By the 1850s, Americans were inclined to solve social problems locally rather than at the national level. Across the ocean, Great Britain's lean toward central government solutions was likewise well pronounced. The event that snaps this into focus is the massive immigration of the Irish to the United States and England in the mid-nineteenth century.
That's one conclusion from Receiving Erin's Children: Philadelphia, Liverpool and the Irish Famine Migration, 1845-1855, by J. Matthew Gallman, professor of history at Gettysburg College in Gettysburg, PA. The book, to be published in May by the University of North Carolina Press, examines the responses of an American city, Philadelphia, and a British metropolis, Liverpool, to the waves of Irish immigrants caused by the great potato blight.
"The difference in the responses of the two cities is one of degree," cautions Gallman, noting that both Philadelphia and Liverpool used a combination of solutions to counter the problems of disease, hunger, overcrowded housing, and unemployment that arose from the migration.
Nonetheless, "Americans, and certainly Philadelphians, rarely looked beyond local government for assistance, or even guidance, in addressing urban social problems," says Gallman. In Liverpool, however, "England's central government repeatedly played a crucial role in molding local decision-making."
The potato famine in the late 1840s killed an estimated one million Irish, a ninth of the population. Between 1845 and 1855, 1.5 million Irish came to America to escape starvation. Another 600,000 went to England. When the Irish landed in cities such as Philadelphia and Liverpool they quickly overtaxed the available resources for health care, housing and other social needs. By 1850, 72,000 Philadelphians were Irish immigrants comprising nearly 18 percent of the population. At the same time, 84,000 Irish immigrants were in Liverpool, making up 22 percent of the population.
Volunteerism is one area where Gallman found Americans more active.
"Philadelphians repeatedly demonstrated a greater commitment to volunteerism than their Liverpool counterparts," he says. "Although Philadelphia had less visible poverty than Liverpool, the City of Brotherly Love supported a greater and more diverse array of philanthropic societies and benevolent institutions." There was some philanthropy to help the immigrants in Liverpool, also, Gallman notes, but "benevolent-minded Liverpudlians responded...by funneling donations through a centralized committee of elected officials."
Disease became a problem as weakened and sick immigrants found shelter wherever they could. In Philadelphia, sanitary officials relied on complaints from neighbors to find nuisances such as unemptied privys. In Liverpool, by contrast, sanitary agents prowled the streets looking for violators.
The Irish immigrants were not received eagerly in either city.
"The newcomers," Gallman says, "were associated with disease, poverty, unsanitary habits, intemperance and what the English Protestants called `popery.' The hostility toward Irish Catholic immigrants in the two cities was really more alike than different."
There were conflicts in both cities over religion in the schools. Powerful Protestant associations were formed, and there was sectarian violence. Indeed, Philadelphia in the 1840s had the reputation of being the number one city in the U.S.--in its level of gang violence. Civic embarrassment over this distinction led Philadelphia by mid-century to develop one of America's best police forces.
The challenges that Liverpool and Philadelphia faced as a result of the Irish immigration were similar but not identical. Liverpool received more desperately poor Irish than Philadelphia did, for example, because the poorest simply couldn't afford the fare to America. Nonetheless, Gallman says that enough comparisons exist to be able to draw conclusions.
"Twentieth-century developments, including two world wars and the Great Depression would eventually compel Americans to re-think the role of the federal government in everyday life.," Gallman notes. "But in certain fundamental ways the die had been cast by the 1850s, establishing the presumption, for better or worse, that (American) social problems should, whenever possible, be addressed by state and local governments on conjunction with voluntary efforts."
For more information, contact Matt Gallman at 717-337-6569 (office) or e-mail him at [email protected].
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