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Question: How much did it cost for immigrants trying to aboard the ship to Ellis Island in the 1900s!. !?
I want to know how most people paid for the high class area and the steerage area in 1880-1920 (immigration time)!?Www@QuestionHome@Com


Best Answer - Chosen by Asker:
Seven years' wages for steerage!.

You walked the 50 or 100 miles from where you lived to Cork or wherever the boat was sailing from, and you contracted with a factor to work for seven years for his boss when you got to the States!. Then if you passed the medicals on Ellis Island and got accepted into the United States you shoveled the mud and the snow and pile-drove the rock to build his railroad out of Chicago (or whatever he was earning his $$$ from)!. It was called "indentured labor"!. At the end of it, if you were still alive and fit enough, you could waggon it over to the "free land" they promised you before you left the scrawny bit of bog in Ireland that your Mom called 'home'!. It really was free, free of rent, but what they didn't tell you on the road from Tipperary is that it was covered in snow half the year and dried out by drought the other half, and the wind never stops!. They didn't tell you either about what its not PC to say nowadays, hostile 'indians'!. But it was really yours, you could live off the land with less hunger than back home, and your children went to school and learned to dream the American Dream and if they were really smart they got a place in a great university and could work to pay their way through their studies!.!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com