Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 91

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716

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The French Canadians have become a stable element in the population of Rhode Island, grouping themselves principally in factory towns and villages, in many of which they tend to become the almost exclusive or predominant racial factor. They were handicapped at the begin- ning by using a foreign language and the necessity of learning English or having recourse to interpreters. These among the immigrants who were bilinguists in French and English achieved unique advantage immediately. Their language problem tended to promote segregation of the French, as it has favored segregation of other races which have come to Rhode Island not speaking English. It is not so much the consciousness of kind as the almost pathetic helpless- ness of the immigrant in an environment which includes use of another language than his own which drives him to seek the society and neighborhood of his compatriots, immediately or once removed, among whom will be many in his own predicament, besides, probably, a few bilin- guists, whose assistance and services he may have, gratuitously or otherwise.

The French came from Canada, as most immigrants had come to Rhode Island, eager for work, and they were willing to accept employment for what to them seemed to be excellent wages, much better than the wages paid in Canada, although the rate might be below the stand- ard demanded by the Americanized Irish. Manufacturers, as a rule, welcomed the French, because the newcomers were more docile than the Irish, and because they had not attained the Irishman's opinion of the value of the services of a mill operative. Thus Irish and French for a time were competitors for employment, and the French tended to be the lower bidders ; consequently French replaced Irish in many textile factories, partly because they sold labor for

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lower wages than Irish would accept, and partly because Irish sought employment that was more remunerative and approached nearer to their standards of living.

The French were hard workers, and they were thrifty; in spite of the language handicap, they progressed rapidly economically, and in succeeding generations achieved better positions, and some entered the professions. For them America opened the door of opportunity, and they came in ; in their experience the ability of a race to rise in the economic and social scale in a liberal democracy was demonstrated as it had been before and has been since they came. Those who became naturalized American citizens entered party politics, and French Canadian immi- grants and descendants of French Canadian immigrants have been elected to the highest offices in the gift of the people of Rhode Island. In the economic life of the state the French Canadians have played their part with credit and success, and their thrift has been rewarded by the accu- mulation of wealth in quantity sufficient to assure comfortable living for most and luxury for many.

In one particular the French Canadians have been unlike most other immigrants; they have cherished their original language, whereas most other immigrants have cared more for the mastery of English than the preservation of their native languages. Through their language the French have endeavored to maintain a racial and religious solidarity, which many of their leaders have believed could not have been possible otherwise. They have opposed assimilation vigorously, so far as the latter has seemed to involve insistence upon the English language. The French have insisted upon the French language. In part the emphasis upon the French language is inherited or based upon the environmental factors that condition life in Canada. There his language has been the French Canadian's most effective defensive weapon in his long resistance to becoming Anglicized. Because he has persisted in using the French language, the French Canadian has kept his part of Canada as thoroughly French for two centuries under English political domination as it was before the Seven Years War. In Rhode Island the French Cana- dian has been apprehensive lest the Americanization program, if achieved and realized in state- wide exclusive use of English as a common language, spells disaster for the solidarity which he has struggled to maintain in Rhode Island as in Canada. For that reason he has planned an edu- cational program emphasizing the French language as an element of fundamental importance. Even if he himself has become a bilinguist for the advantage that accrues to him from his ability to use English in business relations with those who do not speak French, he talks in French to his family at home, to the lawyer and doctor who have his patronage because they use his language, to his friends in the social clubs which he frequents, and to his compatriots of sim- ilar racial extraction. For him, while English may be the language of business, French is the language of love and friendship.

The French language is the strongest bond cementing what is one of the largest racial groups in Rhode Island, although the group is settled principally in the two great river valleys in which the textile industry has been most extensively developed. The tide of French Canadian immigration had passed from flood to ebb in 1910; in that year the population of Rhode Island of French Canadian birth exceeded 34,000. The rate of immigration had slackened even earlier, as indicated by a gain in population of French Canadian birth of only 2500 in the ten years from 1900 to 1910, as contrasted with an increase of 8500 in the preceding ten years. In 1925 people of French Canadian birth residing in Rhode Island numbered 35,548, and constituted the largest foreign-born group in the population, with Italians close up with 34,671, and English and Irish following in the order named. In 1890 French Canadians resident in Rhode Island exceeded English residents ; in 1910 French outnumbered English by 6000 and Irish by 4000. Ten years later French Canadians outnumbered English and Irish, who were nearly even, by 4000 in each instance. In 1925 French Canadians exceeded English by 9000 and Irish by 16,000.

Counting as of foreign origin both persons born out of the United States and persons born in the United States of foreign-born parents, the three groups in 1920 numbered : Irish, 79,640;

R. I .- 73

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French, 75,658; English, 52,942. Factors not measured by the census, yet significant for racial strength because of ethnic tenacity, were (1) Irish intermarriage with Irish principally, thus preserving pure Irish blood for generation after generation; (2) French effort to maintain solidarity through their language; and (3) English retention of tradition and practices. Aside from these considerations, affecting much larger numbers than the census groups, the three con- tingents of Irish, French and English, 208,240 persons of foreign birth or born of parents born in foreign countries, constituted more than one-third of the total population of 604,397 in 1920. The three, with increments in each instance consisting of the third and fourth generations bound to racial solidarity for the reasons named, comprised more than one-half of the total population of the State of Rhode Island.

ITALIAN IMMIGRATION-Less than 2500 persons who had been born in Italy were reported as resident in Rhode Island in the census of 1890; in 1900 the number of Italians living in the state approached 9000. At that time the Italians constituted the fourth racial group in size, not so mighty as Irish, French and English, but larger than Canadian English, Swedish and Scotch, each of the latter group including more than 5000. An impressive immigration of Italians dur- ing the next decade carried the number of residents of Rhode Island born in Italy to 27,287 in 1910. The coming of so many strangers, speaking another foreign language, had not escaped notice. Segregation of the newcomers, most of them laborers, although there were many among them who had been merchants or middle class in Italy, followed almost inevitably, as it had in the experience of other immigrant races. Besides the preponderance of Italians in working gangs in places where toil was most severe, cities and towns had Italian sections, so designated because Italians had come in to claim the occupation of tenement houses, pushing out those of older immigration and other racial culture who had preceded them. Italian merchants soon opened shops for the display and sale of foods and other commodities better known to and bet- ter liked by their compatriots than American goods. Italians ventured also into agricultural towns, and many chose habitation in open or suburban sections of cities and towns, in order that they might be near to and cultivate small plots of ground.

The Italians were intensive farmers, spent hour after hour of hard labor in clearing vacant land of rock and stone, introduced new methods of cultivation and new forms of plant life, and intrigued the curiosity of American farmers and others because of the large crops they were able to raise from small areas, many of which had not been considered arable. The truck garden farming, which had been highly remunerative to Rhode Island farmers, appealed particularly to Italians, and they were eminently successful as market gardeners. Italians also found their way gradually into factory employment, because of their will to work and their willingness to accept lower wages than some of the immigrants of earlier days and descendants of the latter, who demanded wages approximating the American standard of living. to which they had become accustomed. Even low wages, measured by American standards, were high wages to Italians of the earlier generations of immigrants. They were frugal in habit and taste, thrifty in adjusting expenditures to earnings, hard workers under conditions of employment that left them almost without competition for the places they were willing to accept, ambitious beyond the urge of need.

To a certain extent their earlier experiences repeated those of earlier immigrants. The Irish had come to dig ditches and build roads when American labor was scarcely available for the purpose ; the Italians came to dig and build when Irish no longer sought labor so much as employment. And the rise of the Italians was as certain under the favoring conditions of Rhode Island democracy as had been that of the earlier immigrant train. The Italians brought with them to America a kindly, courteous attitude in dealing with their neighbors, and something also, in their love of music and art, of the culture of Sunny Italy. The "little German band" never had become an institution in Rhode Island, because Rhode Island had scarcely shared in the immigration of Germans in the nineteenth century ; the Italian brought the hand-organ and

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the street-piano, mingling the beautiful melodies of his native land with concessions to the assumed American liking for jazz.

Rhode Island scarcely realized the volume of Italian immigration, however, and also its effect in the number of Italian residents of the state until the first observance of Columbus Day as a public holiday in 1910; and then the whole state gasped at the discovery, rubbed its eyes to test the reality of what seemed plausible only as a dream, and spent the next month in discussing what it had seen. Columbus Day was "discovery day"; Rhode Island had discovered its Italian population. In the procession which was the feature of the municipal celebration of the new holiday in Providence there was little out of the ordinary in the appearance and number of the marchers until the Italian divisions swung into the line of march and began to pass the review- ing stands and on through the streets. Then, what in the beginning had promised to be only another parade in a city which at the time was known as the "paradingest city," became a big parade. For hours Italian divisions poured through the city streets in rapid succession at steady military pace, unceasingly and apparently inexhaustibly. Older residents recalled the famous torchlight procession twenty years earlier on the occasion of the celebration of the four hun- dredth anniversary of the discovery of America, when the party on the reviewing stand stood for more than four hours as a steady stream of marchers passed in the greatest night parade in the history of Rhode Island. Whole divisions stood in the streets for hours, waiting the word to swing into line; and early divisions had returned to their homes in distant parts of Rhode Island long before the last of the marchers started on the ten-mile journey over the route of march. Then it had been a parade of Catholics, each man carrying a torch in the form of a cross in honor of his Church and the Discoverer. Twenty years later the Italians were making a demonstration of racial strength in honor of the Genoese Admiral. Rhode Island had become conscious of its Italian population in a day.

In 1920 the number of persons residing in Rhode Island who had been born in Italy was 32,585, and the Italians of foreign birth were the largest racial group in the State. Counting as Italians both persons born in Italy and persons born in the United States of parents born in Italy, the Italian population of Rhode Island in 1920 numbered 70,665, the Italian group being exceeded only by the Irish and French. The state census of 1925 reported 34,671 Italians, of whom 28,793 resided in Providence County, and 2186 in Bristol County. Italians were the sec- ond group in number, exceeded only by French Canadians of whom there were 900 more than Italians.

As had been true of earlier immigrants of other racial stock, the Italians progressed rap- idly. Their willingness to work, their thrift and their frugal living brought them economic sub- stance. and they bought land and buildings in towns and cities. Their children went to school, and their descendants found their way to college and into the professions. Not a few became interested in politics, and the mass of Italians sought naturalization and political citizenship as qualified electors and office holders. In their own residential sections the Italians maintained a racial solidarity which was almost exclusive, other races moving out as the tide of Italians flowed in. But the Italians were not contented with living in squalid tenement houses ; as they became stronger economically, they bought other property, transferring, however, generally to maintain contact with their compatriots. Thus the Italian sections spread out over larger and larger areas. Language was the key to the situation ; not that the Italian cared so much as did the French for his native tongue, but because the Italians had the Latin respect for parents, and the older folk among them seldom learned English. Otherwise it was with younger immigrants and children from Italian homes ; both learned to speak English, and both, as a rule, became bilinguists.

The Italian sections maintained an Old World atmosphere ; the shopkeepers offered Italian foods for sale, filling the windows with piles of hard cheeses and rows of fresh cream cheeses, with fresh and dried sausages and other meats fresh cut or cured in Italian fashion, with boxes

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of farinaceous paste as macaroni or spaghetti or in other forms, with bottles and other contain- ers filled with olive oil, and casks of almonds, walnuts, chestnuts, pistachio and other nuts. The bakers displayed bread in loaves of various shape and rolls with hard crust made from the dark flour of unbleached wheat or other grains; with baskets and boxes of small cakes and sweet breads strange to American eyes. Other shops displayed fruit in profusion, including. pome- granate and grapes when in season, soft grapes and hard grapes, and great piles of sweet grapes ripe and ready for the wine press. The confectioner showed his art in great masses of nougat to be broken in fragments for chewing and intriguingly shaped candies, with baskets of shelled nuts, and nuts candied or covered with fondat. Push carts drawn up to the curb offered fruit and vegetables and nuts. Some of the vegetables were familiar only to the push cart men and the throng of shoppers, some of whom stopped to haggle for bargains, gesticulating dramatic- ally and talking rapidly. The vegetables included a profusion of fresh green crisp garden leaves, besides lettuce and celery for salads.

In the Christmas season the shop windows revealed the significant appeal which realistic representation makes to the Italian. Windows had been cleared of stock in trade displayed to attract customers ; instead the Bethlehem stable scene of the Nativity, with the infant Christ in the manger. and figures portraying Joseph and Mary, the adoring shepherds and the Magi bear- ing gifts, was reproduced as elaborately as in many churches. Again as Holy Week marked the approaching end of the Lenten season, with the rapid sequence of events in the week of tragedy between Palm Sunday and Easter, the Italian section reflected the passing drama portrayed in Church ritual and ceremony. Shops offered live lambs, typical of the Paschal lamb, for sale. Eggs were displayed, including eggs cooked or combined in Italian fashion. Thursday, Eve of Calvary, witnessed unusual street scenes as throngs made repeated pilgrimages from church to church. Within the churches were filled with worshippers, kneeling in prayer or pressing to light candles in the shrines. Other church holidays, and feast days of saints to whom the Italians have particular devotion, were observed elaborately, and in many instances with processions and fireworks in the evening. The practices of his religion played an important part in the Italian's life.

The earliest Italian immigrants brought with them some of the picturesque garments which they had worn in Italy ; none of these were shown in shop windows. In dress the Italian in America tends to become indistinguishable in the sombre garb affected by men, or in the varied fashions followed by women. The love of music, instrumental and vocal, had been retained ; the Italian sections on summer nights when windows were open and crowds thronged the sidewalks, rang with song and chorus, accompanied by the soft music of stringed instruments usually. Even the poor found money with which to patronize concert and chamber music and opera sung by the highest paid performers. Within a generation the Italian immigrant had become a stable element in the population of Rhode Island, settled on the land in agricultural or suburban sections or in quarters of towns and cities, with a tendency toward ownership instead of tenancy. Italian farmers were successful under conditions that had baffled Yankee hus- bandmen; they had revived abandoned farms and reclaimed for cultivation land that had not been considered arable. They had scraped the earth in waste places and had made it luxuriate with vine, orchard, vegetable or flower. In factory occupations Italians had furnished the labor of operative type still needed in spite of the introduction of more and more nearly perfect machinery and mechanical processes, but many had developed latent talent for art and design which had earned them more satisfactory employment. In some trades they had replaced native and other workmen ; in monumental sculptoring and finishing granite cutting, for instance, the principal source of labor was Italy, if for no other reason than that tradesmen in Rhode Island and elsewhere in New England refused to permit their sons to become appren- tices in the trade because of alleged danger to health. In the professions Italians were success- ful practitioners. In 1920 one person of every nine in Rhode Island was native of Italy or a

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child of parents born in Italy. French and Italians constituted almost one quarter of the total population, using principally two Latin languages.

OTHER IMMIGRATION-Some Rhode Islanders had become concerned in 1850 because the population of the state at that time included more than sixteen percent of persons who were not native born; in 1890 the foreign-born were thirty-one percent of the total population. The foreign-born remained at thirty-one percent during the next ten years, but the reason was not an abatement of immigration so much as the fecundity of the second generation of foreign origin, whose offspring were counted as native population. Immigration was much heavier in the decade from 1900 to 1910, and the percentage of foreign-born to total population reached thirty- three percent in 1910. The World War tended to reduce immigration; from some European countries emigration was forbidden because of the war, and the war, with its disturbance of ocean navigation and the commandeering of merchant vessels for transport and other military purposes, interrupted transatlantic migration. The effect related to census figures was a decrease in Rhode Island of the percentage of foreign-born to total population, which was less than twenty-nine percent in 1920; five years later the percentage had fallen below twenty-seven, 182,801 of 679,260 persons resident in Rhode Island having been born in foreign countries. The population, as counted in 1920, included, besides 173,499 persons who had been born out- side of the United States, 246,925 persons who had been born in the United States of foreign parents, or 420,427 persons within one generation of foreign origin, constituting sixty-nine percent of the total population.

Besides Irish, French Canadians, English and Italians, constituting in 1900 two-thirds of the foreign-born population of Rhode Island, the larger groups of other nationalities in 1900 included 7744 English Canadians, 6072 Swedes, 5455 Scotch and 4300 Germans. With respect to these groups there were no significant changes in the twenty years to 1920; each was slightly larger in 1910 than in 1900, and smaller in 1920 than in 1910. Including descendants of the first generation, the Canadian English in 1920 numbered 16,800; the Swedes, 13,500; the Scotch, 12,400 and the Germans less than 10,000. Other races were engaged in more remark- able immigration ; thus, there were 2500 Portuguese in Rhode Island in 1900, 6500 in 1910, and 8725 in 1920, the Portuguese group in 1920, counting the first generation of descendants, num- bered 15,350.

The Portuguese had come first as sailors and longshoremen principally, finding employ- ment as deck hands on steamships and as stevedores. As immigration from Portugal increased, farmers came, who settled in rural towns. Newport and Bristol Counties received large groups of Portuguese farmers, although the Portuguese were by no means confined to these counties, going to other places where the soil promised reasonable returns from their methods of hus- bandry. Other Portuguese found employment in factories. The early Portuguese were from Portugal, direct or through New Bedford, which was one of the earliest New England ports of entry for Portuguese. Later migration included Portuguese from the Cape Verde Islands, many dark-skinned and called Bravas from the place named Brava. By 1920 Bravas had become segregated in Providence along South Main Street and the Providence River front of the East side ; while Portuguese in large numbers had filled up a large part of the India Point section of Providence. Part of the immigration of Bravas was direct to Narragansett Bay in small wooden sailing vessels, little more than seaworthy and sometimes condemned because their zealous ship- ping masters had overloaded with passengers.

The census of 1900 reported 3300 Russians in Rhode Island ; there were 9765 in 1910 and 10,47I in 1920, or 20,429 if the first generation born in America were counted as Russian. The World War had interrupted an immigration that was proceeding at an accelerated rate by 1910. Much alike was immigration from Austria; there were 1450 Austrians in Rhode Island in 1900, 6130 in 1910, and 7638 in 1920, or 15,035 in 1920 if the first generation born in America

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were included. This immigration from eastern countries of Europe was paralleled in smaller numbers, relative to the size of the countries of origin, from Roumania, Bulgaria, and Greece of Eastern Europe and principally the Balkan States ; and also from parts of Western Asia, including Asia Minor and the neighborhood of the southern shore of the Black Sea.

Immigration direct from France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, and Spain never had been heavy ; of these countries only France and Belgium were represented by more than 1000, in any instance, of foreign-born residents of Rhode Island. Immigration from the British Isles of Irish, Scotch and English had reached low figures ; that from Wales never had been considerable. Thus Rhode Island in 1920 with only thirty-one percent of its popula- tion born in the United States of native born parents, faced the problem of assimilating a type of immigration which was handicapped, besides by language, by radically different outlook on life, racial traditions and practices. Rhode Island was already cosmopolitan with its large groups of Irish, French, English and Italians, and with growing contingents of Portuguese, Russians and Austrians.

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Rhode Island : three centuries of democracy, Vol. II, Part 91

Author: Carroll, Charles, author Publication date: 1932 Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co. Number of Pages: 716

Author: Carroll, Charles, author
Publication date: 1932
Publisher: New York : Lewis historical Pub. Co.
Number of Pages: 716