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| Format | Dissertation |
|---|---|
| Creator | Glasco, Laurence |
| Title | Ethnicity and Social Structure: Irish, Germans and Native-Born of Buffalo, NY, 1850-1860 |
| Dissertation Note (type -- academic institution) | Dissertation -- State University of New York at Buffalo |
| Date | 1973 |
| Extent of Work | 365 pp. |
| Abstract | The great international migrations of the mid-nineteenth century fundamentally altered the composition of urban America. Between 1840 and 1860 over 4,500,000 immigrants poured into America, most coming from Ireland and Germany. Some settled in the nation's rural heartland, while many others converged on a band of cities that stretched from Boston, New York and Philadelphia in the East to Milwaukee, Chicago and St. Louis in the Midwest. This influx of new groups radically changed the social structure of many American cities. So pervasive was that transformation that social characteristics and patterns of social interaction which formerly were related to wealth and occupation rapidly came to reflect differences of nationality and religion as well. By the middle of the nineteenth century ethnicity had come to mean for the North something of what race had meant for the South. We know much more about how Southern society was defined by race, however, than of the ways in which ethnicity informed the social structure of the North. Perhaps the glare of racial differences has prevented us from seeing, much less exploring, the spectrum of national differences which derive from ethnicity. Regardless of what caused the neglect, it is clear that the adjustment of ethnic groups to urban America--native-born whites as an ethnic group--has not received sufficient attention. In particular we lack adequate studies which examine group adjustment in a context sensitive to the effect of milieu--the community. Of the half dozen or so major community studies available on the mid-nineteenth century, few can be said to break new ground. Their themes are usually the same: the sudden descent of impoverished immigrants on a city; their pathetic and often futile attempts to secure decent housing and jobs; the crime, disease and prejudice which dogged their steps; the importance of churches and voluntary associations in easing their adjustment and soothing the hurt; the first halting steps toward adjustment and acculturation, which might include the establishment of a toe-hold in local industry and a modicum of social accommodation with the dominant society after a period of labor conflict and nativist outbursts; and finally the more widespread and successful adjustment of their children and their entry into the larger society. The themes of such books vary somewhat depending on the period, city and ethnic group in question, but generally they have a remarkable consistency. Some might wish they had stressed more the disruptive and alienating aspects of the immigrant experience, others the resiliency and adaptiveness of group life; some might prefer more emphasis on acculturation and assimilation, others on the persistence of ethnic institutions and cultures. Still these are questions of emphasis; the basic framework within which they are couched remains largely intact. This suggests that while studies of additional cities and groups might flesh out and amplify our knowledge of the adjustment process, further community studies alone will not substantially modify or deepen our understanding unless they ask new questions of their subjects and search for new areas to explore. One way to open up new perspectives on the ethnic experience--and which will constitute the basic approach of the present study--is to compare in a systematic fashion the adjustment process of foreign-born and native-born ethnic groups in the same community. In this way one can separate what was similar from what was distinctive about their experience, and learn how their adjustment was related to structural differences and variation both within and between groups, and how that differentiation affected intergroup patterns of conflict and accommodation. Specifically, there are three related areas which the present study will take as its central focus: 1. First, it will explore how much demographic variation existed "within" groups and how that variation affected other aspects of ethnic social structure, in particular occupation, property and family structures. We know, for example that each ethnic group had a more or less articulated class structure of its own; the difference between "lace curtain" and "shanty Irish" had at least enough basis in fact to become part of the popular mythology. Also, we know that to some extent class differences were simply functions of demographic factors: the poor were composed not just of the unskilled, uneducated and unfavored of society, but also of the young and the recently migrated. It will not do, however, merely to associate the two characteristics, to say that a group was the poorest and the most recently arrived, unless one can also show a causal relationship and demonstrate the degree to which the group's poverty was associated with the recentness of its arrival. We need to know, that is, how an individual's location in one structure affected his placement in other structures. Perhaps middle-aged immigrants who had been present for some years were not better off in terms of housing, occupation or income than their younger, more newly arrived counterparts; either way, however, the relationship needs to be established. Similar questions will be put to other aspects of internal ethnic variation, of family structure and size, fertility rates, household composition, even political participation and preference. 2. The second research area is related to the first: having dealt with the degree and causes of structural variation within groups, the study will ask whether ethnicity was the single most important factor in determining structural variation between groups. That is, after controlling for demographic variation within groups, how much structural variation would still persist among them? Once that question is answered we can see what was distinctive about the immigrant experience in cities--indeed what was distinctive about the experience of all ethnic groups. Until we know whether ethnic differences in property ownership and family structure and the like simply reflected differences in occupation, age, length of residence in the city or whether they derived from distinctive ethno-cultural values and preferences, we will not know what to make of the urban experience of either foreign-born or native born ethnic groups. And to find that out we will compare the immigrant experience with that of the native-born, contrasting persons of similar age, length of residence in the city and occupation. 3. The third research area to be explored builds on the foundation provided by the other two. It examines how the dynamics underlying internal structural variation within and between a community's ethnic groups affected economic, cultural and political conflict and accommodation. We will test whether structural differences and social characteristics associated with ethnic groups pointed only toward instability and mutual incompatibility, or toward stability and complementarity as well. In doing so, we will utilize our examination of the age structures, sex ratios, migration rates and neighborhood settlement patterns of the city's ethnic groups. Those patterns can tell us among other things, whether immigrants, even the "wild Irish," had a disproportionate number of young men new to the city who lived in large boarding houses outside the restraining social control of family groups; whether there was a shortage of immigrant women, whose absence might have been compensated by bars, brothels and other social establishments catering to the needs and amusements of a floating population of young unmarried men; whether city life weakened working-class and immigrant family ties, such that they had a disproportionate number of "broken" or female-headed families; whether age and class affected immigrant families differently from native-born families; and whether the degree of ethnic stratification in occupation and property ownership suggest that the immigrants' plight was one of unrelieved desperation and poverty, without significant opportunities for advancement or improvement. After examining such "objective" conditions as described above, we will examine how these characteristics were perceived, particularly by the native-born, and how they affected the political structures and conflicts of the period. We have singled out the native-born for closest scrutiny because it was their consciousness and political arrangement which underwent the most obvious and easily ascertainable tensions and changes. The loudest screams of outrage over the social crisis of the city occurred in "their" newspapers; the greatest political upheavals occurred among "their" parties--the Whigs, Know-Nothings and Republicans. We already know that to many native-born the immigrants were at best unwitting tools of unscrupulous politicians, whose ever increasing numbers threatened a political take-over. But to understand fully the perception of the native-born and their response, one must learn whether the period was one of the unrelieved conflict between immigrants and native-born, whether the conflict involved riots and street violence or was confined to editorials and politics, how the native-born perception of the immigrants squared with "reality," whether the issues which upset the native-born related exclusively to the foreign-born population, or whether there were troubling aspects of their own social structure as well, and, most importantly, whether there was anything distinctive about the characteristics--demographic, economic, ethnic--of political leaders voting bases that on a local level operated to promote accommodation as well as conflict. |
| Notes | UMI, printed in 1988. Book, in MadCat. |
| Call Number | MKI/SHS F129 B8 G58; shelved with MKI dissertations |
| MKI Terms | Ethnicity/ Ethnic groups -- General/ Ethnic relations/ German Americans/ Ethnic groups -- Other groups/ Social aspects/ Immigrants/ Sociology |