Background: History and Perception of Irish During 1800s Cont...

Following the industrialism of the 19tth century, waves of agricultural laborers abandoned American farms in favor of factory work in the cities. According to the website titled Irish American Journey, "this caused cities to grow rapidly, and the mode of connecting cities and expanding trade routes became a major priority." Irish who landed in American found several employment opportunities in factories and along canals and railroads.  Irish enclaves were formed across an ever-expanding America, with Irish concentration along the Eastern seaboard especially in New York, Pennsylvania, and New England. For much of these immigrants an unfavorable reception, and a longing for their homeland intensified the growth of Irish slums.  The Irish ghettos were littered with filth, disease, and alcoholism. Ex-peasant Irishmen battled a debilitating sense of inferiority and yearned for respectability. 

People were crowded into rooms with often a whole family living in one room. In 1850, it was reported that in the Irish Fifth Ward in Providence, an average of nine people or 1.82 families lived in one or two rooms. The Five Points slum area in Manhattan was described by a witness as having 75 people living in 12 rooms and paying about $4 a month for rent. At this time, this was equivalent to about one weeks pay. In the back of the building were wooden hovels which rented for $3 a month. (Watts., pp. 65-66) Many tenements did not have indoor plumbing or running water. Sewage collected in outhouses and rats were prevalent, carrying and spreading disease, often to children. In 1857, 2/3 of New York Citys deaths were children under age 5, mostly Irish. (Watts., p. 67) There were also epidemics of typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis and pneumonia throughout East Coast cities.

When the newly arriving Irish immigrants looked for work, they found only the lowest unskilled jobs available to them. Men were hired for low-paying, physically demanding and dangerous work. Wages for unskilled jobs during the 1840s were under 75 cents a day for 10-12 hours of work. (Watts., p. 43) The men built canals, railroads, streets, houses and sewer systems. Many others worked on the docks or canals.

Irish women, like Irish men, also had low-paying unskilled jobs. There were two main types of work available for Irish women domestic servants or factory work. Domestic work was secure and dependable and was not seasonable. However, the work was tiring and strenuous. It was not unusual for one maid to cook, clean and care for children 16 hours a day or more.

Whilst researching through the Irish American Journey website it stated that, "Nowhere was the influence of the Irish immigrant more pronounced than in America's most powerful city, New York.  75% of the famine Irish landed in New York harbor, and by 1860 a quarter of New York City's population was Irish." The rise of Irish citizens in New York culminated when Al Smith, the grandson of Irish immigrants, rose from the tenements of the Lower East Side to become governor of New York in the 1920s. Within a few decades Tammany Hall, the Democratic Party political machine at the time, was under firm control by the Irish meaning that they held major control over New York politics. 

For the Irish immigrant who anchored in New York Harbor in the first decades of the twentieth century, no longer were prejudice, hatred and aggression there to spurn them.  In their place was a new Irish-American identity, confident, proud, and irrepressible, ready to be assumed by the next greenhorn to step down from the deck of an Irish steamship.

Sources:

Secondary:

Irishamericanjourney.com,. 2013. 'Irish American Journey: Irish Immigration To America: How America Became Irish'. http://www.irishamericanjourney.com/2011/09/irish-immigration-to-america.html.

Watts, J. F. 1988. The Irish Americans. New York: Chelsea House.