Czech migration in the context of "old" and "new" migrations to the USA

Czech migration in the context of “old“ and “new“ migrations to the USA Conceptualising Historical Migration

Jana Slavíková 1.2.2010

Instructor: Ole J. Eide

1. 2. 2010

Jana Slavíková

Czech migration in the context of “old” and “new” migrations to the USA

Contents 1.

Introduction .......................................................................................................................... 3

2.

Atlantic Mass Migrations....................................................................................................... 3

3.

“Old” Migrations ................................................................................................................... 6

4.

“New” Migrations.................................................................................................................. 8

5.

Czech Migration .................................................................................................................. 11

6.

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................... 14

7.

Bibliography ........................................................................................................................ 15

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Czech migration in the context of “old” and “new” migrations to the USA

1. Introduction The focus of this paper is a comparison of “old” and “new” European migrations to the United States of America in the 19th and early 20th century. I would like to sum up and compare the characteristics of “old” and “new” migrations, with special attention paid to Czech migration. While the migration of Slovaks, Poles and other nationalities from central and eastern Europe (except Jews) demonstrated the characteristics of “new” migrations, I would like to point out that Czech migration was more in accord with “old” migrations, and try to examine in what respect.

The Czech Republic lies at the heart of Europe – or so we pride ourselves, anyway. Ever since the East-West divide of the Cold War, it has been associated with eastern Europe.

However, it was not always the case. At the beginning of the 20th century, Czech lands were the most prosperous industrial province of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy.

Therefore, we should not be surprised when we learn that Czech migration to the USA shared its characteristics with German rather than Slovak or Polish migrations.

The sources for this paper are mainly the obligatory literature for the course Conceptualising Historical Migration, but also “Moving Europeans” by Leslie Page Moch and “Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870 – 1914” by Walter Nugent. Concerning Czech migration, the main sources were works of Jiří Kořalka and Květa Kořalková (Basic tendencies of Czech emigration and Czech reemigration until the beginning of the 1920s) and Ivan Dubovický (Czechs in America).

2. Atlantic Mass Migrations At the beginning of the 19th century, the USA stretched from the Atlantic coast to the river Mississippi and its population was 5.3 million. By 1920, the territory had quadrupled, reaching the Pacific coast, and the population had exceeded 106 million.

(US Census Bureau) A significant part of the population growth can be attributed to immigration, which grew into unprecedented numbers that have only been matched at the turn of the new millennium (in terms of legal migration), as Figure 1 shows.

Immigration from Europe played a major role. “European emigration to America grew from the 1830s into a historic mass movement.” (Bade, 2003: 90) The number of Europeans who emigrated overseas between 1820 and 1920 is estimated at about 50-55 3

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Czech migration in the context of “old” and “new” migrations to the USA

million1. (Bade 2003: 97) At the beginning of the 20th century, immigration accounted for about a third of the United States’ population increase. (Hatton and Williamson, 1995: 27) Figure 1: Legal Immigration to the United States: Fiscal Years 1820 – 2007 (in millions)

Source: Migration Policy Institute

The increase was facilitated by changes in transport2: railways and steamships.

Travelling across and between continents thus became much faster and safer, and with heightened competition between ship-owners also cheaper. The frequency of transatlantic lines increased. At the same time, the correspondence between migrants and their relatives in Europe improved, and increasingly, migrants were able to sent home remittances or prepaid tickets. Their letters painted an enticing picture of the New World: full of opportunities, free of oppression. It was the American dream, and labour needs of the thriving American economy, that brought masses from Europe, and it was

1

Estimates differ. Moch (2003: 147) states that “about 52 million Europeans left Europe between 1860 and 1914, of whom roughly 37 million (72%) travelled to North America and 11 million to South America (21%).”

2 Improvement of transport had also another impact that increased emigration from Europe: “The railroad networks effectively created worldwide competition in agricultural products and punished the inefficient, whereupon the railroad provided a way out for the young workers made redundant by it.”

(Nugent, 1995: 84)

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Czech migration in the context of “old” and “new” migrations to the USA

transatlantic migration networks that provided new migrants with support before and after their arrival, and thus eased their transition. (Bade, 2003) Four waves can be identified in European overseas migrations in the 19th and early 20th century: 1. 1846-56, 2. 1866-75, 3. 1880-90, 4. 1900-15. Each of these waves was stronger than the previous one and while an average annual volume of emigrants in the first third of the 19th century was about 50,000 (gross), it exceeded 1,300,000 before World War I. Bade (2003) points out that this description of migration patterns might be misleading, as there were no direct “migration causes” for individual waves. On the other hand, the faltering between them may be ascribed to economic crisis in the USA or wars in Europe.

Also the structure of transatlantic migration changed over the period in question. The main changes were (Bade, 2003: 101): -

A geographical shift in the source countries – from western, central and northern Europe to southern, south-eastern, east central and eastern Europe o This shift overshadowed another trend observed by Hatton and Williamson (1998: 11) in the old emigrant countries, e.g. Britain: “In the late nineteenth century, while many still had rural roots, the emigrants from any given country were increasingly drawn from urban areas and nonagricultural occupations.”

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A shift in motivation and form – from religiously and socially motivated group migration to family rural settlement migration (land seekers) and then to individual (predominantly male) industrial labour migration (wage seekers)

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A shift in (intended) duration – from definitive to temporary or even shuttle migration (with increasing rates of return migration)

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A rise in the share of unskilled labour migration (of relatively poorer migrants) o The reason for this was not just migrants’ origin in rural areas, limited schooling and lack of training, but also their youth. (Hatton, Williamson, 1998: 11)

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3. “Old” Migrations Countries in western, northern and central Europe had a “head start along the path towards industrial age [and therefore also in transatlantic migrations] until the late 1880s”. The only exception was France, whose rate of emigration was low, probably as a result of low fertility rate3. However, differences existed not just among countries, but also within them. The “classic” home regions of nineteenth-century overseas emigration were peripheral (rural) areas of western, northern and central Europe. (Bade, 2003: 92) They were mostly mountainous regions or small islands. “These geographical locations enjoyed few resources and little employment because they were relatively isolated from the urban and industrial jobs that would increase over the century; their people, then, were less likely than others to join the currents to the nation’s cities and towns.” (Moch, 2003: 149). Nugent (1995: 83-94) also observes that people from the surroundings of capitals or big industrial cities had a lower rate of emigration.

The chief reason for transatlantic migration in the 19th and early 20th century was economic, although political or religious migrants could still be found. “A number of studies have suggested that access to land, the availability of other rural employment opportunities, and population growth all interacted to determine emigration.” While “the intensity of emigration can be traced to economic forces in the local origin, settlement patterns in the United States were driven largely by the existence of previously established communities.” Thus, the most important forces in the settlement formation were “diffusion and path dependence”, i.e. the role of migrant networks and traditions. (Hatton, Williamson, 1998: 16-17) At first, the main incentives for increased migration were “the harvest failures and economic dislocations that followed the Napoleonic wars”. However, mass migrations began in the 1840s, with two important trends: demand for labour in North American farms and cities and in Latin American plantations, and suffering and unemployment in

3

Moch (2003: 10) explains it was a consequence of high taxation of peasantry in France, which inhibited the consolidation of landholdings and prolonged the existence of smallholders, giving the peasant population an incentive to control births.

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Europe, exacerbated by “hungry forties”, the potato famine, and political struggles.

(Moch, 2003: 147) While English4 and Scottish mechanics and skilled artisans moved to America hoping for better business opportunities in industry (Moch, 2003: 149), most of the Scandinavians, Germans and Austrians5 arrived to the USA to acquire cheap land and settle. They were enabled to do that by the Homestead Act of 1862, which promised up to 160 acres of unoccupied public land to anybody who would reside there and cultivate it for five years. (King, 2008) “For the most part, these farmer migrants were welcomed with open arms. They were seen as a civilizing influence. They were white, often respectable and, except for some German Catholics, were Protestant in denomination.”

(Cohen, 1995: 78) The view on the Irish was different, just as was the character of their migration. Some suggest that it might be seen as a forced movement, because the potato plague and famine in Ireland in the 1840s put people into a situation where a decision to emigrate was a matter of life and death. Later on, famine migration was followed by typical “new” labour migration of single men, which was facilitated by existing migrant networks. It was probably the great numbers and poor state of the immigrants that contributed to the negative opinion about the Irish. (Scally in Cohen, 1995: 80-3) “The Irish were stereotyped as uncivilized, unskilled and impoverished and were forced to work at the least desired occupations and live in crowded ethnic ghettoes. Irish immigrants often found that they were not welcome in America; many ads for employment were accompanied by the order “NO IRISH NEED APPLY.”” (Haug) Most of them stayed in cities and towns along the east coast or the Great Lakes. In New York, for example, the Irish were concentrated in the Lower East Side for most of the

4

Moch (2003: 150) notes that “the English were very likely to be from towns and cities”, while in general, “most emigrants were rural people”.

5 Nugent (in Cohen, 1995: 103) compares migration from the German and Austro-Hungarian empires to North America: German migration – declined after 1886 and provided more of a farm-family migration; Austro-Hungarian migration – mainly after 1880 and provided more of a proletarian labour migration.

Both empires “contributed roughly similar numbers – over 4.5 million people – to the transatlantic flow”.

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19th century (only replaced by the Russian Jews at the end of it – King, 2008). Another reason for the animosities against the Irish was their Catholicism.

Figure 2: The Stereotyping of the Irish Immigrant in 19th Century Periodicals: 1867 Cartoon

Cartoons for magazines such as Harper's Weekly featured cartoons by Thomas Nast and depicted Irish immigrants as ape-like barbarians prone to lawlessness, laziness and drunkenness. "St. Patrick's Day, 1867...Rum, Blood, The Day We Celebrate" shows a riot with policemen and ape-like Irishmen.

Source: http://www.victoriana.com/Irish/mail6.htm

The Irish migration had the most balanced sex ratio. (Nugent in Cohen, 1995: 107-8) “Women formed a substantial minority among migrants from western Europe to North America. In the 1820-1928 period, they were 40 percent or more of the English, Scottish, Swedish, and German migrants to the United States – and nearly half of the Jewish migrants from eastern Europe and the Irish. Women figured less large in the late-century migration groups from Italy and southeastern Europe because a large proportion of those groups were men who came to work in North America for only a short time.” (Moch, 2003: 149-50)

4. “New” Migrations “New immigration” to the United States originated in southern, south-eastern and eastern Europe and it emerged in the 1880s. The reason why these regions were affected 8

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Czech migration in the context of “old” and “new” migrations to the USA

by mass migrations later than western, northern and central Europe may be several and are interconnected: -

Greater distance from the Atlantic, which meant greater cost and time needed for travelling – an obstacle that was only effectively overcome with the invention and spread of railways. (Nugent, 1995)

-

Later abolishment of serfdom – in Prussia in 1807, in Austria in 1848, in Russia in 1861. (Moch, 2003: 104)

-

Later beginning of industrialization. (Hatton, Williamson, 1998)

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Certain “diffusion process” in the spread of migration, driven largely by noneconomic social forces. (Hatton, Williamson, 1998)

In the last decades of the 19th century, southern and eastern Europeans constituted increasingly significant “proportions of immigrants to America: from 5 per cent in the decade 1870 to 1880, to 33 per cent between 1891 and 1900. By 1914, they made up close to 70 per cent of all arrivals.” (Morawska in Cohen, 1995: 99) “In all, more than four million6 people journeyed from eastern Europe to the Americas between 1880 and 1914. Nearly nine-tenths of this number migrated to North America, of whom about the same proportion went to the USA.” (Morawska in Cohen, 1995: 97) A significant group were Russian Jews, whose migration was of a different nature: whole families were fleeing for political reasons (restrictive laws and numerous pogroms), a great majority of them not coming back.

Vast numbers of new immigrants were received in the USA with growing rejection, especially after an economic crisis in the 1890s. But the reasons were not just economic and social fears (most of the newcomers were unskilled), they were combined with xenophobia and racist prejudice, religious, political and ideological differences. (Bade, 2003) The influx of migrants gave rise to the American eugenics movement, which “campaigned vigorously for the intelligence testing of immigrants ... and for antiimmigration legislation”. (Cohen, 1995: 78) Some Americans feared that immigrants

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Nugent (1995: 88) quotes Ferenczi and Willcox, stating that in 1899-1924, more than 6 million people from East Central Europe migrated overseas.

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posed a threat to their morals, others pointed out at the low literacy of immigrants, accused them of being criminals and increasing the numbers of the unemployed. Face to face with the diversity of newcomers, Americans began to worry about their identity.

(Gjerde, 1998: 307-322) However, it was not just Americans; old migrants were hostile towards to the new ones as well. “The thoroughly acclimated American Jew stands apart from the seething mass of Jewish immigrants and looks upon them as in a stage of development pitifully low.

He has no religious, social or intellectual sympathies with them. He is closer to the Christian sentiment around him than to the Judaism of these miserable darkened Hebrews.” (The Hebrew Standard, 15.6.1894) The well assimilated German Jews feared that everything they had managed to achieve would be ruined and all Jews in America will become subject of hostility and anti-Semitism. (King, 2008: 147) As far as assimilation of immigrants is concerned, Hatton and Williamson (1998: 23-5) point out that despite the contemporary opinion that “new migrants” were assimilated poorly, “[a] new view has emerged in the last 30 years that paints a more benign picture.

It argues that immigrants were able to adapt to America and that the clash of cultures was not nearly so great or as detrimental as earlier writers had suggested.” They suggest that ethnic communities, social and kinship networks provided support and aid, and had beneficial influence. They point out that the argument of higher unemployment of immigrants is supported by weak evidence. There was a difference between the wages of native and immigrant workers. However, it can be explained by lower skill endowments of immigrants, i.e. literacy, the ability to speak English, and work experience in the USA. What also played an important role in the performance of immigrants at the labour market was the fact that they “often changed country and occupation at the same time, especially as young adults.” Nevertheless, some empirical studies examining the rates of (earnings) catch-up and assimilation have brought puzzling results. “They suggest that the “old” immigrants who were supposed to have assimilated so well did much worse that many of the relatively disadvantaged immigrant groups in the late twentieth century.”

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Obviously, earnings gaps were “in part due to differences in occupational attainment and slower upward mobility”. (Hatton, Williamson, 1998: 24) Just as immigrants concentrated geographically, they also tended to concentrate in the same occupations – either because of their specialties originated at home, or simply because of their acquaintances who could find them a job. Thus, Slovaks, for example, could be found in mines, foundries, and steel mills in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Illinois (Nugent 1995: 89), while Jews worked as tailors or tradesmen. (King, 2008: 142-7)

5. Czech Migration The first historically recorded Czech to settle in the United States was Augustin Heřman (1605?-1686), first mentioned in 1633. (Dubovický, 2003). In 1920, there were 623 thousand Czechs (and 620 thousand Slovaks) in the USA. (Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) In 2000, the share of Czechs (persons with at least one Czech parent) on the US population was 0.8%, with most of them in the Midwest region (Illinois, Ohio, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, North and South Dakota). However, the biggest Czech population was in Texas. (Dubovický, 2003: 59) Czech emigration to the USA in the 19th and early 20th century had several peaks: 1. 1853-7, 2. 1867-74, 3. 1891-4, 4. 1903-8 (renewed in 1911). Obviously, these periods correspond with the general trends in European overseas migration (see chapter “Atlantic Mass Migrations”), with the only exception of the third wave, which came a little late to the Czech lands. During the first thirty years, Czech migration represented 80 per cent7 of the whole Austrian migration. (Dubovický, 2003: 15) The most important incentives for migration were the same as elsewhere: population growth, changes in agriculture, bad harvests, competition of cheap American wheat, starting industrialization, the revolution and abolition of serfdom. However, the

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Kořalka and Kořalková (1993) state that the emigration rate in the Czech lands was never lower than 75% of the non-Hungarian parts of the Habsburg monarchy in 1853-1871. Starting 1880s, this share gradually decreased, so that it was mostly lower than 5% after 1895. They also observe that a similar discrepancy appeared between the Czech lands and Slovakia in the inter-war period: the number of Slovak emigrants was two or three times higher than the number of Czechs, even though the population of Slovakia was more than three times smaller.

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situation was worsened by political uncertainty caused by the Crimean War in 1853-6 and the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. (Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) In the 18th and at the beginning of the 19th century, emigration from the Austrian monarchy was forbidden and only rare exceptions were allowed. The patent issued by Joseph II. in 1784 for the first time described as an emigrant as a person departing abroad “with the intention of not coming back”. In 1832, a new patent was issued by Francis I. which revoked the general prohibition of emigration. Only those eligible for military service were not allowed to emigrate freely. In any case, emigration was associated with a loss of Austrian state citizenship8. (Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) The first emigrants were middle classes of peasants that were relatively better off and could afford to pay for the travel. Among the poorer, only one family member would often leave to earn and save enough money for the rest of the family to join him. A significant number of (illegal) Czech emigrants were young men who wanted to avoid military service. (Dubovický, 2003: 15; Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) The character of the main source regions was the same as elsewhere in Europe: nonindustrial rural areas distant from industrial centres. In the Czech lands, it was the case of the south and south-west, which were the main emigrant regions from 1850s until World War II. Not only was any industrial production missing there, but conditions for intensive agriculture were also unfavourable, not to mention the division of land: among large landowners and insufficient smallholdings. When the railroads reached these areas, they did not bring development as much as they facilitated emigration. Later, many emigrants originated also from southern Moravia and some deindustrialized areas. (Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) With a small delay, Czech migration went in the footsteps of western Europe, while the eastern parts of the Habsburg monarchy followed after a couple of decades. At the end of the 19th century, the trend began to change. The birth rate in the Czech lands (and

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With the formation of Czechoslovakia in 1918, many Czechs reemigrated from the USA. As a matter of fact, migration of Czechs from the USA exceeded emigration to the USA for two consequent years.

(Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993)

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most countries of western and central Europe) fell and so did the emigration rate.

(Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) Nugent (1995: 86-7) quotes numbers indicating the ethnic distribution of East European migrants between 1899 and 1924. It is clear from the overview that the share of Czechs was the lowest (together with Romanians): only 2.3 per cent, while the share of Slovaks or Hungarians was over 8 per cent, the highest percentages being 27.1 for “Hebrews” and 22.1 for Poles. He clarifies that Czech emigration was slight after 1900 because its peak had been in the 1870s and 1880s, similarly to the German one.

In his comparison of German and Austro-Hungarian migration, Nugent also points out that Czech migration to the USA differed from the general trend in the AustroHungarian empire. “In most respects, language apart, they shared the characteristics of the south and south-west German landseeking, family migration that predominated in the 1850s to 1870s.” He explains that the Czechs were subject “to much the same pressures as south-western Germans – uncertain harvests, diminishing markets for home industry, gradually less competitive grain prices, and the prospect of smallholdings subdivided beyond the point at which their children would have acceptable life chances.” Family migration was characterized by an extremely balanced sex ratio (54 per cent male and 46 per cent female between 1820 and 19289) and a low return migration rate. (Nugent in Cohen, 1995: 107-108) As to the settlement in the USA, important destination of Czech migrants was the Midwest, but after 1852, a strong wave of predominantly Moravian migrants headed also for Texas. However, Dubovický points out that despite a relatively high share of land seekers among Czech migrants, most of them actually stayed in towns or cities, such as New York, Chicago, etc. For most of them, especially those in the industrial areas, coming to the US was a culture shock, but their adaptation was eased by expatriate associations. (Dubovický, 2003: 18-19) When migrants arrived to America, they often had to change their occupation. Many of those who settled in farms had often come from small towns, while most of the Czech

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Nugent notes that this balance was surpassed only by the Irish.

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(and especially Slovak) labour migrants at the end of 19th century were originally from rural areas but headed for mines and steel mills. (Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993) Dubovický (2003: 22) notes that Czech migrants were literate above average (together with Jews and Scandinavians), and also Kořalka and Kořalková observe that most emigrants were hardworking, initiative and energetic. Emigration of such people annoyed the supporters of the Czech national movement (taking place in the same period as mass migrations), who tried to maintain relations with the emigrants in the USA and even pondered how to prevent their assimilation, but the latter was to no avail. The first generation of Czech immigrants already felt more like Americans, possibly American Czechs, as soon as they were naturalized. (Kořalka, Kořalková, 1993)

6. Conclusion The aim of this paper was to point out that the character of Czech migration in the 19th and early 20th century was closer to “old” rather than “new” European overseas migrations to the United States. I have shown that Czech migration differed from the migrations of Slovaks, Poles or Hungarians in the following features: -

Timing: In the 1880s, when “new” migrations began, Czech migration to the USA had already been slowing down.

-

Form and sex ratio: Even though Czech migration was not exclusively land seeking, the proportion of land seekers (and therefore families) was high and the sex ratio was extremely balanced.

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Duration: The rates of return migration of Czechs were very low.

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Skills: Czech migrants were literate above average.

In other respects, Czech emigration followed the patterns evident in other parts of Europe: its main source regions were peripheral rural areas in southern (and southwestern) Bohemia and Moravia; the first emigrants were from middle peasant classes, followed by poorer rural proletariat when travel became affordable. In the USA, just like other nationalities, Czechs concentrated in certain areas (Midwest and Texas), where numerous communities of Czech origin can still be find today.

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7. Bibliography Bade, Klaus. Migration in European History. Wiley-Blackwell, 2003.

Cohen, Robin. The Cambridge Survey of World Migration. Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Dubovický, Ivan. Češi v Americe / Czechs in America. Pražská edice, 2003.

Gjerde, Jon. Major Problems in American Immigration and Ethnic History. 1st ed.

Wadsworth Publishing, 1998.

Hatton, Timothy J., and Jeffrey G. Williamson. The Age of Mass Migration: Causes and Economic Impact. Oxford University Press, USA, 1998.

Haug, Christine. The Stereotyping of the Irish Immigrant in 19th Century Periodicals. http://www.victoriana.com/Irish/IrishPoliticalCartoons.htm. [available online 29 January 2010] King, Russell. Atlas lidské migrace. Mladá fronta. 2008 Kořalka, Jiří, and Květa Kořalková. Základní tendence českého vystěhovalectví a české reemigrace do počátku 20. let 20. století. in Češi v cizině, 7, Praha 1993.

Migration Policy Institute. Legal Immigration to the United States: Fiscal Years 1820 – 2007. MPI Data Hub. http://www.migrationinformation.org/DataHub/charts/historic.1.shtml. [available online 27 January 2010] Moch, Leslie Page. Moving Europeans, Second Edition: Migration in Western Europe since 1650. Second Edition. Indiana University Press, 2003.

Nugent, Walter. Crossings: The Great Transatlantic Migrations, 1870--1914. Indiana University Press, 1995.

Polišenský, Josef, and Lumír Nesvadbík. Úvod do studia dějin vystěhovalectví do Ameriky II. Češi a Amerika. Karolinum, 1996.

US Census Bureau Systems Support Division, and Population Division. Population, Housing Units, Area Measurements, and Density. http://www.census.gov/population/www/censusdata/files/table-2.pdf. [available online 27 January 2010]

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