USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lawrence > Immigrant city: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 > Part 5
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In spite of its ludicrous qualities the movement was so im- portant to the Lawrence Irish that "Irishmen who were not Fenians were not very plentiful." Since it raised the issue of loyalty to Ireland against loyalty to the United States, the Democratic poli- tician James Tarbox urged the Irish to support the Fenians but not to be "imprudent." The Fenians stressed their devotion to the United States by intermixing Irish and American flags in their parades and by boasting of the Irish contributions to American independence. The movement added spice to the monotonous routine of the mill city, but at a price the Irish could ill afford. The $7,500 collected did not include individual assessments of $20.00 from all Fenians, tickets to a ball at $1.25 a couple, and the $10.00 bonds of the government of Ireland. Nor did it count the money spent on arms, food, and uniforms, or the time lost from work. Perhaps, though, it was worth it because Fenianism made the Irish proud that they were both Irishmen and Americans.4
Even with the end of Fenianism, Lawrence maintained its interest in Irish independence. In 1880 a "sober"-talking Charles Stewart Parnell raised over $1,000 from a crowd that jammed
4. The Lawrence Courier, Dec. 4, 11, 1847, Dec. 18, 1847-Feb. 12, 1848, April 15, Aug. 26, 1848; Lawrence Watchman and Haverhill Chronicle, Jan. 22, 1853. They paraded down Hampshire and Essex Streets on the way to the excursion train. The Lawrence Sentinel, July 8, 1865; Lawrence American, Mar. 4, Aug. 25, Sept. 8, 30, Oct. 20, 1865, Feb. 16, Mar. 2, 9, 16, April 6, 13, June 8, July 20, 30, 1866; The Lawrence Sentinel, Oct. 21, 1865, June 9, Oct. 13, 1866, April 14, June 29, 1867, May 28, June 4, 1870; The Essex Eagle, June 29, 1867.
47
DECADES OF PROMISE, 1865-1890
city hall. Following him came Frank Byrnes, one of those who murdered two British officials in Phoenix Park, Dublin, and Michael Davitt, the originator of the Irish Land League, which was trying to secure land for tenants in Ireland. Backed heavily by the Irish owned Lawrence Journal, the Land League attracted many supporters in Lawrence. While some joined because they wanted to help the folks back home, liberals supported the league because of its reform program. E. T. Burke, for example, attacked its opponents as selfish conservatives and said he backed it for the same reasons that he had backed abolition. Burke compared himself with Wendell Phillips, another abolitionist turned Land Leaguer. In order to attract Germans the league showed an in- terest in their fight to gain concessions in Germany. Judging, however, from the number of politicians and society leaders who led the league, many joined for purely practical reasons. And some immigrants may have joined in order to keep future immigra- tion down by improving conditions in Ireland. While the Land League Convention of 1883, which represented closely the view- point of the Lawrence Irish, pledged support to Parnell and urged an American boycott of English goods, it saw no reason why the United States government should support Irish paupers. An effort to settle an Irish colony in Lawrence failed. Even though the league had a thousand members in Lawrence in 1881, it collapsed in 1884 and left Lawrence apathetic about continued agitation. After a brief flurry over the Home Rule Bill in 1886, the Parnell trial of 1890 caused an irreparable breach in the ranks of the Irish. First The Evening Tribune accused the Journal of being anti- Parnell, but then admitted that no one in Lawrence was "interested in private quarrels" in Great Britain.5
While the Irish could be proud of these positive steps toward maturity, they were still open to occasional criticism. The Irish- Orange Riot in July, 1875, followed a picnic celebrating the Battle of the Boyne held by seventy-five members of the Loyal
5. Lawrence Journal, Jan. 24, June 26, 1880, May 14, 1881; The Essex Eagle, Aug. 29, 1884. The Land League Convention was in 1883, three years before the alliance of Parnell and Gladstone in support of the Home Rule Bill. Lawrence Journal, May 5, 1883, Mar. 15, 1884, April 23, May 7, 1887; The Evening Tribune, Mar. 18, April 1, 4, May 5, 1891, Aug. 3, 1895, June 16, 1902. For more details on Lawrence and Irish home rule see Cole, "Lawrence," pp. 130-36.
48
IMMIGRANT CITY
Lodge of Orangemen from the Protestant north of Ireland. After a day at Laurel Grove on the Merrimack the Orangemen, clad in their bright regalia, returned by steamboat only to find a thousand persons at the dock who stoned them and forced them to take refuge in the police station. When they tried to get to Prospect Hill under the protection of the mayor, the crowd followed and fired shots that wounded about twenty. Most Boston newspapers other than the Catholic Pilot said the Irish were at fault. In the city, the Sentinel and the Catholic priests denied that the church was involved. But it was generally assumed in Lawrence that the crowd was made up mostly of Irishmen. When the Orangemen paraded a year later, plain-clothesmen and priests forestalled trou- ble by circulating through the crowd.6
The growing Irish strength, evident long before the Orange Riot, brought a revival of Know-Nothingism. It started with a letter to the American in 1865 that accused mill workers of steal- ing and demanded restrictions on immigration. The Sentinel re- plied that if foreigners were kept out of the mills, Lawrence would be deserted. Alert to ferret out nativism, it carried a front-page story in 1869 saying that a branch of the American Protestant As- sociation, whose members would vote only for old-time natives for office, was in the city. The Sentinel added that the American Order of Phoenix, a resurrected Know-Nothing club, also had a branch in Lawrence and was supporting Republicans. The anti- immigrant American taunted: "The Naturalized citizens,-we will try ... not to say Irish democrats,- ... will perhaps someday learn the difference between their solid vote for American Demo- cratic candidates, and the serious defection of the latter whenever the foreign element is given representation." Apparently the English as well as the natives showed prejudice against the Irish because in 1870 the Irish voted for the Englishman Bower for one office, but the English, in spite of promises, would not support Sweeney for another. It happened because of the rumor that the "Micks" were "cutting" Bower and revealed deep distrust be- tween the groups. Such considerations certainly influenced John
6. The Essex Eagle, July 17, 24, 1875, The New York Times, July 13, 1875, cited in Berthoff, British Immigrants, p. 193; The Lawrence Sentinel, July 17, Dec. 4, 1875, July 15, 1876. Orange meetings of 1896 and 1906 were un- eventful. The Evening Tribune, Nov. 10, 1896; Sunday Sun, April 1, 1906.
49
DECADES OF PROMISE, 1865-1890
Sweeney, editor of the Irish Journal, when he backed Ben Butler for governor in 1878 because Butler had once denounced Know- Nothingism.™
The most flagrant example of prejudice against the Irish oc- curred in 1875, when the city government shifted the boundaries of two wards. The six wards in Lawrence each elected three members to the City Council and the Republicans hoped to cut Democratic strength to three by gerrymandering most of the Irish into one ward. To accomplish this, a reform-Republican party under Mayor Tewksbury shifted parts of the "plains" and land north of the Spicket from Ward Four into Ward Three, which al- ready had a large number of Irish voters. Here is what happened to the population:
Before Gerrymander (1875 Census)
After Gerrymander (1880 Census)
Total
Irish
Total
Irish
Ward Three
5,366
1,815
8,184
2,358
Ward Four
8,404
2,359
7,214
1,190
Here is what happened in the vote for governor:
1874
1876
Republican Democratic Republican
Democratic
Ward Three
203
367
250
659
Ward Four
346
529
474
428
Not only did the Republicans carry Ward Four in 1876, but they carried it in five of the next six elections studied down through 1888.8 And after losing the mayor's office four out of five years through 1876, they suddenly won it four consecutive years from 1877 to 1880.
While control of Lawrence wavered between the two major parties from 1870 to 1880, the Irish vote was frequently decisive. John K. Tarbox won several elections by appealing to the Irish.
7. The Lawrence Sentinel, April 8, 1865, Feb. 6, 27, 1869, Oct. 28, 1876; Lawrence American, Nov. 9, 1877; The Essex Eagle, Nov. 12, 1870.
8. The Essex Eagle, June 19, 1875; The Evening Tribune, Nov. 30, 1894; Record of Elections in the City of Lawrence, MSS, City Clerk's Office, Law- rence, Mass., I (1853-80), II (1880-1923); Census of Mass., 1875, I, 291; Census of Mass., 1880, p. 50. See Map III.
50
IMMIGRANT CITY Map III LAWRENCE WARDS AND GERRYMANDERING
LAWRENCE, MASS.
WARD
TWO
WARD ONE
1000
2000
WARON
WARĎ
FIVE
SEVEN
River
V
ock
SIX
WARD SIX
WARD BOUNDARIES 1853 on One exception -Part of WARD FOUR before 1875 gerrymander (an Irish section). Essex Eagle, June 19, 1875.
WARD BOUNDARIES and NUMBERS proposed by Bell Plan 1885. Journal, October 24, 1885.
ONE
FOUR
TWO
FIVE
THREE
SIX
SEVEN
51
DECADES OF PROMISE, 1865-1890
"The emigrant-ship freighted with stalwart muscle," he said, "is more valuable to our country than the vessel that comes laden with golden treasure, from the precious mines of Australia or Cali- fornia." To get the Irish vote Republicans "buttonholed" them "on every street corner," "cajoled and flattered" them, and just before the election of 1880 vigorously prosecuted a farmer charged with killing an Irish boy. The Democratic Campaign Budget com- mented upon the change in the Republicans' attitude: "Not a word of abuse for them today, there are no slurs, no talk about voters who can neither read nor write. . . . They want the votes hence they let up."9
But the Republicans were doomed to failure as the regime of John Breen began in 1882. The December election of 1881 was extremely bitter because Breen loomed as the first Irish Catholic mayor in Lawrence. After it was over, the American maintained that Breen won because "he was of Irish birth" and then began a series of attacks on the alleged abuses of the new regime. John Tarbox, on the other hand, rejoiced that Breen was "an Irish- American and a Roman Catholic" because he despised "that bigo- try and prejudice which would deny to all men equal rights." Since there was no excitement when a Protestant immigrant was elected mayor in the 1870's, religion must have been more im- portant than birthplace. Some believed that if a Catholic won, he would replace the eagle on the dome of city hall with a cross.
Although the eagle remained atop the hall, a new type of leader sat at the mayor's desk below. While Lawrence had many keen politicians, men such as Duncan Wood, Amedée Cloutier, and Emil Stiegler, its greatest party boss down to the great strike was John Breen. Born in Tipperary, he came to America as a youth and, after a short stay at Villanova College, became a book- keeper in Boston. Moving to Lawrence he went into the under- taking business, married, and had two children. To his con- temporaries he was "a genial and kindly appearing intelligent gentleman."
The techniques used by Breen to gain and hold office would make a textbook of machine politics. By exploiting his undertaking
9. The Lawrence Sentinel, July 12, 1862, July 16, 1864, Mar. 6, Dec. 25, 1869; Lawrence Journal, Aug. 21, 1880, Mar. 19, 1881; The Campaign Budget, Dec. 4, 1882.
52
IMMIGRANT CITY
business and his membership in the Washington Fire Steamer Com- pany, he made friends and was soon on the City Council. When the Campaign Budget ran what it called a "Popular Catechism" in support of Breen, the questions and answers stressed one of his most effective devices:
"Q. Whose is the ready ear and helping hand to the poor and suffering?
"A. Breen's. . . .
"Q. Whose efforts any laboring man cannot honestly say were ever idle in securing him employment when at all possible?
"A. Breen's."
The city police, who influenced voters at the polls, were the heart of the machine, ably supported by the Health and Street De- partments which provided patronage. The "big boss's mouth- pieces" attacked the opposition in speeches and ward heelers used their fists. Some of Breen's men broke up a Lowell Demo- cratic convention, while others assaulted Councilman O'Neill. Financial support poured in from the "Common Street [vice and liquor] dens," which had "grown fat" under his salutary neglect. More came from the illegal jobs that he and his henchmen per- formed for the city. Breen, Dixie Hannegan, Jim Shepard, John Ford, and Jim Joyce formed a ring comparable to the Tweed Ring in the city of New York.10
During Breen's three years in office several events severely tested the new maturity and power of the Irish. The first was the Pacific Mills strike of 1882. Before 1882 there had been no major strike in Lawrence, partly because there were not enough English agitators in the city to foment the sort of trouble they had stirred up in Fall River. The accessible countryside made unemployment more endurable by offering the unemployed useful occupations such as hunting, fishing, and berry picking. The City Missionary cited sound relief work, easy credit at the stores, and ample worker savings as other reasons for the absence of strikes. Whatever the cause, many considered Lawrence a "model cotton and woolen city" with a "superior and thrifty" labor force. It came, therefore,
10. Lawrence American, Dec. 9, 1881, Jan. 13, 26, 1882, Oct. 10, 19, Nov. 2, 9, 1883, Dec. 5, 1884, July 21, Nov. 13, 1885, Jan. 15, 1886; Lawrence Journal, Dec. 10, 17, 1881, May 24, Oct. 11, Nov. 15, 1884; Campaign Budget, Dec. 4, 1882.
53
DECADES OF PROMISE, 1865-1890
as a great shock when a wage reduction brought on a strike on March 14, 1882. After a short lockout, the company promised to raise wages and let every one go back to work, but not until late in May did most of the operatives return. Employers, meanwhile, came from as far away as Paterson, New Jersey, to hire choice craftsmen and aid for the strikers poured in from many cities. Careful coverage in The New York Times gave it national im- portance.
The Irish showed that they could identify themselves with more than just the interests of the workers. In the 1850's they had acted only as workers and in the 1912 strike they supported the owners, but in 1882 they were on both sides. After first inciting the strikers, Peter McCorey, who edited the Catholic Herald, told them to go back to work because they were not well enough organized. While John Breen was always for the strikers, urging them to go west rather than return to their jobs, Father D. D. Regan helped the owners by calling for an end to the strike. Maggie Duffy first named those who abandoned the strike "slaves and scabs," but later accused the labor leaders of misusing funds. The Irish certainly seemed to see both sides of the issue.
Other nationalities, in Lawrence for a briefer time, were less fickle. Among the British, John Ogilvie, president of the Weavers Union, the Ford brothers, who helped the unemployed with food and money, and Duncan Wood, who denounced the use of strike- breaking detectives, fought to the end. The German weavers were the most important single group in the strike and they talked many German organizations into providing relief money. It was typical of the immigrant cycle that the more recent immigrants were most in favor of the strike. The French Canadians were an exception.11
The arrival of the Salvation Army in the city a year later gave the Irish another chance to demonstrate their maturity. At first neither they nor the natives did much of which to be proud. When the Salvation Army first appeared on the streets, it was attacked by a mob of five thousand. And it was immediately the target of both the Irish and native newspapers, which called it a
11. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, "Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence," Thirteenth Annual Report ... 1882, Mass. Pub. Doc. 31, p. 415; Lawrence City Mission, Annual Report, XXXVII (1896), 11-13; The New York Times, Mar. 14-April 18, 1882; Lawrence Journal, Mar. 25-June 3, 1882.
54
IMMIGRANT CITY
"travesty on religion" and a "roving band of itinerants." The city marshal, at first, would not let the Army parade. He denied that freedom of worship applied because "it was doubtful if worshipping God consisted of beating drums and tambourines and cymbals and parading in the streets." A letter to the Lawrence Morning News accused Catholics of causing a serious disturbance at a Salvation Army meeting. But both the Irish Mayor, John Breen, and the nativist American soon changed their positions. They agreed that as long as the Salvation Army did not disturb the peace, it might march and hold services. In spite of all attacks the Salvationists gained strength, numbering 150 by July and 200 at their first anni- versary in December, 1884. When they held a parade without being attacked in May, 1885, and in August received praise from the Journal, they had won a position in the city. And the surpris- ingly liberal stand taken by Mayor Breen and eventually by the city showed that the Irish had grown up.12
At the same time the Irish faced a more serious test over the collapse of the Augustinian Fathers' bank. The Irish had never trusted banks. In 1878, for example, only a state stay law had been able to stop a run on the Essex and Lawrence banks. A tradition had grown consequently for Lawrence Catholics to de- posite money with their Augustinian priests, who issued deposit books, paid interest, and had thousands of dollars under their control. As early as 1874 there were hints of trouble when Ann Doherty sued the fathers for $100. As depositors had difficulty withdrawing money, new attachments followed between 1880 and 1882. But in spite of these portents the Lawrence Irish com- munity was stunned when the fathers announced in 1883 that all the money was gone and that the church had debts of $600,000.
While the fathers blamed poor investments, high interest rates, and a heavy building program, the Irish Catholic Journal, edited by the anti-clerical Sweeneys, believed that much had been siphoned off to less prosperous parishes. Nor was the Journal satisfied with the priests' financial statement which showed 703 deposits totalling about $400,000. Where, it asked, was the ad- ditional half million dollars the church had collected at services
12. Lawrence Journal, Dec. 15, 1883, April 19, July 19, Oct. 4, Dec. 13, 1884, May 23, Aug. 1, 1885; Lawrence American, April 18, 1884; Lawrence Morning News, April 17, 21, 24, May 7, 1884.
55
DECADES OF PROMISE, 1865-1890
over the past nineteen years? When the Journal demanded lay control of church funds and ran articles attacking the priests, it split the parish into two camps. "Absolute power naturally tends to abuse," thundered the Journal; "few men are strong enough to resist its demoralizing tendency." When the Lawrence Catholic Herald told the editors to be silent because they were Catholics and accused them of libel and misrepresentation, the Sweeneys scur- rilously denounced the clergy for trying to hush up the affair. They blamed the priests for all the misery of the church and slyly added that Martin Luther had once been an Augustinian. The priests then attacked the Sweeneys from the pulpit and an Augustin- ian in Andover called John Sweeney "a persecutor" who would "soon have rope enough to hang" himself. The Journal replied coldly that a priest who lost his temper was not competent to rule a parish. It added that the Augustinians in Lawrence were a "set of pious frauds" who would "hobnob with rumsellers to defraud the poor working people."
The unity of the Catholic church in Lawrence reached its nadir. When the fathers asked depositors to raise their hands in church to indicate that they would not sue, few would comply. In spite of personal visits from the priests, many Lawrence Catholics began to file suits, some for over a thousand dollars. Feeling was so high that many would not contribute when the parish began a drive for funds to settle the debt and on several other occasions parishioners refused requests of their priests. Politically the fight divided the Irish into two groups, one led by the Sweeneys and the other by John Breen, and this schism was to plague them for the next decade.13
As Breen's third term neared its end, the great boss moved from the local arena to the Democratic national convention of 1884. Though originally pledged to Ben Butler, he switched over to Grover Cleveland. John Sweeney, on the other hand, after dis- missing the charge that the Republican candidate James G. Blaine was anti-Catholic and convincing himself that Blaine would do something to free Ireland, came out for him. Now Sweeney and his followers were against the church, against Breen, and against the
13. Lawrence Journal, April 6, 1878, Mar. 3, 17, 24, May 5, July 21, Oct. 4, 1883; The Essex Eagle, Feb. 7, 1874; Lawrence American, April 13, 1883.
56
IMMIGRANT CITY
Democratic party. The Irish split was complete. During the campaign the Journal attacked Cleveland for straddling the tariff issue, for being the "unrelenting foe of labor," and for keeping "Know-Nothing" advisers. It was rare irony that Blaine was himself associated with anti-Catholicism when Burchard made his famous "rum, Romanism, and rebellion" speech in New York just before the election. The Journal, already committed, ignored the blunder.
The Irish, who had suffered, fought, and matured during three years of Breenism, were not able to stand their three years of political prosperity; and the Sweeney-Breen rift led to the loss of the mayor's seat in four of the next seven elections down to 1890. The first disaster was the defeat of Breen's hand-picked successor, Alexander Bruce, in December of 1884. But though the Journal declared the "ring broken" and "Breenism repudiated," the machine held so many non-elective jobs that it survived the year out of office. When Bruce won the two following years, the Journal admitted that Breen was "still Boss." His influence was clearly waning, however, when he was unable to get either the Congres- sional nomination or the postmastership and even lost an election for sheriff. When a group of leading Democrats signed a protest against him in 1886, it further reduced his power and accentuated the party split.14
The Irish squabbles encouraged the natives to resume their attacks. In 1884 the School Committee rejected an Irish Catholic by the name of Owen H. Conlin as submaster in one of the schools, an action that several newspapers blamed on the "bigoted puritan families" who dominated the committee. The American then de- fended the committee on the grounds that all teachers should be capable of "instructing the scholars in the principles of American freedom," an impossible task apparently for Roman Catholics.
The native Republicans determined to gerrymander the city as they had done in 1875. Their victory in 1884 gave them the chance and they proposed a complete redistricting of the city with seven wards running east and west instead of the six that were perpendicular to the river. The additional ward would be the
14. Lawrence Morning News, May 23, 1884; Lawrence Journal, July 26, Sept. 27, Nov. 1, 15, Dec. 6, 1884, Dec. 12, 1885, Jan. 1, 1887; Lawrence American, Jan. 2, 1885.
57
DECADES OF PROMISE, 1865-1890
solidly Irish Democratic district on the "plains" between Haverhill Street and the Spicket River, which the Republicans would con- cede to the opposition. They would also give the Democrats the two other central wards but expected to carry the four on the out- skirts and win the important council. Since they were currently never sure of more than three of the six wards, the new plan was appealing.
So enraged were the Irish that even fourteen years later James O'Neill, President of the Hibernians, drew a pistol when enemies taunted him for voting for this plan to "corral all the Irish in one ward." At the hearings an Irishman named Hannegan said that Ward Four would be "Irishtown," while Councilman Murphy maintained that it would contain two-thirds of the Irish vote. Murphy shouted: "Was this bigotry, or accident?" The Journal then commented: "The real facts are that some Republicans are horror-stricken because a few gentlemen of foreign birth or parents have held offices; they insist that the atmosphere of city hall has been contaminated and must be purified." M. S. O'Sullivan then "showed the intrigue which had been resorted to in arranging the school districts, and claimed that the era of race prejudice was being revived." As invariably happened in Lawrence, national background determined the result. With just one exception the council vote was along ethnic lines: voting "yea" were Abbott, Somerville, O'Neill, Hinchcliffe, Haberle, Wheeler, Haseltine, Auty, Smith, Brackett, Abbott, Lyell; voting "nay" were O'Brien, Mur- phy, Cooney, O'Hearn, Sullivan, Hill. In the cases of Murphy and Cooney, Republicans, ethnic considerations outweighed party benefits. Since a twelve to six vote was not sufficient to carry the redistricting, the votes of the two Irish Republicans were decisive in defeating this Republican scheme.15
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