This is not to glamorize the past too much. Life was extremely hard in America for many immigrants, and in the period 1900-1910, for instance, records show that a good number of them grew quickly disillusioned--the streets were not paved with gold and cities like New York often only offered them jobs in sweatshops or digging the subways underground in not very safe conditions..
Some of these people got involved in labor movements, others just went back to Italy or something...Germany was prospering a lot at that time and it was not unusual for German- Americans who were not making it to go back to Germany at that time ( if they could--if they had not been fleeing worse problems there or just trying to stay out of the army...like the Mennonites and other groups).
The Lisker Congregation started out in Tokay, Hungary and had some good years there....and also some not so good years.
A good number of them came to NYC and wound up in the Bronx...eventually, as they established themselves in the New Land, they moved back into Manhattan, but this time the Upper East Side..
Interesting how austere the exterior of the Lisker Congregation synagogue is...pictures on the net show the interior as being pretty ornate. There were probably reasons for this..
Lisker has a website with their whole history etc.--
http://www.lisker.org/abraham.html
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