American Immigration during Houdini’s day, 1878-1924

Erich Weiss (who would become the great Harry Houdini) landed in New York with his family in 1878 at the tender age of four, part of a wave of mass immigration that would expand to over 24 million new arrivals to the shores of American by 1914.

The beginning of this wave originated largely from Germany, Ireland, Scandinavia, and Britain, but as industrialization spurred prosperity in western Europe in the 1890s, the bulk of immigrants began arriving from Italy and eastern Europe.

Join us as Dr. Nicholas Fessenden explores the impact this wave of immigration had on the United States and its immigration policies – particularly the birth of a restrictionist movement and Congressional quotas that lasted from the 1920s to the 1960s.