Posted on 07/17/2005 12:59:04 PM PDT by Chi-townChief
Irish Catholics in America have a vibrant memory of humiliating job discrimination against their menfolk, which featured omnipresent signs proclaiming "Help Wanted--No Irish Need Apply!” These ads were supposedly aimed at non-Irish men: we have a job and if you are English or German or anything but Irish come in and apply. Today anyone can buy fake NINA signs on Ebay (the fakes are all dated Sept 11, 1915, by the way.) No historian, archivist or museum curator has ever been able to find a genuine NINA signs, nor a newspaper report or court case, nor even a recollection of a particular sign in a particular store. That’s because the signs did not exist. They are as real as leprechauns. Thanks to computerized data bases historians can now search through million of pages of newspapers, including the want ads. Since its start in 1851 the daily New York Times published exactly one NINA ad for males: a livery stable in Brooklyn in 1854 advertised for a teenage boy who could write, and NINA. No one can find NINA want ads for men in the other major newspapers that can be searched (such as the Brooklyn Eagle, Los Angeles Times, and Washington Post, nor in the numerous small town papers). The market for female household workers occasionally specified religion or nationality. Newspaper ads for women sometimes did include NINA, because a small proportion of hiring women (less than 10%) were reluctant to have a Catholic inside their home. Irish women nevertheless dominated the market for domestics because they provided a reliable supply of an essential service.
So where did the myth come from and why has it endured? The slogan was commonplace in upper class London by 1820—referring to English disdain for Irish Protestants (not Catholics). In 1862 in London there was a song, "No Irish Need Apply," purportedly by a maid looking for work who found such a sign in a window. The song reached America and was modified to depict a man recently arrived in America who sees a NINA ad and confronts and beats up the culprit. The song was an immediate hit, and is the source of the myth. The history was aural, not visual, based on imagination not actual discrimination.
Were the Irish Catholics actually discriminated against in the American job market? Statistical data from numerous census sources shows no measurable discrimination against them. It is of course possible that a particular firm here or there refused to hire Irish, but not a single example of that has actually been discovered. Railroads—the biggest employers in the 19th century-- insisted they did not discriminate and research into payroll records shows the Irish were promoted at the same rate as other ethnics. By contrast discrimination against Blacks, Chinese, and (in the early 20th century) Italians and Poles is readily apparent in the census data. We have direct evidence that major employers eagerly sought out Irish workers and borrowed millions to build factories and railroads that depended on Irish Catholic labor. In Northern Ireland and Britain job and housing discrimination against Irish Catholics was a reality, not a myth, to recent times. While the NINA song crossed the Atlantic, there is no evidence of any systematic or widespread job discrimination against Irish Catholic men in America. Historians can find political hostility that was based on religion (anti-Catholicism) and disgust with Irish political machines. That tension does not seem to have affected the job market. There was some hostile criticism of the Irish because of their “Papist” religion, their use of violence, and their supposed threat to democratic traditions. By the Civil War these fears had subsided. The Irish had proven their patriotism; their many churches, schools, colleges, hospitals and charitable agencies demonstrated an Irish Catholic commitment to civic betterment. The remarkable success of Irish politicians over the last 150 years affords proof that they were better than anyone else at winning the votes of non-Irish. Although there were anti-Catholic attacks on Al Smith in 1928 and John Kennedy in 1960, neither was criticized for being Irish. Indeed no major politician in America (outside a few in the deep South like Tom Watson) ever made anti-Catholicism or anti-Irish arguments part of his platform. There never were laws to exclude Irish immigrants because they were in fact needed and welcomed. The immigration restriction movement of the 1890-1930 period was led by Irish-controlled labor unions, and did not target the Irish in any way.
The Irish were not individualists. They worked in gangs in job sites they could control by force. The NINA slogan told them they had to stick together against the Protestant Enemy, in terms of jobs and politics. The NINA myth justified physical assaults, and persisted because it aided ethnic solidarity. After 1940 the solidarity faded away, yet NINA remained as a powerful memory--Senator Ted Kennedy "remembers" seeing the signs when he was growing up in a highly sheltered environment in the late 1930s.
That's why we're such good fighters. With our tempers, we better learn to back it up quickly.
They we drink and laugh about the fight afterward. :)
As a REAL PADDY...that pisses me off like NOTHING else.
Bravo I T!
Kellynla, turns a blind eye to the indigenous terrorism that the real patriots (the people who decided to LIVE in Eire as opposed to those who decided to piss off to America) have to live with!
I believe the signs were "Irish and dogs need not apply"
And how many wars have you fought in, missy?
None?
That's what I thought!
Let us all know when you enlist, will ya. LMAO
Really?
You're sh*tting me?
You only mention this in every other post of yours, it seems.
You also seem to take umbrage with your American cousins, who dare express ancestral pride, in every other post of yours. In this thread, it's two successive posts that you've gratuitously colored with scorn for us.
No one who posted on this thread mentioned turf, Riverdance, and soda bread, so why the attitude?
Who are you to deny what did or didn't happen to the Irish in America?
I've mentioned this to you before, but it bears repeating - the Republic would be a far different place today, and might not even exist, were it not for the scattered Irish you so disdain.
I suggest a couple pints, relax, and drop the nasty attitude (or might it be envy?) you have about our Irish ancestry who had the balls to seek bigger and better opportunity abroad.
My comments were based on the number of reesponss. No one has more respect for the power of the free market or contempt for centrl planning than me, but the 'starve b*tch' crowd was the most numerous in posting.
It's not!!! I want to visit Ireland in the next few years, and I firmly expect to see all the things you say aren't there anymore. No leprechauns!!!! Sheeeesh!
A rewrite of history?
Patriots, as compared to nationalists - Eoghan Harris (another real patriot) described nationalism as the "thin wedge of fascism".
No wonder Mark Dooley described him (along with Conor Cruise O'Brien) as a 'moral titan' in last Sunday's Sunday Independent Life magazine.
Note to kellynla: Mark Dooley, Conor Cruise O'Brien and Eoghan Harris not only are opponents of the IRA - they also support the Iraq War. The War on Terror does not end on Irish soil!
A pic from a recent Norwegian Day parade held in Bay Ridge.
There aren't too many Scandinavian people still living there, though you what you do find are a lot of interesting flags that remain on the main thoroughfares.
My father had a Norwegian or Swedish uncle-I forget which-who was a metalwoker for many, many years.
According to his description, the guy "looked like a character from On The Waterfront."
He lived in Sunset Park.
He's one of the few European leftists who has a margin of sanity and whose views a decent conservative can respect, in my estimation.
Which makes it all the more shocking that he'd allow his publications in the United States to spout such a consistently apologetic line with regard to the crimes committed by the Provos, and their mouthpieces in Sinn Fein.
What's that all about?
:(
here's a link where he call Mark Thatcher a 'terrorist' - a crook yes (to the disgrace of his great mother), but a terrorist, no.
http://www.irishabroad.com/news/irishinamerica/editperiscope/keepthisterroristout.asp
I know Nordic Delicacies is still on Third and 69th (?). They have a nice website too.
Remember how we suffered in this country, miho! One whole family living all together in a four bedroom house! Hay que lastima!
Can I have my reparations check now?
Su pobre hermano Guillermo
I'll have to check out that website in the future.
Hyperbolic doesn't begin to describe that piece.
First of all, I think that the analogy he tries to draw peters out very rapidly, once you realize that there aren't any valid points of comparison between Great Britain-a parliamentary democracy-and Equatorial Guinea-a tin-horn dictatorship that exists simply for the purpose of serving as a huge oil spigot for Western nations.
Secondly, the only "terrorist" in this situation is the man sitting at the head of government in Zimbabwe, who's been practicing or sponsoring terror-in one form or another-against the Ndebele, Afrikaners and other white farmers, along with their black workers, the poor wretches subjected to unspeakable atrocities-by troops bankrolled by Mugabe-in the Congo, the victims of premeditated murder-in addition to other heinous crimes-as a result of the campaign of terror waged by Joseph Kony and the Lord's Resistance Army in the country of Uganda, political opponents and dissidents such as Morgan Tsvangarai, and now, hundreds of thousands of urbanites who've already been impoverished by Mugabe's misrule, and are now having their homes callously ripped away from them, exposing them to God knows what.
Finally, I can't tell you how infuriated I am whenever someone refers to an "undocumented immigrant," or less frequently but equally enraging, "migrant."
They're illegal aliens!!!
Personally, I don't care if Niall O'Dowd feels compelled to defend the interests of people who flagrantly violate our laws simply because they happen to come from Ireland.
My own position is that anyone who has been here for years, and hasn't gone through the proper channels to procure U.S. citizenship-despite numerous opportunities-doesn't deserve that honor.
-good times, G.J.P. (Jr.)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.