[Paleopsych] Richard J. Jensen: "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization
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Richard J. Jensen - "No Irish Need Apply": A Myth of Victimization -
http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm
Journal of Social History 36.2 (2002) 405-429
Professor of History Emeritus, University of Illinois, Chicago
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write the author at [2]RJensen at uic.edu
slightly revised version 12-22-2004
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Abstract
Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job
discrimination, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help
Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!" No one has ever seen one of these NINA
signs because they were extremely rare or nonexistent. The market for
female household workers occasionally specified religion or
nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, but
Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because
they provided a reliable supply of an essential service. Newspaper ads
for men with NINA were exceedingly rare. The slogan was commonplace in
upper class London by 1820; in 1862 in London there was a song, "No
Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work. The song
reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in
America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The
song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. Evidence
from the job market shows no significant discrimination against the
Irish--on the contrary, employers eagerly sought them out. Some
Americans feared the Irish because of their religion, their use of
violence, and their threat to democratic elections. By the Civil War
these fears had subsided and there were no efforts to exclude Irish
immigrants. The Irish worked in gangs in job sites they could control
by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against
the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth
justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic
solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as
a powerful memory.
Introduction
The Irish American community harbors a deeply held belief that it was
the victim of systematic job discrimination in America, and that the
discrimination was done publicly in highly humiliating fashion through
signs that announced "Help Wanted: No Irish Need Apply." This "NINA"
slogan could have been a metaphor for their troubles--akin to tales
that America was a "golden mountain" or had "streets paved with gold."
But the Irish insist that the signs really existed and prove the
existence of widespread discrimination and prejudice. ^[3]1
The fact that Irish vividly "remember" NINA signs is a curious
historical puzzle. There are no contemporary or retrospective accounts
of a specific sign at a specific location. No particular business
enterprise is named as a culprit. No historian, ^[4]2 archivist, or
museum curator has ever located one ^[5]3 ; no photograph or drawing
exists. ^[6]4 No other ethnic group complained about being singled out
by comparable signs. Only Irish Catholics have reported seeing the
sign in America--no Protestant, no Jew, no non-Irish Catholic has
reported seeing one. This is especially strange since signs were
primarily directed toward these others: the signs said that employment
was available here and invited Yankees, French-Canadians, Italians and
any other non-Irish to come inside and apply. The business literature,
both published and unpublished, never mentions NINA or any policy
remotely like it. The newspapers and magazines are silent. The courts
are silent. There is no record of an angry youth tossing a brick
through the window that held such a sign. Have we not discovered all
of the signs of an urban legend?
The NINA slogan seems to have originated in England, probably after
the 1798 Irish rebellion. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries it
was used by English to indicate their distrust of the Irish, both
Catholic and Protestant. For example the Anglican bishop of London
used the phrase to say he did not want any Irish Anglican ministers
iin his diocese. By the 1820s it was a cliché in upper and upper
middle class London that some fussy housewives refused to hire Irish
and had even posted NINA signs in their windows. It is possible that
handwritten NINA signs regarding maids did appear in a few American
windows, though no one ever reported one. We DO have actual newspaper
want ads for women workers that specifies Irish are not wanted; they
will be discussed below. In the entire file of the New York Times from
1851 to 1923, there are two NINA ads for men, one of which is for a
teenager. Computer searches of classified help wanted ads in the daily
editions of other online newspapers before 1923 such as the Booklyn
Eagle, the Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune show that NINA ads
for men were extremely rare--fewer than two per decade. The complete
absence of evidence suggests that probably zero such signs were seen
at commercial establishments, shops, factories, stores, hotels,
railroads, union halls, hiring halls, personnel offices, labor
recruiters etc. anywhere in America, at any time. NINA signs and
newspaper ads for apartments to let did exist in England and Northern
Ireland, but historians have not discovered reports of any in the
United States, Canada or Australia. The myth focuses on public NINA
signs which deliberately marginalized and humiliated Irish male job
applicants. The overwhelming evidence is that such signs never
existed.
Irish Americans all have heard about them--and remember elderly
relatives insisting they existed. The myth had "legs": people still
believe it, even scholars. The late Tip O'Neill remembered the signs
from his youth in Boston in 1920s; Senator Ted Kennedy reported the
most recent sighting, telling the Senate during a civil rights debate
that he saw them when growing up ^[7]5 Historically, [End Page 405]
physical NINA signs could have flourished only in intensely
anti-Catholic or anti-Irish eras, especially the 1830--1870 period.
Thus reports of sightings in the 1920s or 1930s suggest the myth had
become so deeply rooted in Irish-American folk mythology that it was
impervious to evidence. Perhaps the Irish had constructed an Evil
Other out of stereotypes of outsiders--a demon that could frighten
children like the young Ted Kennedy and adults as well. The challenge
for the historian is to explain the origins and especially the
durability of the myth. Did the demon exist outside the Irish
imagination--and if not how did it get there? This paper will explain
how the myth originated and will explore its long-lasting value to the
Irish community as a protective device. It was an enhancement of
political solidarity against a hostile Other; and a way to insulate a
preindustrial non-individualistic group-oriented work culture from the
individualism rampant in American culture.
We must first ask if the 19th century American environment contained
enough fear or hatred of the Irish community to support the existence
of the NINA sentiment? Did the Irish-American community constitute an
"Other" that was reviled and discriminated against? Did more modern
Americans recoil in disgust at the premodern Irish immigrants? The
evidence suggests that all the criticism of the Irish was connected to
one of three factors, their "premodern" behavior, their Catholicism,
and their political relationship to the ideals of republicanism. If
the Irish had enemies they never tried to restrict the flow of Irish
immigration. ^[8]6 Much louder was the complaint that the Irish were
responsible for public disorder and poverty, and above all the fears
that the Irish were undermining republicanism. These fears indeed
stimulated efforts to insert long delays into the citizenship process,
as attempted by the Federalists in 1798 and the Know Nothings in the
1850s. Those efforts failed. As proof of their citizenship the Irish
largely supported the Civil War in its critical first year. ^[9]7
Furthermore they took the lead in the 1860s in bringing into
citizenship thousands of new immigrants even before the technicalities
of residence requirements had been met. ^[10]8 The Irish claimed to be
better republicans than the Yankees because they had fled into exile
from aristocratic oppression and because they hated the British so
much. ^[11]9
The use of systematic violence to achieve Irish communal goals might
be considered a "premodern" trait; it angered many people and three
bloody episodes proved it would not work in conflict with American
republicanism. In 1863 the Irish rioted against the draft in New York
City; Lincoln moved in combat troops who used cannon to regain control
of the streets and resume the draft. In 1871 the Irish Catholics
demanded the Protestant Irish not be allowed an Orange parade in New
York City, but the Democratic governor sent five armed regiments of
state militia to support the 700 city police protecting the one
hundred marchers. The Catholics attacked anyway, and were shot down by
the hundreds. In the 1860s and 1870s the Molly Maguires used midnight
assassination squads to terrorize the anthracite mining camps in
Pennsylvania. The railroad brought in Pinkertons to infiltrate the
Mollys, twenty of whom were hung. In every instance Irish Catholics
law enforcement officials played a major role in upholding the modern
forms of republicanism that emphasized constitutional political
processes rather than clandestine courts or mob action. In each
instance the Irish leaders of the Catholic Church supported modern
republicanism. ^[12]10 After the [End Page 406] 1870s the Irish
achieved a modern voice through legitimate means, especially through
politics and law enforcement. Further enhancing their status as full
citizens making a valuable contribution to the community, the
Catholics built monumental churches (which were immediately and widely
praised), as well as a massive network of schools, colleges,
hospitals, orphanages and other charitable institutions. ^[13]11
Regardless of their growing status, something intensely real was
stimulating the Irish Catholics and only them. The NINA myth fostered
among the Irish a misperception or gross exaggeration that other
Americans were prejudiced against them, and were deliberately holding
back their economic progress. Hence the "chip on the shoulder"
mentality that many observers and historians have noted. ^[14]12 As
for the question of anti-Irish prejudice: it existed but it was
basically anti-Catholic or anti-anti-republican. There have been no
documented instances of job discrimination against Irish men. ^[15]13
Was there any systematic job discrimination against the Catholic Irish
in the US: possibly, but direct evidence is very hard to come by. On
the other hand Protestant businessmen vigorously raised money for
mills, factories and construction projects they knew would mostly
employ Irishmen, ^[16]14 while the great majority of middle class
Protestant households in the major cities employed Irish maids. The
earliest unquestioned usage found comes from the English novelist
William Makepeace Thackeray, using the phrase in Pendennis, a novel of
growing up in London in the 1820s. The context suggests that the NINA
slogan was a slightly ridiculous and old-fashioned bit of prejudice
^[17]15 Other ethnic groups also had a strong recollection of
discrimination but never reported such signs. The Protestant (Orange)
Irish do not recall "NINA signs. ^[18]16 Were the signs used only
against Irish targets?
An electronic search of all the text of the several hundred thousand
pages of magazines and books online at Library of Congress, Cornell
University Library and the University of Michigan Library, and
complete runs of The New York Times and The Nation, turned up about a
dozen uses of NINA. ^[19]17 The complete text of New York Times is
searchable from 1851 through 1923. Although the optical character
recognition is not perfect (some microfilmed pages are blurry), it
captures most of the text. A search of seventy years of the daily
paper revealed only two classified ads with NINA--one posted by a
Brooklyn harness shop that wanted a boy who could write, and a request
for a couple to take charge of a cottage upstate. ^[20]18 Unlike the
employment market for men, the market for female servants included a
small submarket in which religion or ethnicity was specified. Thus
newspaper ads for nannies, cooks, maids, nurses and companions
sometimes specified "Protestant Only." "I can't imagine, Carrie, why
you object so strongly to a Roman Catholic," protests the husband in
an 1854 short story. "Why, Edward, they are so ignorant, filthy, and
superstitious. It would never do to trust the children alone with one,
for there is no telling what they might learn." ^[21]19 Intimate
household relationships were delicate matters for some families, but
the great majority of maids in large cities were Irish women, so the
submarket that refused to hire them could not have been more than ten
percent. ^[22]20
The first American usage was a printed song-sheet, dated Philadelphia,
1862. It is a reprint of a British song sheet. The narrator is a maid
looking for a job in London who reads an ad in London Times and sings
about Irish pride. The last verse was clearly added in America.
^[23]21 [End Page 407]
NO IRISH NEED APPLY.
Written and sung by Miss KATHLEEN O'NEIL.
WANTED.--A smart active girl to do the general housework of a large
family, one who can cook, clean plates, and get up fine linen,
preferred. N. B.--No Irish need apply
--London Times Newspaper, Feb. 1862.
I'm a simple Irish girl, and I'm looking for a place, I've felt the
grip of poverty, but sure that's no disgrace, 'Twill be long before
I get one, tho' indeed it's hard I try, For I read in each
advertisement, "No Irish need apply."
Alas! for my poor country, which I never will deny, How they insult
us when they write, "No Irish need apply." Now I wonder what's the
reason that the fortune-favored few, Should throw on us that dirty
slur, and treat us as they do, Sure they all know Paddy's heart is
warm, and willing is his hand, They rule us, yet we may not earn a
living in their land,
. . . .
Ah! but now I'm in the land of the "Glorious and Free," And proud I
am to own it, a country dear to me, I can see by your kind faces,
that you will not deny, A place in your hearts for Kathleen, where
"All Irish may apply." Then long may the Union flourish, and ever
may it be, A pattern to the world, and the "Home of Liberty!"
In 1862 or 1863 at the latest John Poole wrote the basic NINA song
that became immensely popular within a matter of months. ^[24]22
[poole.gif]
NO IRISH NEED APPLY.
Written by JOHN F. POOLE, and sung, with immense success, by the
great Comic-Vocalist of the age, TONY PASTOR.
I'm a dacint boy, just landed from the town of Ballyfad;
I want a situation: yis, I want it mighty bad.
I saw a place advartised. It's the thing for me, says I;
But the dirty spalpeen ended with: No Irish need apply.
Whoo! says I; but that's an insult--though to get the place I'll
try.
So, I wint to see the blaggar with: No Irish need apply.
I started off to find the house, I got it mighty soon;
There I found the ould chap saited: he was reading the TRIBUNE.
I tould him what I came for, whin he in a rage did fly:
No! says he, you are a Paddy, and no Irish need apply!
Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I'd like to black his eye--
To tell an Irish Gintleman: No Irish need apply!
I couldn't stand it longer: so, a hoult of him I took,
And I gave him such a welting as he'd get at Donnybrook.
He hollered: Millia murther! and to get away did try,
And swore he'd never write again: No Irish need apply.
He made a big apology; I bid him thin good-bye,
Saying: Whin next you want a bating, add: No Irish need apply! [End
Page 408]
Sure, I've heard that in America it always is the plan
That an Irishman is just as good as any other man;
A home and hospitality they never will deny
The stranger here, or ever say: No Irish need apply.
But some black sheep are in the flock: a dirty lot, say I;
A dacint man will never write: No Irish need apply!
Sure, Paddy's heart is in his hand, as all the world does know,
His praties and his whiskey he will share with friend or foe;
His door is always open to the stranger passing by;
He never thinks of saying: None but Irish may apply.
And, in Columbia's history, his name is ranking high;
Thin, the Divil take the knaves that write: No Irish need apply!
Ould Ireland on the battle-field a lasting fame has made;
We all have heard of Meagher's men, and Corcoran's brigade. ^[25]23
Though fools may flout and bigots rave, and fanatics may cry,
Yet when they want good fighting-men, the Irish may apply,
And when for freedom and the right they raise the battle-cry,
Then the Rebel ranks begin to think: No Irish need apply
After a few rounds of singing and drinking, you could easily read the
sign. Note that in the New York City version, Poole changed the London
maid to a newly arrived country boy; the maid lamented, but the lad
fights back vigorously. This is a song to encourage bullies. The lad
starts his job search by scanning the want ads in the city's leading
Republican newspaper, the New York Tribune, which seems an unlikely
resource for a new arrival from a remote village. In the draft riots
of 1863 the Tribune was a special target of Irish mobs. ^[26]24
Did the Irish feel discriminated against before the NINA slogan became
current? First note the last stanza of the 1862 London song shown
above. If the NINA slogan had been current in America surely the
songwriter would not have included the line "you will not deny, A
place in your hearts for Kathleen, where 'All Irish may apply."' The
second evidence comes from the Confederacy in 1863. The Rebels hailed
and incited Irish unrest in the North. A major editorial in the
Richmond Enquirer May 29, 1863 enumerated multiple reasons for the
Irish to hate the Yankees, such as convent attacks and church
burnings. The catalog of grievances focused on anti-Catholicism and
did not mention job discrimination or NINA--probably because the Poole
song had not yet reached Richmond. ^[27]25
We can now summarize our explanation of where the NINA myth comes
from. There probably were occasional handwritten signs in London homes
in the 1820s seeking non-Irish maids. The slogan became a cliché in
Britain for hostility to the Irish. Tens of thousands of middle-class
English migrated to America, and it is possible a few used the same
sort of handwritten sign in the 1830--1850 period; the old British
cliché was probably known in America. There is no evidence for any
printed NINA signs in America or for their display at places of
employment other than private homes. Poole's song of 1862 popularized
the phrase. The key change that made the second version such a hit was
gender reversal--the London song lamented the maid's troubles, the New
York City version called for Irishmen to assert their manhood in
defiance of a cowardly [End Page 409] enemy. By 1863 every Irishman
knew and resented the slogan--and it perhaps helped foment the draft
riots that year. The stimulus was not visual but rather aural--a song
about NINA sung only by the Irish. There was indeed such a song, and
it became quite popular during the 1863 crisis of the draft riots of
the Civil War; it still circulates. The song was a war cry that
encouraged Irish gangs to beat up suspicious strangers and it warned
Irish jobseekers against breaking with the group and going to work for
The Enemy.
Recollection is a group phenomenon--especially in a community so well
known for its conviviality and story telling. Congressman Tip O'Neill
of Massachusetts grew up hearing horror stories of how the terrible
Protestants burned down a nearby convent school run by the Catholic
Ursuline nuns. When O'Neill went to college he was astonished to read
in a history book that it happened a century earlier in 1834--he had
assumed it was a recent event. ^[28]26 It is most unlikely that
businesses in Boston routinely displayed NINA signs in the 20th
century and yet left no trace whatever in the records. People who
"remember" the signs in the 20th century only remember the urban
legend. ^[29]27
Political mobilization against the Irish was never successful. The
most important effort was the Know Nothing movement, which swept the
Northeast and South in 1854--56. It was a poorly led grass roots
movement that generated no significant or permanent anti-Catholic or
anti-Irish legislation. There was no known employment discrimination.
Know-Nothing employers, for example, were never accused of firing
their Irish employees. The Know-Nothings were primarily a purification
movement. They believed that all politicians were corrupt, that the
Democrats were the worst, and that Irish support for Democrats, plus
their growing numbers, made them highly suspect. The party lasted
longer in the South where it was the anti-Democratic party but only
slightly anti-Catholic. Ray Billington concludes "The almost complete
failure of the Know-Nothings to carry into effect the doctrines of
anti-Catholic and anti-foreign propagandists contributed to the rapid
decline of this nativistic party." ^[30]28 Likewise there were few
visible effects of the APA movement of the 1890s, or the KKK in the
1920s. The conclusion is that, despite occasional temptations,
Americans considered their "equal rights" republicanism to be
incompatible with systematic economic or political discrimination
against the Irish. Given the overlap of anti-Catholic and anti-Irish
prejudice how can historians tell the difference? In both cases, the
anti's would attack on political grounds--elections, candidates,
appointments, bosses, machines, election frauds, registration laws,
civil service reform. ^[31]29 Anti-Catholics would focus on certain
issues, especially saints and Mariolatry, parochial schools,
sacramentalism, convents, missions to the Indians, and Bible-reading
in schools. ^[32]30 They also were intensely alert to activities of
the Papacy, and the political power of priests and bishops. The
Vatican certainly controlled ecclesiastical affairs, but it carefully
avoided American political issues. ^[33]31 By 1865 politicians
realized that bishops and priests largely avoided even informal
electoral endorsements of any kind--they were far less active than
pietistic Protestants, as the annals of temperance and anti-slavery
demonstrate. ^[34]32
Were Irish men the victims of job discrimination in reality? That was
possible without any signs of course. The evidence is exceedingly
thin--the Irish started poor and worked their way up slowly, all along
believing that the Protestant world [End Page 410] hated them and
blocked their every move. Contemporary observers commented that the
Protestant Irish were doing well in America, but that preindustrial
work habits were blocking progress for the Catholics. As Thernstrom
has shown, Irish had one of the lowest rates of upward mobility.
^[35]33
A likely explanation is the strong group ethos that encouraged Irish
to always work together, and resist individualistic attempts to break
away. (The slogan tells them that trying to make it in the Yankee
world is impossible anyway.) No other European Catholic group seems to
have shared that chip on the shoulder (not the Germans or
Italians--not even anti-Irish groups such as the French Canadians).
Historians agree the political hostility against the Irish Democrats
in the Civil War Era was real enough. Critics complained that the
Irish had poor morals and a weak work ethic (and hence low status).
Much more serious was the allegation that they were politically
corrupt and priest-controlled, and therefore violated true republican
values. The Irish could shoot back that The Enemy did not practice
equal rights. The Irish community used the allegation of job
discrimination on the part of the Other to reinforce political
solidarity among (male) voters, which in any case was very high
indeed--probably he highest for any political group in American
history before the 1960s.
It is easy to identify job discrimination in the 19th century against
blacks and Chinese (the latter indeed led by the Irish in California).
Discrimination against the Irish was invisible to the non-Irish.
^[36]34 That is perhaps why this urban legend did not die out
naturally. Benign Protestant factory owners could not soften the
tensions by removing signs that never existed. When Protestants denied
NINA that perhaps just reinforced the Irish sense of conspiracy
against them (even today people who deny NINA are suspected of
prejudice.) The slogan served both to explain their poverty ^[37]35
and to identify a villain against whom it was all right retaliate on
sight--a donnybrook for the foes of St. Patrick. ^[38]36 The myth
justified bullying strangers and helped sour relations between Irish
and everyone else. ^[39]37 The sense of victimhood perhaps blinded
some Irish to the discrimination suffered by other groups. ^[40]38
Perhaps the slogan has reemerged in recent years as the Irish feel the
political need to be bona-fide victims. The Potato Famine of course
had all the ingredients to make them victims, ^[41]39 but it will not
do to have the villains overseas: there must be American villains.
^[42]40 If we conclude the Irish were systematically deluding
themselves over a period of a century or more about their primary
symbol of job discrimination, the next question to ask is, was it all
imaginary or was there a real basis for the grievances about the
economic hostility of Protestants to Irish aspirations? Historians
need to be critical. Because a group truly believes it was a victim,
does not make it so. On the other hand, the Irish chip-on-the-shoulder
attitude may have generated a high level of group solidarity in both
politics and the job market, which could have had a significant impact
on the on the occupational experience of the Irish.
How successful were the Irish in the job market? Observers noticed
that the Irish tended to work in equalitarian collective situations,
such as labor gangs, longshoremen crews, construction crews, or with
strong labor unions, usually in units dominated numerically and
politically by Irishmen. Wage rates were often heavily influenced by
collective activity, such as boycotts, strikes and [End Page 411]
union contracts, or by the political pressures that could be exerted
on behalf of employees in government jobs, or working for contractors
holding city contracts, or for regulated utilities such as street
railways and subways.
The first arrivals formed all-Irish work crews for construction
companies in the building of railroads in the 1830s. ^[43]41 Sometimes
the Irish managed to monopolize a specific labor market sector--they
comprised 95% of the canal workers by 1840, and 95% of the New York
City longshoremen by 1900. ^[44]42 The monopoly of course facilitated
group action, and once a crossing point was reached it was possible to
exclude virtually all Others. Solidarity (with or without formal union
organization) made for excellent bargaining power, augmented as needed
by the use of intimidation, strikes, arson, terrorism and destructive
violence to settle any grievances they may have had with their
employers, not to mention internal feuds linked to historic feuds back
in Ireland. Direct evidence that employers did not want Irish workers
is absent. By the early 20th century major corporations had personnel
offices and written procedures. If the Irish had a reputation for
being unsatisfactory, the personnel managers never commented upon it.
Job discrimination against blacks and Asians continued, and was quite
visible in the corporate records and the media. Discrimination against
newer immigrant groups can be identified as late as 1941 (when it was
banned for government contract holders). No trace of anti-Irish
hostility has turned up in the corporate records of the literature of
personnel management. Can we prove there was no job discrimination
against the Irish? Zero is too hard to "prove"--though no historian
has found any evidence of any actual discrimination by any business or
factory. ^[45]43 The main "evidence" referenced in the historical
literature is three fold:
First, the NINA myth was so convincing that the Irish saw no need to
investigate further, or to document the discrimination, or to set up a
protective organization. (They of course organized extensively, in
both Ireland and America, to protest maltreatment back in Ireland.)
^[46]44
Second, historians point to contemporaries who commented unfavorably
on the Irish, generalizing from a handful of cases to create a
stereotype of the dominant views of all of American society. Now
indeed the 19th century literature is filled with eyewitness and
statistical descriptions of Irish drunkenness, crime, violence,
poverty, extortion, insanity, ignorance, political corruption and
lawless behavior. The reports come from many cities, from Catholics
and non-Catholics, social scientists and journalists, Irish and
non-Irish. ^[47]45 The question is not whether the Irish were admired.
(They were not.) The argument that the dominant popular stereotypes of
the Irish were especially nasty does not hold up under careful
examination. There is no evidence that more than one in a thousand
Americans considered the Irish as racially inferior, non-white or
ape-like. ^[48]46
Third, as noted, historians point to statistical evidence that the
Irish had lower rates of upward social mobility than average, in the
1850--1880 period. The Irish must have been held back by something:
but was it internal or external, or just random historical luck? Given
the 20th century success story of the Irish--they are among the
wealthiest groups today--the disability or discrimination ended
somewhere along the line. [End Page 412]
Many different models can explain the Irish condition: First there was
lack of financial and human capital. The Irish who arrived in the
1840s and 1850s came with few useful industrial or agricultural
skills, while the British and Germans who came at the same time
brought cash and much more human capital. Thus the distribution of
human capital can be said to have allocated Irish to unskilled jobs,
and other immigrants to more skilled opportunities. After 1890 the
Irish had acquired some schooling and skills, while the current
newcomers were primarily unskilled peasants from southern and eastern
Europe. The latter groups moved into the unskilled jobs while the
Irish moved up. In the coal fields, with very few job opportunities
above the level of unskilled miner, the arrival of new competitors led
to significant tensions and violence. In some cases the new
competitors were more skilled than the Irish; thus the Swedes who came
to Worcester in the late 19th century displaced the less skilled Irish
in the metals factories.
The Irish did invest heavily in human capital, through their system of
parochial schools and colleges. The impact of such investment was
necessarily long-term, and seems to have become visible by 1900. To a
considerable extent the goal was preservation and protection of
traditional religious values, and the creation of a social system that
would discourage intermarriage. However the schools did follow a
standardized curriculum that inculcated literacy and learning skills.
Negative investment in human capital involved internal self-defeating
factors, such as heavy alcoholism, weak motivation, poor work habits,
and disorganized family life. This was widely commented on regarding
19th century Irish, but not much reported in 20th century. ^[49]47
Rather few Irish became entrepreneurs; the community did not generate
pools of financial capital. Perhaps more important was a low communal
value on the individualistic businessman. Construction contracting
seems to have been the only business in which they had any significant
ownership role, and that depended on control of labor and access to
government contracts rather than financial capital. The Irish did
operate many saloons, but they were financed by the German brewers and
generated little new capital for the community. ^[50]48
Comparing rates of social mobility assumes that the Irish were seeking
that goal to the same extent as the Yankees. Perhaps their ambitions
looked more toward non-individualistic goals (such as building
impressive churches), or non-career family advancement strategies
focused on political leadership or home ownership, or (in the case of
nuns and priests) honorific careers that involved a vow of poverty. A
strikingly high proportion of talented Irish youth went into very low
paying, very high prestige religious careers. The community more often
honored priests and bishops than business entrepreneurs.
Social mobility depends upon strong family structures. Weak ties in a
group would indicate fathers and uncles did not assist their kin. The
Irish had a reputation for the opposite traits (clannishness and
nepotism), but also had reportedly high rates of internal family
discord. ^[51]49 On the other hand kinship ties could be too strong
and impede upward mobility. Parents might demand more child labor,
valuing family collective goals over the child's individualistic
career potential. Did the Irish tend to remove their children from
schools to put them to work early? This would produce ready funds for
home ownership, but less long-run human capital. Census data indicate
high rates of school attendance, at least to [End Page 413] age 14.
^[52]50 Special family needs, especially sending funds to Ireland for
subsistence and bringing over more relatives, might have drained the
capital needed for upward mobility through small business. This indeed
was a major factor among the Irish down to the 1880s.
Perhaps the Irish ethic placed more stress on equality and communal
sharing of wealth. Different customs can have this effect--for example
extensive charity (tithing), or heavy gambling that redistributes
earned income in random fashion. Irish levels of charity were
moderately high (especially donations to the church); observers did
not comment on heavy gambling. In some cultures, when a man gets money
he must share it widely with relatives, thus diffusing it and slowing
accumulation in entrepreneurial hands. Observers did not report this
trait as especially characteristic of the Irish community. In the
context of social mobility, "clannishness" can refer to a collective
ethic whereby the goal is for the group as a whole moves ahead, with
individual initiative discouraged. ^[53]51 Bad historical luck could
lock a group into the wrong skills or geography, causing retarded
growth and structural unemployment. A group could cling too long to
old-fashioned skills that were dead-end or slow growth, or be attached
to businesses or geographical areas that grew very slowly. This may
have happened to the Germans, and certainly did happen in the 20th
century to coal miners. The Irish however, were noted for their
willingness to change jobs, move to new neighborhoods or cities, and
abandon trades. However, the quest for political patronage probably
locked Irish men into overpaid but dead-end blue-collar jobs, and
channeled talent into public administration rather than private
entrepreneurship. ^[54]52
Perhaps businessmen figured Irish were unacceptable and decided not to
hire any? There is little evidence for, and vast evidence against,
this hypothesis. Beginning with Samuel Slater, New England
entrepreneurs built hundreds of textile mills in the ante-bellum
period. Although the Yankee owners were at first eager to use Yankee
workers like themselves (the famous "Lowell Girls") they soon switched
to Irish and French Canadian Catholics. Pleased with this new labor
supply, they built more mills, often in small towns that had
previously been entirely Yankee. They counted on a steady inflow of
Catholic workers, borrowing millions of dollars to create these jobs.
Once the Irish did have mill jobs they were four times more likely to
put their children to work in the same mill than Yankees--rather odd
behavior if they were mistreated so badly. ^[55]53 Perhaps foremen and
superintendents hired Irish for low level jobs but deliberately held
them back or promote them very slowly? Major research projects by
Tamara Hareven (dealing with Amoskeag, the largest textile mill in the
world), and Walter Licht, dealing with internal promotion system in
railroads, finds no evidence of this. Business historians and
biographers have turned up no instances of systematic anti-Irish
discrimination by any employer in the US, at any time. ^[56]54
NINA originated with women domestic servants, and we need to rethink
their position. No one has suggested the Irish women used violence,
boycotts or threats to achieve dominance in this industry. "Bridget"
had a reputation for mediocre quality work, but this liability was
offset by communal assets that made them attractive employees. They
spoke English. Along with African Americans and Swedes, they had a
strong commitment to service jobs and were available in large numbers.
Because of late marriages and spinsterhood, they spent years in
service, accumulating experience and maturity that made them more
attractive [End Page 414] than inexperienced teenagers. Off the job
the Irish had a well-developed support network that provided
friendship, entertainment, advice, and connections to find new
employers. These support networks established informal job standards
regarding working hours, housing, food, perquisites and pay scales.
The standards were enforced by the maid immediately quitting if the
employer violated the standards, with knowledge her friends would be
supportive and would help her find a new position. Despite scare
stories in the anti-Catholic pamphlets, the Irish servants did not
proselytize or interfere with household religious activity. Given the
dominance of Irish women among maids in the large cities, and the
constant turnover of servants, we can estimate that the large majority
(perhaps 80 or 90 percent) of middle class families, regardless of
their own ethnic or religious affiliations, routinely hired Irish
women. ^[57]55
The economic theory of discrimination focuses on the tastes of the
employers, coworkers and customers, and the costs to each (in terms of
profits, wages and prices) of having a distaste for a category of
workers. If there is underemployment of a target group in a
competitive market, then some entrepreneur can make a bigger profit by
seeking out and hiring that group. Coworkers who have a strong
distaste for working alongside the target can react by boycotting that
employer, forcing up his other costs. By looking at wage rates in
workplaces with different mixes of groups, economists hope to estimate
the "distaste" factor: that is, workers will have to be paid more to
work alongside a target group (and will accept lower pay if there are
no coworkers from that group.) Estimates of the distaste factor come
from a historical study dealing with Michigan furniture workers in the
1890s. It found that in general all groups have a preference for their
own kind as coworkers (and were willing to take a 5--10% wage cut for
the privilege of working alongside their own kind.) People who were
willing to work with outsiders were paid more. "Distaste" for Irish
measured out about the same as for other groups. Overall
discrimination was small--combined with language skills and the myriad
of other unmeasured factors it was less than 5% of the average wage.
Doubtless there was a tendency for owners of small shops to hire only
their own ethnicity. While this would have the effect of excluding
Irish from certain jobs, it cannot be called "anti-Irish" in
motivation. Probably the Irish practiced closed hiring as much as or
more than any group. ^[58]56
We know from the experience of African Americans and Chinese that the
most powerful form of job discrimination came from workers who vowed
to boycott or shut down any employer who hired the excluded class.
Employers who were personally willing to hire Chinese or blacks were
forced to submit to the threats. ^[59]57 There were no reports of mobs
attacking Irish employment, even during sporadic episodes of attacks
on Catholic church facilities in 1830s and 1840s. No one has reported
claims that co-workers refused to work alongside Irish; this powerful
form of discrimination probably did not affect the Irish in
significant ways. On the other hand the Irish repeatedly attacked
employers who hired African Americans or Chinese. If a group is
systematically discriminated against in a major way by most employers,
it will be segregated into a small niche. This segregation should be
visible in the census statistics of occupation, when comparing it to
other groups, especially to British Protestant immigrants who were not
reputedly subject to discrimination. The most useful analysis of any
large city for the 19th century is the "Philadelphia Social History
Project" [End Page 415] which computerized hundreds of thousands of
census entries. The Irish comprised 15--30% of the labor force there.
How segregated were they, and how did the segregation decline over
time? [60]Table 1 shows an index of how different the Irish and others
were from native Americans. (Philadelphia was one of the few cities
with a large native American working class.) The data show the Irish
were about in the same position as German immigrants, and much less
liable to being boxed into a job niche than blacks, Italians, Poles or
Jews. The Irish had about the same score in 1930 as the British, which
is consistent with very little discrimination by employers. The index
is about the same for Irish of the first and second generation (1880)
and later Irish (1930) indicating that the level of anti-Irish
discrimination did not change much over time; it can be seen as
equally low in both 1880 and 1930. [End Page 416]
Assuming the Irish relied somewhat less on individual skills or market
forces, and more on collective action and political prowess for their
job security and pay rates, we must ask how successful were they? By
the early twentieth century their pay scales were probably at least
average. Peter Baskerville has discovered the Irish Catholics in urban
Canada in 1901 were about average in terms of both family incomes and
standards of living.
Table 1: 1880 Index of Job Segregation , Philadelphia
(100=max)^[61]^58
Old Stock
0
Black
53
Irish Immigrants
35
Sons of Irish immigrants
34
German Immigrants
37
Sons of German immigrants
31
1930 Index of Job Segregation, Philadelphia
White, US born parents
0
Black
62
Italian
60
Jewish
57
Polish
55
German
33
Irish
29
British
25
My analysis of Iowa data in 1915 in Table 2 shows the Irish Catholics
had slightly above average incomes, but that additional years of
schooling helped them less than other groups. This suggests that group
solidarity was a powerful force for uplift, but it improved the status
of the group as a unit rather than as an average of separate
individuals. Autobiographies of overly ambitious youth relate how they
were harassed by their classmates and warned against the sin of pride
by the priest and nuns. ^[62]60
Table 2: Lifetime Earnings and return to additional schooling Iowa
Non-Farm Men, 1915
Group N $Lifetime Return ALL
909 100 10.6%
OLD STOCK 499 97 9.7%
No Religion 243 93 9.1%
Methodist 164 95 9.7%
ETHNICS 410 100 10.6%
German 147 109 12.2%
Lutheran 34 95 9.5%
Catholic 46 106 13.9%
Scandinavian 87 103 12.2%
British 58 114 14.7%
Irish Catholic 57 104 8.4%
Pete Hamill explained how the collective spirit affected him, growing
up in Brooklyn in 1940s: ^[63]61
This was part of the most sickening aspect of Irish-American life
in those days: the assumption that if you rose above an acceptable
level of mediocrity, you were guilty of the sin of pride. You were
to accept your place and stay in it for the rest of your life; the
true rewards would be given to you in heaven, after you were dead.
There was ferocious pressure to conform, to avoid breaking out of
the pack; self-denial was the supreme virtue...it was arrogant, a
sin of pride, to conceive of a life beyond the certainties,
rhythms, and traditions of the Neighborhood. Sometimes the attitude
was expressed directlyMore often, it was implied. But the
Neighborhood view of the world had fierce power. Who did I think I
was?
When the Irish grumbled about "No Irish Need Apply," they perhaps were
really warning each other against taking jobs which were controlled by
the Other and immune from the political pressures that group
solidarity could exert. There was method to the myth, which is why it
persisted so long. Individual upward mobility was a priority for
individualistic strivers imbued with the "Protestant Ethic." There is
no reason to assume it motivated the Irish. Their individual upward
mobility rates were modest. ^[64]62
If the Irish turned both politics and the job market into a group
struggle, then we might expect different outcomes when comparing the
three situations where the Irish were too weak to make much
difference, where they had the "right amount" of leverage, and where
they were too numerous. Statistical studies of social mobility in the
1850--1920 era suggest that the Irish did best in the Midwest (where
they had just the right amount of strength), and not nearly as well in
the Northeast, where they were too numerous to be advantaged by
zero-sum power maneuvering. ^[65]63 Why the difference? Both Midwest
and Northeast regions were doing very well, industrializing rapidly at
that time. Let's examine the model of collective solidarity of the
Irish in the labor market. It was a technique to facilitate the group
as a whole moving rather than individuals. It had zero-sum properties
(what one group gained, other groups lost). Their technique would work
much better when the Irish were 10--30% of the population, and not
nearly as well when they were in a majority. (If their numbers went
above 50%, then it was dysfunctional, for most gains would come at the
expense of other Irish.) The Irish did have a numerical dominance in
Boston and other northeastern [End Page 417] cities, such as Troy.
There were fewer rivals to elbow out of the way, and their technique
was therefore much less successful there. The Irish approach
discouraged entrepreneurship (which is positive-sum). It encouraged
government work, and jobs (such as canal or railroad construction,
longshoremen, transit) where government contacts or franchises were
involved (thus allowing them to use their political muscle). In order
to expand their preferred job base the Irish supported expansion of
government spending and government regulation--what John Buenker has
called "urban liberalism." Successors to the Al Smith tradition of
urban liberalism, such as Speakers John McCormack and Tip O'Neill and
Senator Ted Kennedy could well boast of their achievements in
expanding government (or preventing its contraction) during and after
the New Deal era. ^[66]64
After 1860 fears that the Irish were a threat to republicanism rapidly
disappeared. The most decisive event came in spring 1861; when the War
broke out the Irish rallied to the American flag, and joined the army.
Although they strenuously opposed the draft and emancipation, they
never supported the Confederacy (unlike some old-line Democratic
leaders who took Confederate money.) Irish veterans were welcomed into
the GAR, whose camaraderie validated their republicanism. The worst
forms of poverty and destitution eventually disappeared, and a solid
class of property owners and civil servants emerged to anchor the
Irish in their communities. The Catholic Church, controlled by the
Irish, vigorously supported law and order, and effectively suppressed
the premodern urge to use violence for political goals. The Pope never
dictated politics, and the bishops and priests never became active in
domestic politics. They focused on building schools, colleges,
hospitals, asylums and the stunningly beautiful churches. Many
critics--throughout the 19^th and 20^th centuries--were alarmed that
parochial schools threatened the public school system, which they
insisted was the only guarantee of republican values. The Catholics
vehemently rejected this allegation, and over the years gained
surprising allies, as other denominations started their own parochial
schools, including the German Lutherans, Dutch Calvinists, Orthodox
Jews, and evangelicals. Lingering anti-Catholicism reappeared in
debates over prohibition, and especially over the nomination of
Catholics to the presidency, but it is notable that politicians were
never attacked for their Irish heritage. ^[67]65
Irish collective solidarity seems to have broken down after World War
Two, as New Deal work relief ended, the big city machines collapsed,
unions entered an era of slow, steady decline, and the Catholic school
system generated high school and college graduates well-equipped to
make their way in the white collar world entirely as individuals, with
minimal need for group support. By the 1960s the Irish had moved from
the bottom to near the top of the ladder, with an economic status that
surpassed their old Yankee antagonists. With the election of John
Kennedy in 1960, Irish political solidarity climaxed. The Last Hurrah
came in 1964, when Irish Catholics voted 78 percent for Lyndon
Johnson. They abandoned Humphrey in 1968; since then they have split
evenly between the parties and no longer comprise a bloc vote. ^[68]66
Did the Irish come to America in the face of intense hostility,
symbolized by the omnipresent sign, "Help Wanted: No Irish Need
Apply"? The hard evidence suggests that on the whole Irish immigrants
as employees were welcomed by employers; their entry was never
restricted; and no one proposed they be excluded [End Page 418] like
the Chinese, let alone sent back. Instead of firing Catholics to make
way for Protestant workers, most employers did exactly the opposite.
That is, the dominant culture actively moved to create new jobs
specifically for the unskilled Irish workers. As soon as the Irish
acquired education and skills they moved up the social status ladder,
reaching near the top by the 1960s. For a while political questions
were raised about the devotion of the Irish to America's republican
ideals, but these doubts largely faded away during the 1860s. The
Irish rarely if ever had to confront an avowedly "anti-Irish"
politician of national or statewide reputation--itself powerful
evidence for the absence of deep-rooted anti-Irish sentiment. By the
late 19th century the Irish were fully accepted politically and
economically. However, reality and perception diverged. After the song
appeared in 1862 the Irish themselves "saw" the NINA signs everywhere,
seeing in them ugly discrimination that was forcing them downward into
the worst jobs. It was deliberate humiliation by arrogant Protestant
Yankees. The myth was undeniable--anyone inside the group would be
called a traitor for suggesting that internal weaknesses inside the
Irish community caused its problems; anyone outside would be called a
prejudiced bigot. ^[69]67 But what if there were no such signs? The
NINA slogan was in the mind's eye, conjured by an enormously popular
song from 1862. Job discrimination by the Other was too well known to
the Irish to need evidence beyond NINA, or the "recent" burning of the
Ursuline convent. Historians engaging in cultural studies must beware
the trap that privileges evidence derived from the protests of
self-proclaimed victims. Practically every ethnoreligious group in
America cherishes its martyrs and warns its members that outsiders
"discriminate" against them, or would if they had the opportunity. The
NINA slogan had the effect of reinforcing political, social and
religious solidarity. It had a major economic role as well,
strengthening the politicized work-gang outlook of Irish workers who
had to stick together at all times. It warned the Irish against
looking for jobs outside their community, and it explained away their
low individual rates of upward social mobility. The slogan identified
an enemy to blame, and justified bully behavior on the city streets.
NINA signs never faded away, even as the Irish prospered and
discrimination vanished--they remained a myth about origins that could
not be abandoned.
_________________________________________________________________
Bow, NH 03304
Endnotes
This essay grew out of discussions on several email lists, including
H-ETHNIC, H-HIGH-S, Irish-Diaspora, and Wild Geese. Special thanks to
all the participants; I appreciate the advice from John Allswang,
Tyler Anbinder, Peter Baskerville, Colin B. Burke, Leo Casey, Robert
Cherny, Terry Clark, Heather Cronrath, Maura Doherty, Jay Dolan,
Elizabeth Ellis and the staff at the Museum of the City of New York,
Joe Gannon, Larry Giantomas, Victor Greene, Susan Ikenberry, Rob
Kennedy, Kevin Kenny, Lawrence Kohl, Bill Leckie, Dale Light, Sean
Lyons, Dennis J. McCann, Martha Mayo, Brad McKay, Lawrence J.
McCaffrey, John McClymer, John Morello, Gerald A. Regan, Joel
Schwartz, Patrick O'Sullivan, Gene Sessions, and Stephan Thernstrom.
[End Page 419]
[70]1. Even historians have believed the myth; for example, the
leading scholar of the Irish migration claims, "Unskilled workers and
servants, especially, encountered the ubiquitous 'No Irish Need Apply'
notices when they searched for jobs in Boston, New York, and other
major cities." Kerby Miller, Emigrants and Exiles (1985), 323. Kevin
Kenny, The American Irish: A History (2000) demonstrates how central
the sense of discrimination was.
[71]2. Stephan Thernstrom (email of March 27, 2001 to author) notes he
saw no discriminatory ads, or complaints of job discrimination, in the
four decades of issues of Newburyport Daily Herald that he examined.
Martha Mayo (email of June 24, 2001 to author) likewise has found no
references in her exhaustive search of Lowell newspapers. Oscar
Handlin did not report seeing a NINA, but he did reference a handful
of editorials in Irish Catholic newspapers that vigorously condemned
NINA in want ads for household workers. Handlin, Boston's Immigrants,
1790--1880 (1959), p. 62.
[72]3. A major exhibit, Gaelic Gotham, from the Museum of the City of
New York, see [73]http://www.mcny.org/Exhibitions/Irish/irish.htm did
not have any NINA signs, but did reprint the text of a newspaper ad
for maids.
[74]4. Of course Ebay.com sells these signs. But they are all modern
fakes, made by novelty sign makers for the Irish market. See for
example [75]http://www.bookguy.com/Irish/Books/irishem.htm Scholars
can get fooled too, as shown by
[76]http://www.therblig.com/GLCSSRA/archive/901.htm
[~irish.gif]
[77]5. Kennedy said, "I remember 'Help Wanted' signs in stores when I
was growing up saying 'No Irish Need Apply ."' Congressional Record
Senate Sept 9, 1996 page S10054. He was born to a rich family in 1932,
about the same time as the Lindbergh baby, and grew up in very well
protected upper class circumstances that seldom brought him to the
factory districts. No other Irishman hius age reports seeing a sign.
[78]6. Immigration restriction movements originated in the 1890s, at a
time when Irish immigration had declined to a trickle, and did not
target the Irish. Indeed, the most powerful force behind restriction
was the American Federation of Labor--half of whose leaders were Irish
Catholic.
[79]7. On motivation see Randall M. Miller, "Catholic Religion, Irish
Ethnicity, and the Civil War," in Randall M. Miller, Harry S. Stout,
and Charles Reagan Wilson, eds. Religion and the American Civil War
(1998), 261--96. Edward K. Spann, "Union Green: The Irish Community
and the Civil War," in Ron Bayor and Timothy Meagher, eds. The New
York Irish (1996), 193--209. There were no allegations of Irishmen
going South to join the Confederacy. In the war with Mexico, however,
a hundred Irish Americans deserted from the US army, organized two San
Patricio battalions, and fought alongside the Mexicans. Many were
captured and hung by General Winfield Scott. Pam Nordstrom, "San
Patricio Battalion," Handbook of Texas (1996)
[80]http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/SS/qis1.h
tml
[81]8. Steven P. Erie, Rainbow's End: Irish-Americans and the Dilemmas
of Urban Machine Politics, 1840--1985 (1988), ch 2. After the war the
leading veteran's organization, the Grand Army of the Republic,
welcomed Irish Catholic members. Since it was the mainstay of the
Republican party in many small towns, the GAR provided an opportunity
for Democratic Irishmen to mingle on friendly and equal terms with
Protestants of the same age, and softened the tensions created by the
temperance movement. See Michel J. Martin, "'A Class of Persons Whose
Presence is a Constant Danger': Progress, Prohibition, and 'Public
Disorderliness' in Burlington, 1860--1880," Vermont History (1994) 62:
148--165; and Gene Sessions, "'Years of Struggle': The Irish in the
Village of Northfield, 1845--1900," Vermont History (1987) 55: 69--95.
[End Page 420]
[82]9. John Belchem "Nationalism, Republicanism and Exile: Irish
Emigrants and the Revolutions of 1848," Past & Present (Feb 1995) 146:
103--35. They also considered themselves superior Christians in vivid
contrast to the heretical Protestants, who were most likely damned to
hell.
[83]10. One might add the Fenian invasion of Canada in 1866, which
failed totally; the Pope excommunicated the Fenians.
[84]11. Generally see Michael Glazier, ed. The Encyclopedia of the
Irish in America (1999); for details, Iver Bernstein, The New York
City Draft Riots: Their Significance for American Society and Politics
in the Age of the Civil War (1990); Michael A. Gordon, The Orange
Riots: Irish Political Violence in New York City, 1870 and 1871
(1993); Edward B. Freeland, "The Great Riot," Continental Monthly
(Sept 1863) v4#2 pp. 302--312 online at
[85]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABR1802
-0004-62. On the Molly Maguires, see Wayne G. Broehl, Jr., The Molly
Maguires (1964) and Kevin Kenny, Making Sense of the Molly Maguires
(1998); see also online sources at
[86]http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/molly.htm and Joel Tyler, Headley,
The Great Riots of New York, 1712 to 1873, including a full and
complete account of the Four Days' Draft Riot of 1863 (1873), online
at [87]http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa.new/
[88]12. Lawrence J. McCaffrey, The Irish Diaspora in America (1976),
p. 66, suggests ghetto life exaggerated stereotypes and nurtured Irish
failure "by cultivating the paranoia, defeatism, and feelings of
inferiority planted by the past." See also Thomas H. O'Connor, The
Boston Irish: A Political History (1995), 94.
[89]13. The Irish tended to equate themselves with Catholicism,
interpreting anti- Catholicism as anti-Irish prejudice. Other
Catholics groups, especially the Germans, French Canadians, and Poles,
resented this proprietary attitude.
[90]14. Brian C. Mitchell, The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell,
1821--61 (1988), shows how the mill owners replaced the Yankee "Lowell
Girls" with Irish and French Catholics. Wealthy Protestants who
summered in Maine brought their servants along and asked the bishop to
help arrange for Catholic services for them. James O'Toole, Militant
and Triumphant: William Henry O'Connell and the Catholic Church in
Boston, 1859--1944 (1992), 42. On the decline of anti-Catholicism at
the local level, see Luisa Spencer Finberg, "The Press and the Pulpit:
Nativist Voices in Burlington and Middlebury, 1853--1860," Vermont
History (1993) 61: 156--175.
[91]15. The history of Pendennis. His fortunes and misfortunes, his
friends and his greatest enemy (1848) p. 102. The character was
referring to Protestant Irish.
[92]16. On relations between the two Irish groups, see David
Montgomery, "The Shuttle and the Cross: Weavers and Artisans in the
Kensington Riots of 1844." Journal of Social History (1972) 5:
411--446. In addition to religion, Irish regionalism led to
internecine fighting over jobs, which further gave the Irish community
a "fighting" reputation.
[93]17. It is now easy to search through hundreds of thousands of
pages of 19th century magazines and books, using the Making of America
online software at Cornell ([94]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/ or
Michigan. (see [95]http://moa.umdl.umich.edu For the Times, see
[96]http://newspaperarchive.com/ and for The Nation,
[97]http://www.archive.thenation.com/
[98]18. See the ad in The New York Times of March 25, 1854 shown
below--this is the only NINA ad for men anyone has ever found; also
see Sept. 21, 1859. The Times of Jan 9, 1854, had an ad for servants
from a "Protestant Employment Society." A houseworker ad on February
10, 1858 specified, "Only Scotch need apply." For comparison, the
search engine turned up 25 instances of the phrase "respectable young
girl" in 1861 alone, plus 34 entreaties for a "first rate cook" that
year. It turned up a solitary ad that specified "only Americans need
apply"--for a governess position in Kentucky. New York
[nina.jpg]
[End Page 421] Times July 18, 1855. The New York Irish-American (May
28, 1853) vowed that "we shall kill this anti-Irish-servant-maid
crusade." It claimed to have hired a lawyer to sue the advertisers and
the papers involved. On May 16, 1857, it proudly noted that there had
not been a "no Irish need apply" ad in a while. On maids see David M.
Katzman, Seven Days a Week: Women and Domestic Service in
Industrializing America (1978).
[99]19. Aunt Abbie, The O'Brian Family, or The Fruits of Bible Reading
(Philadelphia, 1855). They hired an Irish servant anyway, to keep the
story moving.
[100]20. The privacy zone around household employment still operates
in federal civil rights law. Stephen J. Pollak, "1968 and the
Beginnings of Federal Enforcement of Fair Housing," (2000), online at
[101]http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/housing/documents/pollak.htm has
explained the exemption from the 1968 Civil Rights law for "Mrs.
Murphy's boarding house." That is, for houses with no more than four
units, one of them occupied by the owner. The choice of an Irish
boarding house was doubtless a humorous touch by Senator Everett
Dirksen, who loved witty wordplay.
[102]21. Online at
[103]http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss/cw1/cw104040/001q.gif Library of
Con- gress. See William H. A. Williams, "Irish Song in America," in
Glazier, ed. The Encyclopedia of the Irish, 475--6.
[104]22. Online at [105]http://memory.loc.gov/ Library of Congress,
digital ID 09730
[106]http://memory.loc.gov/rbc/amss/as1/as109730/001q.gif
[107]23. Meagher's men (see
[108]www.mindesign.net/Ninth_Corps/meagher/meagher2.html and
Corcoran's brigade were Irish Catholic combat units raised in New York
City in 1861--62. (see
[109]http://members.tripod.com/~Shaung/164thny.html After Lincoln
issued the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation on Sept 22, 1862,
support from Irish Catholics fell off drastically, suggesting that the
lyrics were written before then. At the battle of Fredericksburg in
December, 1862, Meagher's brigade, comprising six all-Irish regiments
from New York, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, suffered 45% casualties
and the Irish enthusiasm for fighting drastically declined. Craig A.
Warren, "'Oh, God, What a Pity!': The Irish Brigade at Fredericksburg
and the Creation of Myth," Civil War History (2001) 47:193--221. For
the Irish mood see Bernstein, The New York City Draft Riots; Frank L.
Klement, "Catholics as Copperheads during the Civil War," The Catholic
Historical Review (1994) 80:36--57. For songs celebrating their
patriotism, see David Kincaid, "The Irish Volunteer: Songs of the
Irish Union Soldier, 1861--1865," online at
[110]http://www.hauntedfieldmusic.com/Lyrics.html
[111]24. The narrator is male but he selects an ad for a maid, which
gives the house address. The annual Donnybrook fair had a long
reputation for brawling. "Spalpeen" meant rascal and was current only
in Ireland; "Millia murther" ("million murders") was the standard oath
when one was getting beaten up. On more typical job searches by new
arrivals, see Joseph Dinneen, Ward Eight (1936), 1--3. For Tony
Pastor, see [112]http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/research/fa/pastor.html and
Susan Kattwinkel, Tony Pastor Presents: Afterpieces from the
Vaudeville Stage (1998). The modern version by Brendan Nolan (see
[113]http://brendannolan.com/) is a variant of the Poole version. For
music listen to [114]http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/song.htm
[115]25. The unsigned editorial was probably authored by John Mitchel,
the famous "Young Ireland" leader who was on staff at the time.
William Dillon, The Life of John Mitchel (1883). For text see
[116]http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/noirish3.htm
[117]26. John Aloysius Farrell, Tip O' Neill and the Democratic
Century: A Biography (2001) p 55; Miller, Emigrants and Exiles, 324.
The convent was run by Catholic nuns from French Quebec and primarily
served rich Unitarian girls. See Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Fire and
Roses : The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834 (2000). [End Page
422]
[118]27. There are a few other references to NINA in the periodical
literature: The Nation Jan 14, 1869, p. 27; March 23, 1871, p. 192;
1873 short story used to show prejudice of a crooked politician p 447;
(see
[119]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK293
4-0032-78); an amusing 1876 usage by novelist Henry James, Jr. in The
American, showing tolerance p 669 (see
[120]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK293
4-0037-136); 1876 account on why Chinese make better houseworkers in
San Francisco p 736 (see
[121]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABP766
4-0012-116); There is an explicit reference by an Irish priest in a
Catholic magazine of 1881, referring to an era 40 years before: Rev.
F. P. Ryan, "Ireland and the Irish," Catholic World (Sept 1881) 33:
849, online at [122]http://www.hti.umich.edu/
[123]28. Ray Allen Billington, The Protestant Crusade, 1800--1860
(1938), 407, and geographical maps 405--6. Tyler Anbinder, Nativism
and Slavery: The Northern Know Nothings and the Politics of the 1850's
(1992).
[124]29. Critics said Irish bosses made a mockery of republicanism;
for an example (with no anti-Catholic component), see "Irish Power" a
cartoon in Puck, April 3, 1889, online at
[125]http://historyproject.ucdavis.edu/imageapp.php?Major=RE&Minor=D&S
lideNum=23.00
[126]30. Jenny Franchot, Roads to Rome: The Antebellum Protestant
Encounter with Catholicism (1993); Billington, Protestant Crusade ;
Ward M. McAfee, Religion, Race, and Reconstruction: The Public School
in the Politics of the 1870s (1998). American scholars are laggard
compared to the excellent work done in Britain and Canada: D. G. Paz,
Popular Anti-Catholicism in Mid-Victorian England (1992); John D.
Brewer and Gareth I. Higgins, "Understanding Anti-Catholicism in
Northern Ireland," Sociology, (1999) 33:235--261; J. R. Miller,
"Anti-Catholic Thought in Victorian Canada," Canadian Historical
Review, (1985), 66:474--494; Mark McGowan, The Waning of the Green:
Catholics, the Irish and Identity in Toronto, 1887--1922 (1999);
Terence Punch, "Anti-Irish Prejudice in Nineteenth century Nova
Scotia: The Literary and Statistical Evidence," in Thomas P. Power,
ed., The Irish in Atlantic Canada, 1780--1900 (1991). For an
anti-Catholic compendium see Samuel W. Barnum, Romanism as It Is
(1872), online at [127]http://www.hti.umich.edu/
[128]31. The bishops strongly opposed the Fenians and the Molly
Maguires; the Pope condemned the boycotts in the Irish Land War.
Violence simply was an unacceptable technique. The one American
exception that proves the rule was Rev. Edward McGlynn, who was
repeatedly warned and finally excommunicated. Many priests and nuns
were arrested in Missouri during Reconstruction; the Irish were known
to have supported the Confederacy and the Radicals wanted to exclude
them from politics. The indictments were thrown out by the U.S.
Supreme Court. See Harold C. Bradley, "In Defense of John Cummings,"
Missouri Historical Review (1962) 57: 1--15; William T. Johnson,
"Missouri Test Oath" The Catholic Encyclopedia (1912) v 14, online at
[129]http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/14538a.htm
[130]32. In Ireland the political role of priests was well
established; John Newsinger, "The Catholic Church In
Nineteenth-Century Ireland," European History Quarterly (1995) 25:
247--267. Rev. L. W. Bacon, "The Literature of the Coming
Controversy," Putnam's Monthly Magazine (Jan 1869) p. 72, praises
rapid maturation of RC church; online at
[131]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK928
3-0013-10
[132]33. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles 268--70, 273--4; 314--23;
Stephan Thernstrom, The Other Bostonians: Poverty and Progress in the
American Metropolis, 1880--1970 (1973); Joseph P. Ferrie, "The Entry
into The U.S. Labor Market of Antebellum European Immigrants,
1840--1860," Explorations in Economic History (1997) 34:295--330;
Ferrie, "Up and out or [End Page 423] Down and Out? Immigrant Mobility
in the Antebellum United States," The Journal of Interdisciplinary
History (1995) 27:33--55.
[133]34. The Irish image in the popular media has been a topic of
interest for historians. As Lewis P. Curtis showed in Apes and Angels:
The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (1997) Punch magazine in London
commissioned many cartoons and jokes denigrating the Irish in every
way possible, and making them look like monkeys. For example see the
crude humor of its Dec 21, 1861 issue, pp 250--51, online at
[134]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABR010
2-0072-6 American writers in the MOA corpus never referred to the
Irish as monkeys or apes (though one did refer to Yale undergraduates
as monkeys.) However the German-American cartoonist Thomas Nast picked
up the device. Nast was famous for his use of animals--including the
Republican elephant and Democratic donkey--but does not seem to have
depicted the Irish or any ethnic group as animals. Nevertheless rival
cartoonist Frank Beard ridiculed Nast by drawing him as a monkey, in
Judge July 12, 1884. Otherwise there were no references to the Irish
as "Simian" or subhuman in the American literature. Anthony Wohl
reviews the British hostility towards the Irish (see
[135]http://65.107.211.206/history/race/Racism.html).
[136]35. The most visible--and ghastly--conditions were in New York
City; see Tyler Anbinder, Five Points: The Nineteenth-Century New York
City Neighborhood That Invented Tap Dance, Stole Elections and Became
the World's Most Notorious Slum (2001).
[137]36. In Ireland the Land Wars of 1879--82 involved a demonization
of landlords, contrasted with their sacralization of the exploited
tenant farmer, reflecting a premodern rural ethic, coupled with a duty
sense of fighting back against the oppressor. See Donald Jordan, "The
Irish National League and the 'unwritten law': rural protest and
nation-building in Ireland, 1882--1890," Past & Present (1998)
158:146--70. A dynamic interaction between agitators inside Ireland
and America existed from the mid 1850s, resulting in the formation of
the Fenians and the Irish Republican Brotherhood, as well as
fund-raising in the States. The Fenians turned violent in 1863, aiming
to invade Canada. This cross-Atlantic interplay perhaps heightened
Irish suspicions that they were abused by Yankees as much as by
Englishmen. Oliver Rafferty, "Fenianism in North America in the 1860s:
The Problems for Church and State," History (1999) 84: 257--277;
Victor A. Walsh, "Irish Nationalism and Land Reform: The Role of the
Irish in America," Irish Studies (1985) 4: 253--269.
[138]37. William Cardinal O'Connell of Boston reveled in the memories
of his boyhood, when he and his chums would refuse to endure "Puritan
Yankee jeers and taunts," and often would mete out a few retaliatory
"cuffing(s), blows, and bloody noses." William Henry O'Connell,
Recollections of Seventy Years (1934), pp. 35--39. Chicago's first
mayor Daley built his political reputation as a gang leader circa
1919, with perhaps some involvement in the Chicago race riot that
year, as revealed by chapter 1 from Adam Cohen and Elizabeth Taylor,
American Pharaoh: Mayor Richard J. Daley: His Battle for Chicago and
the Nation (2000).
[139]38. As the biographers of Mayor Richard Daley observe:
Daley's childhood catechism of Irish deprivations left him
convinced that no group had suffered as his kinsmen had suffered.
In the 1960s, when Daley was turning a deaf ear to the civil rights
movement, one liberal critic opined: "I think one of the real
problems {\lbracket}Daley{\rbracket} has with Negroes is
understanding that the Irish are no longer the out-ethnic group."
Cohen and Taylor, American Pharaoh, p. 21.
[140]39. The Irish have worked to include the Potato Famine in the
school curriculum; see
[141]http://www.nde.state.ne.us/SS/irish/irish_pf.html [End Page 424]
[142]40. The sense of victimhood among American ethnic groups varied
greatly. It was highest for groups who lived in high-tension local
situations with neighbors they feared, such as Irish, African
Americans, Jews, Japanese Americans, and white Southerners (after
Reconstruction). However, it seems to be lower among Mormons and
German Americans, who were targets primarily of federal wrath. The
Chinese Americans seem to have surprisingly low levels of perceived
victimhood, perhaps because they systematically walled themselves off
from very hostile neighbors after 1880. The question is open on what
the correlation was between perceived and actual discrimination.
[143]41. Matthew E. Mason, "'The Hands Here Are Disposed to Be
Turbulent': Unrest among the Irish Trackmen of the Baltimore and Ohio
Railroad, 1829--1851," Labor History (1998) 39: 253--72. Peter Way,
"Shovel and Shamrock: Irish Workers and Labor Violence in the Digging
of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal," Labor History (1989) 30: 489--517.
[144]42. The first chapter Divided We Stand (2001), by Bruce Nelson,
provides an excellent discussion of the collective work culture of
longshoremen, 95% of whom were Irish in New York. It is online at
[145]http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/stores/detail/-/books/069101
7328/excerpt/ref=pm_dp_ln_b_3/103-2862524-8067847
[146]43. Thomas N. Maloney, "Personnel Policy and Racial Inequality in
the Pre-World War II North," The Journal of Interdisciplinary History
(1999) 30:235--57; Daniel Nelson, Managers and Workers: Origins of the
New Factory System in the United States 1880--1920 (1975); Sanford
Jacoby, Employing Bureaucracy: Managers, Unions, and the
Transformation of Work in American Industry, 1900--1945 (1985);
Richard W. Steele, "'No Racials': Discrimination Against Ethnics in
American Defense Industry, 1940--42," Labor History (1991) 32: 66--90.
When job discrimination ends--as it largely did against Catholics in
Northern Ireland after 1972, the statistics show a rapid equalization
of social status. Richard Breen, "Class Inequality and Social Mobility
in Northern Ireland, 1973 to 1996," American Sociological Review
(2000) 65:392--406. The Irish were not privy to the private letters of
management--but historians are, They never mention the desirability of
not hiring Irish--though they were often keen about blackballing
strikebreakers. See Thomas C. Cochran, Railroad Leaders 1845--1890
(1953); James R. Barrett, "Unity and Fragmentation: Class, Race and
Ethnicity on Chicago's South Side, 1900--1922," Journal of Social
History (1984) 18:37--55; Licht, Working for the Railroad. Railroad
policy, as one president explained to a priest, was zero tolerance for
discrimination. "If there are any just grounds even of suspicion that
there is any movement among our Superintendents to discriminate in any
manner against Irishmen or against Catholics, we will see that the
proper steps are taken to prevent it." Franklin B. Gowen to Fr. Daniel
O'Connor, March 15, 1880, quoted in Marvin W. Schlegel, Ruler of the
Reading, The Life of Franklin B. Gowen (1947), p. 176.
[147]44. See Bayor and Meagher, eds. New York Irish, especially Hasia
Diner, "'The Most Irish City in the Union': The Era of Great
Migration, 1844--1877" pp 87--106. For conditions in Ireland and the
mind-set of the immigrants, see Miller, Emigrants and Exiles. Miller
shows that the Catholics felt exiled from their native land, driven
out by malevolent Protestants. At the same time the Orange Protestants
became much more hostile to the Catholics; they were a strong factor
in Canada, and weak in the USA. See Donald MacRaild, "The Orange
Order, Militant Protestantism and Anti-Catholicism: A Bibliographical
Essay," (1999) online at
[148]http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/guides/orange.shtml
[149]45. Carl Siracusa, A Mechanical People: Perceptions of the
Industrial Order in Massachusetts, 1815--1880 (1979). For a Catholic
view see "The Sanitary and Moral Condition of New York City," Catholic
World (August, 1869) 9:553--566, online at
[150]http://www.yale.edu/glc/archive/1021.htm
[151]46. Dale T. Knobel, Paddy and the Republic: Ethnicity and
Nationality in Antebellum America (1986) grossly exaggerates the
ridicule toward the Irish--even to the point of reprinting cartoons
that had nothing to do with the Irish, after removing the captions.
Knobel [End Page 425] haphazardly selected a couple hundred
publications (he never says exactly how many); he selected newspaper
stories, for example, that dealt with riots and other episodes of
intergroup violence which have little relevance to employment or
social status. He found 1592 references to the Irish over the years
1820--1860. However sources, such as melodramas with numerous Irish
characters, had numerous references, and each was counted as a
separate "unit-perception." In all he found 392 different descriptive
adjectives, and coded them according to a scheme developed by a
psychologist for the language in use a century later. Knobel found a
small (statistically insignificant) increase in emphasis on physical
characteristics in the depiction of Irish in melodrama and popular
fiction in the 1850s (p. 194). He then rebuilt his thesis around this
tiny effect; he failed to follow proper research design by not taking
a larger sample to see if the effect was caused by sampling error. (He
only looked at 33 melodramas, and then split them three ways, so his N
is around 12.) Likewise he divided his 30 school texts into three
groups. On the whole, Knobel's statistical research design is much too
weak to support his conclusions. For more on the problem of content
analysis, see Charles Dollar and Richard Jensen, Historian's Guide to
Statistics (1971). Knobel's own data reveal that physical references
to the Irish were declining in three of the seven categories of
writing, including newspapers and popular nonfiction. He mentions
adjectives that he found only once--such as "Simian," "bestial,"
"savage," "brutish" and "low-browed", and many readers have assumed
these were "typical" descriptions of the Irish. In contrast to his few
sources this project examined 14,000 books and magazine articles, with
48,000 references to the Irish. We used the amazing searchable indexes
at the Making of America project, the New York Times, and The Nation,
which of course were not available when Knobel wrote. Searches
indicate that Americans rarely or never referred to Blacks as "smoked
Irish"; they did not call the Irish "white Negroes" nor characterize
them as "Simian," "bestial," "savage," or "low-browed." We found
exactly one reference to "low browed" (p. 267 in an 1857 humorous
essay full of vast exaggerations), (see Thomas Butler Gunn, The
Physiology of New York Boarding Houses (1857), 267, online at
[152]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ANY638
4) and one to "Simian" (by William Dean Howells, (see
[153]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK401
4-0083-25) p. 191, in 1891, commenting on the British cartoonists.)
Knobel's misreading of the evidence was perpetuated by David Roediger,
The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working
Class (1991) and Noel Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (1995) who
uncritically used page 88 of Knobel (which, however, is highly
ambiguous and misleading in the first place.) No American in the 19^th
century is known to have considered Irish as black. The Confederacy
for example, welcomed Irish Catholics as citizens and soldiers--even
as governors and generals. See Glazer, Encyclopedia, 155--56, 868,
929--30; Jason H. Silverman, "Stars, Bars and Foreigners: The
Immigrants and the Making of the Confederacy," Journal of Confederate
History (1988) 1:265--88.
[154]47. Hasia R. Diner, Erin's Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant
Women in the Nineteenth Century (1983); Richard Stivers, Hair of the
Dog: Irish Drinking and Its American Stereotype. (2nd ed. 2000).
[155]48. Dennis Clark, "Ethnic Enterprise and Urban Development,"
Ethnicity (1978) 5:108--118; Perry R. Duis, The Saloon: Public
Drinking in Chicago and Boston, 1880--1920 (1983); Walter Licht,
Getting Work in Philadelphia, 1840--1950 (1992); Timothy J. Meagher,
Inventing Irish America: Generation, Class, and Ethnic Identity in a
New England City, 1880--1928 (2000). Kevin Blackburn, "The Protestant
Work Ethic and the Australian Mercantile Elite, 1880--1914," Journal
of Religious History, (1997) 21:193--208, demonstrates the Irish did
not share the individualistic work ethic of their Protestant neighbors
in Australia. The best coverage of the rise of the Irish middle class
is Paula M. Kane, Separatism and Subculture. Boston Catholicism,
1900--1920 (1994).
[156]49. Diner, Erin's Daughters.
[157]50. David W. Galenson, "Ethnic Differences in Neighborhood
Effects on the School Attendance of Boys in Early Chicago," History of
Education Quarterly (1998) 38:17--35; [End Page 426] Galenson,
"Neighborhood, and the School Attendance of Boys in Antebellum
Boston," Journal of Urban History (1998) 24:603--26; Joel Perlmann,
Ethnic Differences: Schooling and Social Structure among the Irish,
Italians, Jews, and Blacks in an American City, 1880--1935 (1988), re
Providence; Steven Herscovici, "Ethnic Differences in School
Attendance in Antebellum Massachusetts: Evidence from Newburyport,
1850--1860," Social Science History (1994) 18:471--96.
[158]51. Miller, Emigrants and Exiles argues this "peasant" outlook
was strong among the Irish; Lloyd I. Rudolph, "The Modernity of
Tradition: The Democratic Incarnation of Caste in India," American
Political Science Review (1965) 59:5--89, shows that an entire caste
can indeed move upward by sticking together.
[159]52. Erie, Rainbow's End, 61.
[160]53. Jonathan Prude, The Coming of Industrial Order: Town and
Factory Life in Rural Massachusetts, 1810--1860 (1983) demonstrates
good relations between the mill owners and the Irish. Also see
Siracusa, A Mechanical People; Mitchell, Paddy Camps, and Bernstein
Draft Riots.
[161]54. Walter Licht, Working for the Railroad (1983), pp. 222--23;
Tamara Hareven, Family Time and Industrial Time (1982). The nearest
example is an 1886 newspaper report that a Worcester, Massachusetts,
factory was deliberately replacing Irish with cheaper Swedish workers.
There was considerable tension between the groups, expressed in street
violence and politics. The Swedes, however, seem to have been rather
more skilled and better paid. The French also complained about being
replaced by Swedes. Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will:
Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870--1920 (1983), pp.
88--89.
[162]55. Diner, Erin's Daughters, 80--94; Diane M. Hotten-Somers,
"Relinquishing and Reclaiming Independence: Irish Domestic Servants,
American Middle-class Mistresses, and Assimilation, 1850--1920,"
Eire-lreland: a Journal of Irish Studies, (Spring--Summer 2001)
185--203; Janet A. Nolan, Ourselves Alone: Women's Emigration from
Ireland. 1885--1920 (1989), 73--90; Katzman, Seven Days a Week,
271--73; Diner, "Women, Nineteenth Century" in Glazer, ed.
Encyclopedia of Irish 964; Faye E. Dudden, Serving Women: Household
Service in Nineteenth-Century America (1983), 62--5; Aife Murray,
"Miss Margaret's Emily Dickinson," Signs (1999) 24: 697--732. For a
negative view see Kenny, American Irish, 153--54. Note that in
aristocratic Britain the butlers controlled the servants' quarters,
not the housewives; an informal Irish network would be a threat to
them, so perhaps they were the ones who decided, "No Irish Need
Apply." See Jessica Gerard, Country House Life: Family and Servants.
1815--1914 (1994). On the workings of informal networks among
domestics, see Dorothea Schneider, "The Work That Never Ends: New
Literature on Paid Domestic Work and Women of Color," Journal of
American Ethnic History (1998) 17: 61--66. For contemporary views see
Grace A. Ellis, "Household Servants," The Galaxy (Sept 1872)
14:349--55 online at
[163]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ACB872
7-0014-43; Robert Tomes, "Your Humble Servant," Harper's New Monthly
Magazine. (June 1864) 29: 53--60, online at
[164]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK401
4-0029-10; Harriet Beecher Stowe, "House and Home Papers," Atlantic
Monthly (June 1864) 13:759 online at
[165]http://cdl.library.cornell.edu/cgi-bin/moa/moa-cgi?notisid=ABK293
4-0013-105
For a revealing cartoon see [166]"Bridget...Our Self-Made Cooks - From
Paupers to Potentates..."
[167]56. David Buffum and Robert Whaples, "Fear and Lathing in the
Michigan Furniture Industry: Employee-based Discrimination a Century
Ago," Economic Inquiry (1995) 33:234--52 finds the Irish were overpaid
by 7%; Paul McGouldrick and Michael Tannen, "Did American
Manufacturers Discriminate against Immigrants Before 1914?" Journal of
Economic History (1977): 723--46 finds virtually no discrimination.
For theory see Kenneth Arrow, "The Theory of Discrimination," in
Discrimination in Labor Markets, edited by Orley Ashenfelter and
Albert Rees, (1973), pp. 3--33; Gary Becker, The Economics of
Discrimination, 2nd. ed. (1971); Glen G. Cain, "The Economic Analysis
of Labor Market Discrimination: A Survey" in Orley C. Ashenfelter and
Richard Layard, eds. Handbook [End Page 427] of Labor Economics (1986)
v1 ch 13 . On ethnic in-hiring, see Odd S. Lovoll, A Century of Urban
Life: The Norwegians in Chicago before 1930 (1988), pp. 153, 159, 165.
[168]57. Harper's Weekly reported on the anti-Chinese movement in
California; their reports are online at
[169]http://immigrants.harpweek.com/ James Ford Rhodes, History of the
United States (1920) 8:186 explained how real job discrimination
worked:
"There were a large number of unemployed in San Francisco,
estimated when the winter came on at 15,000, a large number for a
city of about 200,000; these were willing converts of Dennis
Kearney, the leader of the Sandlotters. Kearney was a drayman of
some education who had lost money through speculation in mining
stocks and who swayed the crowd by his inflammatory speech. "The
Chinese must go," was a favorite declaration and, from attacking
the Chinese, Kearney naturally arrived at a denunciation of their
employers. "A little judicious hanging right here and now," he
said, "will be the best course to pursue with the capitalists and
stock sharps who are all the time robbing us." A notable event was
a meeting on October 29 (1877) on Nob Hill in front of the railroad
kings' wooden palaces. In his speech Kearney demanded that the
Central Pacific Railroad discharge all Chinese within three months.
"Recollect Judge Lynch," he said, "and that is the judge that the
working-men will want in California if the condition of things is
not ameliorated." Kearney was arrested for incendiary language and
when released reiterated his refrain, "The Chinese must go," and
exhibiting to the Sand Lot meeting four feet of rope with a noose
declared that that was their platform."
[170]58. From Stephanie W. Greenberg, "Industrial Location and Ethnic
Residential Patterns in an Industrializing City: Philadelphia, 1880,"
in Theodore Hershberg, ed., Philadelphia (1981), p. 215.
[171]59. Jensen, unpublished data, using sample of 1915 Iowa State
Census. The "lifetime income" is an index involving time discounts,
and should be considered the present value of the future income of the
group, holding age constant. "Return" is how much one additional year
of high school improved annual earnings over a lifetime.
[172]60. Peter Baskerville, "Did Religion Matter?: Religion and Wealth
in Urban Canada at the Turn of the Twentieth Century," (unpublished
paper); Joel Perlmann and Waldinger, Roger, "Second Generation
Decline? Children of Immigrants, Past and Present: A Reconsideration,"
International Migration Review (1997) 31:893--922.
[173]61. Pete Hamill, A Drinking Life: A Memoir (1994), pp. 110--11.
[174]62. Stephan Thernstrom, Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in
a Nineteenth Century City (1964); see also Howard Gitelman, "No Irish
Need Apply: Patterns of and Responses to Ethnic Discrimination in the
Labor Market," Labor History (1973) 14(1): 56--68. Looking at Waltham,
Massachusetts, 1850--90 he finds Irish avoided on-the-job training or
formal education; they stayed in the lowest-paying, unskilled jobs.
[175]63. See Andrew Greeley, The Irish Americans: The Rise to Money
and Power (1981), pp. 110--20; Thernstrom, Other Bostonians; JoEllen
Vinyard, "The Irish on the Urban Frontier: Detroit, 1850--1880." (PhD
Michigan, 1972); David Noel Doyle, Irish-Americans, Native Rights and
National Empires; The Structure, Divisions and Attitudes of the
Catholic Minority In the Decade of Expansion, 1890--1901 (Doctoral
Thesis, University of Iowa, 1976; published by Arno); Grace McDonald,
History Of The Irish In Wisconsin In The Nineteenth Century (1954);
and Steven P. Erie, "Politics, the Public Sector and Irish Social
Mobility: San Francisco, 1870--1900," Western Political Quarterly
(1978) 31: 274--289. For good essays comparing cities across the
country see Timothy J. Meagher, From Paddy to Studs: Irish-American
Communities in the Turn of the Century Era, 1880 to 1920 (1986). For
comparative wealth data, see Timothy G. Conley and David W. Galenson,
"Nativity and Wealth in Mid-Nineteenth Century Cities," The Journal of
Economic History, (1998) 58:468--93. [End Page 428]
[176]64. Terry N. Clark, "The Irish Ethnic Identity and the Spirit of
Patronage" Ethnicity (1978) 2: 305--359, found municipal spending much
higher in Irish strongholds; compare Erie, Rainbow's End, 46. See also
John D. Buenker, Urban Liberalism and Progressive Reform (1973).
Patrick D. Kennedy, "Chicago's Irish Americans and the Candidacies of
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932--1944," Illinois Historical Journal (1995)
88: 263--278.
[177]65. German was another matter, especially in World War I, and as
late as 1940 Wendell Willkie was attacked for his German (Protestant)
heritage.
[178]66. Andrew Greeley That Most Distrustful Nation: the Taming of
the American Irish (1972) and many other reports using national survey
data.
[179]67. Identification of a minority's dysfunctional and pathological
internal problems make an investigator vulnerable to attacks for
"blaming the victim" or "racism." A firestorm of criticism engulfed
sociologist Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1965, when he reported on the
condition of the Negro family. Daryl Michael Scott, "The Politics of
Pathology: The Ideological Origins of the Moynihan Controversy,"
Journal of Policy History (1996) 8: 81--105.
_________________________________________________________________
References
2. mailto:RJensen at uic.edu
3. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT1
4. http://tigger.uic.edu/%7Erjensen/no-irish.htm#FOOT2
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