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Chicago's New Immigration
Chicago is a great
example of the mass immigration that came to America
during the second half of the 19th century. Immigrants
were attracted to growing northern cities where
they could find work as cheap laborers, servants,
and peddlers, and Chicago became a popular destination.
Irish: The
Irish first came to Chicago in 1836 where they helped
build canals and worked in factories and meatpacking
plants. Between 1850 and 1870, Chicago's Irish population
grew from 6,096 to a vast 400,000. These immigrants
flocked to America in escape of the famous potato
famine that struck Ireland in the mid 1840s. In
Chicago, the Irish were deeply enthralled in Catholicism,
as well as local politics. The local parish played
a key role in the daily lives of the Irish, providing
for religious needs, as well as providing aid to
the poor and unemployed. The church organized youth
clubs and created a Catholic school system. Building
a parochial school system was of utmost importance
to the Irish as they wanted to ensure their children
would be taught the Catholic philosophy. They also
worked hard to build these schools because they
believed the public school system was too Protestant.
The Irish were highly
active in politics. In 1890, the Irish comprised
seventeen percent of the population, but held twenty-three
of the sixty-eight seats on the city council. Most
Irish were Democrats, and played heavily into machine
politics, selling votes to entrepreneurs and mastering
the art of election fraud, advising voters to vote
early and often! As mentioned before, most Irish
worked as manual laborers, but a disproportionate
amount of Irish worked as watchmen, firemen, and
policemen. When the Irish immigrated to the United
States they came to stay, and committed themselves
wholeheartedly to America. But, despite their American
patriotism, the Irish were a very cohesive ethnic
group, and dealt with discrimination in the form
of anti-catholic crusades and riots. During the
20th century the Irish became completely emerged
into the larger society, but a nucleus of ethnic
conscious Irish still exist in Chicago today.
Jews: The presence
of Jewish Chicagoans dates back to 1838, when Jacob
Gottlieb arrived and took the role as the first
Jewish resident of Chicago. Gottlieb was a German
Jew, as were most of the early Jewish immigrants
to Chicago. There were two main groups of Jewish
immigrants to America, the German Jews, and the
Eastern European Jews. Prior to 1880, a Jewish immigrant
was most likely Bavarian, Prussian, Bohemian, Polish,
or Austrian (which are all German-speaking). These
Jews left Europe because of restrictions, and came
to America in hopes of finding greater freedom.
The majority of German Jews settled on the East
Coast, but some came to Chicago, and throughout
the mid-1800s Chicago's Jewish population flourished.
Throughout the nineteenth century German Jews enjoyed
much success and as a result achieved rapid economic
advancement and upward mobility.
In 1880, the mass
exodus of Eastern European Jews to America began.
Two million Jews came from Russia, Romania, Poland,
and Austria-Hungary, fleeing a variety of political,
social, and economic persecutions. Between 1815
and 1914, Russia issued more than 1,000 decrees
regulating Jewish religious and communal life, economic
activities, education, and property rights. These
rules culminated into official progroms that made
the exodus out of Russia all but mandatory. In Chicago,
the Eastern European Jews crowded into the near
Westside, living in terribly crowded housing. They
found work in the garment trades filling the need
for cheap, unskilled labor.
The experiences of
Jews in Chicago highly depended on where and when
they arrived, but it is safe to say that the German
Jews that arrived earlier in the century found much
greater success than their Eastern European counterparts
who arrived later.
Italians: Like
the Jews, there were two movements of Italians to
Chicago, the first beginning around mid-century,
and the other movement beginning in the 1880s. Chicago's
Italian community was founded by Northern Italians,
and they dominated it until the 1880s. The early
Northern-Italians came with their families and worked
at skilled or semi-skilled jobs, or found employment
in service and trade occupations. Some became saloonkeepers,
fruit, candy or ice cream vendors, barbers or restaurant
owners and workers. Few of the early Italian immigrants
worked as unskilled laborers.
Southern Italians
started to arrive in Chicago in 1884. In contrast
to the northern Italians, the new immigrants usually
came without their families and were unskilled.
They arrived knowing no English, and had no contacts,
so they immediately looked for an intermediary to
help them get settled. This is how the Padrone system
started. The Padrone acted as an intermediary and
labor boss, collected a fee, and found the immigrants
work. The work the Italians found was low paying,
so they often lived in poverty. To help cope with
the hard times the immigrants made their parish
a major part of their daily lives.
Italian communities
survived through the Great Depression, and immigrants
continued to arrive in the 1930s. The Italians began
to integrate during the twentieth century, and large
numbers moved away from Chicago and into the suburbs.
Greeks: Many
Greeks joined the flood of new immigrants coming
to the United States at the close of the 19th century.
With the fall of Constantinople in 1453, the Turks
went on to conquer Greece, marking the beginning
of 400 years of harsh rule. In 1821 the Greeks won
back their independence, but it came with less territory
and citizens than they had hoped for. Hostility
and warfare continued between Greece and Turkey,
forcing many Greeks to emigrate to America. In addition
to the strife, crop failures, floods and other natural
disasters motivated Greeks to leave their homeland.
America was a natural destination due to its high
demands for unskilled labor, and also because the
United States supported Greece during their war
for independence. Missionary societies traveled
to Greece to help during their war, and many Americans
brought back and raised Greek children orphaned
by the war. Early Greek immigration was dominated
by men who wanted to earn money and return to Greece.
Nine tenths of all Greek immigrants in the 1890s
were men, and one third of them returned to Greece.
Many Greeks gravitated to the large cities in the
north, with Chicago attracting the most. Through
WWII, Chicago was home to the largest Greek community
in America. Most Greeks arrived in America with
no liquid assets, so they went to work in factories
or on the railroad. Some became apprentices and
eventually established their own businesses. The
first permanent Greek community was founded in the
Delta. This community equipped itself with churches,
schools and Greek-language newspapers. As the number
of Greek immigrants grew, eventually they dispersed
to all parts of the city.
The Irish, Jews, Italians,
and Greeks were not the only immigrants to come
to Chicago during the second half of the 19th century,
but their stories are typical and representative
of most immigrants who came during this era. Other
notable groups to immigrate during this period were
the Ukrainians, Poles and Swedes who, like thier
counterparts, came in search of greater opportunities.
Because the northern cities were industrialized,
they attracted new immigrants, and places like Chicago
became great centers of ethnic culture helping to
shape America into what it is today. |
