A continuing high birthrate accounted for most of the increase in population, but by the 1840's the tides of immigration were adding hundreds of thousands more. Before this decade, immigrants had been flowing in at a rate of 60,000 a year ; but suddenly the influx was tripled in the 1840's and then quadrupled in the 1850's. During these two feverish decades, over a million and a half Irish, and nearly as many Germans, swarmed down the gang planks. Why did they come? The immigrants came partly because Europe seemed to be running out of room. The population of the Old World more than doubled in the nineteenth century, and Europe began to generate a seething pool of apparently "Surplus" people. They were displaced and footloose in their homelands before they felt the tug of the American magnet. Indeed at least as many people moved about within Europe as crossed

Berliner Paul "American Judaism", Chicago University of Chicago Press.

Many of the Germanic new comers, unlike the Irish, possessed a modest amount of material goods. Most of them pushed out to the lush lands of the Middle West notably Wisconsin, where they settled and established model farms.

The same was true of many members of the second most numerous immigrant group; the Germans. The influx of refugees from Germany between 1830 and 1860 was hardly spectacular than that from Ireland. During these troubled years, over a million and a half Germans stepped onto American soil. They prospered with astonishing ease, building towns in Wisconsin, Agricultural colonies in Texas, and religious communities in Pennsylvania. They added a decidedly Germanic flavor to the heady brew of reform and community building that so animated antebellum America.

Typical German immigrants arrived with fatter purses than their Irish counterparts. Small landowners or independent artisans in their native countries, they did not have to settle for bottom-rung industrial employment in the grimy factories of the northeast and instead could afford to push on to the open spaces of the American West. These Germanic colonizers of America's heartland also formed religious communities, none more distinctive or durable than the Amish settlements of Pennsylvania, Indiana, and Ohio.

Dobbs Ferry. "The Jews in America", Oceana Publications, 1971

Dick Armey "The Impact of Immigration" Register , 5, July, 1994

Germany's loss was America's gain. The hand of Germans in shaping American life was widely felt in still other ways. The Conestoga wagon, the Kentucky rifle, and the Christmas tree were all German contributions to American culture. Accustomed to the "Continental Sunday" and uncured by Puritan tradition, they made merry on the Sabbath and drank huge quantities of an amber beverage called bier (beer), which dates its real popularity in America to their coming.

Some common words found in the essay are:
English Gaelic, Asian Asian, European Jews, Protestant American, Jews Russia, American Congress, United America, Europe Ruinous, Middle West, England America, european jews, eastern european jews, eastern european, american jewish, american life, cities northeast, jewish community, native countries, religious communities, eastern europe, irish nearly, american jewish community,
Approximate Word count = 1772
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page double spaced)