The Impact of Foreign Immigration on Political Cultures
New England Yankees and southern planters were internal migrations—as were the post-Revolutionary War movements of the Scots-Irish. Until the 1840s foreign immigration was minimal (less than 8400 in 1820). Immigration picked up after mid-1830, building to an 1846–55 pre-Civil War peak of nearly 1.3 million (Barone, 2013, p. 105). Domestic migrants, already socialized into an American political culture, were our “first settlers” who set in place the initial state constitutions and municipal charters east of the Mississippi. These initial documents contained the basic structures and core principles that configured the relationships between levels of government, the nature of public/private interaction, and the forms of government for local communities.
The question whether foreign immigration modified, to some degree, the American first settler culture needs thought. Did foreign immigration modify the administrative framework established by the first state constitutions? Did immigrants adjust their cultures to American cultures and/or accept the existing administrative policy-making frameworks? Deep South and Greater Appalachian cultures encountered remarkably few foreign immigrants. Woodard’s answer is unequivocal:
These great immigration … did not displace their [11 original] regional nations [political cultures]. The [regional cultures] remained the “dominant cultures” which nineteenth-and early twentieth-century immigrant’s children and grandchildren either assimilated into or reacted against. Immigrant communities might achieve political dominance over a city or state (as the Irish did in Boston or the Italians in New York), but the system they controlled was the product of the regional culture … Indeed, in many ways, the immigrants of 1830–1924 actually accentuated the differences among [the regional cultures]. (Woodard, 2011, pp. 254–5)
Woodard’s position corresponds closely to the position advanced in this history. It was first come, first served in the case of structure. Both the Irish and the Germans were ‘Johnny come late,” inheriting state constitutional frameworks already approved and in operation. Immigrants typically did not engage in city-building; they moved into cities/towns already established. The sub-state structural framework set up by the original settlers remained largely unaltered until the late nineteenth/early twentieth century. New immigrants, whatever their cultural values and predispositions, were politically weak initially—and not disposed to fundamental administrative change. Economically desperate and isolated in ethnic ghettos or resident on rural farms, they had other priorities. Immigrants were refugees who wanted to retain their old traditions/values in the new world while, contradictorily, making a new start in a political system/culture which offered opportunities and freedoms their home country did not. They did not come to America determined to change its political structures and local policy processes—but rather to take advantage of them. Succeeding generations aspired to assimilate into the American system/culture. This is the “stuff” behind melting pots and ethnic stews.
Political culture change was further weakened because the immigrant ports of entry were the Yankee North (Boston and San Francisco), Midlands Philadelphia, New Netherlands New York and Tidewater Baltimore. Hybrid/multi-cultural Chicago captured a goodly number of immigrants and is the best example of an exception to our position. Few immigrants ventured into Scots-Irish, Deep South or the other seven Woodard cultures. Germans penetrated into some border cities (Cincinnati and St. Louis), but immigrants generally stayed up north. As Woodard further observed, New York City/New Netherlands and Pennsylvania Midlands cultures were inherently multi-cultural—heterogeneous from their start. All emphasized individuality and tolerance in reaction. Tidewater Baltimore and Yankee New England, on the other hand, were predicated on homogeneity and reacted with considerable intolerance toward immigrants—a statement with which the Boston Irish would heartily concur.
Pre-Civil War foreign immigration was mostly Irish and German. Little remembered, the potato famine, totally associated with Ireland, had serious continental European economic repercussions, especially in southern Germany. European revolutions of 1848 produced substantial uncertainty and insecurity, and considerable numbers of refugees as well. The Irish and the southern Germans shared a Catholic faith—they constituted the first sizeable Catholic immigration into America. In 1840, 5 percent of Americans were Catholics; by 1860, 12 percent. The Irish entered Boston and New York mostly; the Germans New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
The Irish
The initial wave of Irish immigrants stayed in port cities; the Irish were the first primarily urban immigrants. Clustered in eastern city ghettos with high crime rates and disease-ridden, about a quarter of them spoke Gaelic only. The Catholic Church played a major role in Irish identity and American assimilation, establishing its parochial school system and social organizations in Irish neighborhoods. A minority of Irish migrants (mostly young men) moved into new geographies—into the army, out west as railroad laborers, and to Chicago. Those that moved out of port cities entered areas settled by the Yankee Diaspora or Midlands regional cultures. The Irish were not innovative Yankee entrepreneurs. Their work experience more closely mirrored contemporary Hispanic employment trends: entry-level jobs and women engaged in personal and household services. “The jobs the Irish did find were those considered too hard, too menial, too dirty or too dangerous for others” (Sowell, 1981, p. 1).
Irish Catholics became a major presence in the big cities by the 1850s, comprising more than one-quarter of the population in New York, Boston and Philadelphia and in smaller cities in between such as Providence, New Haven, Hartford, Jersey City and Newark (Erie, 1988, p. 532). For the first time, something resembling an ethnic neighborhood of some size sprang into existence. The Irish were the first immigrants to settle into already old, beat-up housing and deteriorating neighborhoods—commencing the process later described as neighborhood succession and housing reform. Since the city of New York at this time could not build “up,” it had to build “out.” Brooklyn’s 1840 population exceeded Albany’s by only 2,500; but by 1860, however, Brooklyn had 200,000 more residents. “Journey to work” became an issue as the separation of work from residence revolutionized the physical landscape and infrastructural needs of the greatly expanding northern and Midwestern cities. The need for internal municipal transportation systems and increasing strain on water supply and sewerage, raising serious public health concerns, became persistent crises. Crime and fires required the development of police and fire services. These policy areas became increasingly salient as the decades unfolded, and became the first targets of early American ED.
The most significant impact the pre-Civil War Irish exerted on early American ED, however, was a new form of municipal government: the political machine. The political machine, a distinctive urban political system, produced its own forms of economic development policy which will be discussed in future chapters. New York City’s Tammany Hall (William) Tweed Machine, initially dependent on Irish votes, developed during the 1850s. Two Boston mayors during the 1850s, on the other hand, hailed from something called the “Native American Party” or Know Nothings—an anti-Irish political movement. The response of the New Netherlands regional culture to Irish immigration was noticeably different from that of Yankee Boston in this period. Within ten years Irish immigrants had found a way into New York City politics, and by 1870 Tammany Hall had an Irish boss. Boston elected its first Irish mayor, Hugh O’Brian, in 1885—nearly a generation later. Boston never developed a city-wide Irish boss similar to Tammany.
The Germans
Germans were long included in the American cultural fabric. Penn’s Midland regional culture included Germans. The post-1840 flood, however, should be treated separately. Nearly half of German immigrants headed into the nation’s interior—to homestead on farms. When they stayed in cities Germans left entry seaports and headed inland (excepting New York City’s 15 percent). Of the Germans who settled on farms, Rhinelanders moved along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers; Cincinnati and St. Louis were the chief urban beneficiaries (both with 27 percent). Germans also settled in Chicago and Louisville (each with a 20 percent German population), and Cleveland (21 percent) and Detroit (16 percent) also got a share. Things got a bit more complicated in Wisconsin.
Pre-Civil War German migration did not reach into Wisconsin’s rural areas. Not until the 1870s—when the German migration blended with a huge Scandinavian (Norway, Sweden and Denmark) immigration—did Wisconsin acquire large numbers of Germans. Post-1870 German/Scandinavian migrations flowed not only to Wisconsin, but also to adjoining Iowa, Minnesota and the two Dakotas.15 Because census records collapsed Scandinavians, Danes and Norwegians into the German category, one must be wary of the “German” label.16 Southern Germans proved to be noticeably different from later northern German and Scandinavian immigrants; this matters in a discussion about political culture. The post-1840 and pre-1870 German immigrants held distinctive political attitudes.
The concept of a rationalized, disinterested, apolitical government bureaucracy, operating under credentialed experts rather than at the direction of crass politicians, had considerable appeal to German voters. Government ownership of utilities, railroads, and major industries was not antithetical to this … their aversion to temperance made them suspicious of Republicans … they were wary as well of the increasingly Irish-dominated patronage politics of the Democrats and attendant corruption, and were sympathetic [to] civil service reform. (Barone, 2013, p. 138)
Germans set up their own schools and volunteer fire/militia companies; and gave America the Christmas tree, kindergartens and the card game pinochle. Germans valued a close family, were associated with low rates of crime, intensely opposed slavery and formed mutual-benefit insurance companies. Germans carried manufacturing (and brewing) entrepreneurship in their genes, but also rose in professions such as finance and law. John Jacob Astor (fur trader and Manhattan real estate developer) was German. German innovators included: Steinway (musical instruments); brewery owners in Milwaukee (Pabst, Schlitz, Miller and Blatz) and St. Louis (Anheuser-Busch); and NYC’s Jacob Ruppert Sr. (Ruppert’s son Jake bought the Yankees (1915), plus NYC’s Walter Lippmann.
Ron W. Coan 