USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 6
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88 Cf. Sidney and Beatrice Webb, English Poor Law Policy (London, 1910), 53; Cork Examiner, March 27, 1844.
89 O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 186; S. and B. Webb, English Poor Law History: Part II, II, 1025-1030.
50
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
forty-shilling freeholders had been deprived of their votes in 1829.90
· To evict prior to 1838 had been dangerous despite a com- pliant statute of 1816. The ejected had no place to go and, when desperate, constituted a menace to the lives and property of landowners. But the act of 1838 integrated emigration and eviction into a new economic policy. For, one of its leading proponents pointed out, "Emigration would prepare the way for consolidation of farms in Ireland, and for an amended administration of the poor laws in England." 91 The dispos- sessed could, thereafter, be conveniently and safely lodged in the new workhouses. And since the same law provided for assisted emigration, it was only a step from eviction to work- house and from workhouse to emigrant ship.92
Evictions were inordinately stimulated in 1846 by the re- peal of the corn laws which destroyed Ireland's protected position in the English market.93 The climax came with the great famine which struck directly at the basis of the food supply. The potato rot, first appearing in 1845, dragged the hunger-ridden land for five terrible years through a succession of miseries and left it an economic ruin.94 Complete chaos caused an upheaval in the system of land tenure, for the gentry were prepared to take advantage of the cottiers' disaster and drove the peasants, unable to pay rent and no longer politically useful, from their holdings. John Mitchel complained, "There is a very prevalent feeling amongst the landlord class . . . that the people of Ireland ought not to be fed . .. upon the grain produced in this country . .. and that it is desirable to
90 O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 55, 161 ff .; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 132 ff.
81 R. Torrens, Letter to the Right Honorable Lord John Russell on the Min- isterial Measure for Establishing Poor Laws in Ireland . .. (London, 1838). 02 Cf. O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 53, 190 ff., 216; William Stewart, Com- ments on the Civil Bill Ejectments Act . .. (Dublin, 1825), 1, 71; William Stewart, Comments on the Act I, George IV, cap. 67 . . . (London, 1826). 93 O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 59, 201 ff.
94 Ibid., 237 ff .; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 242 ff .; Courrier des États-Unis, February 23, 1847.
5I
THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
get rid of a couple of millions of them. . . . taking advantage of the panic which is driving the people away. . . 7) 95 The number of judgments of eviction mounted from 2,510 in 1847 to 3,385 in 1848 and 3,782 in 1849. The total number of evic- tions grew from 90,000 in 1849 to 100,000 in 1850. In 1851 it declined to 70,000 with 40,000 in 1852 and 24,000 in 1853. The evictions of 1849, 1850, and 1851 alone involved some million persons, and the process of displacement continued until 1870. By 1861 the 491,300 one-room cabins of 1841 had diminished to 89,400.96
Those evicted had but one desire - to escape Ireland and English rule as quickly as possible. In the minds of the people the famine ingrained a dread of the hopeless future and a desire to get away at any cost. Even those who loved Ireland best felt there was no hope in remaining. Nothing could reveal the depth of this despair more eloquently than the panic-stricken letters of John O'Donovan, the antiquarian whose love for Ireland and things Irish was an essential part of his being. "I see no hope for Ireland yet," he said, "the potatoes produced too large a population. . . . I see no prospect of relief for two years or more. The number of poor is too great. . . . " "I am sick ... of Ireland and the Irish and care very little what may happen; for whatever may take place things cannot be worse. . . . I would leave Ireland with a clear conscience! ! I would leave it exultingly, retire among the Backwoods of
95 To W. S. O'Brien, April 24, 1847, William Smith O'Brien Papers and Letters (MSS., N. L. I.), XIV, no. 1882. Cf. also G. H. Kerin to W. S. O'Brien, Feb- ruary 6, 1846, ibid., XI, no. 1501.
96 Irish National Almanack for 1852, 26; Gonnard, op. cit., 23; Michael G. Mulhall, Fifty Years of National Progress, 1837-1887 (London, 1887), 115; Mul- hall, Dictionary of Statistics, 190. The change in the number of holdings of various sizes shows the extent of consolidation:
Number
1841
1849
Less than I acre
134,314
31,989
I-5 acres
310,436
98,179
5-15 acres
252,799
213,897
15-30 acres
79,342
150,120
Over 30 acres
48,625
156,960
(Irish National Almanack for 1852, 31, 33; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 59).
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
America. . . . move into the deserts of the western world there to learn a RUDE but STURDY civilization that knows not slavery or hunger." 97 The intensity of these ideas in the mind of the scholarly librarian threatened by neither hunger nor slavery, was multiplied a thousandfold in the hearts of millions of cottiers who "stood ... begging for ... soup which .
. . would be refused by well bred pigs .. . " and daily faced the slavery of the workhouse.98
From 1835 to 1865 "the stream of emigration" continued "to flow with unabated rapidity," little affected by conditions in America. Though it fell off somewhat in the late fifties, new landlord troubles in the sixties and the reappearance of the potato rot in 1863 stimulated it again.99 The movement was cumulative in effect. Those who left early did so with the in- tention of eventually sending for their families, relatives, and friends. Soon large sums of money streamed back to Ireland to aid others across, a course facilitated when Thayer and Warren started the sale of prepaid tickets to Boston.100 Meanwhile even those only indirectly affected by the upheaval were drawn into the current of migration. Doctors, lawyers, trades people, and artisans moved from deserted villages where they could no longer find a livelihood.101 To these were added many Irish who, after first emigrating to England or Scotland, decided to go to America.102 Not until late in 1864 did any real slackening in the tide occur. By that time some 2,500,000 Irishmen had abandoned their homes.103
97 O'Donovan to Daniel McCarthy, February 6, 1848, February 14, 1848, and April 1, 1848 (John O'Donovan, Correspondence, 1845-1861 [MSS., N. L. I.], no. 17, p. 4; no. 18, p. 3; no. 19, p. 3).
98 Robert Bennet Forbes, Voyage of the Jamestown . . . (Boston, 1847), 22. 99 Cf. references to Cork Examiner and Boston Pilot, cited Dissertation Copy, 96, 97, ns. 212-214.
100 Cf. Massachusetts House Documents, 1859, no. 243, p. 6; Edward E. Hale, Letters on Irish Emigration . .. (Boston, 1852), 6; Cork Examiner, April 2, 1847. For approximate figures, cf. Johnson, op. cit., 352 ; Willcox, op. cit., II, 250. For an estimate of the total ($78,000,000), cf. Boston Pilot, September 22, 1855. 101 Cf. references to Boston Pilot, cited Dissertation Copy, 97.
102 Cf. reference to Boston Pilot, cited Dissertation Copy, 98.
103 Cork Examiner, June 13, 17, 1864; Mulhall, Fifty Years, 115.
53
THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
Changes in ocean navigation after 1840 conditioned the im- mense volume of this movement and the route it took. The opening by the Cunard Line of regular transatlantic steam com- munication in 1842 kept rates so low that even the poor could cross. The Line itself did not engage in the immigrant trade until 1863, but forced the established packet lines into it by engrossing other passenger business.104 By the fifties, one could travel from Liverpool to Boston on a respectable line such as Enoch Train and Company, Page, Richardson, or Wheeler & Armstrong for from $17 to $20, including provisions - rates which made profitable landlord-subsidized emigration.105
With the Cunarders came also a significant modification in the direction of traffic. In the old Black Ball days New York had monopolized the transatlantic packet trade.106 But the Cunard Line was subsidized by the British government which desired, above all, to maintain swift, direct contact with its colonies.107 When the Post Office Commission of Inquiry re- ported in 1841 that the best way to get mail from England to Canada was via Boston, the Line was directed in 1842 to estab- lish its terminus there, and before long others regularly fol- lowed its route. Within a few years the Enoch Train Line and Harnden and Company, among others, had added con- siderably to Boston's importance as an immigrant port.108
Low as were the rates, the cost of transportation involved for most the expenditure of their last resources. Sailings oc- curred from Dublin, Cork, and other Irish ports, but the great
104 Cf. Cork Examiner, May 21, 1863.
Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, January 12, 1856, December 4, 1858; Hale, op. cit., 105
7. At the same time passage from the continent in the Nordeutschen Lloyd or the Vanderbilt Line still cost $35-$40 (cf., e.g., Der Pionier, September 26, 1861 ; Der Neu England Demokrat, December 23, 1857).
106 Cf. supra, 9, 10; Frank C. Bowen, Century of Atlantic Travel, 1830-1930 (Boston, 1930), 7 ff .; Dissertation Copy, 100.
107 Cf. British Consular Correspondence, America I Series, F.O. 4/14, fol. 421 ; Bidwell to Manners, September 27, 1827, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/229.
108 British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/350; F. Lawrence Babcock, Span- ning the Atlantic (New York, 1931), 79 ff. For Boston's proximity to Canada, cf. "Extract from the Report of the Post Office Commission of Inquiry .. . " (British Embassy Archives, F.O. 115/78, fol. 18).
54
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
packet lines, now specialists in the emigrant traffic, invariably started from Liverpool.109 At the port of embarkation emigrant funds were inevitably depleted by weary weeks of waiting for passage, and any residue was used up during the long cross- ing.110 In New York and in Boston the penniless newcomer landed with no alternative but to stay where he was.
Even less fortunate were those who, lacking the money for passage to New York or Boston, were forced to go to Quebec, Nova Scotia or the Maritime Provinces in the empty holds of returning timber ships. From Halifax and St. Johns "these debilitated, half starved human-beings" wandered down the coast, drifting aimlessly, sometimes riding on the cheap immi- grant trains of the Eastern Railroad, until they reached a large city - usually Boston - whose charitable institutions would shelter them.111 As a result the Tenth General Report of the Colonial Land and Emigration Commissioners found that of 253,224 emigrants to Canada and New Brunswick, more than 73,000 went at once to the United States and an overwhelming majority eventually found their way to New England.112
That the Irish hegira was unique has been recognized by
109 Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 183 ff. For unsuccessful attempts to establish regular direct communications with Ireland, cf. Boston Pilot, September 18, 1858; Cork Examiner, February 23, 1842; Cork Constitution, May 23, 1835.
110 Cf. Buchanan to Palmerston, January 9, 1837, British Consular Correspond- ence, F.O. 5/315; Adams, op. cit., 83; John R. Commons, et al., eds., Docu- mentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), VII, 81 ff .; Guillet, op. cit., 66 ff .; "First Report of the Commissioner of Immigration . . . 1866," Thirty-Ninth Congress, First Session, House Executive Documents, VIII, no. 65, pp. 3 ff .; Patten, op. cit., 17 ff .; Hale, op. cit., II ff .; Cork Examiner, April 5, 1847, October 30, 1848; Courrier des États-Unis (New York), March 28, April 13, 1848.
111 Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1848, no. 46, p. 5; ibid., 1847, no. 109, p. 5.
112 Cf. "Report and Tabular Statement of the Censors . . " loc. cit., 44; Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1848, no. 89, p. 2. This movement has been treated only in brief discussions by Marcus L. Hansen in "Second Colonization of New England," New England Quarterly, October, 1929, II, 539 ff., and Atlan- tic Migration, 180 ff. There is a contemporary description in the Irish-American (New York), January 20, 1850. For individual cases of such migrations, cf. references to Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel (Boston), United States Catholic In- telligencer (Boston), and Boston Pilot, cited, Dissertation Copy, 103, n. 234.
55
THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
the more perspicacious students of population.113 The nature of its distinctiveness may be gathered from the circumstances that produced it. This exodus was not a carefully planned movement from a less desirable to a more desirable home. This was flight, and precise destination mattered little. The Cork Examiner noted, "The emigrants of this year are not like those of former ones; they are now actually running away from fever and disease and hunger, with money scarcely sufficient to pay passage for and find food for the voyage." 114 No other con- temporaneous migration partook so fully of this poverty- stricken helplessness. There was no foundation for the fre- quent complaints by Boston newspapers and politicians against the export of paupers from England and the continent; 115 even the German famine-scourged "flight from hunger" was "not characterized by the poverty and helplessness that the Irish exhibited. . >> 116 And in this respect, the Irish migration also contrasted with earlier ones from that country. Until 1835 the north, particularly Ulster and Tyrone, had been the primary source of emigrants, chiefly displaced artisans and fairly well-to-do farmers - in general the wealthiest elements of the population.117 The new movement concentrated in the south and in the west, especially in Cork, Kerry, Galway, and Clare, and comprised the poorest peasants, assisted in crossing by the bounty of others. From this group, above all, Boston got her immigrant population.
Imperfect as they are, the statistics of immigration by all groups into Boston reflect this situation.118 Before 1830 the
113 Cf., e.g., Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 249.
114 Cork Examiner, March 10, 1847.
115 Cf. Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Fourteenth Annual Report of the Executive Committee . .. (Boston, 1848), 23, 24; Dissertation Copy, 103, 104.
116 Marcus Lee Hansen, "Revolutions of 1848," loc. cit., 649.
117 Cf. A. C. Buchanan, Esq., Emigration Practically Considered: with De- tailed Directions to Emigrants ... (London, 1828), 36; O'Brien, Union to the Famine, 208, 218; Elizabeth Fry and J. J. Gurney, Report ... to the Marquess Wellesley ... (Dublin, 1827), 74; Hansen, Atlantic Migration, 97, 121 ; Adams, op. cit., 1, 158; supra, 36.
118 'The statistics of immigration into Boston are given infra, Table V and are discussed in the note thereto. These include temporary visitors and passengers in
56
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
number landing there annually never exceeded 2,000; before 1840 it reached 4,000 only once (1837). Distributed among many nativities, most were transients, westward-bound. The few Irishmen who settled in Boston in this period came pri- marily from Ulster and Tyrone.119 Thereafter arrivals in- creased rapidly from 3,936 in 1840 to 28,917 in 1849. These were overwhelmingly Irish. Even the large figures for England and the British North American Provinces represented, for the most part, Hibernians who had sojourned in other countries before finally coming to the United States. By 1850, about 35,000 Irish were domiciled in the city; five years later there were more than 50,000 - almost all natives of the southern and western counties. After 1855 the number of Irish in Boston remained fairly constant. For as the famine subsided, the influx declined, except for brief spurts in 1853 and 1854, to a low point in 1862.120
The other foreign groups in the city were exceedingly small. The number of Germans has always been exaggerated.121 The 2,000 in the city proper in 1850 increased gradually to 3,790 in 1865; and not more than 6,500 dwelt in the entire metropol- itan area.122 The English and British North Americans, as has already been pointed out, were largely of Irish descent.
transit, and are therefore not altogether satisfactory as a measure of the growth of Boston's immigrant population. More reliable in this respect are the census figures (cf. infra, Tables VI-IX).
119 Cf. the nativity of the members of the Boston Repeal Association, the most representative group of Boston Irishmen in 1840 (infra, Table X), and the requests for information in the Literary and Catholic Sentinel (Boston), 1835- 1836, I, II (cf. note to Table XI, infra) .
120 Cf. Jesse Chickering, Report of the Committee . . . Population of Boston in 1850 ... (Boston, 1851), 9; infra, Table XI. Figures for arrivals should be raised from 30 per cent to 50 per cent to account for immigration by land. For the available statistics of this type of immigration cf. Dissertation Copy, 428, 429; "Report and Tabular Statement of the Censors ," loc. cit., 47 ; Josiah Curtis, Report of the Joint Special Committee . . . 1855 . . . (Boston, 1856), 19.
121 Thus they were supposed to number 10,000 in 1849 (Boston Pilot, Jan- uary 13, 1849) although the census of 1850 found only 4,400 in the entire state ("Annual Registration Report, 1852," Massachusetts Public Documents, 1854, 95).
122 Chickering, op. cit., 9; Edward Dicey, Six Months in the Federal States (London, 1863), II, 179.
57
THE PROCESS OF ARRIVAL, 1790-1865
The Scots totalled less than 2,000, while the French, Italians and Scandinavians were even fewer.123
Two groups, the Negroes and the Jews, cannot be numbered by their nativity. For the latter one must rely upon guesses. As far back as the eighteenth century some Spanish and Portu- guese Jews lived in Boston. These ceased immigrating after 1800, and by 1840 few remained.124 A slow infiltration of German and even of Polish Jews in the next ten years brought some 200 families to the city, but they failed to increase notice- ably thereafter.125
Although the colored man's status was probably better there than elsewhere in the Union, Boston attracted few Negroes. In 1790 there were only 767; in 1820 only 1,690; and in 1850 only 2,085. There were 2,216 in 1855 and 2,348 in 1865, but the census of 1860 disclosed no more than 1,615.126 Obviously, these figures do not reveal the full number of Negroes because runaway slaves avoided enumeration. But in view of the many circumstances conducive to their settlement in the city, their failure to grow more considerably was surprising. Two condi- tions were primarily responsible. Boston was not an important station in the underground railway and played only a minor role in the surreptitiously organized scheme of aiding the fugitive slaves from the south to Canada. Furthermore its economic opportunities were so narrow that those who had the courage to risk their lives to escape slavery were hardly content to stay there. In 1830, for instance, a group of fifty already in Boston, led by their Methodist preacher, moved on to Canada.127
123 Cf. infra, Tables VI-IX; Dissertation Copy, 51-53.
124 Cf. Lee M. Friedman, Early American Jews (Cambridge, 1934), 18 ff.
125 Cf. Boston Pilot, September 22, 1849, October 18, 1851.
126 Cf. Boston Pilot, February 9, 1861 ; infra, Table XII; Chickering, "Report," loc. cit., 15; La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, op. cit., V, 178.
127 Only one route, and that by sea, passed through the city (Wilbur H. Siebert, "Underground Railroad," New England Magazine, January, 1903, XXVII, 566; Wilbur H. Siebert, Underground Railroad from Slavery to Free- dom [New York, 1898], map opposite 113; Wilbur H. Siebert, "Underground Railroad in Massachusetts," New England Quarterly, September, 1936, IX, 447 ff.). Cf. also Daily Evening Transcript, September 28, 1830.
58
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
Like all other non-Irish groups the Negroes chose to pass Boston by. Only among the Irish did the motives and circum- stance of emigration necessitate settlement under the unfav- orable conditions dictated by Boston's economic and social structure.
CHAPTER III
THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
It was sailing by dead reckoning to them, and they saw not clearly how to make their port so; therefore I suppose they still take life bravely, after their fashion, face to face, giving it tooth and nail, not having skill to split its massive columns with any fine entering wedge. . . . But they fight at an over- whelming disadvantage, - living . . alas! without arith- metic, and failing so.1
THE elements conditioning the emigration of the foreigners, together with the social structure of Boston as they found it, determined their position in the community. These factors limited the whole orbit of the immigrants' lives in their new homes. Their work, their health and longevity, their housing, their relations with the government, with their neighbors, and with one another, all were implicit in these two forces. What drove the Europeans to Boston and what they found there together produced a new society, far different from its ante- cedents, yet unmistakably their heir.
The course of adjustment created a fundamental difference between two categories of immigrants. Those who quickly resumed familiar routines easily merged in interests and ac- tivities with native Americans. But those whose memories held no trace of recognition for any feature of the new land, made room for themselves, if at all, only with the utmost difficulty. Many faltered, hesitated, were overwhelmed and lost, because in the whole span of their previous existence they found no parallel to guide them in their new life.
The most pressing concern of all newcomers on landing was to obtain employment. Those whose background had equipped
1 Henry David Thoreau, Walden or, Life in the Woods (Writings of Henry David Thoreau, II, Boston, 1894), 322.
60
BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
them with an industrial skill or mercantile trade had little difficulty in adjusting to the economic conditions of their new world. Most, however, had escaped into a way of life com- pletely foreign and completely unfavorable to them. Thousands of poverty-stricken peasants, rudely transposed to an urban commercial center, could not readily become merchants or clerks; they had neither the training nor the capital to set up as shopkeepers or artisans. The absence of other opportunities forced the vast majority into the ranks of an unemployed re- sourceless proletariat, whose cheap labor and abundant num- bers ultimately created a new industrialism in Boston. But for a long time they were fated to remain a massive lump in the community, undigested, undigestible.
Since at the beginning, at least, the immigrants did not form an integral part of Boston's economy, it is difficult to know precisely how they managed to exist. They played no rôle in the usual accounts of her commercial and industrial life. Their contemporaries were aware that Europeans were there, of course, but completely neglected them in describing the busi- ness of the city. Save for occasional cursory notices of the number of arrivals, trade papers and journals throughout the forties and fifties consistently ignored the newcomers, and travellers' accounts which did mention them frequently misled, as they often do, by emphasizing the curious rather than the commonplace.2
For an accurate analysis of what happened to the immigrant in the maze of Boston's business life one must turn to the cold statistics of DeBow's federal census of 1850, the first to enu- merate both nativity and occupations. In Boston it revealed a total of 136,881 inhabitants, of whom 37,465 were adult males, and listed the vocations of 43,567 persons.3 From the
2 Cf., e.g., Hunt's Merchants' Magazine and Commercial Review (New York) and Niles' Weekly Register (Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia), and travel- lers' accounts listed in Dissertation Copy, 500 ff.
3 Cf. infra, Table XIII; Francis A. Walker, The Statistics of the Population of the United States . . . Compiled from the Original Returns of the Ninth Census . . . 1870 . (Washington, 1872), I, 167. A municipal tabulation
61
THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
marshals' schedules of this census, the raw data have been classified in Tables XIII and XIV to determine the incidence of various employments in the city and their distribution within each nativity group.4
The 43,567 persons for whom material was available were engaged in over 992 distinct pursuits - an average of no more than forty-four persons per occupation in the entire city.5 This widespread diversity emanated directly from Boston's complete orientation towards small-scale skilled enterprises and away from large-scale unskilled ones. As the nucleus of an important economic area, the town contained a multitude of retail trades. The center of a prosperous urban life, it en- couraged the growth of highly skilled handicrafts to satisfy the demands for consumers' goods. Commercial rather than industrial in character, it possessed no large-scale establish- ments and therefore no great accumulations of labor in any industry or trade.6 Broad occupational diversification was nor- mal and inevitable in this society.
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