How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
Father watched the prow of the scaly broad-beamed vessel splash in the sea. Her decks were packed with people. Thousands of male heads in derbies. Thousands of female heads covered with shawls. It was a rag ship with a million dark eyes staring at him. A weird despair seized him. [...] He watched the ship till he could see it no longer. Yet aboard her were only more customers, for the immigrant population set great store by the American flag. (2.2)
Father, who is always upset by change, sees a boatload of it coming across the Atlantic. And even though it means more customers for him, because immigrants always want to prove themselves patriotic, he feels fear that the America he is leaving is not the one he'll come back to.
Quote #2
They were despised by New Yorkers. They were filthy and illiterate. They stank of fish and garlic. They had running sores. They had no honor and worked for next to nothing. They stole. They drank. (3.1)
Here Doctorow uses his technique to show the thoughts of common New Yorkers about immigrants, which is also a good way to show the prejudices immigrants were up against.
Quote #3
But somehow piano lessons began to be heard. People stitched themselves to the flag. They carved paving stones for the streets. They sang. They told jokes. (3.2)
After presenting the common misconceptions about immigrants, Doctorow transitions to this paragraph, where he begins to tear those misconceptions down and present the immigrant population as a hard-working people trying to fit in to their new home.
Quote #4
He held up the flash pan and put his head under the hood and a picture exploded. After he left, the family, not daring to move, remained in the position in which they had been photographed. They waited for life to change. They waited for their transformation. (3.4)
Immigrants lacked confidence as they acclimated to their new country. This section is interesting because it shows Jacob Riis, who took up the cause of immigrants and their living conditions, photographing the families who have clearly never seen a camera before.
Quote #5
Please missus, the workingman said, married women, children, anyone they can get their hands on. They defile them and then in shame the female gives her life to vagrancy. Houses on this very street are used for this purpose. (7.2)
This was one of the risks of being an immigrant woman or child in the tenements. You could be kidnapped and sold. Or, as in Mameh's case, made to shame yourself and end up losing your family.
Quote #6
Haywood raised his hands for quiet. He spoke. His voice was magnificent. There is no foreigner here except the capitalists, he said. The place went wild. (16.4)
Big Bill Haywood was union organizer, and here we see the attraction of unions for immigrants. They wanted to belong, but at the same time not be exploited. The unions promised both, though it was hard to keep those promises.
Quote #7
So that was it, the strike would be won. But then what? He heard the clacking of the looms. A salary of six dollars and change. [...] Tateh shook his head. This country will not let me breathe. (17.4)
The great American dream was pretty hard to make happen on the kind of wages factories paid. Immigrants worked from dawn until dusk, and were still unable to make ends meet. Tateh, with his artistic talents, was one of the lucky ones.
Quote #8
The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes your theory up shits creek. He smiled. (20.6)
Jewish immigrants faced anti-Semitism from all sides in America. Here Doctorow is showing that Ford is perfectly comfortable revealing his prejudice against the Jews: evidence of rampant Anti-Semitism in America.
Quote #9
I made them for under five hundred dollars and each has brought ten thousand dollars in receipt. Yes, he said laughing, it is true! Father had coughed and turned red at the mention of specific sums. (33.10)
Don't show me the money. That's what Doctorow is illustrating here. The blue bloods, or people like Father who'd been in America for generations, didn't talk about money. When immigrants and Jews did, they were thought to be crass.
Quote #10
There were commonly in America at this time titled European immigrants, mostly impoverished, who had come here years before hoping to marry their titles to the daughters of the nouveaux riches. So he invented a baronry for himself. It got him around in a Christian world. (34.3)
Tateh, having made it as a filmmaker, invents a title for himself so he won't be seen as a common Jewish immigrant.