By the mid-nineteenth century, overpopulation in Europe had become much worse than in America, and many “surplus” Europeans chose to migrate across the Atlantic, ending up in the same cities that were absorbing the American rural population surplus. Immigration to America, which was a mere trickle before 1830, became a mighty current during the 1840s, driven by such disasters as the Irish Potato Famine and the wave of revolutions in 1848 and 1849. The immigrants competed with citizens for a finite pool of jobs. As a result, the supply of labor overwhelmed the demand, even though demand was
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