THE polyglot character of the population of New York State is not a recent development. When the Empire State was still New Netherland, the Colony already had representatives of a dozen European nationalities. The first settlers of Fort Orange, now Albany, were French-speaking Walloons. Rensselaerswyck, the great patroonship on the Hudson, recruited its leaseholders from among the Norwegians, Danes, Germans, Scots, and Irish as well as Hollanders. English from Connecticut settled in the lower Hudson Valley in 1642, and others from the same colony and from Massachusetts Bay established themselves in the eastern half of Long Island. On Manhattan the pioneer Dutch element was soon swamped under a babel of tongues, races, and creeds, which included a group of 23 Jewish voyagers, come to New Amsterdam from Brazil. In 1644 Father Isaac Jogues was informed that 18 different languages were represented in the population of Manhattan and its environs.
After the British took over New Amsterdam in 1664, large numbers of English and Welsh arrived and settled on the southern tip of Manhattan and on Staten Island. Labor scarcity and high wages encouraged the importation of Negro slaves; by 1700 New York had 6,000 slaves in a total population of 40,000.
The largest mass migration of the Colonial period was that of the German Palatines, a small group of whom settled on the site of Newburgh in 1708–9. Two years later the British Government, adopting the plan of Governor Robert Hunter, subsidized the settlement of about 2,000 of them in the Hudson Valley to produce pitch, tar, and turpentine; but the entire undertaking was badly handled. After they were thrown on their own resources in September 1712, most of the settlers remained in the Hudson Valley, some of them on the Livingston estate; others scattered to New Jersey and Pennsylvania; and several hundred settled in the Schoharie and Mohawk Valleys, extending the New York frontier westward and northward.
Generally speaking, immigration into the Province of New York during the first half of the eighteenth century was discouraged by the threat of French and Indian raids, by the wider religious freedom offered by other colonies, and by the prevailing system of large land grants to political favorites, which narrowly restricted the opportunity of new settlers to acquire title to farms. Small numbers of Scotch-Irish, Germans, and New Englanders, however, formed precarious settlements along the upper waters of the Susquehanna and the Delaware, where they bore the brunt of the Indian attacks. After the close of the French and Indian War and the Treaty of Fort Stanwix, permanent communities were established in the central part of the State.
The Revolution brought immigration almost to a standstill. The Irish welcomed the war as an opportunity to strike back at their historic oppressor; the Germans, while they fought as valiantly—witness Oriskany—did their share not so much from revolutionary zeal as from the desire to protect their farms and homes.
As soon as the peace treaty was signed, American land agents launched a vigorous publicity campaign in Europe to attract settlers. Preference was shown for the ‘bold and adventurous spirit of the Irish, Scotch and English and the patient, laborious and persevering genius of the Germans.’ British subjects traveled in American ships to circumvent the obstructions placed in the way of emigration by the employing classes in England, who saw in this ‘flagrant seduction’ a threat to their own cheap labor market. A number of Portugese, Spanish, and French refugees from oppression in the West Indies added to the variety of nationalities.
While this new influx in the labor market eased its economic justification, the institution of Negro slavery was further weakened by the aggressive denunciaton of the Quakers. In 1799 the New York State legislature provided for emancipation in easy stages. But wage labor increased rapidly, and by 1817 the sentiment against Negro bondage was so strong that even slow emancipation was no longer acceptable and the legislature was forced to pass an act, effective in 1827, prohibiting slavery in the State.
When canal-building in the twenties and thirties increased the demand for labor, experienced Irish canal-diggers responded in droves, entering the State by way of Canada as well as through the port of New York. They swung picks and shovels, lived in leaky-roofed shanties, and worshiped God with missionary priests. Although wages as low as 50¢ a day fell short of what was promised, and although in numberless cases men were defrauded of their pay and discharged without cause, it has been said that ‘the wild Irish behaved better than Revolutionary soldiers on the march.’ By 1840 they had channeled the State with 13 canals totaling more than 900 miles; and from canal-building they turned to railroad construction. But they did more than dig ditches and lay rails; they ‘were working on the foundations of three episcopal sees, were choosing sites for five hundred churches, were opening the interior of the State to the empire of religion, as well as of commerce.’
Beginning about 1840, additional hordes of Irish, fleeing the great potato famine at home, came to the American shore. Between 1847 and 1860 more than 1,000,000 Irish immigrants passed through the port of New York. Many thousands of them settled in New York City to work as teamsters, day laborers, streetcar conductors, and shipyard mechanics. Others pushed up the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys to the brick kilns at Haverstraw, the iron works and quarries at Saugerties, and the mills and factories in Albany, Troy, and Utica.
In the same period other nationals poured in from revolution-torn Europe. Italians fleeing from abortive revolts against Austria started coming as early as 1820; political refugees spilled out of Hungary and Germany by the ill-fated revolutions of 1848 came in shiploads during the fifties. In the three-year period of 1852–4, upward of 500,000 Germans landed in America.
The ebb and flow of immigration was, however, influenced by social, political, and economic conditions in this country as well as by those in Europe. During prosperous times in America the Europeans were invited, courted, and welcomed; but during periods of depression conflicts of interest and prejudice came to the surface, and the ‘foreigner’ was blamed for every misery and hardship. To the ‘native’ worker enduring a falling standard of living he was an economic threat; to the aristocracy of landlords and lawyers he was a political threat. As the Protestant newcomers were absorbed, the Roman Catholics were left in conspicuous isolation; and they therefore served as the target of the strong nativist movement in the State. In 1834 the New York Protestant Association was formed and two years later, in Brooklyn, stirred up an anti-Catholic agitation that was marked by the destruction of churches and other property of Roman Catholics. In 1843 the Native American party elected James Harper mayor of New York City, after a campaign in which crowds paraded on the streets with banners bearing the slogan ‘No Popery.’ Subsequently the party extended its activities to cover the entire State and broadened its aims to retain for the ‘native’ American his power and position threatened by immigrants schooled in European ideologies.
As successive waves of immigration broke over the State, nativism began to lose its effectiveness, despite the partial success of the Know-Nothing Party in 1852. By 1860 the two powerful nativist parties were swallowed by the Republicans and Democrats. From then on Catholics led more peaceful lives, and ‘No Irish Need Apply’ signs disappeared from employment offices. Another factor that helped to put the quietus on the nativist movement was the rise of the capitalist employer, to whom cheap labor meant more profits, and more immigrants meant more cheap labor.
Immigration during the 40 years before the World War was made up predominantly of Italians and Greeks and the peoples of the Slavic countries of eastern Europe: Poles, Lithuanians and Letts, Roumanians, Russians, and Russian Jews. These filled the steerages of westbound ships and were filtered through Ellis Island. Only the war and subsequent immigration restrictions checked what was one of the largest mass population movements in history. Many of these newcomers, especially the Italians, regarded coming to America as a temporary adventure from which they would return home with pockets full of money. Some did carry out that plan, but the vast majority became rooted in the new world.
In 1930 the foreign white stock in New York State included 3,191,549 foreign born, 3,351,491 native born of foreign parentage, and 1,133,307 native born of mixed parentage; the total comprised about 61 per cent of the population of 12,588,066. New York City has held in most cases a majority of each national group that has passed through its portals. In 1930, 73.3 per cent of its total population of almost 7,000,000 was of foreign white stock, including more than 1,000,000 Italians, almost 1,000,000 Russians, with Germans, Irish, and Poles ranging above and below the half-million mark. Cutting across national lines are 1,765,000 Jews. Besides a number of smaller white groups, there are 327,000 Negroes in the city, some 250,000 of whom live in Harlem.
Similarly in the upstate area, the national groups are heavily concentrated in the urban areas. The older Irish and German stocks are completely assimilated. The Irish have made the political field largely their own; the Germans are mechanics, brewers, and bakers; both are well represented in the professions and have played a conspicuous part in civil and commercial life.
The flood of Italian immigration reached its crest in 1907, when 300,000 passed through the port of New York. They settled mainly along the water-level route from New York City to Buffalo. In Rome they make up the bulk of mill hands employed in the large brass and copper plants. Another group, cultivating the black muckland at the city’s southern border, produce tomatoes, celery, and onions in wholesale quantities. In Utica, where they occupy a distinct district, they are principally knitting mill workers. In Syracuse they dominate the city’s north side and are employed in the steel mills, chemical plants, and clothing factories. Rochester’s 55,000 Italians, less compact as a racial group than those in other cities, work in many industries, including clothing and shoe manufacture. Buffalo’s 80,000 Italians, predominantly of Sicilian extraction, are represented in almost every type of commercial endeavor and share with the Poles the heavy labor in steel mills and iron foundries.
The Poles have always sought the centers of heavy industry like the steel mills and iron foundries in Syracuse and Buffalo. The latter city has 187,000 Poles, the largest Polish community in the State and the second largest in America. In recent years, the first full-fledged American generation of Italians and Poles has risen at a rapid pace to achievement in business, politics, and the professions.
The Russians began to come in large numbers after the Russo-Japanese War and the abortive revolution of 1905, and reached a peak in 1913. Lacking funds to go far afield, they found orientation to new conditions difficult and grasped desperately at any straw that would stave off starvation. They toiled for small pay and absorbed little of the language or customs of their adopted country. Russian Jews, on the other hand, adjusted themselves to the commercial tempo of America with amazing ease. Successive generations, educated in American schools, have attained high place in the State’s commercial, industrial, political, and professional life.
The State’s heterogeneous population is well exemplified in Binghamton, where the foreign born include 26 different ethnic types, with the Czechs and Slovaks, employed in the tanneries and the shoe factories, predominating. The local broadcasting station provides regular programs in the Slavic tongues every week. In Jamestown the residents of Swedish ancestry, who comprise 60 per cent of the population, predominate in the cabinet-making industry; they support a weekly Swedish newspaper and their restaurants specialize in Swedish cuisine. The French-Canadians have been filtering down across the line from the north for more than a century and number 83,057 in the State today, 28,955 of whom are foreign born. They are employed in paper and knitting mills, lumber camps, and factories. Sixty per cent of the population of Malone and half the population of Plattsburg and Cohoes belong to this group.
Each nationality, while attempting to keep alive its racial heritage, has contributed its share to our American culture. The Italians have been largely responsible for the addition of Columbus Day to our calendar of holidays and the delight of spaghetti to our tables. The Irish, with their genius for politics, have, since the succession of Irish governors—Dongan, Bellomont, Cornbury, Cosby—in Colonial days, played an active part in the evolution of our particular brand of democracy. The Germans, with their habit of relaxation after toil, lightened our celebration of Christmas, introduced the Christmas tree, and established the observance of gift-giving at Yuletide. Their love of music, reflected in the spread of choral groups, orchestras, and bands, has favorably affected the development of music, both vocal and instrumental. To our tables they have contributed sauerkraut, sauerbraten, frankfurters, and a general substantialness to cooking. The Syrians and Turks have given us the method of brewing thick Turkish coffee; the Greeks are famous for their ‘candy kitchens,’ an institution which no sizable town is without.
More clannish than the Italians and Germans and less influenced by American ways, the Poles have retained much of the folklore, language, and mores of their homeland. Business places in Polish communities display signs such as ‘Apteka,’ ‘Adwokat,’ and ‘Gospoda,’ indicating occupation or trade. In the larger cities ‘little Polands’ support daily newspapers printed in the native tongue. Italians bedeck city streets with flags and bunting to celebrate Saints’ days. As always, the Jews cling to their ethnic traditions, and today our calendars are marked with their holidays.
The restriction of immigration during the past few years has given the potpourri of peoples in the State a chance to boil down to an even consistency. Racial differences have broken down considerably, and today men and women whose ancestry reach back into almost every European nation partake in a common economic and political life.
