Points of Interest
History
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New York : Immigration
It is frequently not realized that despite New York City's more than fortyfold growth during the nineteenth century the net contribution to the city from the American hinterland was, on balance, nil. In 1800 the area within what came to be the five boroughs of New York City contained 79,000 persons, or 1.5 percent of the national population. It may be calculated that approximately 1.6 percent of the country's white residents were then in this area. A century later the federal census classified America's heads of families as either of native or of foreign parentage.
The native parentage group consisted largely of descendants of the residents of the United States in 1800 (the early American stock), though it also included a not insubstantial number of grandchildren of immigrants who had arrived during the nineteenth century. New York City in 1900 had only 1.4 percent of the white families in the nation headed by persons of native parentage. Thus, New York's relative share of the white early American stock declined between 1800 and 1900; it follows that New York very likely was more a place of emigration of this stock elsewhere than a destination.
New York City's enormous growth in the nineteenth century came about because of its absorption of proportionately large segments of the immigrant streams from Europe. But by the close of the nineteenth century Germany and Ireland were no longer the principal sources of American immigrants. Their positions had been taken by Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, and, much larger proportions of the immigrants originating from these countries chose to settle in New York City. Thus in the early twentieth century, when these three countries provided a large majority of the newcomers to America, a substantially greater proportion of the immigrant arrivals remained in New York City than had previously been the case.
Statistics relating to the period of immigration of the foreign-born population permit the study of the relative attraction of New York City. According to the 1910 census only 11.1 percent of the foreign born who had arrived in the United States in 1890 or earlier were living in New York City compared to 17.1 percent of those who arrived between 1891-95, and 21.2 percent of those who came during 1896-1900. The drawing power of New York City apparently diminished somewhat during the first decade of the twentieth century: 18.6 percent of all immigrants of this period were in New York City in 1910. On the basis of the 1920 census it appears that the relatively downward turn continued during the second decade. The 1930 census, however, shows a sharp reversal occurred during the 1920s. By the late 1920s New York City was absorbing almost one out of every four immigrants from abroad.
The only census to cross-classify country of birth with year of immigration was that of 1930. The data indicate that the rise in the concentration of foreign born in New York City during the 1920s was not due to a differential mix in the source of immigrants--a rise in the proportion settling in New York in comparison with earlier periods occurred among the foreign born from each of the major countries of origin. However, it is interesting to note that this increase was much sharper for the "old" countries of origin than for the "new"; the proportion of German-born and British-born arrivals in America during the late 1920s who settled in New York City was almost double the pre-World War I percentage, and the proportion from Ireland also increased substantially. By the late 1920s over 40 percent of the Irish newcomers and over 30 percent of the German newcomers were being drawn to New York City, in comparison to 28 percent of the Italian, once considered as especially concentrated in the metropolis. The apparent sharply upward trend toward concentration in New York City among natives of Poland in part reflects the relatively greater proportion of Jews in the over-all movement from Poland in comparison with "ethnic Poles" (Catholic Poles) during the 1920s than was the cite previous to 1915.
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