The Economics of Early Immigrants of the Progressive Era: The Rieger Family

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            The Progressive Era was a period of extreme progress and change within the United States. The 1890s and the upheaval of the financial depression of that decade had changed the course of American politics and policies that reverberates even more than a century later. During this time, there was a constant arrival of immigrants to the U.S. that transformed America’s identity and society. Immigrants’ flocked into urban cities throughout the country, swelling the city limits beyond capacity in places but filling important industrial and manufacturing positions, as well as other opportunities in services and communities in desperate need of labor.

            Labor wages in the early 1900s had been in a “slow ascent,” wages ranging from $4-7 a week at the turn of the century, which resulted in insufficient “nutritional levels” of workers owing to the “abominable housing available in the industrial centers.”[1] Ultimately these conditions would lead to public health concerns and disease outbreaks, including: “cholera, typhoid, smallpox and tuberculosis.”[2] Otis L. Graham describes the urban setting for many immigrants in 1900, stating that “two-thirds of Chicago’s streets in 1900 were mud; cities like Rochester and Pittsburg were at best half sewer and half privy, and Baltimore and New Orleans had no sewers at all. Water, both in quantity and quality, was everywhere a problem.”[3] Thanks to journalists and public outcry, housing regulations began to be levied on state and city governments across the country. The effects were slow to implement and enforcement even bleaker, but slowly housing quality and quantities began to increase in the urban centers around the country.

Present Day 97 Orchard Street, NY

            Nevertheless, immigrants continued to swell into the United States, seeking a future for their families, a life that, despite the deplorable conditions, America offered a future and freedom that immigrants had not enjoyed in their countries of birth, which brings us to the Lower East Side of Manhattan, where the Tenement Museum is housed in New York City. The former tenement at 97 Orchard Street is a “five-story” building that had “22 apartments, each about 326-square-feet” of living space with three separate rooms in each, and on this site between 1863-1935, “an estimated 7,000 people” lived.[4]

From the 1900 census data, 97 Orchard Street was occupied by the Rieger’s family, who came to live in their early years in the United States. In 1891, Samuel Joseph Reiger, his wife Ida, and their eldest son Mathew immigrated to the United States from Russia. Samuel worked as an upholsterer and feather dealer while his wife was a homemaker.[5] The Reiger family lived and worked in the U.S. for about two years before their three younger children made it to America in 1893. Together they lived at 97 Orchard Street. Samuel and Ida had four children, Matthew, Abraham, Fanny (Frances), and Mollie. From the 1900 census, we can again see how opportunistic life in the U.S. was for Immigrants. Samuel worked as an upholster, his wife Ida a homemaker, the oldest son, Matthew, was now 24 years old and working as a life insurance agent while the younger three were in school. In today’s standards, education is not typically viewed as a luxury, but for young women to also be in school attendance during this time was a significant step forward for this small family from Russia.

Further inquiry led to the New York State Census of 1905, which revealed the Rieger family had moved away from the infamous tenement and into a new apartment at 302 Madison Street, New York City, roughly a 15-minute walk from Orchard Street. It appears that Mathew, who was now twenty-nine years old, had moved out of the family home. The three younger children remained home with their parents, Abraham had completed school and was now a doctor, and the two young daughters were still attending school, and all family members had by 1905 obtained American citizenship.

From the exciting information gained from the census data, further curiosity fed into further investigation of the Rieger family to uncover what happened to Samuel and Ida and their children. From the family genealogy website Geni, we learn more about the Rieger family later in life. Samuel Joseph lived to 77 years old, passing away in New York, NY, in 1934. Samuel and Ida’s children continued in school, with the three eldest seeking professional degrees. The oldest son, Matthew Rieger, became a pharmacist and lived to the age of 87, passing away in April of 1964. The second son, Dr. Abraham Rieger, became a Physician and lived to be 91 years old, passing away in 1973. The oldest daughter, Dr. Franceses (Fanny) R. Lischner, also became a Physician and moved out to California with her husband, as validated by proof of her medical license in California, and she passed on in 1970. Beyond the 1900 and 1905 Census data, no other information was found regarding the youngest daughter, Mollie Rieger.

            From the information gathered, it is safe to estimate that the Rieger family lived the American dream. As Jewish Russians immigrating during a precarious time in world history to the United States, living in a small tenement apartment, earning wages in a skilled craft, allowed Samuel and Ida to move forward to better living arrangements over time and allowed all four children to seek education and college degrees. For many immigrants, that kind of prosperity and independence would not have been possible in their home countries, especially for Russian Jews during that time, and certainly in the rise of nationalistic values that swept through Europe over the next two decades. The Rieger family is undoubtedly an impressive and an admirable example of how essential immigrants were to building a modern American society through hard work and education.

Amy M. White, M.A.

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Bibliography

Graham, Otis L., Jr. The Great Campaigns: Reform and War in America (1900-1928). Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1987.

Immigrants in 1900’s New York: Living Conditions in New York City. n.d. https://immigrants1900.weebly.com/living-conditions.html (accessed Apr 14, 2021).

New York, U.S., State Census: 1905. Ancestry.com. n.d. https://www.ancestry.com/imageviewer/collections/7364/images/004518301_00592?treeid=&personid=&hintid=&queryId=816bb42c9a3c7c255586739535da6a7f&usePUB=true&_phsrc=ErK68&_phstart=successSource&usePUBJs=true&_ga=2.183688422.1193188545.1618410404-644453095.1 (accessed Apr 14, 2021).

Schoeburn, Benjamin. Samuel Joseph Rieger. Jan 31, 2021. https://www.geni.com/people/Samuel-Rieger/6000000171925583910 (accessed Apr 13, 2021).

Tenement Museum. 2021. https://www.tenement.org/explore/97-orchard-street/ (accessed 14 2021, Apr).

U.S. Census Bureau. “1900 Census Orchard Street .” n.d. https://www.archives.gov/files/education/lessons/images/1900-census-orchard-st.pdf (accessed Apr 11, 2021).

 

 


[1] Graham, Otis L., Jr., The Great Campaigns: Reform and War in America (1900-1928), Malabar, Florida: Robert E. Krieger Publishing Company, 1987, 6.

[2] Immigrants in 1900's New York: Living Conditions in New York City, n.d., https://immigrants1900.weebly.com/living-conditions.html (accessed Apr 14, 2021).

[3] Graham, 6.

[4] Tenement Museum, 2021, https://www.tenement.org/explore/97-orchard-street/ (accessed 14 2021, Apr).

[5] Schoeburn, Benjamin. Samuel Joseph Rieger. January 31, 2021. https://www.geni.com/people/Samuel-Rieger/6000000171925583910 (accessed Apr 13, 2021), and Immigrants in 1900's New York: Living Conditions in New York City. n.d. https://immigrants1900.weebly.com/living-conditions.html (accessed Apr 14, 2021).

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