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By 1900 the United States was becoming increasingly urban. Cities were crowded with immigrants arriving from every part of the globe. Between 1890 and 1930, over 22 million came to the United States, including almost three million children. For them, school was the place where the American dream was nurtured, and the future itself took shape… So powerful was the lure of education that on the day after a steamship arrived, as many as 125 children would apply to one New York school. Thousands of students attended school part time for lack of space. Some classrooms were as crowded as tenements. Yet for many other children, school was nothing more than a mysterious building passed on the way to work. In 1900, only 50 percent of America’s children were in school, and they received an average of only five years of schooling. The remaining children could often be found at work.
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