Emigration to the USA Were there strategies to success?

1. Emigration to the USA Were there strategies to success?

2. Irish Emigration to the USA

3. Jewish Immigrants • Came from severe oppression • To a nation that really did not welcome them • How did they become so • successful?

4. Highest Income Highest Level of Education Most Occupational Prestige

5. The Irish Catholics came from a much more Primitive Environment and are now a close second in each category

6. How? • Why?

7. Strategies? • By Chance? • Luck OF THE IRISH?

8. The First Major Minority Group: All of the urban pathologies we now associate with the urban poor

9. Subsistence to Market Rural to Urban Non English to English Speakers Roman Catholic

10. Earlier During the Eighteenth-century

11. 8 Ulster Irish * 1715, 1730, 1745 8Irish Catholics from Ulster 8 Captured Indentures * Cromwell sent over 100,000 Irish to Barbados To Hell or Connaught (or Barbados) 8 Quaker Servants

12. Where the British Empire Goes So go the Irish: as Soldiers, Servants, Missionaries, Settlers, etc.

13. Ulster Presbyterians become American Frontiersmen Irish Catholics from Ulster become Protestant in America Irish Catholic Indentures Also, Anglo-Irish colonlists Ulster Presbyterian

14. 33% to 40% of Washington’s Army was Irish Many British thought it was an Irish rebellion, or a Presbyterian rebellion

15. By 1789 The United Irishmen Alien-Sedition Act

16. Colonial Period: • Irish as Alien Servants and Frontiersmen • 2.Revolutionary Period: • Irish gained claim to patriotism • Early Republican Period: • Irish convergence of talented, educated men • Jacksonian Period: • Emphasis returns to mass immigration of unskilled labor • Period of intense Anti-Irish activity

17. The Philadelphia Example

18. Philadelphia • 1850 72,312 Irish born • 18% of city’s population • 1860 95,458 Irish born • 17% of city’s population • In NYC & Boston 23% of the population • Not counting 1st & 2nd generation American Irish

19. Poor Irishin Philly • 2/3 of those in Alms House were Irish Alms Houses lent poor out as laborers

20. CHOLERA EPIDEMIC

21. Philadelphiavs. New York & Boston Quaker vs. Dutch/Anglican Merchants Quaker vs. Puritan Brahmin

22. Housing -- 1851 • New York 515,000 • 37,730 houses • Philadelphia 490,000 • 61,200 houses

23. HOUSES Building and Loans

24. UNSKILLED WORKERS Canals: Erie, Delaware & Chesapeake, New Orleans Railroads

25. COMPETITION WITH BLACK LABORS • IRISH MOVE INTO CITIES ENMASSE • $3 paid forwarding agents for fictitious RR jobs • They could work 12 hours for 87.5 cents a day • Much lower than African Americans • See Want-ads in Boston & Philly papers • NINA

26. ENTREPRENEURS • Entrepreneurs Raise the Irish to New Levels • 1850 48% of Irish were unskilled laborers • This has NO parallel with any other immigrant group • But only 33% of Philly’s Irish were unskilled laborers

27. 1850Only 1% of Boston Irish were grocers 1857 20% of Philly’s grocers were Irish 12% of Philly’s Dry Goods Merchants were Irish

28. SEVEN YEARS CANNOT MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE!

29. Easier Upward Mobility the Further west they settled • Chicago- • But remember Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, Daniel “Peg leg” Sullivan, and Mother Jones. • San Francisco • Shanghai’d • 1848 -- 1849ers

30. Upward Mobility • Priesthood & Religious Life • Politics • Police • Firemen • Labor Unions • Nationalism

31. Key to Success: Entrepreneurism

32. Fields Dominated by the Irish in the 19th & early 20th centuries • Boxers • Sportsmen • Singers • Actors • Paddy Irish • Musicians • Organized Crime

33. BUT, These fields did not lead to upward mobility Except for a select few

34. CATHOLIC SCHOOLS • Protestant Bibles • Proselytize Catholics • Harass Children

35. Developed an Americanized Catholic Culture, not a Celtic or Gaelic Catholic Culture

36. Prior to 1860Boston has only 4 Catholic schools PHILLY HAD 19

37. Irish Construction Companies Build Catholic Churches & Schools Irish Catholic Workers Workers can afford homes

38. NATIVISTS RIOTS • BIBLE CONTROVERSARY • HARASSMENT OF CATHOLIC CHLDREN

42. ST AUGUSTINE’S • FR. PATRICK E. MORIARTY

43. How did the Jews become the richest and most educated ethnic group in the United States?

44. U Why were Jews able to become the richest and most educated ethnic group in the U.S.?

45. EXILES

46. 98% of all Jews in the Russian Empire lived in Poverty, Persecution, and Overcrowded Conditions

47. They could not own land in the Russian Empire

48. Concentrate on urban skills & trades

49. 1899 – 1914 64% were Skilled Workers from Polish Pale 1902 – 1911 38% were Skilled Workers in Austria-Hungary

50. -Market Economy- Factories pushed many Jews out of the trades. Russian peasants moved into cities and took factory jobs