are sold at 30$ pr head. I have the pleasure to inform you that I have got 1.500 sheep on thirds from Messrs Samuel & Bo. I am now living in a house alone with my flock of sheep and it is rather lonesome but as soon as I receive my wool money I intend to get married. My intended wife is a Miss Victoria Smith, who is born in this country but of English parents and speaks very good English. . . .
Hoping this will find you all well as, I am happy to say, it leaves me at presant I remain your Effectionate Brother
Willie X
Source: Fordham Modern History Sourcebook: Immigration. http://web.archive.org/web/19981203161408/www.signature.pair.com/letters/archive/argentina.html
Questions to Consider