USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Boston > Fifty years of Boston; a memorial volume issued in commemoration of the tercentenary of 1930; 1880-1930, Pt. 1 > Part 12
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78
FIFTY YEARS OF BOSTON
life has been drawing the American-born offspring of these people away from the loyalty to God and country and family and friends that has been such a marked characteristic of the first generation of our immigrant stock.
The number and the generally prosperous condition of the many racial and national churches in Boston is a fair indication of the character of our citizens of foreign origin. Italians, Greeks, Russians, French, Germans, Syrians, Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians, Swedes, Albanians, Armenians and Letts are among those who have their own distinctive houses of worship, which are alike shrines of virtue, centers of kindly social life and repositories of the old racial cultures. The steadfast faith of these groups of our fellow Bostonians is well exemplified in the vigorous religious strength of the Irish, which, in this part of New Eng- land, has made Irish and Catholic almost synonymous. And the great and rapidly increasing number of synagogues and temples attests a similar religious loyalty which has all but totally obliterated national distinctions among our fellow-citizens of Jewish faith.
The social nature of many of our newcomers finds expression not alone in a general participation in the activities of the whole community, but in the traditional forms of intercourse which are peculiar to their own special groups. The easy companionships and pleasant leisure of the Greek, Armenian, Syrian and other eastern coffee houses; the strange chatter and jovial laughter of a little back room somewhere down in Chinatown, which so few ever see; the sociable evenings in the halls of the German Vereins (now, in this arid era, rather in decline) can stand comparison with anything that older Boston has to offer. If one cares to cite, as comparable exhibits, the famed gatherings of the Tavern and the Papyrus Clubs, it can be said of them (aye, and of the Clover Club itself, Irish-made, when other doors were closed) that they were rather for an aristocracy (of birth, or wealth or intellect) than for the run-of-the-mill. Man- to-man democracy will be found in the gatherings of the newer races oftener than among those older stocks which have reached the stage of caste distinction and social stratification.
In the fond fraternalism of sport, these newer groups have played no inconsiderable part. The German and Swedish influence in the fields of physical culture and organized gymnastics was a material factor in the development of the playground activities which are one of the just boasts of Boston. The Irish, both as participants and as supporters, were in the forefront in develop- ing our great American game of baseball. The Scottish games, with their kilted Highlanders and bonnie dancing girls, have long been annual classics in Boston; and in the newer soccer, imported from England and Scotland, practically every other racial group now actively participates. Yet these are merely the distinctively racial expressions. True to form, the younger genera- tions of these newer American groups are found in evidence in every quarter of the sporting field. Look over the names of the high school and college and professional athletes in Greater Boston. They read like the roster of the international Olympics.
Even in the matter of residence this infiltration is truly remarkable. Where are your "Irish districts" and your "Germantowns" of a generation ago? They are gone, except in name. If you care to point to a concentration of
79
THE NEWER RACES
Italians in the North End, of Jews in the West End, and of Poles and Lithu- anians in South Boston, let me tell you that this only-to-be-expected colonization of comparatively recent immigrants is already in a state of marked devolution, and that dwindling colonies tell of a rapid and widespread distribution of the various peoples throughout the city. With a declining hostility to the "foreigner" on the one hand and an increasing ability to speak the new language on the other the need for colonization, and the colonization itself, passes.
If this inadequate study were designed for purposes of flattery, it would be an easy and pleasing task to go on ad infinitum, telling the mighty proportions and the inspiring eminence which the newer racial groups have attained in our municipal life. But that, as I have before noted, would not be the truth. It would not even be a plausible piece of fiction. For, great as the progress has been in the last half-century, eininent as inany of our men and women of foreign blood and foreign parentage are today in their especial fields of endeavor, the fact remains (as even a hasty glance at our national "Who's Who" will attest) that their greatest contributions are yet to be made.
There is, to anyone who understands Boston history, nothing surprising in this. The marvel is, not that the newer groups have not risen to dominance in the ratio of their numerical strength, but that they have made the marked progress thay have. For this has been no soft and easy field to conquer. From the earliest days newcomers and new ideas have been received here with a certain chilling aloofness. Our artists, sculptors, musicians, physicians, attor- neys, bankers and business leaders of foreign stock are often the sons of men and women who found their only possible means of livelihood in the humble tasks of the day laborer, the pedler, the junk dealer, the factory lumper, the laundress ("washerwoman" it was then), and the like. These uninspiring levels of effort were no true measure of the intellectual potentialities of those who labored at them, or of those who still do.
The old saw about familiarity breeding contempt holds good only when familiarity discloses contemptible traits or small capabilities. Thanks to the inherent soundness of character and intellectual potentialities of so large a proportion of our national groups and to the constantly increasing contacts of the older citizens with them, the older stock has come to realize at last that strange accent and charin of personality are not incompatible, that non-English racial characteristics are not necessarily indicative of mean minds, and that affiliation with a religious sect other than those implanted here long ago is no indication of unfitness for American citizenship or of an unwillingness and inability to make worthy contribution to national and civic development.
And so not the least of the contributions of our racial groups (a contribution resulting from their very presence here) has been this breaking down of old barriers, this gradual growth of mutual understanding and sympathy, which forms a personal and concrete - one might almost say a living - lesson in human brotherhood.
SO
FIFTY YEARS OF BOSTON
EDITORIAL NOTE -THE CENSUS OF 1930
The full racial survey which is a desideratum for Boston would require a separate volume and could only be included in this Memorial Volume by abridging the space needed for other matters of equal interest and importance. Even Konrad Bercovici's "Round About New York," substantial book as it is and brilliant interpretation by one who knows intimately the East European and Mediterranean peoples, omits much that would have to be included in a thorough survey of the metropolis. Some day, no doubt, a similar but more complete study will be made of the thirty-five to forty nationalities that live in our own smaller city and make up its composite population.
As a preliminary to such a study we present an estimate, based on the recent national census, of the numbers of the principal racial groups in Boston. It can be no more than a skeleton, which writers to come will clothe with flesh and blood, describing the special traits and aptitudes of the various peoples, their ambitions and struggles, their types of home, imported habits, dress and foods, their picturesque aspects and folkways,- such as Italian puppet-shows, bands, parades, saints' festivals, firework displays, vegetable gardens, Sicilian fishing boats, Yiddish theaters, Swedish choral societies, Caledonian picnics and what not, -- and at the same time appraising their solid contributions in business and the professions and their varying degrees of adaptation to American life. These writers will portray the pioneer types, the transitional conflicts of old and young, the nostalgia that causes some to return from painful exile to the homelands,-for remember it is we who are "foreign" to them,- the changes for better and worse in the second generation, the whole drama of human trans- formation in a new environment and the powerful effect on that environment itself of these diverse exotic influences.
We use the plural in referring to authorship because this unwritten volume seems to us a task for more than one writer. In the right hands it could be made a fascinating story and at the same time a valuable contribution to the history of an American city. Our own labor of enumeration is by comparison prosaic and sober. We can only suggest that the figures to follow may seem less uninviting if behind each dry unit in our tables the eye of imagination will seek the living man, woman or child of which it is merely the deplorably meager arith- metical symbol.
Let us begin with the broadest possible classification, based on the general difference of origins, native and foreign, and on color. The figures given in the census of 1930 show the following distribution of the population in that year:
TABLE I
Native white with one or both parents foreign-born
229,356
Foreign-born white
200,255
Native white with both parents native
20,574
Negroes
1,595
Chinese
69
Japanese
43
Indians
26
Mexicans
781,188
Total
329,270
The great preponderance of the first two classes, foreign by birth or by immediate origin, is evident at a glance. The third class, too, consists principally of persons who are of recent foreign origin. The last five groups embrace the dark-skinned races.
But "foreign" is a general term, covering loosely all the varieties of human type to be found in the rest of the world. It is too vague to be valuable as a basis for discriminating judgments. More particular interest, perhaps, will attach to the following table, constructed to show the numbers of the different nationalities (in the first and second generations only) residing in Boston. Here each of us can find his own kindred and compare them with others, noting their relative importance. The second column in the table is headed in the census, "Native white of foreign or mixed parentage, by country of birth of parents." A note states that these whites are "Classified according to country of birth of father, except where the
81
NOTE ON POPULATION
father is native and the mother foreign-born, and then according to country of birth of mother." The last clause obviously throws all the half-bloods into the foreign class.
With thesc explanations the list is easy to follow. The order of the twenty-nine nation- alities has been changed from that of the census bulletin. The reader will observe at a glance how Ireland, Canada, Italy and Russia stand out in the population that is officially "foreign."
TABLE II
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN
Foreign-Born
Natives with One or Both Parents Foreign-Born
Total
England .
10,316
15,901
26,217
Scotland.
5,637
6,237
11,874
Ireland.
50,381
108,967
159,348
Wales ..
251
357
608
English-speaking Canada.
41,475
42,745
84,220
Newfoundland.
2,759
2,668
5,427
Norway
1,508
1,409
2,917
Sweden.
5,432
5,123
10,555
Denmark
681
887
1,568
Finland.
459
569
1,028
Germany
5,381
11,704
17,085
Austria.
1,380
1,934
3,314
Switzerland.
306
424
730
Netherlands.
463
593
1,056
Belgium.
427
329
756
France.
1,058
1,713
2,771
French Canada.
4,083
5,691
9,774
Italy.
36,274
54,545
90,819
Portugal and Azores.
1,057
1,793
2,850
Greece.
3,416
2,512
5,928
Russia.
31,359
36,814
68,173
Poland.
9,903
11,619
21,522
Lithuania.
5,869
6,482
12,351
Latvia ...
1,059
725
1,784
Ruinania.
683
709
1,392
Czechoslovakia
412
52S
940
Syria and Palestine.
2,396
2,746
5,142
Turkey.
1,154
675
1,829
Armenia.
1,219
S11
2,030
Others.
2,558
2,060
4,618
Like all statistics, these are subject to inisconstruction unless they are analyzed. For example, the Jews of Boston, who are estimated to number 85,000, are credited to Russia, Poland, Germany and other countries, yet their racial identity is in most cases distinct.
Again, the English-speaking Canadians and the Newfoundlanders are not differentiated into their component nationalities, principally English, Irish and Scotch. It would be a mistake to count them all as English. In Newfoundland, for example, there is a strong Irish element, of nearly two hundred years' settlement, which has mixed with the English there and produced a very fine local type. Nova Scotia on the other hand, with many Irish, English, American Loyalists, Germans and Acadian French, owes its name to the Scotch who largely peopled the peninsular. The Gaelic-speaking Scotch, Catholic or Presbyterian, from Cape Breton, Pictou and Antigonish differ, of course, from the Lowlanders in the other counties. Other interesting blends are found in the various provinces of Canada. In general, the English-speaking Canadians present a more thoroughly kneaded mixture of the different
i
82
FIFTY YEARS OF BOSTON
British elements than has yet taken place in this country. A large proportion of them might wcar, as their floral emblem, the rose, the thistle and the shamrock, entwined.
The most striking items brought out by a comparison of the tables of 1920 and 1930 are the large increase among the Italians and the decrease of the Irish. An increase of 4,224 among the Negroes is also worthy of remark. It may serve to remind us that Maria Baldwin, the remarkable Negro teacher, though her work was done in Cambridge, found a sympa- thetic liome in this city and that Roland Hayes received much encouragement here in liis early struggle for recognition. The figures for these three races follow:
1920
1930
Increase or Decrease
Italian birth and parentage.
77,105
90,819
+ 13,714
Irish birth and parentage.
174,883
159,348
15,535
Negroes
16,350
20,574
+ 4,224
The growth among the Italians is largely due to natural increase, as their birth rate is rela- tively high and their death rate remarkably low. How far the decrease among those of Irish blood is due to removals to the suburbs and how far it is offset by an increase in the third and fourth generations, the census, of course, does not reveal. Recent studies made by Dr. Austin O'Malley, Dr. James J. Walsh and the Rev. M. V. Kelly lead these writers to the conclusion. unwelcome to most Americans of whatever descent, that the Irish in this country, residing as they do overwhelmingly under urban conditions, are suffering the retardation of numerical growth that usually accompanies prolonged residence in cities. "Back to the soil!" is a safety motto for any race. The Irish curve may fluctuate for different localities and it is possible that the retardation is less in Boston than elsewhere. It may be pointed out, however. that all the Irish of the third and fourth generations in the city must fall within the 200,255 native whites who are not of foreign or mixed parentage. As this group includes the old Americans and the descendants in the third and fourth generations of several hundred thousand residents of foreign stock who are not Irish, a limit is obviously set to any estimate of the total number of Irish descent in Boston. This limit, however, is raised considerably by additions from another source. Many of the 90,000 English-speaking Canadians and Newfoundlanders and some of the 38,000 English and Scotch are actually of Irish blood.
A third table, showing the foreign-born and those of foreign or mixed parentage, arranged by racial groups, may make it easier to see our population in its larger relations. Since there is already much mixture in some of the countries of origin and since race and nationality do not always correspond, these groups may in some instances be considered geographical rather than racial. It is hardly necessary to say that the Finns are only partly Scandinavian and not many of the Belgian Walloons are Germanic. The total of the colored races is added for purposes of comparison. The table follows:
TABLE III
British Races - England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, English-speaking Canada, Newfoundland 287,694
Mediterranean Races - Italy, France, French Canada, Greece, Portugal and the
Azores . 112,142 Slavs (including Jews from Slavic countries) - Russia, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Rumania, Czechoslovakia . 106,162
Germanic Races - Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Netherlands, Belgium 22,941
Scandinavians - Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland 16,068 Orientals - Syria and Palestine, Turkey, Armenia 9,001
Colored Races - Negroes, Chinese, Japanese, Indians, Mexicans 22,307
Total
576,315
83
NOTE ON POPULATION
As the total shows, only a part of the population, though much the greater part, is covered by these rough groupings. The remainder (disregarding a few unclassified "Others") includes the remoter descendants of these various nationalities, among them the Colonial Americans, who in New England may be regarded as mainly, but not purely, English. They are found in most parts of the city, sometimes in surprisingly humble surroundings, though usually above the average in prosperity, and in some quarters they predominate. A certain number of their descendants must, as we have already observed, be hidden away in the table of native whites of foreign or mixed parentage, which credits the offspring of a native American, perhaps of the older stock, and a foreign-born father or mother to the country of the foreign-born parent. Only a separate census could determine how many residents of Boston are of eighteenth century American descent.
One item in the census, numerically among the least impressive, is unexcelled in historical interest. The unsuspected presence of forty-three Indians in Boston may serve to remind those of us who are inclined to boast of ancestry or numbers or fairness of complexion (as who is not?) that, after all, it is a "colored" race that has had the longest tenure of the soil in this vicinity. In a sense that race is ancestral to us all, for it prepared the way for later comers, trod out the trails, named the lakes and rivers, planted and improved many of the natural products of the country, and taught the white strangers - all of them at first "foreign-born" - more useful arts than their historians have generally wished to acknowledge. It is a pleasure to note that the Indians are increasing throughout the state (from 555 to 874 since 1920) and that even in Boston there was a small gain during the decade. This is as it should be in the city of Cyrus Dallin and his "Appeal to the Great Spirit," a noble work of spiritual reparation and atonement.
Two obvious results of the change in population during the last fifty years may be noted here. The control of the municipal government has passed out of the hands of the Colonial Americans. Newer races furnish the great majority of the twenty-odd thousand city officials and employees, though in proportion to their present numbers the descendants of the earlier settlers may still be duly represented.
The religious complexion of the city has also changed. As the Catholic Church has gained in the number of its adherents and in wealth, familiarity with its solemn liturgy and rich ceremonial appears to have influenced the service in some of the other Christian Churches in the direction of greater warmth and color. Certainly in this respect Boston is no longer the eighteenth century town in which the introduction of an organ to accompany the choir is said to have provoked a riot. The great illuminated tree which stands on the Common from before Christinas till after New Year's has no precedent in the period before 1880; nor have the waits who carol through the streets of Beacon Hill on Christmas Eve; nor the window cribs representing the Nativity scenes; nor the bell-ringers now coming into fashion, nor the electric candles and lighted wreaths seen in the windows of houses everywhere at the Christmas season. These customs are of the new Boston rather than the old. Some of them are revivals from the days of Merrie England, but the festival spirit which prompts them must be accounted a contribution of the newer races, as significant as it is delightful. It is turning Christmas Eve in Boston into an occasion of joyous release and social expansion, a quieter and deeper northern equivalent of the southerners' Mardi Gras.
The reference on page 65 to the birthplaces of the contributors to this volume shows a surprising preponderance of persons who were born elsewhere,- forty-six out of sixty-four. This proportion is reversed, however, among the "Representative Bostonians" whose portraits are published in these pages. Only the group of philanthropists and the group representing the newer races at all resemble the list of contributors in this respect. Among the mayors of the last fifty years the proportion is about one half. Of the other five groups, presenting portraits of distinguished men and women, no fewer than twenty out of twenty-five have been natives of Boston. These contrasting figures tell their own story of the change in popu- lation in the last fifty years.
CHAPTER IV THE POLITICAL UNIT - DEMOCRACY IN PRACTICE
THE GOVERNMENT OF THE CITY OF BOSTON, 1880=1930 By A. CHESTER HANFORD
The chief developments in the government of Boston during the half century from 1880 to 1930 have been the extension of administrative functions as inventions, scientific discoveries, humanitarian ideas, the growth of popu- lation * and the demands of the public for more services forced new activities upon the city; the readjustment of the political and administrative machinery to meet these new problems; the various attempts to establish a greater con- centration of responsibility for the conduct of municipal affairs in the hands of the Mayor; the attempt to separate municipal and national politics, and the increase in the scope of state control. In the working out of these developments the city's task has been complicated by its position as the business and indus- trial center of a huge metropolitan area, including at the present time some eighty other cities and towns, with a total population of 2,307,8981, and by the fact that the city's powers have been narrowly limited so that it has had to turn to the Legislature for practically every important change, internal as well as external.
THE CITY GOVERNMENT IN 1880
In 1880 the city government was carried on under the original charter of 1822, which had been revised in 1854. The governmental structure, like that of other American cities of the period, was based on the traditional principle of checks and balances. The chief organs of government were a Mayor elected for a term of only one year and a bicameral City Council, consisting of a Board of Aldermen of twelve members, elected from the city at large for terms of one year, and a Common Council, made up of seventy-two members, three of whom were elected annually from each of the twenty-four wards. The Mayor was only nominally the chief executive, since he appointed merely a few of the less important officers, while those he did appoint were subject to confirmation by the Board of Aldermen or by the Council. He possessed a qualified veto power over ordinances passed by the Council, which could be overridden by a two- thirds vote of both branches of that body.
The real executive power resided in the City Council, especially in the hands of the Board of Aldermen. As stated in the charter, "the executive powers of the said corporation generally, and all the powers formerly vested in the selectmen of the town of Boston, shall be vested in the Board
* The population of the City of Boston from 1850 to 1930 is shown in the following table:
1850 138,788
1880
362,839 1910.
670,585
1860.
177,840
1890.
448,477 1920.
748,060
1870 250.526 1900.
560,892 1930 781,188
The assessed valuations were: ISSO - $039,462.495; 1930 - $1.972,148,200.
+ Boston Herald, August 6, 1931, citing figures from the 1930 Federal Census.
(84)
85
THE CITY GOVERNMENT
of Aldermen." In all legislative matters the Board of Aldermen acted con- currently with the Common Council, but in matters of appointment the Board acted concurrently with the Mayor, since it possessed the power of confirmation over the few appointments that he made. The Board derived, moreover, much prestige from the fact that it was composed of only twelve members elected at large and was generally regarded as the successor of the original town selectmen; it examined the ballot count in the election for Mayor; it summoned upon the requisition of fifty qualified voters extraordinary meetings of the citizens; it confirmed all appointments by the Mayor for minor offices not provided for in the charter, but thesc officers were removable by the Mayor alone. Since it possessed both executive and legislative powers, it was recog- nized as the outstanding organ of the city government.
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