The Making of an Irish and a Jewish Boston, 1820-1900

During the nineteenth century, waves of European immigrants poured into Boston, leading to massive changes in the city's economic, political, and geographic makeup. As Boston transformed from a predominantly Yankee town into a multiethnic city, many saw immigrants' numbers, poverty, religious beliefs, and persistent attachment to foreign culture as a threat to a republican way of life, but migrants themselves tried to reconfigure the meaning of American citizenship to incorporate their ethno-religious ideals. Even as nativist attacks gave way to attempts at understanding after the Civil War, tensions remained, particularly in the political and social arenas. Nevertheless, immigrants were confident that acceptance eventually would prevail.Yet even as economic mobility and increasing demographic strength gave these groups the influence they needed to gain a voice in city affairs, upper-class Yankees closed ranks, erecting barriers against the newcomers in social and financial institutions. Irish Catholics and Jews fought to make room for their groups in the city's Protestant society, seeking acceptance as Americans, but keeping their culture and religion intact. Politicians, businessmen, clergy, and other communal leaders tried to serve group interests and be models of proper citizenry for their immigrant constituents by working with their Yankee counterparts, rather than against them.By the 1890s, Irish and Jewish Bostonians had gained respect in certain arenas, but they were still not fully accepted as Americans. Later waves of immigrants from Eastern and Southern Europe led to new calls to restrict immigration, fueled by Anglo-Saxon notions of superiority. In response, Irish and Jews defended their patriotism through historical scholarship, mass culture, public service, and, in 1898, overwhelming support for the Spanish-American War. Even so, while the decade's end saw greater conciliation among the city's ethnic groups, political and cultural problems remained.IMMIGRANTS IN THE PURITAN CITY, 1820-1860Boston was a fairly homogeneous city before the nineteenth century. The Puritan stronghold was not welcoming to outsiders, and the few who came quickly assimilated into the dominant Anglo-Protestant society. The need to fill the labor demands of the region's massive construction projects in the 1820s and the expanding textile, railroad, and shipbuilding industries in the 1830s and 1840s brought large numbers of Catholic Irish immigrants for the first time. With the onset of the Great Famine in 1845, impoverished Irish peasants flooded Boston, swelling their numbers from 2,000 in 1820 to 35,000 in 1850. They were joined in the 1840s and 1850s by successive waves of immigrants from various parts of Europe, including small numbers of Jews fleeing religious persecution and economic hardship in the central German provinces and Austria.2Most Irish and Jewish immigrants started off on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder. The impoverished Irish, in particular, had few skills and little education, so men worked mainly as day laborers, while unmarried women found employment in domestic service or the growing needle trades. German Jews overwhelmingly became peddlers and Polish Jews worked as tailors; both groups aspired to open small businesses, taking advantage of the opportunities offered by a growing consumer marketplace. For the most part, married Irish and Jewish women did not work outside the home, but instead took in boarders or helped out in the family shop. Like other working-class residents, Irish and Jewish immigrants lived in crowded, low-rent tenement neighborhoods in the South or North End, and were highly mobile, moving frequently in accordance with their finances and employment status. Boston was often the second or third stop for immigrants after London, Quebec, New York, or Philadelphia, so many had some familiarity with the language and culture upon arrival.3Although immigrants retained strong ties to the homeland, they understood that economic opportunity was in the United States, and, once settled in Boston, they were determined to make the city their home. …

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