What were living conditions like for early immigrants??

Question: What were living conditions like for early immigrants!?!?

What were living conditions like for EARLY IMMIGRANTS!?!?
1880-1920Www@QuestionHome@Com

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In 'America's Women' Gail Collins writes:

'The classic first home for a nineteenth-century immigrant family was a New York city tenement of three rooms, each perhaps ten feet square!. The front room looked out on the street, the back room on an airshaft!. The kitchen was in the middle, the better to heat the entire apartment, but it was almost completely dark and badly ventilated!. To light the gas lamps, the tenant had to put a coin in a metre,but few immigrant families had coins to spare, so they used candles or kerosene!. As time went on, the outdoor privy was replaced by a water closet in the hallway!. But the plumbing was unreliable, and the frequently backed-up water closet was not necessarily a great improvement!.

Running water, from a backyard pump or hallway faucet or even in the kitchen sink - was another matter!. "Water!.!.!.to my mother was one of the great wonders of America - water with just a twist of the handle and only a few paces from the kitchen!. It took her a long time to get used to this luxury" said Leonard Covello!. Nevertheless, for many, their first American home was less appealing than the place they had left behind!. In the summer, tenement apartments were so hot the Boston Board of Health recommended that mothers take their babies to the rooftops at night!. (Men and women regularly fell to their deaths when they rolled off a roof in their sleep!.) In the winter, the tenements were so cold that people went to work even when they were sick just so they could get warm!. The wives, who worked at home, had no escape!. Women who had lived in the Italian or russian or Irish countryside were crammed into neighbourhoods where 30,000 people lived in an area equivalent to five or six city blocks!. One tenement described by Jacob Riis had 170 children, and a 14-foot square yard for them to play in!.

No one in the tenements had any privacy - apartments looked into one another across the narrow airshafts, and women often carried on conversations with each other while working in their respective kitchens!. A typical family might consist of parents, who slept in the back room with the smallest child, a boarder, who claimed part or all of the front room for himself, and the other children, relatives and visitors, who slept on the floor, on chairs in the kitchen, or anywhere else they could fit!. The barriers between inside and outside tended to blur!. children played in the streets, adults sat and talked in the hallways!. Young women who wanted to visit with admirers regarded their front stoop as an extension of the house!. "It was nothing unusual to receive company on the street" said Rose Cohen!.

Housewives were engaged in a constant struggle to keep their husbands home at night, and out of the saloons where each man felt compelled to treat his friends to a round of drinks!. The custom of treating virtually guaranteed that any customer who walked into a saloon, would walk out, tipsey!. women hated it - partly because no-one wanted to be confronted with a drunken husband late in the evening, but even more because it threatened the family future!. Drinking cost money, and it made it less likely that the husband would get up the morning and go to a job that was probably both unpleasant and exhausting!.

Despite the chaos and crowding, immigrant wives tried to create something that resembled a parlour, where their husbands and sons would want to sit and read and play cards or talk with friends!. Most readily sent out for a pail of beer or bottle of wine it if kept their men at home rather than in the bar!. The parlor was also a place to show off their acquisitons and demonstrate their status!. "The walls are hung with gorgeous prints of many hued saints, their gilf frames often hanging edge to edge so that they form a continuous frieze around the walls" reported a visitor at the home of Slavic immigrants in Jersey city!. "The mantel is co vered with lacde paper and decorated with birght colred plates and cups, and gorgoeus bouquets of fhomemade paper flowers are massed wherever bureaus or shelves give space for vases!."Www@QuestionHome@Com

the early immigrants lived in awful slums and poor housing!. they were scammed out of their money, and often had to live crammed into one small house or apartment or whatever, with no luxuries!. it was a miracle if all kids had the chance to go to school rather than work to try to make money for the family!. so pretty much, they lived in small, unsanitary, unwanted places!.Www@QuestionHome@Com

EARLY immigrants came to this continent more than 200 years before 1880!. But for most, very cramped quarters (8 people in a one room apartment was not uncommon) with terrible hygiene (a single outhouse may serve two dozen people) that spread disease frequently for the poor (in the late 19th century the germ theory of disease was still forming- people still thought it spread due to "miasma"- or 'bad airs'), and most immigrants were poor!. Many unfortunately found greater poverty in the U!.S!. than they had known at home!.

Jacob Riis was a photojournalist best known for his articles and photographs of the immigrants slums of NYC!. Here's a link to the google of his pictures:
http://images!.google!.com/images!?hl=en&q=!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com