USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 5
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44 Ferenczi, op. cit., I, 114 ff .; Marcus Lee Hansen, Emigration from Con- tinental Europe, 1815-1850 .. (MS., H. C.L.), Chapter I, part 2; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 79 ff.
45 For the status of agriculture in these years, cf. Sigmund Fleischmann, Die Agrarkrisis von 1845-1855 . .. (Heidelberg, 1902), passim; Philippovich, op. cit., 77; Willcox, op. cit., II, 316; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 252 ff.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
of railroads over southwestern Germany had so increased peas- ant mobility that the volume of emigration remained consist- ently high.46 As a result the number of emigrants, only 1,065 in 1820 and 2,174 in 1830, rose to 32,674 in 1840 and to 83,169 in 1850. By 1854 it reached its highest mark, 239,246 and, though it declined thereafter, still numbered 31,360 at its lowest in 1862.47 Throughout, the desire and ability to leave were confined almost exclusively to the discontented free peasants of southwestern Germany.48
Generally then, throughout this period, not the groups with- out opportunities migrated, but those whose opportunities were narrowing with changes in the economic system. And for a long time the physical difficulties involved in coming to America constituted an additional selective factor. Inland transporta- tion and ocean passage were costly and irregular.49 Prospective immigrants required more money and information than ordi- nary peasants or laborers possessed. Indeed, a cautious Scots- man in Boston advised his "countrymen to keep at home if they cannot bring from £500 to £1,000." 50 Above all, new- comers needed ambition and enterprise to carry them through the difficulties of changing worlds. As a result, both the causes and conditions of emigration restricted it to the most prosper- ous and the most venturesome.
These were not satisfied with what Boston had to offer, for new opportunities were not to be found there. The very con- ditions which created the impulse to leave directed the emi- grants elsewhere. The guidebooks and travel accounts they read spoke clearly enough of what they looked forward to.
46 Maurice R. Davie, World Immigration . .. (New York, 1936), 69; for the development of German railways, cf. Clapham, op. cit., 150 ff.
47 Willcox, op. cit., II, 333 ; E. Tonnelat, L'Expansion allemande hors d'Europe . (Paris, 1908), 88.
48 René Gonnard, L'Emigration européène au XIX siècle . . . (Paris, 1906), 99 ; Hansen, loc. cit., 632.
D. F. Donnant, Statistical Account of the United States of America (transl. 49 . by William Playfair ... , London, 1805), 21; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 213; Guillet, op. cit., 43 ff .; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 83, 89.
50 W. Faux, Memorable Days in America . .. a Journal of a Tour to the United States ... (London, 1823), 29.
4I
THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
It was the deep rich soil these books praised most enthusias- tically. Cheap land and ideal climatic conditions waiting to be exploited by broad backs and strong arms were the most extolled attractions. For the city they had little but contempt. Equally persistent was the advice to shun the seaboard, to push imme- diately westward, to settle beyond the Alleghenies at once. Every immigrant was warned, "Go farther west; not until you reach Koshkonong [Wisconsin] will you find America." 51 Hard-working, thrifty agriculturalists, whether German, Eng- lish, Norwegian, or Swedish, who felt an attachment to the soil and a dislike for confining themselves to the city, did not hesitate to follow this advice. Those able to come could gen- erally well afford to get beyond the seaboard to the west, for they were by no means impoverished when they arrived.52
Nor were the artisans more likely to settle in Boston. They had been persons of standing, "not hopelessly and despairingly poor. . . . not quite disinherited from the old village economy in which a man did not merely sell his labour but had some kind of holding and independence of his own." 53 Usually they managed to salvage a bit of capital to bring with them, and, selective about their destination, sought new towns from whose rapid growth and fresh opportunities they might profit. Many landed in Boston, a fairly important port of entry; but few remained. Some stayed to act as "runners" or to supply the
51 Blegen, op. cit., 97, 147, 344; cf. also Whitely Stokes, Projects for Re- establishing the Internal Peace ... of Ireland ... (Dublin, 1799), 12; Charles Norton, Der treue Führer des Auswanderers nach den Vereinigten Staaten von Nord-Amerika . (Regensburg, 1848), 4, 5; Walter Cox, Advice to Emigrants or Observations . . . of the American Union (Dublin, 1802), 6; Boston Pilot, October 23, 1841, September 8, 1848; [Johan Ulrich Buechler], Land und Seereisen eines St. Gallischen Kantonburgers nach Nordamerika . . . 1816, 1817 und 1818 ... (St. Gallen, 1820), 212 ff .; Ole Rynning, True Account of America (translated by T. C. Blegen, Minneapolis, 1926), 79 ff.
52 Thus, emigrants from Bavaria, who numbered 256,336 between 1835 and 1865, took out with them 70,450,198 fl. or an average of 275 fl. per individual (computed from tables in Philippovich, op. cit., 76, 90, 91). Emigrants from Germany as a whole took an average of £29-10-0 with them in 1848-52 and £35-0-0 in 1853-54 (Michael G. Mulhall, Dictionary of Statistics [London, 1892], 246).
53 J. L. and Barbara Hammond, Skilled Labourer, 1760-1832 (London, 1919), 3.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
multitudinous needs of immigrants in transit; others, because they were stranded. But they were not numerous. Boston derived its immigrants from the ranks of neither such artisans nor such peasants; they had sufficient mobility to seek more fertile fields.
Two conditions were essential before a large immigrant group would stay in Boston. First, the immigrants must be more interested in escaping from Europe than in what faced them in America. Secondly, they must have so little mobility that, once in Boston, they could not go elsewhere because poverty deprived them of the means, and despondence of the desire. For a long time this combination of factors did not apply to any migration that affected Boston. The indentured servant, the imported contract laborer, and the conditionally assisted emigrant who lacked mobility were unknown to Boston during this period.54 Whatever assistance there was, was di- rected away from the city. Aid to Germans was either dis- couraged entirely, as in Baden where only those who could pay their own passage were permitted to emigrate, or planned to create consistent, homogeneous groups, first in eastern Eu- rope, then in South America, and after the 1820's, in the Balkans and in Texas.55 Even when these projects failed, the various vereine promoting immigration and arranging itiner- aries looked forward to the Germanization of a single western state. Consequently their routes led directly to the west from New York or New Orleans.56 Great Britain's assistance was
54 Young immigrants, among them Joseph Pulitzer, imported on contract to be enlisted for the sake of bounty money, formed an exception during the Civil War. Cf. Boston Pilot, March 19, 1864; Cork Examiner, April 16, 1864; Don C. Seitz, Joseph Pulitzer ... (New York, 1924), 42; Bostoner Zeitung, Decem- ber 23, 1865. The only earlier exceptions were the catenoni, Sardinians im- ported by Italians in America to act as professional beggars. Surprisingly large numbers of them were brought over and exploited for several years before being freed (cf. account in L'Eco d'Italia [New York], May 10, 17, 1851).
55 Philippovich, op. cit., 112; Marcus L. Hansen, "German Schemes of Colon- ization Smith College Studies in History, October, 1923, IX, 9, II ff., 17, 33, 37 ff .; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 108 ff., 228 ff.
56 Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 123 ff., 166 ff., 188 ff., 238 ff. For the desire to perpetuate Germanism, cf. E. Tonnelat, L'Expansion allemande hors d'Europe (Paris, 1908), 31.
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THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
just as persistently directed at strengthening her own colonies, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.57 But throughout the early part of the century, across the Irish Sea from England, relentless historic forces steadily neared a culmination which eventually swept thousands of immigrants into a startled and scarcely prepared Boston.
Ever since the treacherous King of Leinster, Dermot Mac- Murrough, fled beyond the sea to call to his aid Henry Strong- bow, Sassenach King of England, the "dear dark head" of Eire had bent beneath the weight of foreign rulers.58 But until the seventeenth century the lack of independence had little influ- ence upon the bulk of the people. Subjection began to affect the life of the common Irishman only with the changes in land tenure during the Cromwellian invasions. With Cromwell came a host of land-hungry retainers who had to be satisfied at the expense of the native Irish. The great confiscation created a landlord class of foreign birth and religion while the policy of surrender and regrant destroyed the communal basis of land ownership and concentrated what land was left to the Irish in the hands of a few, reducing the remainder to the position of rent-paying tenants.59 Ruinous wars decimated the population from 1,300,000 in 1650 to less than a million in 1660, and con- fiscations and anti-Catholic penal laws aimed at depriving "the majority of the Irish people of all wealth and ambition," - frankly, "to make them poor and keep them poor." Finally, changes in the land laws destroyed security of tenure, the only safeguard against rapacious absentee landlords.60
57 Cf. Daily Evening Transcript, May 4, 1832; Johnson, op. cit., 16, 344; W. A. Carrothers, Emigration from the British Isles ... (London, 1929), 305; Willcox, op. cit., II, 244 ff .; Guillet, op. cit., 20 ff .; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 115 ff., 227. The English consuls in New York and Boston actually had a fund to assist British subjects in Boston to go to Canada (Buchanan, "Report," October 2, 1816, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/119; Manners to Bidwell, January 2, 1834, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/295, no. 1; Hansen, Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples, 100).
58 Cf. Helen Landreth, Dear Dark Head, an Intimate Story of Ireland (New York, 1936), 142 ff. 59 Cf. O'Brien, Seventeenth Century, 2 ff., 15 ff., 10I ff. 60 Ibid., 12, 122, 123, 135, 215 ff .; John O'Donovan, Economic History of Livestock in Ireland (Dublin, 1940), 73 ff .; O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 52 ff.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
The dispossessed Irish, forced to rent as tenants at will, had neither fixed tenure nor reasonable freedom from their landlords. Expired leases went always to the highest bidder; the tenant in possession received no preference. The conse- quent competition for land encouraged a wasteful system of middlemen, and raised rents far above their true value.61 Nor- mal agriculture proved impossible. The farmers had to con- centrate upon rent-paying crops since retention of their pre- carious hold on the land preceded every other consideration. Feeding themselves became a subsidiary matter, solved after a fashion by reliance on the potato. Irish agriculture therefore bore a twofold aspect. Cereal crops and cattle were raised for the market to bring money for rents, while potatoes were grown for food. For this reason grain exports mounted rapidly al- though very little was available for consumption at home.62
Even worse off than the farmers were the cottiers who throughout "remained the fixed substratum of the popula- tion." 63 Political changes and changes in land status affected them only remotely, for they had little interest in the former and none in the latter. They were completely landless, neither owning nor having any rights to the soil. From some more fortunate farmer they rented the use of enough ground for cabin and potato patch, paying for it by labor for the landlord and by the sale of the ubiquitous pig. The cottiers subsisted on potatoes, to which they occasionally added a bit of milk, these two staples constituting the whole of their diet.64 Their stand-
61 Cf. Lachrymae Hibernicae; or the Grievances of the Peasantry of Ireland ... by a Resident Native ... (Dublin, 1822), 8, 10 ff .; John Revans, Evils of the State of Ireland . .. (London, 1837), 10 ff., 23; O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 66 ff .; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 91.
62 Robert Bell, LL.B., Description of the Conditions . .. of the Peasantry of Ireland ... between the Years 1780 & 1790 . .. (London, 1804), 4; O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 78 ff., 112, 122 ff .; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 25 ff .; Statement of the Proceedings of the Western Committee . . . (London, 1831), 3; Frederick Merk, "The British Corn Crisis of 1845-46 ," Agricultural History, July, 1934, VIII, 97.
63 O'Brien, Seventeenth Century, 117, 136 ff .; O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 86 ff .; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 10 ff .; Halévy, op. cit., I, Bk. 2, 25 ff.
64 O'Brien, Seventeenth Century, 140; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 21.
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THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
ard of living was incredibly low. They live, remarked a con- temporary, "in such cottages as themselves can make in 3 or 4 days; eat such food ... as they buy not from others; wear such Cloths as the wool of their own sheep . doth make. . . . A hat costs 20d. a pair of stockings 6d. . In brief the whole annual expence of such a family of 6
seems to be but about 52 s. per ann. each head one with an- other." 65 Their miserable poverty apathetically perpetuated itself as population grew "disproportionate to the capital and extent of the country," the result "of cheap food and few wants." 66 By the end of the seventeenth century cot- tiers formed the great bulk of the population, embracing perhaps four-fifths of all families, and their number grew thereafter.
Meanwhile the condition of agriculture continued to degen- erate. The growth of population to more than 4,000,000 and the attendant competition for land further raised rents and reduced the size of farms. Infinite subletting and subdivision of land continued until about 1820. Made feasible by the potato diet, it was intensified by the stimulus which Foster's Law of 1784 and the protection provided in the English market after 1806 gave to the production of grain.67 By 1841, no less than 563,153 of the 691,114 holdings in Ireland consisted of less than fifteen acres.68 Tiny plots, penal laws, uncertainty of tenure, and the utter hopelessness of deriving more than a bare subsistence, discouraged permanent improvements or replace- ments, even where the poverty of the farmer did not altogether
65 Sir William Petty, Tracts Chiefly Relating to Ireland Containing ... the Political Anatomy of Ireland (Dublin, 1799), 351, 352 ; O'Brien, Seventeenth Century, 138; also Thoughts on the Present State of the Cottiers . . . (Dublin, 1796), 6; Right Honorable Henry Grattan's Answer to the Rev. Michael Sandys (Dublin, 1796), 8-21.
66 W. Parker, Esq., A Plea for the Poor and Industrious, Part the First . . . (Cork, 1819), 54; Robert Bellew, Thoughts and Suggestions on . . . the Con- dition of the Irish Peasantry ... Second Edition (London, 1808), 8.
67 Cf. O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 10-12 ; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 43. 68 Cf. Petty, op. cit., 305; O'Brien, Seventeenth Century, 175; Irish National Almanack for 1852 . . . (Dublin, 1851), 31.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
prohibit them. Irish agriculture seemed doomed to inevitable decay.69
By the end of the eighteenth century the great masses of rural Irish accepted the situation as unavoidable. They be- came reconciled to, if not content with, their inferior status. Since "the labour of one man" could "feed forty," and op- portunities for other work were wanting, habits of shiftlessness and laziness developed.70 By the same token, drunkenness spread among the peasantry and the urban population, par- ticularly when whiskey was cheaper than bread.71 From time to time hopelessness begot a reckless despair expressed in violent outbreaks which brought swift and merciless reprisals.72
The impact of the agricultural revolution upon this economy was bound to differ from that in other countries. The problem facing the landlord - how to adjust the agricultural system to yield a maximum of profit - was immensely complicated by the fact that his land was occupied far beyond its capacity by numerous tenants holding tiny plots on a basis which pre- cluded modernization. To oust the tenants would have under- mined the foundations of Tory political power based on the voting rights of the forty-shilling freeholders.73 And as long as Irish grains had a secure market in England under the pro- visions of the corn laws and Foster's Law, the landlords will- ingly suspended action. Relief, they theorized, might come from the extension of the amount of arable land or from the artificial reduction of population. The former they hoped to accomplish by introducing new agricultural techniques and by
60 For the effect of these factors on agricultural improvements cf. O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 58, 69, 125; Parker, op. cit., 57, 58; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 27 ff., 99 ff .; Revans, op. cit., 73, 75.
70 Petty, op. cit., 366, 367; O'Brien, Seventeenth Century, 125; Edward MacLysaght, Irish Life in the Seventeenth Century ... (London, 1939), 38; O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 31 ff.
71 Cf. O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 39 ff .; MacLysaght, op. cit., 72; Address to the Public on Behalf of the Poor . .. (Dublin, 1815), 48; Annual Report of the Managing Committee of the House of Recovery . . . in Cork Street, Dublin . . 72 O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 81 ff. 1813 (Dublin, 1813), 5.
73 Cf. Lachrymae Hibernicae 4 ff .; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 45; Adams, op. cit., 13.
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THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
draining the bogs and swamps; the latter, by encouraging late marriages and continence.74 Emigration they either reso- lutely opposed or regarded only as a last resort, an evil to be avoided at all costs.75
Nevertheless, there was always some peasant emigration from Ireland, to England at least. Early in the eighteenth century the spalpeen, the itinerant Irishman "going over to reap in harvest," was already a familiar figure there.76 Every year, the families of hundreds of cottiers whose holdings could not support them "abandoned their dwellings" and went "out to beg through the country" while their men wandered across the Irish Sea, seeking employment as agricultural laborers.77 By 1820 many walked annually to Dublin, crossed to Liverpool in the steerage at five shillings a head, and after tramping about for months, begging from parish to parish, brought back to Ireland some three pounds.78 When economic changes cre- ated a demand for labor in England many gave up wandering and settled there as industrial proletarians. At the same time Irish farmhands played an increasingly prominent part in England as enclosures created large farms using day laborers. Areas like the West Riding of Yorkshire contained many of
74 Cf., e.g., Parker, op. cit., 59; Rev. William Hickey, State of the Poor of Ireland Briefly Considered ... (Carlow, 1820), 23. For Irish publications on agricultural improvements, cf. Dissertation Copy, 86, 87; J. T. Gilbert, Catalogue of Haliday 8vo Pamphlets, 1750-1848 (MS., R.I.A.), I, 378, 409, 436, 460, 498, II, 536, 553, 560, 561, 575, 589, 602, 612, 632, 653 ; also O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 129 ff.
75 For contemporary opinion opposed to emigration, cf. Dissertation Copy, 87-89.
76 G. C. Duggan, Stage Irishman ... (London, 1937), 156. The only sys- tematic account of this movement is a short article by J. H. Clapham, "Irish Immigration into Great Britain in the Nineteenth Century," Bulletin of the International Committee of Historical Sciences, July, 1933, V, 596 ff.
77 Report of the Committee for the Relief of the Distressed Districts in Ire- land ... (London, 1823), 41; O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 98 ff .; Revans, op. cit., 7, 8.
A Letter to a British Member of Parliament on the State of Ireland in 1825 ... (Dublin, 1825), 35; Poor Rates the Panacea for Ireland (Lon- don, 1831), 9; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 15; Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Local Government: English Poor Law History: Part I. The Old Poor Law (London, 1927), 393.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
these immigrants.79 By 1841, fully 419,256 persons born in Ireland were permanently domiciled in England and Scotland. London held not less "than one hundred thousand distressed Irish poor" in 1814 and Glasgow, Manchester, and Liverpool contained large colonies.80 Stimulated by steam navigation across the Irish Channel and by the demand for cheap labor in the construction of the spreading chain of English railroads, the number of migrants continued to grow.81 Meanwhile a steady movement from southern Ireland to Ulster pushed out many Scotch-Irish farmers who would not "sacrifice . . . com- forts which for years they had been accustomed to .. . to pay . .. larger rents." 82 But few of these Irish wanderers reached America; the lack of money was an insuperable obstacle.
The slow siphoning off of Irish population to England brought no relief to those remaining. Throughout the early nineteenth century distress was common. "The country lived in a chronic state approaching famine, and . . . the particular years . . mentioned . .. as famine years were simply the years in which the chronic symptoms became acute." 83 The slightest failure in any crop brought immediate disaster. A deficiency of po- tatoes, as in 1822, resulted inevitably in famine.84 However,
79 Cf. J. L. and Barbara Hammond, Town Labourer, 1760-1832 . . . (Lon- don, 1920), 13 ; George Strickland, Discourse on the Poor Laws of England. . . . Second Edition ... (London, 1830), 68, 22; George A. Grierson, Circumstance of Ireland Considered ... (London, 1830), 59; Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Eng- lish Traits," Collected Works (Boston, 1903), V, 17.
80 Cf. An Account of the Calmel Building Charity ... the Institution for Ameliorating the Situation of the Irish Poor in the Metropolis . .. (London, 1814), 5; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 209; Clapham, loc. cit., 598; Cork Examiner, September 16, 1844; Frederick Engels, Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 ... (Transl. by F. K. Wischnewetzky) (London, [1926]), 90 ff.
81 Sir John Walsh, Poor Laws in Ireland ... (London, 1830), 99; Thoughts on the Poor of Ireland and Means of their Amelioration by a Barrister (Dublin, 1831), 23 ; W. Neilson Hancock, On the Condition of the Irish Labourer . a Paper Read before the Dublin Statistical Society . .. (Dublin, 1848), 7. 82 The Causes of Discontents in Ireland, and Remedies Proposed (s.l., n.d. O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 102.
[Dublin, 1823]?), 45, 46.
84 Cf. Report of the Committee for the Relief of the Distressed Districts in
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THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
not the impoverishment of the peasants, but the fact that land- lords no longer found it politically or economically profitable to keep them on the land, finally caused hordes to flee to America. The precipitate fall in the price of grains after the Peace of 1815, and particularly after 1820, ruined the peasantry and made it difficult for landlords to collect rents.85 The same drop in prices and competition with other, more efficient agricul- tural economies convinced the gentry that it would be more profitable to turn land into pasture - a process necessarily involving the consolidation of holdings and the wholesale evic- tion of tenantry.
Meanwhile, mounting English poor-rates presented an addi- tional threat to Irish landlords. By the 1820's rates in England had reached unprecedented heights.86 English ratepayers blamed this on Irish paupers in England, and demanded a poor law for Ireland.87 An act of 1833, permitting English justices of the peace to return Irish dependents to their birth- place, and another, two years later, cutting off aid to non- residents, aroused bitter resentment in Ireland, for they shifted a heavy burden from English to Irish landlords.88 Finally, the Irish poor law of 1838 subjected Irish landowners to an incredibly high tax, and at once aroused their eagerness to stimulate emigration.89 Moreover, they no longer had a polit- ical inducement for keeping small tenants on the land since the
Ireland ... (London, 1823), 47, 70; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 224 ff .; Statement of the Proceedings of the Western Committee for the Relief of the Irish Poor ... (London, 1831), 4, 7; Daily Evening Transcript, September 3, 1830, June 15, 1831; Boston Pilot, July 9, 1842.
85 Cf. O'Brien, Eighteenth Century, 121; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 52; Adams, op. cit., IO.
86 Cf. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Poor Law History: Part II: The Last Hundred Years (London, 1929), I, I, 2.
87 George A. Grierson, The Circumstance of Ireland Considered with Refer- ence to the Question of Poor Laws (London, 1830), I; cf. also the works cited in Dissertation Copy, 92.
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