2.7 Mid-Semester 2 Reflection

1. The most important thing I learned about immigration in the late 19th century is that America benefitted from the cheap reliable labor that the many Irish immigrants provided. I see it as the most important because without that cheap labor factories may not have had the same potential as they do today and the U.S. wouldn't have the sam cultural diversity as it does today.

2. The most important thing I learned about immigration in today's era is that peoples reasons for immigrating are different. They can either migrate to America or other countries for many reasons including: war, education, and one of my favorite reasons "Freedom of Speech." I see it as the most important thing because knowing people's motives for doing things is one of the key factors of understanding them.

The First Amendment to the Constitution (Wordpress blog)

3. The two most challenging aspects of living the 19th century urban settings would be; 1. Tenements and their horrible conditions for new immigrants 2. The working conditions of factories. These challenges have since been surpassed by outrage from the people with written works like The Jungle or factory fires like the Triangle Fire, which finally caused some change. That change has been rather successful, factory workers have much less risk of injury and conditions for said factories have been brought up to a standard.

4. The effort of building the Highline is similar to 19th century to early 20th century progressivism because as stated by the text book: "An overlapping set of movements to combat the ills of industrialization." Which is exactly what the Highline did, they took this old train track elevated by dark industrial steel platforms and created it into something the reinvigorated the surrounding area. Not only that but it also brought in many different people to help build it and design it, including gardeners, city planners, architects, and photographers. As well as the fact that progressives of that era heavily advocated with recreational areas like the Highline with movements like the "City Beautiful" movement.
The effort was also dissimilar to Progressivism, in ways that the Highline wasn't against but it just didn't recognize the issues. For example the progressives fought for social equality and they were against corruption, social darwinism and alcohol.