USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Lawrence > Immigrant city: Lawrence, Massachusetts, 1845-1921 > Part 8
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Although the amount of crime did not actually increase, it remained fantastically high. Six per cent of the population was arrested in 1880 and 1890, and it was still 5 per cent in 1910. It is hard to imagine six persons out of one hundred with a police record in one year. Between 1889 and 1891, 56 per cent of the arrested were immigrants and even though the proportion of immi- grants in the population grew during the next two decades, their percentage of arrests was identical for the years 1909 to 1912. Once again the newspapers were unfairly stressing the misbehavior of the more recent arrivals.19
18. Sunday Sun, July 30, 1905. Concerning the Irish see The Lawrence Courier, April 24, 1855; French, Lawrence Journal, June 18, 1881; Syrian, The Evening Tribune, Aug. 26, 1903; Polish, Sunday Sun, Feb. 4, 1906. The razor quotation is in ibid., July 5, 1908.
19. Bureau of Statistics of Labor, "Fall River, Lowell, and Lawrence," Thirteenth Annual Report ... 1882, Mass. Pub. Doc. 31, pp. 193-415; Lawrence
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DECADES OF DESPAIR, 1890-1912
The intellectual climate of the city was much less favorable in 1912 than it had been in the 1880's. Once again the hopes of the founders of the model town and the promise of the 1870's and 1880's had been in vain. The workers were still not attending the lectures set up for them by the early builders. Nor was the great library interest maintained. While mill workers made up 37 per cent of those holding library cards in 1873, an encouraging figure, the percentage for the 1890's was 30 per cent and for 1900-10 only 22 per cent. At the same time the proportion of non-fiction and non-juvenile literature read dropped from 29 per cent in 1875-84 to 19 per cent in 1912. Conditions were little better in the school system where Lawrence spent in 1891-92 less per child than any city in the state but one. Truancy, a nightmare for the principals, averaged 8,500 cases a year. And those stu- dents who did come to class were frequently older than the gen- erally accepted age levels. The median Italian and Syrian student had not advanced beyond the first grade in 1896.20
Illiteracy and inability to speak English, which were both related to the decline in intellectual standards, were sharply on the rise after 1900. While less than 1 per cent of the native popula- tion was illiterate in both 1890 and 1910, foreign-born illiterates numbered 15 per cent in 1890 and 22 per cent in 1910. And this was an increase over the 14 per cent of the foreign-born who were illiterate in 1865. As a consequence one-eighth of the city could not read or write any language just before the strike. Among the natives those with foreign parents had three times as many il-
City Documents 1889-1890, p. 305; 1890-91, pp. 280-81; 1891-92, pp. 253-54; 1899-1900, p. 183; 1900-1, pp. 151-52; 1901-2, p. 235; 1909-10, p. 6; 1910-11, p. 4; 1911-12, p. 72; Eleventh Census . .. 1890, I, cxxvii; United States Census Office, Twelfth Census . 1900, II, 621; Thirteenth Census . . . Supplement for Mass., p. 609.
20. The Essex Eagle, Jan. 3, 1874; Catalogue of the Free Public Library of . . Lawrence (Lawrence, 1873), p. 332; Librarian of the Free Public Library . of the City of Lawrence, Report, 1873 (Lawrence, 1874), p. 9; Librarian, Report, IV-V (1875-76); XIV-XV (1885-86); XIX (1890); XXI (1892); XXV (1896); XXIX (1900); XXXI (1902); XXXIII (1904); XXXVII (1908); XXXIX (1910); XLI (1912); School Committee of ... Lawrence, Annual Report, XLVI (1892), 91; XLVIII (1894), 19-20; L (1896), 9-11, 46-47; LVI (1902), 9-11; LXV (1911), 26, 30, 71. One-fifth of the pupils in the first eight grades were above the normal age. Ninth Census ... 1870, p. 446; Eleventh Census . . . 1890, I, 172-80. Immigrants made up 18 per cent of the public school students in 1870; 16 per cent in 1896. The median student in Lawrence was in the fourth grade in 1896.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
literates as those with native parents. The figures for the factory workers studied by the Immigration Commission in 1909 were about the same. The immigrant who could not read or write his own language often had the added difficulty of not being able to speak English. It was bad enough in 1890 when about 10 per cent of them could not speak English, but in 1909 almost 40 per cent of the woolen and worsted workers had that added handicap.21
The immigrant city sought to remedy the situation through its schools. In the regular day-classes natives mixed freely with foreigners. Not one of the city's schools in 1896 had a dominant number born in any one country and most had students from five to seven ethnic groups. Only the Syrians were confined to one school. Segregation was the rule of course in the Free Evening School, which taught English to immigrants, where only two classes out of sixteen were mixed. There were two separate German classes, seven French, and one each of Italians, Syrians, and Armenians. A school of six hundred in 1870, it doubled its size by 1912. The city also set up an industrial school in 1909 to teach the immigrant a trade. Situated within the city, it was a great improvement over the previous arrangement whereby tired workers left the mills at 6:30 P.M., went nine miles to the textile school in Lowell, re- turning to a midnight supper. But in spite of all efforts Lawrence was a city of poorly educated and frequently illiterate immigrants in 1912.22
21. "Illiterate" means "cannot read or write" or "cannot write" any language. Oliver Warner, Abstract of the Census of Massachusetts,-1865 . . . (Boston, 1867), p. 94; Ninth Census . . . 1870, I, 446; Carroll D. Wright, Census of Massachusetts: 1880 . . (Boston, 1883), p. 470; United States Census Office, Eleventh Census of the United States: 1890, II (Washington, 1897), cxix-xccii; Thirteenth Census ... Supplement for Mass., p. 597. Exact native illiteracy was 0.7 per cent 1890 and 1910. Exact total of illiteracy 1910 was 13.2 per cent. Immigration Commission, "Woolen and Worsted Goods in Representative Community A," Immigrants in Industries, Part 4: Woolen and Worsted Goods Manufacturing, II, Immigration Commission, Reports, X, 61 Congress, 2 Session, Doc. 633 (Washington, 1911), pp. 775, 789; Eleventh Census . . . 1890, II, lxv, 270. Factory worker illiteracy 1909: native-born, native parents, 0.2 per cent; native-born, foreign parents, 0.5 per cent; foreign-born, 21.9 per cent. See Table IX.
22. School Committee, Report, L (1896), 46; LXVI (1912), 89; The Evening Tribune, Mar. 1, 1894; The Essex Eagle, Nov. 12, 1870; William Dooley, "Practical Education for Industrial Workers," Educational Review, XXXVIII (1909), 261-72. Those enrolled in evening School were: 600 in 1870; 900 in 1894; 1300 in 1912.
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DECADES OF DESPAIR, 1890-1912
As the gap between immigrant and native grew, nativism, dormant for a few years after the gerrymander failure of 1885, arose again. The ugly prejudice displayed in the Saint Mary's flag raising episode in 1890 only foreshadowed worse ethnic clashes to come, for after several decades of relative peace, the city returned to the fierce passions of the 1850's. The Saint Mary's affair began when members of the G.A.R. would not take part in a Decoration Day ceremony at Saint Mary's school and were called "bigots" by the Irish. Patrick Sweeney, donor of the flag that was to be raised, then offered the city $1,000 for prizes at Saint Mary's school. Since many thought he only wanted to in- fluence the schools, they felt the city should not accept his offer. The positive stands of the G.A.R. and Sweeney focused attention on the flag raising ceremony in which only Catholic societies participated. Father O'Reilly, the prominent priest at Saint Mary's, probed the religious issue with these words:
We find here and there, the smoldering embers of intolerance and bigotry, fanned into a flame of religious hatred.
No sect or creed, no native nor foreign-born class can claim upon this soil to be the loyal men or women of America.
. We are not ashamed to assert it, God first, country second. And he who serves God well, the better serves his country.
[But why have we parochial schools?]
We believe that a religious education should go hand in hand with a knowledge of the sciences of the material and physical world. This is no new doctrine of America. The Puritan founders of Massachusetts insisted in having their parish schools alongside their parish church.
The idea that what was good for the church was good for America and the parallel drawn with New England Puritanism did little to ease tension. Nor was the situation relieved a few days later when the Hibernians attacked the British Americans, whom they believed had kept the G.A.R. away from the flag raising. A British American extended the controversy by replying, "We are sorry for our neighbors . . . that they cannot adapt themselves to the institutions as they find them. ... They are ruled by scheming and tricky politicians and demagogues. . . . "23
The Saint Mary's affair touched off five years in which the nativist issue dominated politics, a period comparable to the six 23. The Evening Tribune, May 5, 10, 27, 31, June 14, 1890.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
years between 1854 and 1860. Party labels became "Mick" and "anti-Mick" or "A.P.A. and "anti-A.P.A." The Democratic Eve- ning Tribune felt that the only way the Democrats could win in 1891 was to nominate a native for mayor because even the second- generation Irish wanted one. Its poem accentuating this point was one of the high spots of the campaign:
The Boston democrats
Go to the polls
Elected an
Today from
American democrat
Four to 9 o'clock
For mayor.
And vote to restore
The example is
Democratic harmony,
Worthy of emulation
Democratic unity
By the democrats
And win a
Of Lawrence.
Democratic victory.
The Republicans at the same time considered the Germans, the so-called "Bremen Line," an equal handicap. The campaign song used to get the German Gesing off the Republican ticket was as well known as the Tribune's ditty:
Arra, Gesing, dear, and do you hear the cry that's going round:
"Get off the ticket, laddy buck, or you surely will be drowned.
There's a German weight at one end that makes a round shouldered stoop;
Get off! Get off! Get off! or the ticket's in the soup."
Prejudice reached its high point on the day of the election when twenty-eight women in Ward Six united to vote against the Irish Democratic candidates for the School Committee and suc- ceeded in defeating a Catholic named Kennedy by the scant margin of eleven votes. The Democrats, who followed the Tribune's cue by nominating the native-born Lewis P. Collins for mayor, carried the city, but controversy continued over appointments to office. "Nominate a Mc or an O, Mr. Mayor," said the American; "the fellows [the Democratic Aldermen, mostly Irish Catholics] will recognize him at once." The Irish Democrats then combined
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DECADES OF DESPAIR, 1890-1912
with the Republicans on the board to defeat any of the mayor's Democratic nominees who were not Irish.24
Later that year prejudice arose in a different area when a few native members of the swank Canoe Club voted not to admit a half dozen Irish because they imagined a "studied attempt" to make it an Irish club. The Irish members had been in Lawrence too long for such treatment, however, and succeeded in passing the following resolution: "Whereas it is apparent that at a recent meeting of this club certain members thereof voted to reject ap- plicants for membership solely through race prejudice: Be it resolved, That we distinctly repudiate the spirit of bigotry thus manifested ... as hostile to the best interests of the club and that we denounce their action as narrow, illiberal, and un-Ameri- can. . . . ' "25
But the next year a different slur against the Irish was not officially rebuked. Former Senator Patterson addressed a Lawrence meeting of the Essex County Teachers' Association and made re- marks that the Catholic teachers of the city held to be "offensive." He attacked the sale of indulgences and not only ridiculed the "superstitious ... reverence of Catholics for sacred relics" but also said he had seen enough of them on his travels "to build a house." The School Committee's discussion of the teachers' resolution against him revealed intense religious feeling. While a Protestant member named Brewster suggested tabling the resolution, Catholics McCarthy and Breen wanted to endorse it. Brewster saw no reason for Catholic irritation and pointed out that he had done nothing when people accused his Puritan ancestors of whipping naked women through the streets. Breen, however, thought this irrelevant, saying that Brewster's ancestors had actually whipped women, while Patterson's remarks were false. After additional acrimony, the committee voted along strictly religious lines not to condemn the Senator's references. When Brewster in his campaign for mayor later said it was necessary to protect the schools against Catholic foreigners, Breen and McCarthy used his statement to defeat him.26
24. British-American Citizen, Dec. 7, 1889, Aug. 2, 1890, cited in Berthoff, British Immigrants, p. 200; The Evening Tribune, Nov. 11, 14, 27-28, Dec. 3, 9, 17, 1891, Jan. 14, 30, 1892, Nov. 23, 1894.
25. Ibid., June 9, 21, 1892.
26. Ibid., April 28, Nov. 28, Dec. 9, 1893.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
After the controversy over the role of the Catholic church in education and politics, Lawrence became the scene of a series of American Protective Association lectures in the fall of 1893 and throughout 1894. This organization, the Know-Nothing move- ment reborn a half century later, was organized in 1887 in the Mississippi Valley and spread to the northeast on the heels of the depression of 1893. A harbinger of the A.P.A. lectures was a meeting back in 1886 when Patrick Welch spoke in City Hall on "Why I left the Roman Catholic Church and Became a Protes- tant," amid hisses, stamping of feet, and calls of "How about that, Paddy Welch?" But there was nothing more until 1893.
The A.P.A. in Lawrence was more concerned about Catholi- cism than immigration. Out of ninety-five references in the lectures, fifty-two were about the menace of the Catholic church to America, while only fourteen took up the dangers of uncontrolled immigra- tion. While the lecturers, most of whom were Protestant ministers, feared the power of the church over education and other American institutions, they were particularly worried about its political in- fluence. To the rhetorical question: "What power is it that has corrupted our municipalities?" the Reverend Wheeler replied: "It is that very power that has its grip on Mexico, and has demoralized Italy, Canada East and the South American republics." One A.P.A. lecturer so feared the divided loyalty of a Catholic, split between Papal dogma and the Constitution, that he asked: "What constitutes a loyal citizen of the United States?" When he added, "Can one who owes allegiance to the pope . . . be one?" he felt obliged to answer, "No! No man can serve two masters." To guard against the threat the speakers urged their listeners to demand an educational qualification for all voters and to elect only those whose primary allegiance was to the United States.
Although the A.P.A. denied any objection to parochial schools, it did not want public money supporting them. If the Catholic church "chooses to have such a school," said Reverend Bates, "she must not come like a pauper and ask state aid." Nor did the A.P.A. want Roman Catholics on public school boards. To de- feat the Catholic threat the A.P.A. called for frequent inspections of all public schools.
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DECADES OF DESPAIR, 1890-1912
Closely related to the menace of Catholicism was the danger from unrestricted immigration. According to Reverend Nathan Bailey there were "two dangers-the first ... Romanism and the second ... immigration. The first is dependent upon the second. If another immigrant did not come in it wouldn't take Romanism long to die out from natural causes." The A.P.A. believed that the new immigration was swamping New England upsetting its basic American institutions. The United States could never teach such immigrants to understand America, it said, because "what can you do with people who have a vague idea that our liberty is license?" The A.P.A. opposed Catholicism and immigration because they menaced its particular interpretation of the American way of life.
In order to define this way of life the typical A.P.A. speaker would open his talk with a rhetorical question such as: "Why is it that ... these meetings are being held. .. ? " To this he would re- spond: "It is because they feel that there is danger somewhere, and we have come together ... ready to make any sacrifices that our institutions may be preserved and perpetuated." For the A.P.A. these institutions included individual liberty, the public school, the separation of church and state, the Constitution, and the Supreme Court. They were opposed to anarchism and other radical move- ments. They continually called upon the immigrant to be an American. When the Reverend Blackburn introduced the theme, "Who shall carry the flag?" he said they had gathered "not as Protestants or as Catholics, but simply as Americans." When he asked "What sort of people are to carry the flag?" a voice answered, "American."
The Lawrence A.P.A. speeches usually closed with a tolerant gesture. The movement was not, said the speakers, an attack on the Catholic church but only on its evil influence for they "would not destroy the Roman Catholic church" if they could. When speakers referred to the loyal service of the Irish in the Civil War, they were simply repeating the tolerance that Lawrence had shown during the war. But the generosity was frequently patronizing. "When I walk through the streets and see the character of the people pouring in upon us," said one speaker, "I am convinced that that church is needed to touch them-that the whip of her
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IMMIGRANT CITY
priesthood is necessary to keep these people within the bounds of moral decency."
Immigrant Lawrence, led by the Catholic Sunday Register and its editor, Katie O'Keefe, responded to the A.P.A. attacks. Miss O'Keefe was silent at the May 14 meeting, but members of the Young Men's Catholic Association carried her burden by passing out pamphlets. When Miss O'Keefe sat in the front row, notebook in hand, at the next lecture, she so irritated the speaker that he ended one of his more extreme sentences with "Take that down, sister." When he quoted a statement from the Catholic World, Katie in vain demanded the number of the issue. After a brief exchange, hisses rose from the audience, and the speaker chal- lenged his tormentors to come down front. There were no takers, but hissing continued at the next lecture. In another, Reverend Scott Hersey sharply criticized Roman Catholic canon law and when the Register contradicted his statements, he defended his position by quoting from a book on ecclesiastical law. The non- sectarian Tribune, which often sympathized with the immigrants, called the A.P.A. views "narrow" and "un-American."
Not all Lawrence opposed the movement, for many attended the meetings and vigorously applauded references to Americanism and attacks on Catholics in education. An Englishman wrote in to the Tribune urging the abandonment of parochial schools. But while some who filled the lecture hall were supporters of the A.P.A., most were either curiosity seekers or active opponents. The A.P.A. found little religious favor in Lawrence.27
For a while, however, the movement had great political im- portance. The Tribune referred darkly to its effect on the city election of 1893, but not until the fall of 1894 did its significance become evident. During the next twelve months over forty articles appeared in the Tribune concerning the political role of the A.P.A., generally connecting it with the Republicans. Jeremiah T. Sullivan and Charles A. DeCourcey, both Irish Democrats, denounced the movement, and DeCourcey even suggested that it might be a group of Tories returned from Canada. Although they could not carry Lawrence in November, 1894, the Democrats did manage to
27. Lawrence American, Nov. 21, 1886; Lawrence Journal, Nov. 13, 1886; for lectures see Tribune, Nov. 27, 1893, May 14, 21, 28, June 4, 11, 18, Sept. 6, 19, Oct. 4, 18, Nov. 1, 1894. For analysis of lectures see Table X.
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DECADES OF DESPAIR, 1890-1912
defeat the one Republican candidate who was openly for the A.P.A. The Democratic candidate who was suspected of A.P.A. leanings also lost.
In spite of its November rebuff, the A.P.A. exerted great influence on the city election the following month. The Democrats, already suffering from the religious split between Breen and Sweeney, tried to prove that the Republicans were the intolerant ones. John Breen compared the A.P.A. with the Know-Nothing party; a Lowell Democrat tied it to the Orangemen; and others connected it with the British-American club. All agreed that the A.P.A. was in control of the Republican party and planned to gerrymander the city and register women to vote against Catholics on the School Committee. The result: an important Democratic victory.
After this election the Republicans abandoned the A.P.A. and wisely put two Irish Catholics on their ticket the next year to combat the balanced Democratic slate. Their smashing victory meant the end of the A.P.A. in Lawrence. While the Democrats lost this particular election and a few that followed, they were not to lose many more. Shortly afterward they healed their own re- ligious schism and were able to nominate and elect Irish Catholic mayors.
And so one year after the final A.P.A. lecture the movement came to the end of its political importance. Even though school children still called each other "A.P.A.'s" or "anti-A.P.A.'s" and in spite of continuing bitterness in the mills, the organization had lost its vigor. When the Lawrence School Committee replaced two Protestant principals with Roman Catholics, it was the Boston A.P.A., not the Lawrence group, that accused the committee of planning to "Romanize" the schools. By 1898 Katie O'Keefe was able to ask sarcastically where the A.P.A. people had gone now that there was a war. The strength of the immigrant society in Lawrence had killed the A.P.A. several years before it died in other New England cities.28
The A.P.A. was one in a series of movements against the immigrant, and like the others its principal concern was religion.
28. The Evening Tribune, Sept., 1894-Dec., 1895, particularly Oct. 6, 23, 31, Nov. 3, 7, 20, 28, Dec. 5, 1894, Nov. 26-27, Dec. 4, 1895. For the decline of the A.P.A. see ibid., Nov. 23, 1894, Jan. 22, July 2, 3, 1895.
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IMMIGRANT CITY
While the Know-Nothing riot and the Breen election posed the problem of the Irish Catholic in politics and the Saint Mary's affair focused attention on sectarian education, the A.P.A. lectures cov- ered the entire relationship of immigration and Catholicism. In retrospect, it is remarkable that so little violence arose from these and other incidents. Possibly the steady intolerance of the city had dulled the immigrant's sensibilities. When the Irish themselves in 1912 began to echo the A.P.A. attacks on anarchy and the A.P.A. adulation of the flag, the persecuted had become the attacker and the immigrant cycle had been completed in Lawrence.
As trouble between the natives and Irish waned, more vicious battles among different immigrant groups arose. While these con- flicts were not completely new, they came to a head after 1890. The Irish-British antagonism grew in the decades after the Civil War until finally in 1888 the Lawrence British-Americans asked the Irish-Americans to stop supporting the rebels in Ireland. "A great nation ... on whose dominions the sun never sets," they said, "is not going to yield to a few agitators." The Journal then snapped back that the only purpose of the British-American societies was to persecute the Irish. Two years later in 1890 a state meeting of the Hibernians vigorously denounced the British. The main battle, however, awaited the Boer War.
The officers of the Irish legal societies in a secret meeting at Christmastime in 1899 decided to help the Boers in their revolt against the British. When they sponsored a mass meeting, Ger- mans and other immigrants joined them in condemning the British. John Breen began with a broad attack on the British Empire, com- paring the situation in South Africa with that in India and Ireland. At the same time he praised Secretary of State Olney's courage in denouncing Britain in the Venezuela boundary dispute. When Reverend Francis Page said that the Boers were more anti-Catholic than anti-British, he stung Father Fleming into a hot denial. The Tribune kept the agitation alive by calling attention to the large number of Scots at a British celebration and commenting: "This is peculiarly a British practice. In South Africa the Irish and Scotch brigades lead the van." But the furor subsided even more suddenly than in the A.P.A. movement.29
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