Emigration around 1888/1889 (General)

by rookancestrybest , United Kingdom, Friday, September 17, 2010, 20:57 (5186 days ago) @ Parisien

www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk gives the exact figures from 1820 to the 1960s. There is a massive increase in the 1880s but an even bigger one in the decade 1900-1909. 1870s a total of about 2 3/4 million people emigrated to the USA, 1880s the figure was 5 1/4 million and in the 1900 decade it was 8 1/5 million.
As well as trying to get a better life and work there was the movement for religious freedom, people's interest in exploring the vast areas beyond the eastern seaboard and purchasing land etc. There was also a huge amount of poverty in Britain then (see Charles Dickens' novels) and fear of the Workhouse.

However it is also important to acknowledge how much easier it was to travel when steam ships took over from sailing ships and with better communications e.g. postal services,the telegraph system etc. it might have made people feel that the move was not such a wrench as keeping in touch with people at home would be easier than previously.

People may also have been enticed by incentives to move to do jobs for which there were shortages. For example one of my ancestors (not from the Forest of Dean) went to Australia on an assisted passage in 1880s as a labourer, to build railways, he gave up a very skilled job to do it (silversmith).