Brooklyn During the Early 20th Century
During the early years of the 20th century, Brooklyn had emerged and began expanding extremely in its population and transportation. New York City had funded from taxpayer’s dollars to find new ways of transportation for Brooklyn. Some of the transportations Brooklyn had were trolley lines, bridges, elevated railroads and subway lines. According to Thirteen.Org, “Trolleys began to traverse the streets of Brooklyn in 1890, the Williamsburg Bridge was completed in 1903, the first subway line was thrust under the East River in 1908, and the Manhattan Bridge opened in 1909.” These new ways of transportation were a great impact on Brooklyn because it meant that people had easier traveling options and these transportation ways were bringing more and more people into Brooklyn.
Brooklyn had become one of the leading producers of manufacture goods by 1808. Some of these manufactured goods producers include “dockyards, gas refineries, ironworks, slaughterhouses, book publishers, sweatshops, and factories producing everything from clocks, pencils, and glue, to cakes, beer, and cigars.” – (thirteen.org). Although these kind of jobs were not always the greatest, they were low pay, tiring and some were not even safe, these jobs were available to people. With these jobs, Brooklyn became one of the leading producers of goods in the nation.
During the 1930s and World War I, many immigrants had indeed migrated to Brooklyn. Thousands of African Americans and Puerto Rican immigrants also inhabited in Brooklyn. In order to come to Brooklyn from Puerto Rico, the journey took five days by steamship. Still, many Puerto Ricans went along with the journey because they knew Brooklyn had jobs available for them, that Brooklyn was an alternate route to poverty and limitations of Puerto Rico. The Puerto Ricans found many jobs in the needle trades and cigar factories in Red Hook and Greenpoint, which are both places in Downtown Brooklyn. African Americans had also settled down into the many locations in Brooklyn. Soon the A train was constructed that it ran from Harlem to Brooklyn and because of this, African Americans saw a chance to search for better lives and more affordable living. Thirteen.Org states that “by 1930, more than 60% of the African Americans in Brooklyn had been born outside the borough.”
In 1929, the terrible stock market crash left many of the new immigrants in poverty and despair. This put an end to the prosperous life that the new immigrants had been looking for by coming to America. During this time, the Salvation Army food stations were familiar places for everyone because thousands of workers had lost their jobs. Yet, this Depression had ended through the entry of the United States into World War II. -thirteen.org
