The Mexican people referred to America as “El Norte,” and to them it meant a promised land of opulence. While immigrants of other nationalities faced a long journey across the Pacific, migrants from Mexico simply had to cross the border. Because the process of immigration was effortless compared to that of others, thousands of Mexican people journeyed to El Norte, singing a song about success in America, where “your watch is on its chain and your scarf-pin in your tie and your pockets always filled with plenty of silver” (Takaki 293). This song conveys the overall mindset of Mexican immigrants, identical to the other immigrants during this time. Similar to what happened in Japan, the people of Mexico were facing poverty and violence in their homeland, causing even more of a push of immigrants to America searching for fortune and security. Furthermore, the development of transportation, specifically railroads, during the new industrial order, accelerated the rates of migration, allowing more Mexican people to enter the Gilded …show more content…
Due to the fact that the labor force transformed from agricultural to industrial, U.S. citizens too benefited from the development of railroads, migrating from rural farmlands to urban cities. During this time period, the labor force went from consisting of seventy percent agricultural to only thirty-seven percent (Takaki 209). A specific group of people who migrated inside the country was the African Americans. This period of time where over six million blacks migrated from southern states to the Northeast, Midwest, and West is know as The Great Migration. Similar to the Japanese and Mexican people, the African Americans were traveling through the country in a search for higher-paying work. This in-country migration provided travelers with exactly what they were searching for. A letter used in chapter 13 of A Different Mirror states “I should have been here 20 years ago. I just begin to feel like a man” (Takaki 314). Others explained that work was plentiful and the opportunities were endless. The migration of African American people in the U.S. supports the idea that the Gilded Age was a time of economic expansion, which caused these people to leave their homes in search for internal economic growth. Overall, between the 1870s and the early 1900s, the United States experienced a major change in its economy, referred to as