From: harrisrd
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: RE: Ir-D `No Irish' 10

The Vere Foster papers make it clear that when Irish women had some
preparation and training they made good domestics. It is clear that it
was far
more difficult for young women from remote areas of western Ireland to
have
that kind of preparation. For those of you who aren't familiar with
Foster,
he assisted the emigration of thousands of Irish women between 1850 and
the
1890s. Before deciding to send women he investigated conditions in
America
very carefully and his papers are rich in information. Nevertheless,
the
Foster papers and other work I've done on the letters women wrote make
it
clear that young Irish women were mostly very willing to learn and had
the
right attitudes to be good domestics. Some years before he became
president
Abraham Lincoln's family in Springfield, Illinois employed a number of
Irish
girls. Irish domestics in Illinois in the 1850s were known as excellent

marriage partners and families had difficulty retaining them as
domestics, one
of Foster's informants saying that 'six girls married out of my house in
the
past year.'
Ruth-Ann Harris



>===== Original Message From irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk =====
>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

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

John McClymer and Richard Jensen, who are part of the team which runs
the H-Ethnic list, have asked if H-Ethnic can pick up and re-distribute
recent Irish-Diaspora list messages about the 'No Irish Need Apply'
issue.

Broadly, I think, there are 2 sorts of message on the Irish-Diaspora
list: 1. public information announcements of one sort or another (and
these, obviously, we are quite happy to see distributed further), 2.
more private messages of comment from Irish-Diaspora list members. The
convention on the Irish-Diaspora list is that such private messages are
NOT in the public domain.

In fact, we do have a policy in place - it is one of our Frequently
Asked Questions on irishdiaspora.net...

>Citation

>From time to time people ask me how the Irish-Diaspora list is to be
quoted or cited, in an article or other publication.

>The brief answer is that the Irish-Diaspora list is NOT to be quoted or
cited. The Irish-Diaspora list is an email discussion forum - it is not
in itself a source. The source is the original writer of the email you
want to quote - that person's name and email address is always given in
the Irish-Diaspora list message. You should contact that person directly
and ask permission to quote.

>Irish-Diaspora list messages often contain first thoughts or
half-formed views on a subject - the original writer may not wish to be
quoted beyond the bounds of the Irish-Diaspora list.

>Or the original writer may wish to write you a note of clarification or
amplification - which then becomes your source ('private
communication').

>Or the original writer may wish to direct you to a formal publication,
where the facts and opinions you seek may already have been published.

>In any case the wishes of the original writer are to be respected.

>It would be nice if the work of the Irish-Diaspora list gets mentioned
somewhere along the line - but it is not essential.

I think that that remains the policy. Members of the Irish-Diaspora
list post messages to Ir-D with the expectation that they are posting
messages to a closed, moderated list. Our messages are NOT displayed in
a publicly available, searchable database. H-Ethnic and all the H-Net
Discussion Logs are publicly available, and are posted on a web site.
People use different forums in different ways - messages to Ir-D can be
more personal and unguarded. We cannot give guarantees of course - the
Internet is not like that, and the Irish-Diaspora list remains a
semi-public forum.

Members of the Irish-Diaspora list who are happy for their recent
messages to be distributed further can contact...

Richard Jensen
John McClymer

Or they will be contacting you.

Paddy


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Kevin Kenny"
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D QUERY Cross-posting `No Irish'?

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

Paddy et al:

Yes, I agree that ours is a closed, moderated list and should remain so.
I also think it would be good to discuss the NINA issue on other such
lists, including H-Ethnic, though I no longer subscribe to it.

If Jensen or McClymer contact me -- and they already know I'm likely be
involved -- I'll be glad to duplicate the message I circulated on our
list yesterday. Of course, to keep up with the discussion on H-Ethnic,
we would each then have to subscribe to that list ...

Kevin

___________________________________
Kevin Kenny
Director of Graduate Studies
Department of History
Boston College
140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
Phone (617) 552-1196
Fax (617) 552-3714
kennyka[at]bc.edu
http://www.bc.edu/schools/cas/history

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 12

from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

The question for the historians is how to differentiate anti-Catholicism
from anti-Irish sentiments. The rhetoric was highly distinctive.

Anti-Catholicism focused on narrow, clear-cut range
of issues, especially European themes such as the history of the Popes,
infallibility, the Inquisition, intolerance toward Protestants in
Catholic nations, devotions to the saints, and Mariolatry; closer to
home it focused on parochial schools, convents, missions to the Indians,
and Bible-reading in public schools.

Most of the anti-Catholic rhetoric warned of the threat to
republicanism represented by the Papacy, and priestly control over the
consciences and political behavior of the laity.

These issues were alive in 1854-- and in 1928 and 1960.
The main attack was on the Pope--who was always Italian in those
days--
and on the Papal delegate to the USA.

Take a look at Samuel W. Barnum, Romanism as it is: an exposition of
the Roman Catholic system, for the use of the American people; embracing
a full account of its origin and development at Rome and from Rome, its
distinctive features in theory and practice, its characteristic
tendencies and aims, its statistical and moral position, and its special
relations to American institutions and liberties; the whole drawn from
official and authentic sources, and enriched with numerous
illustrations, documentary, historical, descriptive, anecdotical, and
pictorial: together with a ... complete index. By Rev. Samuel W. Barnum
...(1872), online at http://www.hti.umich.edu/m/moa.new/



Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

From: patrick maume
Sender: P.Maume[at]Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 6



On 18 March 2003 05:59 irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

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

> 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.)

The bishop might have had doctrinal reasons for this since Irish
Anglican clergymen had a reputation for extreme, intransigent
and outspoken evangelicalism.
Is the character in PENDENNIS disliked because she is Irish or
for other reasons. (She's an actress, if I remember correctly.)
Surely Professor Jensen's distinction between Irish and
Catholic is overdone, given the extent to which the two were
seen as synonymous. If there was significant discrimination
against Irish Catholics only, it was still discrimination with
an anti-Irish element.

----------------------
patrick maume

From: patrick maume
Sender: P.Maume[at]Queens-Belfast.AC.UK
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 9


On 19 March 2003 05:59 irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

>
> From: "Richard Jensen"
> To:
> Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 8
>
> from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu
>

> 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.

I have seen occasional references in an Irish context to
Catholic maidservants surreptitiously baptising the children of
Protestant employers. The Mortara case is probably not relevant
because what you get there is the use of state power to enforce
this "conversion" - but it should be borne in mind that it was
not uncommon for small children to have more contact with and
form closer emotional bonds with the servants who looked after
them than with their parents. (According to Maurice Manning's
biography of James Dillon, Dillon's relationship with his nurse
as a child was a lot closer than with his father & permanently
affected his emotional & Religious development. This is to some
extent a special instance since Dillon's mother died when he was
young & his father was rather distant and remote.)
Religious influence could go both ways - I know of
nineteenth-century Evangelical writers who argued that
Protestant employers should actively obstruct the religious
practices of their Catholic servants and seek to convert them to
Protestantis, on the grounds that (a) servants were part of the
family and therefore should be subject to the diktats of the
head of the household just as much as the bllod family
(b)since all catholics would be damned, employers who tried to
show them the true way even by semi-coercive means were acting
in their long-term best interests.
I suspect the position of live-in servant in a
nineteenth-century household is just so remote from us that it's
diificult to understand its full implications.
Best wishes,
Patrick

----------------------
patrick maume

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 15

Matt O'Brien sugests that I attribute >. My apologies for being unclear: I don't
believe that at all.

My argument was that anti-Catholicism was 98% separate from anti-Irish,
and that it was much more potent that anti-Irish sentiment. In the 20th
century, the strongest anti-Catholicism has come from religious figures
(especially Southern Baptists and German Lutherans) who had little or
nothing to do with the Irish. Another important group are the Orange
(Protestant) Irish, who sponsored a lot of anti-Catholicism.

Was there anti-Irish sentiment in politics. Very little, I suggest. Mr
O'Brien quotes Democratic Senator Williams regarding World War I. The
Irish Catholics were fiercely opposed to an alliance with Britain, and
as major players in President Wilson's Democratic party they certainly
had a voice. Wilson's solution was to promise the independence of
Ireland if the Irish-RC supported his war. They did so, and felt
betrayed at Versailles. William was Wilson's leading supporter, and
defended him by attacking the Irish. Very few others followed Williams.


Admiral Sims served as the liaison with the Royal Navy in the World War.
Sims was a leading Anglophile, and was often attacked for that in the
USA by Irish Americans. He was very well known for his candid opinions.
He received an honorary degree from Cambridge in 1921 when, in uniform,
he attacked the Sinn Fein, and of course was reprimanded by the Navy
department for that serious error. Sims was a highly controversial
figure already, since after the war he led a major attack on the Navy
department's conduct of the war.

O'Brien also mentions Paul Blanshard, He wrote strong
attacks on the Catholic church as an enemy of republicanism. Catholic
bishops--most of them Irish by 1950--regularly denounced him as a bigot.
He did not stop with the Catholics: "I have come to the conclusion that
Christianity
is so full of fraud that any honest man should repudiate the whole
shebang and espouse atheism." (1972).
- -------

From: MOBrien[at]franuniv.edu
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish'


I think that Richard Jensen oversimplifies matters considerably when
he attributes all anti-Irish antipathy after 1870 to anti-Catholicism.

This is especially true regarding two particular attacks made on
Irish-Americans during the "anti-hyphen" movement of the early 1920s.
In 1921 Mississippi Senator John Williams attacked the "braggart Irish"
on the floor of the chamber for obstructing the resumption of the
transatlantic "Special Relationship" between Britain and the United
States during the Anglo-Irish War.

Likewise Admiral William S. Sims inpugned the patriotism of Irish
Americans a couple of years later, equating their support for Irish
nationalism with treason as he stated, "They are like the zebra- either
white horses with black stripes or black horses with white stripes." In
each case both speakers were motivated by explicitly political
motivations for their indignation, focusing on Irish Americans for their
role as the loudest champions of ethnic patriotism rather than ties with
a European power (which was a charge that could be turned on either one
of the Anglophilic critics). It should be noted that the ensuing
controversies generated hundreds of letters of support for Williams,
while efforts to discipline Sims by his superiors drew a protest from
the Los Angeles Times, which published an editorial cartoon in which the
Admiral was "decorated for telling the truth."

I would also agree with Patrick Maume's argument that it is difficult
to rule to separate non-religious factors from the anti-Catholicism of
many of the harshest critics of Irish America. I think this is
especially true in the case of Paul Blanshard, who followed up his
initial expose on the dangers of Catholicism, _American Freedom and
Catholic Power_ (1949), with a more focused attack on Irish Catholics in
particular in his sequel, _The Irish and Catholic Power: An American
Interpretation? (1953). Blanshard actually attributed the Catholic
threat more to ethnic roots in his first book with the statement,
explaining that "Irish dominance explains many of the characteristics of
American Catholicism." (_American Freedom_, page 28). In fact,
Blanshard's "research" for this latter book was conducted in Dublin
rather than Rome! In the end, I would wonder if Blanshard was more
worries about the reactionary anticommunism of the junior Senator from
Wisconsin (Joseph McCarthy) rather than the mechinations of the Bishop
of Rome.

Matt O'Brien

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: anti-RC rhetoric

from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

A good example of ant-Catholicism appears in the NY Times today-- it's a
historical retrospective by Rob Kennedy. He has them everyday -- using
Harper's Weekly (it was the TIME magazine of the era). Note that
anti-Irish themes are (almost) absent. But there's plenty of religion,
gender & class.

http://nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0320.html

EXTRACT BEGINS>>>
On March 20, 1869, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about women and
the Roman Catholic Church: "Two Girls of the Period" This unsigned
Harper's Weekly cartoon criticizes the relationship between the Roman
Catholic Church and women.

>>Ritualistic Priest. "There, my Child, observe that Example of
Humility and Devotion. How sweet to change the Vanities of the World for
a Lot so Humble!" Fashionable Convert. "Oh, but that is not at all what
I expected!--and wear such Awful Shoes? and--oh, really, on second
thoughts, I shall stick to Fifth Avenue.">>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The Irish-Diaspora list will go quiet over the coming weekend. I am off
to Edinburgh
For the conference...

MILITARY ACTIVITY IN THE NORTH IRISH SEA WORLD:
CONTEXT AND RESPONSE, c. 1100- c. 1750

http://www.celtscot.ed.ac.uk/news.htm#Conference

Perhaps see some Ir-D members there?

Keep those Competition entries coming in...

A Title, A Sentence, to comp[at]irishdiaspora.net.

Paddy


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Personal Fax 0044 (0) 709 236 9050

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 18

from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

I did read William Mulligan's essay in New Hibernia Review/
5#4 (2001) 109-122 -- it's online via Project Muse.

His article dealt with Irish Catholic copper miners in
remote Upper Peninsula Michigan in the 1860s. The main
point relates the hillarious story of the St Patrick's day dance in
1865. Seems Father Sweeney, the very corrupt Irish priest had forbade
the dance (because of Lent). It was held anyway and Sweeney showed up
with a horsewhip and physically attacked the guests. The local
newspaper ferociously attacked the priest, while defending and honoring
the Irish. Mulligan emphasizes how the editor over and over again
misspelled the priest's name as Sweeny, proving the depth of his
anti-Irish prejudice. Yes, I agree that it's a pretty good measure of
just how little anti-Irish sentiment there was.

The community by the way had just elected an Irish Catholic
as sheriff--along with the county judge the most powerful office there.
The episode showed the editor disliked the Catholic priesthood (echoing
standard anti-RC themes), but had a high regard for the Irish community
as a whole. Mulligan presented no evidence of job discrimination, nor
evidence the Irish ever complained about job discrimination.

In his posting Mulligan says one mine owner in the 1890s was angry with
the Irish as staunch unionists and talked about reducing their hiring.
In 1971 I wrote a chapter on this issue in 1894, (focused on the coal
industry, with only a glance at the Upper Peninsula) in The Winning of
the Midwest. I identified an emerging hostility between the Irish and
the newer ethnics, which led the Irish to form strong unions and to
demand restriction on immigration. The AFL, controlled by the Irish
Catholics, was the major force--by far--for immigration restriction for
decades.

From: "Richard Jensen"
Subject: Polish Joke

WALL STREET JOURNAL 3-24-03

A Seriously Funny Comedy

By TERRY TEACHOUT

Anyone, so the saying goes, can write the first act of a play -- it's
the last act that does you in. David Ives has heretofore finessed this
problem by specializing in one-act comedies in which he pulls the rug of
reality out from under his hapless characters and watches with glee as
they stagger and lurch. By his own admission, he is "not very fond of
writing full-length plays," and though two evenings of his surrealistic
sketches, "All in the Timing" and "Mere Mortals and Others," have had
solid Off-Broadway runs, he's never had much luck with more ambitious
projects. Now, though, Mr. Ives's luck is about to change, for the
Manhattan Theatre Club's production of "Polish Joke," a two- act play
about the misadventures of a self-hating Polish-Catholic seminarian from
Chicago's South Side, is pulverizingly funny from snout to tail.

Fresh Take on an Old Theme

"Polish Joke," which opened Tuesday at City Center's Stage II, is a
fresh take on one of the oldest of theatrical themes. Second-generation
Americans have been grappling on stage and on screen with the question
of assimilation ever since "Abie's Irish Rose," and Jasiu Sadlowski
(Malcolm Gets), who is struggling to break free from the stranglehold of
his heritage, is cut from broadly similar cloth. Warned by his godfather
(Richard Ziman) that "all Polish jokes are true" and that the only way
for a Pole to get anywhere is to "impersonate somebody who is not
Polish," he changes his name to John Sadler, drops out of the seminary
to become a novelist, dates a rich Jewish girl (Nancy Bell), even tries
to pass himself off as Irish. Naturally, none of it works, and Jasiu
finally learns that the only thing worse than being Polish is trying to
pretend you're not.

Described this way, "Polish Joke" sounds rather like "My Big Fat Greek
Wedding," only with an IQ of 200. But instead of turning out a
conventionally carpentered three-act Problem Play, Mr. Ives has
structured his loosely autobiographical tale as a series of related
sketches, a set of picaresque variations on a comic theme -- and it
works, not least because of his uncanny ear. I laughed so hard at
Jasiu's encounter with a cliche- spewing Irish travel agent (Nancy
Opel) that I thought I might rupture myself: "Sure, isn't the breeze
today as fine and lovely and grand and blessed as the first good fart
after a plate o' cooked cabbage?"

It isn't news that Mr. Ives is funny. What is
surprising about "Polish Joke" is the sustained intensity of its
heartfelt moments, especially the vignette in which Jasiu tells his
urbane priest-professor (Walter Bobbie) that he has lost his vocation
and is dropping out of the seminary. Typically, Mr. Ives detonates one
of the show's biggest punchlines in mid-scene. Asked if he ever had any
doubts about his own calling, the priest replies, "Well, there are those
Saturday nights when it's just you and the pastor singing 'The Mikado'
together in the rectory. Times like that, you start to wonder." (Mr.
Bobbie puts a wicked spin on this line.) But instead of shying away from
the emotion of the moment and vanishing into an inky cloud of
one-liners, Mr. Ives plays it to the hilt, screwing up the tension in
such a way as to leave no doubt of his underlying seriousness of
purpose. For "Polish Joke," like every first-rate comedy, is really
about the human condition -- the ethnic joke as metaphor for man's fate
- -- and the louder you laugh at its verbal skyrockets, the closer you'll
come to crying at evening's end.

The five-person cast, egged on by director John Rando, tears through the
script like a bullet train, and the effect is crisp and exhilarating.
Mr. Rando, of course, won a Tony last year for "Urinetown," which I
happened to see for the first time a few weeks after 9/ 11. I still
remember the rush of relief I felt as I shook off my fears and
surrendered myself to that delicious show. New Yorkers were sorely in
need of laughter back then, and I dare say they will need it no less in
the coming days, for which reason we owe a great debt to Mr. Ives. Alas,
"Polish Joke" is set to play only through April 20, so go while you can
- -- but cross your fingers. The Manhattan Theatre Club has a good thing
going, and I hope it changes its mind and lets it run and run and run.

From: "William Mulligan Jr."
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D QUERY Cross-posting `No Irish'?

I agree with your decision.

Bill Mulligan

- -----Original Message-----
Subject: Ir-D QUERY Cross-posting `No Irish'?

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

....
>In any case the wishes of the original writer are to be respected.

>It would be nice if the work of the Irish-Diaspora list gets mentioned
somewhere along the line - but it is not essential.

I think that that remains the policy. Members of the Irish-Diaspora
list post messages to Ir-D with the expectation that they are posting
messages to a closed, moderated list. Our messages are NOT displayed in
a publicly available, searchable database. H-Ethnic and all the H-Net
Discussion Logs are publicly available, and are posted on a web site.
People use different forums in different ways - messages to Ir-D can be
more personal and unguarded. We cannot give guarantees of course - the
Internet is not like that, and the Irish-Diaspora list remains a
semi-public forum.

Members of the Irish-Diaspora list who are happy for their recent
messages to be distributed further can contact...

Richard Jensen
John McClymer

Or they will be contacting you.

Paddy

From: "William Mulligan Jr."
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D `No Irish' 16

My own work on the Irish in Michigan's Copper Country between 1845
and 1920 does not support any of the points made by Prof. Jensen, except
that he has not found a contemporary reference to a NINA sign. I've not
found any in print either, but I never really looked. A bit more on
that later. My grandmother used to refer to signs that said, "Apartment
for Rent, No Irish, No Dogs"when she was growing up (1890s in New York
City). Why she would make something like that up, I don't know, but I've
never seen one of those either. Jensen's research on job ads is not
persuasive. Discriminatory practices need not be advertised to exist.
Further, his sample of newspaper on the internet is neither random or
representative -- or at least is not established as either when it needs
to be both. This is a serious methodological weakness in his case, it
seems to me. The internet is great, but relatively few
nineteenth-century papers are on line -- would that more were. His
findings seem to me to be a product of his research design much more
than they reflect the reality of the lives of Irish immigrants in the
nineteenth century.

During the 1860s the Copper Country newspapers were full of negative
stereotypes of Irish residents, damned with faint praise those Irish who
succeeded and provided general news coverage that stressed negative
aspects of life among the local Irish community. I discuss much of this
in my article in New Hibernia Review Vol 5, no. 4. There was a great
deal of animosity towards the Irish as Irish and as Catholic -- there is
no similar treatment of the German Catholic population or French
Canadians, who were almost entirely Catholic. It is clear that to be
Irish was to be Catholic in the eyes of the newspaper editor and the
community. Those people of Irish birth who were Protestant for whom I
have found biographical sketches in period publications clearly identify
themselves as of Scots or British ancestry. In 1865, in an incident I
discuss at length in my article, letters to the editor and editorial
comment make clear that there was prejudice against the Irish in the
community, despite the appearance of acceptance. In fact, animosity and
discrimination against the Irish seems to have increased between the
1840s and the 1860s, not declined as Prof. Jensen's findings would
suggest. In 1887, the president of the Quincy Mining Company, one of the
largest employers in the region, instructed the mine managers to hire
fewer Irish. This was related to his view that the Irish were active in
the Knights of Labor and a potential source of labor trouble, granted,
but the Irish are referred to as a nationality in his letter. Union
members are not specified, he refers to the Irish. Animosity towards
Irish Catholics was not clearly decreasing over time and was equally
clearly not gone by 1870 in the Copper Country.

I am also not sure Prof. Jensen's case will hold up in the larger
society either. The Society for the Preservation of New England
Antiquities was founded in 1905 in Boston -- the year John Francis
"Honey Fitz" Fitzgerald was elected Mayor -- and defined the end of the
New England history that needed preservation as the year the first large
group of Irish Catholic immigrants arrived. This hardly seems to fit
with the idea that anti-Irish sentiment was largely gone by 1870. I am
sure other members of the list can add evidence to support the view that
prejudice against the Irish was more extensive and longer lived than
Prof. Jensen maintains.

Regarding the NINA signs, part of my work is in the area of history
and memory. Even if the NINA signs are a myth, and I am not ready,
based on the evidence Prof. Jensen has presented so far, to concede that
point, we need to ask ourselves why that myth been so enduring. The
explanation in his article is not compelling and seems to largely
involve blaming the victim because Prof. Jensen has decided that there
has not been discrimination. Therefore there must be some other
explanation. While it is hard to separate anti-Catholicism from
anti-Irish sentiment because the two are so intertwined in the US after
the 1840s doing so may be trying to split something that cannot be
split. Their Catholicism, an especially militant Catholicism, was a key
factor in anti-Irish sentiment, especially as the Irish came to dominate
the hierarchy of the Church. It is also hard to accept based on the
evidence Prof. Jensen presents that the widely held memory of
discrimination in housing and employment among Irish Americans is not
based on some reality of discrimination. I certainly heard about it
growing up, was warned about it, and know, from first-hand experience,
that Irish Catholics faced negative stereotyping in the 1970s in New
England in at least one university's history graduate program. That
Irish Americans eventually overcame these negative views should not
diminish their reality. I join Kirby Miller in wondering about the
purpose of Prof. Jensen's article. It pushes its evidence far beyond
what it can reasonably support. It seems to have a mean spiritedness
and confrontational tone -- as do many of Prof. Jensen's posts -- that
one seldom sees in scholarly articles or list serves. This last is an
observation, not a complaint, by the way.

William H. Mulligan, Jr.
Professor of History
Murray State University

Please Note New Address: BillMulligan[at]murray-ky.net

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

This book review appeared on the H-Catholic list...

2 points of interest... The suggestion that the English-speaking
(Irish) Catholic bishops were prepared to sacrifice French language
education, in order to protect English language Catholic education...
The notion of 'diaspora studies' used 'provocatively...'

P.O'S.


- -----Original Message-----
H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Catholic[at]h-net.msu.edu (March 2003)

Pellegrino Stagni. _The View from Rome: Archbishop Stagni's 1915
Reports on the Ontario Bilingual Schools Question_. Translated with
Introduction by John Zucchi. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queens
University Press, 2002. i + 131 pp. Notes and index. $65.00 (cloth),
ISBN 0-7735-2347-2.


Reviewed for H-Catholic by Mel Piehl , Professor of
History and Humanities, Christ College, Valparaiso University

Two Languages, One Faith

The phrase "bilingual education" has become a political hot button in
the United States in recent years, but there is nothing recent about the
issue in Canada, for obvious reasons. Controversy over single or dual
language education is deeply rooted in the country's history as a
federation of largely English-speaking provinces with French-speaking
Quebec. And it was probably inevitable that such an
educationally-oriented institution as the Catholic Church would share in
this feature of Canadian history.

A touchstone of this controversy for Canadian Catholics was the "Ontario
schools question" of the early twentieth century, when Francophone
Catholics vigorously protested against what they saw as an English-only
policy being imposed on Ontario's Catholic schools, where growing
numbers of migrants from Quebec were enrolled. This volume contains
John Zucchi's English translation of two 1915 reports sent to Rome by
the Vatican's Apostolic Delegate to Canada, Archbishop Pellegrino
Stagni, along with Zucchi's fifty-page introduction. It also reprints
Pope Benedict XV's 1916 letter to Canadian bishops, _Commisso
divinitus_, which punctuated the controversy, even if it did not end it,
by appealing for Christian unity and charity on all sides.

By far the most valuable part of this work is Zucchi's substantial
introduction. More than simply introducing Stagni's reports, it
constitutes, in effect, a wonderfully concise history of the whole
Ontario controversy within the context of Canadian religious and ethnic
history. While Zucchi, at times, alludes to earlier specialized accounts
of the affair as if they were common knowledge, or should be, all but
the most narrowly engaged expert will find Zucchi's own informed
analysis a sufficiently thorough summary and convincing interpretation
of the event.

Though long smoldering, the controversy was essentially ignited when a
1912 report of the Ontario Department of Education revealed that a large
number of Ottawa's tax-supported Catholic parochial schools, serving
migrants from Quebec and largely staffed by French-speaking religious
orders from that province, were conducting instruction primarily in
French. Subsequently, a "Regulation 17" was issued requiring English
instruction, though allowing for French to be used transitionally in the
first form (Grades 1 to 3).

Zucchi effectively explains and demonstrates several things about this
episode. First, he shows that the local issue in Ontario's Catholic
schools exploded not because of any intrinsically religious issue, but
because it exposed deeper tensions regarding the ethno-linguistic
identity of Canada in general and the Canadian Catholic church in
particular. Second, he demonstrates the central role played by Ontario's
English-speaking Catholics and their bishops, primarily Irish in
background, who were determined that the church's cherished,
tax-supported religious schools not become visible targets for
anti-Catholic Canadian Protestants (especially "Orange" Irish
Protestants), which they surely would if such schools were seen as a
vehicle for sustaining a permanently French-speaking culture in Ontario.
Finally, he shows how the issue was continually agitated by Quebec
Catholic bishops, priests, and journalists, who believed that the future
linguistic and cultural identity of the Canadian church, and Canadian
society outside Quebec, was at stake. Was all of Canada and its
Catholic church really to be bilingual, or were French-speaking
Catholics only a subcultural group to be tolerated as long as they
stayed within their own province?

While showing how these issues touched raw nerves of Canadian history
and identity, Zucchi also nicely sets them within wider contexts of
Catholic history. Asking whether the demand for French Catholic schools
was "a Canadian version of Cahenslyism," he implies that Peter
Cahensly's proposal for permanent national parishes (and schools)
actually made more sense in Canada than it did in the United States,
where German Catholics lacked a true territorial base and were likely
destined to become "Anglo-American" in the long run. Zucchi also
provocatively suggests that the perspectives of "diaspora studies," in
which a scattered people retain a primary attachment to a distant "base"
that prevents complete assimilation, may be relevant to the French
Catholic experience in Canada outside Quebec.

Given the precision and suggestiveness of Zucchi's interpretive
introduction and his cogent summary of Archbishop Stagni's view of the
affair, the actual text of the Apostolic Delegate's reports to Rome,
which makes up the bulk of the book, comes as something of an
anticlimax. Stagni's reports sensibly informed the Vatican of the issues
and rightly asserted that the matter was strictly cultural and did not
involve Canada's official policy regarding Catholic parochial education,
which was exemplary. ("That God should will that in many countries known
to us in Europe there be at least similar legislation!" he exclaimed.
[p. 10]) While it is no doubt useful for a few specialists to have these
reports accessible in English, one wonders why it is necessary to put
between bound covers the full texts of what are, in essence, a pair of
bureaucratic reports to headquarters. There is, really, nothing much of
wider interest in the documents themselves that is not better summarized
and put into context by Zucchi in the introduction. And it also seems
odd to title the book _The View From Rome_, since the bulk of its
contents consists of Stagni's views of the affair presented to Rome from
his post in Ottawa.

Nevertheless, historians or others interested in the dynamics of
linguistic and cultural relations within the Catholic church in general,
or in Canadian or North American ethnic and religious matters in
particular, will find this episode and Zucchi's historical view of it
presented here illuminating. And one can hope that, in the spirit of
genuine bilingualism that Canada models at its best, this volume--or at
least Zucchi's introduction--might eventually appear in French.

Copyright (c) 2003 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits
the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From: "William Mulligan Jr."
To:
Subject: RE: Ir-D `No Irish' 19


Prof. Jensen's reply summarizes my article very selectively and
incorrectly and shows little knowledge of the specifics of the Copper
Country in the period under discussion. Knowing the particular context
of events is important, I think. Unfortunately, everything is not
on-line like my article, sometimes you have to go into an archive and
read microfilm or go through manuscript records to understand the
context of events and the particularities of a place, however remote it
might be.
I'm not sure how the remoteness of the Copper Country is
relevant at all to the discussion and also note that Prof. Jensen does
not address my comments about the methodological weaknesses in his
article. He might better address the representativeness of his sample of
newspapers and publications in terms of what was published at the time,
not what is available online, than offer partial and selective
summaries.
The Copper Country editor did not simply "honor and praise the
Irish," but only those elements within the community that had ignored
Sweeney's edict and attended the Ball, which was a benefit for the US
Sanitary Commission -- an interesting point. Further, within his
seemingly positive comments there are many more negative ones about the
Irish set forth by the editor and Prof. Jensen ignores these and the
other letter writers who vented anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiments.
The editor is against much more than Father Sweeney, who had his
problems to be sure. Although by the 1880s one of those who organized
the fateful ball referred to Sweeney as our dear pastor whom long-time
residents will remember fondly. Community history is not simple. Yes,
the county sheriff was Irish, but logically that does not mean there was
no prejudice against the Irish. It only means there were enough Irish
people in the county to elect the sheriff -- who, in the case of Edward
Ryan, was a rather remarkable individual. It does not mean that they
controlled the large corporations hired and promoted people. In the
region's economy the few large mining companies had tremendous economic
power.
The president of the Quincy Mining Company is not just "one mine
owner." Quincy was one of the largest mining companies in the area and
employed thousands of people and had employed Irish people since its
inception -- although with fewer Irish moving into supervisory positions
as time went on. It was a very successful and profitable enterprise that
dominated the local economy until well after WWII. Dismissing it as "one
mine owner"
I am also not clear how the position of the Irish within the AFL
and the views of the AFL on immigration restriction are relevant to the
discussion or support Prof. Jensen's point. A group that had overcome
prejudice and discrimination would be as likely to use whatever power
they had gained to protect their gains.

Bill Mulligan

Please Note New Address: BillMulligan[at]murray-ky.net

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of...

Catherine Boone
Administrator
Institute of Irish Studies
Queen's University Belfast

- -----Original Message-----

Institute of Irish Studies, Queen's University Belfast - News and Events
in 2003


Please see below for information on the following:
Estyn Evans Summer School Scholarship
John Fairleigh Summer School Scholarship
International Summer School
Mary McNeill Scholarship for MA Irish Studies programme
New MA (Irish Studies) programme
Forthcoming seminars


Estyn Evans Summer School Scholarship in Irish Studies, 2003
E. Estyn Evans (1905-1989) was Ireland's first professor of geography
and the first Director of Queen's University's interdisciplinary
Institute of Irish Studies, established in 1965. This scholarship is
founded in his memory.


This scholarship, which covers the cost of tuition and accommodation
(£695 in 2003) will be offered to a well-qualified student wishing to
enrol in the International Summer School in Irish Studies at Queen's
University Belfast, 21 July - 8 August 2003.


Applications will be judged by a panel on the basis of academic merit
and reasons for taking the course. The closing date for applications is
30 May 2003.


John Fairleigh Summer School Scholarship in Irish Studies, 2003
This scholarship honours the continuing work of John Fairleigh in
promoting the inclusion of Irish Studies in the curriculum of Balkan and
Baltic universities. He has published several anthologies of Irish and
Romanian literature in translation. In recognition of his dedication to
the dissemination of Irish and Romanian culture, President Emil
Constantinescu invested him in November 2000 as a Commander of the
Romanian Order of Merit.


The scholarship is available in 2003 to students following courses in
Irish Studies at Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Transylvania,
Romania. The scholarship will cover the cost of tuition and
accommodation at the Summer School, 21 July - 8 August 2003. The cost of
return economy-class flights to Belfast from Romania will be reimbursed.


Applications will be judged by a panel on the basis of academic merit
and reasons for taking the course. Closing date for applications is 30
May 2003.


International Summer School, 21 July - 8 August 2003
This three-week programme is now in it's third year and attracts
students from the US, Canada, Europe and South America.
The programme offers a unique opportunity to examine Irish history,
politics, anthropology, literature, drama, film, archaeology and art.
Teaching is combined with fieldtrips to sites of historic, political,
scientific and cultural interest in Northern Ireland. Aspects of the
conflict are also explored through meetings and dialogue with community
group leaders, local think-tank organisations, politicians and the
Police Service. The closing date is 30 May 2003.


Mary McNeill Scholarship for the MA (Irish Studies) programme
The Institute is offering this scholarship, worth £3,000 to a
US/Canadian citizen enrolling for the MA (Irish Studies) in 2003. The
closing date is 30 May 2003.


MA (Irish Studies) New Programmes for 2003
The Institute has offered a very successful MA in Irish Studies since
1987, providing the opportunity to undertake interdisciplinary study in
the broad field of Irish Studies. This programme is now being expanded
so that students entering this programme in 2003 will be able to choose
their course from several themed areas: Ireland and Politics, Culture,
Tradition and Heritage, Literature and Language, Communities and
Identities, Conflict and Power, Peoples and Place, and Religion and
Ritual. Students choose four taught modules, and undertake a
dissertation of 15,000 words in one of their chosen subjects. For this
degree we call on the expertise, not only of the Institute staff, but
also of the teaching and research staff involved in Irish Studies
throughout the university.


Seminar Programme - Remembering and Commemoration
27 February - 15 May 2003
27 March, Mark Phelan (School of Languages, Literatures and Arts, QUB)
Not so Innocent Landscapes, Representing the "Disappeared": material
absence and historical presence in David Farrell's photography


3 April, Dr Karen Murphy (Facing History and Ourselves, Boston)
Confronting the Past: the Roles of History and History Education in the
Process of Reconciliation


1 May, Dr Yvonne Whelan (Academy for Irish Cultural Heritages, UU)
Geographies of Conflict Commemoration: Interrogating the Cultural
Landscapes of Northern Ireland


Further information and application forms are available on the website
at www.qub.ac.uk/iis or from:


Catherine Boone
Administrator
Institute of Irish Studies
Queen's University Belfast
8 Fitzwilliam Street
Belfast BT9 6AW
Northern Ireland
Tel: (0) 28 9027 3386
E-mail: irish.studies[at]qub.ac.uk
www.qub.ac.uk/iis

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 20

from Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

Mulligan asks about my research design regarding anti-Irish sentiment,
and wonders if it's perfect.

As for newspaper ads, I searched (electronically) through about 20,000
of them. And found one NINA ad (which I reproduced.) I searched through
all on-line newspapers and magazines (NY Times, several local papers,
and about half the major magazines of the era, including Nation,
Atlantic, Harpers Weekly, Harpers Monthly, DeBow Review and numerous
others, together with dozens of abolitionist magazines.) I read the
standard compendia of editorials (such as Perkins on
secession.) I searched through about a million pages of popular fiction
and nonfiction. I read maybe 20 anti-Catholic books, novels and tracts
for the era, as well as hundreds of campaign speeches by politicians. I
examined probably 1500 or more cartoons (including several hundred by
Thomas Nast). I searched the Congressional Globe and the Official
Records of the Civil War. I searched through about 12 million words of
the NY Herald, Charleston Mercury and Richmond Enquirer for the Civil
War years. I browsed through the published letters, diaries and speeches
of numerous major politicians (Lincoln, Johnson, Douglas, Sherman,
Grant, Sumner, Stevens, Clay, Webster, Calhoun, Davis, Garrison, Schurz,
Hayes.) These were ordinary books, not online.) I looked at hundreds of
song-sheets (which are online) and numerous collections of Irish songs.
I listened to tapes of maybe 50 Irish songs. I watched a couple videos
on the Irish and visited about 15 museums. I did not look at any
unpublished manuscript sources, except for the incoming letters to
Abraham Lincoln (which are online). I read most of the scholarly voting
studies (on every state) and did my own analysis of election returns in
a few cities (Albany and Troy NY, and Chicago).

I also read through most of the scholarly literature in history,
sociology, political science, economics and literature that seemed to
have a bearing. I glanced through the relevant scholarship on Ireland,
England, Canada and Australia. I discussed my paper by email with about
40 scholars, debated it online on H-ETHNIC and Irish-Diaspora and other
venues, gave phone interviews to reporters, and gave a full
presentation at the New England Historical Association. I've been at
this theme for 40 years and actually enjoy this sort of research. :)

So what did Mulligan read that makes him so sure I'm wrong?

Richard Jensen rjensen[at]uic.edu

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of...

Dell F. Pendergrast
Director, George J. Mitchell Scholarships
DPENDERG[at]aol.com

The application for the 2004-2005 George J. Mitchell
Scholarships is now available on our web site (www.mitchellscholar.org).
This year the application process will be done primarily online in
partnership with the Princeton Review organization. This innovation will
eliminate an onerous, often expensive paper and mail burden on the
applicants, who are increasingly accustomed to using the Internet for
educational and personal tasks. The online application also should
significantly expedite and improve the processing at our end, something
which applicants will welcome as well. Mechanisms are deliberately built
into the system to protect the confidentiality of both applicant and
recommenders. Certain requisite materials (e.g. citizenship
documentation) still be mailed to us, but the main elements of the
Mitchell application will be done online.

As can happen with introduction of any new procedure, questions
almost certainly may arise concerning the mechanics of the online
application. Princeton Review has extensive experience with online
applications for universities, scholarships and other educational
programs. Their contact information is provided on our web site and
they have pledged prompt responses to technical queries from you or
prospective Mitchell applicants at your school. Please let me you know
if there is any unresolved issue which I should explore myself.

We are proud of the swift, unprecedented progress that the George
Mitchell program has achieved in just four years with recognition among
the most prestigious and coveted graduate awards in the United States,
which the NEW YORK TIMES affirmed in its annual Education Supplement in
January. The quality of the program, however, is exhibited in the
Scholars themselves and what they are achieving while in Ireland. We
strongly encourage looking at the profiles of current and past Scholars
on our web site as well as their online reflections which highlight the
unique quality of what we like to call the Mitchell Experience.

We seek to identify outstanding young Americans who meet the
highest standards of academic excellence, leadership and community
service. We look forward to applicants from your college or university.
I will be happy to speak with you or applicants on Scholarship-related
questions not covered in the web site's FAQs. Please note that our
office address and telephone number have changed.


Dell F. Pendergrast
Director, George J. Mitchell Scholarships
2800 Clarendon Boulevard, Ste 502
Arlington, VA 22201
Tel. (703) 841-5843

From: "Richard Jensen"
To:
Subject: Re: Ir-D `No Irish' 23

oops
if you use
http://www.newspaperarchive.com

try searching on >
rather than >

RJ