Around 1890, a new and much larger wave of newcomers started to arrive. These immigrants were primarily from Eastern and Southern Europe, with substantial numbers from Mexico and Asia, too. In Rhode Island, this wave brought Portuguese (from mainland Portugal as well as Cape Verde and the Azores), Eastern European Jews, Poles, Greeks, Armenians, and most of all southern Italians. The new immigrants had a much harder time than the older immigrants had. Both native-born Americans and older immigrant groups looked down on them because they tended to have darker skin and came from less familiar cultures. They also arrived at a time when there was less available land because the country already had achieved its “Manifest Destiny” of settling coast to coast, and the jobs available were less attractive. As the nation entered the peak of its industrial age, many skilled jobs were downgraded to unskilled factory positions that required long hours in unsafe conditions for low wages and little job security.
During this period, the largest number of immigrants to Rhode Island came from southern Italy. Political changes after Italy became a unified nation in 1871 had not benefited southern peasants, and overpopulation and an agricultural depression made it harder for farmers to earn a living. Many Italians decided to seek their fortunes in the U.S.. The Italians who reached Providence tended to settle in the North End and on Federal Hill. Outside the capital city they settled in the Pawtuxet Valley and in Westerly, where many labored in granite quarries. Many Italians found jobs in construction, textile mills or jewelry factories. Skilled workers labored as tailors, mechanics, stonecutters or bakers, and others ran barbershops, butcheries or grocery stores. Wives took in boarders or helped run family businesses, and unmarried women labored in garment factories and millinery shops.
Like the French Canadians, many Italians were slow to put down roots by learning English and becoming citizens as many hoped to save enough money to return home and buy a farm. By the early twentieth century, steamship travel had become so much cheaper and safer that many Italians were what historians call “birds of passage” who traveled back and forth across the Atlantic, working in American factories during the winter and on Italian farms in the summer. This changed after the U.S. enacted a harsh immigration restriction law in 1924, however, and Italians who lived in Rhode Island committed to staying. They became increasingly active in politics, switching from the Republican to the Democratic Party by the 1930s, and in labor organizing (particularly in the building trades unions). It was a great victory for the community when John Pastore, whose father had immigrated in 1899, became the first Italian-American in the nation to serve as governor (in 1944) and U.S. Senator (in 1950).
At the same time, a smaller but substantial wave of Portuguese immigrants was arriving. The Portuguese were not new to the state. Before the Civil War, a number of Azoreans and Cape Verdeans who had arrived on whaling ships stayed on after the whaling industry declined to work in the Providence and New Bedford textile mills, or became farmers in Portsmouth or Little Compton. After 1870, a much larger population (primarily from the Azores) arrived to work in the textile mills and settled in and around Providence (forming distinctive neighborhoods in areas such as Fox Point) and the East Bay. They were motivated both by the promise of better jobs in the U.S. and by the political disruption caused by the founding of the Portuguese republic in 1910.
Source: Immigration to Rhode Island | EnCompass
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