Sociology 2501 - Chapter's 4, 5, 6
The Irish Americans, the Italian Americans and the Jewish Americans

The Great Movements

• Changes in agricultural movements
• Food surpluses
• Industrialization

• 1) First Great Immigration Stream (1820-1889) - W. & N. Europe
• 2) Second Great Immigration Stream (1890-1924) - S. & E. Europe
• 3) Third Great Immigration Stream (1946-present) - Latin Amer. & Asia

Chapter Four - The Irish

• The 19th Century Irish
• Potato Famine - mid 1840"s
• Poverty-stricken - "Little Dublins"
• Ruffians & brawlers - ignorant, barbaric
• Dominated the Catholic Church
• History of conflict with the English
• Great efforts to retain their ethnic community
• Women Irish - domestic servants

• 19th Century Germans
• Small farmers
• Largest ethnic minority
• Travel advertisements
• Unfamiliar with English language and traditions
• Created everything in German language
• Bilingual schools
• German Revolutionary leaders - 48er’s
• Republican party - antislavery, antibias toward foreign-borns & women’s rights

• 1871-1889 - change in national origins
• 1861-1870 - Norway & Sweden fivefold
• 1871-1880 - Norway & Sweden doubled
• 1875 - only U.S. Congress could regulate immigration
• Ellis Island, New York
• "Island of Tears"

• 1890-1924 - S. & E. Europe
• Bohemians, Bulgarians, Croatians, Greeks, Lithuanians, Moravians, Poles, Serbs, Slovaks
• Language and religion further from English
• Encouraged by labor recruiters
• Poverty-stricken peasants forced off land by industrialization

• 1890 U.S. Frontier officially closed - main jobs on railroads or factories
• 1890 - 2nd stream was the main source of workers in industrial production
• Ethnic slums developed and disease was rampant
• Promise of new life in America became a shattered dream

Chapter Five - Italian Americans

• The Italians
• Over 3 million arrived from 1890 - 1920
• Agricultural people
• 40% went into blue collar and lower white collar jobs
• Sojourners or Birds of Passage
• Few Italian women came
• Lived in housing unfit for humans
• Criminality - "Mafia" or "Cosa Nostra"
• "Little Italys" - hotbeds of crime - N. Vs S.

Chapter Six - Jewish Americans

• Jews
• Sephardim - Spain, Portugal, Holland
• Ashkenazim - German Jews became the primary force in Jewish American Life
• German Jews - Reform movement
• Itinerant peddler - foundation of America’s great department stores (Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s, Sears)
• Elite of American Jewry
• Between 1.5 - 2 million German and Russian Jews

• Italian and Russian Jews
• Russian Jews were trapped in Eastern port cities
• Did not want to assimilate
• Both were forced to work at unfamiliar jobs
• Eager to make way in politics and education
• Garment industry
• Entrepreneurs and land owners
• Jewish neighborhoods

• Immigration laws passed in 1924 closed the Golden Door
• National-origins principle - quotas
• Forces of industrialization and urbanization
• A proliferation of laws and legal agencies

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