Essay On 19th Century American Culture

In the 1800’s and first half of the 1900’s the WASP was seen as unjust and cruel by many European immigrants in America. Every single one of those terms however was necessary for full acceptance into the American mainstream: white, Anglo-Saxon (from northern Europe although the Irish are the exception) and Protestant. In the nineteenth century America was undergoing a dramatic transformation; the rise of industrialization, a massive influx of immigrants and urbanization caused racism to become a powerful force in American culture, affecting all parts of the political spectrum. American culture became obsessed with crude and cruel racial and ethnic stereotypes in literature, the arts and in the press.

Political cartoons regarding the Irish immigrants were designed to question how and if they were fit for American democracy by representing them as apes, casting doubt on if they were capable of being good and loyal citizens and intelligent

enough to vote by comparing them with similarly stereotyped images of African-Americans. Almost all of the Irish who immigrated to America were poor peasants from rural counties and illiterate. They did not have farming skills so they settled in cities; they took whatever jobs they could find and lived in slums near the ports where they arrived. Many children begged on the streets, and men often spent their money on alcohol. In the 1850s the Know-Nothing Party was founded to prevent Irish immigration because the large numbers of arrivals strained cities’ resources and many unskilled “native” American workers feared being put out of work by the Irish who were willing to work for less money. The Irish were also ostracized from American society for being Catholic. Many Protestants and “nativist” Americans were suspicious of their religion; they viewed it as questionable because people prayed to saints and statues. They feared that the Irish were under the power of the Pope and could never be patriotic Americans. Because of discrimination, the Irish-Catholic immigrants stayed together in small communities or ghettos.
The press described Irish immigrants as being mindlessly loyal to their Catholic leaders They were categorized as angry, alcoholic beings with volatile tempers, who drank all the time and had regular bar brawls; as illiterate, greedy, too clannish, and bred like rabbits.

They were also depicted as a stupid servant race not loyal to America and not willing to assimilate into the culture. These images were portrayed in the daily east coast newspapers, photographs, and other media of the time. “The Mortar of Assimilation: And The One Element That Just Won’t Mix”, published in Puck magazine on June 26, 1889, cartoon was a perfect demonstration of the nativist American view of Irish immigration to the United States. In it, the drawing shows the American melting pot made up of different kinds of Americans, but the Irishman is standing on the edge of the pot holding a knife and a flag. As anti-Irish and anti-Catholic sentiment grew, newspaper advertisements for jobs and housing routinely ended with the statement: “No Irish need

apply.”
The Irish immigration experience was unique as they were not considered a part of the “white society”, as Anglo-Saxon Americans were fearful that the Irish would turn their organizational focus toward overpowering the Anglo-Saxon American establishment. Therefore, the continual depiction of the servant class for women and the illiterate, crude and greedy men extended the view of the publisher and governmental leaders to the intended American audience.
.