york. if we were in class right now, what kind of questions are the students asking about this and what answers are they looking for in regard to immigration. >> great question. students take my classes for a wide range of reasons. some of them are immigrants themselves or the children of immigrants and they want to understand their family's experience and put it in a larger context to see how their experience compares to those who came before them. that's one set of motivations. others approach it from a policy standpoint. they're interested in american government. they're interested in a legislative responses, and the history of the presidency, and they want to understand how immigration policy has changed, and what is the appropriate course of action. i think we're all in agreement that we're at a moment in our history where we need to reconsider our immigration policy. and we're not in agreement about what that should look like, but

i think there's a curiosity about engaging with the questions and trying to come up with an appropriate answer. that's another motivation for taking the class, and then others approach it from a purely economist, the economists who take it want to understand the economic impact that immigrants have on the u.s. and on their countries of origin in terms of remittance. >> you talk about the debate that we're ensuing in this country. we've been dealing with it for 10 or 15 years. george w. bush tried to put an immigration bill. it's going to be part of the debate in 2016. is this unique? did we have these types of debates previously? >> all the time. look at the congressional debate on hart-cellar. it's always been a contentious issue. 9/11 has been the real game changer. i think since 9/11, immigration has been going into larger discussions about national security. it's been cast as a national

security issue, whether it should be, i think that's subject to debate. but i think it's -- immigration has or discussions about immigration and reform have become all the more important in light of 9/11. >> what advice would you give lawmakers as they begin this next debate? >> well, immigration reform has many different pieces. i know that in the public media, most of the discussions on immigration reform have focussed on whether to give a path to citizenship to people who are in the country without authorization. that's an important piece of the puzzle, but there are many other pieces of the puzzle that need to be doiscussed. another piece of the puzzle that we need to discuss, and it hasn't received enough attention in the news media. should we continue to favor family reunification or should

we shift and put more emphasis on job skills on bringing in people to the united states who have skills that are necessary to our u.s. economy? that's another set of issues that we need to discuss. but, you know, i think by focusing on just one tiny piece of the puzzle, al beit, it's an important piece of the puzzle, i think we ignore there are other issues we need to discuss. >> and these are immigrants to come to all parts of the country, not just philadelphia and new york but to iowa. >> and they are actively recruited to come. they come because they will find jobs. they will find jobs. if there weren't any jobs and if americans weren't offering them jobs, immigrants wouldn't come either with authorization or without authorization. >> why is this your passion? >> because it's the american story. you know, when i went to

graduate school, my intention was to study colonial history, but then i realized that i could make -- i could be of more service by focusing on those individuals, those histories that had been left out of the american narrative. we know so little about immigrants, about people of color, about the experience of women, about the experience of gays and lesbians. there are so many communities that are central to the history of the united states whose stories haven't been fully told, and i want to be part of a community of scholars that tells that story, and reinserts those people into the american narrative. >> and finally, in order to tell the story, you have to do the research. >> i look at a wide range of sources. i consult the same documents that diplomatic historians.

>> i do oral histories. you name it. i consult as many sources as possible to try to get as wholistic an interpretation as possible. >> thank you for your time. >> thank you. >> this sunday night on q and a, brookings institution senior fellow talks about the u.s.'s counter insurgency and state building efforts in afghanistan. >> the u.s. did achieve improvements in security, but nonetheless, has it been wort, depends on how it ends. a year is where i hesitate and increasingly interrogate myself and question myself. we don't know how it will end. that's a moment of opportunity now that moment -- things may come up. but it's possible that still five years down the road, you'll be back in a civil war in afghanistan. isis is now slowing emerging in

the country. it is much worse than the tall ban. taliban is deeply entrenched and hardly defeated. if we end up in a new civil war in afghanistan afghanistan and new safe havens for the taliban and isis, then i would say it was not worth the price. >> sunday night at 8:00 eastern and pacific on c span's q & a. edward o'donnell talks about the prejudice many immigrants faced in the 19th century with regard to religion, customers and social status. he says this often led to fights over what would be taught in public schools, questions about the loyalty of catholic politicians and job postings stating such things as no irish need apply. this class is about an hour and 10 minutes. >> welcome to the latest chapter

of the irish american experience. as you know, today we will be talking about nativism, the anti-immigrant movement that explodes in the mid 19th century focused on all immigrants, but really focusing on the irish. as we know, they're the biggest group, the most identifiable group. that's in the crowded cities and so forth. they stand out and they generate an enormous opposition. so before we get into that, let's back up a little bit. because we're not just simply talking about the irish today, because the nativist response that the irish generate existed before the irish got here. you can find early versions in the 18th century and you also find echos of it since that time. this question about anti-immigrant sentiment speaks to the larger american experience. it's kind of a phenomenon that we pride ourselves being a nation of immigrants, we are a

nation offi ismmigrants. but we are always questioning that tradition. let's start now looking at things in 2014. what do americans think about immigration? if you go to ellis island, you will see this image here, which is an american flag, very large, 20 feet long, 10 feet high. if you stand on one end, it has a hologram affect. if you stand to the right, you see the flag. if you walk toward where i'm standing, you can see faces representing different ethnic and racial groups. ellis island is the great example of how much americans love immigration. this may seem strange given politics today. americans of -- millions of americans, most americans absolutely love immigration. strange as that may sound, hold that thought. we know from headlines from politic politics, debates that americans hate immigration. we have always hated it.

there's -- we will get to the explaining how that's possible to love and hate something at the same time. we're not saying that half of americans love it and half of them hate it. it's that millions of americans at the same time love it and hate it. there's a good reason for that. it's been the same reason for a long, long time. two kinds of immigration. this is one way to look at it. who wants to venture a guess? how is it possible for somebody -- maybe even if you go back to the earlier image, this woman standing there holding the flag saying america has been invaded, how would somebody like that express love for immigration? what kind of immigration would she like, anyway? >> she would like the old style of immigration, but immigration in the past, probably when her ancestors came over. sglt k >> the key word is what? >> past. >> from a generation or two or three ago, always seems pleasing, always seems to be a

welcome thing, a positive thing, a contributing thing to the greater good of the united states. and what kind of immigration do you imagine we -- that americans hate, even some of the same people? when people push back against immigration, denounce immigration, whether illegal or legal, what's the -- what kind do they dislike? what's the likely -- someone who likes past immigration has actually very strong feelings about it, but -- >> i guess obvious then they would be opposed to the new immigration. >> right. >> legal immigration, stuff like that. >> even legal immigration some people are upset about how many people are coming to the country. it has to do with timing. as a society, generations and centuries over time, we have compartmentalized our understanding of immigration. we think of it in positive terms in the museum settings. which is why millions

statue of liberty and ellis island. they will tell you when their grandfather came over from greece or ireland and how it became part of the great american dream. when it's happening around us, whether it's us in 2014, us in 1944, us in 1894 or 1844, it seems alarming. it seems quite alien and dangerous. that's the kind of dynamic we're going to look at here today. where these ideas of two ways of thinking about this immigration. think about the positive side of immigration, the way we think about it in positive terms. it's something i call the multicultural ideal. that's throughout our -- in the 20th and 21st century, we have developed this language of diversity, tolerance, multiculturalism, the words we express why it's a good thing. this has great historical depth to it. go back to the late 18th

century. a series of small essays were written about america. america was being born. one of the first guys to write down what this thing is, this america that's being born. one of his most famous observations and lines is that he said here individuals of all nations are melted into a new race of men, whose labors and pos territory will cause great changes in the world. he is saying, america is destined for greatness and one of the key factors is that it has this melting pot affect, taking people and ideas and traditions and melding them into a new race of people. that's not a new idea. way back in the colonial period we had people talking in those terms. we had people like benjamin frankly who we site as one of the open minded people in america, in the world. he is one of the great examples of the enlightenment. he is into science and public service and literature. he's a great entrepreneur.

but he is not above having that kind of negative reaction to immigration as it's happening. in the mid 1700s, pennsylvania experienced a big influx of german residents. frank lynn go franklin goes off on them. he says, why are we letting these people come here? why should they be suffered to swarm into our settlements and establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours? why should pennsylvania, founded by the english, become a kol ni of aliens who will be so numerous to germanize us? in 1753, we have a vivid -- an expression of classic nativism where he is making the case, they're not going to blend in. they're causing to cause lots of trouble.

this may sound familiar. to prove the point of how timeless those words are, if we just take what franklin said in 1753 and change six words, we will set it in a modern context, mexican immigration in california. this is what franklin said in 1753. if we swap out modern words. why should mexicans be suffered to swarm into our settlements and by herding together -- why should california become a colony of aliens who hispanisize us. so it's timeless expressions. they have deep, deep historical roots. does anybody have any questions? all right. why do we think this way? let's jump into this. before we do, let's remind ourselves about where we are

historically. this is -- we're almost halfway through our semester looking at the experience of irish american immigration. we're sort of situated in the middle 19th century. we talked about the famine migration and some of the struggles of those immigrants economically, socially, politically in our previous class. that's part of the old immigration, the big explosion of immigration that took place in the first two-thirds of the 19th century. it's eight million immigrants. they mostly come from northern and western europe. so you are talking about the irish, germans, english, ska scandinavi scandinavians. they will generate their own nativist response on the west coast. then around 1880, a new flow, a larger flow -- you can see the numbers. eight million versus 20 million. the flow now starts to come from eastern and southern europe.

you still have irish immigrants. you have german and english. their numbers are quite small. it's right in the middle of this old immigration that the nativist response just explodes. it turns out -- turns into more than anger. it turns into a political movement. so what is this nativist tradition? let's talk about historically what happens. what we will do is break down nativism into its component parts. here is a classic emblem of the no nothing party or the american party is its formal name. the nickname was the know nothings. it's not clear why they were called the know nothings except that the lore is that they were a secret society. the masons and so forth. part of the way they created an allure about themselves is that they wouldn't tell people about the organization. if somebody walked up to a know

nothing or a member of the american group, he would say, i know nothing. that was to heighten his interest. they are early versions of the 1830s and 1840s, but it becomes a political movement in the mid 19th century, in 1854 and 1855. the american party -- what's happening in 1854 is that the wig party -- there's the wig party and democratic party. the wig party is disintegrated over the issue of slavery. so we are in this strange period 1854 where we actually have one main party and then a bunch of splinter parties that are trying to sort themselves out and create a viable second party. a lot of americans believe the american party was the next big party. the replacement for the wigs. turns out there was another movement out there more concerned about slavery, the republican party.

for here it looks like the american party. look at statistics. in 1854, the american party wins control of the state governments of delaware, pennsylvania and massachusetts. in massachusetts, it's a complete sweep. they take control of both houses of the senate legislature, the lieutenant governor, the governor and hundreds of other high offices and positions of power. it's a complete takeover. then the next year, maryland and kentucky come under american party control. a lot of people political forecasters, if there were such things, would say the american party seems to be getting traction. this anti-immigration movement is the one that's going to coalesce into a viable second party. a couple more stats. they had really strong finishes and took -- created -- became powerful not quite dominant in states like new york and california. then in congress, 75 congressmen were elected with either explicit american party credentials or had the backing of the american party.

so they were -- there's a lot of political influence both locally and at the state level and even in the halls of congress. anybody have any questions? let's look at this. what were the nativists afraid of? a lot of things. it does change over time. so that in different time periods, certain things -- the order of priority or the order that people are worried about tends to change. in 1850, the mid 19th century period when the know nothings emerge, religion is the number one issue. specifically catholicism. so one of the readings that i had you to was by morris who -- almost all american can name the one thing that morris is famous for. this is the morris. he is the -- depending how you define investor, he is the inventor of the telegraph and

revolutionizes communication. he is well-known as an artist. he is one of america's better known early 19th century artists. he has a third feather in his cap in terms of being well-known and making an imprint on society. he's a leading voice of anti-catholic alarmism if you look at the title of his writings. so you had to do that reading last night. let's ask a few questions here. who can tell me some of the ideas, some of the acquisitions he's making? >> pretty much that catholics were following the rule of the pope and the priests would command them. shoot. >> let's get us started right there. the idea is that unlike true born americans who are individuals, who are free

thinkers, who are beholden to no one but themselves, the idea that morris is conveying is that catholics are authoritarian and believe in authoritarian structure. the hierarchy of the church reflects this unamerican, unrepublican, undemocratic way of thinking and operating. so that's kind of a mark against them. he's saying it's worst. what's the conspiracy? >> a really big connection between the catholic church and european influence. he sees catholics in america as still beholden to the pope and then with that political influence in europe. >> right. so notice he's saying the foreign conspiracy. to most non-catholics, particularly those who are concerned about the rise of catholicism in the united states, they're saying catholicism disqualifies you as a true republican citizen. not only do you believe in this

hierarchy way of operating society, but you also, according to their understanding of things, owe complete loyalty to a foreign king, a foreign power. in this case the pope. the pope was a civil leader. they see him as a king, a different sort of king. but they depict him in royal terms, which sht counter opposite of americans political understanding of themselves. what else? anybody want to tell me a phrase or something that stood out from his -- >> at the end, last paragraph, he calls catholics the enemy. he says the meenemy is awake. he says their goal is to rid the world of liberty. not just america but the whole entire world. >> he says, protestantism is tied to liberty. catholicism is tied to what? good mid 19th century word.

despotism. it's a religion of despotism, of squelching of freedom, freedom of conscience. he is saying this is -- americans, as you look around and see the poor hopeless, helpless irish coming into the cities, don't be fooled. this is an advanced army of the pope who hates liberty. it has designed to destroy, as soon as it has enough bodies on the ground and they have leaders, priests. the priests have leaders, bishops. this is a command structure that is going to attempt to overthrow the republic. this may sound crazy, conspiracy theory gone awry. but it made a lot of sense to people in that period. does anybody have a way -- see a connection between this kind of conspiracy mania and a different period in american history?

it's amazing. i swapped out the words of franklin and put in mexican and california instead. you could take some of what morris wrote and instead of catholic put in the world communist. soviet russia. it works the same way. americans, you are slumbering while your liberties are about to be overtaken by the hundreds of spies and sympathizers in america. conspiracy theories are often have a tremendous amount of similarity to them. morris writes this. there's a huge amount of anti-catholic literature published in america at that time. if there was such a thing as a barnes & noble, a big section would be the pope is coming to get us, papal conspiracy literature. books and pamphlets published and images.

you have a copy of this image. look at it and see the connection. this is a visual representation from a book -- a different book published at roughly the same time period that shows many of the same -- many of the messages, many of the ideas and accusations that morris was making. here in visual form. what do you notice about the details? what are some of the -- >> the pope is on the thrown. >> you couldn't look any more royal. if we didn't know any context, we would say this is a european king. he is on a thrown. he has a couple of lackeys on either side of him. a big crown. americans in the 19th century are -- when they think about what they are, they think about what they aren't. they are republicans and democrats with small r and d. they believe in liberty. the opposite of that is monarchy

and aristocracy. >> it's towards the american town. >> it's a split screen. he is in rome. you can see the basilica on the -- behind him. he is pointing across towards america towards the -- across the atlantic ocean towards a schoolhouse. a schoolhouse as we will see, that becomes the flash point of this anti-catholic mania, one of the flash points. anything else? any other -- >> it also looks like he's standing on the bible. in a lot of the things we read, they talk about how the pope just didn't want anything to do with the bible. that looks like it's a significant thing. >> he has his foot on the bible which is an important detail. it's more of the religious side of the argument, which is that by now it's 1855 when this image was first published and the point that people would make is that protestants believe in

individualism and individual reading and interpretation of the bible. if you know your reformation history. catholics have that authoritarian idea that only the pope and only the bishops and priests can tell -- can read certain parts of the bible and tell you what it means. that's an exaggerated image that the pope is anti-bible. we will talk about public schools in a moment. now you can see where this comes from. the title of this book is the papal conspiracy exposed and protestantism vindicated. the title of the image is popery undermining free schools. the public school system is being invented in the united states in this time period. people start to see it as a key part of democracy. and a republican. and when the big debate ensues in this period about which bible, not whether to read the bible, nobody disagreed on that. it was what bible. then the fur began to fly.

another incident -- this is not far from where we are in massachusetts. in 1834, a convent was burned to the ground by an angry mob that showed up in august of 1834. there were rumors that the nuns had kidnapped a local protestant girl and holding her against her will, forcing her to become a catholic nun. the mob showed up. they were egged on by preachers. they burned the convent. nobody was hurt. it stands as a vivid symbol of the conspiracy -- the belief in the conspiracy and the fear that people had for catholicism. a little bit more detail about this pope is coming to get us literature we were talking about. just in this 40 year period, 1820 to 1860, 210 books -- you can read the numbers there. huge output of anti-catholic, catholic conspiracy literature. this was more popular than

anti-slavery or pro-slavery literature which was the other debate in the mid 19th century. best selling book of all, it gets dethrowned in 1852 with uncle tom's cabin is the one where this image is drown from, the awful disclosures of mariah monk. it purported to tell the story of a teenage girl who joined the catholic convent. she was a protestant living in canada. she became friendly with the nuns. decided to enter the convent. as soon as the doors were shut, she found out the real story. most of it involved sexual impropriety, priests taking advantage of nuns among other things. it fed this -- there's a fear that there's actually an army of catholics about to overthrow the republic. there's this fear that the morally speakibg/e they pose a great threat. that was actually why this kind of fear of convents -- why the

convent was burned, which we talked about a moment ago. it's this huge best seller. she goes on a book tour and telling these people her tale of woe. the baby she's holding is the baby she became pregnant according to her story from an irish priest and fled because they were going to kill her baby to hide the evidence. she went on book tour and sold thousands of books. she was exposed as a fraud. she ended up dieing in poverty. the anti-catholic activists that sponsored her got all the money. we know this because they sued each other. there's a court record explaining who actually wrote the book and so forth. you get the picture. we mentioned on the earlier image that the free school, the american school was one of the key flash points. what do americans think about schools? as they are becoming these key institutions in this emerging democracy? if you read these words here, this is from the minnesota chronicle and register in 1850.

makes the case that you put anything you want into a public school and out of it comes a republican citizen. public schools take the child of the exile of hung guiary and th norwegian and places them on the same bench with the offspring of those whose ancestors bleached. as the chielld plays he learns whistle yankee doodle. he is a sturdy, a little republican as can be found in the land. americans have this positive feeling about this emerging public school system. then along come this large immigrant group, mostly irish catholics who say, we don't want to send our kids to the push li public schools. he says, a brief experience of the public school system in the

sit itcity of new york convincee could not allow them to be brought up under the influence of irreligious principals upon which the schools are conducted. he is throwing down the religious cultural gauntlet and saying we will build our own school system at a cost of millions of dollars. it's a rejection of a key institution in american life. further more, what he doesn't say is that those who go to public school, we're going to fight for their right to read catholic bibles. so this public school stuff, it's not just an intellectual argument. philadelphia explodes in religious sectarian rioting. they're arguing about which bible is going to be used in the public school. these are real riots. they go on for days. 20 people are killed. blood running in the streets

over the issue of catholic or protestant bibles. you can still see evidence of this. in new york, most people know the cathedral, st. patrick's. but its earlier version is now in chinatown. this is the old cathedral. you notice something about it. it has a high wall around it. this a ten-food hit high wall ad the property. it was built in 1814. they built the wall in the 1840s because they were afraid the church is going to be destroyed because mobs rumored and threatened to do so. you can see this is a side shot from the sidewalk with people walking to give you an idea, it's a fortified cathedral. thick walls, three feet thick at the base. here is a -- a couple more images before we move on to a different aspect of nativism. we will see a number of his images, a cartoonist of the late 19th century. cartooning everything involving politics. he has this particular focus on

the threat of the catholic church. this is in the 1870s. gives you an idea of how this plays out over decades. these are not alligators hitting the beaches of american. these are irish bishops hitting the beaches. there's a school master protecting the schoolchildren of america from the foreign catholic influence. just to give you a quick look forward, this is 1928. this is well into the 20th century. al smith, who we will talk about in a subsequent lecture, is running for president. he is the first irish catholic to be nominated by a major party, the democratic party. he gets hammered by the republicans and the ku klux klan and other anti-catholic groups. he bows before a foreign king, kisses the ring of the pope. could you vote for him? he wants us to be -- place him in the whitehouse. the answer is obvious. you can't have a catholic sit in

the whitehouse. it's 32 years later when john f. kennedy runs. everything is diminished then. but he still has to answer that question. can you be a catholic and an independent political leader in the united states? we also know if you look across the country today, more than two dozen states have passed statutes, because people are imagining that there's this conspiracy. this idea that the law, muslim slaw cre law is creeping into the political system. i think it's over 30 states now have done so in just a few -- in recent types. this religion and nativism go hand in hand. nativism and non-assimilation, perceived non-assimilation. it's in the eye of the beholder. this is what new york city looked like in 1865. there's two predominant edge lick enclaves. we have seen this.

the orange is little germany. that's the concentrated area of germans and the three green wards represent the area where the irish are concentrated. today we go to little italy and chinatown in american cities and it's a place to try edthnic foo. this is seen as an effort not to blend in. in fact, it conforms to what ben franklin was saying. crowding together and refusing to assimilate. you can see this is a typical comment from this period. this is not an amused statement. this is an alarmed statement about people not blending in. those are the irish neighborhoods. they are bunched together. most people don't look at that and say, that's the worst

housing, that's the one place that people will let them live. they will choosing to crunch together, choosing to not assimilate. one of our readings from last night touches on this issue. from 1860. i should have given you a little background on that. in 1860, the united states will welcome the prince of wales. a big visit. pomp and circumstance wherever he goes. part of the ceremony is to have a big parade for this, all the different militias will march to give the prince a big welcome. michael corcoran, an irish nationalist, driven out of island in a chapter we will talk about in a couple of classes, he said he's the head of the irish brigade brigade. he said we're not marching for him. he gets court-martialed eventually. the only thing that saves him is the civil war breaks out.

what's in the harper's weekly editorial about our irish soldiers? what's the -- what's their interpretation? who do they say this tells us about the irish? >> from what i could tell, it seemed like they were calling the irish ungrateful. they kept going on about how the americans have given them land pretty cheap land and they have been good to them. they have allowed them to practice their catholicism. >> even though we don't want to, we will -- we have been tolerant. >> they're making it seem like they have been very tolerant to them and painting the irish to be these insubordinate people they don't want in the country. >> disloyal. we have given -- you don't deserve it. you are filling our jails, our hospitals. you are jacking up our taxes. you are corrupting our democracy and we let you stay. and yet you pull this incredibly embarrassing act of treason. we can't trust you.

you are bad -- you are not going -- this tells us you are probably not ever going to be good americans. either it's your temperament or religion or whatever. it angered the editors at harper's. this is a flashpoint. you can see in this image a pretty vivid example of how the irish are perceived. you see lady liberty, she's stirring the pot of immigrants. you can see all different kinds of ethnic groups. notice the one who is -- he will get in there, the implication. he is going to get into the soup. but he will have to be whacked over the head. he has his irish flag, his knife and he is exhibiting that kind of anger and riotousness that people associate with irish. it's not -- no coincidence he's the one on the lip of the pot. another dimension of nativism is

this perception. it's more vague and it's related to this idea of clustering together. it's this idea that they're taking over. you hear this in years past, people would talk about the cubans are taking over miami. this is an earlier version. we talked about some of the numbers where they go from being a small percentage of new york and boston and philadelphia to becoming 30, 40, 50% if you include their american-born children, 50% of the population. here is a vivid cartoon from the 1860s. the great fear of the period, uncle sam may be swallowed by foreigners. this is looking from canada. you have the irish on the east coast. the chinese immigrant on the west coast. they are devouring uncle sam in a grotesque, horror-film way. this is the first panel. this is a multi-panel cartoon. in the end, the china man

swallowed the irish man. if people had to choose who they thought was the most dangerous, they would choose the chinese. the irish are right behind them. we can see in this image the rapid and really shocking growth of the irish population in this mid 19th century period largely due to the famine. but we know that before the famine there were 45,000 irish living in new york city. it's -- this does not include their american-born children. it's 25%, 28% of people born in ireland. if you throw in their kids, you are talking 40% or 50% of the population. don't forget that one thing that's in that statistic is that these aren't just irish people. they're mostly irish catholics. there's a double set of fear there. i threw this image in to show you the connection with other

groups. this is from 1882. you can see the caption, the day -- the dream of the jews realized. the cartoonist in 1882 showing new york city completely taken over by jewish immigrants. they're taking down -- look on the right-hand site, john smith d dry goods. the new york herald is the new jerusalem heard. you can see jewish people lording themselves over the city that they have begun to come to. the funny thing is it's 1882 and people are -- the cartoonist is worried there are too many jews in new york. it's just at this moment that the real great wave, the great wave of the next 40 years is going to unfold where new york becomes identified with the jewish population because a third of the jews in the world are going to come to the united states. this guy is having -- he is freaking out, so to speak, in

1882 and he has no idea what's about to hit the american shores. another one. with the irish, nativism and poverty. we think about this. this is not just a matter of thinking that immigrants are raising our poverty statistics. it's not just a matter of that. it has to do with our political culture and our sense of ourselves. what do americans think when they think about them service and their country and the¢ republic? the opposite, which is aristocratic england. in that place or in europe, there's fixed classes and there are huge numbers of poor people. that's a symbol of an un-republican government. even though there are poor people in america, americans think it's small and people are temporarily poor. then come these waves of poor people from europe. they begin to fill things we start to call slums.

there's this calculus that says these people are artificially jacking up the poverty rate in america, which is a threat to our way of being. the irish born in new york city -- 64% of the people that ended up in the poor house are born in ireland. so that's way disproportionate to the population. you notice on this boat, it says poor house from galway saying we're importing poverty to this republic. here is an expression of this idea that american just doesn't do poverty. that's not part of our political social makeup. we as a people, americans, are intolerant of ragged garments and empty paunches. we confound, we associate ill

clothing and distitution. this is an image you have in front of you. this is a classic image of the irish, both male and female. what's the -- we can assume they're poor because they live in a shack. what else is -- what's the nature? >> it looks like an animal in the face. almost like an ape. >> mid 19th century, you would be able to spot that in a second in a political cartoon or a poster. that's an irishman because that's the way they look or the way they are shown. this is very much the typical way in which he is shown. what else do we know about him without even knowing -- i didn't give ut caption or anything. >> the man is sitting down, which is -- i don't know if that's supposed to signify irish laziness. >> he is not only poor but

he's -- >> not trying to improve. >> runs counter to the boots straps political culture. pull yourself up out of poverty. >> he has a bottle by his feet. he has a club under his arm. drunkenness and violence definitely significant features of the irish stereotype. >> he is not only poor. these are associated vices that he is a drinker, which may explain why he is poor. and he is also ready at the drop of a hat to get into a scrape. what about his attitude? we -- most people associate poverty misery. >> he almost looks content. he doesn't seem to care. >> he looks content.

not upset about his circumstances. obviously, not saying, what do i have to do to get out of these circumstances. to the american viewer, this is a very unamerican approach to poverty. you are supposed to be very embarrassed and a shamed is and to do everything in your power to get out of it. they seem to be quite content with their circumstances. again, just to show you how this idea carries forward, this is an image from 1896 showing uncle sam at the gates of america. he is holding his nose. the immigrant is your composite eastern european. little bit jewish. a little slovic, italian. a composite immigrant. he is carrying a bag labeled disease. he is carrying a bag labeled poverty. he has a keg on his back. he is not only a drinker but drinking on the sabbath. uncle sam is trying to stop him. these associations are not

exclusively lly attributed to t irish. he had a bag labeled disease. disease is another crucial component. if you look at the medical records, public hospital records in the mid 19th century, these things are being invested. you see that the irish form a huge, great disproportionate amount of patients in the hospitals. this is the public hospital in new york. it shows that 85% of the foreign-born admissions are irish born. just almost everybody in that hospital for the public, the poor, are irish born in the 1850s. there's this clear association with disease, poverty and so on. here is a vivid image showing the grim reaper. that's arriving at the tip of manhattan island which is where they landed before ellis island

opened a few years later. the belt of this angel of death says cholera. epidemic of 1849 killed 4,000 people in america. in cities like new orleans, boston, new york. almost half were irish born. it's an association with immigrants and particularly with the irish. nobody says, well, they are beset by cholera because they live in terrible conditions. they said they are filthy people. they bring this upon themselves. this is an immigrant hospital, prior to the days of ellis island, new york landed people at the tip of manhattan island. they also had a hospital there. that's one of the things they're concerned about is sick immigrants that are coming in. in staten island, where this hospital was built in new york harbor, a mob showed up and destroyed the hospital because they were so afraid that the spread of disease was going to

be greatly increased by the presence of this hospital full of sick immigrants. here is another one to show the connection. this is an anti-chinese cartoon from san francisco in the 1880s showing parts of san francisco, chinatown and leprosy and ghosts or demons are labeled diseases. this association of immigration and disease is very, very tight. nativism and crime. a lot of these overlap, by the way. where you find poverty you find high rates of crime. nativism and crime, in new york city, which we use new york but it's a great representation of of the irish experience, 55% of those arrested in the 1850s were irish born. you can probably tack on 20%, 25% if you included irish-americans. 35% of the prostitute s s arres were irish born. wherever you turned you found irish offenders.

sometimes it's petty thieves or drunk and disorderly. sometimes it's more serious. this is a quotation about the irish from the 1880s. by a judge. very blunt laying when the irish have a pros iftitute or future criminal. this shows prisoners lining up -- i guess they're getting out of this wagon. the wagon known as -- not that anybody has any personal experience with this. what do we call a police van? where does that -- it comes from the 1850s. >> it's a nickname sometimes affectionate. why would they call this a patty

wagon? >> they're mostly filled with irishmen? >> the back of it is full of irishman. it's also possible -- this is an unknown origin of the term. a very large percentage of the people driving that van were irishmen wearing blue uniforms. by 1850, more than a quarter of the new york city police department is irish born. it could mean that it's -- they're showing up as criminals. it could be they are members of law enforcement or both. the patty wagon is born in that period. other groups have certain kinds of criminal attributions given to them. the sinister chinese villain emerges in the 1870s and becomes the part of popular fiction in dime novels. a classic example of this here. here is an image from 1909 called the fool pied piper.

eastern european immigrants, jews, italians, greeks coming to america as rats. it's blunt. in the real story, the pied piper plays the this. as you can see they are going off to america. notice the reaction of the european officials on the shore there jumping for joy that america is taking the worst of european society. they're coming out of the sewers and coming out of the jails. this idea of criminality is imbedded. nativism and disorder. basically rioting. rioting becomes a huge problem in the mid 19th century in most american cities. we know that rioting goes back into the colonial period. think about the 1760s, the stamp act riot. those riots were more

demonstration riots. they were shows of anger. there were pageantry and role playing. they would break things. in the mid 19th century, riots become violent and deadly. people begin to bdie. this is the dead rabbits riot, which is partially featured in the movie gangs of new york. here is an expression from a new york city merchant in the 1840s talking about this characteristic of the irish. it's deeply imbedded in the irish nature to be riotous. republican citizens are rational, self-controlled.

that's how they get ahead. not the irishman. here is another cartoon from the 1870s showing a scene, greatly exaggerated. an intersection where the parade ran into traffic and scuffling ensued. it's blown up into this full-on riot. if you look closely, you can see -- i think i have a close-up. notice the way he draws the irish as these savage beasts who are clubbing and beating bystanders and policemen. it was double the delight that it was on st. patrick's day this happened. what more could you expect? any questions at this point? there's more. nativism, it's multidimensional. nativism and labor. this is one that will sound familiar to our modern ears.

the idea that immigrants steal jobs or lower wages. you can see this in this poster from the 1850s. natives of the soil arouse. basically saying, shall american labor be protected? americans are being threatened by the influx of cheap labor from abrod. they work for less. the wages of brick layers and teamsters and things begin to decline. this is for the american party, for the know nothings, this was probably number two to anti-catholicism. you can see this statement by the american association for the condition of the poor for the improvement of the condition of the poor that lays this out saying increased immigration from europe has had a negative impact on the laboring mechanic classes of new york city. needy foreigners accustom to live upon less than our own countrymen are enable to produce cheaper and work for lower wages. restrict immigration. what about this one?

nothing more intimately associated with the irish and this question of labor than the phrase no irish need apply. people use it jokingly now. sometimes you hear it as a nina sign, no irish need apply. it has a powerful place in irish-american historical memory. if you were to -- it's like various ethnic groups do this. you have sort of phrases that kind of -- that capture a big idea. the big idea is, when we came to this country in great numbers, americans hated us and discriminated against us and made our adjustment to america all the more difficult. it was going to be difficult anyway because we were poor and didn't have skills and so forth. it was doubled upon us because we were discriminated against çó us. they shut us out of lucrative or decent jobs. the interesting thing is most people associate this -- when you hear people talk about it, they say, when irishmen showed up at factories, they saw the no

irish need apply. they went to coal signs. waterfronts, they saw no irish need apply. there has been research done in which historians have been looking for the evidence of this. this is what we do. we can't just take tradition and accept it as face value. what's happened is, very little evidence of that sort exists. there are no signs. there are fake vintage signs that people have. they're printed in the 20th century as almost novelties. irish men don't -- at least as far as we know, tend not to face -- these actual signs. not to say they aren't discriminated against. who are the ones who bare the brunt of no irish need apply? where you can find in the historical record the repeated, repeated phrase no irish need apply? it's in classified ads for irish women. irish domestic servants or

domesticer doe mess domestic servants. it's an image you have in front of you. we have covered this in some respects. we can see who is the irish woman. very clearly. she's the one who looks luke an ape to fit that ideal. she has orange shamrocks on her dress in case you didn't get the idea. what's going on here? what do we see -- dan, what's the -- one of the things that you notice? there's a lot of detail. >> the american woman is -- >> what's wrong with that? why is that -- >> it's kind of evoking fear. >> she's the employer. she's the one who is supposed to be the boss. this is her house, her kitchen. she's cowering in front of this gorilla-like figure. which is the opposite of how it should be. the help should be submissive and meek before the employer. that's one thing that's wrong. this is the female version of the riotous irishman. she's rioting, essentially in

the kitchen. we can see that. there's a broken dish on the ground. what else? what's another problem with the bridge e bridgette? you can tell who is the irish woman. you know her name, even though you don't know her name. she would be called a bridgette like the men would be called patty. what else? what about the execution of her duties? >> she's very uncooperative. >> uncooperative and what about tonight's dinner? >> looks like a mess. >> something is boiling over. something is burning. this is the other association. american is saying, we need servants. we're becoming a middle class society. we need servants. they begin hiring. the great majority of the people that are showing up to do that kind of work are irish women. there's a push back. if you real estate the classified ads, wanted

protestant girl, preferred german or preferred swedish or american. no irish need apply. she's this very, very unlikable figure. she's big and hulky and she's terrible at her job. what's the -- why would her brother pat probably not face a no irish neat apply at the waterfront? what's the different between her job and his job that makes americans in terms of -- >> it doesn't matter if he is temperamental. if you are doing manual labor, if you are work on the docks, no one is going to care. if you are working in somebody's house, they're going to get upset if you are wrecking their house and not doing your job. >> also, you will deal with children and with the adults. the sanctity of the american home. the home is supposed to be clean and wholesome and peaceful above

all. here comes this one woman wrecking crew who is going to do a terrible job and who knows what with the children and with the house. it's a conundrum. if you go into a historical database and type in servant problem, you will get hundreds of articles that have that in the headline, the servant problem, we need servants and the only ones we can get are the women from ireland. here is the ad from the -- wanted an english or american woman that understands cooking to assist in the work generally of wished, a girl to do chamber work. none need apply without recommendation from last place. irish women need not apply and going on from there. this is where you fine the evidence. it's aimed at bridgette less so that be pat. who cares about the behavior of an irish man in the dock or coal mine?

this is not an irish image. this is that swarthy southern european characteristics. he is reaching in and taking the food off the table of the american-born working man. the title is the inevitable result, the american workman of indiscriminate immigration. we need to control immigration so jobs and wages are preserved. here is one aimed at the chinese showing a chinese immigrant with ten arms doing all these different jobs and the young american men kind of kicking around on the right-hand side because presumably they are unemployed. what shall we do with our boys from 1882? there's more. n nativism and race. the images of the irish as beasts is not just somebody being mean. somebody dipping into the emerging idea of racial ideas and racial categories and so

forth. if you take a look at two imams close up that we have seen, we see -- this is not to be mean to the irish but it's to say they are indeed lower on the scale of humanity. they belong to a lower race that is not too far from the baboon as depicted here. george templeton strong who was a merchant in new york, kept a big diary or regular diary. a gold mine of resources for historians. he wrote about the irish, almost always in horror at their alien ways and behavior. he said, our celtic citizens are almost as remote from us as the chinese. the chinese are way --furthest . here is an image from a physiology textbook. it's a book that is -- it's

1866. you can see that it's almost like that -- you see similarity between this and that servant picture. you have the beautiful, composed, intelligent american-born woman. in this case florence night nightengale. she looks ape-like, dirty, she looked dumb. her name is bridgette mcbruiser. there's no real person named bridgette mcbruiser. this is in a textbook explaining the connection between physiology and personality and intelligence and so forth. sometimes race is explicitly shown in the images and in these documents. here you can see the irish woman being put side by side with an african-american woman and notice in the age of slavery, in the able of raging anti-black

racism how the irish are being shown here. in this case, the irish woman is being -- is shown as much lower, much more inferior, much less desirable, less entireble, less controlled, less intelligent than the african-american woman beside her. and the whole point of the cartoon is that the irish woman is very upset that she's sitting next to a black woman when, in fact, the black woman is much more intelligent, much more middle class than she is or probably ever will have. another image, thomas na a ft, it's political commentary during the era of reconstruction and he's basically saying that the problem in the south, the blacks have been given the right to vote and there's a problem in the north that everybody who is white and the citizens can vote including these legions of irishmen. so it's tapping into two kinds of racial ideas there. so race is becoming -- as race becomes more -- and i'm putting up my fingers. scientific in the late 19th,

early 20th century, eventually ideas develop, the racial component becomes more pronounced. nativism and politics. because all of these people as thomas nash indicates, all the men above a certain age who become citizens can vote. and this is a horror to a lot of people. here you see a mid 19th century image of an irishman, in this case also with a german. and they're running away with the ballot box. they're literally hijacking democracy. these are not intelligent republican citizens who think about the issues and take great care in captioning the vote. these are people who are just winning elections. in the the article we read last night, was that the system of universal suffrage in large cities has fallen into discredit through the incapacity of the irish self-government.

they're filling out jails, filling out hospitals, filling out slums and pulling down the democracy. and so another classic image of the irish in the mid and late 19th centuries, this guy who is subverting democracy, corralling votes, using the poor immigrant vote to his vant advantage to gain the system and then to enrich himself and his friends through corruption. so you have a great 19th century term, it means corruption. a boodle boss who has his thumb on democracy and his boot on the taxpayer and then on the right-hand side, taminy hall, the most famous irish run political machine has his boot on city hall. that's the mayor shining his shoes on taminy. it's a powerful association with in this case very much the irish. no one is complaining about german or italian political power. at least not yet. we're getting close to the end of this list. nativism and radicalism.

this becomes an important point, especially as cities develop and we already talked about the incidence of rioting and strikes, as well been the industrial revolution advances, wage work becomes more common, strikes become a big feature of american society. a lot of americans say -- don't say oh, people are striking and strikes become violent sometimes because people aren't being paid enough. they say people are rioting because that's in their nature. these are foreigners who come and don't understand our wayes and they're predisposed to rioting. so in 1885, josiah wrote these words saying it is a peculiar attraction for immigrants. men who are ready on any pretext these a r attributed to

immigrants of riotish nature and socialism and anarchy i. here you see it's lumped in with a variety of groups. this is columbia, lady liberty stopping these unwanted immigrants in the 1880s and they are not a pleasant looking group. and he's carrying a bag labeled dynamite. that's because irish americans were deeply involved in the irish nationalism movement, the effort to free ireland in the 1880s and that does involve a certain level of violence, and a certain level of raising money for essentially terrorism. which is our next -- >> i've seen that on a couple. >> black hand has two meejs. it's a nickname for the mafia. it also refers to eastern european radicals, anarchists and so forth. so you see it used

interchangeably in these cartoons. >> yeah. yep. and it was. [ inaudible question ]. >> the irish revolutionary brotherhood. they make no bones about it. they say our goals as irish immigrantes and irish americans is to raise money to have an armed insurrection in ireland and that involves assassinations, if need be, that involves rolling up for shippes and so forth as need be. that's where the association of irish and radicalism and terrorism. here is an image from the foot of manner hattan island. uncle sam is watching all these scary immigrants landing. it says the mafia in new orleans, anarchists in chicago, just after the hay market bombing still referring to germans and radical galore new york instead of