Steam, Steel and the Great Migrations

Industrialization set people in motion on an enormous scale. Within countries, millions moved from farms to industrial towns. Across oceans, steamships and railways made long-distance migration faster, cheaper and safer. Between the early 19th century and 1914, tens of millions of Europeans emigrated, mainly to the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil and Australia, pushed by poverty, population growth and persecution, and pulled by jobs and land.

In the United States, immigrants from Ireland, Germany, Italy, Poland and elsewhere supplied labor for mines, mills and railroads; Ellis Island opened in New York in 1892 to process arrivals. In Asia, Indian and Chinese workers moved under indenture or contract to plantations and mines across the world. Migrants transformed the economies and cultures of their new homes, but often faced discrimination, dangerous work and restrictive laws.