USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Boston's immigrants, 1790-1865 : a study in acculturation > Part 8
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42 Cf., e.g., Gazette Française, April 15, 1851.
43 Courrier des États-Unis, April 9, 1846, March 3, 1844, October 31, 1843.
44 Cf. Courrier des États-Unis, March 3, 1846, October 30, November 6, 1847.
45 For a list of hotels and boarding houses, cf. Chase's Pocket Almanac ... 1850 (Boston, n.d. [1850]), 15, 17.
46 For Degrand, cf. Boston Pilot, January 5, 1856; Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston . . . (Boston, 1880), IV, 135-137. For Touro, cf. Christopher Roberts, Middlesex Canal, 1793-1860 (Cambridge, 1938), 131, 200, 227; Lee M. Friedman, Early American Jews (Cambridge, 1934), 21. For a few other excep- tional cases, cf. Dissertation Copy, 54.
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THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
merce or finance grew out of the patronage of their own com- munities. Foreign ship agents frequently saved enough from the profitable business of remitting funds to Ireland to engage in banking operations for their compatriots. The Tri-Moun- tain Insurance Company was directed by and at the Irish, and the Germania Life and Germania Fire Insurance Com- panies, by and at the Germans.47 The New England Land Company united the prominent Irishman, Patrick Donahoe, with several well-known Bostonians (among them the Know- Nothing mayor, J. V. C. Smith), in a scheme to move the Irish to the west, and a number of other immigrant-controlled real estate agencies prospered.48 But the commercial com- munity was overwhelmingly American. Almost 90 per cent of all the merchants - 3.4 per cent of the total native working population - were native born. In no foreign group were the merchants proportionately or numerically significant. They ranged from .5 per cent of the group in the case of the Germans to 1.4 per cent in the case of the English. The Irish, as usual, lagged far behind, with only .I per cent. In the lower cate- gories the non-American groups played as small a rôle. More than 86 per cent of the agents and 88.2 per cent of the clerks were Americans, while only 4.2 per cent and 3.6 per cent, respectively, were Irish.49
The fact that Americans had somewhat recently entered the professions complicated the same basic pattern in that field. At one time Europeans had played a fairly prominent part in the city's professional life. In 1794 the number of qualified Americans was so limited that the builders of the Middlesex Canal advertised for a supervising engineer in French.50 By 1850, however, the native professionals outnumbered the for- eign born in every field, though in all but the government
47 For these companies cf. Boston Pilot, October 5, 19, 1861, March 3, 1860; Der Pionier, October 26, 1864.
48 For the New England Company, cf. Massachusetts Senate Documents, 1852, no. 112, p. 2; infra, 163. For others, cf. Boston Pilot, March 24, 1860.
49 For these occupations, cf. Dissertation Copy, 446.
50 Roberts, op. cit., 48.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
services, where Americans always predominated, the non- Irish immigrants were proportionately as important. These classes amounted to between 3 and 5 per cent of the total of each nativity group, except the Irish, which had only .2 per cent.51
In some spheres foreigners usually retained an advantage. They dominated the plastic arts and monopolized the dance, both as performers and teachers. Boston ladies insisted upon taking lessons from Mr. Williams of London, M. Duruissel of Paris or, most of all, from the glamorous Lorenzo Papanti of Leghorn.52 They liked to study foreign languages either with Frenchmen or Italians, particularly when combined with "Tuition on the Piano Forte." 53 There were many prominent foreign musicians. The Englishman Hayter and the German Zeuner, the Frenchman Du Lang and the redoubtable Irishman, Patrick Gilmore, established firm reputations. But the rank and file of professional musicians and music teachers were American-born, as were instructors in most other branches of education.54
A small number of professionals served their own co-na- tionals. A few taught in evening and commercial schools, catering to the special needs of immigrants.55 All groups de- manded priests familiar with their ways and using their own language. Likewise, they preferred lawyers of their own kind, friends they could understand and trust when it was necessary to cope with the law or the government.56 It comforted the Germans to learn that their doctor was a relative of the oculist to the King of Saxony, and the Irish to believe that
51 Cf. infra, Table XIII. These figures are for clergymen, teachers, physicians, actors, musicians, and "other professions."
52 Charles F. Read, "Lorenzo Papanti ," Proceedings of the Bostonian Society . .. 1928 (Boston, 1928), 41 ff.
53 Independent Chronicle (Boston), January 3, 18II.
54 For totals cf. infra, Table XIII. For other prominent foreigners, cf. Disser- tation Copy, 137, 138.
55 Cf. references to Boston Pilot cited in Dissertation Copy, 139.
56 For Irish lawyers cf. references to Boston Pilot and Irish American (New York), cited in Dissertation Copy, 139, n. 94.
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THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
their apothecary or physician had practised for twenty-seven years in County Kerry.57
[The exceptional Irishman who found satisfactory employ- ment failed to mitigate the abject circumstances of the group as a whole. With no adequate outlets in the handicrafts, in commerce, or in the professions, the rank and file remained totally or partially unemployed. In this respect they differed from every other element. Unabsorbed laborers in other groups were more than counterbalanced by their skilled co-nationals already integrated in the scheme of Boston life. Even the Negroes, who stood closest to the Irish in occupational expe- rience, fared better than they. Emancipation before 1790 did not wipe away the stigmata and disabilities of slave status. It was always difficult to acquire education, skill, or capital, and the prejudices of the classes immediately above confined the Negroes to unpopular tasks.58 Yet, though their employ- ments were not particularly desirable or well paid, they had specific functions. Negroes were acquainted with the by-ways of Boston's economic organization, and, as time went on, adapted themselves to it. They did not remain simple unskilled laborers to the same extent as the Irish. Despite the risk of being sold as slaves on long voyages, many became seamen; others were barbers, chimney sweeps, and traders.59 Some, like Robert Morris, a prominent lawyer, even rose to the profes- sional ranks. By the time Walt Whitman visited Boston in 1860 the Negroes were better off there than elsewhere in the United States.60 While their position shone chiefly by compari-
57 Boston Pilot, September 4, 1852. For similar references to Boston Pilot, United States Catholic Intelligencer, Jesuit or Catholic Sentinel (Boston), and Irish American, cf. Dissertation Copy, 140, n. 96. For French doctors, cf. Gazette Française, April 12, 19, 1851.
58 Cf., e.g., the Boston Pilot, April 18, 1863; also John M. Duncan, Travels through ... the United States ... in 1818 ... (Glasgow, 1823), I, 67.
59 Cf. infra, Tables XIII, XV; also La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, Voyage dans les États-Unis ... (Paris, An VII [1799]), V, 178; E. S. Abdy, Journal of a Residence . .. in the United States . .. (London, 1835), I, 121; Minutes of the Selectmen's Meetings . . . 1818 to .. . 1822 (Volume of Records .. . Early History of Boston, XXXIX), Boston City Documents, 1909, no. 61, p. 12.
60 Cf. Archibald H. Grimke, Life of Charles Sumner ... (New York, 1892),
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
son with less fortunate members of their race, it was clearly closer to that of the natives than the Irish.61 The latter un- questionably were lowest in the occupational hierarchy.
But unless it contained a reliable and constant productive element, no group could continue to subsist by employment in the service trades and by dealing with one another. As it was, the large body of casual, unskilled Irish labor created tremen- dous social problems and called for more adaptations than either the individual or his family could make for long. Though only a temporary escape was possible, the temptation to try it was great.
Paradoxically, the same immobility that rooted the Irish im- migrants in Boston also drove them out to work in all parts of the United States. Surplus labor was an unthinkable an- achronism in the body of American economic life. In so many places cheap labor was essential, yet lacking, that it was in- evitable the Irish should be used for more productive purposes. In the west, in the south, and in Canada vitally important projects awaited the application of their brawn. From every part of the United States construction bosses in embankments and water projects, tunnels, canals, and railroads called on Boston for the cheap man-power they knew was always avail- able there. Thus the city's rôle as labor reservoir assumed national proportions; often the Boston Irish newspapers, in single issues, printed advertisements for more than 2,000 men wanted in widely scattered places.62
.
Sooner or later the immigrant in search of employment dis- covered the labor contractor in search of men. In the columns of their weekly newspapers they saw, or heard read to them, the incredible, tempting advertisements detailing the blandish-
220; also Columbian Centinel (Boston), June 18, 1791; Boston Pilot, Septem- ber 25, 1858; Der Pionier (Boston), July 2, 1862 ; C. J. Furness, "Walt Whitman Looks at Boston," New England Quarterly, July, 1928, I, 356.
61 Cf. also Charles H. Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States . . (New York, 1927), 43 ff.
62 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, April 22, 1854. For other advertisements, cf. the citations in Dissertation Copy, 143, n. IIO.
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THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
ments of good wages, fine food, and excellent lodgings. The attractions of steady employment were hard to resist. True, railroading meant living a riotous camp life and the absence for a year from women, family and friends, and from the ministra- tions of the priest. But these partings were not novel to Irish life, for many sons and daughters had already left the family to earn a living. Moreover, before coming to America, the men had been accustomed to this type of migration; each fall the spalpeens had left their plots on the "ould sod" and crossed the Irish Sea to work for English landlords. In Boston as in Ireland, the wives and children remained behind to shift as best they could, sometimes assisted with occasional remit- tances, often becoming a burden upon the community. In any case, within a year the laborers were back, usually no better off than before.63
Unscrupulous exploitation was the theme of the construc- tion camp; and dirt, disorder, and unremitting toil were its invariable accompaniments. Wages ranged from $1.00 to $1.25 a day, though skilled stonelayers and masons often got from $2.00 to $2.50.64 The more prudent contracted for board as part of their pay, or for their upkeep at a flat weekly rate.65 But most were victimized by rapacious sub-contractors who monopolized supplies in isolated construction camps and took back in exorbitant prices what they paid out in wages.66 The railroads themselves frequently resorted to equally dishonest practices. The Irish, after travelling several hundred miles, had no recourse when the company decided to pay less than it had advertised. Many roads, by deliberately asking for more men than they needed, built up large labor reserves with which to bludgeon down the wages of those already working
63 Cf., e.g., Benevolent Fraternity of Churches, Twenty-First Annual Report of the Executive Committee ... (Boston, 1855), 12; Consul Grattan to Lord Aberdeen, January 28, 1843, British Consular Correspondence, F. O. 5/394.
64 Cf. the advertisements in the Boston Pilot, cited Dissertation Copy, 144.
65 Cf., e.g., Boston Pilot, November 6, 1852, February 19, 1853.
66 For these evils cf. Irish American, November 1, 1851; for the truck system cf. John R. Commons, et al., eds., Documentary History of American Industrial Society (Cleveland, 1910), VII, 50, 51.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
for them. With reason enough, the Boston Pilot advised "all laborers who can get employment elsewhere to avoid the rail- roads. ... to ... do anything ... in preference to 'rail- roading.' " 67 But the Irish were the guano of the American communications system. "Ferried over the Atlantic, and carted over America," despised and robbed, downtrodden and poor, they made the railroads grow.68
Back in Boston, the quondam railroaders, like those who stayed behind, still faced the problem of securing permanent employment. Some found openings of a sort as sweepers and janitors in the textile factories of neighboring cities. These were the most wearisome jobs in the mills, the least skilled and the lowest paid - the ones the native operatives would not take. Mill owners soon perceived the potentialities of this docile labor supply. The New England girls who had been working in the factories were independent, militant, and im- permanent. "Amateur" rather than "professional" proleta- rians, they left abruptly when marriage set them free for their true careers. Their insistence upon decent working conditions proved burdensome and led to increasing costs, particularly after Sarah Bagley started the Lowell Female Labour Reform Association in 1845.69 With men available at rates lower than those paid to women, the manufacturers turned to the Irish to run their machines, raising them from the meaner chores to higher ranks, and eventually using them for all tasks. And, as immigrants invaded the textile field, it lost status; native girls became more reluctant to enter it. By 1865, male employees outnumbered females in woolens and were gaining on them in
67 Cf. Boston Pilot, July 31, September 11, 1852.
68 Emerson, quoted in Boston Pilot, March 2, 1861 ; Hale, op. cit., 53. Cf. also Thoreau, Walden, 146.
69 Cf. John R. Commons, History of Labour in the United States (New York, 1926), I, 539; B. M. Stearns, "Early Factory Magazines in New England .. . , Journal of Economic and Business History, August, 1930, II, 693 ff .; Norman Ware, Industrial Worker, 1840-1860 . . . (Boston, 1924), 149; Allan Macdonald, "Lowell: a Commercial Utopia," New England Quarterly, March, 1937, X, 57; Caroline F. Ware, Early New England Cotton Manufacture ... (Boston, 1931), 12, 64 ff., 198 ff.
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THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
cottons.7º Foreign labor, for which Boston served as a con- venient recruiting ground, manned both.71
Almost as important as textiles was the shoe industry. Be- fore 1850 it had been loosely organized on a handicraft house- hold basis as a supplement to fishing and farming.72 When the first practical shoe machinery was invented, cheap labor in nearby Boston facilitated the transition to the factory system in towns like Quincy and Lynn. "Green hands," anxious to be exploited, replaced skilled artisans, enabling the "garret bosses" to reap tremendous profits and become large-scale manufac- turers.73 Throughout the fifties and the Civil War the pres- ence of a labor surplus in Boston stimulated infant industries and accelerated the process of industrialization in New England.
This transformation of New England followed the general shift from craftsmanship towards mechanization in all phases of American economy. Emphasizing cheapness and mass pro- duction rather than skill, it required an abundant supply of labor. Wherever this essential condition existed, the trend left its impact; without it the change could not be effected. The process was particularly significant in Boston where a con- sistent deficiency of labor had seriously hampered the growth
70 Arthur Harrison Cole, American Wool Manufacture (Cambridge, 1926), I, 274, 369 ff .; United States Census Office, Eighth Census, 1860, Manufactures (Washington, n.d. [1864]), xxxv; M. T. Copeland, Cotton Manufacturing In- dustry of the United States (Cambridge, 1917), 13 ff .; Edith Abbott, Women in Industry ... (New York, 1910), 102, 103.
71 Cf. Emerson David Fite, Social and Industrial Conditions in the North during the Civil War (New York, 1910), 187, n. 1; Susan M. Kingsbury, ed., Labor Laws and Their Enforcement ... (New York, 1911), 56 ff .; C. F. Ware, Early New England Cotton Manufacture, 228 ff.
22 Cf. supra, 13; Albert Aftalion, Le Développement de la fabrique . . . dans les industries de l'habillement (Paris, 1906), 21 ff .; Blanche E. Hazard, Organization of the Boot and Shoe Industry in Massachusetts before 1875 (Cam- bridge, 1921), 24 ff., 93, 94.
73 Cf. Fite, op. cit., 90, 91 ; George C. Houghton, "Boots and Shoes" (United States Census Bureau, Twelfth Census, 1900, Manufactures, IX, 755; Aftalion, op. cit., 61 ff .; Eighty Years Progress of the United States: a Family Record of American Industry . . . (Hartford, 1869), 324; Commons, History of Labour, II, 76-78; Ware, Industrial Worker, 38 ff .; John R. Commons, "American Shoemakers . ," Quarterly Journal of Economics, November, 1909, XXIV, 73 ff.
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
of industry until the forties. Between 1837, when the first business census was taken, and 1845, the total number of employees in the city's major industries (all those which at any time between 1837 and 1865 employed 100 persons) prob- ably did not increase at all.74 Few grew significantly, and many actually declined. The prospective manufacturer desiring a site for a new establishment, or the capitalist with an "abun- dance of money seeking an outlet," found little encouragement. And even those already established who wished to expand were inhibited by the apparently inflexible labor supply.75
But in the two decades after 1845 the Irish energized all aspects of industrial development in Boston by holding out to investors magnificent opportunities for profits from cheap labor costs. The total of industrial employees doubled between 1845 and 1855, and again between 1855 and 1865. Between 1837 and 1865, the number of workers in the older industries rose from 9,930 to 33,011, and, in addition, 6,272 appeared in new ones.76 Meanwhile the stream of immigration through the early fifties replenished the supply of workers already drawn off into factories, and their presence guaranteed a con- tinuance of low prices. Because it possessed this labor reserve after 1845 Boston could take advantage of every opportunity. Within little more than two decades it became the nation's fourth manufacturing city.
There was the ready-made clothing industry, for instance, which had grown appreciably in Boston since its inception by John Simmons in the early thirties. At first an adjunct to the trade in second-hand apparel, then a part of the ship store busi- ness which supplied "slops" to sailors on shore leave, it even- tually turned to producing cheap garments for southern slaves, for western frontiersmen, and for California miners to whom
74 The actual number cited infra in Table XVII fell from 9,930 to 6,010, but this excludes approximately 2,900 in the building and clothing trades not listed in 1845. If these were added the figures for both years become roughly equal.
75 Cf. Lousada to Russell, February 29, 1864, British Consular Correspondence, F.O. 5/973; Third Annual Report of the Bureau of Statistics of Labor, 535. 76 Cf. infra, Table XVII.
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THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
considerations of style and fit meant little.77 Until the mid- century, however, Boston was at a disadvantage with New York. Her rival on the Hudson was as accessible to supplies and, as a greater seaport, catered to more sailors and enjoyed more intimate connections with both the south and the west. Wages were also lower in New York, at least to 1845, and the cost of labor was the most important as well as the most variable factor in production, since the industry always "tended to concentrate at the points of cheapest labor." 78 As a result Boston remained behind, unable to compete on equal terms with New York.
Yet it was an exceedingly tempting industry promising high profits if only a way could be found of producing clothes good enough to command a wide market at a price lower than those made in New York. But cheap clothes depended upon cheap wages; and until 1845 the labor force consisted entirely of the ordinary journeyman tailors who worked primarily on custom clothes. The "ready-made" clothiers, unable to pay the same wages as the custom tailors, were compelled to produce only during the twenty-eight weeks or less each year when the journeymen were not busy at their usual work. On this basis the industry could never develop to significant proportions. No matter what degree of standardization the technical proc- ess of manufacturing reached, the absence of a cheap labor supply precluded conversion to factory methods. Machines alone could not create a factory system in Boston when only the 473 tailors employed in 1845 were available to man them.79
77 Cf. Winsor, op. cit., IV, 98; Jesse Eliphalet Pope, Clothing Industry in New York (University of Missouri Studies, Social Science Series, I, Columbia, 1905), 7; Horace Greeley, et al., Great Industries of the United States . . . (Hartford, 1872), 588, 589; Eighth Census, 1860, Manufactures, lxiii; Edwin T. Freedley, United States Mercantile Guide . .. (Philadelphia, 1856), 125; Cole, op. cit., I, 293.
78 Cf. Documents Relative to the Manufactures in the United States . . , United States Congress, 22 Congress, I Session, House Executive Documents, no. 308, I, 465; Victor S. Clark, History of Manufactures .. . (Washington, 1928), II, 447; Martin E. Popkin, Organization, Management, and Technology in the Manufacture of Men's Clothing (New York, n.d. [1929]), 36.
79 Cf. Pope, op. cit., II; J. M. Budish and George Soule, New Unionism in
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BOSTON'S IMMIGRANTS, 1790-1865
The situation changed, however, with the influx after 1845 of thousands of Irishmen ready to work for any wages. The manufacturers fully realized how important these immigrants were; and on the occasion of a journeymen's strike in 1849 they pointed out to Mayor John P. Bigelow that they had no need of his services as arbitrator, for an abundance of other labor sources was available to them.80 Henceforth they ex- panded their business, firm in the assurance that profits would not be menaced by labor costs or strikes. Erstwhile peasants were unskilled, of course, and knew nothing of tailoring. But the simpler parts of the trade were not difficult to learn and it was profitable to press the raw immigrant into service at wages which no true tailor would consider. The invention of Howe's sewing machine in 1846 in Cambridge came just in time to facilitate the training of the Irish by mechanizing and sim- plifying the sewing operations.81 By 1850 the 473 tailors of 1845 had grown to 1,547, of whom more than a thousand were Irish.82 The Civil War brought rush orders for thousands of uniforms and capped the process of expansion.83 By 1865, these circumstances had produced a distinctive method of fac- tory production known in the trade as the "Boston System." Achieving an ultimate exploitation of cheap hands, it combined machinery with an infinite division of labor "which completely eliminated the skilled tailor." 84
the Clothing Industry (New York, 1920), 17; Axel Josephsson, "Clothing," United States Census Bureau, Twelfth Census, 1900, Report, Manufactures, IX, 296 ff .; for the number of tailors, cf. Shattuck, op. cit., Appendix Y, 40.
60 Cf. the MS. letter of thirteen master tailors to Mayor Bigelow, August 13, 1849 (John Prescott Bigelow Papers, Box VI [MSS., H. C.L.]).
81
Cf. J. Leander Bishop, History of American Manufactures from 1608 to
1860 ... (Philadelphia, 1864), II, 474, 475.
62 Cf. infra, Table XIII.
83 Cf. Pope, op. cit., 9; Fite, op. cit., 89; Clark, op. cit., II, 32.
84 Cf. Josephsson, loc. cit., 297; Pope, op. cit., 69 ff. Pope's claim that the Boston System originated among English tailors settled in Boston is accepted by Clark (op. cit., II, 448). The only ground for this hypothesis is the similarity of conditions in the English clothing industry, particularly in Leeds, to those in Boston. This similarity is, however, merely the result of the fact that the factory in England grew out of the same cause that produced it in Boston, a cheap labor surplus (cf. J. H. Clapham, Economic History of Modern Britain
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THE ECONOMIC ADJUSTMENT
The factory failed to emerge during this period in New York primarily because of the absence of the labor surplus that made it possible in Boston. Instead, the pressure for cheaper costs led to the growth of the outside shop where the efforts of the entire family were utilized.85 As a result Boston manufacturers gained an advantage, for the factory system permitted them to reduce wages while producing more per capita. The average value of the goods turned out there by a single worker in 1860 was $1,137 as compared with $788 in New York.86 Moreover the New York employers paid from $8.00 to $10.00 a week for labor, and the Bostonians only from $4.50 to $5.50.87 These differentials more than offset New York's other advantages. On this basis George Simmons' "Oak Hall," employing 3,000 tailors, became a national in- stitution by 1860 and the whole industry in Boston quad- rupled in value between that year and 1870.88 By then the city had become the center of the factory manufacture of ready-made clothing in the United States, a position it retained as long as cheap labor was available.
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