The Children’s Museum portrays life in Sweden in the 1800’s as rigorous and demanding. People did not enjoy the same luxuries and convenience that we take for granted today. People needed to produce their own food and make their own furniture and clothing. While building a new life in America also required a lot of hard work, it represented hope and for opportunity for a brighter, more prosperous future.

On a guided tour, second – fifth grade students also tour our We Are America exhibit. There, the immigration experience is portrayed as both dangerous yet hopeful, a prosperous yet unequal opportunity. We discuss the push factors that drove people from Sweden such as famine, lack of economic mobility, and religious persecution. We discuss the pull factors that brought people to the United States such as economic opportunity, political and religious freedom, and the Homestead Act which offered free land. We detail the dangerous and grueling journey over the Atlantic on a wooden ship where your only accommodations are a wooden plank and a chamber pot. Disease was common and many did not survive. But through the perseverance of people demanding change the Passenger Act of 1882 set new regulations for shipping companies setting higher standards for the conditions they provided for immigrants.

However, surviving the journey was not the only obstacle. Upon arriving at Ellis Island one could be discriminated against and denied entry for being sick, disabled, or a single woman, for the Law of Sponsorship required women to be accompanied by their father or husband to be admitted. People could then face deportation. But if you were admitted into the United States, there were many factory jobs available where people could make wages much higher than they could in Sweden. Many Swedes arrived as migrate workers but could afford to send money back home to Sweden to have family immigrate and join them here.