Here’s an excerpt from the book titled “Un-American Immigration: It’s Present Effects and Future Perils” published in 1894. I believe you’ll notice a striking familiarity with it’s tone. Thanks to Google for scanning this book in so we can easily access it for study.
This is just a small portion of this text, as you can see.
Here’s the link on Google: Un-American Immigration: Its Present Effects and Future Perils : a Study.
(Thank you to John Lamb for this lead.)
Discrimination against other immigrants, especially Catholics was especially virulent during the Nineteenth Century. Nineteenth century Protestant American "Nativist" prejudice against Irish Catholics reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. Much of the opposition came from Irish Protestants, as in the 1831 riots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In rural areas in the 1830s riots broke out among rival labor teams from different parts of Ireland, and between Irish and "native" American work teams competing for construction jobs.
(1854 NY Times Ad) It was common for Irish people to be discriminated against in social situations, and intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon (and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests). One response to this prejudice was the creation of a parochial school system, in addition to numerous colleges, that isolated about half the Irish youth from the public schools.[citation needed] After 1860 many Irish sang songs about signs reading "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY"; these signs came to be known as "NINA signs." (This is sometimes written as "IRISH NEED NOT APPLY" and referred to as "INNA signs"). These songs had a deep impact on the Irish sense of discrimination.
Posters compared the Irish to Blacks, who were considered an inferior race.
(Editorial Cartoon from mid-19th Century depicting "filthy Irish")
(Mid-19th Century Cartoon equating Irish and Blacks)If you liked this post, don't forget to subscribe to my RSS feeds. Or you can
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