Irish Immigration to the USA: Success Stories Amidst Adversity

Irish Immigration to the USA

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

Highest Income Highest Level of Education Most Occupational Prestige

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

How? • Why?

Strategies? • By Chance? • Luck?

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

Subsistence to Market Rural to Urban Non English--English Speakers Roman Catholic

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

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

Ulster Presbyterian Ulster Presbyterians become American Frontiersmen Irish Catholics from Ulster become Protestant in America Irish Catholic Indentures (also Anglo-Irish)

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

By 1789 United Irishmen Alien-Sedition Act

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

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

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

COLERA EPIDEMIC

Philadelphiavs. New York & Boston

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

HOUSES Building and Loans

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

COMPETITION WITH BLACK LABORS • IRISH MOVE INTO CITIES ENMASS • $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

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

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

SEVEN YEARS CANNOT MAKE THAT MUCH OF A DIFFERENCE!

CATHOLIC SCHOOLS • Protestant Bibles • Proselytize Catholics • Harass Children

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

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

NATIVISTS RIOTS • BIBLE CONTROVERSARY • HARASSMENT OF CATHOLIC CHLDREN

ST AUGUSTINE’S • FR. PATRICK E. MORIARTY

Irish Immigration to the USA: Success Stories Amidst Adversity

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