Author: Henry Burby

Henry Burby

MHC 10201

3/7/16

Italian Immigration in New York City

The Jewish migration of the mid to late 19^th century overlapped the second largest immigrant group to come to New Your, the Italians. Generally less skilled then the Jews, the Italians were instead more like the Irish. They were unlikely to be literate, had little urban experience, and came to America to escape poverty and starvation. They were faced with financial, occupational hardships, and social prejudice. However, the Italians had different history then the irish, which made them unique. New York’s Italian population shot up from 1880 to 1914. Most early immigrants were young men, planning to purchase land back home with American money. Later, families started to arrive. Italians settled in many areas of the city. They followed the physical jobs they depended on, such as construction projects. Early Italian immigrants depended on padroni, labor contractors who helped with employment and integration, for a price, though this system died out when it was made illegal. The Italians tended to group themselves with others from the same Italian region. With little English, and few valuable skills, Italians made little money, and couldn’t afford decent housing, making their neighborhoods cramped and unhealthy. Large amounts of crime fed stereotypes of the Mafia, and the Black Hand. These led to greater mistrust from some natives, though others disagreed. Though most Italian males were laborers, some found other work as entertainers, municipal workers, and small business owners. Over time, Italians, and especially women, also branched out into the garment industry. Their willingness to accept bad conditions and low pay, and their inexperience with unions, gave them not entirely unfounded reputations as strikebreakers and scabs, making them unpopular with other workers. Italian women tended to be part of families, and if they were single, they were expected to join one as soon as possible, and retire from public life. However, as most Italian families lived below the poverty line, daughters and wives often took jobs to support their families when their husbands experienced lulls. Young single women found work in factories, and married ones often worked at home, often with the help of their children. Families made additional funds by taking on borders. Though men’s jobs were often exhausting, the women suffered as well, in dark, dangerous and dirty workshops and factories. By the Great War, many Italians had successfully climbed the societal ladder, and were beginning to find better work. The children of immigrants understood American language and culture, and they were able to find skilled labor. They had also had access to American public schools. However, many parents felt that schools interfered with the family structure, and saw more benefit from their children as wage earners. Thus, though the second generation had more schooling their predecessors, they were far less educated then, for example, the Jews. By the early 20^th century, many Italians began to join the Jews in the labor unions. This was not true everywhere, and Italian scabs and Italian union workers often stood on opposite sides of the picket line. Italian men, with their unskilled and temporary jobs, were slower to unionize in the women, though some did form. By World War 1, an Italian middle class had begun to form, though it was not a majority. Shop keepers, white collar workers, and even some professionals, began to move to make more money, and find better housing. Italians were less likely to be involved in politics, because they had little experience with democracy. They also experienced discrimination from the Irish, and since they dominated Tammany Hall, Italians were more likely vote republican. By the turn of the century, Tammany stepped up its efforts, leading to a number of Italian Democrats. Many Italians were also attracted to socialist organizations. However, despite some political success, few Italians turned out to vote before World War 1. Though Italians distrusted settlements houses, ethnic organizations achieved great popularity and success. These groups helped to support and Americanize recent immigrants. Mutual aid groups, which provided emergency funds, insurance, and community, were also common. Successful men also formed groups of Prominenti. Many Italian newspapers emerged as well, and some achieved great success. Though most Italians were Catholic, the primarily Irish catholic community of New York was very different from what they were used to. The Irish clergy saw Italian Catholics as superstitious, primitive, and lazy, and Italian services were usually relegated to church basements. It was true that most Italians, especially men,  were infrequent churchgoers. In Italy, they had seen the church as primarily a social institution, but in new York, it had a huge amount of competition. Most Italian men came only to major holidays, weddings and funerals. This led to conversion attempts by Protestant groups, which had some success. Over time, the Irish and the Italians grew to accept each other, and by 1911, many Italian catholic churches had taken root. In certain areas, churches became the centers of their communities. Festas, large holy festivals, were one of the most important religious events for Italian Catholics. Though New York’s Italian population gradually trended towards Americanization, they remained a close community well into the 20thy century.

 

Henry Burby

MHC 10201

3/5/16

The Gods of New York

The characters of Gangs of New York represent many different worlds. In the film, rich and poor, young and old, white and black, and native and foreign all coexist and struggle with each other. each other, as dictated by their backgrounds, circumstances, and worldviews. A person’s traits are often reflected in their personal philosophies, which can be channeled into their religions. By comparing the character’s religions, perspective can be gained on the thoughts and motivations of Amsterdam Vallon, Bill the Butcher, and the philanthropist Schermerhorn. The scene in which the three men pray before the draft riots intercuts and compares their religious perspectives. In this scene, the character’s relationships to the world are indicated by their relationships to God.

Bill the Butcher barely mentions his religious beliefs in the rest of the film. When he does, it is to juxtapose his “Christian Lord” with the “Roman popery” of the Irish. Like most American protestants of the time, his anti-Catholic vitriol is directed more at their culture than at their religion. Bill attacks Catholicism for promoting poverty, corruption, and ignorance, not for its religious doctrine. This doesn’t make him a nonbeliever. He objects to the Irish as a nation, not for their religion, but because he believes in a national God. Bill is an American before all else, and his religion reflects that loyalty. Bill worships a God that, at least, heavily supports America, and at most, personifies his view of America’s essential spirit.[i] Nowhere is this clearer then in his use of an American flag as an altar cloth. His is the God of American exceptionalism, manifest destiny, and white supremacy, an inescapable protector and avenger of the American way. This “God of retribution” supports white, protestant, America, and will vengefully put down any threat to its favored nation. For Bill, national dedication is interchangeable with religious devotion. In one scene, he wraps a flag around his shoulders at night for protection and comfort, benefits often supplied by religion. When used this way, the flag fills the same niche as the Pope’s “pointy hat.” He uses a glass eye with an eagle for a pupil, so he is symbolically half blinded by a twisted vision of America. He sees himself as an agent of his American God, able to ignore the official corruption, law, and morality, to protect the spirit of his country from foreign invaders. God is “The dagger in… [his] hand” in that, by working on behalf of God, he is empowered and justified.

Like Bill, Amsterdam is not obviously religious. Because his life experience has been  different, he sees God differently then Bill does. To Amsterdam, God is not personally vengeful, but neutrally just. Unlike the other characters, Amsterdam prays silently, inside his head. This may point to a very strong, personal belief in the existence and power of God, though though Amsterdam usually keeps his distance from this power. As seen when he throws his bible and its protestant ideas into the river, Amsterdam doesn’t think God can be found in the pages of a book. Instead God is a tangible force in the world. Amsterdam’s enemies have wronged him and he plans to take revenge. He is confident that God will crush them because they have done evil, not because they are protestant, or American. However, Amsterdam is clear that he is fighting his enemies for his own reasons, not God’s, and that his sword is his own. He is not following God, but proposing an alliance, of sorts, in which he will use God’s support to kill their mutual enemies. Instead of vowing to be God’s agent, he asks that God to be just. He is asking more to get God’s attention then because he owes him anything.[ii]

Schermerhorn’s religion is strongly influenced by the new testament, making it the most moderate of the three, and the closest to modern day Christianity. He believes in a universally loving God, who both gives and forgives. His wealth and good fortune seem to give him reason to feel this way. In his prayer, he gives thanks to a huge table of food, which he assumes God has provided. God has always provided for him, and he has never had to question that God is on his side. He refers to God in the third person, and speaks directly to a group of other people, because he is not personally connected to God. Schermerhorn sees the Almighty as a reliable, predictable, force of goodness in the universe. To him, self defense and promotion are not God’s will. That is a realm of earthly action, in which the divine has no place. Plus, he has never needed to do so over a long term. Instead, he defends others from oppression, through philanthropy. He intends to lift others up, away from the starvation and squalor which makes them kill each other. Successful or not, these efforts are Schermerhorn’s way of carrying out God’s will on earth.

When comparing the three men by their religions, it is tempting to lump Bill and Amsterdam together, against Schermerhorn. Bill and Amsterdam are men of violent action, calling for support in a battle. Neither are traditionally religious, but their dedication and proximity to their ideals make the men more likely to follow them. Their Gods are brutal, and the actions taken in their names are cruel. However, Amsterdam and Bill are not hypocritical. Schermerhorn doesn’t follow his religion completely in the real world. He claims to represent a merciful, loving God as long as the world is following order.  However, to maintain that order, he suggests that one half of the poor can always be hired to kill the other.[iii]  On the contrary, Bill and Amsterdam never claim to be anything other than they are, and follow their religious codes, such as they are, to the letter. Bill practices his nationalist religion every day, and Amsterdam follows his belief that God is just.

Though Bill and Amsterdam share many qualities, especially when compared to Schermerhorn, they still have several religious differences. To name one, the two men disagree on the natures of their deities. Neither Bill or his God are interested in right or wrong. Bill exists only to promote himself, and the interests of his tribe, white protestant America, in accordance with God’s wishes. On the other hand, Amsterdam’s God is impartial, sees only right and wrong, and is ready to enact justice on the wicked. Amsterdam and his people have suffered so much that he cannot assume that god is on one side or another. His God is not concerned with earthly bickering, and cares only for ideals.

Despite their differences, all three men are bound by a key characteristic. Their prayers show their faith in a traditional system of order in the world. They are so caught up in old ideals that when the real, messy world intrudes, in the form of the draft riot, they are taken completely by surprise. Schermerhorn knows of the warning signs, but because he is used to a world of order and mercy, he ignores them. Bill and Amsterdam are preoccupied with their struggle of ideals, and don’t know about the riot at all until to late. The film may be suggesting that all three men are wrong. In the riot, there is no ultimate power to provide support, justice, or love. There is only a chaotic force, fueled by rage and self defense, which is put down by another simply because the second is better armed and organised. The beliefs of the three men are drowned out by the chaos around them, and proved wrong. Bill loses his cause, is mortally wounded randomly by the forces of the country he idolizes, and his cause dies with him, a footnote in the dust. Amsterdam gets his revenge, but only after seeing all the friends and enemies he knows cut down arbitrarily. Schermerhorn shows no mercy when defending his house against its wild attackers. The forces of the establishment regain order, and effect the change he never could in the Five Points by leveling them.

 

[i] Personifications of America are nothing new. Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam are good examples, though Columbia is closer to what Bill worships.

[ii] Another interpretation is that Amsterdam’s God is tied to his father, who used to own the medallion. He only mentions God by name in his last line of prayer, and only in the third person. Therefor, he could easily be talking to his father’s spirit, in preparation for his revenge against his father’s killer.

[iii] John Stewart Mill squares theoretical devotion with practical inaction by explaining that Schermerhorn believes his religion too strongly, without ever questioning it. its ideals survive as truisms, which can be both bellied and ignored at once. The same can be said of Bill, if he claims to represent the Christian lord, but he gives no indication that he adopts the teachings of Christ into his religion, so this doesn’t make him hypocritical.

 

Sources Cited:

Gangs of New York. Dir. Marten Scorsese. Perf. Leonardo DiCaprio, Daniel Day-Lewis, Camron Diaz, Jim Broadbent, John C. Reilly, Henry Thomas, and Liam Neeson. Miramax, 2003. Film.

 

Henry Burby

The title of Breadgivers implies many themes in the lives of immigrants, and specifically Jewish immigrants. By separating the compound word, two especially stand out.

The word bread serves as a reminder of a factor that defines the lives of many immigrants: hunger. The book begins with Sara pealing potatoes for dinner, and most of the early part of the book is taken up with food and the work which is needed to acquire it. It is something that everyone has to contend with from time to time, but for many people around the world, including immigrants, it is part of their core identity. Life is not easy without food. There is no time to relax when you face starvation. You need to work to live, a fact that is much easier to see for immigrants without a social or governmental safety net.

The term breadgiver is similar to the term breadwinner. However, their second words show the difference between them. Where a breadwinner brings home the food, a breadgiver gives it without expecting anything in return, even love. Giver points out the one-sidedness of the relationship between Bessie and her father. In Jewish culture, as seen in this book, the father contributes nothing to the family, and is given his bread for free. His service to the family is strictly relegated to their afterlives, and their acceptance of this situation makes sense at first. After all, an eternity in paradise is worth the fat from the soup. The first breadgiver in the family is Bessie. She carries the family almost single-handed. She works constantly, and gives everything she earns back to her family. She does this because, in her culture, she only exists within and for her father, and by extension, her family. She carries them at least until she marries, when she takes on the burden of her new family, and she may well need to support her previous family as well. This relationship contrasts with that of the modern American family, where the family is taken care of for love. In Sara’s family, there is a much stronger element of obligation.

Henry Burby

2/16/16

HNRS 10201

Summery of Painter’s “The First Alien Wave.”

Because of its early dependence on black slavery, racism on the basis of skin color has a long and established history in America. However, there was a parallel system of racism against groups now considered white. At this time, racial identity was decided by religion as well as skin color, and religious hatred, the older of the two, ensured that Irish Catholics were treated similarly to the blacks. By 1840, protestant Saxon Americans, the dominant national group, were labeling the Irish “Celts” and grouping them with the oppressed nonwhites, despite their skin color. While many Protestant Irish had already immigrated to the USA, their common religion and lower numbers had allowed them to integrate fairly easily. Catholic Irish, however, had always been greeted as outsiders by both groups, and the huge wave of immigration after 1830 increased this tension massively. History explains the source of this intolerance.

America had inherited anti-Irish and anti-Catholic tendencies and laws from its English founders, many of which remained until nearly the mid 19^th century. Parallels between American and British treatments of racial minorities were noted by several social commentators of the time. Gustave de Beaumont blamed poverty and oppression for Irish squalor, which he considered more severe then among the natives and black slaves of America. The popular Thomas Carlyle took the opposite view. He called their poverty a symptom of their status as a lesser race of savage, uncultured, lazy, uncreative animals. By the 1840s, Carlyle’s view had gained massive support in America, where two million Irish had already arrived. Many anti-Irish groups and newspapers formed, ideologically supported by popular intellectuals. Samuel Morse claimed that catholic European kingdoms were flooding America with Irish in an attempt to convert it. Henry Ward Beacher attacked Europe for trying to destroy American democracy. These men drew the support of the lower classes, and incited violence and arson against Irish immigrants.

Maria Monk’s pornographic “Confession” portrayed the catholic church as a haven for lechery and rape. The wildly popular book, and the numerous other publications it inspired, spurred anti catholic hatred to greater heights.

The late 1840s was a time of great uneasiness for the traditional western world in general. Massive sociopolitical unrest in Europe caused several revolutions of poor against rich, and attempts were being made to secure suffrage for poor men, and even women. Backlash against threats to the social order often took the form of racism. European unrest, poverty, and famine  raised the number of immigrants from other European countries, as the number of Irish continued to grow. According to the first US censuses, nearly as many Germans fled danger in their countries. However, Germans were largely middle class, educated, protestant, domestic, and they settled larglyinthe Midwest. As a group, they seldom organized radically, unlike the Irish.

By 1855, the stereotypical “Paddies” overwhelmingly supported the democratic party, and were drunken, violent, lazy, poor, and criminal. Leading minister Ralph Waldo Emerson drew on these stereotypes. He showed the American willingness to discriminate against whites grouping the Irish, Hungarians, and Poles in with with the blacks, Chinese, and Native Americans, other races he considered hopeless. Anti-Irish attitudes were also spread via political cartoons, “Celts were compared unfavorably with Anglo Saxons.

Cartoons were also used to equate the Irish with the blacks. Abolitionists typically labeled the Irish as the northern white equivalent of the southern blacks. Pro-slave southerners usually equated the two even more closely, advocating the enslavement f both groups. Northerners advocated the emancipation of the Irish and the Blacks, seeing their situations as analogous. However, the urban Irish themselves opposed the comparison, and used their white skin color to gain an advantage over free blacks. They voted to allow slavery, and mobilized against blacks on several occasions, notably the several draft riots in the northeast. Irish nationalism also rose, countering British claims of genetic superiority by recasting themselves as the better race, and condemning the barbarism and violence of the Anglo Saxons. Outsiders also adopted this view, usually to attack the English, although their compliments usually portrayed the Irish as a quiet, race of simple primitives, with little common sense, who couldn’t stand up to the Anglo Juggernaut. Surprisingly, these view became popular with the Irish themselves, perhaps because, if they had to be a race, at least this one was preferable to Nast’s.  some Irish rewrote their own history yet again, this time descended from pre-Christian Spanish nobility. regardless of stance, most Europeans saw the Irish as a race unfit to rule themselves. American racism, however, changed, pertly because religion was less of an issue. When compared with European religious wars and national faiths, America was remarkably tolerant. The separation of church and state kept one faith from gaining power, and kept religious violence from becoming traditional. Another difference was that Britain had been debating the Irish problem for hundreds of years, whereas in America, abolition was more pressing. There was still struggle, however, as shown by the rise of nativism in the 1840s

The rise of nativist organizations both in politics and on the street increased anti-Irish violence enormously. While Irish churches and houses burned, politicians began attempting to pass discriminatory legislation preventing immigrants from voting. However, these groups were usually formed spontaneously. With the rise of the Know Nothing party in 1850, nativism gained even more power and organization. The club, which was open only to at least second generation American protestants, advocated temperance and attacked corruption, but their main focus was the Irish Catholics. They advocated American nationalism, and celebrated the heroes of the revolutionary war. The Know Nothings raised mobs across America, attacking catholic figures and communities, killing nearly 100 in the 1844 Philadelphia riots alone. They also swept into political power, becoming governors, congressmen, and mayors in the 1854 elections. They presented numerous anti immigrant laws, though few were enacted. The Know Nothings were also popular in the south, though the issue of slavery drove the southern and northern halves apart in 1855. Nativism survived the split, but faded in power, ending the worst of the violence against Irish Catholics. Though they were still considered a separate race, their light skin gave them a considerable advantage over America’s other “Lesser Race,” the blacks.