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Chapter 9 A. The Castle Garden In 1868, the immigrants arriving in New York came through Castle Garden (also known as Castle Clinton). The State of New York opened the very first examining and processing center for immigrants on this island off the southwest tip of Manhattan. The steam tug comes alongside, and is engaged for a considerable time in transshipping the luggage. At length the passengers are safely landed on the threshold of Castle Garden, glad and grateful to set foot on the terra firma of the free, and rest their weary limbs and sea-worn souls and systems under the wing and welcome of its refuge. Although appropriated to the purposes of an emigrant depot, it turns out to be an old fortress or castle, and remains one of the great landmarks or trophies in that eternally memorable struggle - the War of 1812. The British built it after the model of the Martello towers of the old country. All being ready, the emigrants proceeded in a body up the corridor into the interior of the building, their boxes and baggage being removed to the luggage warehouses, and here they range themselves in order on the seats. In front of them, and in the center of the building, which is lit by a glass dome, stand a staff of some dozen gentlemen, all busily engaged in making arrangements for facilitating the movements and promoting the settlement of the newly-arrived emigrants. Each emigrant, man, woman and child, passes up in rotation to the Bureau, and gives to the registrar his or her name and destination, as a check upon the return of the Captain of the vessel, who gives the name, place of birth, age and occupation. One of the leading officers connected with the Bureau of Information then mounts a rostrum, and addressing the assembled emigrants, tells them that those who have not been provided for, or are not prepared to pay for their accommodation, can find shelter under the roof of that building. That advice and information of the best and most reliable kind can be had relative to tickets for railway and steamer to take them East, West, North or South. The best means of obtaining employment register is kept in the Intelligence Department of the Institution, The best and most expeditious routes to take, with facilities for corresponding with friends, and of changing money at the Bureau of Exchange. Emigrants who were ill are transferred to a medical facility where they receive the best of care. All of these services were provided without charge! Approximately 250,000 immigrants were processed in this facility in 1869. The operation of this type of facility was unique to the United States - none existed anywhere else in the world. On June 13, 1897 the original wooden structure burned to the ground. All the administrative records for Castle Garden for the period 1855-1890 and most of the records for the Barge Office and Ellis facilities were lost. A photo of this facility is shown below. 
B. Emigrant Train to the Midwest The impression created by the big city must have been overwhelming for the children of the soil. Strange tongues and the busy activities of the "runners" were nerve-racking and bewildering. Many of the young girls had now reached their goal - work in an American household - but for most the seaport was only one step along the way, a place to change means of transportation for the journey inland. For most immigrants New York was just the halfway point. In the early days the journey continued by paddle steamer up the Hudson River to Albany. Before the railroads were built the Erie Canal, completed in 1825, served as the link between the Hudson River and the Great Lakes. From Buffalo the emigrants were taken by paddle steamer over the Lakes to Chicago, Milwaukee or Duluth. The last part of the 1-3 month long journey was spent on horse carts or walking through the bush. This itinerary was, of course, completely changed by the railroads, which from the 1850s brought the emigrants straight to Chicago. Modern communications made the overland route to the homestead region relatively simple from the beginning of the Swedish mass emigration. 
A description of the development of the railroads during this time period is found as part of the National Railroad Museum website Many of the passengers, who had endured the Hull-Liverpool train, again boarded "emigrant trains" that took them on their long journey. They had been given that name because the government was offering train rides cheap to get people to settle up the land out West. The cheapest fare from Omaha to San Francisco as of April 30, 1872, was fifty dollars by emigrant train --- a slow means of travel. Express trains generally required only five days from Chicago. The fare on an emigrant train from New York to Chicago was approximately twenty dollars. They were allowed only 100 pounds of freight to each passenger on the route West. The trains traveled at about 22 miles per hour! There were over 100 trains per day embarking on the almost four-day trip to Chicago. Many of these trains were nothing more than modified freight cars, and were not unlike the steerage class of the Atlantic steamers. The emigrant trains aided poor settlers by providing folding seats which could be flattened out into beds, and cooking accommodations, in the form of a stove in the rear of the coach, where a pot of coffee could be prepared or water heated to boil diapers. While they mainly carried passengers and their European baggage from New York to the Midwest, those that continued to the West would also carry farm livestock in the same cars. 
There were no dining cars. Emigrants boarded with a large basket of food. Three or four times a day, the emigrant trains would stop to permit the passengers to get out, stroll around, and limber the kinks out of their legs, and buy food. The book "Across America on an Emigrant Train" contains author Robert Louis Stevenson's account of travel and life in 1879 as he traveled from Scotland to California. Stevenson traveled by boat and various transcontinental railroads, all the while observing scenery, the lives of fellow passengers. An excerpt from his book follows: "I am in the cars between Pittsburgh and Chicago, just now bowling through Ohio. I am taking charge of a kid, whose mother is asleep, with one eye, while I write you this with the other. I reached N.Y. Sunday night; and by five o'clock Monday was under way for the West. It is now about ten on Wednesday morning, so I have already been about forty hours in the cars. It is impossible to lie down in them, which must end by being very wearying. I had no idea how easy it was to commit suicide. There seems nothing left of me; I died a while ago; I do not know who it is that is travelling. Have at you again, being now well through Indiana. In America you eat better than anywhere else: fact. The food is heavenly. No man is any use until he has dared everything; I feel just now as if I had, and so might become a man. 'If ye have faith like a grain of mustard seed.' That is so true! Just now I have faith as big as a cigar-case; I will not say die, and do not fear man nor fortune. " Emigrants arriving in Chicago found it had developed into a national center for commerce, serving as the westward bound transportation hub for both railroads and ships. The city's engineers began to tackle the problems of such growth, creating sewer systems, water pumping stations and mass transportation. The population had again increased tenfold from 30,000 in 1850 to almost 300,000 in 1870. It was the hub of Swedish America. There were more Swedes living there than any place in the United States. But only a small number of immigrants stayed in Chicago, while the majority continued on to the homesteading region of Minnesota and other states. The generous offer of the Homestead Act became a powerful magnet on land-hungry farm people. This also destined them to the so-called Homestead Triangle, especially to Minnesota, which became the Swede State of America. This was in accordance with the politics of Minnesota, where in 1867 a state immigration office was established. The Swedish Civil War colonel Hans Mattson became its first director. The result of the Swedish land-hunger was that the area of Swedish-owned farmland in America of 1920 corresponded to 2/3 of all arable land in Sweden. Arriving in Minnesota after this one-month journey from Sweden, the weary emigrant began a new life. In some counties, such as Chicago, Isanti and Kanabec, the land became almost totally owned by Swedes. A string of Swedish settlements also grew up around the new railroads. The possibility of combining farm work with jobs for the railroad or a lumber company was important for the penniless Swedes. Most of the unmarried men worked as lumberjacks or on the railroads. The railroad king James Hill is quoted: "Give me snuff, whiskey and Swedes, and I will build a railroad to hell." The everyday reality of the pioneer's life often replaced the glitter of the dream. But they did not give up. The first home was a cabin as simple and primitive as a poor "torpstuga" in Smaland, Sweden, but built on Minnesota's fertile soil. Clearing the ground of stones was replaced by the rooting out of stumps - it is hard to say which task was the more wearisome! The prairie was so different from the landscapes of Sweden that the emigrants hesitated to settle there. Since time immemorial the Swede has used wood as his principal material for the construction of tools, furniture, and buildings, and for fuel. The problems of work and everyday life were solved with great ingenuity. The emigrants from Sweden spoke their own language and were influenced by traditions quite different from the ones prevailing in the "adopted land." From the 1870s many were living in densely populated settlements which Chicago and Minnesota had melted together into vast Swedish-dominated areas. They became the cradles of Swedish-American culture with characteristics different from both America and Sweden. The popular picture of the Swedish immigrant is the hardworking farmer, something like Vilhelm Moberg's description in his emigrant novels, and the movie versions "The Emigrants" and "The New Land". But reality looked otherwise. In 1910 no less than 61% of 665,000 Swedish-born Americans lived in cities. This was a much higher level of urbanization than in Sweden. It looks as if the Swedes combined the move to another country with the step from farm to town. To many this development had been prepared by the experience of one of Sweden's cities right before emigration. The wave of emigration passed through expanding cities like Chicago and Minneapolis. The labor market of the big city had more and better offers to cash-less immigrants than the farm regions. This was especially true for the unmarried women who had enough of their old lives as milkmaids. Therefore the industries of the cities absorbed more and more Swedish immigrants. C. Settled in Chicago Chicago became the center of the urbanization process. The population figures for Gothenburg, Sweden's second largest city, were at the turn of the century surpassed by Chicago's Swedish population, which was then close to 150,000 of first and second generation. Since 1870 Chicago had its own Swede Town with a "Swedish Snuff Street" as its main vein. The Swedish Chicagoans became prominent within all walks of life. They were especially important within the building industry, a fact that is reflected in the saying that "the Swedes built Chicago." At that time the Swedes had long had their own churches, clubs, schools and newspapers. It was possible to live and die in Chicago or Minnesota without speaking anything but Swedish. The first Swedish church congregations were founded in the 1850s in Illinois. The Lutherans became the predominant group and in 1860 they had founded the Augustana Synod. When this church group in 1962 was merged with other Lutheran synods, it comprised 1,269 congregations with close to 630,000 baptized members. The first Swedish-language newspaper, HEMLANDET, was issued in Galesburg, Ill., in 1855. It attracted 1,500 followers, most of them published before World War I. No one has yet been able to measure the volume of literature published in " Swedish-America." The first Swedish social clubs were started in New York in 1836 and in Chicago in 1857. These trail blazers for Swedish-American community life was followed by thousands of clubs and fraternal orders all over the country. The churches and societies started their own schools, hospitals, and old-age homes. Such activities kept the Swedish-Americans together around an ethnocentric core. Although ethnocentric activities absorbed quite a lot of energy, the main field of the Swedish activities was America. The overwhelming majority of Swedish immigrants had to start from the bottom level of society. Even skilled artisans met with severe problems when they did not speak the language. But the bulk of immigrants had very little professional experience. They had been expulsed from the rural society in Sweden. In Chicago the men got jobs as underpaid laborers, and the girls became maids in "American families" if they were not hired as seamstresses in the "sweat shops". Some of them could not stand the hardships. They returned to Sweden, or sank down in the big city's underworld. The vast majority, however, overcame the difficulties and created a position in America. Some made careers as businessmen, professional men, artists or politicians. Their achievements are also present in America today. They can be sensed behind great companies or inventions. |
