Jewish Immigrants in Early 1900s America: A Visitor's Account

WITH MORE THAN 50 VINTAGE PHOTOS AND ILLUSTRATIONS

From the 1880s to 1920s, more than 2 million Jews immigrated to the United States. Most were fleeing poverty and persecution in Eastern Europe and the Russian Empire. As the U.S. Jewish population swelled from 250,000 to 4 million, they built new identities and strong communities.

French political writer Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu toured the eastern U.S. in 1904 to see how the refugees were doing. "I had already visited most of the Jewish quarter...