Possibilities and Problems in America’s New Urban Centers

With the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Europe and Asia, the face of our population changed. Willing to work for low wages, sharing quarters with family members, many of these immigrants lived in poverty in the new urban centers that proliferated in the late 1800s. Tenements teemed with newly arrived families, offering them the promise of a better life along with the problems that would arise living in poverty and squalor.