In the early twentieth century, the population of New York City's Lower East Side swelled with the arrival of vast numbers of eastern European Jewish immigrants. Established American Jews - arrivals from the German states only a generation before - feared that their security might be threatened by the newcomers. They established the Industrial Removal Office (IRO) to assist in relocating the immigrants to the towns and cities of the nation's interior.

Dispersing the Ghetto is the first book to describe in detail this important but little-known chapter in American immigration history.