Category: Reitano/Painter

Y Boodhan: Blog 8 – Summary of Reitano Ch.5

Summary of Joanne Reitano’s “The Restless City”, Chapter 5 – The Empire City

In this chapter, Reitano talks about the growing economic gap between the rich and poor as a result of corrupt politics and unlivable working conditions. Reitano discusses the issues of New York city in the late 20th century and how they led to increased social reform.

During the late-nineteenth-century, America was growing increasingly complex industrial. Ragged Dick by Horatio Alger, one of the most successful books of that era, managed to portray “old values” in a world that seemed increasingly impersonal and immoral.

The book was a rag to riches tale that managed to show the city in a fascinating and positive light. It was seen as an optimistic novel for the time, giving people hope that the poor can rise up economically and socially.

Stephen Crane, the author of Maggie: A Girl of the Streets, had a contrasting view. Unlike Alger, Crane portrays the harsh consequences of social Darwinism. Unlike Dick, Maggie falls victim to the city and its hold over the poor.

New York was growing for the best and the worst. Nicknamed the Empire City, New York was the center of finance, trade, and industry. It housed the rich and attracted poor immigrants.

New York was the center but it was not perfect. the city had many problems at the time that needed to be addressed. Among them was the gap between the poor and the wealthy. The era was dubbed the Gilded Age and was seen as an era of social struggle and strife between the rich and poor. Authors like Mark Twain challenged myth and reality when addressing the social and economic gap, questioning Alger’s viewpoint about whether one can really go from rags to riches.

The wealthy class in New York City included robber barons who ran monopolies on their companies and who controlled a majority of the wealth in the city. Rockefeller was one of the most important and powerful of the businessmen at the time. Although he had humble beginnings, he expanded his company through ruthless methods and made himself a wealthy man.

Because of growing companies like Rockefeller’s, the government began to reassess their role in the economy and struggled to control trusts. As the economy boomed, so did the infrastructure of the city. Iconic changes to New York included the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty.

With the influx of new immigrants came a set of new issues that needed to be addressed politically. Corrupt politicians entered the office by taking advantage of the needs of the poor. A good example of this is politician William M. Tweed who was described as having New York City under his thumb. He took on several positions in Tammany Hall. Tweed rigged the votes so that he could continuously hold office. Despite his unethical rise to power, Tweed helped New York City by funding several public projects.

Tweed was exceptionally wealthy and powerful during the time period.  His fall began with the Orange Riot in 1871 when there was a conflict between the Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics. This was soon followed by evidence that proved Tweed was stealing money from the city. Tweed was removed from office and later arrested. After Tweed, there focus on creating a good government and honest politics.

As changes were being made to improve politics, changes were also being made to improve social conditions. In an effort to expose poverty and the economic gap in New York, journalist Jacob Riis publicized his book How the Other Half Lives with very graphic images to appeal New Yorkers. He managed to capture the very worst of the city. At the same time, he increased awareness about the unsanitary and overall terrible conditions faced by the city’s youth.

Now that the problems were known, efforts were being made to fix these problems. The mayor worked with journalists like Riis to make improvements in the city. This included changes to the police force and public schools.

Jacob Riis was not the only one making changes. Josephine Shaw Lowell was improving prisons workhouses and  job programs. She supported Riis and his projects and completed several projects of her own to help women rise to leadership positions.

Overall, efforts were being made to improve working and living conditions. Several organizations were created and privately funded to support the poor. To Jacob Riis and historian Alan Nevins New York City was very philanthropic.

At this time, concerns about labor were on the rise. The financial panic in 1873 along with wage reductions and  unemployment caused workers to ask the government for relief. When the government refused, workers went to the streets to protest. However, the police took to the streets and violently stopped protesters. 

There were as many as 1200 strikes in New York City alone and ongoing conflict with the police force and judicial system made it more difficult to achieve labor goals. With the help of Samuel Gompers and Henry George, people strived for better hours wages benefits and working conditions.

Even young newsboys were trying to improve working conditions and wages. To Jacob Riis, the role of the newsboys in striving for better labor conditions mirrored the current culture of society. For New York, labor was one of the primary concerns in the late 20th century. To Riis, the Empire City was growing by starting to care for the poor and working-class.

By investing in improving labor, New Yorkers were investing in improving living conditions and were adopting the optimistic mindset of Dick — that maybe things will change for the better.

Summary of Reitano’s The Restless City Chapter 5- The Empire City

The Empire City begins with a quote from Horatio Alger, in which advice is given to a young ‘street urchin’. The chapter covers most of the Gilded Age in New York, which took place during the late nineteenth century. Retiano discusses Alger’s book: Ragged Dick which draws focus to how New York City during this time period was facing a great many changes and could be considered both a land of promise and hope and a land of danger and exploitation.  The possibility of upward mobility emerged, when combined with the benefits of social Darwinism and laissez-faire capitalism. She label’s Alger’s book an optimistic take on the period as his character becomes an urban hero. She then claims Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets provides a pessimistic view of the same as his heroine could not overcome the demand of the changing city.

New York City was in the throws of the Industrial Revolution and was experiencing both its benefits and its drawbacks. The ‘Empire City’ dominated national finance, trade, and industry however it was wrought with poverty, political corruption, and exploitation. Mark Twain labeled the time period “the Gilded Age” as it focused on wealth and production at its surface but was filled with poverty and destitution within. “All that glittered was not gold” (p. 81). Those who were rich often stepped on the heads of others. Robber barons such as John D. Rockefeller, who dominated and monopolized the oil business, and Cornelius Vanderbilt, who did the same with the railroad, made New York the industrial powerhouse that it was through their social Darwinian tactics and upward growth. Competitors were taken over or steamrolled and organizations like Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust grew with little government control or regulation. The growth added to New York City’s power and appeal and by 1900 it housed two thirds of the American millionaires of the time.

This growth in power and status led to physical updates as well. The industrial revolution came with inventions, gas, electricity, better transportation, better communication, and a growing landscape. New York City icons such as the Statue of Liberty and Brooklyn Bridge emerged. The five boroughs were combined and New York City became the largest city in America in 1898.

For a time, bosses such as Tweed and Tammany Hall dominated politics in New York City through corruption and exploitation. Eventually, evidence was gathered to take the Tweed organization down with the help of The New York Times. Once Tweed’s bookkeeping was made public in the Times, he attempted to escape punishment by fleeing to New Jersey and then to Spain, but he was eventually captured, and returned to New York. There, he wrote a confession that exposed many powerful corrupt officials, was imprisoned, and never pardoned. However, with Tweed’s loss of power came the 1871 Orange Riot (between Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants) occurred.

As previously stated, the Gilded Age, ignored or hid the poor from the public eye. However, writers brought attention to the poverty of the time. Charles Loring Brace’s novel: The Dangerous Classes of New York, as well as Jacob Riis’ writings in the New York Tribune and his book How the Other Half lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York were a few of many attempts to expose the inequality, suffering, and wide wealth gap due to social Darwinism. Many New Yorkers became actively “concerned about what the called ‘the Social Question’” (p. 89) and contributed some form of kindness to those in need. Reform was attempted when William L. Strong was elected as mayor by a new Committee of Seventy to remove Tammany from power.  As reform was endeavored, controversies over children, public education, and segregation emerged. Other reform organizations were created by members of the upper- and middle- classes. A sort-of “Crusade against poverty” occurred.

Labor, too, was a cause of much contention during the Gilded Age in New York City. This is because, while there was a booming laissez- faire capitalist economy, the only ones who benefitted were the rich. “Modernization challenged assumptions about equality of opportunity, social mobility, hard work, individual initiative, fair plate and personal morality” (p. 95). Workers were exploited: often underpaid and overworked. To counteract this inequality, strikes were commonplace. However, participants were often struck down by police with little improvement being accomplished. Labor unions were started by men such as Samuel Gompers.  Gompers headed the Cigarmakers’ Union in 1877 however the internal debates between skilled and unskilled, large factory and small shop workers, caused it to have little success. The Knights of Labor, the Central Labor Union, etc. all nevertheless tried to band together to counteract the control of big business. The Central Labor Union drew government and public attention to the poor labor conditions in 1886 by nominating reformer Henry George for mayor. While he didn’t win the office his popularity among voters, he drew more attention towards reform. Unions across the country in states such as New Jersey, Virginia, Colorado, Florida, etc., began nominating labor reformers for political office.

In 1886 Samuel Gompers spearheaded “the creation of the most important labor organization in American History” (p. 102). This was the American Federation of Labor which focused on improving overall quality of employment (such as better pay, hours, conditions, and benefits). Labor unions were made up of people of all ages, as shown by the strikes among the young boys who sold newspapers.

The Gilded Age was a period of conflict between rich and poor, big business and small, corrupt politicians and reformers, social Darwinism and struggling classes. New York City grew to be great in name and power, but its lower class inhabitants suffered greatly, struggling with poverty and few worker/laborer rights. It was a time of abuse, corruption, and exploitation, as much industry, economic growth, and invention.

The Gilded Age: What it Actually Stood For

In the mid-19th century, Horatio Alger published a book regarding how to achieve success, whether it’d be in the United States or in the growing city of New York. In this piece, he portrays the city as lively, well-rounded, and the center of opportunity. It was as if all the world revolved around what happened in Manhattan. But when the Industrial Revolution came, New York had its fair share of ups and downs. Soon after, the city was nicknamed many things, ranging from what Alger coined as the “Empire City” to what the Commercial Advertiser called it “the Cosmopolitan City.” As time moved along, different people started to conclude different things about New York, and although it started to make a massive impact on the economy, wealth, and growth for the nation at the time, many started to believe that it could lead to its destruction as well.

John D. Rockefeller is a household name that monopolized the oil business, owning and operating nearly 90% of the industry. He wasn’t the only multi-billionaire that functioned out of the city either. With this new eco-centric city, came way of the world’s elite. By 1900, the majority of the world’s richest people took home to Manhattan. And as they continued to prosper, so did the city they colluded in. While these businesses evolved, the city had no choice but to evolve with it. At this point in time, the city’s infrastructure as its citizens knew it was adapting at rates uncontestable with modern times. The Brooklyn Bridge, the Empire State building, all rising from the ground up to make room for the business aspect the city now took on.

It was only time before New York became the largest city in the country, and with that being said, its population grew as well. Tammany Hall was well-known for housing the government that had to tame this wild beast, and one man in particular was elected the role to do it. William Tweed is one of the well-known politicians from this era, holding different seats throughout his tenure. Aside from his unorthodox ways of handling his constituents, he had a huge hand in allowing the city to develop the way it did. The system in which he formed allowed big businesses to produce its fullest potential, leaving no room for missed opportunity. On the other hand, he failed to receive as much support from the poorer crowd, and in fact provided the key that led to the “Tammany Riots.”

The Gilded Age disproved Alger’s path to success and made his work irrelevant by this time. The independence that came with its generation started to change drastically to a dependence on those who can barely help themselves. By this point, people were unemployed. Those who had jobs took the risk of joining unions in hope for better working conditions, better pay, and better hours. For some, these gatherings resulted in the changes they needed. But many found themselves struggling to pay their bills and watched as their jobs got filled by people who were willing to suffer. Henry George was one of the key actors in providing the support for unions, speaking at rallies, meetings, and sometimes in the middle of the roads. The American Federation of Labor became the most fruitful labor societies in history. Regardless, many strikes continued to occur, like the Brooklyn Trolley strike of 1895.

This age in New York made its people stingy, provincial, and uneducated to the rest of the world around them. With time, the gap between the wealthy and poor only grew. In the late 19th century, many journalists attempted to answer why this issue was so prominent, but one man in particular stood out above the rest. Jacob Riis, an immigrant from Denmark, was an author for novels about poverty, especially focusing on that of New York. He presented the people with the knowledge they either didn’t have access of seeing or refused to see in the beginning. By the time others began to run with the movement, the population began to help the cause as a whole.

With that came the fight from younger workers as well; while in today’s world, children are expected to go to school, many were forced to work from the time they were old enough to throw newspapers. And yet, they fought too for the better things in life, seeing how much they were suffering as compared to their counterparts who did manage to receive an education. These ideas led to the “Newsies” strikes, and allowed for organizations to be built from their struggles. They didn’t last, but managed to cause national uproar, as similar groups in Philadelphia, Boston, and other parts of New England joined in as well. For Riis, this could have been expected, although he never imagined his work would have such influence. Whether it was him or many other Americans at the time, the Gilded Age wasn’t so rich after all, especially not for the majority living in muted conditions, barely making it through each day.

 

The Empire City Summary

Chapter five of Joanne Reitano’s The Restless City explains the political, social, and economic questions that sprung up during the Gilded age in New York City. She uses Horatio Alger’s words from his novel Ragged Dick to demonstrate how New York City during the late-nineteenth century period of modernization was a place of curiosity and opportunity as well as a place of hardship and crime. Throughout the city there was a huge separation between the rich and the poor and the ideas of social Darwinism controlled many people’s thoughts. Although social Darwinism flooded the minds of many with the ideas of faith in material values, the survival of the fittest, the inevitability of progress, and the futility of reform, many New Yorkers were starting to reexamine those ideas to bring about change for the better.

At this time, New York’s largest companies were monopolizing their businesses. The famous robber baron John D. Rockefeller controlled the oil business with his Standard Oil Trust. His social Darwinian way of thinking eliminated all of his competitors and created a trust that shocked the people and the government to start regulating business practices. Despite the government starting to regulate business, the trusts grew stronger and stronger which also strengthened New York City as a center of the American economy. To keep up with the growing economy of the city, physical aspects of the city were updated as well.

As the city was expanding, corruption and urban bossism grew as well. William M. Tweed dominated both the Democratic Party and Tammany Hall while becoming the nation’s first true political boss. He provided jobs, naturalization, money, food, and other services to the middle and working class people in return for votes. He used race to garner support from the white working class and appealed to mostly everyone besides the African Americans and the wealthy Protestant reformers. Tweed became so powerful that something had to be done to stop him. Thomas Nast first publicly exposed Tweed when he published his cartoons showing the members of the Tweed Ring as robbers and wrongdoers in 1869. The New York Times eventually was able to find enough evidence to uncover his corruption and finally arrest him. The Gilded Age bosses such as Tweed forced America to make good government a national priority and pushed New York City into change.

During this time, many people began to actively help the poor out. Whether they saw them as inferiors that needed correction or acted out of good character to help them, everyone agreed that it was in their own self-interest to bring about change. Jacob Riis’ collection of photos, How the Other Half Lives, unmasked the poverty and horrors of living in a tenement. His book spurred a social revolution where reformers tried many different ways to help the poor. The reformers elected William L. Strong as mayor in 1894 to unseat Tammany and bring improvements for the city’s lower class. The reformers were even able to make schooling for all children under twelve mandatory in New York in 1901 and desegregated schools in 1900. Even the wealthy were becoming more involved in helping the poor. A member of an upper class family, Josephine Shaw Lowell, the first female commissioner of the State Board of Charities and head of the New York Charity Organization Society (COS), advocated for a living wage where people would make enough to sustain a decent life. To continue to aid the poor, settlement houses were created that offered inexpensive meals, free kindergartens, health clinics, language classes, and taught job skills. Social reform was on the rise and the public reassessed urban problems.

Modernization provoked people to question, “why there was so much strife in a booming capitalist economy” (95). At the beginning of the 1860s, New York City’s unions started to grow and gain more power. Wealthy New Yorkers looked down upon unions in the light of social Darwinism and the police used brutality to stop any and all action from the unions. In 1877, Samuel Gompers proved to be one of the most important union organizers of the time. Led by Gompers, the Cigarmakers’ Union raised funds from America and from across Europe to provide for fifteen thousand strikers and their families. He later learned about striking, boycotting, and other union ideals from the Central Labor Union (CLU) while labor activism was peaking across the country.

The CLU started in politics to further demonstrate the power of labor. They nominated Henry George to run for mayor which surprisingly unified all different type of laborites in the city. Although George was not voted into office, the sheer amount of votes he did receive startled many people into facing the problems of society and even forced Tammany to recognize the problem of labor in New York.

In 1886, Gompers formed the American Federation of Labor to work for better hours, wages, benefits, and working conditions. Even though Gompers got labor to be a national issue, it was still a problem in the 1890s as demonstrated by the Brooklyn Trolley Strike of 1895.

Even the young children who worked as newsies were forming a union and striking. Their strike was mirrored all around the country in cities like Boston, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Providence. It was evident from this strike that these children will eventually become adults and become America’s future. Improving their lives and implementing social change is, “a wise social investment in a better life for all” (104).

 

The Glided Age of New York: Reitano, Ch. 5

In Joanne Reitano’s The Restless City, her chapter on the “Glided Age of New York” begins with an introduction of Horatio Alger’s Ragged Dick. The quote talks about how anyone can reach the top of the social system if they plan wisely and save accordingly; the message was tailored to inspire impoverished Americans. This message coincides with the evolution of Manhattan in the late-nineteenth century, where it had become the home of modern American industrialization. The city had become overrun with robber barons, urban bosses, labor leaders, and social reformers (79). In short, New York City had gained the reputation of both excess and exploitation. Ragged Dick was the first novel that portrayed the gap between rich and poor as surmountable as protagonist Dick embodied the concept of Social Darwinism and the need to compete to survive. Alger’s novel encouraged laissez-faire capitalism and emphasized the need for the individual to reach success on his or her own terms (80). On the contrary, Stephen Crane’s Maggie: A Girl of the Streets showed the counter to Alger’s idealism by showing protagonist Maggie’s fall to prostitution and death. New York earned the label of “Empire City” by becoming “the nation’s largest and grandest metropolis – a master of finance, trade, and industry…” (80). That being said, New York also brought along with it crime, corruption, conflict, and violence, as prefaced by the Tweed Ring and the 1871 riots. However, the success of New York’s economic boom also meant the question of what exactly qualified as “progress” for the city and its inhabitants. Mayor Abram Hewitt deemed the future of New York’s destiny as one to “be realized or thwarted…by the folly and neglect of its inhabitants.” (81). Philosopher Henry George saw the crisis lie between the material progress of the city and the ongoing poverty and survivalist mentality of the people. Mark Twain coined the term “The Glided Age” as a period where success was only at the surface, but where the values of “every man for himself” were called into question. Twain went further on to knock down Alger’s illusionary portrayal of New York success by emphasizing the difference between myth and reality: the rich were not kind and generous, but rather cheap and volatile.

The idea of an economic oligarchy rang true as the infamous Wall Street barons dominated the financial wellbeing of the city. Bankers and trusts such as John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust, Cornelius Vanderbilt’s New York Central Railroad, Andrew Carnegie’s steel trust, and J.P. Morgan’s banking house exemplified the allocation of power within the few on top. Rockefeller was the main robber baron of nineteenth century New York, as he personified the rags-to-riches archetype that Horatio Alger idealized. However, “Rockefeller’s austere manner, ruthless business techniques” earned him the title of “the greatest villain of the Glided Age” (82). He monopolized the oil and petroleum industry, taking over 90% of American’s refining business, and establishing both a national and global empire. Effectively eliminating his competitors, Rockefeller proved to be a physical manifestation of Social Darwinism and the “kill or be killed” mentality that reverberated from that Since this level of financial autonomy was unheard of before, there were no regulations in place to combat the trusts that formed as of a result of the economic free-for-all. By 1892, almost a third of America’s millionaires lived in the New York metropolitan area; by 1900, it harbored over two-thirds of the nation’s biggest businesses.” (82). In order to accommodate the massive influx of wealth and corporation to the city, New York City underwent a massive foundational overhaul of its infrastructure. From utilities such as gas and electricity to advanced technology like the telephone and railroads, the city transformed to mirror the fast-paced urban environment it needed to be. The construction and delivery of the Statue of Liberty portrayed New York as the city of opportunity, with the monument symbolizing the “golden door to America” (83).

The political sphere of the city, on the other hand, was mixed with corruption, with mobs and gangs influencing the motions of the government. Under the infamously corrupt organization, Tammany Hall, William “Boss” Tweed stole millions of dollars from the city in order to cement himself as the de facto political leader of Manhattan. He instituted the help of local immigrant populations to further his campaign in controlling New York and organized his own militia to scare any opponents away from the ballots. The “Tweed Ring” comprised of the mayor, city comptroller, city commissioners, and Tweed himself (85). The ring worked to pass several bills that would end up helping the city, such as annexing the Bronx, completing the build of Central Park, Brooklyn Bridge, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. However Tweed’s lavish lifestyle and tensions within his Irish immigrant supporters drew Tammany Hall to a halt during the 1871 Orange Riot, in which Irish Protestants went to battle with Irish Catholics once again over native-born versus foreign-born control. The deterioration of public support for Tweed resulted in a movement to expose him for his corruption by the New York Times and various political cartoonists

The “Social Question” of whether or not the rich should help the poor and if the rich and poor could coexist in harmony began a prominent factor in deciding the social dynamics of late-19th century New York. Journalist Jacob Riis was pivotal in documenting just how decrepit the conditions of the urban impoverished were through his photograph series of the Five Points in his novel, How The Other Half Lives. Riis focused particularly on the children of the slums as a wake-up call to the city. The depiction of their lives in rags and dirt represented the continual cycle of poverty to crime. There was a contentious debate over the fate of the education system in New York as reformers pitted themselves against Tammany Hall over improving education standards to lift poor children out of poverty. Progressively, more and more affluent urbanites were turning to charity as a way of giving back to the local community and improving several key social components, such as settlement housing, labor unions, and health centers. Organizations such as the Salvation Army and YMCA were created from this era of giving back (94).

The “Labor Question” posed during the Glided Age aimed to tackle the tensions between the economic hierarchy that came as a result of a modernized New York. Issues such as equal opportunity, social mobility, hard work, individual initiative, fair play, and personal morality came to the surface of many working-class Americans (95). Many workers organized labor strikes in order to combat unfair labor practices and a demand for higher wages. This dissent was met with the brutality of local police forces determined to bar the congregation of labor union members. (96). The Central Labor Union, headed by popular labor activist Samuel Gompers, was one of the major forces in bringing labor rights to the attention of New York Government.

While on the surface New York City had refurbished itself to become one of the most successful and technologically advanced cities in the world, the reality was that with its advancements had come internal corruption, a rise in poverty, and a general conflict between urban elite and the working poor. The late-nineteenth century in the city had become a period of social, economic, and political reform, headed by the people themselves against those who worked to claim the city for its own. In the end, the city had not only become a modernized metropolis, but had also become a city idealized on liberty and drive.

Lina Mohamed- Chapter 5 Reitano Summary

Horatio Alger was one of the first to publish a novel about New York or America in general that was about the formula for success and rags to riches stories. His book was the first to also portray New York in a positive and cheerful way and described it in a beautiful way where poor people could rise with having just hard-work and dedication. New York got the best and worst of the Industrial Revolution and soon it became labeled “The Empire City”. It got this name for its finance, marketing, metropolis, place for immigrants and so much more. Philosophers, politicians, writers; they all had different opinions about the future of the country.

Rockefeller soon became significant as he grew significantly in the industries and soon controlled about 90% of the petroleum. Gotham also became big and very important to the new economy-based country. Most of America’s billionaires lived in New York City by 1900. New York only continued to grow and become stronger over the American economy. The city had to keep up so it kept transforming to be able to adapt. So many technological and societal advances were happening and big changes were coming about like the Brooklyn Bridge which was said to fit Gotham’s spirit so well. However, in the Gilded Age, Gotham was a portrayal of what a government should not be.

New York soon became the biggest city in America and its population was rapidly increasing and it led to it becoming its own empire. William Tweed became an important man in New York politics and business as he became the main symbol of Tammany Hall. Tweed held many positions but never mayor. And although he used unapproved methods, his enemies admitted that he, undoubtedly, helped the city grow and advance in many ways. Also, his governmental activism benefited many people/businessmen who worked to better the city even more. During this time of prosperity, there wasn’t all good everywhere. Riots were still breaking out and the city would be out of control at times. These riots piled up and were labeled “The Tammany Riot” and this built a stronger case against Tweed but it was still not enough evidence. Later, however, evidence was found against the corruption of Tweed and his men.

The prosperity of the Gilded Age in New York made New Yorkers selfish and disinterested in anyone’s business. The difference between wealthy and poor continued to grow until it became more apparent. Many journalists and writers took on these problems but Jacob Riis played a major role in the debate about causes and consequences of these problems in the late nineteenth century. Riis was a hardworking immigrant who became well known for publishing books about poverty and other controversial topics. Jacob Riis showed people what they couldn’t see so clearly. These horrors became widespread and the Gilded Age quickly became associated with many negative images. Lowell had a huge influence in improving a lot of conditions for people in prisons, workhouses and many other work places. When poverty and all these injustices came to light, people paid attention and contributed to the cause.

The Gilded Age taught that Alger’s secret to prosperity was no longer relevant to New Yorkers. People began to look for help from others instead of only depending on themselves. New York’s unions began to grow one step at a time and they began to have greater influence. Labor activism became huge and widespread all over with thousands of strikes breaking out. Henry George worked extremely hard to speak at union meetings, rallies, factories and even on the street. Hewitt won and this started many rumors of corruption in Tammany. The American Federation of Labor became the most influential/important labor organizations in American history. However, even amongst all these improvements and unions, strikes still occurred such as the Brooklyn Trolley strike of 1895.

Young children also became part of these labor movements and people often sympathized them more than adults. Newsboys’ strikes and other young laborer issues spread quickly through Long Island to Manhattan then into Brooklyn and Jersey. Protests, strikes, and riots just became part of the urban culture among all workers; men, women and children. The problems of these children had a great impact on the economy of New York and greatly affected everyone. As Riis stated, “the problem of the children is the problem of the state”. These children grew to be the adults who shaped the society and how it came to be organized. This is the story of the Empire City in a Gilded Age.

Painter Summary

Although many Americans today may find it difficult to understand earlier American hatred towards white Irish Catholics than the racial hatred expressed towards African slaves, religious hatred such as that of Protestants towards Catholics supposedly existed earlier, lasted longer, and killed more people than racial hatred and bigotry. Indeed, there were other white people, most notably Irish Catholics, who were considered inferior by the majority of Americans and thereby mistreated and stigmatized.

Anti-Catholicism has been a part of American history since before it was even a sovereign nation; anti-Catholic laws existed even in the pre-Revolutionary era, when America consisted of just a few British colonies. Religious contempt toward the Irish surged in the mid-nineteenth century, when the devastating potato famine caused greater numbers of Irish to immigrate to the United States than ever. Consequently, several anti-Catholic publications and groups established themselves in the northeast. Countless Catholic churches were burned throughout New England and the Midwest. Protestants perpetuated the view of the Catholic church as sexually immoral through popular books like Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk. In addition, Protestant Americans feared that the great numbers of Catholics pouring into the country would destroy democracy and cause a nationwide conversion to “Popery,” (Painter 136).

Despite the broader scale of religious hatred and violence in the United States, American society remained rooted in ideas of racial difference and color hierarchy. Race was applied to Irish immigrants with nearly the same frequency and prejudice as their religion. Due to their racial status as Celts, many native-born Americans viewed the Irish as a separate race inferior to the Anglo-Saxon English. They were even referred to as “white chimpanzees” (Painter 135). Masses of American writers and cartoonists emphasized this racial aspect of the Irish by depicting them as apelike, ugly, violent, ignorant, drunken, lazy, and filthy sub-human people, which ultimately enforced and reinforced the Paddy stereotype of the Irish. Paddy jokes became a constant source of amusement for the “better classes” in American society.

During this era in history, many people, both patronizing Irish sympathizers and vehement nativist haters of the Irish, equated and compared the Irish to African slaves. Undoubtedly, both Irish immigrants and enslaved Africans were considered racially other and inferior in relation to Americans of Anglo-Saxon descent. The destitution, starvation, and poverty that the Irish experienced in the midst of the potato blight reminded many American intellectuals who visited Ireland at this time of the unspeakable suffering of African slaves in the U.S. “American visual culture” (Painter 142) in the form of cartoons and the like also equated the Irish Paddy with the “Negro.” Despite the similarities between these two groups, Irish immigrants themselves violently rejected these comparisons and tried to use the color lines present in American society to elevate themselves over black people by supporting the pro-slavery Democratic Party.

The combined status of the Irish as Catholic Celts, hated both for their religious differences as well as for their racial otherness, spurred mob violence at the hands of groups like the Know-Nothings, who soon acquired great political power for their anti-Catholic position, and the Order of United Americans. As slavery became a more pressing issue, however, Know-Nothingism lost most of its influence.

The First Alien Wave Summary

The chapter begins with an introduction of the attitudes towards Irish Catholic people throughout history. Although technically white these people are often compared to Negro people in terms of the treatment they receive from their society. Throughout history there has also been an ongoing conflict between Protestantism and Catholicism.

The early part of the chapter discusses the what situation was for Irish people in Europe and what caused so many of them to immigrate to the US during the mid 1840’s. “The history of the poor is the history of Ireland” (pg 134). This is a general trend for the Irish people. In Europe they faced oppression from British rule and were viewed as inferior. What made this worse was the political and economic unrest that Europe was facing during this time period. Ireland was hit especially hard. Most of them were peasants and relied heavily on agriculture. When faced with failed harvests they had no choice but to move. This is what caused that huge influx of immigration to the US. In addition to Irish immigrants there were a great deal of Germans who came.

By the Mid 1850’s there were huge concentrations of Celts in the US, especially in the cities (specifically NY). Once arriving in America the Irish immigrants faced further struggle. Since they were poor peasants their place in American society was limited. They concentrated in slums and were viewed negatively by natives. This is when stereotyping emerges. Cartoon played a big role in the emergence of the Paddy stereotype. Irish people were often depicted as ape like figures. The author includes some images of cartoons from the time. Many of these cartoons featured Negros and Irish people as similar figures.

Nativism became relevant in the politics of this time. American felt threatened by this influx of people from Europe. This effected the political environment of the country as well. The development of the Know Nothing Party is a prime example of the nativist sentiment of the time. There was generally a lot of political tension regarding immigration and the Irish became the focus of discrimination. Coupled with the religious tensions this was an especially hard time for that group of people.

 

Summary of Painter’s “The First Alien Wave”

Today we think of race as being determined solely by the color of a person’s skin. However, in the early 19th century when the Irish were immigrating to America by the thousands, races were divided by not only skin color, but also by things like nationality and religion. The Irish were categorized as Celts, and were deemed aesthetically and personally inferior to Anglo-Saxons.

A lot of the anti-Catholic views upheld in America could be credited to the anti-Catholic legislation in British colonies. After seeing Ireland for themselves, Gustave de Beaumont equated Celts with negroes for being the lowest life forms, and Thomas Carlyle equated Celts with animals, and assumed that they were inherently lazy and stupid.

In the mid 1830s, “Samuel F.B. Morse, the father of the American Telegraph” (Painter, 135) and Yale alumnus and prime minister Lyman Beecher were two popular figures in America whose anti-Celt views helped influence others to feel the same. Morse wrote texts about why Celts were lesser than Anglo-Saxons, and Beecher preached strongly anti-Catholic sermons, which led a mob to burn down the Ursuline convent school in Charlestown.

In 1836, Awful Disclosures of Maria Monk: The Hidden Secrets of a Nun’s Life in a Convent Exposed became very popular and well know, and sold “some 300,000 copies by 1860” (Painter, 136). The book told Maria Monk’s story of what it was like to be a nun in the Catholic church, and how nuns’ obedience to the priests often involved rape of the nuns and murdering offspring. Even after investigation of the validity of the story “quickly disproved Monk’s allegations” (Painter, 137), it led many publications to be written about how bad and immorally sexual Catholicism was. This of course caused more people to have anti-Catholic views.

A variety of crises occurring in Western Europe in the mid-1840s, including political unrest and agricultural failure, led many mainland Europeans to immigrate to America. This great increase in America’s immigrant population led to the creation of the first U.S. census in 1850, which showed that nearly half of the immigrants were from Ireland. Despite the diversity of the German immigrant population “in terms of wealth, politics, and religion” (Painter, 138), they were better received than the Irish due to their tendency to become wealthy. Ralph Waldo Emerson, a leading intellectual in America, furthered this clear distaste of the Irish in his writing by reinforcing the Paddy stereotype.

Cartoons also “played an important role in reinforcing the Paddy stereotype” (Painter, 141). Thomas Nast, editorial cartoonist for Harper’s Weekly pictured a balance beam with a negro on one side and a Celt on the other to represent their equal inferiority to Anglo-Saxons. Even those who were on the pro-abolition side of slavery could draw parallels between the Negro and Celt. After a “visit to Ireland in the famine year of 1845” (Painter, 143), Frederick Douglass did just that. However, Irish people in the United Stated were totally against this assumption, for they understood that although they were Irish, it was better to be white in America than to be black. This anti-black ideology led many Irish to vote in favor of the pro-slavery Democratic Party.

During the mid 19th century when Irish nationalism flourished, two non-Irish writers named Ernest Renan and Matthew Arnold “laid a basis for the study of Celtic literature” (Painter, 144). Despite their rather condescending and patronizing words, they shed light on the idea that though the Celts may have been a pathetic race, it was not the fault of an inherently inferior mind, but rather that of unfortunate circumstances and situations in their country. Nevertheless, the Celts took a liking to these writers at the time.

The Order of United Americans was an extremely violent anti-Catholic terror group that first appeared in New York, and by the mid-1850s had “flourished in sixteen states” (Painter,147), including Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut. Then, the Supreme Order of the Star-Spangled Banner, a nativist American and anti-Catholic group, was founded in New York. These groups and others like them were known as “Know-Nothings” because they “responded to queries about their orders with “I know nothing”” (Painter, 147). Mobs were incited by these groups upon a visiting papal envoy in 1853, and “a mob in Ellsworth, Maine tarred and feathered a Catholic priest before nearly burning him to death” (Painter, 148) in 1854.

The influx of anti-Catholic views led many of the members of these Know-Nothing groups to be elected into office during the fall elections of 1854. When in office, they passed bills that prohibited “people not born in the United States from holding political office and … extend[ed] the naturalization period to twenty-one years” (Painter, 149), which in turn made it more difficult for immigrants to vote and be involved in politics.

Know-Nothings did well in elections and were a powerful group until “1855 [when] the question of slavery in the Nebraska Territory” (Painter, 150) separated the pro-slavery south from the pro-abolition north. Most Know-Nothings from the north joined the newly-founded Republican Party, and those from the south rejoined the Democratic Party. While the worst of the violence against poor Irish-Catholics was over, they were still viewed as Celts. They as well as Africans remained inferior to Anglo-Saxons, who “monopolized the identity of the American” (Painter,150).

A Summary of The History of White People, Chapter Nine: “The First Alien Wave”

Lucia Lopez

In today’s world, the concept of racism is normally directly paired with the topic of skin color. What most people fail to recognize, however, is that American hatred towards other white people has also been a horrible problem in the nation’s history. Not all white people were privileged in American society, and this is seen when looking at the experiences of Irish Catholics in the Unites States in the 19th century.

Before 1820, Irish immigrants had easily fit into American society due to their Protestant religion. They had begun to call themselves “Scotch Irish” in order to distinguish themselves from the Catholic-Irish population. Catholics had been discriminated against for years in the British colonies as well as in the United States. Up until 1821, Catholics were denied citizenship in New York unless they declared faithlessness to the Pope. In Massachusetts, all people were expected to pay taxes to fund Protestant churches until 1833.

During the Irish potato famine in the 1830s and 1840s, intellectuals began to discuss the roots of the problems the  Irish were facing. Although many, like essayist Thomas Carlyle, believed the Irish to be a genetically inferior race, some such as Gustave de Beaumont believed that the essence of their suffering was British policy. Since the seventeenth century, Catholics had been deprived of land ownership by Protestant English settlers. Still, most at the time believed that the Irish, like African Americans, lacked the desire to add any value to society.

Also immigrating to the United States were Germans. German Americans had more easily blended in due to their wealth and Protestantism. Meanwhile, things were getting much worse for the Irish; they had received the reputation as drunk, violent, lazy people- this archetype became known as “the Paddy”. This figure was enforced by cartoons, depicting the Irish as ape-like and contrasting their facial features to those of Anglo-Saxons.  

Although color did not play a main role in race relations as the Irish were first discriminated against, it became of importance when the Irish began to be compared to the black population of America. Although both groups were seen as inferior, poor, and lazy, the Irish used their skin color to draw a distinction between themselves and African Americans and put themselves above them. They even went as far as supporting the proslavery Democratic Party. the draft riots followed, in which the Irish clearly rejected the concept of black-Irish commonality.

Soon a group arose in the political sphere that claimed they knew nothing when it came to choosing a party to associate with, dubbing themselves the “Know-Nothings”. Their distaste targeted alcohol and Catholicism mainly, and while they made efforts to enforce laws according to their views they usually did not succeed. Soon, as issues such as slavery became more pressing, members of the party began to take sides and the party slowly disappeared after losing so much of their following. Despite their disappearance, hatred towards the Catholic Irish continued for years. Nativism continued and Celts and Africans were still seen as subordinate members of society; the Irish, however, held on to their whiteness for value.