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.
The Irish farmes were sending wheat over to the British during the famine. If you took some for your family, you were a thief and some were sent away to Austrailia, never to see thier families again.
See the song "The Fields of Athenry"
"Irish people"
why the redundancy?
do they call Texans, Texan people?
and where's the joke?
spit it out or refrain from the ethnic "humor"
there was and is nothing funny about the prejudice against Irish in America during the 1800's nor the genocidal deaths of millions that took place in Ireland at the hands of the Brits.
It would pay you better to concentrate on the terrorists/traitors that is the modern IRA, rather than a famine that occured 150 years ago.
Ping.
"It would pay you better to" mind your own business
In Boston or New York in the 1920s or 1930s it would have been madness for any employer or landlord to put out a "No Irish Need Apply" sign. The Irish were largely accepted by that time and were regarded as quite worthy Americans at least in the big cities.
Some Irish-Americans definitely projected the strong prejudices of the 19th century forward into the 20th century. Sometimes there was a political motivation behind it, but mostly it was folk memory. At some point people settle on what happened "in your grandfather's day." And a century later, such things still happened "in your grandfather's day."
It's not just the Irish who do this. For a long time some hotels and resorts excluded Jews. Very often they'd make a point of noting "Protestant services" or "restricted clientele." Or maybe they simply said nothing in their advertising, but people knew the hotel was restricted anyway. That's documented fact.
In later years plenty of Jews were convinced that hotels had "no dogs or Jews" signs out front. Perhaps, but it would have been much, much rarer. It would have been calling far too much attention to the practice. And by now it's hard to prove that such signs were or weren't around at the time.
Ethnic groups sometimes assume that they're more on the mind of other people than they in fact are. But making out that such things are "myths" tends to be interpreted as hostile. Maybe "misunderstandings" or "misinterpretations" gets more at what's going on. It's always somebody else's "misunderstandings" that are "myths." People are more tolerant of their own.
19th century lithographers also had a field day mocking the Irish with similar depictions.
Toys were also made mocking the Irish. Google "Mechanical Bank Paddy Pig" and you'll see pictures of one such toy.
And then there's the term "Paddy Wagon".
The article fails to touch upon the history of the Irish in New Orleans. There, Irish just off the boat fought with black slaves for the lowest of low jobs. Black slaves had value and were kept from doing dangerous jobs that might prove fatal so the Irish took them since they had no value.
My g-g-grandfather was one of those famine refugees who landed in New Orleans, busted his arse, and made something for himself, buying lots of farmland in Iowa and making real dinero.
Another g-g-grandfather left the famine behind to come build the Erie Canal, then was drafted to fight in the Civil War, and eventually farmed south of Rochester, NY.
Still another settled near Chicago to turn the Illinois River back on itself. His son, whom I'm named after, had a flourishing gas station on Rt.66 south of Chicago.
How I'd love to be able to set the Wayback Machine and have a chat with these guys, and others, who only wanted a chance to pursue the American dream sans handouts from anyone. This country owes much of its status to the Irish, who gladly took the filthiest and most dangerous job just to put food on the table and a pint in the belly.
Personally, I find mocking the Irish funny, and that's something fairly unique to Irish blood - we can laugh at ourselves while the bigots are trying to slam us.
No, what Uncle Teddy actually remembers from his younger years was the sign that said:
NO IRISH INSIDE
Referring to Bailey's Irish Cream
Uh...You're insulted that I referred to the Irish as 'people'? Congratulations, you've elevated hypersensitivity to an art form.
there was and is nothing funny about the prejudice against Irish in America during the 1800's nor the genocidal deaths of millions that took place in Ireland at the hands of the Brits
No, but it's amusing to watch you try to fight with someone who agrees with you about it.
Melloooooooooooow...
Wow! Logic! Good to see it still occasionally used on Free Republic.
...................I have no words....................
It also pays to never forget, thank you very much.
I think it is simplistic, while I am on the subject, to blame the Famine entirely on the British, I, and the rest of my countrymen are descended from people that survived the Famine - there are unanswered questions that have yet to be asked about those who neither starved or emigrated did managed to survive.
Although it's "No Irish or dogs need apply".
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