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From the Mother Country Oral Narratives of British Emigration to the United States, 1860-1940 PhD Thesis Mario Varricchio When you get older, you get very nostalgic and you don’t remember what happened yesterday, but you start to remember things that happened ninety years ago (Harry Sonnes, Ellis Island Oral History Project) There’s little I can tell you, but you’re welcome to what little I know, and more that I feel (A Scotch quarryman’s widow, Federal Writers’ Project life histories) I’m so happy that you got here in time. I said, ‘This is my last hurrah’ (Agnes Schilling, Ellis Island Oral History Project) Submitted to The University of Edinburgh’s School of History, Classics, and Archaeology for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, August 2011 Abstract This study investigates the experience of British (English, Scottish and Welsh) emigrants to the United States in the 1860-1940 period. It is based on the analysis of two large corpora of oral histories, about 180 interviews in total, preserved in libraries as well as archives and libraries’ special collections and manuscript departments scattered throughout the United States. In particular, the thesis draws on the interviews conducted by the Ellis Island Oral History Project researchers since the 1970s and the “life histories” gathered by the Federal Writers’ Project fieldworkers during the New Deal era. The critical examination of these sources makes it possible to shed new light on an extended period of British emigration to the United States, including the decades following 1900, which have largely been neglected by scholars so far. In fact, the FWP life histories of British immigrants have never been tapped by scholars before, and the same is true as regards the Ellis Island accounts, with the exception of the interviews with Scottish immigrants. The Introduction to the thesis presents the subject, scope, structure and objectives of the work, also providing a brief overview of the historiography in the field; the first chapter discusses both the reliability of oral histories as historical sources and their peculiarities; the second chapter specifically deals with the Ellis Island and Federal Writers’ Project interviews, on the fieldworkers’ research strategy and the interview approach they adopted, providing an in-depth critical analysis of the strengths and limits of the documents on which the dissertation’s conclusions are based. The following chapters trace the experiences of men and women who left Great Britain for the U.S. by dwelling upon the pre-emigration, emigration proper and post-emigration phases, and identify common aspects in Britons’ migratory experience as well as differences due to their age, gender and nationality. The analysis of the post-emigration phase focuses on Britons’ economic conditions, work activity and social mobility in America, as well as on cultural and identity issues. In particular, the last two sections of the thesis put to the test the widespread notions of British immigrants’ economic success and of their cultural “invisibility” in America. In fact, the evidence offered by the Ellis Island and Federal Writers’ Project oral histories challenge the image of Britons as successful immigrants who blended into American society relatively quickly and easily. Acknowledgements First and foremost I wish to thank the men and women who, in the 1930s and in the last four decades, agreed to be interviewed by the Federal Writers’ Project and the Ellis Island Oral History Project fieldworkers. I am also sincerely grateful to the people who gathered the oral histories on which this work is based, though I have not spared criticism of the programmes and the way the interviews were conducted. Indeed, the necessary precondition that provided me with the opportunity to learn a lot about the migratory experience, ultimately the life, of millions of men and women who left their native country to start anew in a foreign land was the encounter between individuals who had a story to tell and people who realized such story was worth recording. Mention must also be made of the staff of the libraries where I retrieved and consulted the primary and secondary sources used in this work. I would like to thank the personnel of the Edinburgh University Library, The National Library of Scotland, Widener Library at Harvard University and the New York Public Library. In particular, I am indebted to the following librarians and archivists in the United States: Janet Levine, George Tselos and Jeffrey S. Dosik (Ellis Island Immigration Museum, New York); Laura Katz Smith (Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut Libraries, Storrs, CT); Gary Domitz and Gene Warren (Special Collections Department, Idaho State University Library, Pocatello, ID); David Vancil (Rare Book and Special Collections, Cunningham Memorial Library, Indiana State University, Terre Haute, IN); Judy Lilly (Archive Collection, Salina Public Library, Salina, KS); Steven R. Wolz (Nebraska State Historical Society, Lincoln, NE); Beth Getz (Wilson Library, Manuscript Department, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, NC); L. Lotte Bailey, State Historical Society of North Dakota, Bismarck, ND); Judith Michener (Oklahoma Historical Society, Oklahoma City, OK); Todd Shaffer (Oregon State Library, Salem, OR); Linda Shopes (Pennsylvania State Archives, Harrisburg, PA); Jennifer D. McDaid (The Library of Virginia, Richmond, VA); Shirley Lewis and Trevor James Bond (Washington State Library, Olympia, WA). In Edinburgh, I am grateful above all to my supervisors, Professor Thomas M. Devine and Dr Enda Delaney, for offering excellent advice and insightful suggestions. Alex Murdoch supported my project when I first presented it, and Paul Quigley made useful observations on Chapter 2 of the thesis. I also remember with pleasure the seminars and workshops organized by Adam Budd, in particular the first-year methodology seminar. The staff at the University School of History, Classics and Archaeology have always been kind and helpful: in particular, many thanks to Anne Brockington, Richard Kane and Niko Ovenden. I also wish to mention friends with whom I had interesting chats and whose company I really enjoyed. In alphabetical order: David Hesse, Eva Kilborn, Hisashi Kuboyama, Amy Lloyd, David Ritchie. More friends from the first-year seminars (whom I met several times later on as well): Matthew Dziennik, Frances Williams, Tawny Paul. Finally, this work would never have been completed (probably, it would never have been started) without the support, patience and love of sweet Elisabetta. Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 1 I. Scope 1 II. Ground 11 III. Structure 16 CHAPTER 1: ORAL NARRATIVES AS HISTORY 20 I. Entrenched prejudice 20 II. Lingering doubts 22 III. Living history 27 CHAPTER 2: BRITISH VOICES YET UNHEARD 34 I. Tapping the projects 35 II. The FWP life histories and the Ellis Island interviews as historical sources 44 CHAPTER 3: LEAVING ALBION 69 I. Reasons for leaving 71 II. Deciding to go 79 III. Patterns of emigration 89 IV. Preparing to leave 95 V. Parting from Britain 105 CHAPTER 4: BRITONS ACROSS THE SEA 108 I. Braving the waves 110 II. Sighting America 122 III. Island of fears 125 IV. Between two worlds 137 CHAPTER 5: BRITONS IN THE LAND OF PLENTY 145 I. The myth of “success” 147 II. American jobs 154 II.1 Supply and demand 157 II.2 Work, money and mobility 162 II.3 Toiling women 171 III. American dwellings 185 IV. Hard times 192 V. They had a dream 197 CHAPTER 6: CULTURE, IDENTITY & BELONGING 203 I. “Invisible” immigrants 206 II. New loyalties, old ties 219 III. Longing for home 231 IV. Cultural roots 238 V. Mother country tongue 247 VI. Foreign and different 256 VII. Immigrants after all 262 CONCLUSIONS 266 BIBLIOGRAPHY 280 I. Primary Sources 280 II. Other oral histories 286 III. Interview guidelines and manuals 287 IV. Websites 288 V. Secondary Sources 288 V.1 British emigration 288 V.2 Other studies 292 APPENDICES 302 I. Informants’ profiles 302 II. Interviews guidelines 313 Introduction The writing of ethnic history is both necessary and possible. It need neither be justified nor defended. The collective voice of the people, once silenced, has a right to be heard. Oral history is not only a tool or method for recovering history; it is also a theory of history which maintains that the common folk and the dispossessed have a history and that this history must be written.1 I have learned and hope to learn from this material things about people that cannot be learned by reading books written from other books [...]. This is no trivial matter. The people, all the people, must be known, they must be heard.2 I. Scope This work aims at breaking new ground in the study of British emigration to the United States from the 1860s to the 1930s through the analysis of oral histories. In particular, it draws upon interviews with English, Scottish and Welsh emigrants to the United States collected during the Great Depression era by the Federal Writers’ Project – a New Deal governmental agency which employed thousands of jobless white-collar workers, artists and intellectuals to develop programmes investigating the nature of American identity and culture – and produced from the 1970s by the staff of the National Parks Service and Oral History Office of the Ellis Island Museum in New York City.