A Peddler''s Progress

During the mass migration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries millions of immigrants arrived in the United States. Unlike earlier migrations, which mainly brought immigrants from northern and eastern Europe, many of these immigrants came from untraditional countries of eastern and southern Europe, as well as immigrants from Asia and the Middle East. Of these immigrants, a small group of Syrians from present-day Lebanon eventually came to settle in Kearney, Nebraska. As traveling peddlers, they initially filled a void in the economy of central Nebraska that helped them in America''s capitalist society. Unlike other immigrants who worked in factories and for large firms and struggled to advance, Kearney''s Syrians moved up the capitalist food chain very quickly. Within their first decade in Kearney, they moved from traveling peddlers to successful entrepreneurs and farmers. Aside from their traditions of food and church they learned to blend in to American society and Kearney in particular.