DISCOVER. HISTORY. EMIGRATION
Emigration to the U.S. in the Early 20th Century
The causes of Emigration
Throughout the 19th century, Greece remained a very poor country suffering from a lack of raw materials, infrastructure and capital. Agriculture was mostly practiced at a subsistence level due to the small family units that supported only intensive crops such as raisins and olive production. Two-third (2/3 in value) of the total foreign trade, which was a permanent liability for the country (Greece imported more than it exported), concerned agricultural products. In this category, the first place was held by the Peloponnesian currants, which had reached a value of ½ of the total exports and was the regulatory factor in the country’s effort to achieve external balance payments and the import of foreign currency. Olive oil followed by a large margin.
Some Greek entrepreneurs became wealthy as merchants and ship owners, and Piraeus developed into an important trading port, but little of this wealth found its way to the Greek peasantry.
The crisis of currant overproduction of the late 1890s and early 20th century, following the recovery of France’s vineyards, saw much of the production go unsold, while prices plummeted for the small quantities that were absorbed by the market.
Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis’ increased spending, in his attempt to create necessary infrastructure such as the railway network and the Corinth Canal, overtaxed the weak Greek economy, eventually forcing him to declare bankruptcy in 1893 and to accept the imposition of an International Fiscal Control Authority to pay off the country’s creditors.
In 1897, his conservative and populist successor Theodoros Deligiannis, who favored the promotion of Greek nationalism and the “Megali Idea” (the “Big Idea” of reviving the Byzantine Empire), declared war on the Ottomans, resulting in the defeat of the poorly trained and equipped Greek army and in the loss of territories.
Greece remained hopelessly indebted to London financial houses. Poverty was widespread in the rural areas and on the islands. The large-scale immigration of Greeks to the United States came to provide the solution.
The “Promised Land”
Industrial capitalism was the most important factor that drew emigrants from Europe to the US between 1880 and 1920. Within half a century after the end of the Civil War, the new technologies of the time led to a massive leap in industrialization.
The expansion of electric lighting and powerful machinery allowed factories to run 24 hours a day, seven days a week, requiring large numbers of workers and the proper infrastructure to sustain them. Grueling twelve-hour shifts required them to stay close to the factories. Thus, the influx of emigrants contributed to the rapid growth of urbanization. By 1890, emigrants and their children made up about 60 percent of the population of most large cities in the American North.
In Europe, the Long Depression that occurred worldwide after 1873 was a catalyst for massive transatlantic migration from the predominantly agricultural countries of Southern and Southeastern Europe (Austria-Hungary, Russia, the Balkans, Italy and Greece), which were on the fringes of the global capitalist system.
Although this emigration wave was a continuation of the earlier 19th-century Western European emigration to the U.S., it was called the “new migration” motivated by racial theories of the time in which emigrants from the British Isles, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries were considered the “pioneer settlers” of America, while the newly arrived Southern Europeans were classified among the unskilled proletarians and the less “white” and culturally related races.
In contrast to the previous wave, this migration was primarily an economic migration of young people and especially men with the intention of returning to their homeland (temporary sojourn). About 23 million Europeans immigrated to the US between 1880-1930.
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The Greek Emigrants
Greek emigrants followed the emigrants of the rest of the Mediterranean countries in the growth of transatlantic migration with a small delay. Transatlantic emigration began slowly before 1880, spread after 1890 and reached mass proportions in the first decade of the 20th century.
For the period 1899-1924, it is estimated that a total of approximately 400,000 Greek nationals emigrated, over 8% of the country’s population.
This outflow was one of the highest in Europe in proportion to the size of the population.
Emigration first and massively took place in the Peloponnese – a fact linked to the Currant Crisis – and extended from the beginning of the 20th century to the rest of the country’s geographical regions. In the period 1890-1911, the exit rates from the Peloponnese reached 56.51% of all Greek emigrants.
According to a census carried out in 1911 for the period 1890-1911 under the instructions of the Greek Ministry of the Interior, Arcadia presented 22,465 emigrants, Laconia 19,372, Messinia 18,008, Argolidocorinthia 14,163 and Achaioilida 12,424.
The emigration mainly concerned the rural population of the country. In order to survive, the Greek agricultural family, as an economic and social unit, opted for the emigration of it’s often most dynamic members: Men of productive age between 14-44 years, mostly unmarried, who fulfilled the criteria of the industrial economy and the American labor market.
Initially, members of families of the middle agricultural classes emigrated who were able to finance the travel of one of their members. The costs involved steamboat and railroad tickets, the dollars they had to present to authorities upon entering the U.S., and expenses in the U.S. that had to be covered until the emigrant found work. The money was secured either by selling the agricultural family property or by mortgaging it to a usurer, who would legally bind them with the help of a notary or lawyer.
In later years the transfer of earnings from relatives who had already emigrated to the U.S. and the dispatch of prepaid tickets by labor brokers and small business owners gradually made the act of borrowing money unnecessary.
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The Εmigration Industry
By the end of the 19th century, the trafficking of emigrants from Europe to America had developed into a large international, profitable and well-organized business. The major European steamship companies had extensive networks of agents and middlemen throughout Europe to attract emigrants as passengers.
These networks were not created from scratch. In the Peloponnese, the profitable currant trade had created a long chain of various middlemen who ensured the flow of the agricultural product abroad. After the Currant Crisis, a large number of these people turned to the economy of emigration. Representatives of the steamship companies, agents, local correspondents, itinerant brokers expanded to the most mountainous village looking no longer for agricultural products to export but for prospective customers of emigration. The transformation of the port of Patras from the main export port for currants to the main port of emigration from 1905 onwards, is indicative of the development.
This network of emigration agents and correspondents who represented the major steamship companies – in addition to convincing prospective emigrants of the opportunities of the New World- facilitated the bureaucratic preparation of the journey and saw to the collection of the necessary certificates for the issuance of the immigration permit.
They maintained the emigration flow by cooperating even with labor brokers and moneylenders, community officials, sometimes with illegal traffickers and document forgers. A large number of sub-agents operated even in the most remote villages where even influential local figures such as priests, teachers and community leaders were recruited in order to lure young men willing to cross the Atlantic.
The business of selling tickets was prosperous since it involved high commissions from the companies, a cost naturally passed on to the emigrant. In some cases the price of the ticket could reach 550 drachmas, when at the same time the value of the transoceanic ticket did not exceed 250 drachmas.
The brokers’ profits increased even more when the ticket was sold through a loan that implied suffocating loan repayment periods, interest and insurance premiums for the emigrant. Profits skyrocketed when brokers acted, not on behalf of steamship companies, but on behalf of labour brokers in America. They resold inflated tickets (often at double the price of the ocean liner ticket) with the promise of guaranteed entry and employment.
Emigration was a field of entrepreneurship with large profit margins for those businessmen or opportunists involved in recruiting, organizing, carrying out and facilitating it. Various business people in the capitals of the prefectures, and especially in the ports of departure, benefited from the movement: food, clothing and shoe merchants, barbers, hoteliers, caterers, insurers, land and sea workers who transported luggage and passengers to the ships etc.
The lack of emigration legislation and state control in Greece allowed for a huge margin for exploitation at the expense of people who were traveling in groups mostly for the first time. There were not a few cases of deception. The great competition and unscrupulousness that prevailed in the field of transoceanic ticket brokerage encouraged unfair practices, such as advertising campaigns with exaggerations and false promises, and even the processing of emigrants to European ports by issuing irregular tickets that had no value, resulting in the emigrants being rejected and left stranded in some foreign port.
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Crossing the Atlantic
The transition to the era of steamships, that were constantly increasing in size to accommodate a growing number of passengers travelling in “Steerage”, meant greater safety and regular schedules between the major European ports and New York. By the 1880s the time needed for the transatlantic crossing had shrunk to less than two weeks and by the early 20th century to 7-10 days. Due to improvements in maritime design, the trips had become less dangerous compared to the long and grueling transatlantic crossings of the past.
However, the transport conditions of Greek emigrants until the early years of the 20th century presented several difficulties and risks.
Until 1905, there was no regular, direct connection between Greece and America. From 1902, only ships of the German Levant Line and the Hamburg-America Line, which primarily served the transport of goods and also accepted a limited number of passengers, served the ports of Piraeus and Patras. Thus, the immigrants first had to travel to the large Western European ports of departure of the great ocean liners, such as Le Havre and Boulogne-sur-Mer in France, Naples in Italy, etc.
The collection and transport of the emigrants from the ports of Piraeus and Patras, as well as from other ports of the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, was undertaken by the French shipping company “Messageries Maritimes” but also various Italian companies with initial destination the transit stations of France (Marseille) and Italy. At the transit stations, emigrants waited, often for days and unprotected, for their transfer to the ocean liners or alternatively were pushed transcontinentally by train to the major ports of departure.
Thus, the total duration of the journey from Greece to the port of New York in some cases reached 40 days, due to multiple transfers and delays. To the ordeal we must add the long walk to the nearest railway station or provincial port for a large part of the Greek emigrants who came from isolated, mountainous regions of the country.
This changed with the transfer of business activities to the port of Patras of the Austrian shipping company “Austro-Americana” in 1905 and the establishment of direct routes with the port of New York but also with the entry of Greek Shipping companies after 1907. The ships of the “Austro-Americana” ran the Patras-New York route in 15 days.
On many transatlantic and older steamships, living conditions remained harsh, unsanitary and potentially dangerous for economy class passengers. Emigrants were crammed in open bunks by the hundreds into an overcrowded compartment of the ship, one on top of the other, with minimal lighting and no proper ventilation or amenities. The quality and preparation of the meals served was often poor and many emigrants were forced to supplement their diet with food purchased from the ship’s bar, spending a valuable portion of their money. The failure to comply with necessary hygiene conditions as well as with the medical inspection of the passengers turned the journey into a great ordeal, from which not all emigrants managed to survive.
Conditions improved in the first decade of the 20th century for the “Third Class” when some companies invested in new ships that offered more amenities, bedding, cooked meals served in dining rooms, individual cabins for families, recreational areas, etc. However, Third Class passengers remained birthed on the lower decks of the ship, below the water line, and were strictly separated by metal gates from the upper decks. It was only after the sinking of the Titanic in 1912 and the loss of 75% of her third class passengers that the question of safety provisions for working class people on transatlantic voyages arose.
The Ellis Island Experience
The arrival of emigrants at the port of New York was accompanied by detailed legal and medical screening at the Ellis Island emigration station that began operation on January 1, 1892. By the time the facility closed in 1954, more than 12 million emigrants from all over the world had entered the United States through Ellis Island. Of these people, the vast majority passed through the island before the quota laws of 1921 and 1924 that set the maximum immigrant limit for each country at 3% and 2% respectively (Johnson Quota Act, Johnson-Reid Law).
After the steamships arrived in New York Harbor, third-class passengers were boarded in small boats and taken to Ellis Island to undergo a rigorous interrogation and thorough physical and mental examination to ensure that they were physically and mentally fit to enter the country.
Although steamship companies after 1903 were required to subject prospective third-class passengers to health inspections at the ports of embarkation, in order to reduce the possibility of the emigrant being rejected by American authorities and of the imposition of a $100 fine for each unfit emigrant as well as his forced return on the same ship at the company’s own expense, Ellis Island doctors thoroughly screened the emigrants for more than 60 physical ailments that would have made them a public burden if they had been allowed entry.
According to an 1891 law, idiots, insane persons likely to become a public charge, persons suffering from a loathsome or contagious disease, those convicted of a felony or crime of moral turpitude, and polygamists as well as illegal contract laborers were excluded from entry into the United States.
Those emigrants who were suspected of having contracted a disease were temporarily detained on the island for further examination. Not a few emigrants were rejected at Ellis Island because of the diagnosis of trachoma disease (granulomatous conjunctivitis), a common and highly contagious disease of the time especially among those coming from Southeast Europe.
After the health inspection passengers were interrogated by legal inspectors with the help of an interpreter and the ships’ manifest, in order to cross-examine the details of the passengers’ origin, destination and their likelihood to become a public charge.
The Greek emigrants, in addition to the humiliating and arduous conditions of third-class passenger inspection, had also to face the negative attitude of American authorities towards Greeks, which was due to the frequent violations of American regulations by several Greeks who entered the country illegally either as crew members of foreign ships or as contract labourers. The involvement of several Greek employers and brokers in networks of trafficking and labor exploitation of underage emigrants intensified the hostile feelings against Greek emigrants.
Despite the island’s reputation as an “Island of Tears”, only 2% of the arriving emigrants were excluded from entry.
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Greeks on the labor market
Despite their rural background, Greek emigrants chose to work and settle mainly in urban areas of the USA, as their goal was to immediately save a sufficient amount of money to meet the needs and obligations of the family and to return to Greece. Therefore, they were not interested in agricultural and livestock work.
Compared to the rest of the European countries of mass emigration, Greek emigrants presented a low percentage of illiterates. However, due to their low educational level, ignorance of the English language, and lack of professional skills and finances, they were forced into unskilled manual and seasonal work in the industry and process manufacturing, mining and railway construction- difficult and dangerous jobs with unstable incomes and no prospects.
Gradually, some of them managed to cross over to independent business activities, especially retail business where the Greeks, although inexperienced, showed remarkable skills. Common businesses of the early years were candy shops, shoe shining parlors, hat cleaning stores, grocery stores, flower and fruit shops and tobacco shops, but also barbershops, coffee shops and tailor shops.
The founding of businesses by the first emigrants also created a great demand for wage laborers, positions that were considered a pre-stage to owning your own business. Starting from the position of an apprentice in conditions of intense labor and financial exploitation (even by their own relatives), the most successful emigrants managed after some years to save enough money to start their own business.
For some Greeks, however, their “Odyssey” continued long after their arrival in the US, as they fell prey to fellow-national middlemen who took advantage of them and had them sign exploitive labor contracts until their contract fees were paid off. There were Greek labor- brokers, “padrone”, who were notorious for exploiting their fellow countrymen and there are documented cases of Greek emigrants who worked for years simply for room and board without receiving any money for their labor.
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Leading a life of Privation
When they were not living in company-owned tenement buildings, they lived in large groups in lodging and boarding houses, renting a single room together with other fellow countrymen, cooking and sleeping in shifts in order to save money. A common alternative was living with a known family.
Greek emigrants remitted the largest amount per capita compared to other emigrant groups, and consequently led the most frugal lives. Remittances were the product of hard labor in unskilled, low-paid and precarious jobs, since the majority of Greek emigrants were employed as railroad and factory workers or as petty clerks with wages that wer 20-30% lower than the wages of American workers (due to the Greeks being non-unionization).
Having earned from their labor seven to twelve dollars a week, they tried to spend from two and a half to four dollars and to save about five to nine dollars in order to ensure their maintenance in times of unemployment or sickness and to meet obligations and the needs of the family back home as well as their own needs when they returned.
First they took care of settling the debt of the voyage which amounted usually to a total of 80-100 dollars (400-500 drachmas), then they proceeded to purchase land for their family, furnish dowries for their daughters and sisters, and even to build a house.
The remittances sent to their families in the rural communities of Greece by Greek emigrants in the early years, although small amounts of five and ten dollars, were often vital to the survival of rural households since they covered a significant percentage of their annual expenses. On average, emigrants contributed between 100-200 dollars per year to their relatives.
The harsh working, nutritional and hygienic conditions in which the first Greek immigrants lived, in particular, had an impact on their health. The tuberculosis virus found fertile ground to develop in the bodies of the poor and hard-working immigrants. They usually followed the doctors’ instructions poorly in order to quickly return to work, while the living conditions aggravated their condition.
The deprivations for the emigrants were many and it was difficult for a worker to endure such a lifestyle for more than five to six years.
Inability to work due to physical exhaustion, accident and illness made the return trip back to Greece the only option.
Many Greeks returned disappointed by the harsh living and working conditions and settled permanently in their homeland. For many, the emigration experience to the New World was a negative one as it was exclusively associated with labor exploitation-usually by fellow Greeks- fierce competition and difficulty adapting to the industrial way of life.
Greek Museum of Chicago
Migration Networks
The strong identification of the inhabitants of Greece with their villages, which was a result of their geographical isolation, administrative organization and state policies as well as the historical past, was transferred by the emigrants to the New World and reconstructed there through the migration networks that reached the point of connecting villages and provinces of the Hellenic Kingdom with the American metropolises, defining inter-local ties.
These networks directed fellow villagers in chains to specific cities and neighborhoods, residences and types of work while supplying them with local products, spouses, information and messages from relatives. They built an extensive transatlantic system of communication and social control, thus ensuring the remote exercise of social pressure and the management of family and community affairs.
Local ties were also reflected in the social life and community organization of emigrants who reconstructed the microcosm of their village.
The difficulty of overcoming localism had its roots in practical needs that required the emigrant to resort to the assistance and solidarity of local networks: Ignorance of the English language and the codes οf conduct of the new environment, dealing with difficult living and working conditions, difficulties in adaptation, the absence of state structures to protect the sick, injured and unemployed, the need for familiar frames of reference and familiar social relationships for psychological safety, the need to save money and the need to deal with common problems, such as rejection and stigmatization.
Antagonisms and violent conflicts between ethno-local groups were very common, especially among the railway gangs. They also started from enmities that were transferred from the homeland and of course from competition for work. Greek emigrants, relying on their ethno-local relations, appeared particularly competitive towards their compatriots. Greek small businessmen preferred to hire their fellow countrymen. Of course, ethno-local networks were not free from exploitative relations. Young boys were recruited by their compatriots and relatives to become polishers, street vendors and assistants in commercial stores. The newly arrived immigrants followed their networks both in the northeastern industrial cities where they were employed in factories and in the distant West on the railway lines and in the mines.
The central institution were the coffee houses that appeared in every neighborhood where a network of Greek emigrants was established. Their names usually testified to the origin of their ethno-local clientele: “Arcadia”, “Corinthia”, “Olympia” etc. They were at the same time centers of recreation and entertainment, meeting points for newcomers, employment agencies and informal postal branches where emigrants received their correspondence and composed letters with the help of a literate person. They exchanged newspapers, information arriving from the homeland, and discussed national and political issues of Greece.
Within these local enclaves, emigrants, with a sense of temporaryity, attempted to preserve their ancestral habits, values, customs and the atmosphere of the Greek province. The cultural heritage they brought was particularly resistant to change and the experience of emigration. Considering their movement as temporary, Greek emigrants preserved social and cultural capital in order to reactivate it on their return to the homeland.
Discrimi-nation
The racial prejudice of “Americans” and earlier immigrant groups marginalized and excluded Greeks from certain types of work and from the use of public services and fostered negative stereotypes about them.
Greeks, who were willing to work for significantly lower wages than previous immigrants who demanded better working conditions, were hired (often unknowingly) to replace striking workers in factories, mines, and slaughterhouses, thus provoking the discontent and hostility of previous immigrants, especially the Irish. Furthermore, the reluctance of Greeks to join labor unions accumulated the anger of the remaining workers.
Xenophobia towards Greeks was fueled by rumors circulating about their dubious morals, criminal tendencies, increased delinquency and living conditions that were threatening to public health.
Their low educational level, their refusal to learn English and become naturalized, as well as the increased flows of their economies to Greece, created negative attitudes.
Reactions against Greek emigrants ranged from insulting descriptions such as “the scum of the earth” and “the dregs of Europe”, frequent complaints to the authorities to racial riots and pogroms of persecution, the most famous being the race riot against the Greek neighborhood of South Omaha, Nebraska, on February 21, 1909, which followed the fatal shooting of a police officer by a Greek emigrant. With Nebraska newspapers calling the “vile filthy Greeks” a menace to the American working class, a vengeful mob of three thousand outraged workers and middle-class pillars of Omaha’s society destroyed about 30 homes and businesses owned by Greek immigrants, beating women, men, and children, and shooting two boys and a man. The riots eventually led to the displacement of the entire Greek community of South Omaha.
Bibliography
Τουργέλη, Π., “Έλληνες της Αμερικής, εμβάσματα και μετασχηματισμός τοπικών κοινοτήτων στην παλαιά Ελλάδα (1890 – 1940)”, Διδακτορική Διατριβή, Πανεπιστήμιο Πελοποννήσου Σχολή Κοινωνικών και Πολιτικών Επιστημών. Τμήμα Κοινωνικής και Εκπαιδευτικής Πολιτικής, 2019
Τουργέλη, Π., “Οι Μπρούκληδες, Έλληνες μετανάστες στην Αμερική και μετασχηματισμοί στις κοινότητες καταγωγής”, Εθνικό Κέντρο Κοινωνικών Ερευνών (ΕΚΚΕ), Αθήνα, 2020
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