USA > Rhode Island > Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II > Part 90
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The system in operation established a profound respect for what the citizen thought. The sovereign citizen was honored and dignified by the respect accorded his opinion; the man was respected because he was a free and independent man, whose counsel had weight in government. Rhode Island had solved the paradox that had baffled Cotton, who could not conceive of or understand democracy, because there must be "governed" if there was a "governor"; in Rhode Island the governed had become governors, and the governors were ruled by the governed. The good Rhode Islanders had learned to respect both a man's religion and a man's politics, and the colony first and state later were, so far as the rank and file were concerned. further advanced toward genuine democracy than any other until the new pioneering in the westward extension of the United States produced a new equality in those sections. Thus it happened that as the Revolution approached there was little ill feeling between patriots and those who were destined to become Tories, except a few of the latter who were too recently from England or Scotland to have learned Rhode Island ways. Governor Joseph Wanton was as zealous a defender of the Charter as any other Rhode Islander, and he stood firmly with his people until it was clear that be must choose between rebellion in arms and loyalty to England. He was deposed by not being permitted to qualify as Governor only after he had been given a final opportunity to make his choice.
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Religion and political toleration were established thoroughly in Rhode Island within a cen- tury of the founding, in the sense that both were settled policies. Rhode Island's attitude toward the native Indians was consistent with the general principle of toleration. The intolerance of the Puritans of Connecticut and Massachusetts precipitated conflict with the Indians; Rhode Island's just treatment produced peace. It is true that the difficulties almost inevitable when civilization and barbarism or savagery meet and remain closely in contact were experienced, but Rhode Island succeeded in its relations with the Indians, while Connecticut and Massachusetts failed. When Hebrews came to Rhode Island, east meeting west, alien in race, oriental in cul- ture and tradition, Rhode Island made them welcome. They sought residence and freedom to engage in trade and commerce, and the General Assembly knew of no more reason for exclud- ing Hebrews than for rejecting Friends, if indeed the General Assembly wanted reason. The Hebrews were shrewd, resourceful, adventurous and successful merchants and traders; their argosies brought wealth, and Rhode Island profited from their enterprises. Their capital was invested in new home industries, and Rhode Island profited again. In a century in which Hebrews were anathema in most countries claiming civilization, a persecuted race, confined to ghetto, systematically robbed by rulers and baited by riotous denizens of towns, they found toleration and good treatment and protection of the law in Rhode Island. Rhode Island tolera- tion in religion and politics had been extended, in the instance of the Hebrews, to race, culture, tradition, custom, orientalism in an occidental setting. The Hebrews were so well treated in Rhode Island that they forgot it not for generations, and their descendants, scattered by the pursuit of fortune, sent money to endow the synagogue and the cemetery for perpetual care, and aid to Redwood Library to assure its continuance. It is significant of the spirit of Rhode Island that the enfranchisement of Catholics was proclaimed so soon as independence had been firmly established, by repeal of a section of the printed laws of the enactment of which no rec- ord has been found, and of the actual enforcement of which there is more than reasonable doubt. Thus Rhode Island ended the eighteenth century, still setting an example in toleration for all the rest of the world to follow if and when it could.
MANUFACTURING AND IMMIGRATION-The most serious social and political problems of the nineteenth century in Rhode Island were predicated to the success of Samuel Slater and others with power-driven machinery in manufacturing textiles. Rhode Island was transformed from a farming community which had grown wealthy because of favorable commerce, into a beehive of factories. Population was increased by immigration, for the most part from Europe, and almost directly from Europe to Rhode Island, whatever the port of entrance. The prin- cipal source of early immigration was England, and the newcomers were mostly from English manufacturing towns with a few relatively from Scotland and the north of Ireland immediately or after a sojourn in England. News had reached the British Isles that Rhode Island was build- ing factories, and that work was plentiful for textile operatives and that wages were good. The surplus of labor, displaced at home by the introduction of power-driven machinery, flowed to America. Though the immigrants were not exclusively of one racial stock, they had more in common than language and immediate environment, being drawn from a more homogeneous grouping than is suggested by the extremes that met in the British Parliament by representa- tives from Highland and Lowland Scotch, and Belfast and Cork Irish. They were different, however, from Americans, and particularly the advanced type of American who lived in Rhode Island.
The Rhode Islander of the period was not merely an Englishman who had been ferried across the Atlantic Ocean; he had been transformed through the experiences of governing him- self in an autonomous republic and of wresting a livelihood from the soil and from the sea in a new environment. The newcomers were still of the Old World, and the Rhode Islander belonged to the New. They came from the mill population of Europe with inclination to docility, while
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the Rhode Islander was still fired with the enthusiasm of the Revolution. It was true, as it has been true generally of immigrants, that those who ventured the long voyage across the sea were alert and enterprising, men and women whom the pioneering instinct urged to move on to the westward with the flood of the elite, as their fathers and mothers had followed the sun through generations of human history, because they could not be content and remain at home while there was a promise of better conditions in America. They were men and women out of whom good Rhode Islanders could be made. Had they come with the purpose of replacing Rhode Islanders in long-established industries, no doubt they would have been less welcome; but they were, as a rule, filling new places in new factories, and Rhode Island farmers and merchants found profits accruing to them from the new prosperity attending the development of the textile industry, and from the demand for food and other commodities of every kind, for which customers with money were waiting.
Besides all of that, Rhode Island had learned to tolerate differences, and relations between Rhode Islanders and the newcomers, although the latter were alien and strange in their ways and points of view and opinions, suggested no serious problem in the early part of the nine- teenth century. Had there been no segregation of the early immigrants, or if they had settled down and mingled with and become part of the mass of the population of the state, it is alto- gether likely that Rhode Island would have absorbed them, taught them Rhode Island ways by example quickly and without much difficulty, and that Rhode Island would have been changed but little, and would have been certainly no worse, if not indeed far better, because of the infusion of new blood and the introduction of new elements by the progressive type of men and women who move. But the earlier immigrants were segregated for the most part in the new manufacturing villages rising around the factories which had been erected beside the water- falls and milldams. Newport, because it had no water-power and no textile factories, received few of the immigrants ; the increase in population for half a century from 1800 to 1850, was only twenty-seven percent in Newport. The same was true of Newport County and Washing- ton County generally. Manufacturing towns, such as Cranston, Cumberland, Johnston, Scituate and Smithfield,* in Providence County, doubled and trebled in population, as did Warwick, in the Pawtuxet Valley, during the same fifty years. North Providence, including Pawtucket and a large part of the present city of Providence, gained 660 percent of population in the half- century.
Segregation of races was in progress ; the stream of immigration besides pouring into fac- tory towns to the exclusion of other sections, was directed principally into compact and isolated villages. Thus the villages acquired a racial cast that continued in some for a century or more, and that was maintained, in spite of the enlargement of the factory and the growth of the village, because settled villagers invited, encouraged and aided relatives and friends in Europe to come to the new Old World villages transplanted to Rhode Island and because superintendents, overseers and foremen gave preference in employment to "their own kind." The English were and have been more reluctant than any other immigrant race to renounce allegiance to their mother coun- try and to become American citizens by naturalization. Where they have been relatively isolated or have been able to exercise their uniform choice of living with "their own kind," they have con- tinued to be English, observing English practices, patronizing English shops, playing English games, celebrating English festival days, and in language preserving idiom and accent. Succeed- ing generations of English ancestry born in America have fallen more into American ways, but the English culture is still to be recognized in mill villages and in textile factory towns in Rhode Island. A particular reason for the latter is the marked increase in immigration from England which occurred between 1900 and 1910 and which in the ten years effected an increase of 5000 in the number of Rhode Islanders who had been born in England.
*The geography here is as before 1850, when what is Woonsocket lay partly in Cumberland and partly in Smithfield, and Smithfield included North Smithfield, Lincoln and Central Falls.
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ENGLISH AND SCOTCH-In 1920 one of every twelve persons living in Rhode Island had been born in England or of English parents born in America. In that year 24,501 residents of Rhode Island had been born in England; five years later the number was 26,885, of whom 22,986 lived in Providence County. Immigration from Scotland increased between 1900 and 1910 to such an extent that the population of Scottish birth, which had been small in 1900, reached 6200 in 1910 and 5805 in 1920; it was 6524 in 1925. Of the Scotch, 5356 resided in Providence County. In 1920 the population of Scotch origin by birth in Scotland or of Scotch parentage, though born in America, was nearly 12,500. The immigration from England and Scotland at the time, about 1910, was related to the condition of the textile industry in the Brit- ish Isles and in America ; the American industry being more prosperous, English and Scotch came to Rhode Island factory towns. In 1920 the number of persons of English birth in Rhode Island almost equalled the number of persons of Irish birth, in spite of the fact that in 1900 there were 13,000 more of Irish than of English birth in Rhode Island. In 1925 English exceeded Irish by 7000. Reconciliation of the figures rests upon fresh immigration from Eng- land, which renewed the English-born population, and the failure of Irish immigration suffi- cient to offset the losses by death of older Irish stock settled in Rhode Island. Ireland had been bled almost white by emigration during the nineteenth century. Besides that, the twentieth cen- tury Irishman sees great hope for the future of his own country, because of the readjustment of political relations between Ireland and England. The Irish Free State is achieving economic independence and prosperity. Irish emigration has ceased to be significant ; whereas English emigration has been stimulated by the economic disturbances which have beset England since the World War. For these reasons the Rhode Island population of Irish birth has not been renewed in recent years, whereas the reverse appears to be true of English born.
TRISH IMMIGRATION -- With practically no water power, Providence did not become a tex- tile manufacturing town until the introduction of steam-driven machinery made the location of factory sites away from rivers feasible; even then Providence was never distinctively a textile city, because of the great wealth of other manufactures. Providence did not grow so rapidly because of immigration in the first quarter of the nineteenth century as did the towns along the Blackstone and Pawtuxet Rivers. There were steady gains in population in Providence, never- theless, commensurate with the rising importance of the town as the trading centre for the northern part of Rhode Island and as the seaport into which came ships carrying cargoes of raw material for factories and cargoes of food for factory operatives, and out of which manu- facturers shipped their products. Its geographical location was determining in this respect ; Roger Williams, had his purpose been to select the site for a great commercial city, could not have chosen more wisely than he did. Providence was the inevitable terminus for the Black- stone Canal; it could not be avoided as the centre for railway development.
In the half-century from 1800 to 1850 the population of Providence gained 446 percent, but the increase was much more rapid after than before 1825. Providence shared in the immi- gration of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, as did also the part of North Provi- dence that became Pawtucket, and the parts of Smithfield and Cumberland that became Woon- socket. The type of immigration had changed somewhat. It was still largely from the British Isles, but in the later immigration Irish outnumbered English. As far as the latter were con- cerned. the surplus of labor had been drained away in the earlier movement, and economic reasons were not so compelling as formerly. The Irish were coming from all parts of that "most distressing country," but principally from the southern provinces. Many had come away earlier from north and south, following the Emmet revolution ; more as repressive laws and economic distress in Ireland discouraged youth's hope in the welfare of Ireland and sent him away to the land "beyant the say," which, interestingly enough, was described in the Irish anthem, "The Wearing of the Green," one of the few national songs that expresses hope in another country than home.
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"I've heard whisper of a country that lies far beyant the say, Where rich and poor stand equal in the light of freedom's day ;
O Erin, must we leave you, driven by the tyrant's hand,
Must we ask a mother's welcome from a strange but happy land?"
The Irish were mostly from farming communities, with the little education that might be expected under penal statutes which forbade teaching children to read. The labor which they offered for sale was principally the brawn of big muscles and strong bodies. They were wel- comed to America, because America wanted strong men to dig ditches for the canals which pre- ceded the railways, and more strong men to build railroads when the latter were introduced. Large numbers of Irish came to Rhode Island to fill up the gangs of laborers working on the Blackstone Canal, and others came to build the railway to Boston and the line to Stonington. Many remained in the city of Providence and in the larger towns, working as laborers. Their sisters, the colleens who came in the great adventure that was stripping Ireland of its youth, found employment first as servants.
With the genius for improvement that most races have shown in America, the Irish began to seek better types of work. By 1850 they were strongly entrenched in factories, and a second generation, which had had the advantages of education in public schools or in the schools estab- lished by the Catholic Church, was reaching higher. Another generation saw Irish youth enrolled in colleges and preparing for entrance to professions. Such is the opportunity that America lias offered to the oppressed and persecuted races of the world, and such is the prog- ress that is made possible under liberal government. Like the English who had preceded them, the Irish became segregated for a time. The Irish were excluded by English from the factory villages in which the English had become established. The fact that the Irish settled in the city of Providence and in larger villages in towns in which groups of factories close together sug- gested the cities that were to come, might negative segregation were it not that the Irish came as laborers, for the most part in distressing economic circumstances, and were constrained to live in hovels and cabins, and in the poorest type of tenement houses. Their homes were as over- crowded and insanitary in many ways as immigrant houses have been and may be in the twentieth century ; their habits of living were strange and intensifiedly so because of poverty ; their language usage was distinctive, because correct in contrast with American pronunciation, although more noticeable to Rhode Island ears for the "brogue"; and their religion, generally, was Catholic. Their poverty, behaviour, speech and religion marked them as strangers.
The Irishman had been a rebel in his native country, and had the rebel's critical attitude toward government which stamps him as a politician. It was the same trait which Burke had observed among Americans before the Revolution, and which had made them the most fre- quent readers of Blackstone's "Commentaries," wherefore the book had its largest sale in the American colonies. The politics of America intrigued the Irishman; he longed to participate. Unlike the Englishman, who clung to English citizenship, the Irishman rejoiced to see the day dawn on which he could renounce the allegiance to England which he had never acknowledged willingly, and with gladness in his heart sought naturalization at the earliest opportunity. He learned soon after he came to America of Federalist misadventures with alien and sedition laws, and of the Federalist leaning to friendship with Great Britain during the War of 1812. He was opposed to those who were friendly to England, as the country which had oppressed and persecuted his race. He was interested in movements for extension of suffrage, and his earliest party affiliations were with the Democrats, who, under Jackson's leadership, were broadening democracy. In Rhode Island Dorr found enthusiastic supporters among the Irish, who were, for the most part, excluded under the suffrage laws of the period from political privileges. The Irishman had as little in common with Whigs, as Whigs had sympathy for Irishmen. The Whigs included the remnants of the disrupted and discredited Federalist party, with new elements favoring the economic policies expounded by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.
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Rhode Island reached 1850 with 23,860 persons of foreign birth in a total population of 145.545. In the state as a whole one person of every six was of foreign birth ; in Providence, with 10,275 of foreign birth out of 41,513, one person of every four was of alien origin. In Providence, and the villages of Pawtucket and Woonsocket, a large part of the foreign born population was Irish. It should be noted that the figures cited exclude persons born in America of alien parentage, who would increase to much larger numbers and proportions the population less than two generations removed from distinctly foreign associations. The alien population at the time, however, almost without exception spoke English, and the public school system, thoroughly reorganized by Henry Barnard and being strengthened during the aggressive admin- istration of Commissioner Elisha R. Potter, was Rhode Island's well-chosen and most hopeful agency for assimilation of the foreign element. The Irish were eager for assimilation for the reason that they had accepted America as their foster mother country without reservation, and they climbed steadily in the economic, professional and political life of Rhode Island. The col- leens who had entered domestic service in Rhode Island families learned ways of thrift and household management which were very valuable to them when they married and established homes of their own; the experience was educational for them and beneficial for their families, which profited from the living conditions insisted upon by mothers who knew how much better Americans lived than Irish had been able to live in the early period of immigration. The Irish mother who had actually seen and experienced Rhode Island home life wished her own family to live as well as well-to-do Rhode Islanders. In many an Irish family in Rhode Island the mother was the earnest agent striving to improve the family's prospects and urging sons and daughters to undertake the effort and the education necessary to achieve success.
For the most part Rhode Islanders were tolerant and some were more than merely gen- erous in helping ambitious Irish boys and girls to progress ; others there were, however, who began to fear that the large infusion of aliens and the extraordinary proportion of foreign born to native born seriously threatened to destroy the continuity of tradition and culture. The sense of danger contributed, no doubt, to the short-lived ascendancy of the Know Nothing or Amer- ican party in Rhode Island about 1855, although the ease with which candidates for office shifted at the period from one to another political party may be related to the disruption of the Whigs and the unsettled period that intervened before the new Republican party had been established. The activity of the American party and the interpretation of its slogan, "America for Amer- icans," as hostile to immigrants had an interesting effect in the novel connotation attached to the word "American," which came to be a synonym for Protestant. The usage continued in Rhode Island for over half a century ; so late as 1886 the qualifications for admission to an institution maintained in part by charity were stated by those in charge of it thus : "Only Amer- ican widows or unmarried women who have resided in Providence at least ten years are admit- ted." Similar use of the word "American" as meaning Protestant appeared in advertisements seeking help or employment, even in the twentieth century ; it has been relegated to obsolescence so completely in recent years that the rising generation might not be expected to recognize its significance. The teaching of the public schools that all who live in America ought to be good Americans, and the purposeful effort of children of immigrants to identify themselves with America and American ideas, were helpful in banishing from Rhode Island the restrictive meaning applied to "American."
As Irish immigration waned it ceased to be sufficient to offset losses by death among the earlier immigrants from Ireland, and the Rhode Island population of Irish birth decreased steadily. From 39,000 in 1890 it fell to 35,500 in 1900, to 29,700 in 1910, to 24,800 in 1920, and to 19,800 in 1925. In 1920, notwithstanding the steady decrease in population of Irish birth, 79.640 of the people of Rhode Island had been born in Ireland or born of Irish parents in America ; one person in every eight in Rhode Island was Irish. In the census persons of the third generation and later, that is persons born of parents who had been born in the United
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States, were counted as American properly, although they might be of as pure Irish blood as if their ancestors never had left Ireland. The unique racial persistence of Irish in America has been due to the Catholic Church's attitude in opposition to intermarriage with persons of other religious faith ; while Irish constituted an overwhelmingly predominant element in the Catholic Church in Rhode Island, as they did for half a century, marriage with Catholics meant marriage with Irish. Yet the Irish ( I) because they made no reservation in declaring allegiance to Amer- ica, (2) because they retained no anticipation of returning to Ireland, and (3) because they purposed participation to the largest possible extent in the life of America, as a race constituted less of a problem in assimilation than any other which came in large numbers to Rhode Island.
FRENCH CANADIAN IMMIGRATION-The Irish had become thoroughly settled for one and in some families for two or three generations, and Irish immigration, though still considerable in volume as ambitious youth sought adventure and fortune in the new country, had long since passed flood tide, when French from Canada in large numbers came to Rhode Island. Of the French Canadians it was said by one of themselves that "they came only for a few years at most, just long enough to save money so that they might go back to their own country, to pay off the mortgage on the farm, or else buy a farm on which to settle their children later on." Color to the statement was given by the migration across the international boundary line in one direction or the other which persists, as Canadians come to Rhode Island factory towns when mills are prosperous and operatives are wanted at good wages, and as many go, when the tide of prosperity ebbs, back to farm life in Canada. Certainly Canadian French had not the impell- ing motive that induced Irish to "ask a mother's welcome from a strange but happy land." The cost of transportation back to Canada was low as compared with the price of passage overseas ; besides that, there were few Canadians, as there were many Irish, who left home with "a price upon their heads" and the probability of facing a firing squad or dangling from a gibbet had they returned to Ireland and been discovered by or betrayed to British soldiery. But the state- ment as to motive and the observation of alternating current of migration neglects the fact that thousands of Canadian French remained permanently in Rhode Island, and that thousands among the population of Rhode Island are children's children of French Canadian immigrants who found happy homes and contentment in Rhode Island.
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