The Melting Pot: Corporations and Exploitable Immigrants

Above the Yard: Park Ave and 107th Ave circa 1900

Former President John F. Kennedy argued that “every American who ever lived, with the exception of one group, [Native Americans] was either an immigrant himself or a descendant of immigrants”.
Generation after generation, immigrants have and continue to work the hardest, for the longest hours, for the lowest pay, in jobs that already established Americans do not want. Yet, we are to this day, most inhospitable to our newest arrivals. Anti-immigrant sentiment flourishes as it did at the end of the 19th century.

In 1896, New York City, on the cusp of a new century, was the most highly urbanized and industrialized part of the US. However, despite this fact,  especially on New York's  Lower East Side,  immigrants and low paid factory workers lived in  mostly pre-industrial conditions.

With a population of 3.5 million, and as many as 100,000 people in each precinct, the poorest city dwellers lived in tenements (pictured above)  where at least 5-6 people were crammed into each room.  Most tenements had common spigot outside; their only source of running water. A few more modern buildings provided a filthy sink in the middle of a hallway that was shared by scores of people. Outdoor latrines were still common. Access to air and sunlight was very limited.

On August 4, 1896, a 10-day heat wave scorched these over-crowded buildings converting them into brick ovens, where temperatures reached as high as 120 degrees inside. Nearly 1,500 people died as a result.

At the time, there was no electric refrigeration, so ice became a precious lifesaving commodity during heat waves in the city.  Poor people could not afford the tin and zinc-lined boxes required to store food and ice, therefore, the price of ice could determine life or death.

By 1896, ice magnet, Charles "the Ice King" Morse (left: man pictured in the center), traveled to NYC from Maine where he consolidated three-quarters of the independent ice companies into an ice trust. Long before the summer, word got out, and poor city dwellers were worried he was going to jack up the price of ice, making it a luxury they could not afford, and that's exactly what happened.

Theodore Roosevelt was the only person to intervene on behalf of the overheating poor. He championed the idea of giving away free ice to the poorest people and personally supervised the distribution of ice.   Afterwards, he even toured the back alleys of the worst sections of the Lower East Side to observe how the ice was used.

While it's true that immigration is a very complex issue, not easily solved, there are some things that are very solvable because we know some things such as: Corporations almost always choose profit over life.  Corporations almost always exploit immigrants and the poor. Politicians love to use the issue of immigration as a wedge issue because Americans fear and many times loathe immigrants despite the friendly image as the world's "melting pot".  

Source: Hot Time in the Old Town: The Great Heat Wave of 1896 and the Making of Theodore Roosevelt by Edward P. Kohn

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