From: markhall[at]gol.com
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: NYTimes.com Article: Red, White and Green

This article from NYTimes.com
has been sent to you by markhall[at]gol.com.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

markhall[at]gol.com


Red, White and Green

March 17, 2003
By ROY FOSTER

LONDON
The tricolor bunting is everywhere. The beer runs green. Unlikely people
wear buttons demanding "Kiss Me, I'm Irish." Politicians from Dublin and
Belfast converge hungrily on Washington, to be entertained by a lunch of
boiled corned beef and cabbage, boiled potatoes, soda bread and lime
sherbet.

This strange menu - dubbed in The New York Times one year
as a lunch "that would make any Irishman proud" - sums up
the collusive fantasy that reigns on March 17, when
"greening" breaks out all over. St. Patrick's Day seems to
have become, among other things, a carnival celebrating the
end of winter. But it also affirms the warm kitchen
comforts of ethnicity, at a time when identity politics
have replaced ideology and - for one day at least -
everyone wants to be Irish.

It wasn't always that simple. St. Patrick himself is the subject of
considerable controversy and reinvention among historians. (Was he Roman
or Welsh or Breton? Was his name actually Succat? His very existence as
an identifiable individual is disputed - is he a conflation of three,
four or even five people?) So it is only appropriate that St. Patrick's
Day, as we know it, is by and large an American invention re-exported to
the homeland, like American-style pizza to Italy. (No one on the Emerald
Isle would ever sit down to anything like that White House luncheon.)

The festival's more distant origins are of course Irish:
from the 17th century, there are local records of wearing shamrocks and
dining in the saint's honor. But until the 19th century, it was a
celebration observed by elite or charitable foundations, often with a
strongly Protestant coloration. It was Ulster Presbyterian emigrants who
brought the tradition to the cities of America's East Coast. The saint's
color was blue, not green, and politics were kept in the margins: there
is an enduring image of Queen Victoria dishing out shamrock to her Irish
regiments on St. Patrick's Day.

By the turn of the 20th century they ordered things
differently in New York, Boston and Chicago, as the
immortal "Mr. Dooley" can tell us. But until quite
recently, the day was celebrated very differently in
Ireland. Indeed, "celebrated" was hardly the word. True, it
was a national holiday from the early 1900's, but a dry
one; the only place you could get a drink was at the Dublin
Dog Show, and after a long day in the liquor tent bemused topers would
emerge and be astonished to find themselves surrounded by coiffured
canines.

There was a public parade from the 1950's, but largely as
an industrial pageant: funereal black trucks advertising Guinness, or
modest mock-ups of airliners emblazoned with the Aer Lingus logo, were
drawn through the largely apathetic streets of Dublin, Cork or
Waterford. And it was always raining. The weather may have had something
to do with the very different spirit in New York, with spring sunshine
and a fabulous hit of mid-March ozone belting up the city canyons. And
drink was part of the tradition, too. So was an equally bracing
undercurrent of politics, though not as markedly as in Canada, where a
large Orange ingredient was guaranteed to be stirred into the cocktail.

As the Irish immigrant community grew in numbers, power, influence and
confidence from the later part of the 19th century, the New York parade
quickly epitomized dancing, color, display and an orgy of parodic
national iconography. And when the lackluster demonstrations back in
Dublin were taken over by the Tourist Board in the 1960's, the
Irish-Americans began to cross the water, take part, and show how it was
done.

Nowadays, mischievous or smart-aleck newspaper columnists
who were young at the time, like Joseph O'Connor, recollect
how exotic the "returned" Irish-Americans seemed, with
"their incredible self-confidence, their savage, cancerous suntans,
their lurid clothes." Fintan O'Toole similarly recalls from his Dublin
childhood "the timeless Celtic ritual of jeering good-naturedly at the
high school marching bands from Minnesota or Delaware."

But today, in the new commercialized, self-parodying,
ironized Ireland of the 21st century, the laugh is on us.
Once, it took Mayor Richard J. Daley to dye the Chicago
River green, but now U2 has shown that the native Irish can combine
visual spectacle and sentimentality like no one else, and Michael
Flatley has come home to live, bringing the "Riverdance" culture with
him.

Still, the New York parade sets the standard, with its own traditions,
its own icons, its own tensions. If the Grand Marshal supports Noraid,
the Irish-American organization that has raised money for the Irish
Republican Army, will he be greeted by a Prince of the Church on the
steps of St. Patrick's Cathedral? (Usually not.) Will unlikely Irish
names such as Hillary Rodham Clinton and Michael Bloomberg be marching
well to the fore? Above all, where is ILGO - the Irish Lesbian and Gay
Organization - whose exclusion from the throng has provided the most
cliffhanging entertainment of all?

Meanwhile, down in Washington, St. Patrick's Day
invitations to the White House have become political
I.O.U.'s bearing enormous value in Belfast and Dublin. Even among the
far less self-conscious Irish diaspora of London, there is a certain
edginess about which of the Irish Embassy's many parties you will get
invited to.

The whole celebration - or "festival," as it has recently
been re-branded in Dublin - is itself the subject of
academic research and analysis, bearing directly as it does
on issues of public space, charivari, ritual,
territoriality and political ceremony: Mike Cronin's and
Daryl Adair's "The Wearing of the Green: A History of St. Patrick's
Day," published a little more than a year ago, is already required
reading.

Behind the ballyhoo, paddywhackery and hard-headed wheeler-dealing lie
some interesting and highly contested traditions, but their origins get
mistier and mistier. "Two Four Six Eight" chanted ILGO a few years ago,
"How Do You Know St. Patrick's Straight?" How, indeed. Or how many of
him there were, or whether he was (as the Episcopal Church of Ireland
used to claim) doctrinally a Protestant. But the commercial and
political stakes are too high now for it to matter. "St. Succat's Day"
doesn't sound the same, somehow.


Roy Foster, professor of Irish history at Oxford, is author
of ``The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland' and
the forthcoming second volume of ``W.B.
Yeats: A Life.'

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/17/opinion/17FOST.html?ex=1048895913&ei=1
&en=329ae6cd71d5cd88


Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D Foster, Irish Story 2

Sorry--I've been writing an article about some Sligo immigrants named
Barrett. Of course, I should have written, Tom Bartlett (of UCD). KM


>From: Kerby Miller
>Subject: Re: Ir-D Review, Foster, Irish Story
>
>Before your excitement and enthusiasm overwhelm you entirely, I suggest

>you read as antidote Tom Barrett's review of Foster's book in the
>Spring 2002 IRISH LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.
>
>Kerby Miller.
>
>

From: Daryl Adair
[planetadair[at]ozemail.com.au]
Subject: Review of "The Irish Story"

Dear Colleagues,

This review (below) was posted to Early-Modern-Ireland[at]yahoogroups.com.
Apologies if you have already seen it. Roy Foster once again
provokes a rethink of Irish and Diaspora history. For me, his
A History of Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 has been the most
influential book I have read. I am yet to find an opportunity
to look at this latest Foster tome. The Irish Story appears to be
something that will spark plenty of debate - hopefully on the
Irish-Diaspora list too. I must get a copy ... soon!

Cheers,

Daryl Adair
University of Canberra
Australia

THE IRISH STORY:
Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland.
By R. F. Foster.
282 pp. New York: Oxford University Press. $28.

'The Irish Story': Collective Blarney
March 16, 2003
Reviewed by RICHARD EDER

Perhaps every nation has its exceptionalist legend, but
there could hardly be two more different than the American
and Irish versions. For us it is belief that we are
providentially destined to prevail in our personal,
national and movie life: the so-called happy ending, quite
opposite to any tragic sense. For the Irish, the
providential destiny is for defeat: unjust, heroic,
beautiful, to be someday redeemed; and not so much tragic
as lyrically plaintive. Put this way, of course, it is a
cliche, yet one that retains a subliminal power of
governance. It is this power that R. F. Foster examines,
playfully and otherwise, in 'The Irish Story.'

An Irish literary historian, Foster has written extensively
about Yeats (several chapters of this book deal with him),
and he inherits from Yeats a mix of obsession and
wrathfulness with his country, and particularly with the
uses and misuses it has made of its own history. His book,
subtitled 'Telling Tales and Making It Up in Ireland,'
assays for unsoundness such matters as Yeats's obituaries,
the memoirs of Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams (it was an
inspired touch to pair them) and the varying versions held
by succeeding generations of the potato famine of the
1840's and of the abortive Rising of 1798. He circles
continually around his people's link between national
history and personal identity.

'The elision of the personal and the national, the way
history becomes a kind of scaled-up biography, and
biography a microcosmic history, is a particularly Irish
phenomenon,' he writes. And, noting the 19th-century
novel's contribution to a national sense in some countries,
he points out that Ireland lacks any such formative
exemplar: 'History -- or historiography -- is our true
novel.'

Some historians, notably in the 1970's, tried to fight the
Irish habit of myth-juggling, Foster writes, but more
recently myths have been making a comeback. There is the
upsurge in historic commemorations -- tourist-inspired in
part -- and not only to celebrate glories. In Limerick, a
potato-famine theme park has been set up, he observes, and
contemporary intellectual fashion has introduced the notion
of survivor guilt into the history of the blight. The
bicentennial Rising ceremonies set up a 'Senate' of the
'Wexford Republic' -- passing over the fact that there
was no such senate and that 'republic' was mainly used
back then as a term of abuse. Notwithstanding, you could
become a 'senator' for =A32,000, and you didn't even have
to live in Ireland.

Though it was led by the United Irishmen, many of them
urban Protestants, the Rising was translated by
mid-19th-century nationalist writers into a revolt by the
Catholic peasantry, with the Protestants fading from view.
Now, with peace efforts under way in the North, the mission
statements of the 1998 bicentenary called for nonsectarian
recollection. Time for re-revision, and so 'the leadership
of the Wexford and Wicklow rebels was retrospectively
removed from Father John Murphy and handed back to
supposedly liberal Protestants like Bagenal Harvey or
General Holt.'

Foster's theme ranges far wider. After the establishment of
the Free State in the 1920's, cultural nationalism took an
exclusionary line. Yeats was suspect because of his
international fame (if it was Irish to be misunderstood,
then to be understood must denote patriotic infirmity), and
because his art was too restless to fit political fashion.
Joyce and Oscar Wilde were anathema. Today, with
European-style prosperity, the emphasis is on inclusion:
'As Ireland becomes a nation of immigrants rather than
emigrants, it is repatriating its writers.' Every town, it
seems, claims one. 'Wilde is for some reason celebrated in
Bray, for an entire week. Does it matter whether Wilde
could, or would, have spent a week in Bray?'

At times the minutiae of Irish historians wrangling and
switching about becomes overwhelming, or perhaps
underwhelming, to a reader who has never heard of many of
them. But Foster has far better than the ironist's magpie
eye. His superb portrait of the essayist Hubert Butler
evokes an Irish Orwell; someone who for 60 years, at times
reviled and at others ignored, spoke subtle, lucid truth
from his rural retreat in the Nore Valley. Foster enriches
the portrait with long passages from his subject's writing.

The heart of the book, not so much in itself as in what it
leads to, is the essay 'Selling Irish Childhoods.' Foster
eviscerates what he sees as the cramping of the past in
memoirs by Frank McCourt ('Angela's Ashes' and '
'Tis'), and Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein and, though
he has never admitted it, widely presumed to be a former
I.R.A. chief ('Before the Dawn'). There is not room to do
more than name his argument. 'Both, in their apparently
different ways, turn Irish childhoods to very particular
purposes and both exemplify narratives skewed through
selective 'evidence,' and a maneuvered memory.'

In McCourt's huge success Foster finds reader-pleasing
sentiment and easy stereotypes beneath a sophisticated
veneer. He argues that Adams, who, Foster writes, has
crossed from belief in armed intransigence into political
compromise, has nevertheless made his memoir the old heroic
story of oppression and resistance, with little hint of the
evolution promised in his present public role. So then,
Foster wonders: if 'pragmatics' fails, what is there in
Adams's writing that puts his former endorsement of armed
struggle any farther beyond use than those guns the I.R.A.
is believed still to retain?

What Foster is really going after is not politics but a way
of thinking and writing 'for an audience in search of
reaffirmation rather than dislocation -- or
enlightenment.' McCourt's and Adams's memoirs, grittily
sentimental and activist respectively, 'seem to be
marshaled in order to reconstruct the borders and defenses
which apparently protected our innocence before the onrush
of the modern tide.'

And he returns to Yeats, who wrote that 'innocence can be
'murderous,' ' though he too hated the tide. 'His own
memoir, brilliantly disingenuous and impressionistic, was
at the same time written in order to explain a revolution
- -- political as well as artistic -- breaking around him as
he wrote. The achievement of style, as he put it elsewhere,
came from the shock of new material.'
Style is Foster's touchstone for truth. His disdain for
McCourt's and Adams's writing, and the tradition of
tale-telling, is more than literary.

Richard Eder writes articles and book reviews for The
Times.

From: "Richard Jensen"
Subject: Good News for the Irish: Not Hated


This story ran on page D4 of the Boston Globe on 3/16/2003.

Fighting words
A historian challenges the `No Irish' myth

By Sean Lyons, 3/16/2003

NOTHING SYMBOLIZES the hatred faced by Irish immigrants during their
first century in America as strongly as the signs that used to hang
outside factories and in shop windows: 'Help Wanted-No Irish Need
Apply.'

The late Tip O'Neill recalled seeing them as a boy in Boston, as has
Senator Edward Kennedy. In a 1996 speech on the Senate floor, Kennedy
said, 'I remember `Help Wanted' signs in stores when I was growing up
saying `No Irish Need Apply.' Thankfully, we have made a great deal of
progress in ending that kind of... bigotry.'

The signs, which some have likened to the 'Whites Only' signs of the
South before the civil-rights era, have been used to illustrate not just
native-born Americans' bitter opposition to the Irish, but how the Irish
managed to surmount that opposition in order to achieve the American
Dream.

There's only one problem with this story: The signs may have hardly
existed.

In the December 2002 issue of the Journal of Social History, Richard J.
Jensen of the University of Illinois at Chicago claims that there is
scant evidence of the 'No Irish' signs in the historical record. An
electronic search of several hundred thousand pages of newspapers,
magazines, and books yielded only a handful of ads that included 'No
Irish' phrases. As for signs in store windows, he writes, 'There are
no contemporary or retrospective accounts of a specific sign at a
specific location.... No historian, archivist, or museum curator has
ever located one; no photograph or drawing exists.' The signs available
on eBay and elsewhere, he states, are 'modern fakes.'

In the 19th century, Jensen adds, studies show that the Irish received
job promotions at the same rate as others, and they were no more
segregated into one particular industry than immigrant Germans or
British were. So why the legendary stories of discrimination? While
other groups followed 'individualistic' paths to economic and social
success, the Irish specialized in politics, unionized labor, and other
activities where they benefited from group solidarity-a solidarity,
according to Jensen, which stories of the 'No Irish Need Apply' signs
only served to strengthen.

In a recent interview, Jensen said the Irish 'didn't face that much'
discrimination in the New World. The signs, he says, are simply another
'myth of victimization.'

Jensen's paper is stirring up a donnybrook among his fellow historians.
Although some allow that there may not have been all that many 'No
Irish' signs, they cite numerous other examples of 19th-century
anti-Irish bigotry, including the rise of the nativist Know Nothing
movement, convent burnings in Charlestown and Baltimore, and the
numerous political cartoons depicting the Irish as apelike.

Timothy Meagher, a history professor at Catholic University in
Washington, D.C., calls the 'No Irish' signs 'a bogus issue.' 'I
would dispute the notion that the Irish belief that they faced prejudice
was based only on a cultural paranoia,' said Meagher, a Worcester
native. 'They weren't inventing enemies.'

Jensen, who received his bachelor's degree from the University of Notre
Dame, argues that the signs are a historical memory that the Irish
brought over from the Old World. The phrase was first popularized in a
song called 'No Irish Need Apply,' printed in Philadelphia in 1862 and
adapted from a British songsheet. The song, originally the lament of an
Irish girl in London who'd been turned back from a job as a housekeeper,
in America became the defiant cry of a new immigrant Irish man scanning
the help-wanted ads in the New York Tribune. (The newspaper itself
became a target of Irish mobs in the draft riots of 1863, Jensen notes.)

Thin I felt my dandher rising, and I'd like to black his eye? T o tell
an Irish Gintleman: No Irish Need Apply. I couldn't stand it longer: so
hoult of him I took: A nd I gave him such a welting as he'd get at a
Donnybrook.

Jensen maintains that the few 'No Irish' ads he did find were mostly
ads from the 1850s seeking maids and nannies-and that Irish women
nevertheless dominated the market for domestics. 'It was a sentiment
shared by a small number of people for a brief moment in time,' he
says. 'That's all.'

Jensen roundly dismisses the claim that 'No Irish' signs could still
be found in the 20th century. Imagine somebody hanging a sign in Boston
during the 1920s, he says: 'The Irish make up more than a third of the
city. How long do you think it will take for someone to throw a rock
through that window? But there are no reports of anyone ever causing a
fight, a riot, or having any other sort of protest.' (A spokesman for
Senator Kennedy did not return calls requesting comment on his own
recollections of the signs.)

Most historians agree that the signs have been exaggerated in the
Irish-American consciousness, but they contest Jensen's larger
conclusions. 'Victimhood always has its political benefits,' says
Kevin Kenny, a professor of history and Irish studies at Boston College.
But Jensen, in his view, has written a 'deliberately pugnacious paper'
that 'carries his conclusions too far.' According to Kenny, '`No
Irish' is a symbol of something real, the prejudice the Irish faced,
that we don't want to discount.'

Jensen won't back down. 'I think historians have bought into this myth
that seriously affects and influences their interpretation of Irish and
American social history,' he said. 'This is a leprechaun and I'm
saying the leprechaun didn't exist. The good news for the Irish is that
people didn't hate them that much.'
- ----------
for full text of Jensen article see
http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

Sean Lyons teaches journalism at the Scripps Howard School of Journalism
at Hampton University in Virginia.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

A colleague has reminded me that Eric Hirsch's book about ethnic
politics in the Chicago labour movement is freely available online...

P.O'S.

Urban Revolt
Ethnic Politics in the Nineteenth-Century Chicago Labor Movement
Eric L. Hirsch

Suggested citation:
Hirsch, Eric L. Urban Revolt: Ethnic Politics in the Nineteenth-Century
Chicago Labor Movement. Berkeley : University of California Press, 1990.
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft40000586/

Contents
Preface
Chapter One Ethnic Segmentation in the Early Chicago Labor Movement
Chapter Two Anarchism and the Eight-Hour Movement
Chapter Three Anglo-American Labor Reform in Chicago
Chapter Four Irish Labor Reform
Chapter Five The Roots of Revolutionary German Labor Politics
Chapter Six Theories of Urban Political Movements
References

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 2

Kerby Miller seems to want to challenge my interpretation of Irish
American history. He says I'm factually wrong and darkly warns about my
political and ideological agenda. He also recommends people pay less
attention to my research.

Sigh.

First of all, he really believes the NINA myth. He says he
saw the NINA sign at the Kansas City Public Library.
Recently. I asked the librarian who said: >

That's the sign that's part of my No Irish Need Apply essay online
version. It's an obvious fake--there are 15 copies of it for sale today
on E-BAY (and *no* other NINA signs for sale from anywhere else for any
other year--isn't that odd, unless the 1915 sign is a modern fake.) For
my copy see http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/no-irish.htm

Miller says he saw NINA ads in the New York press. Probably
ads for maids, which I discuss at length. I looked through thousands of
want ads and found exactly one male NINA (for a teenage boy to work at a
livery stable.) I also included it in the online version. Seeing a NINA
was a very rare event indeed for Irish men.

On the other hand I provide a complete explanation in terms of a song
that was written in 1862 and became quite popular. You can hear it on
my website.

So what's Jensen's mysterious Political & Ideological agenda?

1. Interdisciplinary research. I use evidence from literature,
economics, political science and music in my argument.
2. To promote Internet research; I founded H-NET and for 10
years have coedited H-ETHNIC. I used the WWW for most of my
research, and managed to search through hundreds of
thousdands of pages of magfazines, newspapers, books,
government documents and sheet music in search of the
elusive NINA.
3. For 30+ years (since The Winning of the Midwest, 1971) I
have studied the emergence of emergence of ethnic pluralism
as a prime American value. I argue the Irish were fully
accepted in American society by the 1870s. (And that no one
*ever* considered them nonwhite.)
4. I emphasize religion & anticatholicism as historical
factors. Anti-RC not anti-Irish was the main reason behind the
Know-Nothing surge in 1854-55. Al Smith's 1928 campaign is another
good
example. Plenty of anti-Catholicism that year, and
anti-Tammany Hall (machine politics), and also anti-New York
City. No historian has turned up much anti-Irtish sentiment
that year (or in 1960).
5. Finally I want to get beyond the filiopietistic "inside"
histories" of ethnic groups as typified by Miller's own
work. As long as you study only your own group you're likely
to be trapped by myths. Kerby was trapped by the NINA myth
and can't seem to extricate himself.

Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

From: McCaffrey
Subject: Re: Ir-D Review, Foster, Irish Story

Daryl,

Thank you for bringing up Roy Foster on this day. I think that his
book ought to be obligatory reading for everyone involved in Irish
history and literature. Is really is an excellent analysis of the
history of myth and the myth of history in Ireland and the way that
'facts' get used for particular purposes. Without a deep reading into
original sources Irish history can be a minefield of propaganda. I have

put 'The Irish Story" on my list of recommended reading for students.

Not that this practice is unique to Ireland; it would be a mistake to
presume so - all you have to do is look at the current world 'crisis'
and not dig too deeply to find its origins in particular interests.

Carmel

Forwarded on behalf of

Robert Savage
savager[at]bc.edu
Subject: fellowships At BC

Please distribute...


FALL IRISH STUDIES RESEARCH FELLOWSHIP

In the fall of 2003 the Boston College Irish Studies Program will offer
a research fellowship. The scholarship will provide housing at the Mill
Street Cottage adjacent to the Boston College Law School and an office
in Connolly House, the home of the Irish Studies Program.

Scholars will be able to conduct research at Boston College libraries
including the Burns Library, which houses the Special Irish Collection,
the O'Neill Library and the Irish Music Archive. The fellowship will
allow researchers access to other institutions in the Boston area such
as the Boston Public Library, the Massachusetts State Archive, and the
John F. Kennedy Library.

Scholars studying in all fields of Irish Studies are invited to apply.
A travel grant of $1,000 will be offered to assist the research fellow.
Those interested in applying should send a detailed letter explaining
how they would use the research fellowship and the names and email
addresses of three references to:

Robert Savage
Acting Director
Boston College
Irish Studies Program,
Connolly House,
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 USA

----------------------
> Robert J. Savage
> Associate Director
> Irish Studies
> Boston College
> savager[at]bc.edu
> (617) 552-3966
>
> web site: www.bc.edu/irish
>

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 3

Sorry, perhaps Dr. Jensen is correct about the sign I saw last week,
but I still do not agree with the conclusions or sympathize with the
thrust of his research.

I disagree completely that Irish Catholics were fully accepted in
American WASP society by the 1870s, and I find the distinction that
Dr. Jensen wants to draw between anti-"Irish" and anti-"Catholic"
prejudice quite artificially fine--as would, I think, many other
historians. However, I have no personal or "ethnic" reason for
caring one way or another. (And "whiteness"?--I've never written on
that issue.)

Indeed, as far as my work on the Irish being "filiopietistic" or
"'inside'" history: (1) I am not Irish Catholic or of Irish Catholic
ancestry, background, or education; and (2) more than a few Irish and
Irish-American Catholic historians have criticized my work for what
they regarded as its hostile, "outsiders'" perspective on what I
described as the myth that ALL Irish emigration was tantamount to
political exile.

In 1965, long before I ever read anything about Ireland or Irish
immigration, I was a summer intern at a museum in western
Massachusetts--far from my home in Phoenix. One of the guides, a
widow in her mid-40s, told me, with great sadness and bitterness,
that when she married her husband, his "Yankee" parents disowned and
disinherited him because she was Irish Catholic. Of course, she
could have been lying, deluded, or suffering from Dr. Jensen's
collective mythology, and of course there is the possibility that her
late husband's parents might have been quite willing to HIRE her.

And, yes, I still wonder what is "the point"--for I am not so naive
as to imagine there is not one. I suspect that it is to undermine
the "dangerous" notion, still lamentably and unfashionably current
among a dwindling minority of Irish and Irish-Americans, that a
shared history of colonization, famine, discrimination, and rebellion
links at least one kind of "Irish" historical experience with those
of other "victims" of and rebels against various forms of imperialism.

Kerby Miller.

From: patrick maume
Sender: P.Maume[at]Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D ROY FOSTER in NY Times

>
> This strange menu - dubbed in The New York Times one year
> as a lunch "that would make any Irishman proud" - sums up
> the collusive fantasy that reigns on March 17, when "greening" breaks
> out all over. St. Patrick's Day seems to have become, among other
> things, a carnival celebrating the end of winter. But it also affirms
> the warm kitchen comforts of ethnicity, at a time when identity
> politics have replaced ideology and - for one day at least -
> everyone wants to be Irish.

I've just come in from the open-air Belfast concert - what I
saw of this was a couple of boyband and girlband wannabes
singing cover versions of Mary Black and Van Morrison songs.
Tricolours were out in force - I suspect there'll be complaints
about this.
One nice piece of diaspora blowback - there were some people
wearing plastic leprechaun hats labelled I'M IRISH ON ST.
PATRICK'S DAY. Methinks those who adopted that particular
import in St. Patrick's Day didn't stop to think about the
implication that the wearer was Irish only on St. Patrick's Day.

> politics were kept in the margins: there
> is an enduring image of Queen Victoria dishing out shamrock to her
> Irish regiments on St. Patrick's Day.

This bit is slightly misleading. For several years
before Queen Victoria adopted this custom (in 1900), there had
been instances of Irish soldiers being disciplined for wearing
shamrock on St. Patrick's day (soldiers being forbidden to wear
unauthorised badges and emblems); the Irish Parliamentary Party
regularly made an issue of it.
The 1900 decree that soldiers could wear shamrock and the
subsequent official presentation were declared to be a reward
for the loyalty of Irish soldiers fighting the Boers and the
loyalty displayed on the Queen's 1900 visit to Dublin - in other
words, it was a political move implying nationalist politicians
didn't really represent Irish opinion. The next St. Patrick's
Day in Belfast saw Unionists decking themselves and all
belonging to them with large bunches of shamrock as tokens of
loyalty, while nationalists refused to wear it without added
pro-Boer emblems. Anna Parnell suggested that nationalists
should wear their shamrocks dipped in ink until the disgrace to
the national emblem had been wiped out by a Boer victory "or
some other means".

True, it
> was a national holiday from the early 1900's, but a dry
> one; the only place you could get a drink was at the Dublin Dog Show,
> and after a long day in the liquor tent bemused topers would emerge
> and be astonished to find themselves surrounded by coiffured canines.

The dry St. Patrick's Day only really took off after the Irish
Free State came into existence and tightened up the licensing
laws. From c.1900 Catholic and Irish Ireland groups tried to
persuade publicans to close voluntarily on St. Patrick's Day,
but this voluntary ban met with limited success. D.P. Moran and
Arthur Griffith ran annual name and shame campaigns listing all
the pubs which stayed open on St. Patrick's Day - to general
embarrassment these included such patriotic premises as the pub
owned by the ex-Invincible Joe Mullett (it had been bought for
him by admirers when he got out of jail).


> Nowadays, mischievous or smart-aleck newspaper columnists
> who were young at the time, like Joseph O'Connor, recollect how exotic

> the "returned" Irish-Americans seemed, with "their incredible
> self-confidence, their savage, cancerous suntans, their lurid
> clothes." Fintan O'Toole similarly recalls from his Dublin childhood
> "the timeless Celtic ritual of jeering good-naturedly at the high
> school marching bands from Minnesota or Delaware."

I remember one year in the early 1980s it was announced that
Miss Ireland would walk at the head of the Dublin parade in a
green bikini. When it snowed on the day and Miss Ireland ahad
to assume warmer wear, an elder relative of mine claimed this as
the direct interposition of St. Patrick.

>whether he was (as the Episcopal Church of Ireland
> used to claim) doctrinally a Protestant.

Not just the episcopal Church - the Presbyterians used to claim
he was a Presbyterian. (Rev. Thomas Hamilton's Victorian short history
of Irish Presbyterianism argues that in those days being a bishop just
meant you were a senior presbyter. St. Columba
was a bit more difficult, because he was a monk - but Hamilton
mmanaged to make him a Presbyterian too.) Nelson McCausland, a
Belfast Unionist councillor, recently published an Orange
pamphlet entitled PATRICK, APOSTLE OF ULSTER. Ian Paisley likes
to claim he was a Free Presbyterian. The SUNDAY TRIBUNE accused
Paisley of ignorance for making this claim - I'd say it's just a
difference of theological opinion.

Has anyone seen today's IRISH TIMES story about a youth group
who are putting on a play about the young St. Patrick, with a
multiracial cast of slave and a black St. Patrick? They give
him a love interest, too, but I suppose that's just a throwback
to the old SEVEN CHAMPIONS OF CHRISTENDOM chapbooks, where the
patron saints are represented as knights with ladyloves...
Best wishes,
PAtrick
- ----------
patrick maume

From: Kerby Miller
Subject: Re: Ir-D Review, Foster, Irish Story

Before your excitement and enthusiasm overwhelm you entirely, I
suggest you read as antidote Tom Barrett's review of Foster's book in
the Spring 2002 IRISH LITERARY SUPPLEMENT.

Kerby Miller.



>From: Daryl Adair
>[planetadair[at]ozemail.com.au]
>Subject: Review of "The Irish Story"
>
>Dear Colleagues,
>
>This review (below) was posted to Early-Modern-Ireland[at]yahoogroups.com.
>Apologies if you have already seen it. Roy Foster once again provokes a

>rethink of Irish and Diaspora history. For me, his A History of Modern
>Ireland, 1600-1972 has been the most influential book I have read. I am

>yet to find an opportunity to look at this latest Foster tome. The
>Irish Story appears to be something that will spark plenty of debate -
>hopefully on the Irish-Diaspora list too. I must get a copy ... soon!
>
>Cheers,
>
>Daryl Adair
>University of Canberra
>Australia
>

From: "MacEinri, Piaras"
To: "'irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk'"
Subject: St Patrick's Day, shamrock and all that

I read Patrick Maume's comments with interest. On shamrocks and the day
that was in it, the Irish media all carried extensive coverage of troops
wearing shamrocks: the "Irish Guards" in Kuwait. The Irish Guards are a
British Army regiment which recruit from both parts of this
country...it's no wonder foreigners find Ireland confusing. It reminds
me of my previous life in the Irish Foreign Service, and how odd the
Lebanese used to find it that the British Ambassador, a devout Roman
Catholic, used to go to Mass with the Franciscans in Hamra, whereas his
Irish counterpart, a Dublin member of the Church of Ireland, used to
cross the city to attend an Anglican service. But then, real life rarely
conforms to stereotypical expectations.

The Dublin Saint Patrick's Day parade had as its grand marshal Samantha
Mumba, a black Dublin popstar, and very well she looked. But the "Irish
Catholic" complains {http://www.irishcatholic.ie/n1.htm} that there is
no religious participation in the parade even though it is said to be
about 'Irish identity'. The report states, quoting the organiser of the
parade, that when pressed that the Catholic religion was a major part of
Irish cultural identity she replied that "we don't manifest some aspects
of our identity within the parade." "There are no groups at all involved
of any religious persuasion. ...Participation is entirely based on
entertainment value."

Speaking as an agnostic who respects (I hope) other people's beliefs and
is deeply interested in intercultural issues, I think there are a number
of nettles to be grasped here. Unitary identity, especially the old
Catholic, ruralist, 'not-British' one which typified Dev's vision, has
indeed become greatly attenuated. But we won't address the vacuum about
the meaining of contemporary Irishness in a very meaningful way by
reducing identity to entertainment or denying the central role of
various religions to many people's notions of their own identities.

Apparently only 30% of Irish people now state that religion is 'very
important' in their lives - compare this with a US figure of 60% -
something interesting is going on here
{http://www.amarach.com/study_rep_downloads/Diageo_Ireland_QoL_Revisited
_Report.pdf}. I wonder if the data for Northern Ireland would be the
same. Anyhow, I think any debate about identity in Ireland today would
need to recognise that respect for diversity includes respect for those
for whom religion and traditional values are important, even if we no
longer accept that such values should be given a hegemonic place in our
society.

Best wishes to all, in spite of the times we live in,

Piaras Mac Einri

From: Daryl Adair
Subject: Ir-D Foster, Irish Story

Dear Kerby,

obviously I'll have to reserve my opinion on Foster's latest tome until
I have read the book, and, as you say, also taken a look at Bartlett's
review. However, my excitement and enthusiasm remain undiminished for
Foster's "Ireland: A Modern History, 1600-1972". Any thoughts of your
own about that book? What are the impressions of other Ir-D members?

Cheers, Daryl

Daryl Adair
University of Canberra
Australia

From: "Thomas J. Archdeacon"
Subject: No Irish, yet again

I'm sorry to see two scholars whom I have admired (Miller and Jensen)
going at one another. I think Kerby scored one on Richard when he
pointed out that he is not Irish and is not and has not been Catholic.
Jensen is correct about the tendency of ethnic history to be done
"in-house." Indeed, partly out of recognition of that, although working
on immigration, I long consciously avoided specializing on the Irish,
despite being the son of Irish immigrants. Miller, along with a few
others like Victor Greene, are the exceptions that prove the rule. I
was surprised that RJ is an ND grad; the name sounds too Scandinavian
for ND (Knute Rockne was another exception to the rule). My mischievous
side wonders whether or not RJ is suffering PCET (Post-Catholic
Education Trauma), but I don't know him on a personal level and won't
allege that except in jest.

I too saw evidence NINA in NYC newspapers in the 1870s, but that
research (for an MA on the illustrious career of Samuel J. Tilden) was
so long ago -- and so unrelated to the ads -- that I won't challenge
RJ's contention that the positions were for domestics. Even with that
concession, however, such a restriction in that marketplace was hardly
trivial in light of the importance of domestic work for the half of the
Irish population that was female. Moreover, to say that the Irish were
fully accepted by the 1870s is over the top. Their position in the
Middle West, where RJ has focused some of research, was certainly better
than in the East, but then most of the Irish were in the East.

RJ's casting of doubt on the Irish not being considered "white," in any
concrete meaning of that term, is much more reasonable. Many may have
thought the Irish to be congenitally dim-witted, backward, and inferior,
but those academics who put the Irish in the position of choosing to be
white when they had available another morally superior choice that would
have saved them from becoming the hardcore racists -- that their moral
superiors today know them to be -- really have an agenda that is less
than sympathetic to the Irish. The Whiteness School is one of the
largest crocks from which the academy has been recently tasting. Eric
Arnesen's article of not too long ago has helped, I believe, put it on
the road to becoming yesterday's flavor. As a person also inclined
toward a social scientific approach, I can agree with Jensen's apparent
dislike of the whiteness approach. Once again, however, Kerby isn't one
of the bad guys.

RJ is certainly right to point out how anti-Catholicism was much more
virulent than anti-Irish sentiment. I think, however, he is
underestimating the extent to which being Catholic and being Irish were
equated. Being Catholic in a particular kind of way became the sine qua
non of being Irish for much of the late nineteenth and twentieth
centuries. At this point, many Irish are trying to recapture a
non-Catholic Irish ethnicity and to break the equation between being
Irish and being Catholic. The reasons for the change tell us much about
the status of the Catholic Church among intellectuals (and others) in
the early 21st century, much about the need -- in Ireland -- to
reconcile persons of both Irish religious traditions (even if one of
them has frequently denied its Irishness), and something about a desire
to recover a Celtic past. Whatever the merits of this revisionism, it
doesn't really help us much in understanding the perceptions that people
in America had of the Irish during the historical periods most of us
study.

I think the Irish gained acceptance, or at least made it imprudent for
those less than fond of them to express their distaste too publicly,
only when they gained enough wealth and political power to make crossing
them an unduly high risk. It's the old rule about winning hearts and
minds -- if you have your foes really tightly gripped by their most
private parts, their hearts and minds will follow. The grip is
unfortunately a bit loose in certain corners of academics, at least if
one can judge by remarks that my best graduate student reports are
routinely made by her most socially conscious colleagues.

Tom

Thomas J. Archdeacon Ph: 608-263-1778
Dept. of History Fax: 608-263-5302
U. Wisconsin - Madison
5133 Humanities
455 N. Park St.
Madison, WI 53706

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 4

Well I apologize to Professor Miller for assuming he's Irish--Call it
the Senator Kerry Syndrome.

Did the Irish experience what he calls a > Yes indeed, in
Ireland. But not in America. It really was a New World, I argue.

Was there ever significant resistance to marriage between Yankees and
Irish? No, only between Protestants and Catholics. As far as I can
tell the Yankees had no aversion whatever to marrying a non-Catholic
Irishman. (That was not true in England. Thackeray's 1848 novel
Pendennis, where the NINA phrase is first used, features English
Protestants trying to stop their young man from marrying a Protestant
Irish woman. The Anglican bishop of London, circa 1840s, was well known
for his No Irish Need Apply policy --he used the NINA words--toward
*Protestant* Irish clergymen.)

Keep in mind that most Catholics in America were not Irish: Germans,
English, Dutch and French were numerous before 1890, and then Italians,
Poles, Hungarians etc., and in more recent years Hispanics. (The rural
Catholics, especially Germans, had much higher birth rates than urban
Catholics, so I believe the German proportion has grown over time.)

Miller says >. "WASP society"? That
does beg the question, doesn't it? My argument dealt with the
economy: there was no noticeable job discrimination against the Irish at
any time. What evidence is there to the contrary except those mystery
NINA signs? As for society, I think the acceptance rate was pretty good
after about 1870. For example, neighborhood segregation rates were
quite low for the Irish. I had a very hard time in finding
predominantly Irish precincts because the Irish were spread out pretty
well by 1890. As for politics, the Irish did very well indeed in cities
and states where they comprised less than 20% of the population, which
means they had to be able to win votes from other groups. They DID win
those votes, and they still do.

While anti-Catholicism comes and goes in politics, it is very hard to
find any evidence of anti-Irish voting. I could not find any in 1928
(Al Smith) or 1960 (JFK). When you look at Canada, you see a lot of
Orange anti-Catholic-Irish sentiment, by Protestant Irish. There are
traces of that in the USA,--say in the APA movement of the 1890s--but on
the whole very little.

From: "Kevin Kenny"
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D `No Irish' 5
Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2003 08:57:16 -0500

From Kevin Kenny, Boston College: kennyka[at]bc.edu

As I was quoted in the Globe article, perhaps I can offer my position. I
read Richard Jensen's article in manuscript and offered a lengthy
comment on his argument at a lively session of the New England
Historical Association in April 2002.

Like many historians I had taken the existence of NINA signs more or
less for granted. After Jensen's article we can no longer to do so. When
I told my class I was heading to the conference to discuss Jensen's
paper, one of them told me had his roommate had a NINA sign on his dorm
room wall. Hoping to bring this sign to the conference, as evidence,
hold it up to the audience, and rest my case, I asked the student to
bring it to class.

The computer-like consistency of the nicely faded font aside, the real
give away was the date: Boston Sign Company, September 11, 1915. Why
would the Boston Sign Company oblige you by putting the date of purchase
on the sign itself, if not for the benefit of future historians?

If you were a German grocer or a British middle-class housewife, and you
wanted to hire a helper or a servant, why would you go all the way to
the Boston Sign Company to have printed what you could just as easily
write yourself on a good piece of cardboard? On the other hand, and
Jensen does not consider this, if you were a discriminatory bigot, why
would you bother keeping a sign you had written yourself?

In light of Jensen's argument, we need to be much more cautious about
NINA and related forms of discriminatory practice, as distinct from
prejudice, directed against the Irish. But let us first try to appraise
what Jensen has and has not successfully demonstrated.

First, absence of evidence, to quote the old adage, can never be taken
as evidence of absence. As Jensen would admit, lack of surviving signs
can in no way prove their non-existence in the past. Still, the absence
of evidence is striking, and at the very least it compels us to revise
the traditional standard interpretation that these signs once existed in
abundance.

Second, even if we were to concede the virtual or complete absence of
window signs, this would not imply the absence of discrimination
generally, nor even of discrimination in hiring practices in particular.

In other words, we should not jump too hastily from the absence of signs
to claim a similar absence of NINA advertisements in newspapers. Jensen
suggests that these, too, have been greatly overblown, but his own very
tentative research in this area has already produced quite a few such
advertisements and other historians say they have encountered such
material in mid-nineteenth century American newspapers.

Also, one must remember that many of these advertisements, while they
did not say "no Irish" instead said something like "German cook wanted",
etc. Where's the difference? Jensen does not acknowledge this.

Yet, while the case for NINA ads is clearly much stronger than that for
NINA signs, Jensen's larger point in this respect is surely correct.
American demand for unskilled male heavy labor and unskilled female
domestic labor in the nineteenth century was simply too great for the
Irish to have suffered much by way of anti-hiring discrimination at all.


Why would employers use either signs or ads against the Irish when they
depended so heavily on their labor? One future research task suggested
by Jensen's paper is to identify these NINA ads by time, place, and
theme.

But, if we grant the relative if not total absence of NINA signs, how,
then, are we to explain Irish poverty and sluggish Irish social mobility
before the 1920s? The most obvious explanation to many people is that
the Irish were discriminated against, actively excluded from the best
work, relegated to the ranks of the menial and the servile.

Does the evidence support this widely held claim? Or is there not a
simpler and more compelling explanation: i.e. that most of the
nineteenth-century Irish did not possess the marketable skills that
would have allowed for rapid social ascent?

There has to be very large element of truth in the second of these
explanations. But what about the first? The Irish suffered from many
forms of prejudice--religious, cultural, political, some would even say
racial--but we cannot infer from these forms of prejudice actual
practices of labor discrimination in the form suggested by NINA.

Jensen, indeed, goes so far as that the consolidation of the NINA myth
in popular culture serves to reinforce forms of group solidarity that
may have actually held the Irish back by perpetuating their position in
particular forms of hard, physical work. This, indeed, is perhaps the
most provocative implication of his thesis.

I think that would be a hard argument to substantiate historically: it
seems to rest on an implicit counterfactual assumption that the Irish
would otherwise have progressed quite nicely, which is undemonstrable.

Jensen has called into question widespread assumptions concerning NINA
signs, and by extension, Irish-American labor and social mobility. In
light of his findings, we need to be more careful than ever to
distinguish between prejudice and actual labor discrimination: that the
Irish were depicted as racially and religiously inferior does not mean
that they were denied a living or even denied skilled jobs (for which
they had no training). Neither, and this also needs to be strongly
emphasized, did anti-Irish prejudice mean that the Irish were treated
anything like American blacks and Chinese.

That said, Professor Jensen and those inspired by his work run the risk
of going too far in the opposite direction: that labor discrimination
was much less severe than some have assumed does not mean that the we
can ignore the sustained and pervasive indictment of Irish immigrants in
nineteenth-century America as the dregs of humanity, unfit for
republican citizenship on economic, cultural, political, religious, and
even racial grounds.

This is what I meant in the Globe by saying that, while Jensen has
offered some valuable correctives, he presents a "deliberately
pugnacious argument" (as witness the response on this list!) but one
which "carries his conclusions too far."

Kevin Kenny, Boston College: kennyka[at]bc.edu

From: John FitzGerald
Subject: Re: Ir-D Irish dance in diaspora 3


Here in Newfoundland, the Irish dance to which Sean Mc Cartan refers to
is not the general dancing Moira Ruff found described on the
Newfoundland heritage page in the Society and Culture section (created
by Memorial
University) at {http://www.heritage.nf.ca/society}. It is the dancing of
the St. Patrick's Hall Dance troupe, called the "St. Pat's Dancers", a
group at St. Patrick's Hall School here in St. John's Newfoundland (not
"America", and in 1930, not even "Canada", thank you) in 1930 formed by
a member of the Irish Christian Brothers, Brother Samuel Murphy. I do
not know whether he was an American who joined the Irish Christian
Brothers (thus fitting into Colin Quigley's "Boston-dance-masters to
Newfoundland tradition"), or a native of Ireland, as many of the Irish
Christian Brothers who came here were - but I will try to find this out.

While I know very little about the terpsichorean arts, I have been able
to determine (from my father, Edward FitzGerald) who was a member of the
St. Pat's Dancers from 1932-33) that the form of dancing Brother Murphy
introduced at St. Patrick's Hall School was for a group of about 8-10
boys, aged 8-10, in which they danced in formation, wore black short
pants, green and gold knee-socks, a white shirt, a green and gold tie,
and a green/gold cummerbund and a green sash. (St. Patrick's Hall
School's colours were "green and gold"). They performed locally at
school concerts and entertainments to the accompaniment of an accordion,
or a tin whistle, or a grammophone. Their dances in the 1930s originally
were characterized by not having "taps" in their shoes, and by high
steps with the arms held by their sides.The group continued in existence
until recent times (and indeed may still exist but I haven't heard much
about them lately). Their most famous audience was Pope John Paul II on
the occasion of his visit to St. John's in September 1984. I know that
in recent times, the group has also included girls, but that up to 1984
it was a boys-only dance troupe.

Just a little context about the people of Irish heritage here in
Newfoundland, which until recent times was the Grand Cod Fishery of the
Universe. Most of the Irish who came here came out as fishing "servants"
between 1675 at the earliest, with the migrations continuing until the
eve of the Famine. The bulk arrived between 1790 and 1840. This
migration was initially out of Dublin but overwhelmingly came to be out
of the ports in SE Ireland and was a seasonal one, typically for two
summers and a winter, a 16-18 month interval, after which the fishermen
migrated back to Ireland. The collapse in trade following the Napoleonic
wars fixed the population here permanently, as did the C19 demand in
industrial revolution Britain for marine oils (seal, and whale) which
created the Newfoundland seal hunt and made overwintering feasible.
Newfoundland was Ireland's Talamh an Eisc, and not only did Ireland
provide labour, it provided provisions for the fishery. The City of
Waterford, Thomas Francis Meagher's family wealth and their house (now
the Granville Hotel), and the original Penroses' Waterford glass were
all largely built on the profits from the Newfoundland trade. Here in
St. John's we have Yellowbelly Corner, we have a mid-C19 Irish
neoclassical cathedral filled with Hogan and Carew statues, predating
(and a rival in size to) Thurles, we have (still in existence) a
Benevolent Irish Society, and we have Irish cemeteries which are still
being filled with the great great grandchildren of those first buried in
them.

Re: Moira's comments on "invented tradition", I suppose in one sense the
Christian Brothers' dancing in Newfoundland was an invented tradition
among the youth of a population which by 1930 was at least a century out
of Ireland. Certainly my father's closest links with Ireland through his
mother's family were of surnames Sexton and Greene of the vicinity of
Carrick on Suir, circa 1820, and on his father's side, FitzGeralds from
Thomastown, Kilkenny in circa 1750. My father has never been to Ireland.
On the other hand, he grew up in a very Irish Catholic culture, and
identifies that he is of Irish-Newfoundland heritage. Given the studies
of Irish material culture, architecture, folklore, folksong, dietary
traditions, and religious practices of the Newfoundland people of Irish
heritage, most of which reveal that the practices exhibited remarkable
continuity, dancing might just prove to be one of the few things which
was invented rather than continued.

As a footnote, when I told my father (who turns 80 tomorrow) that
academics in lands far and near might believe his boyhood dancing to
have been an "invented tradition" because they were applying
sociological theories, his eyes narrowed but in charity he told me to
invite them to come and see for themselves.

John FitzGerald
Memorial University

From: Matthew Barlow
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 6

From Matthew Barlow mbarlow[at]videotron.ca

It would seem to me that Prof. Jensen may be extending the argument a
bit when he claims that there was no significant economical
discrimination against Irish Catholics in NYC when he seems to readily
admit the counter-point of Prof. Miller concerning "NINA" signs and
domestic work. Now, I haven't yet read Prof. Jensen's article, so I may
be out of line, but it seems to me that "NINA" ads against Irish women,
who were a sizeable chunk of the Irish Catholic population of America is
still evidence of discrimination, no? The fact that there wasn't much
in the way of this discrimination against men is somewhat moot, I think.
The fact that such signs did exist insofar as women and domestic
employment, considering that this was the sector of the economy one
found Irish women in predominately, is significant.

On another note, to bring the Canadian experience into this debate, Mark
McGowan has published a study, "The Waning of the Green," on the Irish
Catholic experience in Toronto, and argues, essentially, that by the
time of his period of study, 1890-1922, the Irish Catholics had more or
less integrated themselves into Canadian society, having chosen to turn
their backs on Ireland to become Canadian, as the politician Thomas
D'Arcy McGee had urged Irish Canadians to do back in the 1860s. At any
rate, I found myself wondering, as I read McGowan's work, if his
conclusions had been different if he had studied the period up to 1890?

Matthew Barlow
Concordia University

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 8

from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

On the Irish maids, Kevin Kenny's comments last spring got
me thinking about the issue, and I did some additional research.
Household workers were mostly hired by word of mouth, but cities also
had employment agencies called "intelligence bureaus." I looked at
hundreds of ads from the New York Times and estimate that 10-15%
specified language, ethnicity or religion.

1. Language was of course a factor. In every northern city the
Germans were the largest non-English speaking group. They
wanted German-speaking maids.

2. Some ethnic groups had reputations for specialized
skills--French as cooks, English as butlers.

3. Some parents were afraid to have a Catholic in the
household. I cited examples from an anti-Catholic tract that
warned the Catholic maids might try to convert the children.
household. I cited examples from an anti-Catholic tract that
warned the Catholic maids might try to convert the children.
To my knowledge this never happened--but there was indeed a
famous case in Italy. The Papal States were ruled by the
Pope, and Jewish families worried that Catholic maids might
try to baptise their children. In the famous Edgardo
Mortara case in 1858, Pope Pius IX seized the child, who
became a priest--despite international outcries. Nothing
ever like this in the USA -- but it did feed
anti-Catholicism. (Which was anti-papal much more than
anti-Irish.)

4. As David Katzman has demonstrated from census data ("Seven
Days a Week"), Irish women dominated the domestic market in
most northern cities. The reason is they married late (or not
at all) and stayed in service much longer than the teenagers
from other groups who soon married. African American women
dominated the market in the South. Anyone who refused to
hire an Irish woman had a very restricted pool of choice.

5. The Irish maids did *not* have a reputation as excellent
workers. However they were much more professional and
experienced than the inexperienced teenagers who made up the
rest of the pool. The middle class literature is full of
references to the "servant problem." The Irish stuck
together and developed norms regarding pay scales, days off,
housing, and perquisites. They did not allow dating or sex
with the men in the household. They insisted on control of
the kitchen (and the right to entertain their friends
there.) If an employer violated the norms, the maid would
immediately quit, leaving the housewife stranded. Her
friends would support her and help her find another
position. This was a very effective technique that allowed
the Irish women considerable control of the situation.

Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

- -------

From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Dymphna=20Lonergan?=

Can we presume that the Irish women were discriminated
against not because they were Irish but because they
made bad domestics? They now make good presidents-in
Ireland at any rate.


Dymphna Lonergan
Flinders University of South Australia

=====
Go raibh tú daibhir i mí-áidh/May you be poor in ill-luck
Agus saibhir i mbeannachtaí/rich in blessings
Go mall ag déanamh namhaid/slow to make enemies
go luath a déanamh carad/quick to make friends