This situation struck most heavily working-class families who, had to rent thein Libiny quarters. It became common in many big cities for a „one family“ apartment to be occupied by two or three families. Inside many buildings, living condotions were harsh. Interior rooms often lacked windows. After discovering precious metals in the West, many people moved there. But also life in the West wasn’t easy. Women commonly did the same agricultural work as men. Lacking cookstoves, they had to prepare food over open fireplaces, using all kinds of substitutes for ingredients easily available back East. Before they could wash clothes, women had to make soap out of lye and carefully saved household ashes. Frontierswomen also had to defend their homes against prairie fires and Indian attacks. Women often gave birth without medical help or even the support of other women. c) The attitude of Americans and influence on religion:
This flood of immigration worried many Americans. They accused immigrants of taking jobs away from American-born workers, of lowering standards of health and education and of threatening the country’s tradition and way of life by bringing in „un-American “ political ideas like anarchism and communism. Workers feared that immigrant labor would drive salaries lower. Increasingly violent agitation against Orientals led to race riots in California and finally culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, Which denied Chinese laborers entrance to the country. Later the Japanes were also completely excluded. Religion: The influx of so many immigrants between 1870 and 1920 transformed the Us from a basically Protestant nation into one composed of Protestants, Catholics and Jews. Newcomers from Italy, Hungary, Poland and the present-day Czech Republic and Slovakia joined Irish and German to boost the proportion of Catholics in a number of cities. German and Russian immigrants gave New York one of the largest Jewish populations in the world. Many Catholics adn Jews tried to accommodate their faiths to the new environment. Some catholic and Jewish leaders from older, more established immigrant groups supported liberalizing trends- the use of English in sermons, the phasing-out of Old World rituals such as saints’feasts and a preference for public over religious schools. Eastern European Jews, convinced that Reform Judaism sacrificed too much to American ways, established the Conservative branch, which retained traditional ritual, though it abolished the segregation of women in synagogues and allowed English prayers. 2.