Gone to Texas: Eastern-European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Urban Texas, 1900-1924

by Stacy D. Bondurant

B.A. in History, May 2002, The University of Texas

A Dissertation submitted to

The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy

May 20, 2012

Dissertation directed by

Tyler Anbinder Professor of History

The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Stacy Dianne Lowe Bondurant has passed the Final Examination for the

Degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of March 23, 2012. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation.

Gone to Texas: Eastern-European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Urban Texas, 1900-1924

Stacy D. Bondurant

Dissertation Research Committee:

Tyler G. Anbinder, Professor of History, Dissertation Director

Richard Stott, Professor of History, Committee Member

Thomas A. Guglielmo, Associate Professor of American Studies, Committee Member

ii

© Copyright 2012 by Stacy D. Bondurant All rights reserved

iii

Dedicated to my son, Ford James Bondurant, and my daughter, Emerson Cleire Bondurant.

iv Acknowledgements

During the course of writing this dissertation I have made two cross-country moves and welcomed my two children into the world. As such, I could not have completed the project without the support of a number of individuals and institutions who have greatly helped me along the way. I am grateful to George Washington University for the financial assistance that made possible my enrollment as a graduate student and allowed me to focus much of my time and energy on my studies, research, and writing.

I was fortunate to have the assistance of numerous archivists and librarians across the country who aided my research efforts. I would like to especially thank the librarians of Plattsburgh State University and the University of Texas at Dallas; Lisa May at the

Archives of the Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston; Casey Greene and the staff of the

Rosenberg Library in Galveston; the archivists of the Dallas Jewish Historical Society; and the very able staff of the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the

University of Texas at Austin. I am grateful for the assistance of Tina Di Francia who helped me with the translation of Italian-language newspapers and to Gina Lecca of the

Italian Club of Dallas provided me with contacts and ideas for further research on Italian immigrants. Larraine Miller, librarian at Shearith Isreal in Dallas, generously supplied me with synagogue records.

The assistance of the faculty, staff, and graduate students of the History

Department at George Washington University is immeasurable. I am thankful to Tyler

Anbinder, whose patience apparently knows no bounds, for his guidance and extensive editing, and for going above and beyond what is required of a dissertation director. I am also grateful to Tom Guglielmo, Richard Stott, Leo Ribuffo, and Jenna Weissman Joselit

v for their time and the feedback they provided. I have an enormous amount of respect and gratitude for Michael Weeks.

I am thankful for the friends that I have made at George Washington University, who have helped me immensely through this process and encouraged me every step of the way. Sara Berndt, Kristen Gwinn, and Chris Hickman pushed me forward and offered advice when I needed it most. I am grateful for the friendships of Helena Kaler,

Varad Mehta, and Bo Peery, whose infectious curiosity about the past encouraged me to be a better student. Outside GW, a number of friends have also provided me with encouragement and support, and I would like to especially thank Amber Bach-Gorman,

Sara Hov, and Amy Kretser.

My family has patiently watched as I worked for the past nine years, offering their love and support. I am grateful to all of them for the assistance and encouragement they provided me. I would like to thank my mother, Judy Lowe, for showing me that it is possible to pursue a higher degree even with the multitude of responsibilities that come with having a family, and to my father, Richard Lowe, who has taught me to take full advantage of the wonderful opportunities I have been offered. The sweet faces of my children, Ford and Emerson, provided comfort and relief when deadlines were closing in around me. I perhaps owe the greatest debt to my husband, Matt, who I could always count on for sound advice and encouragement. He has worked tirelessly to support our family over the past five years and words cannot adequately express the appreciation and admiration I have for him.

vi Abstract of Dissertation

Gone to Texas: Eastern-European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Urban Texas, 1900-1924

This dissertation offers a close examination of the East European Jewish and

Italian immigrant populations of three Texas cities—Dallas, Galveston, and Houston—at the turn of the century. Using statistical data derived from the 1900 and 1920 United

States federal manuscript censuses, as well as information gathered from a variety of sources including newspapers, census directories, and religious organization records, it weaves together a narrative of the immigrant experience of two populations that receive little scholarly attention in studies of Texas history.

Much of the history of southern and eastern European immigrants has been placed in the large immigrant centers of the north and northeastern United States. Despite the relatively small size of the East European Jewish and Italian immigrant populations in

Texas’ cities in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these two groups helped shape the economic and cultural landscape of three of the state’s largest urban areas.

Through a comparison with East European Jewish and Italian immigrants in other major U.S. cities, it is apparent that the immigrants who settled in Texas cities were not particularly unique in terms of gender distribution, marital status, literacy, or ability to speak English. They were, however, far more likely to be involved in low status white- collar occupations, notably as small business owners. Immigrants in these positions, unlike those working as wage laborers in the employ of another, achieved some level of independence.

vii Far removed from the immigrant centers of the North and Northeast, East

European Jewish and Italian immigrants created a variety of institutions to facilitate their transition into their new homes in Texas, defining themselves by their ethnicity and retaining many homeland traditions. Rather than creating tension between the immigrant and native-born population, this practice of ethnic identification was in some cases encouraged by the native-born, even during a period of heightened anti-immigrant sentiment. The immigrants who settled in Texas’ urban areas were not, however, rejecting assimilation. In many ways, the ethnic identities they constructed incorporated their new status as Americans and Texans.

viii Table of Contents

Dedication iv

Acknowledgements v

Abstract vi

List of Figures viii

List of Tables ix

Introduction 1

Chapter One A Pioneer Effort: Texas’ Immigrant Past 17

Chapter Two Deep in the Heart of Texas: The Immigrants’ Arrival in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston 52

Chapter Three “The Possibilities Within Their Reach”: Immigrants and Work in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston 90

Chapter Four Constructing Community: Social Organization of East European Jewish and Italian Immigrants 140

Chapter Five A Conditional Welcome: Assimilation, Americanization, and the Retention of Ethnic Identity 189

Conclusion 244

Bibliography 255

List of Figures

Figure 1.1 The German Belt of Texas 20

Figure 4.1 Catholic Churches Attended by Italians in Dallas 150

Figure 4.2 Catholic Churches Attended by Italians in Galveston 151

Figure 4.3 Catholic Churches Attended by Italians in Houston 152

Figure 4.4 Houston Synagogues 165

Figure 4.5 Galveston Synagogues 166

Figure 4.6 Dallas Synagogues 167

Figure 5.1 Areas of Highest Residential Concentration of Italians in Dallas, 1900 and 1920 197

Figure 5.2 Areas of Highest Residential Concentration of Italians in Houston, 1900 and 1920 199

Figure 5.3 Areas of Highest Residential Concentration of Italians in Galveston, 1900 and 1920 201

Figure 5.4 Areas of Highest Residential Concentration of East European Jewish Immigrants in Dallas, 1900 and 1920 206

Figure 5.5 Areas of Highest Residential Concentration of East European Jewish Immigrants in Houston, 1900 and 1920 208

Figure 5.6 Areas of Highest Residential Concentration of East European Jewish Immigrants in Galveston, 1900 and 1920 210

x List of Tables

Table 1.1 Total Texas and Foreign Born Population, 1860-1920 18

Table 1.2 Population Size of Texas’ Largest Immigrant Groups, 1860-1920 20

Table 1.3 Rural and Urban Population of Texas, 1900-1920 41

Table 1.4 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Galveston, 1900, 1920 44

Table 1.5 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Houston, 1900, 1920 46

Table 1.6 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Dallas, 1900, 1920 50

Table 2.1 Italian Immigrant Families with American-Born Children, 1920 62

Table 2.2 Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Families with American-Born Children, 1920 63

Table 2.3 Percentage of Immigrant Households in which Members Engaged in Chain Migration, 1920 65

Table 2.4 Gender Distribution of Italian Immigrants within Sample Group, 1920 70

Table 2.5 Marital Status of Male Adult Italian Immigrants by City, 1920 72

Table 2.6 Marital Status of Female Adult Italian Immigrants by City, 1920 72

Table 2.7 Percentage of All Married Italian Immigrants Living without Spouse by City, 1920 73

Table 2.8 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Italian Immigrant Men Age Fourteen and Older, 1920 74

Table 2.9 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Italian Immigrant Women Age Fourteen and Older, 1920 75

Table 2.10 Ability to Speak English among Italian Immigrants Age Fourteen and Older by City, 1920 77

xi Table 2.11 Number of Years in Residence in the United States among Italian Immigrants by City, 1920 78

Table 2.12 Gender Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants, 1920 80

Table 2.13 Marital Status of Adult Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Men by City, 1920 82

Table 2.14 Marital Status of Adult Foreign Born Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Women by City, 1920 82

Table 2.15 Percentage of All Married Eastern European Jewish Immigrants Living without Spouse by City, 1920 83

Table 2.16 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Men Age Fourteen and Older, 1920 85

Table 2.17 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Women Age Fourteen and Older, 1920 85

Table 2.18 Ability to Speak English among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants Age Fourteen and Older by City, 1920 86

Table 2.19 Term of Residence in the United States Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants by City, 1920 88

Table 3.1 Occupational Distribution of Adult Men in Dallas by Category, 1920 98

Table 3.2 Occupational Distribution of Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men in Dallas by Category, 1920 99

Table 3.3 Occupational Distribution of Adult Men in Houston by Category, 1920 105

Table 3.4 Occupational Distribution of Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men in Houston by Category, 1920 105

Table 3.5 Occupational Distribution of Adult Men in Galveston by Category, 1920 109

Table 3.6 Occupational Distribution of Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men in Galveston by Category, 1920 110

xii Table 3.7 Adult Italian Immigrant Men Engaged in Unskilled Blue-Collar Occupations, 1900 and 1920 116

Table 3.8 Adult East European Jewish Immigrant Men Engaged in Unskilled Blue-Collar Occupations, 1900 and 1920 116

Table 3.9 Percentage of Employed, Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in Texas Cities, 1920 123

Table 3.10 Marital Status of Employed, Adult East European Jewish Immigrant Women in Texas Cities, 1920 125

Table 3.11 Marital Status of Employed, Adult Italian Immigrant Women in Texas Cities, 1920 125

Table 3.12 Term of Residence of Adult Employed East European Jewish Immigrant Men, 1920 134

Table 3.13 Term of Residence of Employed, Adult Italian Immigrant Men, 1920 135

Table 3.14 Employed, Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men Able to Speak English, 1920 135

Table 3.15 Rate of Literacy Among Employed, Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men, 1920 136

Table 4.1 Number and Percentage of Foreign Born in Dallas, Houston, Galveston, and Texas for 1880, 1900, 1920 141

Table 4.2 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Dallas, 1900-1920 142

Table 4.3 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Houston, 1900-1920 142

Table 4.4 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Galveston, 1900-1920 142

Table 5.1 Citizenship Status of East European Jewish Immigrants by City, 1900 and 1920 222

Table 5.2 Citizenship Status of Italian Immigrants by City, 1900 and 1920 223

Table 5.3 Ability to Speak English among East European Jewish Immigrants and Italian Immigrants Aged 14 and Older in Texas Cities, 1920 235

xiii Introduction Gone to Texas: Eastern-European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Urban Texas, 1900-1924

Law abiding people, without regard to section, nationality, religious creeds or political views, including laboring men and capitalists who are inclined or desirous of securing homes among us…are hereby most cordially invited to come and dwell among us, and that this is intended in the best of good faith, and with the declared assurance that they will each and all receive from the people of Texas a cordial and sincere welcome.1

“Would not the newcomers,” it has been asked, “be dissatisfied in the West and drift back to the Eastern settlements of their own nationality?”2

While many people are familiar with the state’s Mexican heritage and possibly with the story of German immigration, far fewer are aware of the diverse nature of Texas’ immigration history. The presence of European immigrants and the influence they have had on Texas’ social, economic, and cultural development frequently goes unnoticed.

Yet, this history is quite visible. A trip down the Interstate 35 corridor and through

Texas’ towns and rural communities reveals much about the ethnic history of the state.

Eighty miles south of Dallas sits the small town of West, where residents have established Czech-themed businesses and Westfest, an annual Czech/Polka celebration capitalizing on central Texas’ German and Czech heritage. West of Forth Worth on I-20 lies the remnants of Thurber, an abandoned coal-mining town that was home to Italian,

Polish, and other European immigrants until its closure in 1921. There are few remaining vestiges of this community other than a single smokestack that rises up like a lone sentinel over the landscape, looking out over the cemetery where hundreds of graves mark where town residents laid their dead. Headstones in cemeteries across the state bear

1 “The Convention in Dallas,” Galveston Daily News, December 22, 1887 (hereafter GDN). 2 “The Galveston Movement,” Jewish Herald, November 12, 1908 (hereafter JH).

1 the names of people from many different nations, and serve as some of the clearest reminders that Texas’ history is an ethnically varied one.

The state has taken measures over the past fifty years to recognize and promote the ethnic heritage of Texas. As part of the 1968 HemisFair celebration in San Antonio, the Texas Legislature established the Institute for Texan Cultures museum. This institution, part of the University of Texas at San Antonio, holds as its mandate the responsibility to act “as the state's center for multicultural education by investigating the ethnic and cultural history of the state.” Each summer, the Institute hosts the Texas

Folklife Festival, a three-day event celebrating the ethnic traditions of groups from around the state. Crowds gather in the early summer heat to enjoy food, crafts, and entertainment. A recent festival featured Israeli Folk Dancers and the Italian Tarantella

Dancers of Galveston, both adorned in brightly colored costumes. Food booths offered tastes of regional and ethnic cuisines, like haggis served by the Scottish Society of San

Antonio, pancit prepared by the Filipino Americans in San Antonio Association, and bratwurst from the popular German Wurstfest group. Crafts and demonstrations round out the affair. Each year, the Texas Folklife Festival offers a brief and accessible introduction to the ethnic composition of the Lone Star State and reminds visitors of a diverse heritage that reaches from Texas’ earliest days to the present.3

Nineteenth century Texans would have been perhaps more aware of the importance immigration played in the development of the Lone Star State than the first-

3 Institute of Texan Cultures, “About the Institute of Texan Cultures,” http://www.texancultures. com/museum/about.html (accessed October 9, 2010); Thirty Seventh Annual Texas Folklife Festival, University of Texas’ Institute of Texan Cultures, Brochure, June 13-15, 2008; Handbook of Texas Online, “University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures,” http://207.200.58.4/handbook/ online/articles/UU/kcu25_print.html (accessed October, 9 2010).

2 time festival participant. Immigrants had been settling the region prior to Texas’ independence from Mexico, but in the latter half of the nineteenth century Texas businessmen, politicians, railroad companies, and the state government began an organized effort to attract settlers to the state. Many of the newcomers were drawn by

Texas’ vast acreage that they hoped to farm or ranch, but others settled in cities, which were populated at the time primarily by native-born Anglo-American, African-American, and Tejano residents. English, Irish, and German immigrants arrived early, but as the origins of U.S. immigration began to shift, so too did the origins of Texas immigrants.

While settlers from the United Kingdom and Western Europe continued to be among the most numerous of all foreign-born groups in Texas’ cities, between the 1880s and 1920s increasing numbers of foreign-born Italians and Eastern European Jews also began settling in urban areas of Texas. By opening businesses, building places of religious worship, and establishing fraternal organizations, social clubs, and aid societies, these immigrants altered the landscape of Texas’ cities.

Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants arriving in Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries followed two basic patterns of migration. The first was a direct route that immigrants followed from Europe through the port at

Galveston or another U.S. port, and then on to the Lone Star State by rail. Approximately

10,000 East European Jews followed this path through the port at Galveston between

1907 and 1914 when a group of Jewish leaders in the United States attempted to redirect immigrants away from the Northeast and into the Southwest. The second route was more

3 circuitous; immigrants landed at ports around the country, settled first in another city like

New York or New Orleans, and then later moved to Texas.4

Isolated from the urban centers of immigration, the migrants who settled in

Texas’ urban areas were initially unable to depend upon an ethnic community for support. In choosing Texas, they risked their ability to maintain traditions and distinctly

Italian or Jewish ways of life because they were moving into communities that were overwhelmingly populated by the native-born. Yet, Texas was not an unlikely destination for East European Jews and Italians. Galveston was a major port along the

Gulf Coast and steamship companies offered direct service from Europe to Texas.

Railways connected the urban areas of the state to all the major port cities. Late nineteenth and early twentieth century economic development of the state’s urban environments resulted in job growth and a climate conducive to new business ventures.

Less urban crowding translated to lower rents and cheaper real estate, and a chance at home ownership that was far less likely in the congested urban metropolises of the North and Northeast.

In order to take advantage of the opportunities available in Texas’ smaller urban environments, immigrants had to enter communities that lacked many of the resources they needed to maintain ethnic practices and traditions. For these individuals who settled in urban areas dominated by native-born Texans, part of the immigration process involved absorption into mainstream American culture. Some immigrants in Texas cities, however, tried to foster the maintenance of ethnic identity among the foreign-born

4 Bernard Marinbach, Galveston: Ellis Island of the West (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983); Henry Cohen II, “The Man Who Stayed in Texas: Galveston’s Rabbi Henry Cohen,” in Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas, ed. Hollace Ava Weiner and Kenneth D. Roseman (Waltham, Mass: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 82-86.

4 population by founding fraternal, philanthropic, and religious organizations, and in some cases, even importing food and other goods from Europe.

Dallas, Galveston, and Houston provide a good setting for an examination of the complex relationship between Italian and East European Jewish immigrants and the small, southern city. First, they are the three largest cities in turn-of-the-century Texas, with the exception of San Antonio, where Mexican immigrants dominated the foreign- born population to such a great degree that their presence creates a different dynamic for the study of immigration in this city. Second, the study of Italian and East European

Jewish immigrants in urban Texas is further complicated through a comparison of populations living in three cities at different developmental stages and with different economies. Examining immigrants in the port cities of Galveston and Houston (after the dredging of Buffalo Bayou) and Texas’ center for commerce and banking in Dallas allows for the evaluation of how geography and economic conditions in a particular city influenced trends in patterns of settlement, employment, and social organization. In order to illustrate the ways in which Texas’ urban-dwelling immigrants may or may not have been typical of the larger nationwide population, this dissertation compares demographic data on Italians and East European Jews in Texas with their counterparts in

New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco.

The use of this comparative approach allows for an assessment of regional trends and patterns in the immigrant experience. An attempt to categorize Texas, which encompasses over 260,000 square miles, as distinctly southern or southwestern is fraught with difficulty. Historically, of course, Texas had been a slaveholding state and part of the Confederacy. But while the eastern portion of the state may have identified culturally

5 and economically with the South, the same cannot be said for the entire state. This dissertation evaluates to what extent Texas immigrants more closely resemble those in southern communities, like New Orleans, or western ones, like San Francisco, in an effort to determine whether the quality of the immigrant experience was uniquely southern or something more distinctly southwestern.

Scholarly attention to immigrants in the cities of the North and the Northeast has given the impression that Southern and Eastern European immigrants avoided the South and that those who did venture into the region were drawn solely, and perhaps only temporarily, by agricultural and railroad work. The reasons for these trends are clear enough; the numbers of native-born Texans dwarf those of the foreign born throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and the immigrant population residing in urban areas was a fraction of the total number of foreign born in the state.5

Yet, the state’s immigrant past is rich and varied. In the years following the Civil

War, Texas politicians and businessmen became increasingly concerned with developing the state’s economy and infrastructure and worked to facilitate the movement of immigrants and native-born Americans into Texas. Railroad construction and mining ventures, for example, brought increased diversity to Texas as Italians and other immigrant groups were recruited as laborers. In addition to these industries, the growth of manufacturing and development of seaports also helped bring foreign-born immigrants

5 In 1890, Texas had a total population of 3,048,710. Of this number, 179,357 were foreign born. Thirty years later, that total population had risen to 4,663,228, and the foreign-born population had grown to 360,519. In 1920, only about 30 percent of the foreign-born population lived in Texas cities having more than 30,000 residents. Geostat Center: Collections, “Historical Census Browser,” University of Virginia Library, http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/collections/stats/histcensus/ and U.S. Bureau of the Census. Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 766.

6 in search of jobs to Texas towns and cities.6 Nonetheless, general urban histories of

Texas, an area in which there is a dearth of good scholarship, rarely discuss European immigration. Even in examinations of Texas’ urban economic development, the

European immigrant is notably absent.7 Southern and Eastern European immigrants were among the nineteenth- and twentieth-century urban arrivals and though both groups influenced the social, religious, and economic development of Texas cities, the small size of their populations has made them all but invisible in most scholarly works on the history of the state.

Several monographs on Jews in individual Texas communities exist, but these studies tend to cover several centuries of history and encompass the entire Texas Jewish population, making the works so broad in scope that they are unable to convey some of the finer details of the East European Jewish immigrant experience. Rose Biderman has studied Jewish communities in Dallas and Elaine Maas produced a survey of the

6 One book-length work on this migration is Barbara Rozek’s Come to Texas: Attracting Immigrants, 1865-1915 (College Station: Texas A. & M. University Press, 2003) which examines the variety of ways that boosters and local leaders attempted to bring people to the state after the Civil War, but does not look closely at immigrant lives in Texas. Her broad definition of “immigrants,” which includes both the foreign and native born, makes it difficult at times to determine what factors drew specific ethnic groups to Texas, but Rozek is successful in illustrating how and why people poured into the state in the years following the Civil War and that Texas’ cities were destinations for those on the move in the United States. Valentine Belfiglio discussed the role that railroad development played in bringing Italians to the state in his work, The Italian Experience in Texas: A Closer Look (Austin: Eakin Press, 1995). See also Leo S. Bielinksi, “The Italian Presence in the Coal Camp of Thurber, Texas,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 80 (2004): 33-40, and John C. Rayburn, “Count Joseph Telfener and the New York, Texas and Mexican Railway Company,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 68 (1964): 29-42. 7 The existing studies on the urban history of Texas are mostly centered on economic and political events surrounding urban growth and decline. Major works on Dallas, Houston, and Galveston include David McComb’s Galveston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986) and Houston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981); Marguerite Johnson’s Houston: The Unknown City 1836-1946 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1991); Marilyn McAdams Sibley’s The Port of Houston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968); and Patricia Evridge Hill’s Dallas: The Making of a Modern City (Austin: University of Texas, 1996). One exception is Michael Phillips’ White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006) which covers the growth of Dallas and the race relations between the white, black, Mexican, and Jewish population. See also Leo S. Bielinski, “Beer, Booze, Bootlegging and Bocci Ball in Thurber-Mingus,” West Texas Historical Association Yearbook 59 (1983): 75-89; Bruce A. Glasrud, “Asians in Texas: An Overview, 1870-1990,” East Texas Historical Journal 39, no. 2 (2001): 10-22; William J. Chriss, “The Greeks of Corpus Christi, 1880-1945,” Journal of South Texas 18, no.1 (2005): 5-30.

7 demographics and organizational history of Houston’s Jewish population. A number of scholars have undertaken statewide studies of Jews, yet often these works are in the form of pictorial histories. Bryan Edward Stone’s dissertation, “West of Center: Jews on the

Real and Imagined Frontiers of Texas,” is perhaps the best and most scholarly work on

Jews in Texas. Stone offers an excellent evaluation of the Jewish experience in Texas, utilizing the idea of the frontier as force that shaped life and religious practice.8

Considerably less attention has been paid to Italians in Texas than to the Jewish population. The history of Italian immigrants in Texas has been written mostly as a series of scholarly articles on Italians in specific Texas communities. Valentine Belfiglio is responsible for much of this scholarship. His study of Texas Italians, The Italian

Experience in Texas: A Closer Look, offers a brief history of the numerous Italian settlements throughout the state. Though his research can be superficial at times,

9 Belfiglio must be credited with doing the pioneering work in this field.

Though the role of Eastern and Southern European immigrants in Texas’ urban history has been largely marginalized, the negotiation that took place between these

8 See Rose Biderman, The Came to Stay: The Story of the Jews of Dallas, 1870-1997 (Austin: Eakin Press, 2002); Elaine Maas, The Jews of Houston: An Ethnographic Study (New York: AMS Press, Inc., 1989); and Bryan Edward Stone, “West of Center: Jews on the Real and Imagined Frontiers of Texas” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 2003). Pictoral histories on Jews in Texas include Ruthe Winegarten and Cathy Schechter, Deep in the Heart: The Lives and Legends of Texas Jews, a Photographic History (Austin: Eakin Press, 1990); and Hollace Ava Weiner and Kenneth Roseman, ed., Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas (Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2007). Several scholars have examined the wider Texas Jewish population as well. Marilyn Kay Goldman’s dissertation “Nineteenth Century Jewish Merchants Living Texas Reality and Myth” (Ph.D. dissertation, Texas A&M University, 2003) details the economic and social life of Jewish merchants in various regions of Texas. 9 Valentine Belfiglio’s articles on Italians in specific communities include “Early Italian Settlers in Dallas: A New Life with Old Values,” Heritage News: A Journal Devoted to the History of North Central Texas 10, no.4 (winter 1985-1986) 4-7; “The Italians of Bexar County, Texas: Tradition, Change and Intraethnic Differences,” East Texas Historical Journal 30, no. 2 (1992): 30-44; and “The Nature and Impact of Italian Culture on Galveston Island,” East Texas Historical Journal 27, no. 1 (1989): 44-54. Geographer Susan Hardwick’s recent work, Mythic Galveston: Reinventing America’s Third Coast (Baltimore: John’s Hopkins University Press, 2002), includes a brief study of Italians in Galveston, particularly concerning how the population was affected by the 1900 hurricane.

8 migrants and their southern urban surroundings reveals much about immigration into the small, southern, urban environment, about Texas immigration history, and importantly, the process of assimilation among first generation immigrants within these smaller environments. This dissertation will examine the immigrants’ integration into society not by the complete adoption or rejection of American language, citizenship, and culture, but rather as a more complicated negotiation of personal and group identity, in which the immigrant’s decision to assimilate is analyzed with reference to the continued adherence to traditional customs and behaviors and the maintenance of a group identity. Italian and

East European Jewish immigrants in Texas cities created ethnic-based fraternal societies and mutual aid associations, participated in the religious community, and celebrated their culture publicly with parades and picnics, as well as privately in their homes and churches. The extent to which individuals were able to create and recreate both an ethnic and American identity in the face of social pressure to assimilate, but without the support of a large ethnic community, is central to an understanding of the immigration story in

Texas and beyond.

I will examine Italian and East European Jewish immigrants’ process of migration and integration into the urban areas of Texas in five chapters. Chapter One provides an overview of Texas immigration history focusing briefly on the two largest ethnic groups—Germans and Mexicans—and their settlement patterns. It also details the nineteenth century effort to increase migration into the state, concluding that Texans had a great interest in immigration despite the high proportion of native-born residents of the state. An 1876 constitutional prohibition against the use of public money for the purpose of bringing immigrants to the state was not an expression of any particular groups’

9 opposition to this effort as much as it was indicative of beliefs that Texas’ attractions need not be advertised, that previous government-sponsored efforts had been ineffective, and that private individuals and companies should bear the responsibility of drawing settlers to the state, instead of taxpayers. The chapter closes with a description of the nineteenth century economic development of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston and a brief overview of each city’s ethnic composition.10

Chapter Two examines the departure of Italians and Eastern European Jews from

Europe and their journey to Texas. Though some immigrants arrived in Texas directly through the port at Galveston or by train from another U.S. port, others took a more indirect route, coming to Texas after first settling in another state. This pattern of migration resulted in a population of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants whose longer tenure in America likely eased their transition into the economic and social spheres of Texas’ cities. The high percentage of married immigrants living in Texas

10 Integration, a term that I use to describe the Italian and East European Jewish immigrants’ inclusion into economic and social networks of Texas cities, may be viewed as part of the process of immigrant assimilation. This dissertation, however, examines first generation European immigrants who arrived before 1920, and thus the findings presented here focus on the initial response of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants to early-twentieth century pressures to Americanize. The use of an assimilation paradigm to evaluate the immigrant experience has fallen in and out of favor with scholars in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Russell Kazal’s 1995 article, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History,” provides a good overview of the historiography. I have undertaken a examination of this complicated process and the Italian and East European Jewish immigrant populations of Dallas, Galveston, and Houston in Chapter Five. I do not assume that individuals within these two immigrant groups responded uniformly to pressures to assimilate or Americanize. Nor do I assume that a study of one generation of immigrants can sufficiently answer the question of what role assimilation played in the lives of southern and eastern European immigrants and their children in Texas. Perhaps future investigations of the second-generation immigrants of these two populations can further illuminate this issue. Additionally, the experience of Mexican and Mexican-American groups in these cities, many of who were subject to a considerable amount of prejudice and segregation, makes clear the importance of race to the question of immigrant assimilation. Despite the fact that my dissertation focuses on first generation immigrants who arrived before 1920, I believe that the findings presented here suggest the presence of a pluralistic society in Texas’ urban areas; one which granted Italian and East European Jewish immigrants room to define themselves both by their ethnicity and as white Americans, as long as they remained committed to certain principles of American life, such as democratic government. Arnoldo De Leon, Ethnicity in the Sunbelt: A History of Mexican Americans in Houston, (Houston: University of Houston Press, 1989); Russell Kazal, “Revisiting Assimilation: The Rise, Fall, and Reappraisal of a Concept in American Ethnic History,” The American Historical Review 100, no. 2 (April 1995): 437-471.

10 with a spouse suggests that the immigrants who moved to Texas’ urban areas intended to stay, which is significant in light of the high rate of single men in the tide of migration from Italy and Italians’ tendency toward return migration. This chapter finds relatively high rates of literacy and English speaking ability among Italian and East European

Jewish adult men, two factors that likely eased the immigrants’ transition into urban environments populated mostly by the native born.

The employment history of Italian and East European immigrants in Texas cities from 1900 to 1920 is the subject of Chapter Three. Texas was promoted as a place where economic opportunities abounded and this chapter concludes that given the high numbers of Italians and East European Jews working in white-collar jobs and as small business owners, these populations were taking advantage of an environment that encouraged small-scale entrepreneurial ventures. The high number of white-collar workers and self- employed immigrants among the Italian and East European Jewish population is evaluated in relation to other immigrant communities across the nation. A comparison of demographic differences that might account for a greater involvement of Texas immigrants in these fields of occupation, including literacy rates, English speaking ability, and term of residence, reveals only slight differences between the Italian populations of Texas and other major U.S. cities. The late-nineteenth century economies of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston, which were based largely on the sale and movement of goods and raw materials and very little on large-scale manufacturing, are thus considered in this chapter as having played a significant role in the tendency of Italians and East European Jews towards self-employment. Because there was not a great demand for large numbers of factory workers in Texas, immigrants instead moved into

11 low-status white-collar work or became merchants, providing goods and services to the urban population. These small businesses proliferated in environments where available real estate allowed immigrants to operate stores from their residences or in cheap rental properties near their homes.

Chapter Four explores the social and religious communities that Italian and East

European immigrants formed in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston. While Italian immigrants were building many of their organizations from scratch, the East European

Jewish population had some foundation upon which to construct their communities thanks to the existence of an established German Jewish population. The presence of a

Jewish community, however, did not mean that integration of East European-born Jews was entirely smooth. Some German Jews, who had already gone through a process of integration and Americanization, feared that the arrival of an unassimilated immigrant population threatened to undermine the economic and social advances they had made.

Additionally, because the East European immigrants tended to be Orthodox and the older entrenched Jewish population were largely Reform, there was disagreement over religious observation, resulting in the establishment of new synagogues. The vigor with which immigrants constructed and promoted such religious establishments and social organizations suggests a genuine interest in the maintenance of an ethnic identity and their desire for association. These organizations and institutions helped to ease the immigrant’s transition to life in the Texas urban environment. The publicity these organizations received in the mainstream media suggests that the native-born population was not only aware of their existence, but also, to some degree, approved of immigrants’ efforts to associate by ethnicity.

12 The degree to which the anti-immigrant sentiment that was spreading through the nation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries also affected Italians and

Eastern European Jews in Texas cities is assessed in Chapter Five. In certain respects, the native-born population had little reason to worry about the assimilation of the urban- dwelling immigrant in Texas. As a whole, the Italians and East Europeans of Dallas,

Houston, and Galveston were an English-speaking population who displayed high rates of naturalization and publicly disavowed radical movements. Owing perhaps to the small size of these two foreign born populations, there was relatively little residential concentration in these cities, and certainly nothing on par with the immigrant neighborhoods of New York. Nonetheless, the concerted Americanization effort undertaken by the native-born population in Texas’ urban areas indicates a concern over immigrant assimilation. Anti-immigrant sentiment and anti-Semitism in Texas, culminating with the revival of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, was troubling to both the foreign and native born. The power wielded by nativists and anti-Semites was, however, curbed by a few factors. First, Texans appear to have believed that immigrants who settled in the South were different than those that settled in the North, and less prone to sympathize with radical movements. Second, Texans were highly optimistic about their ability to Americanize immigrants through educational programs. Finally, though the

Klan found a strong base of support in Texas, and particularly Dallas, there were a number of powerful and outspoken opponents of the organization in major Texas cities, especially Dallas. Fear that the disruptive and divisive nature of an organization like the

Klan would inhibit economic growth created an antipathy among the native-born population towards aggressive nativism. Not only did displays of anti-Semitism threaten

13 to stem Jewish patronage of offending businesses, but Italians and Jews were also among the prominent businessmen and community leaders in Texas’ cities. Immigrants, for their part, seemed ambivalent about assimilation. On the one hand, they became naturalized

U.S. citizens, learned to speak English, and made public demonstrations of their patriotism. On the other hand, they continued traditional religious practices, created ethnic associations, and maintained an interest in European affairs. Their experience indicates that assimilation was conceived both by the native-born population and the foreign-born as a complex process that would happen over time, starting with first- generation immigrants but being perhaps only fully realized with the second. On the whole, however, many Texans did not seem to believe that the immigrant’s maintenance of an ethnic identity undermined their patriotism and commitment to the United States.

The dissertation concludes by assessing the importance of the complex relationship between East European Jewish and Italian immigrants and the small, southern, urban environment they called home. The attractions of Texas’ urban areas were clearly strong enough to pull immigrants from Europe and from parts of the United

States thousands of miles away. The urban communities into which they settled were small and the immigrants faced the difficult task of negotiating their social and economic integration without the presence of a larger ethnic population on which they could depend. To some degree, the immigrants who settled in Texas were well equipped for life outside the centers of Italian and East European Jewish immigration; they spoke

English and were literate, they started families and businesses, and they established social and religious organizations for support. The complicated nature of the relationship between immigrants, the small urban environment, and their native-born neighbors in

14 Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, demonstrates that the maintenance of ethnic identity did not depend upon the existence of a large ethnic community nor did it conflict with the immigrants’ identification as Americans or Texans.

Despite an apparent amnesia concerning the role that Italian and East European

Jewish immigrants played in the state’s early twentieth century urban history, the story of these immigrants in urban Texas, far from the larger and better-known communities of the North and Northeast, complicates our understanding of both Texas and American immigration history. Their ability to enter the white-collar workforce as small business owners, clearly differentiates then from their counterparts in major U.S. cities. Yet these immigrants actively pursued the construction and maintenance of a distinctively ethnic identity despite their relatively small numbers. Historians have begun probing the settlement of European immigrants in small urban environments of the west and southwestern United States. For example, Nicholas Ciotola uncovered occupational patterns among Italian immigrants in Albuquerque similar to those found among Italians in Texas’ urban areas. Future studies will show whether the experience of Italian and

East European Jewish immigrants in Texas’ urban areas was unique, or instead characteristic of European immigrant life in smaller cities throughout the United States.11

An inclusion of these immigrant populations in the history of the state draws attention to little known communities of individuals who came to Texas not for farming opportunities, like so many of their contemporaries, but to seek out a life in burgeoning

11 For a few examples of the work on eastern and southern European immigrants in small urban areas, see Nicholas Citotola, "Italian Immigrants in Albuquerque, 1880 to 1930: A Study in Western Distinctiveness," Journal Of the West 43, no. 4 (2004): 41-48; Francis Kallison, “100 Years of Jewry in San Antonio,” (masters thesis, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, 1977); Janet Worrall, "The Impact of the Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition on Denver's Little Italy," Journal Of The West 43, no. 4 (2004): 32-40.

15 urban areas of the South. In these cities, East European Jewish and Italian immigrants settled with their families and found a niche within the economic structure of the small urban environment. They tempered feelings of isolation though the formation of ethnic social and religious organizations. When our study of the Italian and East European

Jewish immigrant experience is redirected from the major U.S. cities towards the smaller urban environments, like those in Texas, it becomes apparent that at the turn of the century, Southern and Eastern European immigrants were choosing to search for opportunities in smaller urban areas as well larger ones, and that they were likely attracted by the chance for self-employment in Texas. These immigrants were apparently undaunted by the prospect of settlement apart from a large ethnic population, in part because they realized that they could establish support systems in the smaller urban environments, as well.

16 Chapter One A Pioneer Effort: Texas’ Immigrant Past

On January 1, 1900, the Galveston Daily News published an article concerning recent immigration into Texas. The journalist reflected upon the number and nationalities of the individuals who had crossed through the Island City’s port over the previous twelve months, and compared the growth in Texas’ migration to the that of New

York: “Bohemian and Moravian, Chinese, Croatian, and Slavonian, Cuban, Dalmation,

Bosnian, Dutch and Flemish, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Irish,

Italian, Lithuanian, Magyar, Mexican, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Scandinavian, Scotch,

Servian, Syrians, Austrian and Hungarian. A varied assortment, indeed, but the sturdiest of their kind, the forerunners of many thousands in the not distant future. New York state alone receiving 15,000 people this year, started as Texas is now starting, with pioneers few in number.”12

Texans placed great importance on immigration in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and spoke competitively of the state’s attractiveness to settlers relative to other areas of the United States. Nonetheless, stories of war, cattle ranching, and oil dominate Texas’ written history. The substantial growth of the Mexican immigrant population has attracted scholarly attention, as has German immigration to an extent, but the migration of other European immigrants into the state occupies very little space in the body of work on Texas’ past. Because native-born whites have historically comprised the majority, it is understandably difficult to imagine the variety of ethnic groups that are represented in the population. Out of 604,215 total residents in Texas in

1860, only 7 percent were foreign-born. As is shown in Table 1.1, while the total state

12 “Immigration,” Galveston Daily News, January 1, 1900 (hereafter GDN).

17 population had grown to more than three million by 1900, only 179,357, or about 6 percent, were of foreign birth. There was a slight increase in the number of immigrants in Texas over the following two decades, and by 1920 the percentage of foreign-born residents among the total population had risen to approximately 8 percent. Overall, though, Texas lagged far behind other states in terms of its immigrant population between

1860 and 1920. For example, New York, Wisconsin, and Connecticut each had foreign- born populations that comprised around 26 percent of the overall population at the turn of the century. Though native-born Americans have always formed the majority of Texas’ population, numerous foreign-born ethnic groups were represented in the state. The considerable amount of influence Texas immigrants have had in the areas of farming, business, religion, and culture encourages examination of these populations.13

Table 1.1 Total Texas and Foreign Born Population, 1860-1920

Percent of Total Total Foreign- Total Population Population that Born Population is Foreign Born 1860 604,215 43,422 7% 1880 1,591,749 114,616 7% 1900 3,048,710 179,357 6% 1920 4,663,228 363,832 8%

Sources: Population of the United States in 1860. Eighth Census (Washington: GPO, 1864), 490; Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (Washington: GPO, 1881), 483; Census Reports, Volume I. Twelfth Census of the United States. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 732-733; Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 47, 130, 766.

Out of a total 42,422 foreign-born residents in Texas in 1860, Germans were the largest foreign-group, as is shown in Table 1.2. Pushed from Germany by competition

13 Census Reports, Volume I. Twelfth Census of the United States. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 482, 732.

18 for agricultural land, crop failure, industrialization, and failed revolutionary efforts,

Germans moved into a region of Texas that has been labeled the “German Belt”; an area of settlements that swung west from the coastal land near Galveston and Houston to the

Hill Country of central Texas shown in Figure 1.1. The Society for the Protection of

German Immigrants oversaw the establishment of such settlements as New Braunfels and

Fredericksburg in this region during the mid 1840s. Joined by immigrants seeking refuge from poor economic conditions in Europe caused by the mechanization of farming methods, transportation developments, and competition with farms across the Atlantic,

Germans moved outside this area in the post-war period, forming small “folk islands” across Texas. Immigrants also began moving into urban areas like Galveston, Houston, and San Antonio, where they assumed non-agricultural occupations. By 1860 there were approximately twenty-one thousand foreign-born Germans living in Texas and the migration of this group increased after the Civil War. There were 35,347 foreign-born

Germans in the state in 1880, and 48,295 in 1900. By 1920, the number the foreign-born population had fallen to 31,062, but the German-American cultural presence in Texas remained strong.14

14 Population of the United States in 1860. Eighth Census (Washington: GPO, 1864), 490; Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 147-149; Walter Kamphoefner, News from the Land of Freedom: German Immigrants Write Home (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 2-3, 56-59; Jordan, “The German Settlement of Texas,” 194,197-198, 200, 203, 205-211; Rudolph Leopold Bisele, The History of the German Settlements in Texas 1831-1861 (Austin: Eakin Press, 1987), 111, 140, 45-50, 61.

19 Table 1.2 Population Size of Texas’ Largest Immigrant Groups, 1860-1920

1860 1880 1900 1920 Germany 20,553 35,347 48,295 31,062 Mexico 12,443 43,161 71,062 249,652 Ireland 3,480 8,103 6,173 4,333 France 1,883 2,653 2,025 2,544 England 1,695 6,528 8,213 7,685 Austria 730 3,474 6,870 6,441 Bohemia/Czechoslovakia ---- 2,669 9,204 12,819

Sources: Population of the United States in 1860. Eighth Census (Washington: GPO, 1864), 490; Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (Washington: GPO, 1881), 492-495; Census Reports, Volume I. Twelfth Census of the United States. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 732-735; Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 1022.

Figure 1.1: The German Belt of Texas

Source: Terry Jordan, “The German Settlement of Texas after 1865,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 2 (October 1969): 200, fig. 1.

20 Foreign-born Mexican immigrants made up the second largest ethnic group in

1860. Unlike German immigration, early Mexican immigration to Texas is complicated because of shifting boundaries. Many people who identified as “Mexican” were native- born Texans. But non-Texas-born Mexicans continued to move into the area even after

Texas became an independent Republic. In 1860 the Mexican-born population in Texas was almost 12,500. By 1880 that number had increased to 43,161 and by 1920 the size of the population had exploded to 249,652. Mexican immigrants went first to south and central Texas seeking jobs in agriculture and new opportunities gradually drew the newcomers across the state. The post war period witnessed movement of Mexican immigrants into newer communities like San Angelo in west central Texas and eastward from San Antonio. Mexican immigrants later moved into northern and eastern Texas in the twentieth century, pushed from home by economic and political unrest during the dictatorship of Pofirio Diaz and the Mexican Revolution and drawn by agricultural job opportunities in these regions.15

The land that drew German and Mexican farmers and agricultural laborers to

Texas was the state’s greatest resource. Both plentiful and cheap, it was perhaps the single greatest attraction that Texas had to offer immigrants. Farmers who saw a limited future for themselves and their descendants in Europe traveled many thousands of miles

15 Mexicans and Germans continued to dominate the foreign-born immigrant population throughout the period under examination in this study. The foreign-born Mexican population would quickly grow in size in the late nineteenth century, coming to nearly match the German population by 1870 and outnumber it by almost eight thousand individuals in 1880. Austrian immigrants also comprised a large portion of the foreign-born immigrant population in nineteenth century Texas. However, no Austrian settlements existed in the state at the time. There is very little historical scholarship written specifically about Austrian immigrants in Texas, who are sometimes listed as Germans and Bohemians in the nineteenth century. Terry Jordan, “A Century and a Half of Ethnic Change in Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 89, no. 4 (April 1986): 393-400, http://www.jstor.org. proxygw.wrlc.org/stable/30239930; Arnoldo De León, Mexican Americans in Texas: A Brief History (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harland Davidson, Inc., 1993), 36, 63, 66, 67.

21 to take advantage of this opportunity. Early concentrations of Czech immigrant families formed in south central Texas drawn to the state by letters from immigrants like

Reverend Ernst Bergman and Josef Lesikar, who believed Texas offered immigrants the option of land ownership that they did not have at home. Men and women with visions of establishing utopian communities also took advantage of the large tracts of available land. For poorer immigrants who were unable to purchase land, employment on Texas’ farms and ranches served as an added attraction.16

Some of the very earliest arrivals when Texas was still under Mexican control came to take advantage of empresario contracts issued by the government in an effort to develop the region. After 1832, these contracts were given with the stipulation that only

Mexican citizens and foreign immigrants could be settlers, as the government tried to create a barrier between Mexico and encroaching Anglo-American settlements. The

Republic of Texas government issued similar contracts to migrants after independence.

Irish immigrants established several early settlements. John McMullen and James

McGloin partnered to establish the colony of San Patricio and recruited individual Irish immigrants and families already in the United States. James Power and James Hewetson established Refugio, a south Texas colony settled by Irish immigrants who arrived directly from Ireland. English empresarios also established Texas colonies. One such settlement was the Peter’s Colony of north Texas, in which a group of Englishmen invested after receiving a contract from the Republic of Texas in 1841. Though Peter’s

Colony was large and survived longer than other colonies, it ultimately failed due to

16 William Phillip Hewitt, “The Czechs in Texas: A Study of the Immigration and the Development of Czech Ethnicity, 1850-1920” (Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1978), 67, 108, 111, 38; Terry Jordan, “A Century and a Half of Ethnic Change in Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 89 no 4 (April 1986): 411, http://www.jstor.org.proxygw.wrlc.org/stable/30239930 (accessed November 3, 2010).

22 mismanagement, internal and external friction over land holdings, and poor relations with surrounding Indian groups.17

French immigrants also petitioned for empresario contracts. Though during the first three decades of the nineteenth century French settlement in Texas consisted mostly of small, unorganized migrant groups and individuals, in 1842 Frenchman Henri Castro entered an agreement with the Republic of Texas to settle six hundred families on two separate land grants outside San Antonio. Castro actively recruited immigrants in Europe and traveled back and forth between Texas and France to raise money for the endeavor.

The people of Castroville, which included French, Alsatian, German and Swiss among the foreign-born population, faced drought, disease, and Indian attack, but ultimately the colony survived. Henri Castro’s colony was the only successful French settlement in

Texas.18

Some immigrants came to Texas as settlers for these empresario colonies, but many came independently as individuals or in small family units, particularly after Texas secured independence from Mexico. Drawn by the availability of cheap land, farmers as well men and women seeking refuge from the monotony, pace, and long hours of factory work in the United Kingdom and Europe made their way to the Lone Star State. The

17 Graham Davis, “Models of Migration: The Historiography of the Irish Pioneers in South Texas,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 99, no. 3 (January 1996): 333-337, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30241515 (accessed November 7, 2010); William Oberste, Texas Irish Empresarios and their Colonies (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Co., 1953), 1-4, 46, 60-63, 93-101, 151- 164; Brendan Flannery, The Irish Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1980), 27, 31, 38-42, 43-48, 99-102; Thomas W. Cutrer, The English Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1985), 40-41, 44-47; Seymour Connor, The Peters Colony of Texas, reprint ed. (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones Company, 2005), 22, 25, 104, 107, 84-87, 164; Mary Virginia Henderson, “Minor Empresario Contracts for the Colonization of Texas, 1825-1832,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 31, no. 4 (April 1928): 300-302, http://www.jstor.org/ stable/30242530 (accessed November 2, 2010). 18 The French Texans (San Antonio: University of Texas Institute of Texan Cultures, 1973), 10; Wayne Ahr, “Henri Castro and Castroville,” in The French in Texas, ed. Francois Lagarde (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2003), 130, 133, 131, 139.

23 partitioning of former plantations and ranches into smaller parcels of farmland after the

Civil War and the westward movement of Anglo-Americans willing to sell their land attracted Germans farmers, in particular. Railroads actively promoted the sale of the land around their tracks by distributing German-language brochures throughout central Europe and colonization organizations like the Verein zum Schutze deutscher Einwanderer in

Texas (Society for the Protection of German Immigrants in Texas) brought thousands of foreign-born Germans to the state. Dreams of financial improvement through agriculture did not always come to fruition, however, particularly if the immigrant was compelled to become a sharecropper or tenant farmer.19

The wide availability of land attracted settlers who had little interest in farming or ranching, as well as those who did. This was the case with the failed colony of La

Reunion, established in 1854 four miles west of Dallas by French Fourierist, Victor

Considerant. Considerant planned a cooperative settlement of French, Belgians, and

Swiss immigrants and located his colony atop a limestone bluff; a spot which he unfortunately chose for its beauty rather than fertile soil. The colony’s population of artists, skilled craftsmen, and intellectuals, had little agricultural experience among them, which meant productive farming would have been difficult even had the land been fertile.

Within three years crop failure and severe weather propelled many of the settlers back to

19 Cutrer, English Texans, 35-39, 82, 101-103; Terry Jordan, German Seeds in Texas Soil: Immigrant Farmers in Nineteenth Century Texas (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1969, paperback edition, 1975), 38-47; Terry Jordan, “The German Settlement of Texas after 1865,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 73, no. 2 (October 1969): 196-197, http://www.jstor.org.proxygw.wrlc.org/ stable/30236570 (accessed October 21, 2010).

24 Europe, though some would move to Dallas where they came to influence the social, cultural, economic, and political life of the growing city.20

Though many of immigrants were successful in utilizing Texas vast acreage for farming and agriculture-related jobs, others, like the inhabitants of La Reunion, recoiled at Texas’ rough social and physical terrain and at the hard labor required for the farming and ranching life. Sometimes, these immigrants chose to return home. But the rough environment did not repulse all immigrants, particularly a wave of sojourning young

English men who went to Texas to work as cowboys in the late nineteenth century.

While the hardship of settling Texas’ lands made many immigrants uncomfortable and unhappy, these young men found Texas to be exactly the temporary adventure they sought.21

Though land and the romantic vision of open spaces and an untamed wild attracted many immigrants, others settlers came to Texas as military personnel, merchants, professionals, artisans, and unskilled laborers. By 1870, 65 percent of French immigrants in Texas worked in non-agricultural jobs. Some urban-based immigrants, like Irish-born Peter Gallagher, became quite successful in business. Gallagher arrived in

San Antonio shortly after Texas independence and from a humble start as a stonemason he successfully transitioned into business and land development. He later served the region as a county justice.22

20 Patricia Hill, Dallas: The Making of a Modern City (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996), xx-xxi; Jonathan Beecher, “Building Utopia in the Promised Lands,” in The French in Texas, 206-219; Francois Lagarde, “Birth Stock and Work,” in The French in Texas, 164-165. 21 Cutrer, English Texans, 35-39, 82, 101-103. 22 Lagarde, “Birth, Stock and Work,” 160-161, 164-166, 169-170; Flannery, The Irish Texans, 103, 109- 110.

25 The spread of railroads also brought immigrant laborers to the cities. In the late nineteenth century increasing numbers of Irish and Mexican immigrants went to Dallas and the Houston-Galveston area where they contributed to railroad development. Some worked as laborers earning roughly two dollars a day at jobs that included laying rail, lining track, and bolting fishplates, which are the metal bars used to join rail segments together to form tracks. Other immigrants contributed to the railway development in an entrepreneurial capacity. In the early twentieth century, after the railroad work was completed, the migrants found employment in the gas, oil, shipping and cotton industries and also as city laborers.23

Not all foreign interest in Texas manifested itself in migration into the state, and the experience of nineteenth century English investment in the state illuminates the difference between Texans’ desire for immigrants and capital, and their disdain for a foreign landholding class. During the 1880s a number of English corporations and individuals looked to Texas as place for capital investment. In particular, the Panhandle region appeared as an attractive location for land and livestock investment. At least five

England-based companies were organized in the late nineteenth century, including the

Prairie Land Company and the Land Mortgage Bank of Texas. But severe climate fluctuations, economic depression, and Texans’ suspicion of monopolies, speculation, and absentee landlordism, made these ventures largely unprofitable for English investors.

Specifically, the Alien Land Law of 1892 and the Corporation Land Law of 1893 tried to prohibit this type of foreign investment.24

23 Flannery, The Irish Texans, 123-124; De León, Mexican Americans, 35, 66, 70, 71. 24 The Corporation Land Law of 1893 was not strictly enforced and eventually Texas laws were rewritten to allow foreign corporations to own land. The passage of such laws, even if later altered, most likely did lead to a decrease in British investment in Texas. J. Fred Rippy, "British Investments in Texas Lands and

26 Whether immigrants came to Texas for farming, investment, or urban employment opportunities, many newcomers found the challenges of life in the Lone Star state quite overwhelming. Even in the late nineteenth century, Texas was still a vast region of undeveloped land, vulnerable to severe weather and violent clashes between settlers and American Indian groups. For some migrants, these hardships proved too much and they chose to leave. But many immigrants stayed and survived and some even prospered, developing the land and the economy and influencing the cultural, social, and religious world that formed around them.25

Promoting Texas

The decision to emigrate is rarely an easy one and in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries it might have seemed an even greater risk to move to Texas than more developed regions, especially for those immigrants who did not have friends or family already in residence. Outsiders who had heard stories about Texas feared hostile Indians, severe weather, and even menacing wildlife, like coyotes or venomous snakes.

Additionally, residents of the Lone Star state were reputed to be wary of newcomers and unfriendly to migrants from above the Mason-Dixon line.

Perhaps it was inevitable that land availability and developments in agriculture, railroad construction, and the petroleum industry would draw people to Texas. But the effort of boosters, businessmen and the state government to attract immigrants to Texas undoubtedly helped increase the flow of migration after the Civil War. The state needed

Livestock, " Southwestern Historical Quarterly 58, no. 3 (January 1955): 331-332, 334-335, 339, http://www.jstor.org.proxygw.wrlc.org/stable/30235211 (accessed November 2, 2010). 25 This chapter focuses on the early settlement of foreign-born immigrants in Texas, and does not examine the populations that already resided in the state at mid-century, including the numerous groups of American Indian groups who had long made the region their home prior to the arrival of European immigrants.

27 people and capital in the nineteenth century, and though Texans may not have agreed upon the methods with which to increase immigration, they generally shared the belief that an influx of newcomers was critical to the development of the state.

Racism, in part, fueled Texans’ desire to draw both native and foreign-born immigrants to the state. After the end of the Civil War, the assumption that African

Americans would not work unless coerced, in addition to the notion that Texas could become a “white mans’ country,” motivated plantation owners to seek out white laborers from around the country and abroad. Men like Scottish immigrant and agriculturalist,

Thomas Affleck, worked to promote such immigration. Affleck traveled to Scotland after the Civil War with hopes of bringing Scottish and English farmers back to Texas to replace African American laborers. He wrote, published, and distributed pamphlets abroad that told of the opportunities awaiting immigrants, along with descriptions of the state. He also distributed circulars to other Texas farmers to inform them of how they could join the effort. Affleck wrote to the Galveston Daily News detailing his work and although his attempts to organize a large movement of immigrants were unsuccessful, it is likely that his efforts influenced a number of immigrants to choose Texas as their home. His motivation and methods are examples of the tactics used by other Texans and institutions, including private corporations and the government, to draw settlers into the state. Written materials like almanacs, pamphlets, and letters, as well as personal contact with potential immigrants were considered essential by other immigration promoters.

28 Interested Texans believed that if they could explain the resources and opportunities available in Texas, people would flock to the state.26

It was not long after the Civil War that the state government decided to join the effort to promote immigration, though the program was short-lived. The state constitution of 1869 provided for a “ ‘Bureau of Immigration,’ which [has] supervision and control of all matters connected with immigration.” The Bureau was assigned a

“Superintendent of Immigration,” to be appointed by the Governor for a term of four years, at a cost of two thousand dollars annually to the state. In addition to the superintendent, there were four bureau agents serving in the United States and abroad.

German-born Gustav Loeffler, the agency’s first superintendent, viewed the Bureau’s work as multifaceted. Its first purpose was to gather and distribute information for immigrants, including descriptions of the land, means of transportation for goods, the average cost of land, and information for families, such as descriptions of school facilities. Second, the agency was to facilitate passage to Texas by acting as a liaison between transportation companies and the immigrants.27

The Texas constitution stipulated that the state legislature was to appropriate funds for “defraying the expenses of this Bureau, to the support of agencies in foreign seaports or seaports of the United States, and to the payment, in part, or in toto, of the passage of immigrants from Europe to [the] State, and their transportation within [the]

State.” The Bureau, however, consistently struggled with issues of under-funding. In an

1874 report to the governor, Superintendent Jerome Robertson was very clear about the

26 Barbara Rozek’s Come to Texas offers a comprehensive examination of the drive to attract immigrants to Texas, as well as a thorough examination of nineteenth century enticement literature. Rozek, Come to Texas, 6, 9-11, 200. 27 Texas State Constitution (1869), art. 11, sec. 1 and 2, http://tarlton.law.utexas. edu/constitutions/text/GART11.html (accessed 10/21/2010); Rozek, Come to Texas, 23-26.

29 need for additional money. “The appropriations made by the Thirteenth Legislature,” he complained, “had been exhausted by [Gustav Loeffler],” leaving “no fund with which to purchase maps…advertise, collect and publish for distribution…statistical answers to the numerous questions” pouring in from across the country and abroad. But Roberston, like many of his contemporaries, was confident that with funding and an adequate staff, his agency would be able to disseminate information at home and abroad that would attract immigrants to Texas.28 He wrote to Governor Coke the following: “In connection with the subject of foreign immigration, I have to report that my correspondence with foreign capitalists, practical farmers and artizans (sic) in England, Ireland, Scotland, Germany,

Sweden, Norway and France induces the very confident belief that with two active general agents to theses countries, provided with proper printed matter, setting forth the advantages of our State, for distribution, would bring a very large number of industrious, active, intelligent immigrants to our State, and with them much of the capital and skill that we need for the development of our dormant resources.” For his part, Robertson compensated for budget shortfalls by appointing twelve unsalaried persons around the

United States and abroad to aid immigrants in local ports and by working with the state’s newspapers to publish information.29

Like the Texans who worked individually to attract immigrants, the Bureau of

Immigration also believed in the power of the written word and tried to spread its message by placing advertisements in journals and in the organization’s publication,

Texas: The Home for the Emigrant, From Everywhere. As with other enticement

28 Texas State Constitution (1869), art. 11, sec. 1 and 2, http://tarlton.law.utexas. edu/constitutions/text/GART11.html (accessed 10/21/2010); Texas Bureau of Immigration, Annual Report of the Superintendent of Immigration of the State of Texas for the Year 1874 (Houston: AC Gray, State Printer, 1874), 4 (hereafter 1874 Report). 29 Texas Bureau of Immigration, 1874 Report, 8-10.

30 literature, promises of fertile lands, a healthy climate, and prosperous futures for hardworking immigrants accompanied the assurance that all people were welcome in the state, regardless of birthplace, political beliefs, or religious creed.30

Texas: The Home for the Emigrant from Everywhere provided much of the information a potential settler would need and covered everything from how to travel through the state, to information necessary for selecting a location in Texas best suited to the migrant’s needs. The front of the publication contained a foldout map showing the location of counties, railroad lines, major cities, and towns, as well concentrations of mineral deposits. Other information included census data with county population statistics for 1850-1870, the names of county seats, regional climate descriptions, and railroad track mileage for the state. For farmers and ranchers there was information about stock raising and land costs and for those immigrants who were unable to afford land, there was information on the cost of land rental and the practice of sharecropping.

The pamphlet assured potential renters that “lands in tracts, suitable for families or single men, can be rented at from three to six dollars per acre, payable at the time the crops are marketed, or at the end of the year, as the parties may agree.”31

Generally speaking, it seems the Bureau was more interested in attracting immigrants to the countryside than the towns and cities. A section titled “Employment and Labor” discouraged professionals from seeking employment in larger cities and towns where, “as a general rule the different professions were overrun.” The Bureau singled out a few occupations, including lawyers, physicians, teachers, bookkeepers, and clerks, warning that individuals in these fields were not “advised to come to Texas,”

30 Texas Bureau of Immigration, Texas: the Home for the Emigrant from Everywhere, 3-4. 31 Texas Bureau of Immigration, Texas: The Home, 5-27.

31 without “additional determination to seek employment in tilling the soil should an opportunity not present itself.”32

The state’s involvement in promoting immigration was not without its detractors.

Many Texans felt that the state’s resources were well known and did not believe Texas’ limited revenue should be used to fund an immigration bureau. The issue arose in 1875 at the state’s constitutional convention in Austin. Protestors called into question the efficacy of the bureau, asking how much it had actually done towards attracting immigrants to Texas. But this sentiment was not unanimous among convention attendees. Others felt that Texas was a state of immigrants and believed its future success depended on maintaining a welcoming posture towards immigrants. These Bureau advocates maintained that a large population meant a greater labor force and more consumers for the goods and services produced by these laborers. Additionally, a larger population meant a greater source for state revenue. Texas’ governor Richard Coke argued prior to the convention that immigration provided for larger population, which ultimately translated to increased national political power through greater representation in Congress.33

As the Bureau’s supporters fought for its survival, Jacob Waelder, of the convention’s Immigration Committee, issued a minority report that suggested the state could establish a Bureau of Agriculture, Statistics and Immigration in place of a Bureau of Immigration. Such an agency would gather information not only to benefit immigrants, but also to aid resident Texans, and therefore might be more acceptable to

Bureau opponents. Waelder acknowledged the work of private individuals and

32 Texas Bureau of Immigration, Texas: The Home, 34. 33 Rozek, Come to Texas, 37-38, 43-45.

32 companies in the collection and dissemination of information but asked: “Who can doubt that the same and more extended information, coming from a public officer, by authority of the State, would be regarded as more reliable, and therefore more acceptable?”

Ultimately, the 1876 Texas constitution prohibited the use of any “public money for the establishment and maintenance of a Bureau of Immigration, or for any purpose of bringing immigrants to the State.” To ease the fears of those Texans who worried this prohibition would make potential immigrants feel unwelcome in the state, legislators adopted a resolution in August of 1876, that assured hard-working and industrious immigrants that they would receive a “hearty welcome” in Texas, even though any aid to the immigrant must be undertaken by private companies “at no cost to the State.”34

The debate over the Bureau of Immigration was not a matter of partisan politics.

Republicans denounced the proposed constitution at their state convention in January of

1876 because it appeared unfriendly to immigration. Democratic delegates were divided over the issue at the constitutional convention in 1875. They avoided taking a stance on the matter through their refusal to endorse the constitution at the Democratic Party convention in the following year. Though some Texans believed that the government should be involved in the effort to attract immigrants, a climate that was hostile to an activist government and the use of state money for the purposes of peopling the Texas, resulted in a prohibition of the bureau.35

34 Rozek, Come to Texas, 44-45; Journal of the Constitutional Convention of the State of Texas, 1875, 288- 290; Texas State Constitution (1876), art. 16, sec 56, http://tarlton.law.utexas.edu/constitutions/text/IART16.html (accessed 10/21/2010); Hans Peter Mareus Neilsen Gammel, The Laws of Texas, 1822-1897 Volume 8, http://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth6731 (accessed October 21, 2010): 1154. 35 Rozek, Come to Texas, 49-58.

33 The 1876 constitution did not, however, end the use of state revenue for the collection of information useful to immigrants. Texas’s Department of Insurance,

Statistics and History, established in 1879, published reports with the official purpose of tracking the state’s development, but immigrants were clearly part of the target audience.

The Resources, Soil and Climate of Texas, published by the D.A.I.S.H. in 1882, provided statistical information gathered from nearly all of the 170 and nine unorganized counties in Texas. This information was of a similar nature to that which appeared in almanacs, though less comprehensive. Population numbers, average crop yields, climate, and information on the relative health of the people, were all included in county reports. The

Department’s Commissioner, A.W. Spaight, acknowledged in the report’s introduction that this information was useful for attracting immigrants to the state. Spaight explained that providing unbiased official reports was made necessary by “the number of letters form other States and foreign countries…asking for information…from official sources, and strongly implying a want of full faith in the accuracy of representations.”36

The 1876 constitutional prohibition said nothing about individual or corporate efforts to attract immigrants to Texas. Thus, these groups moved to strengthen their message to potential immigrants in the following years. Like the Bureau of Immigration, individuals and corporations believed in the power of the written word as a method of selling Texas to potential settlers. Letters, newspaper articles, and railroad promotional literature all presented Texas’ strengths to immigrants and refuted negative rumors about the state. Private efforts to attract immigrants to Texas had been underway since before

36 The Texas Department of Insurance, Statistics and History later became the Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, or the D.A.I.S.H. Rozek, Come to Texas, 103, 105-106, 113-114; Texas Department of Agriculture, Insurance, Statistics and History, The Resources, Soil and Climate of Texas, Report of A.W. Spaight, Commissioner (Galveston: A.H. Belo & Co., 1882), iiv-vi, 95-97, 110-115, 157- 158.

34 the formation of the Bureau of Immigration and continued long after its disbanding.

Designed with the rural farmer in mind, Texas Almanacs provided a wealth of information about the state, but these publications were also directed at the potential immigrant. The 1873 edition of the Texas Almanac included a section composed by the

East Texas Immigration Society that provided information on wages for laborers and skilled professionals, and estimated the cost of travel from ports across the country. An earlier 1871 edition of this publication provided a general description of what items immigrants should bring with them. For individuals who had heard rumors about Texas’s reputation as a lawless and violent place, this edition included a letter from a Texas resident who promised that Northern emigrants are welcome, that women were in no danger, that Texas residents made “high-toned moral” neighbors, and that it was safe to travel unarmed.37

Like almanacs, letters and newspaper articles provided up-to-date information for potential immigrants. Journalists traveling through Texas and immigrant farmers wrote letters to share their experiences in Texas and provide information that might aid others.

Sometimes these letters were published in newspapers and other times they were passed from family to friends, but undoubtedly they were read multiple times by many individuals. Letters offered advice on what immigrants should bring to Texas, how to travel safely, and where to settle. This correspondence acted as a lubricant for chain migration and likely stiffened the resolve of immigrants who were unsure of whether

Texas was the destination they sought.38

37 Rozek, Come to Texas, 67, 73-76; The Texas Almanac for 1871 and Emigrant’s Guide to Texas (Galveston: Richardson & Co., 1871), 109, 201; The Texas Almanac for 1873 and Emigrants Guide to Texas (Galveston: Richardson & Co., 1873), 98-101; Texas Almanac for 1871, 40-42. 38 Rozek, Come to Texas, 93-100.

35 Railroads created their own enticement literature. Their pamphlets and booklets covered an extensive array of topics, similar in style and format to the state almanacs. An

1892 booklet, The Resources and Attractions of the Texas Panhandle, published by the

Union Pacific Railway, reported on matters ranging from climate, soil type, and land cost, to hospitals and educational facilities. The publication contained letters from residents that explained average crop yields and the amount of profit farmers could expect from a normal harvest. Resident testimonials included names, locations, and place of former residence in the case of an immigrant, to emphasize the validity of their statements. James Wilson, formerly of Tama County, Iowa, recounted his travels to the

Panhandle region in one such testimonial. Wilson’s letter included a brief explanation of why he preferred Texas to Florida and California, and why the Panhandle was more desirable than other areas of Texas. “The center of the Panhandle,” he wrote, “has over

2,000 feet higher elevation than Iowa,” which puts it “entirely above the range of the fever region of the coast.” Wilson concluded therefore that “there is nothing to produce malaria in man or beast,” suggesting not only good health for humans but also for stock that would not be quarantined from market. According to Wilson the Panhandle air was

“as pure and clear as the vaulted arch of bright, cloudless skies above, impregnated with life and health.” In an era when yellow fever epidemics ravaged the Texas coastal region such reports of healthful conditions must have been appealing.39

Private individuals banded together in other ways to collect and distribute information to potential immigrants. The 1887 Immigration Convention in Dallas stimulated such efforts. Spurred to action by an 1886-1887 drought and competition with

39 Union Pacific Railroad Company, The Resources and Attractions of the Texas Panhandle for the Home Seeker, Capitalist and Tourist (St. Louis: Woodward & Tiernan Printing Co., 1893), 3-5; Union Pacific, Resources and Attractions, 15-27, 91-93.

36 other regions for immigrants, 850 delegates met in Dallas in December of 1887 to discuss the best methods for attracting potential settlers to the state. The Galveston Daily News reported on the first day of the convention citing high attendance among the delegates who braved frigid weather as evidence of enthusiasm about the purpose for which the men had convened. Convention delegates were encouraged by the contents of a letter read aloud from W.H. Newman of the Missouri Pacific railroad. Mr. Newman urged the convention to immediately appoint a committee of men that would meet and “confer with the railroads on the [immigration] matter,” so that special railroad rates might be set.

Newman assured the group that the railroads may be relied upon to “render material aid…in bringing about what is of such great interest to all.” A committee of thirty-one men, one from each senatorial district, was selected to devise “a plan for local organization [and] the ways and means of raising the necessary funds to advertise the resources and advantages of the state to the world.”40

What is significant about this convention is not its success in setting in motion actions that led to immigration, but that a large group of resident Texans with disparate interests met for the common purpose of attracting immigrants. They adopted the following resolution unanimously:

Whereas reports alike detrimental to our state and unjust to its good people are circulated and kept afloat in other portions of the United States and elsewhere to the effect that our people are opposed to immigration and to the settlement of the state, and they are not desirous of seekers coming among us from certain sections of our common country who entertain political views and opinions different from those entertained by a majority of our people…therefore be it resolved, that all industrious and law abiding people, without regard to section, nationality, religious creeds or political views, including laboring man and capitalists…are hereby most cordially invited to come and dwell among

40 Rozek, Come to Texas, 129; “The Delegates in Dallas,“ Galveston Daily News (hereafter GDN), December 27, 1887; “The Convention in Dallas,” GDN, December 22, 1887.

37 us…with the declared assurance that they will each and all receive from the people of Texas a cordial and sincere welcome.41

Following the convention, local booster clubs began gathering information and publishing brochures. Notably, cities like San Antonio and Galveston became involved in this activity even though it was generally assumed that most immigrants would settle in the rural areas. A final report in the News, noted these heavily settled areas would get the “slosh over,” or the wealth and prosperity that would emerge once immigrants built up “the uninhabited places of the west,” and other regions of the state.42

The promotional effort to attract immigrants was not simply a nineteenth century phenomenon. Texas newspapers published articles and editorials that are indicative of a twentieth century interest in increasing immigration to the state. A letter to the editor of the Houston Post in April of 1900 worried that the flow of immigrants and capital into

Texas were “running very low” compared to other states. In June of the same year, the

Post reported the opinions of John Howard, a passenger and immigration agent for the

Southern Pacific Railroad, who argued that the peopling of Texas was good for the nation as a whole. Howard believed that “what the people want, what the country needs and what the railroads must have is a farmer on every half or quarter section of the fertile prairies of the Louisiana and Texas coast.” When questioned as to whether the religious beliefs of immigrants mattered, Howard answered, “What we want is thrifty farmers, and the more the better.”43

41 “The Convention in Dallas,“ GDN, December 22, 1887. 42 Rozek, Come to Texas, 67, 73-76; “Immigration is Imminent,” GDN, December 23, 1887. 43 “The Tide of Immigration,” Houston Post (hereafter HP), April 24, 1900; “To Get Settlers for Texas,” HP, May 23, 1900; “Working for Texas,” HP, June 8, 1900. For more articles on attracting immigrants to Texas and developing the state’s network of processing and transporting new arrivals, see “Immigration Association,” GDN, March 3, 1900; “Many Immigrants Coming to Texas,” Dallas Morning News

38 As Howard suggested, the effort to attract immigrants to Texas was directed mostly at moving people into the rural areas of the state. Yet, as these areas grew in population, so too did the cities that processed, transported, and marketed the crops and livestock that came from Texas’ farms and ranches. With this growth came greater job opportunities and an increase in the number of immigrants seeking employment in urban areas. By the early twentieth century Texans were increasingly concerned with job competition in the cities and wanted to ensure that immigrants continued to move into the rural areas of the state. An editorial from the Cleburne Enterprise complained that the growing number of immigrant laborers had begun threatening the job security of industrial workers throughout the country, including Texas. Such immigrants, the writer protested, were lowering wages and increasing labor troubles. In December of 1910, the commissioner of labor statistics, J.S. Myers, went to Galveston to study the Texas labor situation compelled by “numerous complaints…from the cities that there is a congestion of the immigrant labor.” Though the commissioner found high levels of unemployment in some north Texas cities, he reported low unemployment in Galveston. “‘This immigration question in its relation to Texas labor,’” he explained, “’is not so much of a problem here as in other cities and towns.’” Commissioner Myers concluded that because

Galveston was not situated amidst farming communities, there were fewer unemployed agricultural workers or rural-dwelling immigrants seeking employment there.

Additionally, Myers explained, Galveston’s many construction projects offered jobs for laborers.44

(hereafter DMN), October 30, 1915; “Divide Immigrant Business,” GDN, February 3, 1910; “Galveston and Her New Immigration Station,” GDN, February 27, 1910. 44 “Immigration to Texas,” HC, May 31, 1902; “Commissioner Myers to Study Immigration,” GDN, December 9, 1910.

39 Despite the attention contemporary urban-dwelling Texans gave to the immigrant presence in their midst, Texas immigration history has been primarily viewed as one of rural migration, farming, and ranching and this is for good reason. Nearly 63 percent of all gainfully employed Texans in 1900 labored in agricultural pursuits. It is important to note, however, that developing urban areas attracted immigrants in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. From 1900 to 1920, the percent of the population that resided in cities increased dramatically, as is indicated in Table 1.3. While only 520,759 people, or approximately 17 percent, lived in urban areas of Texas in 1900, that number had grown to 1,512,689, or 32 percent of the state’s total, by 1920. Much of this increase was due to an influx of immigrants in the early twentieth century. Given the rural focus of

Texas’ nineteenth century immigration, the presence of an increasing foreign-born urban population presents a set of questions that relates not only to Texas’ immigration history, but also to United States’ immigration history. First, if immigrants had the opportunity to join ethnic enclaves in larger, more developed urban areas, why did these migrants choose Texas? Second, why did the urban areas draw immigrants to the state, if Texas’ main resources and attractions were located in rural areas and if Texans were trying to keep immigrants out of the cities? Third, what was the urban experience like for immigrants in Texas cities, which lacked entrenched ethnic communities?45

45 U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Population Volume I, Twelfth Census (Washington: GPO, 1901), 508- 509.

40

Table 1.3 Rural and Urban Population of Texas, 1900-1920

1900 1910 1920 Rural 2,527,951 2,958,438 3,150,539 Urban 520,759 938,104 1,512,689 Percent Urban 17% 24% 32%

Source: Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 28.

Galveston

Of the three cities under consideration, Galveston probably had most in common with the northern and northeastern urban immigrant centers until Houston and Dallas began rising in prominence in the late nineteenth century. Historians have called

Galveston the “New York of Texas” and the “Ellis Island of the West” for its active port and position as gateway for immigrants into the Southwest. The Island City was founded in the mid-1830s by French-Canadian Michel Mernard, who organized the city in a grid- like pattern that remains to this day.46

Prior to the Civil War Galveston was a dirty, rough, export-centered port town that offered storage and shipping for farming supplies and produce. There was some industry that included the manufacture of iron parts and furniture, but the cotton industry, including cotton compression, was the foundation of the city’s economy. Cotton grown in southeast Texas came through the city and then traveled to other points in the United

States. The port activity resulted in a transient population for Galveston, and this factor, combined with poor sanitation and a lack of a fresh water supply, meant that illness and

46 Bernard Marinbach, Galveston: Ellis Island of the West (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983); David McComb, Galveston: A History (Austin, University of Texas Press, 1986), 34, 47-48; McComb, Galveston, 43, Susan Wiley Hardwick, Mythic Galveston: Reinventing America’s Third Coast (Baltimore: John’s Hopkins University Press), 29, 31-33.

41 death came often to the city. Yellow fever affected Galveston more than any other disease, and epidemics hit the city every few years until the mid-1870s when quarantines were implemented to control the spread.47

By 1860, the coastal town was home to approximately 7,300 people. The Civil

War temporarily disrupted port activities when Union forces occupied the city in 1861, though blockade runners operated from the Texas coastline. Life in Galveston returned to normal after the war’s end. Business in the port town was once again brisk but the lack of a deep-water port, a concern that predated the war, continued to plague the city.

The effort to deepen the port preoccupied especially those individuals who anxiously anticipated Houston’s development into a rival in shipping and commerce. Though

Galveston’s harbor had always been a natural port for shipping along the Texas coast, the presence of two sandbars meant that most ships could not enter the harbor and cargo had to be carried in on barges. The state sought federal funding to deepen the harbor, which it secured after the United States Senate approved the Galveston Harbor Bill in 1890.48

To the immigrants arriving in the late nineteenth century, Galveston appeared to be on the cusp of great economic growth. In addition to the commercial development that a deep-water port would bring, Galveston was also a burgeoning center of tourism and entertainment in Texas. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, Galveston residents and visitors began spending leisure time at the beaches, swimming and fishing

47 There were yellow fever outbreaks in 1839, 1844, 1847, 1853, 1854, 1858, 1859, 1864, 1866, 1870 and 1873; McComb, Galveston, 45, 49, 50, 93, 97; Susan Wiley Hardwick, Mythic Galveston: Reinventing America’s Third Coast (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 54, 125; McComb, Galveston, 69-71. 48 For how outside interests helped bring the Harbor Bill to pass, see Bernard Axlerod, “Galveston, Denver’s Deep Water Port,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly 70 (October, 1966): 217-228. For information on attaining a deep-water harbor, see Barbara Rozek, “Galveston, Texas: An Immigrant Port on the Gulf Coast,” Gulf Coast Historical Review (Fall, 1994): 202-216. U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Twelfth Census, 430-431; McComb, Galveston, 48, 50, 60, 73.

42 in the ocean. The newly constructed Beach Hotel offered accommodations, and bicycle and rowing races provided entertainment. Residents and visitors took in wrestling matches, horse races, baseball, and football games. Some of Galveston’s entertainment was of a less than savory, and at times, illicit, nature. The transient population of a port city and the presence of a military base meant that saloons and brothels had a steady clientele. Gambling, drinking, and prostitution were some of the oldest forms of entertainment in the Island City and continued despite the passage of laws that prohibited such activity.49

Municipal improvements accompanied population growth in the late nineteenth century. In 1880 the population was 22,248 and by 1900 it had reached 37,789. The three largest foreign-born populations at this time were Germans, English, and Irish, as is shown in Table 1.4. To serve the city’s growing population, Galveston’s leaders promoted development of utility services. In 1881, telephone service was available through the city though it would not connect to Houston until 1893. Electric lights first appeared in 1882 and seven years later the city built an electric plant. In the nineteenth century, Galveston had a poor history of sanitation services and pigs cleaned the city streets. Beginning in 1886 the government permitted the Galveston Sewer Company to begin building pipeline connections throughout the city for which residents and businesses were charged a fee. Many of Galveston’s problems, sanitary and otherwise, came down to the lack of a fresh water source, a problem which was rectified in 1895 when the city connected to artesian wells on the mainland at Alta Loma.50

49 McComb, Galveston, 109, 114-116, 155, 161. 50 U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Tenth Census, 455; U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Twelfth Census, 430; U.S. Bureau of the Census, Fourteenth Census, 304; McComb, Galveston, 99-104.

43 Table 1.4 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Galveston, 1900, 1920

Mexican German Italian Russian English Austrian Irish 1900 118 1621 352 177 546 147 485 1920 3946 1619 1290 1096 736 479 373

Sources: Census Reports, Volume I. Twelfth Census of the United States. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 798-799; Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population, Volume III (Washington: GPO, 1921), 1022- 1024.

All of this growth came to a sudden halt on September 8, 1900 when a devastating

hurricane hit the Island City. The damage to the city was great; between six and eight

thousand lives were lost and homes, businesses, and churches were destroyed.

Committed to rebuilding, Galvestonians undertook a grade-raising project that increased

the island’s elevation seventeen feet in some parts of the city. The construction of a six-

mile long seawall promised protection from future storms. But while the grade raising

and seawall might have increased the confidence of city residents, outside investors were

still unsure. Houston’s position away from the coastline offered greater protection for

manufacturing and trade. But the 1900 storm was not the singular cause of Galveston’s

decline. Several other problems that included the routing of railroads around Galveston

had already lessened the city’s importance as a commercial center. The population

growth of the nineteenth century began slowing and by 1920 the Island City was less than

one-third the size of other major cities in the state, with a population of 44,255. Though

foreign-born Germans were still among the most well represented immigrant groups in

Galveston, their numbers had actually begun declining over the previous ten years.

Mexican immigrants became the most populous foreign-born group, and the size of the

44 Italian- and Russian-born community in Galveston also increased, becoming the third and fourth largest immigrant groups, respectively.51

Houston

Poised to take the lead in the cotton and oil industry within the first few decades of the twentieth century, Houston’s development followed a path of that benefitted from resources like oil and waterways. But at its founding, the Bayou City’s future was far from certain. Following Texas independence the city served briefly as the Republic’s capital, but government was not to be Houston’s primary function in serving the state.

Interested in the promotion of commerce and shipping, public officials joined private businessmen in 1841 to begin work towards the development of the Buffalo Bayou into a navigable water route to the Gulf. Efforts to promote overland transportation through the improvement of wagon and railroad construction also began at mid-century. In 1856 the Houston and Texas Central (H&TC) began operating between the Bayou City and

Cypress, twenty-five miles away. Seventeen railroads met in Houston by 1910, connecting the city with points across Texas as well as the nation. The development of commerce and manufacturing naturally increased the size of Houston’s population.

Houston grew from a town of 16,513 in 1880 to a city of 44,633 in 1900. At this time,

Germans were by far the largest foreign-born group in Houston, as is shown in Table 1.5.

The English and Irish communities were the second and third largest, though the size of these individual populations was less than half of the German. In the following two decades, the Bayou City more than tripled its size reaching 138,276. There was also a

51 Stephen P. Kretzmann, “A House Built Upon the Sand: Race, Class, Gender, and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900” (PhD diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1995), 59, 77-89.

45 significant shift in the ethnic community as well. By 1920 the Mexican population had increased more than ten-fold, and the Italian population, though small, had almost doubled. While the numbers of English and Irish immigrants were on the decline, the number of Russian immigrants had started to increase.52

Table 1.5 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Houston, 1900, 1920

Mexican German Italian English Irish Austrian Russian 1900 146 2126 366 776 763 246 137 1920 1509 993 693 531 396 371 350

Sources: Census Reports, Volume I. Twelfth Census of the United States. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 798-799; Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population, Volume III (Washington: GPO, 1921), 1022- 1024.

During the first decades of its existence, Houston suffered from the vice and sanitation issues that plagued developing urban areas. Drunkenness, prostitution, and counterfeiting were some of the earliest problems, but disease and the absence of a clean water source were far more damaging. Though improvements came in the areas of utilities, transportation, and communication, sanitation remained one of the more complicated issues Houstonians had to address. The city government established a board of health and a hospital in the nineteenth century, but diseases like cholera, small pox, and yellow fever nonetheless infected the population. Outbreaks of yellow fever hit the city throughout the nineteenth century until the imposition of quarantines in the late

52 For a detailed account of the development of the Houston Ship Channel, see Marilyn McAdams Sibley, The Port of Houston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968). Sibley, The Port of Houston, 53, 63-64, 74; David McComb, Houston, A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 68-69; U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Tenth Census, 455; U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Twelfth Census, 430; U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Fourteenth Census, 304; McComb, Houston, 39, 99, 40-43,104, 38-39.

46 1870s helped prevent the spread of infection. Prior to this time city residents had no waterworks system and relied on bayou water or cistern collection for daily use. In 1878, the city authorized organization of the privately owned Houston Water Works Company, but the company proved ineffective at controlling pollution in the water mains and at providing sufficient pressure to expel water from fire hydrants. The city purchased the company in 1906 and corrected these problems.53

The discovery of oil at Spindletop near Beaumont in 1901 gave rise to a new wave of railway construction in Houston. Pipelines, refineries, and oil companies made their way to the Bayou City, as well. Houston’s location along the ship channel, more protected from storms and flooding than Galveston’s exposed position along the coastline, made Houston the preferred home for the expensive equipment that these companies brought with them. The growth of the oil industry was a boon to Houston not only in terms of the capital and people it brought, but also for the other businesses that were attracted to Houston by growth of the petroleum industry. In the early twentieth century Houstonians were paving their streets, establishing universities, and discussing city planning.54

Dallas

Of the three cities under examination, Dallas was the most recently established.

Historians and journalists like Patricia Evridge Hill, Harvey Graff, and Michael Phillips have written about Dallas’ Origin Myth, an interpretation of Dallas history that deemphasizes conflict and strife among the area’s inhabitants and views Dallas’ birth and

53 McComb, Houston, 46-47, 61-63, 90-92. 54 McComb, Houston, 78-80, 102, 96.

47 rise to prominence as the result of determined city boosters and entrepreneurs. According to this historical interpretation, white leaders built a city that had “no reason for being.”

Dallas did, however, have a reason for being. John Neely Bryan, the first white settler in the area that would become Dallas proper, chose land near a crossable point at the Trinity

River. The black, waxy soil was well suited for growing crops like cotton and wheat and the city developed in large part because it was centrally located near the oil fields of the

Panhandle, Gulf Coast, and Permian Basin of West Texas. To be sure, city boosters and entrepreneurs played a role in development by drawing railroad lines through the city and attracting a Federal Reserve Bank, but the city most certainly did not rise up from a void.55

Dallas changed dramatically in the latter half of the nineteenth century. In 1850 voters selected Dallas as the county seat, a decision that encouraged people to move to the fledgling town in anticipation of the growth to come. The following two decades witnessed the development of Dallas as a regional center for a variety of services.

Alexander and Sarah Cockrell opened the city’s first sawmill in the mid-1850s making lumber for construction available to area residents. Other businesses in operation prior to the Civil War included a cotton gin, a brick plant, a brewery, a newspaper, grocery and dry goods stores, several hotels, and a carriage and wagon manufactory. Doctors, lawyers, and carpenters also served the area. During the Civil War Dallas prospered as a supply center and transportation and recruiting station, and generally from the movement of military through the region. After the war’s end, the effort to improve transportation

55 Hill, Dallas, 79; Harvey Graff, The Dallas Myth: The Making and Unmaking of an America City (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008); Michael Phillips, White Metropolis: Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006); Graff, The Dallas Myth, 56, 147-150.

48 through the city resumed. In 1870, Dallas businessmen enticed the H&TC to route their line through the city and in 1873 the first Texas & Pacific Railroad (T&P) train arrived.

Dallas’ position as an early railway crossing in Texas was instrumental in its economic and physical growth. The H&TC and the T&P lines made Dallas a center for the movement of raw materials eastward and people heading west.56

By the late nineteenth century, Dallas had become a major cotton market with facilities for cotton ginning. The city also served the cotton industry as a center for the manufacture of cotton presses and gins. As the city grew, so too did the need for goods and services. This demand resulted in increasing employment opportunities for residents. The hotels, department stores, groceries, saloons, mills, railroads and manufacturing trades that served the region, as well as the ongoing city development projects, all offered potential jobs for Dallasites. The emergence of banking and insurance as major industries in Dallas attracted clerks, bookkeepers, accountants, and salesmen to the area. Plans for municipal improvements began in the early twentieth century, though major construction projects that would have provided jobs for large numbers of men, like the rerouting of the Texas & Pacific Railway, would not begin until the 1920s.57

The population increase that accompanied this economic development between

1880 and 1920 was explosive. In 1880, Dallas had only 10,358 residents, but by 1900 that number had more than quadrupled to 42,633; only about two thousand fewer than the population of Houston. The foreign-born community at the turn of the century was

56 Darwin Payne, Dallas: An Illustrated History (Woodland Hills, California: Windsor Publications, Inc., 1982), 31, 34, 37, 59; Graff, The Dallas Myth, 278-279; Rose Biderman, They Came to Stay: The Story of the Jews of Dallas, 1870-1997 (Austin: Eakin Press, 2002), 15. 57 Payne, Dallas, 81, 148-152.

49 dominated by German immigrants, as was the case in both Galveston and Houston. As is shown in Table 1.6, the English and Irish populations were the second and third largest groups, though neither community totaled even a third of the German population. When

Dallas surpassed Houston in size by 1920, reaching a population of 158,976, German immigrants were still numerous but the community was not increasing at the rates of other ethnic groups. Exponential growth of the foreign-born Mexican population had made this community the most numerous, followed by Russians, English, and Italians.

Though still relatively small, the Russian and Italian populations had more than tripled over the previous two decades. The overall population growth of Dallas pleased boosters, businessmen, and politicians, who had hoped their city would be the urban center of the Southwest.58

Table 1.6 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Dallas, 1900, 1920

Mexican German English Russian Italian Poland Irish 1900 41 1117 381 255 167 96 365 1920 2278 1175 663 939 583 357 328

Sources: Census Reports, Volume I. Twelfth Census of the United States. Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 798-799; Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population, Volume III (Washington: GPO, 1921), 1022- 1024.

The development of the Lone Star State and its urban areas, which was satisfying to many Texans, also created anxiety among individuals who were disillusioned by a population that was shifting demographically. The anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, anti-

Semitic, racist sentiment that began solidifying in the 1910s with the revival of the Ku

58 U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Tenth Census, 455; U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Twelfth Census, 430; U.S. Bureau of the Census Report, Fourteenth Census, 303-304.

50 Klux Klan affected white Protestants in both the rural and urban areas of Texas. Texas’

Klan membership peaked in the early twentieth century at around 97,000, and Dallas, in particular, had a large Klan membership. Despite the Klan’s popularity, it was opposed by a group of businessmen and politicians who viewed the organization’s espousal of white, Protestant supremacy and violent tactics as a threat to the growth of the state and its cities.59

As the origins of immigrants began to shift from Western Europe to Southern

Europe, Eastern Europe, and Mexico around the turn of the century, maintaining an image of Texas as a place that welcomed all industrious people regardless of nationality or creed proved more difficult with the strengthening of nativist sentiment targeting

Catholics, Jews, and the foreign born. Yet, some Texans had faith that the immigrants who settled within the state’s borders were of a different “class” than the multitudes that settled in the immigrant centers of the North and Northeast. They felt that Texas immigrants were more likely to assimilate and less likely to associate with radical movements. Articles and editorials from local newspapers in the early twentieth convey

Texans’ belief that with encouragement and instruction in American modes of life, these immigrants would become patriotic American citizens and valuable contributors to the prosperity of the state and its urban areas. But while the Eastern and Southern Europeans in Texas’ cities did appear somewhat different than their counterparts in the large urban metropolises, their continuing efforts throughout the late nineteenth and early twentieth century to create and maintain active ethnic associations and religious institutions suggests that the immigrants’ assimilation did not come as a result of the complete abandonment of their ethnic identities.

59 Phillips, White Metropolis, 100-101.

51 Chapter Two Deep in the Heart of Texas: The Immigrants’ Arrival to Dallas, Galveston, and Houston

When the flow of immigration into the United States began to change in both composition and direction in the late nineteenth century, cities like Dallas, Galveston, and

Houston became increasingly popular with immigrants. For much of the century, the majority of immigrants in the United States had settled in rural areas but by the early twentieth century, U.S. immigration was becoming increasingly urban. While in 1870 only about 35 percent of immigrants lived in cities with more than 25,000 residents, by

1900 that percentage had grown to approximately 50 percent. This redirection accompanied a shift in the origin of immigrants, who were now coming in greater numbers from southern and eastern European countries. This movement of immigrants was largely directed to the most developed and industrialized areas of the United States where new arrivals sought employment opportunities and joined friends and family. The turn-of-the-century immigrant experience in northern and eastern urban metropolises, where immigrant populations were large and visible, has garnered a considerable amount of scholarly attention. The migration of southern and eastern Europeans into urban areas of the southern and southwestern United States has drawn less scholarly interest, likely because it occurred on a smaller scale. Yet, by the early twentieth century, southern and southwestern urban residents were noting the change.60

Despite the smaller size of the movement of Italians and Eastern European Jews into Texas’ urban areas, this immigrant influx introduces several significant questions to

60 U.S. Bureau of the Census, “Nativity of the Population by Urban-Rural Residence and Size of Place: 1870 to 1940 and 1960 to 1990,” Historical Census Statistics on the Foreign-Born Population of the United States: 1850-1990 Table 18, http://www.census.gov/population/www/documentation/ twps0029/tab18.html (accessed January 25, 2012).

52 the study of early-twentieth century immigration. Were the Eastern European Jewish and

Italian immigrants who came to Texas cities unique in any way? Did these immigrants, who bypassed or left cities with larger immigrant populations, share some basic characteristics that set them apart from their northeastern counterparts? When the populations of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants in Dallas, Galveston, and

Houston are closely analyzed, it becomes clear that though the immigrants bound for

Texas’ urban areas shared much with their countrymen in other urban areas, but that those who settled in Texas cities displayed a few notable differences from trends in other major U.S. cities. This chapter examines the arrival of Italians and Eastern European

Jews in Texas and presents basic demographic information necessary to understanding the Texas urban immigrant experience.

A “New” Frontier for Immigration

Immigrants arriving in the United States from southern and eastern Europe in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries found that the attitude in America concerning immigration was changing. Growing interest in immigration restriction in this period did not make for the heartiest welcome for these newcomers, but amidst this climate were voices that spoke of how the growing dissatisfaction over immigration policy might be quelled. Increasingly, Americans began to hear the call for immigrant distribution as a method of reducing anti-immigrant sentiment in the northeastern portion of the country. Texas, and the Southwest generally, were seen as a safety valve to relieve pressure that was building over issues such as immigrant crowding and assimilation. An article appearing in the Houston Chronicle in November of 1901 discussed

53 recommendations the United States Commissioner General of Immigration, Terrence

Powderly, made to Congress in which Powderly urged “congressional action for the distribution of aliens” so that the United States might avoid endangering “American institutions,” with the “unchecked introduction…of elements at many times unassimilable.” Increasing Italian immigration to the United States was specifically noted. Four years later in 1905, the Italian ambassador, Baron des Planches, made a tour of the South after which he concluded that based on the presence of an existing Italian immigrant population which had proven independent, refined, and capable of accumulating “comparative wealth,” the southern half of the United States, and Texas in particular, was a place where Italians could thrive. A similar message was directed at

Eastern European Jews. In 1908, Houston’s Jewish Herald reported that Israel Zangwill, leader of the Jewish Territorial Organization and author of The Melting Pot, wanted all immigrants from Russia and “other lands of persecution,” to know that they “are very welcome to Texas.” Zangwill found evidence for his claim in a recently printed article from the Houston Post which submitted that Texas, “with no desire to butt in ahead of other States which are anxious for an industrious and law-abiding population…has room within her borders for all the Israelites in the world, and then some.”61

Zangwill’s message was part of a larger promotion of the Galveston Movement, an effort that brought approximately 10,000 Eastern European Jews through the Gulf

Coast port to destinations throughout the Southwest between 1907 and 1914. With the goal of relieving pressure on the populated areas of the Northeast, leaders of the

Galveston Movement, like Jacob Schiff of New York and Rabbi Henry Cohen of

61 “Immigration Commissioner,” Houston Chronicle, November 16, 1901; “Movement Against Italian Immigration,” Dallas Morning News, June 7, 1905; “Texas Has Room,” JH, September 24, 1908.

54 Galveston, planned for this effort to be primarily a movement of immigrants into rural areas where laborers were needed and hoped to avoid placing them in urban centers where job competition was greatest. Most of the suggestions regarding Italian immigration were also made with rural areas in mind. Undoubtedly, however, a portion of the Eastern European Jewish and Italian population that was attracted westward in this period, perhaps even those looking to farm, ended up in the cities. An article appearing in the Galveston Daily News in 1910 titled, “Why Would You Rather Live in Galveston,” included the testimonials of several Jewish men who attested to the desirability of

Galveston as a place for residence and business and claimed that Galveston was a city

“justly proud of its citizenship…composed as it is of the best people of all parts of the world.” While certain national and state immigration advocates may have worked to spread immigrants throughout the rural areas of Texas, the early-twentieth century growth of cities in business, trade, and other industries would have attracted immigrants looking for non-agricultural jobs and a chance to socialize in the more populated urban areas.62

While employment and the efforts of national, state, and local leaders may have drawn immigrants to Texas in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a number of changes taking place in Europe pushed emigrants from their homes in greater numbers.

For southern Italian immigrants in particular, limited employment opportunities was a powerful motivating factor in the decision to leave. While northern Italians had dominated emigration from that country in the earlier part of the nineteenth century,

62 For more information on the Galveston Movement, see Bernard Marinbach, Galveston: Ellis Island of the West (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1983); “Why Would You Rather Live In Galveston,” GDN, March 13, 1910, “Hebrew Sheltering and Immigrant Aid Meeting,” JH, February 26, 1914.

55 southern Italians comprised the majority from the late nineteenth to early twentieth centuries when conditions deteriorated with the onset of an agricultural depression and tightening in industries that had traditionally provided work for the underemployed.

Many Italians viewed immigration as a temporary solution to these problems, and scholars estimate that in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, between 30 and 50 percent of Italian immigrants engaged in a process of return migration, in which immigrants, typically single men, came to the United States temporarily to work before going to back their homes in Italy. Some Italians returned once again to the United States during periods of unemployment in Italy, creating a migratory pattern that made some

Americans anxious. Newspapers reported on how many immigrants were leaving, the money they were taking with them, and the resulting labor shortages caused by the exodus. An article appearing in the Galveston Daily News in September of 1910 reported government-tabulated figures on return migration that estimated out of 175,006 southern

Italians who entered the United States in the previous year, 39,175 had returned to Italy.

The same article named Texas as the leader among immigration destinations in the South and maintained that the Lone Star State lost relatively few immigrants to return migration.63

Eastern European Jewish immigrants were more likely than their Italian counterparts to become permanent residents, as less than 5 percent of Jewish immigrants returned home. Religious persecution in eastern Europe resulted in a policy of systematic

63 “Figures Compiled on Immigration” GDN, September 4, 1910; Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 32, 34, 35; Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life (New York: HarperPerennial, 1991) 185, 189-192; Dino Cinel, The National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 1870-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 39-41, 71-72. For information on return migration see Mark Wyman, Round-trip to America: The Immigrants Return to Europe, 1880-1930 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1996).

56 discrimination designed to isolate Jews from mainstream society. The combination of restrictive laws and violent attacks against Jews created a crisis for Eastern Europeans who increasingly looked to other parts of the world for permanent relocation. Jews in tsarist Russia suffered considerably under restrictions that began worsening in 1881.

Limitations on the right to rent or own land, residential segregation to the Pale of

Settlement, political disenfranchisement, occupational restrictions, and quotas on the number of Jews admitted to educational institutions created an untenable situation for

Jewish families. Outbreaks of violence, government-sponsored pogroms, and the Russo-

Japanese War of 1904-1905 made survival precarious for even those who could weather occupational and educational restrictions.64

Texans were aware of the hardship and violence that was driving Jewish emigrants from their homes from reports on pogroms and other acts of anti-Semitism printed by local newspapers like the Houston Post, Dallas Morning News, and the

Galveston Daily News. Houston’s Jewish Herald published an article in June of 1920 beseeching the United States government to intervene on behalf of persecuted Jews in

Poland and Galicia, arguing that the United States owed such action to its “loyal Jewish citizens and to humanity in general.” A subsequent article in the Jewish Herald the same year decried the position of former Jewish officials and professionals in Galicia who, unable to find work, were reduced to a meager living. For these individuals and their families, the article maintained, “emigration to America or Palestine has come to be the only hope left.”65

64 Daniels, Coming to America, 188-189, 223-224, 185; Howe, World of Our Fathers, 5-25; Rischin, The Promised City, 19-20, 22, 24-25, 32-33. 65 “Indictment Against Roumania,” GDN, August 15, 1900; “Roumanian Jews,” GDN, August 20, 1900; “A Protest to Russia,” HC, June 8, 1903; “Jewish Residents Deported,” DMN, August 22, 1915, part 3;

57 Desire for the most basic improvement in their standard of living encouraged millions of Eastern European Jews and Italians to emigrate from their homes in search of new opportunities. As potential emigrants considered leaving Europe for the United

States and other places abroad, changes in transportation made their departure more feasible than at any other point in the nineteenth century. The advent of steam-powered ships increased the efficiency of transportation, reducing the trans-Atlantic journey from weeks to days. Competition between shipping lines resulted in improved conditions and cheaper fares. Despite these improvements, the trip to America was still not easy. For

Eastern European Jews in particular, leaving home could involve a treacherous journey.

Individuals without proper documentation might travel westward to distant ports at

Bremen or Hamburg in order to avoid difficult border crossings in Russia. Theses immigrants might, however, still encounter difficulties at the German ports. Cholera outbreaks in 1892 resulted in the implementation of extensive medical examinations, baths, and fumigations, which Eastern European Jews were sometimes forced to endure repeatedly.

Though steerage conditions aboard ships had improved by the early twentieth century, the immigrant might still face crowded quarters and unsanitary accommodations and even after reaching America, difficulties could await him. Many individuals suspected of not being in compliance with federal immigration laws were detained at ports of entry. Frequently, deportation cases at Galveston involved contract laborers, an arrangement which was prohibited in the United States in 1885. Steamship company agents, who after 1891 bore the financial responsibility of returning ineligible immigrants

“Polish Jews,” DMN, October 10, 1915, part 1; “Stop Persecution of Jews,” Texas Jewish Herald, June 5, 1920; “Emigration Only Hope for Former Jewish Officials in Galicia,” TJH, November 6, 1920.

58 to their port of departure, clashed with immigration officials over cases of suspected contract labor violations at Galveston and these disputes were highly publicized in the

Galveston Daily News. In 1920, Immigrant Bureau Commissioner, General Frank

Sargeant, alleged that shipping companies were wrongfully guaranteeing entry to the

United States. Cases involving deportation could stretch for weeks. In early January of

1900, immigration officials at Galveston began an investigation into the status of fifteen suspected contract laborers from the region of Slavonia in eastern Croatia, charging that the North German Lloyd steamship company bore the responsibility of their return. For over a month the steamship company and the Austrian government contested this case, maintaining that the immigrants were not contract laborers, until U.S. officials decided to close the case in early February by ordering the immediate deportation of the fifteen men.

The case came at great cost to the steamship company, which paid for the immigrants’ lodging over a seven-week period during which the investigation was taking place.66

Some fortunate individuals were able to prove their right to enter the United

States, as did one Jewish immigrant man slated for deportation in June of 1900 who was able to produce written evidence that he had come to the United States not as a contract laborer, but, as the Houston Post reported, “to take a partnership in a business.” Many others were not as lucky. Newspapers frequently reported cases of deportation and illegal border crossings thwarted by immigration authorities in Texas. Some immigrants were barred entry based on mental or physical status, lack of financial assets, or other factors that increased the “likelihood of [the individuals} becoming public charges,” as a

66 Daniels, Coming to America, 185-187, 224; Howe, World of Our Fathers, 40-41; Rischin, The Promised City, 33; Strangers in the Land, Higham, 99; “The Aliens were Refused,” GDN, January 2, 1900; “No Refusal to Take Aliens,” GDN, January 3, 1900; “Contract Labor Matter,” GDN, January 16, 1900; “Contract Labor Cases,” GDN, January 19, 1900; “Slavonians are Off,” GDN, February 3, 1900; “Seven Italian Stowaways Arrive at Port Arthur,” HP, July 20, 1920.

59 Galveston Daily News journalist explained in the summer of 1910. Immigrants detained for medical reasons were held at the state quarantine station. Those whose cases required further investigation by officials, or who simply needed general assistance, might be placed in the Galveston Immigrant Home, which was under the direction of the Methodist

Episcopal Church, or the Jewish Immigrant Home. Both of these charitable organizations provided immigrants information on employment, transportation, and temporary housing.67

For a number of immigrants, even successful entry through immigrant inspection stations in the United States did not mark the end of their journey. A portion of Texas’

Eastern European Jewish and Italian immigrant population did not come directly to the state, but instead relocated there after first settling in another region of the United States.

It is difficult to accurately ascertain how many immigrants followed this indirect route to

Texas, but an examination of census data suggests that the number was significant. Out of eighty family units in Dallas having one or two foreign-born Italian parents, at least 35 percent first settled outside Texas before coming to the Lone Star State. In Houston, at least 26 percent of Italian families had lived someplace else in the United States before choosing to make Texas home. At least 6 percent of Galveston’s Italians settled outside

Texas before coming to the state. Among Eastern European Jewish immigrants, as

67 “Island City News Items: Several Russian Emigrants Were Detained by Inspector Levy,” HP, January 24, 1900; “Won’t Be Deported,” HP, June 16, 1900; “Italian Immigrants,” GDN, July 23, 1900; “Evading Immigration Laws,” GDN, August 2, 1900; “Immigration Laws,” HC, September, 27, 1902; “Made Inspector of Immigration in East,” GDN, June 5, 1910; “At Immigrants’ Home,” GDN, July 25, 1910; “Inspected Station,” GDN, February 8, 1910; “Steamship Frankfurt in with Passengers,” GDN, February 8, 1910; “Immigrants are Well-Handled at Galveston,” February 27, 1910; “Officials Were Busy Handling Immigrants,” GDN, June 25, 1910; “Second Anniversary,” GDN, July, 14, 1910; “Twelve Deported,” GDN, August 28, 1910.

60 illustrated in Table 2.2, Dallas again had the greatest percentage of families who settled outside Texas prior to coming to the Lone Star State. Some 44 percent of immigrants followed this pattern of migration. In Houston, at least 30 percent of immigrant families settled outside Texas after arriving in America, while in Galveston a minimum of 12 percent had gone first to a location outside the state. Galveston’s relatively smaller percentage of immigrants following an indirect path to the state might be explained by the Island City’s status as a Gulf Coast port. Steamship service connected Galveston to ports across Europe, so it is likely that a greater number of immigrants traveled directly to the island community than to Houston or Dallas. In 1910, the Galveston Daily News reported that Galveston ranked fifth in the United States “with respect to the number of aliens admitted.” The newspaper dubbed the Island City the “Gateway of the

Southwest,” through which crowds of immigrants resembling a “human kaleidoscope” regularly passed. Further inland and accessible from all parts of the United States by train, the north Texas city of Dallas, with its higher percentage of indirect migrants, might have been a destination for those who initially arrived through distant ports like

New York and New Orleans.68

68 The federal manuscript census includes the birthplace of children within each household. By recording the birthplace of the first native-born child in a family having at least one foreign-born parent, it is possible to estimate the minimum number of immigrant families who first settled in a state outside of Texas. Thus, if an immigrant’s first native-born child was delivered in New York, one can deduce that the immigrant first settled in New York, or at least outside of Texas, before coming to the Lone Star State. There are pitfalls to this method, of course. If the immigrant’s first native-born child was delivered in Texas, the migration pattern cannot be accurately determined as the child might have been born years after the immigrant’s arrival in the United States, during which time he or she may have moved to Texas from another state. Nonetheless, an examination of the birthplace of immigrants’ native-born children proves helpful in comparing the overall immigrant populations of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. There are certainly other factors to consider in estimating the migration pattern of Texas immigrants. It must be noted that not all immigrants have native-born children and some have no children at all, so the figures given reflect a minimum number based only on immigrants with native-born children within a particular city at a given time. Second, not all families include two foreign-born immigrant parents. Some children in the hand count had one first generation immigrant parent and one native-born parent, so each case of a first native-born child delivered outside Texas to an immigrant family does not represent two foreign-born

61

Table 2.1 Italian Immigrant Families with American-Born Children, 192069

Families whose first American born child Number of families with was born outside Texas American born children Number Percentage Dallas 80 28 35% Galveston 112 7 6% Houston 105 27 26% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

immigrant parents. Finally, there exists the more remote possibility that an immigrant settled first in Texas but birthed their first native-born child in another state before returning to Texas. This pattern would create a margin of error for establishing even a minimum number of immigrants engaged in indirect migration using the method employed here. Still, this method is the most efficient way to exact general figures from a sample group. “Immigration Bulletin” GDN, April 27, 1910; “The Human Kaleidoscope at Galveston’s Station,” GDN, August 21, 1910. 69 Figures for all tables in this chapter are based on samples taken from the 1920 Federal Manuscript Census of Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties, found in the online database at Ancestry.com. The method with which I derived my samples involved a process of estimating the average number of foreign- born individuals in each Italian or East European Jewish household. I then divided the total foreign-born Italian and (estimated) East European Jewish population of each Texas city by this average number to determine how frequently to record foreign-born individuals in the census returns. For example, if there were on average three foreign-born individuals within a family and the overall immigrant population was 300, in order to get a 20 percent sample of sixty heads of household, every fifth immigrant, would be recorded. Additionally, I recorded data on all other members of the household, both foreign- and native- born so that these heads of household could be analyzed in the context of their family and surroundings. Though this method results in an overall population sample size that was not consistent between the cities, the percentage of household heads within my samples are close, ranging between 10 and 20 percent of the entire immigrant population. Immigrant data in subsequent chapters will also include figures derived from a 100 percent sample of Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the three Texas cities in 1900. Data on Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco, and data on Texas’ native-born populations used in subsequent chapters derives from a 1 percent sample of residents taken from Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database], Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010. In the case of publication, I would create a new sample of Italian and East European Jewish immigrant in Texas cities, based on the method used with the IPUMS data. In addition to census data on Italians and East Europeans in Texas, all draft records, naturalization records, death records, and some U.S. city directories were also taken from collections found on Ancestry.com. Percentages in the data presented in tables and charts in all chapters have been rounded to the nearest whole number, even when doing so makes the total exceed 100 percent.

62 Table 2.2 Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Families with American-Born Children, 1920

Families whose first American born child Number of families with was born outside Texas American born children Number Percentage Dallas 80 35 44% Galveston 110 13 12% Houston 86 26 30% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Paul Bonno took this circuitous route to Texas, having first settled in New York after emigrating from the Sicilian province of Agrigento in 1902 as a single, nineteen- year-old man. Following his marriage to a New York-born woman of Belgian descent,

Bonno immediately began building a family in New York City where he worked as a cigar maker. Bonno and his wife, Matilda, left Manhattan with their five children around

1914, and moved to Houston where they settled in the northwestern section of the city in a small neighborhood bordered by railroad tracks. Bonno owned a barber shop about fifteen blocks from his home, and his wife, Matilda, who had four more children in

Texas, worked nights as a janitor. The Bonno family remained in Texas for about ten years before returning to the Northeast, sometime before the birth of their tenth child,

Ellenor. Given the family’s need for Matilda to work an evening job (in addition to the daytime work of caring for nine children), perhaps the burden of supporting a large family caused the Bonno family to leave Texas in search of job opportunities elsewhere, though details of their life after 1920 are hard to decipher. The 1930 United States federal manuscript census lists the Bonno family living in New Jersey, but Matilda is registered as the head of household and as a widow, though this marital status may have been the result of clerical error. Military records provide evidence of Paul Bonno,

63 registering for the draft in 1942 at fifty-nine years old, with his son George Bonno listed as a contact.70

Though the Bonno family did not move frequently, spending a decade or more in one location before relocating to a different part of the country, they made several significant cross-country moves. This pattern of migration suggests that whatever attractions Texas’ urban areas possessed, not all immigrants were satisfied with life in

Texas cities. Other immigrants who settled in Texas after first locating in another state were content enough with their new surroundings to make Texas their permanent home.

Jacob Goldin, a Jewish merchant from Russia, arrived in New York in 1902. Before coming to Texas, Goldin had first settled in Alabama with his wife, Esther, and the couple’s three children, where he opened a grocery store. Following the birth of a fourth child, Jacob and Esther moved the family to Dallas, where Goldin owned and operated the Consolidated Kosher Packing Company. Goldin established his grocery store and butcher shop in the building adjacent to his home on Gould Street, in one of Dallas’ most concentrated centers of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, south of City Park. The couple remained Texans for the rest of their lives; Jacob passed away in Dallas at eighty- three-years old, just seven months before Esther died at age eighty-five.71

70 “Paul Bonney,” 1910 United States Census, New York, New York County, Manhattan, Ward 9, District 1070, Family 1267; “Paul Bonno,” 1920 United States Census, Texas, Houston, Ward 1, District 36, Family 305; “George Bono,” 1930 United States Census, New Jersey, Hudson County, Union City, District 362, Dwelling 132; “Paul Bonno,” U.S. Word War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Texas, Harris County, Texas, Roll 1953561, Draft Board 1; “Paul Bono,” United States World War II Draft Registration Cards, 1942, New Jersey, Ancestry.com. 71 “Jake Goldin,” 1910 United States Census, Alabama, Mobile County, Mobile, Ward 5, District 93, Family 140; “J. Goldin,” 1920 United States Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 20, District 38, Family 331; “Jake Goldin,” 1930 United States Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 20, District 49, Family 295; “Jacob Goldin,” Naturalization Records of District Courts in the Southeast, 1790-1958, Record 336; “Jacob Goldin,” United States City Directories, Texas, Dallas, 1924, Image 450; “Jacob Goldin,” United States City Directories, Texas, Dallas, 1925, Image 501; “Jacob Goldin,” JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, United States, Texas, Dallas, July 19, 1957; “Esther Goldin,” JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, United States, Texas, Dallas, February 21, 1958.

64 Though the Goldin family immigrated to the United States together as a unit, many immigrants traveled in a process of chain migration. In this pattern of movement one or more family members, frequently the head of household or an older son, goes first to the United States and is followed later by other family members, perhaps once the initial immigrant was settled or had saved enough money to pay for the passage of the others. Chain migration was a common process among Italian and East European Jewish immigrants who settled in Texas’ urban areas. Of the immigrant households whose pattern of migration can be determined, Italians generally had the highest rate of chain migration on average, as is shown in Table 2.3. East European Jewish immigrants also had relatively high rates of chain migration, totaling no less than 47 percent in any of the three cities under examination.

Table 2.3 Percentage of Immigrant Households in which Members Engaged in Chain Migration, 192072

East European Jews Italians Dallas 58% 60% Galveston 47% 59% Houston 47% 52% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

72 The data listed in Table 2.3 was derived by recording all households in the 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census in which there were foreign-born East European Jewish and Italian children or extended family members (such as a sibling or parent) of the head of household or the head of household’s spouse. The rate of chain migration was then determined by comparing the year of immigration of the household’s foreign-born members. These figures are thus not complete, representing only the percentage of chain migration for immigrants whose children were born in Europe, or whose foreign-born family members lived in the same household.

65 It is no surprise that some Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants came to Texas indirectly from Europe, either as a family unit in the manner of the Goldins or in a process of chain migration, given the attractions other states offered and the number of ports open to immigrant traffic. In his 1995 work, The Italian Experience in Texas: A

Closer Look, Valentine Belfiglio reported that Sicilians living in Texas generally came through either New Orleans or Galveston, and their northern Italian countrymen often arrived through New York, venturing later to the Lone Star State. Italian Texans also came through Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Boston, attracted by jobs in the sugar cane, mining, and railroad industries. Texas was a second, or perhaps third, home for these migrants. The 1920 census data supports these findings. More than half of Italian immigrants who lived elsewhere in the United States first settled in Louisiana where railroad and sugar cane industries offered employment to new arrivals. The next highest percentage of Italian immigrants came to Texas after living in New York, though this population totaled only 17 percent of the overall number of immigrants who had first settled outside of Texas. The remaining immigrants traveled from a variety of states representing all regions of the United States. New York was the single most popular state among Eastern European Jews who eventually settled in Texas, as more than half of immigrant families who settled outside Texas made their home in the Empire State before heading southward. The remaining East European immigrants traveled to Texas from states as close as Missouri and as distant as Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Illinois.73

Regardless of the exact number of immigrants who first settled outside Texas, it is clear that indirect migration of Italians and Eastern European Jews from their homeland to Texas was not uncommon. Did this migration pattern bring a unique type of

73 Belfiglio, Italian Experience, 38.

66 immigrant to Texas’ urban areas? According to Belfiglio, Italian immigrants who first settled in states such as Louisiana or New York acquired certain skills in both language and business that the newly arrived did not possess. Foreign-born immigrants who followed a path of indirect migration displayed high rates of English proficiency in 1920.

Over 80 percent of Italians and 93 percent of Eastern European Jews aged fourteen and older who came to Texas after first settling in another state reported the ability to speak

English in the 1920 U.S. federal manuscript census. The high rate of English speakers among these populations is both the result of the overall amount of time the immigrants had spent in the United States and of indirect migration, given that the two are generally related.74

A close examination of demographics is central to the task of understanding the lives of Eastern European Jews and Italians in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston in the early twentieth century. From the data collected, it is possible to gauge what kind of immigrants were coming to the urban areas of the state and why they were attracted to such areas. Basic demographic information about these immigrants ranging from gender division within a city to the year of migration is essential to understanding the Texas urban experience and why these immigrants decided to make their home in the Lone Star

State.

74 The data summarized here is drawn from the 1920 United States federal manuscript census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and will be further explained in this chapter. Belfiglio, Italian Experience, 38.

67 Italian Immigrants

In a number of ways, Texas’ urban-dwelling Italian population appears similar to

Italian immigrants across the United States; Italian men outnumbered women, and there were higher rates of illiteracy and fewer married men relative to the East European

Jewish population. Italians in Texas also closely resembled their counterparts in major

U.S. cities, like New York, Chicago, and Boston. A comparison of foreign-born Italians in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston and the Italian immigrant populations of other large urban areas in the American Northeast, West, and South, reveals that with regard to gender distribution, marital status, literacy, and English-speaking ability, Italian Texans were similar to populations of urban-dwelling Italians in other areas of the country, but that taken as a whole, these immigrants do not display demographic trends that are particularly northern, southern, western, or eastern in character.

Gender division within the urban-dwelling Italian population of Texas is one area in which Texas Italians resemble Italian communities in other major U.S. cities. But demographic variations emerge not only between the populations of Texas cities, but also between U.S. cities of a particular region, ruling out the possibility of easily categorizing

Texas Italians and East European Jews as representative of their counterparts in northern, southern, or western sections of the country. Late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century

Italian immigration to the United States was mostly dominated by men who travelled abroad in search of economic opportunity and many of these immigrants were unmarried.

Nationwide, a percentage of men among the Italian immigrant population that had reached as high as 80 percent in the first decade of the twentieth century correlated to a high rate of return migration among Italians. Given the increasing difficulty of finding

68 seasonal employment in Italy and the need for temporary laborers in the United States, it was common for unemployed single men in the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries to immigrate, secure temporary employment, and then return to family and friends at home. This cycle might repeat itself several times. Some of these so-called

“birds of passage” headed to Texas, where the railroad and mining industries offered employment.75

But the gender gap was not pronounced in many larger urban areas, including

Texas cities, by 1920. Though the foreign-born Italian populations of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston were more male than female in composition, the number of men in these areas was not considerably greater than the number of women. Houston had the closest male to female ratio at 56 percent male and 44 percent female. Dallas and Galveston had very similar ratios at 62 and 61 percent male, respectively. When compared to six other major cities representing northern, northeastern, southern, and western regions of the

United States, it appears that the gender division among Italian immigrants in Texas’ cities cannot be characterized as reflecting a regional trend. For example, while the percentage of Italian women in Dallas and Galveston appears similar to the 36 percentage rate of women found among Italians in San Francisco, in terms of gender distribution,

Galveston also appears like the northern city of Chicago, while Dallas looks like the eastern city of Philadelphia. Still, it is significant that the gap between men and women in Texas cities remained relatively close in 1920, with the percentage of women in each city’s population hovering close to 40 percent.

75 Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City 1880-1915 (Oxford University Press, 1977), 30-31; Daniels, Coming to America, 194.

69 Table 2.4 Gender Distribution of Italian Immigrants within Sample Group, 1920

Males Females Dallas 62% 38% Galveston 61% 39% Houston 56% 44%

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Graph 2.1 Gender Distribution of Italian Immigrants in U.S. Cities, 1920

100 90 80 70 60 50 Male 40 Female 30 20 10 Percentage Male and Female and Female Male Percentage 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and a 1 percent sample of households from the 1920 populations of Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco derived from Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010 (hereafter 1920 IPUMS database).

70 The relatively close ratio of male to female immigrants in Texas cities, combined with marital statistics showing a high percentage of married immigrant men living with their spouses, suggests that Italian immigrants in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston were less likely to participate in return migration because they were establishing families in the

United States. With the exception of Galveston, the percentage of single, foreign-born, adult males among Italians in Texas’ urban areas was generally low, as shown in Table

2.5. In 1920, only about 30 percent of Dallas’s male Italian immigrant population was unmarried, as was 21 percent of Houston’s population. Galveston’s percentage of unmarried immigrant males was higher, at 39 percent, likely owing to its position as a port city where more newly arrived immigrants could be found. When compared to other

U.S. cities, no clear patterns emerge regarding marital status, excepting the generally high number of married immigrants among all urban Italian populations. The marriage rate for Houston’s male Italian immigrants closely resembled that of New Orleans, while

Dallas’ rates appeared similar to New York. Galveston’s percentage of married Italian men matched closely with Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Among the married Italian immigrant population in Texas cities, only a small percentage were living without their spouse, which is the arrangement that would be expected among immigrants planning only a temporary stay in the United States. In

Table 2.7, it is evident that among married Italians in Dallas in 1920, very few were living without their spouse. In Houston this percentage was slightly higher at 6 percent and Galveston had the highest percentage at 8 percent, which is still relatively low. If

Italian immigration in the early twentieth century is typically viewed as a non-family migration of unattached males, Texas’ urban-dwelling Italians did not fit this profile.

71 High numbers of married men among the overall Italian immigrant population and the high percentage of married immigrants living with their spouses suggests that Texas’ urban Italian immigrants appear more firmly entrenched in the United States than was the general population of foreign-born Italians, which may have experienced a return rate of up to 50 percent.76

Table 2.5 Marital Status of Male Adult Italian Immigrants by City, 1920

Married Single Widowed Divorced Dallas 70% 20% 9% <1% Galveston 61% 32% 3% 4% Houston 79% 16% 5% 0% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Table 2.6 Marital Status of Female Adult Italian Immigrants by City, 1920

Married Single Widowed Divorced Dallas 72% 4% 24% 0% Galveston 77% 10 13% 0% Houston 87% 3 8% 1% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

76 Kessner, Golden Door, 31; Daniels, Coming to America, 185, 189-192; Cinel, The National Integration of Italian Return Migration, 39-41, 71-72.

72 Graph 2.2 Marital Status of Male Adult Italian Immigrants in U.S. Cities, 1920

90 80 70 Married 60 50 Single 40 Widowed Immigrants 30 Divorced Percentage of Italian Percentage 20 10 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Table 2.7 Percentage of All Married Italian Immigrants Living without Spouse by City, 1920

Living without

spouse Dallas 4% Galveston 8% Houston 6% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

73 The ability to read and write is another area in which Italians in Texas cities resemble their counterparts in other major U.S. cities. On the whole, Italian immigrants were not a particularly literate group in the early twentieth century relative to other populations such as Eastern European Jews. Of all foreign-born Italians age fourteen and older in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston in 1920, on average about 74 percent could both read and write. Between the three cities under examination, Galveston had the highest rates of literacy among both the male and female populations, as is shown in Tables 2.8 and 2.9. Italian immigrants in other major U.S. cities were also highly literate. The lowest percentage of literate immigrants lived in New Orleans, where a 60 percent literacy rate among male Italian immigrants matched closely to Houston’s male Italian population. Given the close proximity of Houston and New Orleans, similarities between these two cities in the literacy rate may be the result of the movement of former agricultural laborers and railroad workers into cities.77

Table 2.8 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Italian Immigrant Men Age Fourteen and Older, 1920

Can Read Can Write Dallas 73% 72% Galveston 85% 85% Houston 64% 65% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

77 Kessner, The Golden Door, 39-40; Daniels, Coming to America, 276-278.

74 Table 2.9 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Italian Immigrant Women Age Fourteen and Older, 1920

Can Read Can Write Dallas 49% 49% Galveston 76% 76% Houston 58% 56% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Graph 2.3 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Italian Immigrant Men Age Fourteen and Older in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 Can Read 50 Can Write 40 30 20

Percentage of Italian Men of Italian Men Percentage 10 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

75 Urban-dwelling Italian immigrants were also largely an English-speaking group, as is shown in Table 2.10. Approximately 89, 87, and 88 percent of all foreign-born

Italian immigrants in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, respectively, were English speakers. Though Italians in other major U.S. cities also displayed high rates of English speakers among the immigrant population, as is indicated by Graph 2.4, Italians living in cities in the Lone Star State were significantly more proficient. In New York, for example, 71 percent of Italian immigrants spoke English, and in Chicago the rate was approximately 70 percent, lower than the rate among Italians in Texas’ cities.

Texas Italian immigrants’ high rate of English proficiency was almost definitely tied to the amount of time the immigrants has spent in the United States. Among all sampled foreign-born Italians in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston, whose year of immigration was recorded in the 1920 census, only 16 percent had been in the United

States for ten or fewer years. More than half of the sample had been in the United States from eleven to twenty five years, and 27 percent had been in the United States for more than 25 years. Between the three cities, Galveston’s Italian immigrant population was the most recently arrived. The Island City had the highest percentage of Italians who had been in the United States for ten or fewer years at 22 percent, compared to 11 and 12 percent in Dallas and Houston, respectively. Still, almost 50 percent of Galveston’s foreign-born Italians had been in the United States from sixteen to thirty years. Given the high percentage of English speakers and the long tenure of the Italian population in

Texas’ urban areas, apparently a correlation exists between the amount of time spent in the United States and the acquisition of English language skills.

76 Table 2.10 Ability to Speak English among Italian Immigrants Age Fourteen and Older by City, 1920

Speaks English Dallas 89% Galveston 87% Houston 88% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Graph 2.4 Ability to Speak English Among Italian Immigrants Age Fourteen and Older in U.S. Cities, 1920

100 90 80 Speaks English 70 60 50 Does not 40 speak 30 English 20 10

Percentage of Italian Immigrants Percentage 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Table 2.11 Number of Years in Residence in the United States among Italian Immigrants by City, 1920

Percentage of immigrants by period of years 11- 16- 21- 26- 31- 36- 41- 46- 51- 55- 61- 0-5 6-10 65+ 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 Dallas 2% 9% 14% 29% 17% 9% 9% 8% 1% 1% 1% <1% 0% 0% Houston 1% 12% 13% 29% 18% 9% 9% 6% <1% 2% <1% <1% 0 <1% Galveston 3% 18% 15% 24% 13% 11% 6% 4% 3% <1% 0 0 <1% 0 Percentage of overall 2% 14% 14% 27% 16% 10% 8% 6% 2% 1% <1% <1% <1% <1% total Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

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Eastern European Jews

The demographic differences between Texas’ urban-dwelling East European

Jewish population and nationwide trends were less pronounced than the differences within the U.S. population of Italian immigrants. But like their Italian neighbors in the early twentieth century, Eastern European Jews in Texas’ cities appear to have closely resembled their counterparts in other large urban areas. Because there are variations in demographic statistics between the immigrant population of Dallas, Galveston, and

Houston and also between cities in the Northeast, as was the case with Italian immigrants, no clear patterns emerge with regard to geographic region.

Unlike Italian immigrants, the gender balance among Eastern European Jews nationwide was close, indicating that Jews more often brought their families with them to the United States. The ratio of men to women in the movement of this population was nearly equal, with men accounting for about 55 percent of all East European Jewish immigrants. Within Texas’ urban-dwelling Eastern European Jewish population in 1920, the distribution of men and women was very close to this average. Galveston had the smallest spread at 53 percent male and 47 percent female, and Houston had the largest at

58 percent male and 42 percent female, as Table 2.12 indicates. This gender distribution mirrors trends in other major U.S. urban areas. The relatively even spread between men and women is due in part to the Eastern European Jewish immigrant’s tendency towards permanent settlement in the United States. Estimates of return migration within this group suggest that less than ten percent of all immigrants, or one in twenty, returned to

Europe, and possibly lower given that these figures do not account for Jews who might have returned to the United States. Unlike a larger percentage of Italian immigrants who

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planned only a temporary stay in the United States, the Eastern European Jewish immigrant population contained more families who travelled together or in a process of chain migration.78

Table 2.12 Gender Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants, 1920

Males Females Dallas 57% 43% Galveston 51% 49% Houston 58% 42%

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Graph 2.5 Gender Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants in U.S. Cities, 1920 70 60 50 40 30 Population 20 Male 10 Female 0 Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

78 Daniels, Coming to America, 225.

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Marital statistics from Dallas, Galveston, and Houston support the view of

Eastern European Jewish migration as a movement of families or individuals looking to settle permanently in the United States. High percentages of married men and women among adult immigrants are found in each city under examination, ranging from 73 to 82 percent among men and 79 to 83 percent among women. Of all three cities, Houston had the greatest gap in the numbers of Eastern European Jewish men and women, but also appears to have the highest rate of married men. This apparent inconsistency is explained by a higher rate of marriage between East European-born Jewish men and native-born

American women, or marriage between Eastern European Jewish men and non-East

European women. Like Italian immigrants, married Jewish immigrants in Texas’ urban areas in 1920 were living with their spouses at a very high rate of between 95 and 97 percent, as is shown in Table 2.15. The marital status of East European Jews in Dallas,

Galveston, and Houston closely resembles the status of Jewish immigrants in the major urban immigrant centers of New York and Chicago, where married adult men represented

76 and 74 percent of the immigrant population, respectively. The high percentages of married immigrants, most of whom resided with their spouses, among Texas’ East

European Jews indicates that like their countrymen, Eastern European Jewish immigrants in the cities of the Lone Star State intended to settle permanently in their new home.

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Table 2.13 Marital Status of Adult Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Men by City, 1920

Married Single Widowed Divorced Dallas 73% 25% 2% 0% Galveston 75% 19% 4% 2% Houston 82% 15% 2% 0% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Table 2.14 Marital Status of Adult Foreign Born Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Women by City, 1920

Married Single Widowed Divorced Dallas 79% 16% 4% 1% Galveston 83% 7% 9% 1% Houston 82% 12% 6% 0% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Graph 2.6 Marital Status of Male Adult Eastern European Jewish Immigrants in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 50 Married

Immigrants 40 Single 30 20 Widowed 10 Divorced 0 Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Table 2.15 Percentage of All Married Eastern European Jewish Immigrants Living without Spouse by City, 1920

Not living with spouse Dallas 5% Galveston 5% Houston 3% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Just as the gender distribution and marital status of Texas’ urban-dwelling Eastern

European Jews indicates that this population was similar in composition to the populations of other major U.S. cities, high rates of literacy in Dallas, Galveston, and

Houston suggests another commonality between urban areas of Texas and those in cities across the nation. Comparatively, East European Jewish immigrants in the United States were somewhat more literate than Italian immigrants nationwide, and the same holds true for comparisons made between the two populations in Texas cities, as well as major urban areas across the country. East European Jewish males, age fourteen and older, living in cities in the northern, northeastern, southern, and western regions of the United

States possessed literacy rates of approximately 90 percent and higher. Texas’ urban- dwelling Eastern European Jews were also a highly literate group, as is detailed in Tables

2.16 and 2.17. In 1920, only 3 percent of foreign-born Eastern European Jewish males in

Dallas could neither read nor write, as was the case with approximately 8 percent of

Galveston’s population. A slightly higher 11 percent of Houston’s Eastern European

Jewish male population was illiterate. Literacy rates were somewhat lower among foreign-born East European Jewish women. Dallas had the lowest percentage of literate

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female immigrants at about 12 percent, and Houston had the highest rate at about 22 percent. While 12 percent of Galveston’s female population could not read, about 21 percent reported being unable to write.79

In addition to high rates of literacy among men and women, an exceptionally large percentage of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in Texas’ urban areas were able to speak English. The percentage of English-speaking East European Jews within Texas cities closely matches the rates found among the populations of other major U.S. urban areas. Only East European Jews in New York City had lower rates of English speakers, and even in this city, the proportion of immigrants able to speak English was approximately 85 percent. Houston had the highest rate of proficiency among the Texas cities in 1920 at approximately 99 percent, followed by Dallas at 97 percent and

Galveston at 94 percent. The acquisition of English-speaking skills by 1920 was perhaps the result of a long term of residency among Texas’ Eastern European Jews. On average, however, this population had been in the United States for a shorter period of time than their Italian counterparts, as is indicated by Table 2.19. Yet, still the Eastern European

Jewish population had higher percentages of English-speakers. Some 36 percent of foreign-born Eastern European Jews in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston had resided in the

United States for ten or fewer years, compared to only 16 percent of Italian immigrants.

Seventy-four percent of all foreign-born Eastern European Jews arrived between 1900 and 1920, whereas 56 percent of Italians had arrived in the same period. Though on average the East European Jewish population had spent less time in the United States, with regard to literacy and English-language proficiency, these residents of Texas’ urban

79 Kessner, The Golden Door, 40.

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areas were particularly well prepared to function within a community comprised mostly of native-born Americans.80

Table 2.16 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Men Age Fourteen and Older, 1920

Can Read Can Write Dallas 97% 97% Galveston 93% 92% Houston 90% 89% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Table 2.17 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Women Age Fourteen and Older, 1920

Can Read Can Write Dallas 88% 87% Galveston 88% 79% Houston 78% 78% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

80 Kessner, Golden Door, 40-41.

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Graph 2.7 Ability to Read and Write in Any Language Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrant Men Age Fourteen and Older in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 Can Read 50 Can Write Jewish Men 40 30 20 Percentage of East European of East European Percentage 10 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

* IPUMS provides a 1 percent sample of households from the 1920 census. Because San Francisco and New Orleans had relatively small populations (about 475,000 and 330,000 respectively), and because a small proportion of their populations were Eastern European Jews, the 100% literacy rate found in the IPUMS data may reflect a small sample size (under 100 in each 1% sample) rather than a universal ability to read and write (in any language) among Eastern-European born Jews in these cities.

Table 2.18 Ability to Speak English among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants Age Fourteen and Older by City, 1920

Speaks English Dallas 97% Galveston 94% Houston 99% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

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Graph 2.8 Ability to Speak English Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants Age Fourteen and Older in U.S. Cities, 1920

100 90 80 70 Speaks 60 English 50 40 Does not 30 speak

Jewish Men 20 English 10 0 Percentage of East European

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Table 2.19 Term of Residence in the United States among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants by City, 1920

Percentage of immigrants by period of years 11- 16- 21- 26- 31- 36- 41- 46- 51- 55- 61- 0-5 6-10 65+ 15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 Dallas <1% 37% 17% 17% 7% 8% 6% 5% <1% <1% 1% 0% 0% <1% Houston 1% 34% 32% 13% 5% 9% 4% 2% <1% 1% 0% 0% 0% 0% Galveston 7% 30% 15% 18% 9% 7% 6% 5% 1% 2% 1% 0% 0% 0% Percentage of overall 2% 34% 23% 15% 7% 8% 5% 4% <1% 1% <1% 0% 0% <1% total Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

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Despite similarities between the Italian and East European Jewish populations of

Texas and other major U.S. cities, slight differences in gender distribution, marital status, literacy, and English-speaking ability of Texas’ urban-dwelling immigrants and their counterparts elsewhere in the United States suggests that collectively, the profile of these

Texas immigrant populations does not fit perfectly with that of Italian and East European

Jews in the American Northeast, South or West. What is perhaps more significant than whether or not the Texas immigrants can be classified as more northeastern or southwestern in character is their appearance as a relatively literate population with high rates of English proficiency. With regard to Italian-born men, urban-dwelling Texas immigrants also appear less likely to engage in return migration than is suggested by national averages for this period. Thus, when these immigrants settled in Texas, they were well prepared to enter cities where the dominant population was native-born and the economic opportunities available favored a more literate, and less transient, population.

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Chapter 3 “The Possibilities Within Their Reach” Immigrants and Work in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston

When sixteen-year-old Alberto Vaiani first immigrated to the United States in

1896 he headed to Galveston to live and work with his older brother who owned a grocery store in the Island City. After becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1902,

Vaiani married an Italian-born woman named Clementine, who had immigrated with her parents at age thirteen. In 1905, Clementine delivered the couple’s first child in Texas and shortly after this birth, the family returned to Pisa, Italy. After a two-year stay in

Italy, Vaiani and his family departed Genoa bound for Galveston aboard the Prinzess

Irene. Back in Galveston, Vaiani established himself, as many of his countrymen had also done, in the grocery business. Clementine worked in the family-run store, an endeavor that was lucrative enough to allow the Vaianis to purchase a house in the city’s

Ninth Ward.81

A short, stout man with brown eyes and dark hair, Vaiani was in many ways typical of the Italian immigrants who settled in Texas cities at the turn of the century.

He was literate and could speak English. He was a small business owner with a family.

Vaiani was also representative of a population of Italian immigrants in the United States who came to the country in a process of chain migration, whereby an immigrant follows a family member or a friend. He was also engaged in a pattern of return migration that was common among many Italian immigrants. With regard to the nationwide population of

81 “Albert Vaiani,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 10, District 136, Family 152; “Albert Vaiani,” 1910 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 4, District 34, Family 96; “Clementinia Checchi,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 8, District 132, District 356; “Albert Vaiani,” New York Passenger Lists, 1907, Microfilm Serial T715, Microfilm Roll T715_1024, Line 10, Page Number 115, Ancestry.com; “Albert Vaiani,” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 9, District 52, Family 246.

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Italian immigrants, however, Vaiani was unique. Instead of settling in Chicago or New

York, he located himself and his family in Galveston, Texas, quite removed from the immigrant centers of the North and Northeast. Vaiani learned about running a small retail business by working with his brother before starting his own grocery in the same city. He took advantage of the opportunities afforded by living in a smaller urban area in the southern region of the United States and pursued his entrepreneurial aspirations, as did many eastern and southern European immigrants in Texas cities at the turn of the century.82

An evaluation of the occupational distribution of East European Jewish and

Italian immigrants in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston shows that in terms of relative economic status, many immigrants like Albert Vaiani benefitted from locating in urban

Texas. East European Jewish and Italian immigrants in Texas differed significantly from their counterparts in the American Northeast and, to some extent, from immigrants in cities of the American South and West. A greater percentage of city-dwelling Texas immigrants were small business owners and a smaller percentage were engaged as unskilled laborers, a pattern which suggests that there were indeed certain advantages to settling in the urban areas of the Lone Star State.

Though positions in manufacturing were not as plentiful as they were in the nation’s large metropolises, employment ranging from manual labor to business ownership opportunities greeted the newcomers. The jobs available to workers in Texas cities were therefore varied when increasing numbers of Italian and Eastern European

Jews began arriving in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For many Italian

82 “Albert Vaiani,” United States World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Galveston County, Texas, Roll 1953397, Draft Board 0, Ancestry.com.

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and Eastern European Jewish emigrants leaving Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, economic problems in the homeland were the foremost motivating factor and job opportunities in their new homes would have preoccupied the foreign- born. Even for those immigrants who did not struggle financially in Europe, the United

States represented a place in which they might increase their wealth.83

East European Jewish and Italian immigrants who were arriving at the turn of the twentieth century came with varying skill levels and ranged from white-collar professionals to unskilled day laborers. Southern Italians who began emigrating in increasing numbers in the late nineteenth century came largely from an agricultural background, making them less prepared for available skilled positions in the urban areas of the United States and better suited to fill labor shortages in rural regions. While many may have been unprepared for factory work available in the larger metropolises, unskilled immigrants were qualified to fill the manual labor needs of urban areas and they did, replacing the unskilled Irish workforce of the nineteenth century. East European

Jewish immigrants also came with varied employment experience and skills. Among the two and a half million Jews who emigrated from Eastern Europe were artisans, farmers, professionals, and entrepreneurs. Immigration to the United States meant a new opportunity to utilize skills for many Jewish men and women who had been limited by restrictive laws in Europe.84

83 Roger Daniels, Coming to America: A History of Immigration and Ethnicity in American Life, 1st ed. (New York: Harper Perennial, 1991), 18, 28. 84 In 1885, Congress enacted a law barring contract laborers from entering the United States. Despite its numerous loopholes, this restrictive legislation raised a barrier against securing employment prior to the emigrant’s departure from home. Additionally, restrictive policies that began taking shape in the late nineteenth century included a provision barring from entry those individuals who were likely to become a public charge. The “LPC” clause could be employed retroactively allowing immigration officials to deport individuals already in the United States. Such laws made entry into the United States increasingly difficult for those with little money and few skills and increased the importance of arranging employment quickly

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Though important, the skills with which immigrants arrived in America were only one element required to successfully settle into life in the United States. Also helpful were personal relationships between the newly arrived immigrants and a network of friends and family members already in America. The chain migration that took place among both Italian and East European Jewish populations meant that many immigrants already had connections in the United States. These relationships helped immigrants as they oriented themselves in an unfamiliar environment. For those individuals unable to rely upon friends and family, padroni, who were liaisons between employers and laborers and often immigrants themselves, could be enlisted in the effort to acquire employment.

Though these relationships were often exploitative and abusive, seeking the help of such recruiters perhaps seemed to new arrivals the only way to quickly secure a job.85

Some immigrants who came to the United States in pursuit of better economic opportunities became dissatisfied with the options offered in their first place of settlement and began looking elsewhere, and Texas had its share of attractions. When Israel

Zangwill promised in 1908 that “Texas has room within her borders for all the Israelites in the world, and then some,” he was not speaking purely about the vast acreage covered by the Lone Star State. Texans wanted to develop the countryside through farming and ranching, and also the cities through capital investment and manufacturing. Immigrants would hasten such development. Opportunities existed for both the skilled and unskilled immigrant in urban and rural areas of Texas, though the attractions of the cities were not as widely advertised to prospective residents. Government officials, state boosters, and

after admission. Contract Labor Law of 1885, 23 Stat., 48th Cong. (February 26, 1885), 332; Immigration Act of 1882, 22 Stat., 47th Cong., 1st sess. (August 3, 1882), 214; Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930, Illini Books ed., (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 26-30, 41-43; Daniels, Coming to America, 195. 85 Daniels, Coming to America, 196-197.

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businessmen sought immigrant farmers and laborers to improve Texas’ vast tracts of uninhabited land and to people the small towns that serviced the rural areas. There was some fear that immigrants would flock to the cities instead of the farms, thereby creating more job competition in the urban areas. But the general message Texans sent to immigrants was that opportunities abounded in the Lone Star State.86

In the late nineteenth century, Dallas, Galveston, and Houston were still relatively small cities undergoing a period of development that made the cities ripe for small-scale entrepreneurial ventures. Unfortunately, Galveston would sustain a serious setback after the hurricane of 1900. The devastation confirmed the fears of business interests that the port city was an unsafe location for expensive manufacturing or oil refining equipment.

Yet, residents of the Island City continued to push for investment and population growth throughout the early twentieth century. The people of Houston and Dallas did the same.

Growth occupied much space in the public domain and stories estimating population increases and the development of industries filled local newspapers in this period.

Dallas’ economic development was unlike that of Houston or Galveston though its growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century had been sustained in part by the same cotton and trade industries that were responsible for the development of

Galveston and Houston. The city served the cotton industry through both the manufacture of cotton gins and presses, as well as through the availability of cotton ginning services for crops grown in the surrounding areas. The convergence of railroads in the city made possible Dallas’ development as a shipping point for the export of raw materials to the eastern United States. This commerce led to the growth of banking in the

86 See chapter one for more detailed information on Texans’ efforts to draw immigrants to the rural areas of the state and to encourage growth of the urban areas. Valentine Belfiglio, Italian Experience in Texas: A Closer Look (Austin, TX: Eakin Press, 1995), 38; “Texas Has Room,” Jewish Herald, September 24, 1908.

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city, which grew alongside insurance as two of the most important industries in the city.

Dallas also emerged as a trade center for the fashion and garment industries. A favorable business climate, which after 1875 allowed some manufacturers to claim tax-exemption, led to the city’s rise in the apparel industry. Merchants in Dallas opened large department stores like Neiman-Marcus and Titche-Goettinger & Co., further solidifying the city’s position as the mercantile center of the Southwest.87

While the residents of Dallas, nearly three hundred miles north of Houston and

Galveston, worked towards becoming a business, banking, trade, and manufacturing leader in the region, the two Gulf Coast cities focused on developing their port capacities.

Galveston’s status as a deepwater port in 1896 was its greatest attribute and the shipping industry was at the center of the city’s economy. Cotton exports, in particular, made

Galveston an important American port. The movement of people into the city for the purposes of trade, immigration, and tourism, created a need for goods and services.

Small groceries and retail shops proliferated throughout the city, and many immigrants found employment in the operation of such businesses.88

Houston’s economy also grew on shipping and the cotton industry, and its connection to the rest of the country by way of sixteen railroads in 1900 made the city valuable in the import and export of goods and raw materials. Railroad repair naturally accompanied the expansion of tracks into the city, and several large shops existed in

Houston at the turn of the century. The business prosperity of the city rested in some part

87 Payne, Dallas, 81, 148-152; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 42-43, 50-51, 244-245. 88 Axlerod, “Galveston, Denver’s Deep Water Port,” Southwestern Historical Quarterly, 217-228; McComb, Galveston, 48, 50, 60, 73, 109, 114-116, 155, 161; Rozek, “Galveston, Texas: An Immigrant Port on the Gulf Coast,” Gulf Coast Historical Review, 213; “The Growth of the Port of Galveston,” GDN, February 9, 1910; “Galveston Harbor; Great Achievement,” GDN, February 20, 1910; “Handling and Exporting Staves at Galveston,” GDN, March 6, 1910; “Lone Star State’s Door to the World,” HP, March 27, 1910; “Galveston Looks Good to Wholesale Grocers,” GDN, November 15, 1910; “$1,810,601 of Imports Come Through Galveston During the Month of March,” HP, May 16, 1920.

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on the availability of cotton compresses and warehouses, and Houston also had mills for the production of cottonseed oil, a byproduct of the cotton ginning process. The livestock business, including the sale, slaughter, and packaging of meat, also provided jobs for the city’s growing population, as did the manufacture of a variety of products including iron, furniture, building materials, and farming supplies. By the early twentieth century, mineral deposits and petroleum manufacturing would come to the forefront of Houston’s economy, once the 1901 discovery of oil at Spindletop in east Texas resulted in the location of refineries in the Bayou City.89

Eastern European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Dallas

Dallas’ status as a service, insurance, and banking center for the state, as well as a major national cotton market, meant that there was a wide availability of white-collar jobs for the city’s residents in the early twentieth century. Surprisingly though, the foreign-born East European Jewish and Italian population were able to enter low-status white-collar jobs at a rate that slightly exceeded that of the native-born population. In

1920, 64 percent of foreign-born, adult East European-born Jewish men and 60 percent of

Italian men in Dallas were engaged in white-collar work compared to 55 percent of native-born whites. Most Jews of this class owned small businesses like retail-clothing stores, groceries, and dry goods stores, as is shown in Table 3.2. Wolf Goodstein was one such merchant. Goodstein owned a home on Lear Street just south of City Park near the Orthodox synagogue of Shearith Israel, where he lived with his wife, Jennie, and their

89 Marilyn McAdams Sibley, The Port of Houston: A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1968), 53, 63-64, 74; David McComb, Houston, A History (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 68-69; “Houston and Buffalo Bayou,” HP, April 2, 1900; W.R. Box, “Houston as a Live Stock Market,” HP, April 8, 1900; B.R. Warner, “Houston as a Cotton Market,” HP, April 8, 1900; “An Industry for Houston,” HC, April 5, 1902.

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daughter and grandchild. Goodstein ran a tailor shop on Commerce Street, in the same neighborhood, which likely catered to a Jewish clientele who made their homes in this area of Dallas.90

90 For more information on the economic development of Dallas, see chapter one. “Wolf Goodstein,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 20, District 39, Family 122; “Wolf Goodstein,” United States City Directories, Texas, Dallas, 1918, Image 248, Ancestry.com.

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Table 3.1 Occupational Distribution of Adult Men in Dallas by Category, 192091

Native Born Foreign Born East European White Black Italians Jews High Status 7% 0% 2% 0% White Collar Low Status White 48% 4% 62% 60% Collar Petty 0% 0% 4% 4% Entrepreneurs Skilled and Semiskilled Blue 29% 10% 18% 14% Collar (incl. factory workers) Unskilled Blue 11% 85% 10% 19% Collar Difficult to 5% 0% 2% 2% Classify Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas County and 1920 IPUMS database for Dallas, Texas.

91 There are two types of occupational distribution tables in this chapter. The first compares the immigrants to the native born populations using broadly defined categories, which are explained in footnote 13, to aid in an understanding of the relative socioeconomic status of the immigrants relative to native-born whites and blacks. The second details immigrant occupations more specifically, to give a sense of what jobs East European Jewish and Italian immigrants filled. The categories for the second type of table, as shown in Table 3.2, were devised as follows: “Business Owners” includes merchants, proprietors and those who listed themselves as “owners” or “employers” in the census, with the exception of fishermen. “Clerks and Office Workers” includes clerks, typists, stenographers, and bookkeepers. The “Difficult to Classify” category includes teachers, captains, apprentices, policemen, collectors, land agents, dispensers, farmers, and assistants. “Factory workers” includes any manual workers who specifically recorded “factory” or, in some cases, “operator” in their occupation. “Petty Entrepreneurs” are defined as peddlers, hucksters, and produce stand keepers. “Professionals” include doctors, dentists, lawyers, and clergy. “Skilled and Semi-skilled Workers” includes barbers, boilermakers, binders, blacksmiths, bricklayers, butchers, caulkers, confectioners, coopers, furriers, jewelers, painters, paperhangers, plasterers, sawyers, shoemakers, tailors, upholsterers and wagon makers, but excludes factory workers. “Unskilled workers” are defined as deliverymen, guardsmen, laborers, porters, sailors, waiters, and wagon drivers. The more broadly defined categories used in Table 3.1, which compares the immigrant population to the native-born population, were devised as follows: “High Status White Collar” includes the professional class. “Low Status White Collar” is comprised of business owners, clerks, managers, office workers, and salesmen. “Skilled and Semi-skilled Blue Collar” includes skilled workers and factory laborers. Note that “factory workers” make up a separate category in Table 3.2. The “Unskilled Workers” and “Difficult to Classify” categories are defined as listed above.

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Table 3.2 Occupational Distribution of Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men in Dallas by Category, 1920

Foreign Born East European Italians Jews Business Owners 46% 53% Clerks and Office 17% 7% Workers Difficult to Classify 2% 2% Factory Workers 1% 0% Petty Entrepreneurs 4% 4% Professionals 2% 0% Skilled and Semi-skilled 17% 14% Workers Unskilled Workers 10% 19% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas County.

The remaining Eastern European immigrant men were engaged in various types of blue-collar work, with the highest percentage of immigrants found in skilled and semiskilled positions. There were many tailors and jewelers in this class, like Russian immigrant Joe Sherman, who lived with his wife and five children in a rental home in the

North Dallas neighborhood of Goose Valley. Many newly arrived, poorer East

European Jews had settled in Goose Valley in the late nineteenth century but by 1920 when Sherman and his family were living there, Goose Valley had begun attracting recently arrived Mexican immigrants, though there were still pockets of Jews living in the area. Given Dallas’ goods and services-oriented economy, its status as the leading jewelry market in the Southwest, and the importance of clothing manufacture for the

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employment of Jewish workers in Russia, the prevalence of immigrants like Sherman in these skilled and semi-skilled positions makes sense.

Unskilled blue-collar East European Jewish immigrants represented only 10 percent of the overall adult male Jewish population and generally these men worked as laborers in a variety of industries. Twenty-three-year-old Meyer Mayorsky and his twenty-six-year-old brother, James, both worked as general laborers in Dallas, where they lived with their parents and three younger sisters, Bessie, Bertha, and Ruth. The

Mayorsky family participated in the chain migration that was common pattern in U.S. immigration. James and Meyer were the first members of the Mayorsky family to immigrate to the United States, arriving in 1912. Two years later, the remaining family members followed the brothers to the United States and by 1920 they were living together in the North Texas city.92

As was the case with East European Jewish immigrants in Dallas, a greater percentage of Italian immigrants worked in white-collar than blue-collar positions. Sixty percent of all adult Italian immigrant men in Dallas worked in white-collar jobs and approximately 53 percent of all Italian males were self-employed. Small grocery ownership was, by far, the most popular occupation among Italian immigrants in Dallas, though this population also owned small specialty stores like shoe repair shops. Twenty-

92 For more information on Jewish neighborhoods and Goose Valley, see Chapter Four. “Joe Sherman,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 3, District 7, Family 14; “Joe Sherman,” U.S. Word War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Texas, Dallas County, Roll 1952763, Draft Board 1, Ancestry.com; “Meyer Mayorsky,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 23, District 45, Family 360; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 90-97; Jackie McElhaney and Michael V. Hazel, "DALLAS, TX," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/hdd01), accessed May 15, 2011. The Handbook of Texas Online is an online encyclopedia published by the Texas State Historical Association that contains entries on Texas history, many of which are authored by known scholars in the field. Thomas Kessner, The Golden Door: Italian and Jewish Immigrant Mobility in New York City 1880-1915 (Oxford University Press, 1977), 61-62.

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six-year-old Italian immigrant Joe Musso owned a shop in the city’s Second Ward.

Musso had been in the United States for eight years by the summer of 1920, but had neither naturalized nor declared his intention of becoming a United States citizen. He did, nonetheless, exhibit signs of putting down roots in Dallas. Musso established a small business out of his home where he worked as a dry goods salesman and shoemaker. The practice of operating businesses out of residences was common for both East European

Jewish and Italian immigrants.93

Though the majority of working Italians were employed in white-collar positions, blue-collar work occupied approximately 33 percent of adult Italian immigrant men in

Dallas. Only about 19 percent of this population worked in unskilled positions. Skilled and unskilled positions accounted for approximately 14 and 19 percent of Italians, respectively. Men in this group, like Joe Sosalio, found jobs largely as shoemakers and shoe repairmen. In 1905, Sosalio departed Sicily to join his cousin, Alphonse Cerola, in the United States. Cerola owned a shoe repair shop in Dallas, where he was able to employ both Sosalio and Cerola’s Sicilian brother-in-law, Michael Scalora. Unlike many southern Italian men who came to the United States seeking employment in the early twentieth century, Scalora immigrated with his family at age 15. In the summer of 1907,

Scalora’s father, Tony, an unskilled laborer, and his mother, Mary, left with their eight children from the Sicilian town of Piana dei Greci. Departing from Palermo aboard the

Italia, the family arrived through New York and made their way to Fort Worth, where

Michael found work as a liquor store salesman and his father took a job as a city laborer.

Eventually, Scalora’s sister, Julia, married Alphonse Cerola and moved to Dallas, taking

93 “Joe Musso,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 2, District 6, Family 627; “Joseph C. Musso,” United States City Directories, Texas, Dallas, 1915, Image 289, Ancestry.com.

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Michael with her. Unfortunately, it is difficult to ascertain what became of Michael after

1920, but if he was like many Italian immigrants in Dallas there is a good possibility that he eventually opened his own business in the city.94

The high percentage of white-collar workers among East European Jews and

Italians is understandable given Dallas’ commerce-based economy. Yet, several things are notable about the occupational distribution among these Dallas immigrants. First,

East European Jews and Italians were occupied as business owners and white-collar workers at a rate that either matched or exceeded that of the white native-born population. Rose Biderman, who has written about the Jewish population of Dallas, noted that in the neighborhood of Deep Ellum, where recently arrived East European

Jews opened businesses and “rent was cheap,” even those immigrants with little capital were able to get a start in Dallas’ mercantile industry. Second, the occupational distribution of both immigrant groups is vastly different than that of the black, native- born male population. Approximately 85 percent of black men in Dallas worked in unskilled positions, compared to 19 percent of Italian men and 10 percent of East

European men.95

This comparison of the native-and foreign-born populations of Dallas reveals that in 1920, East European Jewish and Italian immigrant populations ranked closely with their native-born white neighbors in terms of occupational distribution. The one exception was perhaps unskilled blue-collar Italian workers, who were somewhat more

94 “Mitchell Scalora,” 1910 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Tarrant County, Fort Worth, Ward 5, District 114, Family 104; “Michelangelo Scalora” New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957, August 14, 1907, Italia, Image 30, Ancestry.com; “Joe Sosalio,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 15, District 26, Family 1313; 1920 Dallas City Directory, 1789. 95 The majority of black adult males in unskilled, blue-collar positions were laborers working in a variety of industries such as the construction trades. Discriminatory practices in the Jim Crow South worked to exclude many black men from white-collar work by limiting access to such jobs. The status of urban- dwelling African Americans will be discussed later in this chapter.

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likely to be found in manual laboring positions than their East European Jewish and white native-born neighbors. Despite the relatively higher percentage working in unskilled jobs, Italian immigrants were still largely engaged in white-collar work. It is clear that

East European Jewish and Italian workers in Dallas were taking advantage of the white- collar occupational opportunities offered in this growing urban area.

Eastern European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Houston

By 1920, Houston’s economy revolved around oil, commerce, and cotton. These and related industries, like the railroads, employed many of the approximately 138,300 individuals who resided in the Bayou City at this time. It was Houstonians need for goods and services, however, which provided employment for a large percentage of the

East European Jewish and Italian immigrant population. As in Dallas, these immigrants appear well represented within the ranks of Houston’s white-collar workforce.96

In Houston, more male Eastern European Jewish immigrants held white-collar positions than skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled blue-collar jobs combined. In fact, a higher percentage of immigrant Jews held white-collar jobs than did the native-born white population. As shown in Table 3.3, 62 percent of Eastern European Jewish immigrant males worked in white-collar positions in 1920. The largest portion of these white-collar workers was made up of merchants, salesmen, and owners of small businesses like groceries and retail clothing stores. East European Jewish immigrants gravitated towards small-business ownership; approximately 38 percent of all adult East

European Jewish immigrant men in Houston were self-employed. Samuel Schlom, a

96 For more information on the economic development of Houston in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, see chapter one.

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Russian immigrant and naturalized United States citizen, was one such individual.

Schlom ran a tailor shop at 715 Congress Avenue that was successful enough to allow the tailor to support his wife and extended family in his home at 1914 Everitt Street, which

Schlom owned outright. Another 14 percent of East European Jewish worked as peddlers and street vendors in Houston, many who likely had aspirations of one day opening a store. These petty entrepreneurs sold produce and goods in the streets of Houston and sometimes into the countryside as well.97

97 “Samuel Schlom,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, Ward 5, District 89, Family 270; Morrison & Fourmy’s Directory Co. Houston City Directory (Houston: R.L. Polk & Co., 1920), 1785; West of Hester Street, DVD, directed by Allen Mondell and Cynthia Salzman Mondell (Dallas: Media Projects, Inc., 1983).

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Table 3.3 Occupational Distribution of Adult Men in Houston by Category, 1920

Native Born Foreign Born East European White Black Italians Jews Difficult to 4% 2% 3% 2% Classify High Status 7% 2% 3% 0% White Collar Low Status White 41% 4% 59% 56% Collar Petty 0% 0% 14% 1% Entrepreneurs Skilled and Semiskilled Blue 34% 20% 17% 17% Collar (incl. factory workers) Unskilled Blue 14% 73% 3% 24% Collar Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Harris County and 1920 IPUMS database for Houston, Texas.

Table 3.4 Occupational Distribution of Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men in Houston by Category, 1920

Foreign Born East European Italians Jews Business Owners 38% 49% Clerks and Office 21% 7% Workers Difficult to Classify 3% 2% Factory Workers 0% 0% Petty Entrepreneurs 14% 1% Professionals 3% 0% Skilled and Semi-skilled 17% 17% Workers Unskilled Workers 3% 24% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Harris County.

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As is indicated in Tables 3.3 and 3.4, among the adult, male East European Jewish population of Houston, the percentage of blue-collar workers was generally low. Of the

20 percent of East European Jewish immigrant men who filled blue-collar positions, only a very small portion of the population, approximately 3 percent, was employed in unskilled blue-collar positions. Seventeen percent were skilled and semi-skilled workers.

Men like Harry Green, a Jewish immigrant who left Russia in 1913 for the United States, found employment as tailors, carpenters, and mechanics. Green worked as a cabinetmaker in a furniture factory in Houston and though he was married, in 1920 he was living alone as a lodger in the northern part of the city. The following year, however,

Green was reunited with his wife, Eva, and the couples’ son, Leon, who joined him in the

Bayou City. Over the next decade, Green advanced to a position as a building contractor that allowed him to purchase a house for his growing family.98

While a large percentage of Italian immigrants in Houston were employed in white-collar jobs, there were slightly fewer in this class than among the East European

Jewish population. Fifty-six percent of all adult, male Italian immigrants worked in white-collar positions. As was the case with Italian immigrants in Dallas, Houston’s white-collar Italian population was largely a self-employed group and grocery store proprietors accounted for a large portion of white-collar immigrants. Many small business owners operated stores from their homes. Men like Italian-born Philip

Tomasino who established themselves in Houston as small businessmen found a degree of freedom and success in this arrangement, which was common in Texas cities. By

98 “Harry Green,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, Ward 1, District 33, Family 273; “Harry Green,” 1930 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, District 79, Family 558.

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1930, Tomasino owned the building in which he both ran his store and lived with his family.99

Most of the remaining Italian immigrant men in Houston were spread somewhat evenly between skilled, semi-skilled, and unskilled blue-collar work. Seventeen percent of all Italian men worked in skilled and semi-skilled positions such as shoemaking, baking, carpentry, and factory work. Twenty-four percent of these immigrants were employed as unskilled workers, often with railroad companies but also as laborers in other industries. Italians like twenty-five-year-old Dominick Caravella relied upon

Houstonians’ need for services and labor to provide a means by which they could support their families. Caravella, who emigrated from Italy in 1899 and became a naturalized

U.S. citizen in 1914, supported his wife, Mary, and their two small children by working as a hotel waiter. Ben Verdina was another of Houston’s blue-collar Italian workers.

The thirty-one-year-old immigrant arrived in the United States in 1906 and found work as a dough mixer at a macaroni factory, most likely the Italian-owned Houston Macaroni

Manufacturing Company.100

When compared to the overall white, adult, male, native-born population of

Houston, a greater percentage of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants appear engaged in white-collar work due to the high number of small business ownership within the immigrant populations. While some 62 percent of all adult East European Jewish men and 56 percent of all adult Italian men labored in white-collar positions, only 48

99 “Philip Tomasino,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, Ward 4, District 73, Family 249; “Philip Tomasino,” 1930 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, District 96, Family 142; “Philip Tomasino,” United States City Directories, Texas, Houston, 1926, Image 832, Ancestry.com. 100 “Dominick Caravella,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, Ward 2, District 41, Family 295; “Ben Verdina,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Harris County, Houston, Ward 4, District 70, Family 246; 1920 Houston City Directory, 1708.

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percent of white, adult, native-born, male Houstonians did so. As was the case in Dallas, black, adult, native-born men concentrated in unskilled jobs, which employed about 73 percent of the African American population. Even Italians, who had the next highest rate of unskilled laborers of the four groups under comparison, came in a distant second to unskilled black workers at 24 percent. Although Italians were slightly more involved in unskilled manual labor than Houston’s native-born whites, they still fared well overall.

Like Dallas’ Italian and East European Jewish populations, Houston’s immigrants appear by comparison with the native-born population to have had an advantageous position in the port town’s economy, generally bypassing the unskilled jobs for business ventures and less physically demanding work.

East European Jewish and Italian Immigrants in Galveston

Perhaps more so than Houston, Galveston relied on its port for much of its economic vitality. But in the wake of the hurricane of 1900, Galveston’s position on the

Gulf Coast proved too much of a liability for oil companies, which instead located in

Houston. Galveston’s economy instead depended on the movement of goods and people through the city for commercial and recreational purposes. It was this constant influx that supplied the Island City’s East European Jewish and Italian immigrants with jobs.

As is illustrated in Table 3.5, approximately 59 percent of Galveston’s adult, male

East European Jewish immigrants were engaged in white-collar occupations. One percent of this group filled high-status positions as lawyers and clergymen. Such was the case with Rabbi Abraham Rosenblatt, an emigrant from Galicia who journeyed to the United

States in 1910 with his wife and two children. The rabbi served Galveston’s Jewish

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population one block from his home in the Fifth Ward as head of the Jewish Benevolent

Association. Within ten years of relocating to Texas, Rabbi Rosenblatt, his wife, and children had firmly established themselves within the Island City’s community. All four immigrants had become naturalized citizens and the rabbi and his wife had four more children, all of whom were born in Texas.101

Table 3.5 Occupational Distribution of Adult Men in Galveston by Category, 1920

Native Born Foreign Born East European White Black Italians Jews Difficult to 13% 0% 4% 1% Classify High Status White 5% 0% 1% 2% Collar Low Status White 21% 3% 58% 50% Collar Petty 0% 0% 10% 6% Entrepreneurs Skilled and Semiskilled Blue 38% 6% 12% 23% Collar (incl. factory workers) Unskilled Blue 23% 91% 13% 17% Collar Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Galveston County and 1920 IPUMS database for Galveston, Texas.

101 “A.D. Rosenblatt,” 1920 United States Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 5, District 41, Family 57; “Abraham Rosenblatt,” U.S. Passport Applications, 1795-1925, Ancestry.com; Galveston City Directory, 1921 (Houston: R.L. Polk & Co., 1921), 421.

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Table 3.6 Occupational Distribution of Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men in Galveston by Category, 1920

Foreign Born East European Italians Jews Business Owners 47% 44% Clerks and Office 11% 6% Workers Difficult to Classify 4% 1% Factory Workers 0% 4% Petty Entrepreneurs 10% 6% Professionals 1% 2% Skilled and Semi- 12% 19% skilled workers Unskilled Workers 13% 17% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Galveston County.

Most of the remaining adult, male, white-collar East European Jewish immigrant workers in Galveston were occupied as merchants who specialized in clothing and produce. Frequently, these entrepreneurs operated stores out of their homes but they also established businesses in separate locations. Sam Fargelstein opened a jewelry store in his residence in the Fourth Ward, while Paul Bronstein ran a clothing store on Avenue D.

On Avenue D, no fewer than thirty clothing stores were in operation and most of these shops had Jewish proprietors.102

Twenty-five percent of Galveston’s adult, male, East European Jewish workers were engaged in blue-collar pursuits. The majority worked as skilled and semi-skilled tradesmen. One such immigrant was Abraham Diamond who emigrated from Russia in

1905 and settled in Galveston with his wife Dora. Diamond worked in a tailor shop in

102 “Paul Bronstein,” 1930 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, District 17, Family 271; “Sam Fargotstein,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 4, District 37, Family 51; Galveston City Directory, 1921, 654, 626.

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Galveston in 1920, but eventually started his own business. The business venture was successful enough that Diamond was able to purchase a house on the western side of the island.103

Compared to the East European Jewish immigrant population, Galveston’s Italian immigrants were more likely to occupy skilled and unskilled laboring positions.

Approximately 36 percent of adult, Italian immigrant men served the city in blue-collar jobs such as mechanics, teamsters, and ship builders, while only about one-quarter of

Jewish immigrants held similar positions. A number of Italians worked in skilled and semi-skilled jobs as barbers, butchers, and fishermen, like Salvatore Calandro, a naturalized U.S. citizen who immigrated to America in 1895. Calandro’s experience offers an example of how blue-collar work in Texas urban areas could be lucrative over time. In 1920, Calandro was employed as a wageworker on a deep-sea fishing boat, and renting a home in the city’s Second Ward. Ten years later, the Italian native owned a fishing boat and a house on Avenue L in the eastern part of the city. Seventeen percent of Italian immigrants were employed in unskilled occupations and almost all immigrants in this class worked as laborers. Notably, over half of the unskilled laborers worked on

Galveston’s docks. Joe Gaido, a forty-four-year-old married Italian immigrant who lived near the beach in the Ninth Ward, labored on one of the city’s wharves, as did Albert

Mariani, a single, eighteen-year-old Italian immigrant who lived with his sister and her

103 “Abramon Diamond,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 4, District 38, Family 102; “Abraham Diamond” 1930 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, District 19, Family 387.

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native-born husband. Galveston’s port was an important source of employment for

Italian manual laborers.104

Italians in Galveston were more likely to be engaged in white-collar work than in blue-collar jobs. About 50 percent of the male Italian population was engaged in low- status, white-collar occupations, and 44 percent were small business owners. As was the case in Dallas and Houston, grocery stores were popular ventures among these entrepreneurial-minded Italians. Italian names fill city directory listings of retail grocers in Galveston. One such grocer was Frank Carubbi, who first emigrated from Italy in

1896 and four years later brought his wife and young daughter to the United States.

Carubbi ran a grocery store from his rented home on Avenue K in the Seventh Ward, where he lived with his wife and six children.105

The involvement of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants, like Carubbi, in white-collar occupations set the foreign-born workers apart from their native-born neighbors. Twenty-six percent of Galveston’s native-born white population was engaged in white-collar work, compared with 59 percent of Eastern European Jews and

52 percent of Italians. Though many Italian immigrants were employed in manual labor jobs, they were slightly less likely to be so employed than was the native-born white population and significantly less likely than African American men. The same is true for

East European Jewish immigrants, as is shown in Table 3.5. Many of these native-born

104 “Salvadore Calandro,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 2, District 33, Family 159; “Salvador Calandra,” 1930 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, District 30, Family 310; “Joe Gaido,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 9, District 53, Family 349; “Albert Mariani,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 6, District 42, Family 77; “Galveston 1889,” Historical Maps of Texas Cities, Perry Castaneda Library Map Collection, digital images, http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/historic_tex_cities.html. 105 “Frank Carubbi,” 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census, Texas, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 7, District 47, Family 9; Galveston City Directory 1921, 644.

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workers, particularly black males, worked as longshoreman and in other capacities on the city’s docks, while others worked for the railroads.

Galveston’s Italian and East European Jewish immigrant populations were involved in white-collar work at a higher rate than both native-born white and black residents. To some degree, the difference between native-born whites and foreign-born

Italian and East European Jewish immigrants in Galveston can be explained by a combination of a high rate of immigrant storekeepers in the Island City and native-born whites’ occupations in shipping-related industries. The immigrants likely gravitated towards business ownership because it gave them a measure of independence and allowed spouses and children to contribute to the family income. Additionally, manufacturing in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston was limited and therefore the immigrants did not have a great number of factory positions available to them, as might have been the case in New York or other major U.S. cities. By establishing small businesses, the immigrants created their own jobs and did not have to compete directly with the native-born population for work. Putting aside other less pronounced intercity differences in the occupational distribution of the native and foreign born, what appears conclusive about the Italian and East European populations of all three cities is that they were effectively integrating themselves into the Texas urban economy and avoiding manual labor positions. Only among Houston’s Italians did the rate of immigrant men involved in unskilled blue-collar work exceed 20 percent of that group’s adult male population, as is shown in Graph 3.3, and even in this city the percentage was still relatively low.

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Graph 3.1 Male Population, 18 and Older, Engaged in White-Collar Occupations, 1920

70

60

50

40 Dallas 30 Galveston 20 Houston

Percentage of Population Percentage 10

0 East European Italians Native Born Native Born Jews Whites Blacks

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, Texas.

Graph 3.2 Male Population, Age 18 and Older, Engaged in Skilled and Semi-skilled Blue Collar Occupations, 1920 70

60

50 Dallas 40 Galveston 30 Houston 20

Percentage of Population Percentage 10

0 East European Italians Native Born Native Born Jews Whites Blacks

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, Texas.

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Graph 3.3 Male Population, Age 18 and Older, Engaged in Unskilled Blue Collar Occupations, 1920

100 90 80 70 60 50 Dallas 40 Galveston 30 Houston 20

Percentage of Population 10 0 East European Italians Native Born Native Born Jews Whites Blacks

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, Texas.

A comparison of the rate of Italian and East European Jewish immigrant men engaged in unskilled work in 1900 and 1920 does not reveal that the occupational distribution of these immigrant groups in 1920 represents an overall advancement in employment status. While the percentage of Galveston’s Italian men working as unskilled laborers dropped from 23 percent in 1900 to 17 percent in 1920, the proportion of Italians engaged in such work grew in Dallas and Houston over the same time period.

The reduction in Galveston probably resulted from the hurricane of 1900 rather than an improvement in the Italians’ job opportunities there. A slight drop of 6 percentage points occurred among unskilled foreign-born East European Jewish laborers in Houston, but

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the populations of Dallas and Galveston saw an increase in their rate of unskilled work between 1900 and 1920.106

Table 3.7 Adult Italian Immigrant Men Engaged in Unskilled Blue-Collar Occupations, 1900 and 1920107

1900 1920 Dallas 10% 19% Galveston 23% 17% Houston 12% 24%

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Table 3.8 Adult East European Jewish Immigrant Men Engaged in Unskilled Blue-Collar Occupations, 1900 and 1920

1900 1920 Dallas 4% 10% Galveston 6% 13% Houston 9% 3%

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

106 If immigrants’ occupations were traced over time it would be possible to see whether these white-collar workers were previously employed as unskilled laborers, revealing whether the jobs they filled in Texas in 1920 represent an advancement in economic status. Tracing would also show whether these white-collar workers were in a position to enter this segment of the workforce at the time of their entry into the United States. Unfortunately, an attempt to trace individuals between my samples of Dallas, Galveston, and Houston in 1900 and 1920 proved unproductive in this regard. 107 The occupational distribution data for 1900 derives from a 100 percent sample of Italians and East European Jewish immigrants taken from the 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties found on Ancestry.com. 1900 United States Federal Census, Texas, Dallas County, Ancestry.com, http://www.ancestry.com/; 1900 United States Federal Census, Texas, Galveston County, Ancestry.com, http://www.ancestry.com/; 1900 United States Federal Census, Texas, Harris County, Ancestry.com, http://www.ancestry.com/.

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Regional Comparisons of East European Jewish and Italian Immigrants Urban Areas

An intercity comparison of Texas workers shows that with regard to the native- born populations of Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, urban-dwelling East European

Jewish and Italian immigrants in the Lone Star State found opportunities to avoid the lowest positions on the state’s economic ladder. A high rate of business ownership among immigrants in both of these groups is responsible for the large percentage of white-collar workers. Comparison between workers in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston and those in other major U.S. cities in the area of business ownership and unskilled labor additionally highlights what was unique about life for immigrants in Texas. This comparison also gives an understanding of what immigrants either gained or lost by living outside the urban metropolises of the North and Northeast. What is clear from such an evaluation is that the Eastern European Jewish and Italian immigrant males living in Texas cities were far more likely to be self-employed than immigrants in other major urban areas of the United States. Texas’ urban-dwelling East European Jewish and

Italian immigrants’ propensity towards small business ownership, combined with a relatively high percentage of adult men’s engagement in white-collar jobs, suggests that there was something unique about the immigrants and their Texas urban environment.

East European Jewish adult men in Texas’ cities and other major U.S. urban areas were involved in business ownership to some degree, as is indicated in Graph 3.4. These immigrant proprietors entered into a variety of entrepreneurial ventures that included groceries, clothing stores, and tailor shops. The number of adult, East European males working in these fields, however, was significantly higher in Texas urban areas. While approximately 27 percent of adult East European Jewish men living in Philadelphia were

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self-employed, no less than 39 percent of the immigrant population living in Texas’ cities owned businesses. Some 20 percent of East European-born Jewish men in Boston and

Chicago were business owners, and East European Jews in New Orleans and New York were self-employed at a rate of about 17 percent. The male East European Jewish immigrant population of San Francisco was slightly less likely to open businesses than were their counterparts in New York and New Orleans.108

108 Data for figures on the immigrant populations of Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco derives from a 1 percent sample of households taken from Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek, Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database], Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010.

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Graph 3.4 Occupational Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrant Men, Age 18 and Older, in U.S. Cities, 1920

60

50

Business Owners 40 Petty Entrepreneurs 30 Unskilled Laborers

20

10 Percentage of East European Male Population Male of East European Percentage

0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Italian men in Texas were also involved in small business ventures at a greater rate than immigrants in other major U.S. cities. As is shown in Graph 3.5, some 9 percent of New York’s adult, male Italian immigrants were small business owners, and

11 percent of their counterparts in San Francisco and Chicago were similarly employed.

Less than ten percent of the Italian male population in Boston and Philadelphia were self- employed. By contrast, 47 percent of Italians in Galveston and 54 percent of Italian men in Houston and Dallas were proprietors of small groceries and other shops. Italians in all cities except New Orleans took jobs as unskilled laborers at a much higher rate than did the Italians in Texas’ cities. In Chicago, a large number of railroad laborers filled the ranks of unskilled workers and in New York much of this group were either longshoreman or laborers. San Francisco also had a large number of laborers among its

Italian immigrant population.

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Graph 3.5 Occupational Distribution of Italian Immigrant Men, Age 18 and Older, in U.S. Cities, 1920

60

50 Business Owners

40 Petty Entrepreneurs

Unskilled Laborers 30

20

10 Percentage of Italian Male Population of Italian Male Percentage

0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Texas’ urban-dwelling Italians were generally self-employed at the same rate as their East European Jewish neighbors but at a much higher rate than their northeastern counterparts. Both of these groups had a remarkably high rate of small business ownership, which means that Texas’ urban-dwelling East European Jewish and Italian immigrants were a largely white-collar group. In addition, peddlers and street vendors, who perhaps lacked the capital with which to open a shop but still possessed entrepreneurial aspirations, added to the number of self-employed immigrants in Texas cities.

There is no clear pattern that indicates that the low rate of Italians and East

European Jews in unskilled positions and the high rate of business ownership was the result of uniquely southern or western economic conditions. In New Orleans, Italians were also able to open their own businesses at a rate far higher than that in other major

American cities. The employment patterns among Italians and East European Jews in

San Francisco, a large western city, did not resemble those in Dallas, Galveston, or

Houston. Finally, the occupational distribution of Italian and East European-born men in the major metropolises of New York and Chicago looked notably different than that of

Texas’ urban-dwelling populations.

Women in the Workforce

While Italian and East European immigrant women were far less likely than their male counterparts to be employed, they were far more likely to be employed in the home at tasks that were overlooked by census takers but nonetheless contributed to the family income. Though there were not many Italian or East European Jewish women workers

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listed in the 1920 United States federal manuscript census for Dallas, Galveston, and

Houston, those whose occupations were recorded represent a cross section of the female population. There were married, widowed, and single women in the urban Texas workforce. These women were employed in their homes, in other people’s homes, and in offices and shops. As is shown in Table 3.9, Eastern European Jewish women tended to work more than Italian women, except in Galveston, where the percentages were relatively similar.109

Table 3.9 Percentage of Employed, Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women in Texas Cities, 1920

Italians East European Jews Dallas 10% 20% Houston 6% 23% Galveston 15% 14% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Frequently, Italian and East European Jewish women were engaged in the same industry as their husbands. Infrequently, women owned small business themselves, either in the absence of their husbands or as widows. Approximately half of all working

East European and Italian women in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston, both East European and Italian, worked as store clerks and saleswomen in grocery and dry goods stores or were the proprietors of such establishments.

109 Data for this section is collected in the same manner as that used with male immigrants, from a sample that derives from the 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census of Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and from a 1 percent sample of households derived from the 1920 IPUMS database for New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. The method is explained in more detail in chapter 2, footnote 12. Donna Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), 147-148.

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The positions that women commonly occupied fell mostly in the low-status white collar and skilled blue-collar categories. Besides working as store clerks, employed immigrant women in Texas’ urban areas filled only a few different types of occupations.

East European Jewish immigrant women were stenographers, typists, office clerks, and seamstresses. In addition to those who worked in grocery and dry goods stores, Italian immigrant women labored as office clerks, cashiers, seamstresses, laundresses, and boardinghouse keepers. Although many of those who worked were not married, including divorced and widowed women, married female workers accounted for almost half of employed immigrant women. A relatively equal distribution of married and unmarried women among female Italian and East European Jewish workers was likely the result of employment opportunities available to immigrant women in family business, which were frequently operated either out of or in close proximity to the home.

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Table 3.10 Marital Status of Employed, Adult East European Jewish Immigrant Women in Texas Cities, 1920

Unmarried Married Total Single Divorced Widowed Dallas 70% 60% 5% 5% 30% Galveston 67% 37% 7% 23% 33% Houston 59% 41% 0% 18% 41% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

Table 3.11 Marital Status of Employed, Adult Italian Immigrant Women in Texas Cities, 1920

Unmarried Married Total Single Divorced Widowed Dallas 57% 43% 0% 14% 43% Galveston 35% 12% 0% 24% 65% Houston 25% 13% 13% 0% 75% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties.

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Was the working experience of Italian and East European immigrant women in

Texas cities unique as it was among their male counterparts and did the experience of

Italian and East European Jewish women in other U.S. cities, such as New York,

Philadelphia, and San Francisco, differ significantly? As shown in Table 3.12, census data indicates that the answer is different for Italian and East European Jewish women.

Though the rate of employed Italian immigrant women in Galveston and New York was close in 1920, overall, Italian women in New York were more likely to be employed than were their urban-dwelling Texas counterparts. The employment rate of Italian immigrant women in Texas cities more closely resembles that of Philadelphia and San Francisco, cities that had rates of 13 and 12 percent, respectively.

Despite the nearly a 10 percent difference in the rate of employed East European

Jewish immigrant women in Houston and Galveston, women in Texas cities generally worked at about the same rate as Jewish immigrant women in New York, where approximately 19 percent of the female East European Jewish population listed occupations in the 1920 census. The employment rate of East European Jewish women in Texas cities also closely resembled that of Philadelphia. However, the frequency of

Jewish women’s employment in the western city of San Francisco was significantly higher than any of the other cities under comparison, which suggests that East European

Jewish women in Texas cities had more in common with their northeastern counterparts.

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Graph 3.6 Percentage of Employed, East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Women, Age 18 and Older, in U.S. Cities, 1920 50 45 40 35 Italians 30 25 East European 20 Jews 15 10 5 0 and Italian Immigrant Women Percentage of Adult, East European Jewish

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. *IPUMS provides a 1 percent sample of households from the 1920 census. Because New Orleans and San Francisco had relatively small populations (about 330,000 and 475,00 respectively), and because a small proportion of their populations were Eastern European Jews, the high percentage of employed, adult East European Jewish women found in the IPUMS data may reflect a small sample size (under 100 in each 1% sample) rather than a unusually high frequency of employment among Eastern-European born Jewish women.

Information regarding the employment experience of immigrant women in the

United States is incomplete, given the likelihood that many women who did not report occupations to the census taker actually did contribute to the family economy through housework or by working in the family business. It is still possible, however, to get a basic understanding of which industries provided the greatest employment opportunities for Italian and East European Jewish immigrant women. While there appears to be considerable variation in the jobs Italian immigrant women occupied in Texas cities, there was a high rate of women in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston who owned small businesses, as is shown in Table 3.12. This pattern closely matches the occupational

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distribution of Italian men in Texas. Italian immigrant women were also employed as saleswomen and store clerks, which is likely a factor of the high rate of business ownership among the Italian immigrant population. Houston’s high rate of women working in the garment industry reflects the presence of seamstresses and tailors among the population, rather than the existence of a large garment industry operating in the

Magnolia City.

With the exception of those Houston women who found employment in the needle trades, there is little resemblance between the working experience of Italian women in Texas cities and New York, where Italian women were frequently occupied as dressmakers, garment finishers, artificial flower makers, and increasingly in the early twentieth centuries, as factory workers. Few similarities exist between female Italian immigrant workers in Texas cities and Boston, Philadelphia, or San Francisco, either. It appears that rate of immigrant women occupied by trades in the garment industry was close in Houston and San Francisco, owing to women’s engagement as seamstresses and other needle trade work. There was also similarity between the rate of Italian immigrant workers in the garment industry in Galveston and Philadelphia, where 11 and 17 percent of women worked as dressmakers, tailors, and in the case of Philadelphia, garment finishers. Perhaps the closest resemblance is between Italians in Texas cities and New

Orleans, where there were similar rates of women employed as office workers and sale clerks. Overall, however, the differences in occupational distribution between Italian women in urban Texas and other U.S. cities appear more significant.110

110 Kessner, The Golden Door, 72; Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elizabeth Street, 91-97.

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Graph 3.7 Occupational Distribution of Italian Immigrant Women, Age 18 and Older, in U.S. Cities, 1920*

70 Business Owners 60 Factory Workers 50 Garment Workers

40 Ofice Workers/ Store Clerks 30

20

10

0 Percentage of Adult Italian Immigrant Women

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. *Occupational data on women is categorized in the following manner: “Business Owners” are proprietors. “Factory Workers” includes machine operatives and mill workers, but excludes garment-related work. “Garment Workers” includes embroiderers, finishers, furriers, sewers, seamstresses, and tailors. “Office Workers/Store Clerks” are defined as office clerks, stenographers, typists, accountants, bookkeepers, and saleswomen.

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Generally, the occupational distribution of employed Eastern European Jewish immigrant women living in Texas cities in 1920 did not closely resemble the distribution patterns of East European Jewish immigrant women in Boston, Chicago, New York,

Philadelphia, or San Francisco. As was the case with Italian women in Houston, small business ownership occupied a large percentage of East European Jewish immigrant women, but notably, this was not the case in Dallas and Galveston, where East European

Jews were more likely to be engaged as office workers. The area in which the rates of

East European Jewish women in Texas and the other U.S. cities were the most similar was office work, which provided immigrant women with jobs as stenographers, typists, and clerks. Dallas had a high percentage of Jewish women working in sales, which is understandable given the city’s large retail industry. East European Jewish immigrant women in Galveston and Houston were also employed as saleswomen and retail clerks, although at a lower rate than in Dallas. The rate of saleswomen among Eastern European

Jewish women Philadelphia and Chicago approached that of women in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston. East European Jewish women in New Orleans most closely resemble those living in Texas cities in the rate of women engaged as sales clerks and office workers.

The garment work that offered East European Jewish women occupational opportunities in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and, to a lesser degree, Chicago New Orleans, and

San Francisco, was not as popular among Jewish women in Texas cities.

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Graph 3.8 Occupational Distribution of East European Jewish Women, Age 18 and Older, in U.S. Cities, 1920 90 Business Owners 80 70 Factory Worker 60 Garment Workers 50 40 Ofice Workers/ Store Clerks 30 20 10 0 Percentage of Adult East European Jewish Women

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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It seems that with regard to the employment of East European Jewish and Italian immigrant women, the greatest similarity between Texas cities and other major U.S. urban areas was the rate with which East European Jewish immigrants entered the paid workforce. The garment industry, which provided many women with jobs in the northeastern United States, was not as central to women’s work in Texas, with the possible exception of Italian women in Houston. A much higher percentage of immigrant women in Texas’ cities, like their male counterparts, found employment in the ownership of small businesses and retail sales, which allowed them the flexibility of self- employment and of working from or near their homes.

The Urban Texas Advantage

Factors relating both to the immigrant and the economic climate of Dallas,

Galveston, and Houston influenced the occupational distribution and comparatively high percentage of business owners among East European Jews and Italians in Texas’ urban areas. Economic differences were perhaps most responsible. New York’s need for garment workers, factory operatives, and unskilled workers provided employment for a great number of the city’s East European Jewish and Italian population. Texas’ urban economies, however, were less dependent on manufacturing and the cities’ East

European Jewish and Italian immigrants often found employment as retail merchants and in supplying personal services as tailors, barbers, and butchers. Perhaps because the economies of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston were younger and built primarily upon the movement of goods and people, rather than manufacturing industries, immigrants found themselves in a position to establish small businesses that served the population’s needs.

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Most frequently, these businesses were groceries and retail clothing stores but in the early years of the twentieth century, saloons were another popular business venture, particularly with Italians. These drinking establishments were often combined with grocery stores either on the first floor below or in the front room of the immigrant’s residence. The fairly common practice of running a business from a place of residence may have been another reason that Texas’ urban-dwelling immigrants were more likely to be self-employed than were immigrants living in New York. While large apartment- style tenement buildings dominated the immigrant neighborhoods in New York, in

Texas’ urban areas there were far fewer large multi-family dwellings. Those that did exist housed fewer families than one of Manhattan’s infamous tenements.111

It seems that the availability of affordable real estate and rental properties may have played the largest role in the tendency towards self-employment among Texas’ urban-dwelling Italian and East European Jewish immigrants. There may also, however, have been something unique about the group of immigrants who settled in Dallas,

Houston, and Galveston. Data regarding the immigrants’ period of residency, literacy, and English-speaking proficiency can be examined to determine whether the Texas immigrant population possessed a unique set of abilities that influenced their decision to start a business in the United States.

Though it is likely that the longer an immigrant had been in the United States, the more prepared he would be for business ownership, term of residency alone cannot account for the occupational difference between Texas immigrants and those in other

111 The housing situation in Texas cities will be discussed in more detail in chapter five. “Galveston, 1899,” Digital Sanborn Maps, 1867-1970, http://sanborn.umi.com; Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Galveston, 1899-1900 (Galveston: Morrison & Fourmy, 1899), 339-340.

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major U.S. cities. The period of residence of East European Jewish immigrants in urban areas across the United States reveals that Jewish immigrants in Texas cities had spent almost exactly the same amount of time in the United States as their counterparts in other urban areas of the county, while the Italian population of Texas had been in the United

States significantly longer. A comparison between Texas cities and New York offers an example. Twenty-eight percent of employed, adult male East European Jewish immigrant men in New York had lived in the United States ten or fewer years as had 29 percent of their countrymen living in Texas’ urban areas. Some 72 percent of New

York’s population had lived in the United States for more than ten years, compared to 71 percent in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. In contrast, while about 50 percent of New

York’s Italian population had been living in the United States for sixteen or more years,

72 percent of Texas’ urban-dwelling, employed, Italian males had lived in the United

States for that length of time. With regard to the Italian population, only those immigrants living in New Orleans appear to have had a longer tenure in the United

States.

Table 3.12 Term of Residence of Adult Employed East European Jewish Immigrant Men, 1920

0-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21+ years Boston 1% 22% 22% 28% 27% Chicago 1% 27% 28% 20% 24% New Orleans 0% 29% 43% 29% 0% New York 2% 26% 27% 23% 22% Philadelphia 1% 25% 31% 21% 22% San Francisco 5% 26% 16% 26% 26% Texas cities112 1% 28% 24% 17% 30% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

112 “Texas cities” represents combined statistical data from the populations of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston.

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Table 3.13 Term of Residence of Employed, Adult Italian Immigrant Men, 1920

0-5 years 6-10 years 11-15 years 16-20 years 21+ years Boston 6% 29% 23% 19% 23% Chicago 4% 29% 18% 28% 22% New Orleans 3% 3% 13% 31% 51% New York 4% 23% 23% 24% 26% Philadelphia 4% 28% 24% 22% 22% San Francisco 4% 28% 23% 22% 23% Texas cities 2% 12% 14% 27% 45% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Table 3.14 Employed, Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men Able to Speak English, 1920

East European Jews Italians Can Speak Cannot Speak Can Speak Cannot Speak English English English English Boston 98% 2% 83% 17% Chicago 93% 7% 81% 19% New Orleans 100%113 0% 79% 21% New York 88% 12% 80% 20% Philadelphia 94% 6% 85% 15% San Francisco 100% 0% 86% 14% Texas cities 98% 2% 94% 6% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Table 3.15 Rate of Literacy Among Employed, Adult East European Jewish and Italian Immigrant Men, 1920

East European Jews Italians Can Read Can Write Can Read Can Write Boston 92% 90% 77% 76% Chicago 91% 89% 68% 63% New Orleans 100% 100% 59% 59% New York 89% 88% 74% 73% Philadelphia 94% 92% 78% 78% San Francisco 100% 100% 91% 89% Texas cities 93% 92% 76% 75% Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

It is possible that Italian immigrants’ longer period of residency in the United

States helped them prepare for business ownership by granting the individual time to save money or to learn about business management. This longer period of residency might also have given the immigrant time to learn English, another factor that could have aided their ability to start a business in the United States. Ninety-four percent of all employed, adult, Italian immigrant males in Texas cities were able to speak English, compared to 80 percent of New York’s comparable population. Employed East European Jewish immigrant males also spoke English at a relatively high rate of 98 percent, compared to

88 percent of New York City’s population. The ability to communicate with English speakers would have been an asset to the immigrant business owner, even if he primarily did business with members of his ethnic group.

It appears from the census data that immigrants in Texas urban areas might have pursued their entrepreneurial aspirations in part because of their ability to speak English and perhaps, at least in the case of Italian immigrants, their longer tenure in the United

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States. But because the language abilities of immigrants in Texas cities were not considerably greater than their New York counterparts, it is likely that these factors only made it easier for East European Jews and Italians to become self-employed and cannot be given credit for the differences that exist between the New York and Texas populations. What is more probable is Texas’ urban economies, which were only really beginning to expand at the turn of the century, still had space for small-scale entrepreneurial investment. When combined with more accessible and affordable real estate in Texas’ cities, these factors led between approximately 50 and 60 percent of adult, male Italian and East European Jewish immigrants to open their own businesses.114

The final factor that led to a high proportion of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants in white-collar jobs in Texas is the presence of so many unskilled native-born

African Americans in the Texas labor market. Because native-born whites also had a relatively low rate of involvement in unskilled, blue-collar work, and native-born blacks had a much higher rate of at least 70 percent and as high as 90 percent in these three cities, it seems that unskilled labor in Texas’ urban areas was likely considered the province of African American workers. That Italian and East European Jewish immigrants were able to enter the white-collar and skilled labor force as easily and frequently as they did suggests that they were considered, to borrow historian Tom

Guglielmo’s phrase, “white on arrival.” African Americans owned businesses in Texas’ cities but not at the rate of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants. While some black workers filled low-status white-collar positions, they were also far less likely to be so employed than were their white neighbors. This occupational pattern was the

114 Though residence in another state prior to Texas may be another factor in explanation of the high rate of businesses ownership among immigrants, it is only possible to know a minimum percentage of those immigrants that had first settled elsewhere before coming to Texas, as is explained in Chapter Two.

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outgrowth of social and economic conditions in the Jim Crow South that limited economic advancement of black men and women. Though blacks in Texas had gained some level of economic success in the late nineteenth century, a paternalistic attitude towards African Americans in places like Galveston, where whites accepted black employment as dockworkers and other low-level laboring positions, restricted the ability of black men and women to move into higher status jobs. Additionally, there may have been a preference among employers to hire African Americans because they could be paid less, or because they had a tradition of working in these positions. The native-born white population was comfortable with having blacks in unskilled positions, and the predominance of African Americans in these jobs is also likely indicative of a means by which whites maintained social control. On the other hand, East European Jewish and

Italian immigrants do not appear to have had the same difficulty securing white-collar jobs or establishing themselves as small business owners.115

When Albert Vaiani opened his grocery in Galveston around 1910, he was pursuing a desire for financial independence that had motivated many of his countrymen, as well as his East European Jewish neighbors. Having settled in a city whose economy relied upon shipping and trade rather than manufacture, and whose native-born population filled many of the unskilled jobs traditionally held by Italians throughout the country, his options for work were somewhat limited. Many of the Italian and East

European Jewish immigrants who settled in the urban areas of Texas in the early twentieth century followed the path that Vaiani ventured down, using whatever skills they possessed as tradesmen for the foundation of small business ventures. By

115 Thomas Guglielmo, White on Arrival: Italians, Race, Color, and Power in Chicago, 1890-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003); Stephen P. Kretzmann, “A House Built Upon the Sand: Race, Class, Gender, and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, 1995), 125-136.

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establishing businesses, Italians avoided the manual laboring jobs that occupied their counterparts in other major U.S. cities. East European Jewish immigrants found freedom in working for themselves on a schedule that they dictated.

Immigrants spent many hours laboring in order to support themselves and their families and to send remittances to family back home. Many moved to the United States specifically so that they could improve their economic position. Feelings of happiness and accomplishment were, therefore, closely tied to employment status for these individuals. It seems that the East European Jewish and Italian immigrants in Texas, who had a relatively high percentage of self-employment and low percentage of involvement in unskilled blue-collar work, would have viewed their position in Texas cities as advantageous. Because in Texas real estate and rental properties were fairly accessible to immigrants, both the newly arrived and more experienced immigrant were able to establish businesses with only a small amount of capital investment. Thus, even uneducated immigrants were able to improve their economic status without formal education. It is likely that immigrants both in the United States, as well as abroad, realized the employment opportunities offered in Texas’ small urban environments given the processes of chain and return migration. Those who came to the Lone Star State may well have made the journey in order to pursue entrepreneurial aspirations, hoping that as

Texans they could, as an editorial from the Houston Post suggested in 1900, grasp “the possibilities within their reach.”116

116 Untitled editorial, Houston Post, April 3, 1900.

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Chapter 4: Constructing Community: Social Organization of East European Jewish and Italian Immigrants

Despite the seemingly open invitation southern leaders were issuing to immigrants in the early twentieth century, urban areas of Texas were populated mostly by native-born Americans. Even Galveston, a major port on the Gulf Coast, was more of a gateway for immigrants heading west than a final destination. Yet, some of Texas’ most populous cities were nevertheless celebrated as ethnically diverse places. In an 1890 issue of Harper’s magazine, Lee Cohen Harby described Houston’s Saturday evening market in an article titled, “Texas Types and Contrasts.” Harby described the market as crowded by “black, white, brown, and yellow—negroes, Americans, Mongolians, Irish,

Dutch, French, Germans, Italians, and Spanish…all laughing, talking…being proper or improper, polite or rude, as the case may be.” A 1920 Houston Post article argued that the city’s need for multilingual census takers who could speak “Swiss, Bohemian, Polish,

Serbian, German…French, Italian and Spanish” indicated the presence of a diverse foreign-born population that made the Bayou City a cosmopolitan place. In the 1936 centennial edition of the Galveston Daily News, a journalist remarked upon the Island

City’s diversity claiming that “into the veins of [Galveston’s] citizens has been poured the blood of many nations and within its limits are colonies that are replicas of the lands from which the people came.”117

In fact, the native born dominated the Lone Star State in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Between 1880 and 1920, the population of foreign-born

117 Lee Cohen Harby, “Texan Types and Contrasts,” Harpers New Monthly Magazine 81, no 482 (July, 1890): 229-232; “Houston Is Cosmopolitan City, Says Director of Census Enumeration,” HP, February 19, 1920; “Cosmopolitan Background Makes City One of Contrasts,” GDN, July 11, 1936.

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residents never rose above 8 percent of the total, as is indicated by Table 4.1. What was true for the state was generally true for Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, as well, where the number of native-born residents dwarfed the number of foreign-born, though immigrants made up a higher percentage of the population in Houston and Galveston than in the rest of the state. The growth of the foreign-born population of Texas slightly declined between 1880 and 1900, despite a nationwide increase in immigration in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Notably, however, the number of Eastern and Southern European immigrants in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston increased during the first two decades of the twentieth century, as is shown in Tables 4.2 through 4.4, as the population of once dominant foreign-born groups, including Germans and Irish, began to decline.

Table 4.1 Number and Percentage of Foreign Born in Dallas, Houston, Galveston, and Texas for 1880, 1900, 1920118

1880 1900 1920 Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Dallas 3,978 10% 3,381 8% 8,801 6% Houston 3,115 11% 4,405 10% 12,088 9% Galveston 5,870 20% 6,339 17% 7,030 16% Texas 114,616 7% 179,357 6% 363,832 8%

Sources: Statistics of the Population of the United States at the Tenth Census (Washington: GPO, 1881), 3, 455; Census Reports, Volume I, Twelfth Census of the United State, Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 430, 732-733, 796; Fourteenth Census of the United States, Population 1920, Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 47, 130, 303-304, 766.

118 The percentages in this chart have been rounded to the nearest whole number even when doing so results in totals of greater or less than 100 percent.

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Table 4.2 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Dallas, 1900-1920

English German Irish Italian Mexican Poland Russian 1900 381 1117 365 167 41 96 255 1910 629 1434 369 338 134 --- 742 1920 663 1175 328 583 2278 357 939

Table 4.3 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Houston, 1900-1920

Austrian English German Irish Italian Mexican Russian 1900 246 776 2126 763 366 146 137 1910 567 590 1563 564 568 334 328 1920 371 531 993 396 693 1509 350

Table 4.4 Population of Seven Largest Foreign-Born Immigrant Groups in Galveston, 1900-1920

Austrian English German Irish Italian Mexican Russian 1900 147 546 1621 485 352 118 177 1910 369 613 1771 460 639 491 629 1920 479 736 1619 373 1290 3946 1096

Sources: Census Reports, Volume I, Twelfth Census of the United States, Population, Part I (Washington: GPO, 1901), 796-797; Thirteenth Census of the United States, Population 1910, Volume I (Washington: GPO, 1913), 864; Fourteenth Census of the United States, Population 1920, Volume III, Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 1022-1024.

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For East European Jewish and Italian immigrants, whose population in Texas was small but increasing in the early twentieth century, the transition to urban life in the absence of a large ethnic community could have been difficult. The Orthodox Jew in need of a shochet or the Italian family seeking paesani with whom to celebrate a religious festa would have found limited options in the late nineteenth century. An immigrant’s simple desire to socialize with individuals who could speak his native tongue would have been harder to satisfy in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston than it would have been in larger immigrant communities outside of Texas. Yet, even in the absence of a large ethnic population, this relatively small group of East European Jewish and Italian immigrants created communities within which they worshipped, celebrated, and socialized.

To be sure, the East European Jews and Italians who arrived in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were not entering communities completely devoid of institutions that would have supported their transition. Nor were they forced to construct ethnic institutions from scratch. West European-born Jews, particularly Germans, had been in Texas for many decades, during which time they had established synagogues, cemeteries, and benevolent societies. Italian immigrants too had predecessors in a group of mostly Northern Italians who had settled in Texas prior to the influx of the early twentieth century. However slight, the sense of community that these groups established provided a foundation upon which East European Jewish and Italian immigrants built an organizational life. These organizations allowed immigrants to retain ethnic traditions while acclimating to life in Texas cities.119

119 Hollace Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas: Rabbis and Their Works, 1st ed. (College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 1999), xv-xvi; Bryan Edward Stone, “On the Frontier: Jews without Judaism,” in Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas, eds. Kenneth D. Roseman and Hollace Ava Weiner

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Two elements contributed to the successful construction of community in this period. Local newspapers such as the Dallas Morning News, Houston Post, Galveston

Daily News, Jewish Herald and several Italian foreign-language newspapers like Il

Messagiero Italiano and La Tribuna Italiana helped promote the activities of immigrants’ ethnic-based religious and social organizations. These newspapers published meeting times and places and advertised social events and fundraisers. They were a fundamental source of information for the newly arrived. But none of this activity would have been possible without the participation of East European Jewish and Italian immigrants who were willing to provide the leadership necessary to run such organizations. Most of these immigrants fit a particular profile that suggests what type of individuals were interested in constructing ethnic community. A majority of leaders elected to religious and ethnic-based social and benevolent organizations between 1900 and 1920 had arrived between the last twenty-five years of the nineteenth century and the first few years of the twentieth century. Most had low-status, white-collar occupations, or owned their businesses. They tended to be married with families and were, in large part, naturalized U.S. citizens. Nearly all were literate English speakers and they were of no particular age. The Eastern European Jewish leadership was largely homeowners, while the Italian leadership tended to be renters. This demographic information suggests that the ethnic leadership was comprised of relatively successful men and women who were responsible for families and committed to their new home. These immigrants, and those who filled the general membership ranks, saw value in strengthening their

(Waltham, Mass.: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 22; Valentine Belfiglio, The Italian Experience in Texas: A Closer Look (Austin: Eakin Press, 1995), 16, 36-37.

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community through the formation and support of religious, social, and benevolent ethnic organizations.

Religious Institutions

By the time observant East European Jews and Catholic Italian immigrants began arriving in large numbers at the turn of the century, there were numerous religious institutions to serve them in Texas cities. By 1920, Dallas and Houston each had ten

Catholic churches and Galveston had seven. Jewish Texans had established synagogues in the state in the nineteenth century; Dallas and Houston had four synagogues each in

1920 and Galveston had three. Newspapers frequently published notices for religious services. An article appearing in the Houston Post in April of 1900 gave detailed information regarding Easter services and a Dallas Morning News article in 1915 publicized special services for “Peace Sunday,” a holiday decreed by the Pope. Lists of individuals being confirmed in the Catholic Church were published in local newspapers.

Jewish holidays and services were regularly advertised in the Dallas Morning News, the

Houston Post, and the Galveston Daily News. An article appearing in the October 3,

1920 edition of the Galveston Daily News about Rosh Hashanah, for example, explained the significance and observation of the holiday. Any regular reader of these papers would have been well aware of local religious organizations and their activities.120

120 The number of Catholic churches, as taken from city directories, includes chapels, infirmaries, and orphanages, though these places of worship accounted for only a few of the total. Dallas City Directory, 1920 (Dallas: John F. Worley Directory Co., 1920), 42; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921 (Houston: R.L. Polk & Co., 1920), 47; Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.’s Galveston City Directory, 1921 (Houston: R.L. Polk & Co., 1921), 42-43; “The Easter Festival,” HP, April 15, 1900; “Observe Anniversary of Bishop’s Consecration,” GDN, April 30, 1910.“Rosh Hoshonoh 5671,” GDN, October 3, 1910; “New Diocese Created,” DMN, January 22, 1915; “Two Classes Being Confirmed by Bishop Gallagher,” GDN, May 30, 1919.

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The presence of Catholic and Jewish institutions in Dallas, Houston, and

Galveston does not, of course, mean that Italian and East European Jewish immigrants were active participants in the organized religious life of the urban areas. The relationship between Catholic Italians and the American Catholic church was complex, as

Robert Orsi demonstrated in his 1985 study of Italians in Harlem, The Madonna of 115th

Street. Orsi writes that though their faith was important, “Italians make a rather clear distinction between religion and church, and they often view the latter with cynicism.”

“The immigrants and their offspring,” he continues, “were resolutely Catholic…This

Catholicism, however, had little to do with the church.” Many Italians adhered more to a form of “popular religion,” a term Orsi uses to separate Italian immigrants’ religious expression from the normative religion practiced in the American Catholic Church.121

Italians settling in Texas’ urban areas seem to have shared this apprehension with their Harlem counterparts, given their limited involvement with the church. In the late- nineteenth century there were few Catholic leaders of Italian-descent in Texas and Irish traditions influenced the church. As the Italian population increased, the Catholic leadership and some private citizens made a few attempts to incorporate Italian or Italian- speaking priests into the lives of Texas’ urban-dwelling immigrants. On March 11, 1913, the Galveston bishop, Nicholas Gallagher, answered an inquiry from two Italians living in Houston who requested permission for a visiting Italian-born priest, Reverend A.

Bucci of Los Angeles, to perform Mass in the Bayou City. Bishop Gallagher replied that the normal practice was to permit a visiting priest to conduct a private Mass. He

121 Robert Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street: Faith and Community in Italian Harlem, 1880 1950, 2nd ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), xiii-xix.

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maintained, however, that the services of a visiting priest were unnecessary, as the diocese already had Italian priests.122

Another series of correspondence beginning in 1925 between Monsignor Kirwin of Galveston, Bishop Christopher Byrne of Galveston, and Father D. Viola, an Italian- speaking priest serving the Catholic Church in Nova Scotia, discussed the possible reassignment of Father Viola to Texas. Viola requested placement in Bishop Byrne’s diocese where, the priest had been told, “there are Italians in need of a pastor of their own nationality.” By the end of April 1926 Father Viola, who was already in Houston, was instructed to prepare to take over Saint Michael’s and Sacred Heart, two churches in the

Houston region. Father Viola was to serve Italian and non-Italian Catholics in the vicinity because, as Bishop Byrne explained, to assign Viola specifically to an Italian parish would “require a reference from Rome.”123

These letters suggest that there were few Italian priests serving in the Galveston diocese but they do not reveal whether Italians were attending Mass or sending their children to Catholic schools. Correspondence regarding the Catholic Italians in the

Central Texas city of Waco, however, indicates that Texas Italians were not fully active in the Catholic Church. In June of 1913, Waco priest Father Gratiani Palermo wrote to

Bishop Gallagher that the residents of his Italian parish were not making progress toward raising funds for a new church. Father Palermo conveyed his intention to continue preaching to the community about the importance of the project and his hope that they

122 Belfiglio, Italian Experience, 55-56, 59; Bishop Nicholas Aloysius Gallagher to Mr. and Mrs. Genora, 11 March 1913, Nicholas Gallagher Collection, Letterpress Books, Vol. 2, Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Archives. 123 Reverend Dominic Viola to Bishop Christopher Byrne, 19 June 1925, RG 2.1, Record Department, Priests, Viola, Dominic, Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Archives; Reverend Dominic Viola to Reverend Monsignor James Kirwin, 14 July 1925, RG 2.1, Record Department, Priests, Viola, Dominic, Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Archives.

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would be convinced. The priest wrote again to the bishop the following month bemoaning his inability to persuade his Italian parishioners to contribute. Father Palermo explained to the bishop that despite his efforts and those of the “Italian committee for the new church,” all the work had been “useless because the great majority of the Italians are opposed to [the] idea” of constructing a church at their own expense. The priest also complained that though church members had promised to pay his salary, they now claimed they would only do so for a few months, and as of yet he had not received any compensation. Father Palermo maintained that even sermons preformed in Italian had failed to attract many Italians to Mass. He told the bishop that one parishioner had advised that Palermo provide “wine or beer” if he wanted the Italians to attend services.

Apologizing for his “useless” efforts, Father Palermo sadly reported that his committee for church construction had disbanded.124

In his study of Italians in Texas, Valentine Belfiglio found evidence of Italian immigrants establishing and worshipping at Catholic Churches in communities around the state, such as St. John’s Catholic Church in the North Texas town of Montague.

Most of the churches that the Italians of Dallas, Galveston, and Houston attended were predictably near areas of Italian settlement. Dallas Italians went to Sacred Heart

Cathedral and St. Patrick’s Church. Houston’s Italians attended Annunciation Church,

St. Joseph’s Church, or Sacred Heart Church. Italians in Galveston worshipped at Sacred

Heart Church, St. Mary’s Cathedral, and St. Patrick’s Catholic Church. Though Belfiglio has determined that Italians attended these churches from interviews and church histories, it is not clear how often Italians participated in Sunday mass and therefore difficult to

124 Father Palermo to Bishop Gallagher, 17 June 1913, 22 July 1913, Nicholas Gallagher Collection, Letterpress Books, Vol. 2, Catholic Archdiocese of Galveston-Houston Archives.

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determine what role the church played in their lives. Italian names were infrequently mentioned when newspapers in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, reported on Catholic

Church activities, though names of Italian children did appear in reports of confirmation services. Even when attending Sunday mass was not necessarily a priority, participation in certain Catholic events like baptisms, funerals, and weddings was important within the

Italian immigrant community. In May of 1907, Galveston’s Italian-language newspaper,

Il Messagiero Italiano, reported on the elaborate Italian wedding of John Bonno that took place in Saint Joseph’s Church in Houston. The reception was enthusiastically described by the reporter as an elegant and memorable event, complete with an orchestra, buffet, and approximately four hundred guests who celebrated late into the night.125

125 Patterns of residential concentration among Italians will be discussed in Chapter Five. “Confirmation Services,” HP, May 21, 1900; “Feste Passate,” Il Messagiero Italiano, May 4, 1907, Microfilm edition, The Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin, (Hereafter IM); “Two Classes Confirmed by Bishop N.A. Gallagher,” GDN, May 30, 1910; Belfiglio, The Italian Experience in Texas, 55-59.

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Outside the confines of the Catholic Church, Italian immigrants found other ways to demonstrate their religious values. Orsi has shown how Italian immigrants in Harlem displayed their faith in the annual festa of Our Lady of Mount Carmel. Texas Italian immigrants had a similar celebration with the festa of Saint Joseph. Though Italians in

Texas hosted feasts in honor of other saints, Saint Joseph’s feast was the most publicized in newspaper accounts. On March 19th, Sicilian residents celebrated Saint Joseph, the patron saint of Sicily, carpenters, cart makers, unwed mothers, and orphans. The most important part of this celebration took place in Italian homes where an altar to Saint

Joseph, the Virgin Mary, and the baby Jesus was erected at the head of a table laden with food. After a priest’s blessing, four children representing the three figures and Saint

Antonio, taste the food and after their approval is given, the feasting begins. The feast seems to have been a popular occasion among Italians in Texas. The Houston Post reported in 1900 on one celebration that took place in the home of Houston resident, Joe

Manino, an Italian-born fruit merchant who immigrated to the United States in 1873.

According to the Post article, “more than half of the Italians in Houston were Mr.

Manino’s guests” and on that day “not an Italian was to be found at his place of business.”126

Celebration of the feast of Saint Joseph also occurred outside of the home in the streets and city churches. Wearing badges and carrying a banner, members of Saint

Joseph’s Sodality of Houston “paraded the street” on March 19, 1907 prior to convening

126 “St. Joseph’s Festa,” HP, March 20, 1900; “St. Joseph’s Day Services,” GDN March 19, 1907; “St. Joseph’s Day Today,” GDN, March 19, 1908; “Feast of St. Joseph,” GDN, March 20, 1908; “Feast of St. Joseph,” GDN, March 20, 1909; “St. Joseph’s Day Celebrated,” HP, March 20, 1920; “Joseph Manino,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 6, District 65, Family 128; Belfiglio, Italian Experience, 54-56; Orsi, The Madonna of 115th Street, xlii-xliii; Rosalie Scarmado, “St. Anthony’s Catholic Church: A Century of History and Faith,” (Catholic Archives of Texas, Austin, 1996), 10-11.

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at the Houston Labor Temple to conduct organization business. The Galveston Daily

News joyfully reported that Saint Joseph’s Day “is always the occasion of much enjoyment.” The following year the News reported that the sodality had arranged for an

Italian band to lead a procession to Saint Joseph’s Church of Houston. The group’s president, Ben Salvage, a shoemaker who emigrated from Italy in 1883, was instrumental in the organization of activities. Churches bearing the Saint’s name in other cities also marked the day with special services, though Italians did not exclusively organize these events. In 1908, the Galveston Daily News described a special service held in honor of the day at Saint Joseph’s Church of Galveston where services were delivered both in

German and English. The article makes no mention of Italian residents. Nonetheless, for

Italians in Texas, the Feast of Saint Joseph was a celebration that brought the community together and one that highlighted an Italian presence in the urban areas.127

Like Italians, East European Jewish immigrants entering Texas in the late- nineteenth and early twentieth centuries found that religious institutions already existed for them in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston due in part to an earlier influx of German

Jews to the state. During the nineteenth century, Jews in Texas built up the foundations necessary for an observant religious community by establishing synagogues, temples, and cemeteries, so when East European-born Jews entered Texas’ urban areas there was already an existing Jewish community. The East European arrivals were generally welcomed into religious worship, even though their ideas on ritual did not always coincide with the preexisting Jewish populations. Much more so than for Italian immigrants in Texas cities, formal religious institutions and leadership were central to the

127 “Houston Italian Sodality” GDN, March 20, 1907; “St. Joseph’s Day Today,” GDN, March 19, 1908; “Feast of St. Joseph,” GDN, March 20, 1908; “Ben Salvage,” 1910 United States Census, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 1, District 49, Family 178; Belfiglio, Italian Experience, 59.

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lives of the East European Jewish immigrants, who were largely an Orthodox population moving into Reform communities. By creating their own congregations, these Orthodox

Jewish Texans defined themselves as a family of sorts, and provided an institutional foundation that helped ease immigrants’ transition into the unfamiliar environment.128

Once increasing numbers of East European Jewish immigrants began settling these urban areas, the need arose for Orthodox synagogues and Jewish leaders to help the immigrants interpret Jewish law in their new and unfamiliar environment. In Dallas, for example, German Jews had established the Reform congregation of Temple Emanu-El in

1875. As the city’s first Jewish congregation, Temple Emanu-El served the needs of one segment of the Jewish population, but the Orthodox Jewish members decided to build their own congregation and Jewish associations. Jews in other Texas cities did the same; city directories for 1920 list a combined total of seven Orthodox Jewish congregations in

Dallas, Houston, and Galveston, and many more Jewish organizations. Of course, not all

Orthodox Jewish congregations in Texas cities could afford to build synagogues, and some met to worship in rented buildings or private homes. But other congregations did construct large, imposing structures as their membership increased in number and prosperity. When Dallas’ Shaarith Israel outgrew its first home on Jackson Street, for example, a new synagogue was constructed overlooking City Park at a cost of over

$115,000. The building was designed to serve the Jewish community’s needs beyond

Saturday service. In addition to a sanctuary, the City Park synagogue had classrooms and a social hall. A tall brick structure with a grand entryway, the synagogue rose up over the

128 German Influence on Isle Exerted in Many Fields,” GDN, February 22, 1970; Jenna Weissman Joselit, New York’s Jewish Jews: The Orthodox Community in the Interwar Years (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 45-48.

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flat, North Texas terrain and neighboring buildings, acting as a physical expression of

Jews’ presence in Dallas’ social and religious landscape.129

As the growing number of East European Jewish immigrants in Texas cities began increasing the demand for Orthodox services, tension arose within Jewish congregations, particularly in Houston, between those who favored Orthodox ritual and those who preferred Reform practices. The formation of the Bayou City’s Adath

Yeshurun congregation was the result of a schism within Beth Israel. Recent immigrants from Russia and Poland were instrumental in founding Adath Yeshurun, Houston’s largest Orthodox synagogue in the early twentieth century, and East European Jews acted as the congregation’s officers. In 1900, Jacob Levine served as secretary of Adath

Yeshurun. The Russian-born father of four who worked in Houston as a grocer, had immigrated to the United States in 1885 and was followed a year later by his wife, Libby, and their two children. In 1891, Levine became a naturalized U.S. citizen and later purchased a home on Clay Avenue in a section of the city’s Third Ward that was popular among East European Jewish immigrants. The members of the Levine family were active in Houston’s Jewish community; Jacob was elected vice president of Adath

Yeshurun in 1902 and his Texas-born daughter, Bettie, worked as superintendent of

Houston’s United Jewish Charities.130

129 “Dallas City Directory, 1920 (Dallas: John F. Worley Directory Co., 1920), 42; Morrison & Fourmy Co.’s Galveston City Directory, 1921 (Houston: R.L. Polk & Co., 1921), 42; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921 (Houston: R.L. Polk & Co., 1920), 47; Gerry Cristol, A Light in the Prairie: Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, 1872-1997 (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University, 1998), 23; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 128-130. 130 Elaine Maas, The Jews of Houston: An Ethnographic Study (New York: AMS Press, 1989), 37-38; “J.K. Levine,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Justice Precinct 1, District 93, family 121; “Mamie Levin,” 1910 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 3, District 94, Family 272; “Mamie Levine,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 3, District 52, Family 55.

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Two other Orthodox congregations formed in Houston in the early twentieth century to serve the growing Jewish population that lived too far from Adath Yeshurun to walk to services. Adath Israel opened its doors in 1906 in Houston’s Fifth Ward and

Adath Emeth opened five years later in the city’s Sixth Ward. East European Jews were members of both congregations. In 1920, an Austrian immigrant, Jacob Geller, and his son, Max, led Adath Israel. Russian immigrant Meyer Epstein served as Adath Emeth’s rabbi and also as shochet, or ritual meat slaughterer, for Houston’s Jews who followed kosher dietary laws. Rabbi Epstein and his wife, Lena, did not immigrate directly to

Texas from Europe, but instead settled first in New York, where they had a son, Sam. By

1920, however, the fifty-six-year-old rabbi lived in a home the couple had purchased outright within walking distance of the synagogue in the city’s Sixth Ward. With all of their children now grown and out of the family home, Meyer and Lena took other East

European Jewish immigrants into their home as boarders, perhaps to help cover expenses or perhaps as part of the rabbi’s duties as a religious leader in Houston’s Eastern

European Jewish community.131

In 1914, a group of men and women, most of whom were Zionist, left Adath

Yeshurun, to organize a new congregation under the leadership of the congregation’s

German-born rabbi, Wolff Willner. Among the original members of Beth Sholum,

Houston’s fourth Orthodox congregation, were a number of East European Jews including Max Karkowsky, Julius Lewis Aronson, and Godfrey Furman. These three men were among those elected to create bylaws and a constitution for the congregation.

131 “Adath Jeshurun,” HP, March 27, 1900, “City in Brief,” HC, April 1, 1902; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 47, 63; Maas, The Jews of Houston, 36, 42; “Max Epstein,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 6, District 94, Family 278; “Rev Meyer Epstein,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward, 6, District 94, Family 279; “Wolff Willner,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 3, District 53, Family 101.

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By the time of Beth Sholum’s founding, Max Karkowsky and Julius Aronson had spent much of their lives in the United States. Karkowsky left Russia at about the age of ten, arriving to the United States with his family in 1894. In 1910 he was working as a bank teller in Houston. Julius Lewis Aronson had also emigrated from Russia, though he arrived as an infant in the early 1880s. A slender man with blonde hair and grey eyes,

Aronson had spent almost his entire life in the United States and worked as a railroad clerk in Houston, where he died at the young age of forty-seven. Godfrey Furman was a third Russian-born immigrant on the bylaw committee for Beth Sholum. Furman left

Russia in 1882 when he was about twenty-years-old. Like the other immigrants elected to participate in the construction of Beth Sholum’s bylaws and constitution, Furman owned a grocery. In his late forties, Furman was well established in Houston as a naturalized U.S. citizen, husband, father, and homeowner. Incidentally, the work Furman and his coreligionists did towards establishing another religious home for Houston’s

Orthodox community was short-lived. The new congregation only worshipped together for a brief time before its members returned to Adath Yeshurun.132

Despite Beth Sholum’s closure, the presence of multiple Orthodox congregations in Houston imparted a sense of community and acceptance for newly arriving East

European Jewish immigrants. But some of Houston’s Orthodox community considered the splintering of congregations over rituals and practices a liability. The Orthodox leadership stressed the importance cohesion both for Houston’s Jewish residents and for

132 “Congregation Beth Shalom Organized,” JH, March 19, 1914; “J.K. Aronson,” 1910 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 3, District 86, Family 42; ”Julius Lewis Aronson,” World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Harris County, Texas, Roll 1953563, Draft Board 3, Ancestry.com; “J. Lewis Aronson,” JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial, Ancestry.com; “G. Furman,” 1910 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 2, District 107, Family 132; “Godfrey Furman,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 2, District 41, Family 435; “Max Karkowsky,” 1910 United States Census, Harris County, Houston, Ward 4, District 83, Family 111; Ruthe Winegarten and Cathy Schechter, Deep in the Heart: The Lives & Legends of Texas Jews, A Photographic History (Austin: Eakin 1990), 99.

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the institutions that served them. At a 1914 meeting of Adath Yeshurun, conducted in both Hebrew and English, the congregation’s Rabbi Schmulewitz spoke to this point, imploring the Orthodox Jews of Houston to put aside their differences. Disagreement over religious practices had repeatedly brought members of Adath Yeshurun to court, as two factions struggled for control of the congregation and the synagogue building. In the interest of restoring peace, the Jewish Herald advised the members of Adath Yeshurun to divide into two congregations and quickly resolve the matter of synagogue possession.

Eventually the factions would settle their differences and reunite as Adath Yeshurun, but the conflict lasted for half a decade and caused a considerable degree of anxiety for

Houston’s Jewish leadership.133

As with the Jewish populations of Dallas and Houston, Jews in Galveston had also been active in the nineteenth century building institutions that would give strength to their community. The city’s Reform population, which included many German Jews, worshipped at Temple B’nai Israel, which was founded in 1868. It was not until the late- nineteenth century, however, that Orthodox congregations were established. East

European immigrants took the lead in forming these organizations. Two of the city’s three Jewish congregations in 1920, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association and the

Hebrew Orthodox Benevolent Association, were Orthodox. The Young Men’s Hebrew

Association, established in 1894 and comprised primarily of Russian Jews, organized

Ahavas Israel in 1895. Jacob Geller, the rabbi of Houston’s Adath Israel, had led this

Galveston congregation before relocating to Houston. East European Jewish immigrants,

133 “Orthodox Congregation Again Appeals to Court,” JH, February 19, 1914; “Local News: Adath Yeshurun Mass Meeting,” JH, May 21, 1914; The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities, “Houston, Texas,” http://www.isjl.org/history/archive /tx/houston.html (accessed September 1, 2011).

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including Abe Rosenthal, a paint contractor who emigrated from Poland in 1907, sat on

Ahavas Israel’s executive board. When the congregation divided along cultural lines, a group of Austrian and Galician Jews broke away to form the Hebrew Orthodox

Benevolent Association, which was led by Rabbi Geller, while Russian-born Abraham

Gordon headed the Young Men’s Hebrew Association. These two congregations would eventually merge in 1931 to become Congregation Beth Jacob when the Depression made it financially necessary to do so.134

B’nai Israel was under the direction of Rabbi Henry Cohen for more than half a century beginning in 1888. It is impossible to discuss Jewish religious life in Galveston without including the Island City rabbi, the London-born son of Polish immigrants.

Cohen was instrumental in the management of the Galveston Movement, a philanthropic effort funded by Jacob Schiff of New York that attempted to bring thousands of Eastern

European Jewish immigrants through the port of Galveston and into the Southwest, away from the crowded centers of northeast. This movement, which began in 1907 and ended in 1914, resulted in the immigration of about 10,000 Eastern European Jewish immigrants to the United States. Beyond the Galveston Movement, Cohen’s work with needy individuals of many religious and ethnic backgrounds and his outgoing personality, won him respect and popularity among Galveston’s residents. In March of 1910, the

Galveston Daily News praised the rabbi, in perhaps slightly hyperbolic terms, as a “man

134 The precise reason for the split of Ahavas Israel is unclear. Unfortunately, flooding from Hurricane Ike in 2008 destroyed most of the records of Congregation Beth Jacob. Kathleen Sukiennik, email message to author, December, 22, 2011; Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.’s Galveston City Directory, 1921, 42, 45; Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Galveston, 1899-1900 (Galveston: Morrison & Fourmy, 1899), 281; “Jacob Geller,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 5, District 122, family 122; “Abe Rosenthal,” 1930 United States Census, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 9, District 28, family 215; The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities, “Galveston, Texas,” http://www.isjl.org/history/archive/tx/galveston.html (accessed September 7, 2011).

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of the broadest culture and the most comprehensive training,” whose “scholarly attainments are such as would reflect credit upon the head of a university rather than the leader of a single religious body in a city of moderate size.” His presence in Galveston provided the East European Jewish residents with support for both their spiritual lives, in his capacity as a rabbi, and in their daily lives, as well. Rabbi Cohen offered assistance to immigrants, as well as the native-born, who needed help finding employment, housing, or medical care.135

Dallas’ physical size demanded a greater number of Jewish congregations than existed in Galveston, for as the city grew Orthodox Jews required neighborhood synagogues within walking distance of their homes. In the early twentieth century, the immigrants’ options for Orthodox houses of worship were Shaarith Israel, Tiferet Israel,

Anshe Sphard, and Agudas Achim. Reform Jews attended Temple Emanu-El. After establishing a benevolent association and a cemetery in the early 1870s, Dallas’ Jewish community formed Temple Emanu-El in 1875. For the first two decades of the twentieth century, Rabbi Henry Greenburg led the congregation. Greenburg was active member of the Dallas community, where he helped establish the Federation of Jewish Charities and participated in a host of other organizations that promoted the education and welfare of children.136

The Orthodox Jews of Dallas did not have their own congregation until the mid-

1880s when a small group of Jewish residents decided to charter a new organization that

135 “Churches in Galveston; Their Value to the City,” GDN, March 20, 1910; “Henry Cohen,” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Galveston, Ward 3, District 36, Family 317; Henry Cohen II, “The Man Who Stayed in Texas: Galveston’s Rabbi Henry Cohen, a Memoir,” in Lone Stars of David, 78-91; Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, 191. 136 Dallas City Directory, 1920, 42; Rose Biderman, They Came to Stay: The Story of the Jews of Dallas, 1870-1997, 1st ed. (Austin: Eakin Press, 2002), 114-142, 138-140; Weingarten and Schechter, Deep in the Heart, 60.

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became Shaarith Israel. Michael Wasserman and Josiah Emin, both of whom had only recently arrived from Russia in 1881, were founding members. Prussian-born Rabbi

Louis Epstein took control of the congregation in September 1913, shortly after Shaarith

Israel moved to a new location at the corner of Browder and Corsicana streets. Epstein was an active Zionist who tried to increase interest in the movement among Dallas Jews during his tenure at Shaarith Israel. A second Orthodox congregation, Tiferet Israel, was organized in the 1890s in a North Dallas neighborhood sometimes called “Goose

Valley,” where newly arrived Jewish immigrants settled because of the area’s cheap real estate and low rents. Joe Ablon and Sam Tobolowsky, both East European-born dry goods peddlers, led a group of Eastern European Jewish families in the founding of this congregation. Ablon and Toblowsky shared not only an interest in fostering the growth of the Orthodox community, but also family ties. Joe’s son, Ben, married Sam’s daughter, Alta, in 1901. All three families lived in Goose Valley in the early twentieth century.137

In 1906, a second group of Goose Valley immigrant residents, many Roumanians among them, formed Dallas’ third Orthodox synagogue, Anshe Sphard. Two of the first three officers of this congregation, Solomon Ely and Morris Friedman, were East

European immigrants who had arrived in the United States in 1900. They were also neighbors in Dallas’ Fourth Ward. Ely was typical of the East European Jewish leadership. In 1910 he was forty-eight-years-old, married with children, and the owner

137 “Michael Wasserman,” 1900 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 5, District 104, Family 388; “Josiah Emin,” 1900 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 6, District 109, Family 176; “Esther Tobolowsky,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 2, District 28, Family 84; “Joe Ablon,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 3, District 7, Family 87; “Sam Tobolowsky,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 3, District 7, Family 38.

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and operator of a boarding house. Friedman, meanwhile, was somewhat atypical.

Thirty-years-old and single, Friedman lived in a boarding house and worked as a laundry delivery driver. Despite his marital status and boarding-house address, Friedman appears to have had plans of remaining permanently in the United States; he became a naturalized

U.S. citizen within ten years of residence in the United States, while his neighbor, Ely, still had alien status. The congregation that Ely and Friedman helped to build in the early twentieth century continued to grow over the next few decades. About twenty-five years from its founding, the members of Anshe Sphard began preparations for the construction of a synagogue at the corner of Browder and Pocahontas Streets at the cost of fifty thousand dollars.138

As Dallas’ Orthodox community grew and Jews moved into different neighborhoods, new congregations were formed in the North Texas city. Since Orthodox

Jews who lived in South Dallas were too far from the existing Orthodox congregations, a fourth Orthodox synagogue, Agudas Achim, was established in the 1920s. The neighborhood synagogue was an important component in the Jewish immigrant’s life.

An article appearing in the October 1, 1935 edition of the Dallas Morning News spoke to this point, noting approvingly that “all five of the Jewish congregations in Dallas have enviable records of achievement in directing the spiritual activity of Dallas Jewry.” The presence of synagogues in various Dallas neighborhoods created pockets of community

138 “Solomon Ely,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 4, District 36, Family 138; “Morris Friedman,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 4, District 36, Family N/A; “Dallas’ New Orthodox Rabbi,” JH, January 1, 1914; “Dallas Zionists will Meet,” DMN, February 7, 1915; “Texas News: Dallas,” TJH, December 4, 1920; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 90-91, 114-142, 136-140.

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for the city’s Jews and increased visibility of the Eastern European Jewish immigrant population.139

139 “Texas News: Dallas,” TJH, December 4, 1920; “Dallas’ First Jewish Church Began in 1872,” DMN, October 1, 1935; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 114-142, 138-140.

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As was the case with the Catholic churches of Texas, newspapers were instrumental in communicating announcements of regular weekly Jewish worship services, and holidays to the community. Most articles about services, holidays, or community activities appear to have been directed at the Jewish community itself, but often these articles were also geared towards educating the Gentile readership. The primary purpose of a March 1915 Dallas Morning News article was to provide details regarding Passover services in the city, but the second half of the notice described particulars of the holiday, which the News reported as “a spring festival commemorating the historical event of the deliverance of the Jews from Egypt.” Numerous Houston Post articles also described Jewish holidays. In April of 1900, a Post article explained that during Passover, “people of the Jewish faith eat no other food than the matzos,” and provided instruction on the process of making the “unleavened bread.” The Galveston

Daily News similarly reported Jewish holidays, trying to convey the significance of Yom

Kippur, Passover, and Rosh Hashanah to non-Jewish readers. The large amount of space that Galveston’s primary newspaper dedicated to these descriptions may have been due in part to the prominence of Rabbi Henry Cohen in the Galveston community. An October

14, 1910 News article which explained the significance of Yom Kippur also discussed the rabbi’s holiday sermon in great detail. The space dedicated to Jewish holidays and services in the News indicates the presence of a strong Jewish community in the Island

City.140

140 “Unleavened Bread,” HP, April 14, 1900; “Rosh Hashanah,” HP, September, 24, 1900; “Hanukkah Celebration,” HP, December 16, 1900; “Festival of Hanukkah,” HP, December, 24, 1900; “The Passover,” GDN, April 22, 1910; “Rosh Hashanah 5671,” GDN, October 3, 1910; “Jews of the City Observed the Day of Atonement,” GDN, October 14, 1910; “Texas News: Dallas,” JH, May 21, 1914; “Will Celebrate Passover,” DMN, March 27, 1915; “Jews Observe Holiest Day with Fasting and Prayer,” HP, September 21, 1920.

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The Houston-based Jewish Herald provided information about religious services and special social events sponsored by Jewish congregations in Houston as well as other major Texas cities. Because it covered the activities of many regions, the Herald created a sense of a statewide Jewish community. For Bayou City residents, a listing of services to be held in Houston’s various synagogues and temples could be found in the “Local

News” column. For those outside Houston, or with interest in the activities of the rest of the state, the Jewish Herald published articles regarding services in other urban areas, as well. A December 25, 1920 article, for example, detailed Dallas’ Congregation Shaarith

Israel’s Hanukkah program.141

The Jewish Herald, like the Dallas Morning News, the Houston Post, and the

Galveston Daily News, was a tool for the dissemination of daily activities and information for the East European Jewish population. But these newspapers, in their simple explanations and descriptions of Jewish and Italian holidays, were also useful in bringing the Jewish community into the mainstream of urban life in Texas. Just as immigrants were united in some small way by listings of religious services, meeting notices, and mentions of East European Jewish and Italian names, so was the rest of

Texas’ urban population made aware of the presence of these immigrant groups in their midst.

141 “Local News,” JH, May 21, 1914; “Dallas,” JH, December 25, 1920.

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Ethnic-based Social and Benevolent Organizations

Like religious institutions, ethnic-based social and benevolent organizations emerged within the immigrant communities of Texas’ urban environments. At the turn of the century, clubs and associations proliferated within immigrant communities in Texas towns and cities, and many served some of the same functions as those created by the native-born population. Fraternal and benevolent societies offered the opportunity to socialize with other members of the ethnic group, but it also provided financial security in the form of insurance for illness and burial expenses. The native-born population formed similarly functioning mutual aid societies, but for immigrants, these ethnic-based associations helped to ease the transition into an unfamiliar environment, even acting as a substitute for family members who remained in Europe. Ethnic associations also served charitable purposes, providing clothing, food, housing, medical care, and employment assistance to needy individuals, sometimes even outside the group. Other ethnic groups had an educational orientation and featured lectures and discussions of literary works.

Both East European Jews and Italians created organizations for the purpose of providing aid for members of their group and for opportunities to socialize. Some cities had more active organizations than others, owing to the size of the immigrant population or the city, and perhaps, the immigrants’ interest in communal life. The leadership of these organizations tended to be well-established men and women within the community; mostly white-collar, naturalized immigrants with families.142

Due to the relatively small size of the existing Italian community in the late nineteenth century, there were only a few Italian organizations in Dallas, Houston, and

142 Dallas City Directory, 1920, 45-49; Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.'s Galveston City Directory, 1921, 45-47; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 65-67; Belfiglio, The Italian Experience in Texas, 60-67; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 166-167.

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Galveston when increasing numbers of Italian immigrants began to arrive in Texas’ urban areas. Italians in Texas’ urban areas convened to celebrate holidays, discuss international and domestic matters, and socialize, but the institutions they organized in Texas cities were largely benevolent in function. In Dallas there were two such organizations: Alta

Italia, established in 1897, and the Society Roma of Dallas, established in 1890. There was likely some overlap in the membership of these two organizations, which met monthly on alternate weekends. In 1904, Peter Giuffre served both as secretary of Alta

Italia and president of Societa Roma. Giuffre had been born in Italy in 1855 and immigrated to the United States when he was twenty years old. Initially after his arrival in Dallas, Giuffre had rented a home in Goose Valley in North Dallas, which he shared with his Louisiana-born Italian wife, and the couples’ three Texas-born children. His pattern of settlement in the city was not unusual for Italian immigrants. By 1930, Giuffre had departed Goose Valley for South Dallas, where he purchased a home. A barber by trade, Giuffre owned his own business, which he likely ran from his residence on

Pennsylvania Street.143

Several other Italian-born Dallas residents served in Alta Italia and Societa Roma alongside Giuffre. Antonio Brunini, also a Goose Valley resident, was president of Alta

Italia. The proprietor of an umbrella store, Brunini immigrated to the United States in

1872 and married a Texas-born woman named Clara. Like many within the Italian leadership, he was also a naturalized American citizen. Camile Candiotta served under

Peter Giuffre as secretary of Societa Roma in 1904. Candiotta emigrated from Italy in

143 Peter Giuffre,” 1900 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 2, District 96, Family 252; “Peter Guiffre,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Ward 10, District 74, Family 55; “Peter Guiffre,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 33, Family 89; “Peter Guiffre,” 1930 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas, District 57, Family 344.

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1887 with his Italian-born wife, Francesca, and followed a pattern of indirect migration, settling first in Louisiana before coming to Texas. Unlike Giuffre and Brunini, Candiotta did not quickly naturalize after arriving in the United States. But typical of many

Italians, Candiotta established himself in Dallas as the owner of a small grocery.144

Galveston had a larger Italian immigrant population than Dallas and the Island

City’s Italian organizations were older. Valentine Belfiglio has written that the “oldest

Italian mutual aid society on Galveston with a charter on file with the Office of the

Secretary of State was the Societa Italiana Meridioale di Mutuo Soccorso” or Southern

Italian Mutual Aid Society, which organized in 1909. Italians in Galveston, however, had organized socially much earlier. The Italian Benevolent Association was established in 1875 and had 127 members by 1900. Like Italian organizations in other cities, the

Italian Benevolent Association hosted parades and picnics through the city. The association’s president, Charles Biontini, was a barber who had immigrated to the United

States in 1875. Unlike other Italian immigrants who tended towards endogamy, Biontini married a New York-born woman of Irish and Scottish descent after his arrival in the

United States. He and his wife owned their home in the city’s Ninth Ward in 1900, an area that would be severely damaged by a massive hurricane that hit the Gulf Coast in

September of that year. The storm’s fury would perhaps prove too much for the couple, who moved to San Antonio in the following decade.145

144 “Antonio Bruini,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 2, District 26, Family 155; “Camile Candiotta,” 1900 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 10, District 119, Family 56; John F. Worley & Co.'s Dallas City Directory for 1904, 806, 808. 145 Belfiglio, Italian Experience, 63; Morrison & Fourmy's General Directory of the City of Galveston, 1899-1900, 297; “Flotsam and Jetsam,” GDN, March 18, 1888; “Charles Biontini,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 9, District 133, Family 26; “Charles Biontini,” 1910 United States Census, Bexar County, Ward 5, District 34, Family 143.

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In 1891 Italians in Galveston formed a second organization called the Italian

Confederation Mutual Benefit Society of Texas. This organization boasted 600 members in 1900 but unlike the other Italian organizations in urban Texas, it did not hold regular meetings, instead convening whenever the organization’s president, Galveston consular agent Clemente Nicolini, deemed necessary. Italian-born Sperandino

Bernardoni served as the association’s secretary in 1900. Bernardoni’s family came to the United States in a process of chain migration that was not uncommon for Italians in

Texas cities. After Bernardoni settled in the United States in 1883, his wife, Catherine, and two young daughters, Annie and Victoria, joined him three years later. Bernardoni worked as one of the city’s many Italian grocers and lived along the Gulf in the city’s

Eighth Ward. Fortune smiled upon the family in September of 1900, when they somehow managed to survive the hurricane that completely destroyed their ocean-side neighborhood. Perhaps emboldened by an enormous grade-raising project that lifted the city above sea level, or the construction of a massive sea wall, the Bernardonis were not frightened away from the island home. They stayed in Galveston, but Sperandino left his job as a grocer and worked a variety jobs, including as a painter in a flourmill and as a salesman at a fruit company. Bernardoni died in Galveston in 1933 at the age of eighty- eight.146

146 Morrison & Fourmy's General Directory of the City of Galveston, 1899-1900, 297; “Clemente Nicoloni,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 9, District 134, Family 233; “Sperandino Bernardoni,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 8, District 131, Family 37; “Sperandino Bernardoni,” 1910 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 8, District 45, Family 64; “Sperandino Bernardoni,” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 8, District 50, Family 278; “Sperandino Bernardoni,” 1930 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 8, District 26, Family 414; “Sperandino Bernardoni,” Texas Death Certificate, Galveston, June 20, 1933, Certificate 27701, Ancestry.com.

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Italians who, like the Bernardonis, chose to stay in the Island City after the great storm, continued to foster a sense of ethnic identity among the immigrants of the city by rebuilding the organizational life that had existed before the hurricane. The Galveston city directory listed two new Italian organizations in 1921 that do not match those that appeared in 1900. The first was Stella D’Italia, or Star of Italy, an organization established in 1860 according to the directory. In 1911, the Star of Italy absorbed the previously mentioned Italian mutual aid organization, Societa Italiana Meridionale di

Mutuo Soccorso, to become the Societa Italiana di Mutuo Soccorso Stella D’Italia. In

1921, the Stella D’Italia mutual aid society had one hundred members and was led by

President Rosario Vassallo, an Italian-born naturalized United States citizen. Vassallo arrived to the United States in 1901 aboard the Spartan Prince when he was twenty-five years old, passing first through New York in his journey to Galveston where he planned to live with a brother-in-law already in residence. Vassallo quickly established himself as a small business owner in the Island City and by 1903 opened a barbershop in his home near the corner of Avenue D and 26th Street in Galveston’s Fourth Ward. By 1920

Vassallo was very much a family man, living with his wife and seven Texas-born children in a house the family rented at 1321 Avenue D in the Second Ward. By 1930,

Vassallo had purchased this home and operated “Star Barber” out of a separate location near his former Fourth Ward residence.147

147 While there are some discrepancies between the various census data entries and ship manifest on Rosario Vassallo, I was able to confirm his identity by matching the names of family members. Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.'s Galveston City Directory, 1921, 46; “Rosario Vassallo,” 1910 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 5, District 35, family 193; “Rosario Vassallo,” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 2, District 34, Family 3; “O R Vassallo,” 1930 United States Census, Galveston County, Galveston, District 6, Family 7; “Roasario Vassallo,” New York Passenger Lists, 1901, Microfilm Serial 15, Microfilm Roll T715_212, Line 30, Page Number 84, Ancestry.com; “Rosario Vassallo,” United States City Directories, Texas, Galveston, 1903, Image 176, Ancestry.com; “Rosario Vassallo,” United States City Directories, Texas, Galveston, 1921, Image 259, Ancestry.com; “Rosario

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The second organization listed in the 1921 directory was the Italian American

Association, whose honorary president was the aforementioned consul, Clemente

Nicolini. David Rossi was the acting president of the association in 1921. Rossi, who had immigrated to the United States in 1896 at the age of twenty-two and become a naturalized citizen nine years later, worked as an agent for the Houston Brewing

Association. He lived in a home that he owned in the Tenth Ward with his Italian-born wife, young son, and five stepchildren. Unlike Rossi, who arrived to the United States as an adult, the organization’s financial secretary, Antone Baroncini, emigrated from Elba as a two-year-old child in 1890. By 1920, Baroncini had married a Texas-born woman of

German descent and had a four-year-old daughter, whom he supported by working as a bookkeeper for an insurance company. Like many of the other officers of Galveston’s

Italian organizations, Baroncini owned his home in the Twelfth Ward. He lived to be almost ninety-one years old, passing away while still a resident of the Island City.148

Houston had two Italian benevolent societies at the turn of the century, the

Christopher Columbo Lodge, organized in 1897, and the Societa Margherita di Savoia, organized in 1887. John Mustachia, president of the Societa Margherita di Savoia in

1905, first settled in Louisiana and later moved with his Italian-born wife, Margarete, and their three children to Houston. The couple had four more children in Texas by 1910, at

Vassallo,” United States City Directories, Texas, Galveston, 1932, Image 220, Ancestry.com; Belfiglio, Italian American Experience, 63. 148 Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.'s Galveston City Directory, 1921, 46; “David Rossi,” 1910 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 9, District 47, Family 12; “David Rossi,” World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Galveston County, Texas, Roll 1953397, Draft Board 0, Ancestry.com; “David Rossi” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 10, District 55, Family 94; “Antone Baroncini,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 7, District 128, Family 252; “Antone Baroncini,” 1920 United States Census , Galveston County, Ward 12, District 59, Family 133; “Anton John Baroncini,” World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, Galveston County, Texas, Roll 1953364, Draft Board 0, Ancestry.com; “Anton Baroncini,” Social Security Death Index, Number 453-01-5506, Texas, Before 1951, Ancestry.com.

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which time they lived in Houston’s Second Ward in a house shared by Mustachia’s brother, Vito who served as president of the Christopher Columbo Lodge in 1905. A fifty-five-year-old widower who immigrated to the United States in 1880, Vito was part of the small class of Italian petty entrepreneurs who peddled goods and produce in the city and, sometimes, into the adjacent countryside, as well.

In May of 1905, Houston’s two Italian organizations merged to become the

Societa B.A. Margherita Savoia and Christofo Columbo. Interestingly, by 1920 the leadership of the new organization included both first and second-generation Italians immigrants. Louis Parlatti, an Italian-born insurance agent who arrived in the United

States in 1900, served as the organization’s president. Louisiana-born Peter Del Barto served under Parlatti as vice president of the society. Though Del Barto lived in a boarding house in 1920, he was worked as a lawyer, and as a professional he represented only a tiny segment of the Italian immigrant community. Del Barto appears to have been quite successful in Houston. By 1930, the thirty-seven-year-old had married an Italian- born woman named Josephine and purchased a house in which he employed a servant.149

At least one member of the Societa Margherita Savoia and Christofo Columbo’s executive board had been involved with the organization since its inception. Vito

Mustachia, the former president of the Christopher Columbo Lodge also served as treasurer of the new association. By 1920, this fifty-year-old fruit peddler was living with his Italian-born nephew in a section of Fifth Ward that was popular among foreign- born Italians. Mustachia’s commitment to Italian organizational life was great. He also

149 Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 66; “Louis Parlati,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 2, District 40, Family 543; “Louis Parlati,” 1930 United States Census, Justice Precinct 1, District 57, Family 128; “Peter Del Barto,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 3, District 50, Family 24; “Peter Del Barto,” 1930 United States Census, Harris County, Justice Precinct 1, District 111, Family 296.

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served as treasurer for the Contessa Entellina, or Catholic Italians of Houston, which had organized in 1908 under the direction of another Italian immigrant, Ignacio Ingrando.150

While the membership rosters were not typically long, these active Italian organizations provided the Italian community with the opportunity to gather socially beyond the daily interactions that took place in the workplace or at home. Most held regular meetings which were advertised in the local newspapers, and sponsored annual events like picnics and parades. On July 2, 1900, for example, the Houston Post reported that a picnic cosponsored by the Margherita di Savoia and the Christofo Columbo societies had been a “magnificent success in every respect.” The large crowd that had gathered at Magnolia Park was entertained by an Italian band and enjoyed participating in

“various sports and amusements,” as well as contests for children and adults.151

In addition to fundraising affairs, Italian associations in Texas cities also found cause to celebrate in their annual observation of Columbus Day. In September of 1900, a

Houston Post article noted that the city’s two Italian societies were to mark “the 408th anniversary of the discovery of America with a grand picnic and ball.” Italians’ celebration of Columbus Day continued into the following decades. By 1920, the celebration had grown so prominent that a front-page Houston Post article featured details of Italian Houstonians observance of the day, which included an operatic concert,

150 “Vito Mostache,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 5, District 92, Family 604; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 66; Belfiglio, Italian Experience in Texas, 62. 151 “City Brevities,” HP, June 27, 1900; “City Brevities,” HP, July 2, 1900; “Columbus Celebration,” HP, September 6, 1900; “Christoforo Columbo Officers,” HP, December 7, 1900; “Meeting of Italian Society,” HP, August 1, 1920; “Ben Guzzardo,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 3, District 80, Family 226; “Frank Bonno” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 6, District 65, Family 297; “Martin Moralis,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 2, District 85, Family 207; “Sam Abate,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 1, District 61, Family 18; “Suedo Marino,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 4, District 69, Family 171; “Ignacio Ingrando,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 3, District 77, Family 25; “Frank Lamont,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Justice Precinct 1, District 90, Family 99; “Michael De George,” 1900 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 4, District 69, Family 60.

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a lecture on Columbus’ life, piano solos, and a dance performance by a young, second- generation Italian girl. The Christoforo Columbo society sponsored the event and invited the public free of charge. Accompanying the Post article was a large picture of young

Italian women placing flowers on a bust of Christopher Columbus at the Houston library.

The Post explained the ritual, reporting that “Italians of Harris country [sic] have determined that each year on the eve of Columbus day the great statue which was given the city by the Christoforo Colombo society shall be fittingly crowned with a wreath of the tropical blossoms of Texas.” Event director Vincent Chiodo, a twenty-eight-year-old

Italian immigrant, expressed his hope that the “placing of wreaths…be made an annual custom,” and that in addition to “citizens of Italian birth and descent [who] will celebrate the day with appropriate ceremonies…all the citizens who can do so, [will] join in this celebration in honor of the discoverer of America.” Texas Italians kept the celebration alive throughout the early twentieth century. In October of 1930, the Dallas Morning

News published an account of a gathering of two hundred Italians in Dallas in honor of the holiday. The festive occasion appears to have been important to Texas’ Italian population and the effort they made to celebrate the Italian explorer underscores the pride they felt as Italians while also emphasizing their connection to the United States.152

If Italians were fairly successful at creating social and benevolent associations,

East European Jews were even more so. The organizations that Jews in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston formed were varied in nature. Some clubs were charitable, others were social and still others were associated with a specific religious congregation. There were

Zionist clubs and clubs specifically for women. In some cases, these organizations united

152 “Best Local Talent Has been Engaged for Columbus Day,” HP, October 3, 1920; “Bust of Great Discoverer is Crowned with Flowers,” HP, October 11, 1920; “Vincent Chiodo,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 1, District 33, Family 22; “Italians in Texas,” DMN, October 16, 1930.

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the relatively new East European Jewish population with the older, more established

German population. Despite cultural differences that often kept these two groups apart, the presence of numerous Jewish organizations in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston in the early twentieth century evidences the existence of a strong Jewish community and reveals a network of organizations available to assist the new arrivals.

Among the multitude of Jewish organizations in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston in the early twentieth century, a few attracted East European Jewish immigrants specifically. One organizing element among Jews in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston was

Zionism; a movement that many Jews in Texas, particularly German Jews, felt could damage their reputation as loyal American citizens. Despite this anti-Zionist sentiment,

Jews in Texas founded a number of Zionist organizations in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and East European immigrants were among the leadership. The

Young Zionists of Dallas were headed by a group of mostly East European immigrants and native-born Jews of Eastern European-descent. The organization’s vice president,

Henry Ely, was born in Romania in 1892 and immigrated to the United States in 1900.

Ely was in his early twenties when he served the group as vice president in 1915. Census records list Ely as a decorator in a dry goods store in 1910, but his career path in Dallas lead him in many different directions over the next few decades, during which time he also worked in commercial advertising and as an insurance salesman. Though there were a number of Jewish organizations open exclusively to women, a few, like the Young

Zionists, brought men and women together. The organization’s officers included two women; native New Yorker Sarah Goldberg served as treasurer and Missouri-born Pearl

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Herzberg was the group’s financial secretary. Both women were of East European- descent.153

Despite some opposition to their cause, Texas Zionists continued their efforts to towards establishing a Jewish home in Palestine and the preservation of Jewish traditions and the Hebrew language in Texas. When the Texas Zionist Association Convention met in Dallas in February of 1915, the Dallas Morning News reported that leaders were hoping to arouse greater “interest in the Zionist movement” in the city. Rabbi Louis

Epstein, leader of the Orthodox congregation of Shaarith Israel, addressed the convention. Epstein had come to Texas via New York where he had graduated from

Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary. As rabbi of one of Dallas’ oldest Orthodox synagogues, Rabbi Epstein was a central figure within the East European

Jewish community. Epstein worked actively to develop Jewish life in Dallas. During his tenure at Shaarith Israel, which lasted from 1913 to 1915, Epstein initiated a formal

Sunday school class, started a late Friday evening service, and oversaw the graduation of the congregation’s first confirmation class.154

Houston had a number of Zionist groups in the early twentieth century, including the Houston District of Zionists, Adath Zion, Houston Zion Society, and the Sons and

Daughters of Zion. Though Zionists may have been a minority in the city, the national organization saw Houston, as well as other Texas cities, as fertile ground for recruitment.

153 Maas, The Jews of Houston, 43-44, 131; “Young Zionists Elect Officers,” DMN, January 4, 1915; “Henry Ely,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 4, Family 138; “Henry Ely,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Precinct 7, District 13, Family 144; “Henry Ely,” 1930 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward N/A, District 52, Family 459; “Louis Twine,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 2, District 28, Family 345; “Pearl Herzburg,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Dallas Precinct 2, District 6, Family 237; “Sarah Goldberg,” 1900 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 1, District 93, Family 50. 154 Stuart Rockoff, “Deep in the Heart of Palestine,” in Lone Stars of David, ed. Hollace Weiner, 97-98; “Dallas’ New Orthodox Rabbi,” JH, January 1, 1914; “Young Zionists Elect Officers,” DMN, January 4, 1915; “Dallas Zionists Will Meet,” DMN, February 7, 1915; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 127.

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In March of 1920, the publicity director of the Zionist Organization of America, A.H.

Frommenson, travelled to the Houston to speak about the organization’s plans to assist in a mass migration of Jews into Palestine and their plans for “reconstruction work [for] converting the Holy land into the modern Jewish national homeland.” The Houston

District of Zionists arranged the event. East Europeans were at the helm of the Zionist organization in 1920, which met bimonthly in Adath Yeshurun Hall. Jacob Werlin, a forty-four-year-old Russian immigrant who had arrived in the United States in 1892, headed the Houston District. Prior to coming to Texas, Werlin lived in Pennsylvania where four of his six children were born. After arriving in Texas, Jacob took at job as a bookkeeper with a wholesale dry goods company and purchased a house on Payne Street in the First Ward. Another Russian immigrant, Philip Blumenthal, served the Houston

District of Zionists as treasurer. Like Werlin, Blumenthal settled in Pennsylvania before coming to Texas. Neither of these two men lived in the neighborhoods that were most heavily populated by East European Jewish immigrants, but as officers of an organization whose membership was comprised of immigrants, they were likely well-known within in the East European Jewish community.155

Galveston also had several Zionist groups to which East Europeans belonged.

The B’nai Zion Association was led by Rabbi Jacob Geller, head of the Orthodox congregation, Ahavas Israel. Rabbi Geller lived in Galveston’s Fifth Ward, which was one of the city’s most heavily Eastern European Jewish populated wards in 1900. Geller

155 Charts detailing the immigrants’ residential distribution are included in chapter 5. Maas, The Jews of Houston, 42-44; Morrison and Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-21, 51, 63; “Zionist Director Will Speak Here on Jewish Ideals,” HP, March 3, 1920; “Jacob Werlin,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 1, District 37, Family 36; “Phillip Blumenthal,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 4, District 72, Family 204.

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was an ardent supporter of Zionism in Texas. In April of 1900 he traveled to Houston to speak at a meeting of Houston’s Adath Zion society, an organization whose membership was comprised largely of Orthodox and East European Jews. Geller assured the group of

Zionism’s bright future and promised that the realization of its goals would be attained “if all Jews lent a helping hand.” He praised the Jewish community of Houston for taking an interest in the movement. After taking control of Congregation Adath Israel in Houston,

Geller continued his work with Zionist groups in the Bayou City. In May of 1920, he delivered a special sermon at Adath Israel on the migration of Jews into Palestine.156

In addition to these Zionist organizations, Dallas, Houston, and Galveston also had active chapters of Hadassah, the Zionist women’s volunteer organization started in

1912 by Henrietta Szold. In June of 1920 under the direction of Ruth Nevelow, president of the Hadassah Sewing Circle, the Galveston branch of Hadassah sent a shipment of clothing to New York for Jewish children living in Palestine. Nevelow, a thirty-four- year-old Russian immigrant and naturalized U.S. citizen who had arrived in the United

States in 1907, came to the United States with her husband, Hyman. Nevelow had three children, all of whom were Texas natives. In addition to sewing and sending clothes to

Palestinian children, Nevelow and her fellow Hadassah members organized fundraising balls that drew people from other Texas cities.157

156 Morrison & Fourmy’s General Directory of the City of Galveston, 1899-1900, 281; “Jacob Geller,” 1900 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 5, District 122, Family 177; “Jacob Geller,” 1910 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 4, District 34, Family 45; “The Adath Zion Society,” HP, April 9, 1900; “Jacob Geller,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 2, District 38, Family 349; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-21, 47; “Jews to Celebrate Giving Palestine as Homeland,” HP, May 1, 1920. 157 Marvin Lowenthal, Henrietta Szold, Life and Letters (Westport Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1975), 76-77; Maas, The Jews of Houston, 125; “Texas News: Galveston,” JH, June 12, 1920; “Ruth Nevelow,” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 6, District 42, Family 5.

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The Sophie Szold chapter of Hadassah in Dallas first met in 1918 under the direction of a number of East European women. Chapter directors Esther Fair, Rose

Cahn, Rebecca Sachs, and Alta Ablon (whose husband Ben was also involved in Jewish organizational life) were all East European immigrants who had come to the United

States in the late nineteenth century. All but Ablon were naturalized citizens. The society organized sewing and knitting groups that met weekly to produce clothing and other items for women and children in Palestine and sponsored other charitable events, like a fundraising concert in March of 1918 given “for the benefit of Palestine war sufferers.”158

Though Zionist organizations were popular with East European Jewish immigrants, the pursuit of a Jewish home in Palestine and aid to Jews in Palestine were certainly not the only organizing principles for Jewish organizations in Texas’ urban areas. Many other organizations existed to bring Jews together for social, educational, and charitable purposes. The Jewish Literary Society of Houston began in 1906 as an effort to create a Zionist organization but the members opted to drop Zionism in favor of forming an association more inclusive of all Jews. Houston’s Jews also established a

Yiddish Library Society in 1912, which met bimonthly at the Orthodox Adath Yeshurun synagogue. Russian immigrant Abe Cohen served as the organization’s secretary. The

158 “Jewish Women of City Organize Hadassah Society,” DMN, January 18, 1918; “Esther Fair,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Precinct 33, District 69, Family 340; “Rose Cahn,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Precinct 22, District 43, Family 344; “Alta Ablon,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Precinct 23, District 46, Family1156; “Rebecca Sachs,” 1920 United States Census, Dallas County, Precinct 20, District 38, Family 463; “Hadassah Society makes Plans for Winter’s Work,” DMN, November 27, 1918; “Hadassah Society to Give Entertainment Tonight,” DMN, March 7, 1918.

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library supported itself in part by hosting fundraising events, such as the ball given on

November 30, 1920 for the purchase of books and bookcases.159

Charitable work was an important organizing principle for Texas’ urban-dwelling

East European Jews, particularly among Jewish women. One such organization, the

Ladies Orthodox Benevolent Society of Dallas, organized in 1886 and met bi-monthly at the Shaarith Isreal synagogue. Sophie Miller, a Russian immigrant who arrived in the

United States around 1881, served as the organization’s treasurer. Married to Sam

Miller, a grocer and president of Congregation Shaarith Israel, Sophie was actively involved in several charitable Jewish organizations in Dallas. Her family was very much part of the growth of Dallas, with regard to both the Jewish community and the city in general. In addition to Miller’s work aiding the needy of Dallas, Aaron Miller, her Polish immigrant father-in-law who had lived in Dallas since about 1870, was a leader in the

Jewish community. Sophie Miller’s Texas-born son, Henry, was a real estate agent in

Dallas who was awarded the title “Builder of Dallas,” in 1966 by the Community Chest, a fund that, as the Dallas Morning News explained, was established in 1953 to “provide capitol funds for philanthropic agencies.” Miller served on the organization’s original board of trustees.160

159 Maas, The Jews of Houston, 44; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 63; “Houston Yiddish Library to Give 4th Annual Ball,” HP, November 8, 1920; “Abe Cohen,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 6, District 96, Family 26; “Abe Cohen,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 3, District 54, Family 60; The Houston City Directory lists Abe Cohen as the sole officer for the Houston Yiddish Library. Identifying the correct Abe Cohen from the United States Census is difficult as the 1920 Census lists two Abe Cohens, both Russian immigrants living in Houston. 160 John F. Worley & Co.’s Dallas City Directory for 1904 (Dallas: John F. Worley & Co., 1904), 802; “Sophie Miller,” 1900 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 2, District 97, Family 314; “Sophie Miller,” 1910 United States Census, Dallas County, Ward 7, District 58, Family 315; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 222-223; “Community Chest Trust Fund Founders to Receive Plaque,” DMN, March 19, 1957.

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Charitable organizations brought together first- and second-generation Jewish immigrants of various nationalities in Texas urban areas. Some individual associations, like the Jewish Ladies Aid Society of Galveston, had German and East European Jews in their leadership, and foreign-born and native-born Jewish women in their membership.

The umbrella organizations that formed in Texas to bring local Jewish benevolent societies together were also vehicles for uniting Jews of different backgrounds. In 1911, a number of Dallas Jewish charities met to form an association to direct the charitable works of individual organizations and the Federation Jewish Charities of Dallas was chartered in September. The original board of trustees included some of the most well- known and successful Jewish men and women of Dallas. Though the Board and the officers were largely of German descent, there were several East European-born immigrants serving the organization, including the previously mentioned Sophie Miller and Ben Ablon. Among its many works, the Federation provided funds for housing, groceries, food, medication, medical services, and funeral expenses for needy individuals.

Financial statements from 1917 through 1919 indicate that Eastern Europeans were frequently casework subjects. In her 2002 study of the history of Dallas Jews, Rose

Biderman wrote that “Jews have always organized themselves into committees or groups to provide aid and relief to their brethren, and the Federated Jewish Charities…was no exception.” Jews were, however, not the only recipients of the Federation’s aid work. A category labeled “non-Jews” also appears in the organization’s files. Though there were generally few recipients recorded in this category, it is clear that the Federation was willing to aid applicants of many ethnicities and faiths.161

161 Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.’s Galveston City Directory, 1921, 44-45; “Rachel Bonart,” 1920 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 5, District 41, Family 195; “Ruth Nevelow,” 1920 United

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The United Jewish Charities was a similar umbrella organization in Houston, which began operation in 1914. With the stated goal of “ameliorating unsocial conditions among the Jews of Houston,” the group’s membership appears to have been motivated by the same forces that inspired social reformers across the United States during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In March of 1914, the organization published their first report in the Jewish Herald. Though the report cited difficulties due to

“exceptional financial depression,” a summary of the charitable work completed included securing material relief, employment, medical aid, loans, and legal aid, as well as settling domestic disputes. The United Jewish Charities also took over work started by other

Jewish benevolent societies, as was the situation in 1914 when the Ladies Benevolent

Society transferred casework involving a Houston Jewish family whose head of household was unable to find employment. The organization enlisted the aid of Rabbi

Henry Cohen in this effort. The United Jewish Charities’ manager, Manuel Ostrow, wrote to Rabbi Cohen in a letter dated February 23, 1914 that “whenever in trouble, I turn to you.” The rabbi worked with both the Federated Jewish Charities in Dallas and the

United Jewish Charities in Houston to place needy individuals in jobs, to provide loans, and to consult generally about difficult cases that arose in Texas urban areas.162

States Census, Galveston County, Ward 6, District 42, Family 5; “Esther Novin,” 1930 United States Census, Galveston County, Ward 7, District 20, Family 435; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 176-178; Jewish Federation of Dallas Organization Charter, 1918-1920, Dallas Jewish Historical Society, Dallas, TX; Jewish Federation of Dallas Organization Charter, 1918-1920, Dallas Jewish Historical Society, Dallas, TX. 162 Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 63; “Houston’s Jewish Charities Finally United,” JH, January 15, 1914; “Sociological Club Organized,” JH, March 12, 1914; “First Monthly Reports of United Jewish Charities,” JH, March 5, 1914; M.P. Ostrow to Henry Cohen, 23 February 1914, 15 June 1914, Henry Cohen Papers, Microfilmed Correspondence, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin; I. Lowenstein to Henry Cohen, 28 January 1914, Henry Cohen Papers, Microfilmed Correspondence, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin.

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Rabbi Cohen’s position in Galveston enabled a network of charitable Jewish efforts to crisscross the state as well as the nation. The rabbi’s work for both Jews and non-Jews was well known throughout the country. In 1914, Rabbi Cohen received a letter from Joseph Mayper, the secretary of the North American Civic League for

Immigrants. Writing on behalf of the New York-based immigrant assistance organization, Mayper asked for the rabbi’s help in such matters as “education, distribution, employment and protection” of immigrants. He conveyed the League’s hope that having a Galveston contact “would enable [them] to be of greater service,” by permitting the referral of “requests to agencies near the immigrants’ homes.”163

Texas newspapers considered the charitable works of the Jewish community important enough not only to report on their activities, but in some cases to contribute to their causes. In April of 1900, Houston’s Bikur Cholim society, which claimed to have the “largest member [sic] of any Hebrew organization in Texas,” met at Adath Yeshurun to report on a recent Purim ball given by the society. The society, which counted East

European Jews among their membership, gave thanks to the Houston Daily Post “for free advertising” and to a few local breweries for their contributions.164

A variety of Jewish groups appeared in cities across the state. Native and foreign- born Jews were responsible for establishing B’nai B’rith lodges, ladies auxiliaries, social clubs, and even a few socialist organizations such as the Workmen’s Circle, in Dallas,

Houston, and Galveston. The institutional component of the Jewish community was well

163 “Galveston,” JH, undated, Henry Cohen Papers, Box 79-0033, Box 1, No. 32, Rosenberg Library, Galveston, TX; Henry Cohen II, “’The Man Who Stayed in Texas,” in Lone Stars of David, 79-91; Hollace Ava Weiner, Jewish Stars in Texas, 71-73; Joseph Mayper to Henry Cohen, 25 February 1914, Henry Cohen Papers, Microfilmed Correspondence, Center for American History, University of Texas at Austin. 164 In 1900, Houston’s Bikur Cholim Society had one hundred and fifty members. It was established in 1895 and ran a Hebrew school. “Bikor Cholim Society,” HP, April 9, 1900; Morrison & Fourmy's City Directory Co., Directory of the City of Houston, 1905-1906, 47; “Bikor Cholim Society,” HP, October 15, 1900; Maas, The Jews of Houston, 40.

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established due in part to the preexistence of a German Jewish population in Texas, but it was also the result of the efforts of Eastern European Jewish immigrants to establish social, cultural, benevolent, and educational organizations to fit their needs in the Texas urban environment. East European-born Jews did not settle into a fully formed Jewish community when they arrived in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, but they quickly set to work to create what they required.

The presence of religious, social, and benevolent institutions alone may not have made the transition to life in Texas’ urban areas an entirely smooth one for East European and Italian immigrants. But certainly these institutions made it easier for immigrants to adapt to their new surroundings. Public acceptance of these ethnic-based social and benevolent groups is apparent in the advertising of special events in the local newspapers.

Acceptance, however, does not necessarily mean the general public had no concerns over whether ethnic-based societies slowed immigrants’ assimilation. The early twentieth century was a period in which many native-born Americans felt apprehensive about what seemed to them the rejection of American culture and immigrants’ failure to assimilate.

To some degree, the proliferation of ethnic-based institutions may have appeared to these

Americans as a harbinger of hyphenated-Americanism. Yet, in the first few decades of the twentieth century, some of these immigrant organizations would adopt

Americanization as a goal, reflecting their awareness of the tension between native-born and immigrants nationwide. Some of the ethnic-based associations in Texas’ urban areas would come to serve multiple functions, creating both an ethnic community for the immigrants while also preaching the virtues of assimilation.

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Chapter Five A Conditional Welcome: Assimilation, Americanization, and the Retention of Ethnic Identity

The delegates who gathered at the Dallas Opera house for an immigration convention on December 21, 1887 passed a set of resolutions aimed at increasing the influx of people into Texas, believing that the development of the Lone Star state rested on its ability to attract capital and labor. “Industrious and law abiding people,” read one resolution, “without regard to section, nationality, religious creeds or political views…are hereby most cordially invited to come and dwell among us.” Yet several decades later as an increasing number of native-born Americans started calling for immigration restriction, Texans too expressed their misgivings over the prospect of having a large immigrant population in their midst. Texans were ambivalent about immigration, to be sure. On one hand, immigrant laborers were a necessary component of the state’s economic development. Migrant laborers, in particular, played an important role in building Texas’ agricultural industry. On the other hand, some Texans worried that a large, unassimilated, immigrant population would be detrimental to the existence of

American political, economic, and religious institutions.165

Texans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were becoming increasingly concerned with a perceived change in the character of immigration. A 1902 article in the Houston Chronicle reported the views of Frank Sargent, Commissioner

General of the United States Immigration Bureau, who felt that growing numbers of East

European immigrants were furnishing the United States with “the least desirable classes.”

Editorials in local newspapers complained of the inadequacy of the “new” immigrants

165 “The Convention in Dallas,” GDN, December 22, 1887.

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from Eastern and Southern Europe and suggested that a link existed between these immigrants and an increase in criminal activity throughout the country. One article appearing in the Houston Post in November of 1920 urged greater enforcement of immigration laws to combat the prospect “of the country being flooded with the scum of

Europe,” and called for the revision of immigration legislation to prevent the “admission of foreigners, who are either criminals or criminally inclined.” As a major Gulf Coast port, Galveston had its share of immigration investigations and deportations of immigrants who did not meet health requirements and stories of immigrants attempting to enter the country illegally were quite common after the passage of the Foran Act in 1885, which barred the entry of contract laborers.166

But the continued economic success of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants, as is indicated by a remarkably high number of self-employed merchants and artisans, and the general inclusion of Italians and East European Jews in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston into mainstream society suggests that any anti-European immigrant sentiment present in Texas cities was by no means debilitating to the immigrant population. Certainly these immigrants were subject to ethnic stereotyping, and the nativist’s fear of “foreign influence” sometimes escalated into violence. The efforts of ethnic organizations to promote their groups as committed Americans also suggests that immigrants perceived their social status as precarious.

The nativism that inspired support for immigration restriction in the early twentieth century had evolved over decades encompassing fears based on religion, economics, racism, anti-radicalism, and nationalism. To some degree, native-born

166 “Immigration Laws,” HC, September 27, 1902; “The Immigration Problem,” HP, November 27, 1920; “Unprecedented Wave of Outlawry,” HP, December 23, 1920; Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 28.

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Americans felt that if immigrants would shed their Old World traditions and customs and adopt American modes of life, there would be less reason to worry about the increasing influx of newcomers. An article titled, “New Material in the American Melting Pot,” which appeared in the Galveston Daily News in April of 1910, detailed the landing of two hundred East European Jews in Galveston in overly romantic terms but left no question that the immigrants’ assimilation was the ultimate goal. After a detailed description of the newcomers, which included demure women possessing of “elements of the eternal feminine that even twenty-two days in the steerage can not destroy” and men who had “a look of intelligence lacking in many faces of those born here,” the reporter remarked that the scene truly epitomized “the first phase of the American melting pot.” He maintained that the immigrants “were the raw materials out of which the second generation is to emerge, owning American property, voting in American elections, teaching in American schools and—who knows—supplying American officials.” Though styles of dress, language, food, and religious practices set these immigrants apart from arrivals of earlier decades, the News reporter had little doubt that these immigrants could assimilate and become productive members of society.167

Despite such faith in the transformative power of the assimilation process, the fear that immigrants like those on Galveston’s docks might reject American institutions and ideals was part of the basis for concern over congested immigrant neighborhoods, particularly in the northeastern United States. Many Americans believed that immigrants were less likely to adopt American ways, learn the English language, or become a United

States citizen if they lived in an ethnic enclave. Typically, this theory on

167 “New Material in the American Melting Pot,” GDN, April 3, 1910.

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Americanization meant that immigrants were encouraged to settle in rural areas and small towns, but not all groups who were supported assimilation efforts felt that rural settlement was the preferable way to reach the newcomer. The Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution believed that industrial life offered a quicker introduction to the

American economy, politics, and lifestyle and argued, in the words of the Galveston

News in 1910, that “the more general distribution of the large number of immigrants over the country and their more speedy identification with our industrial life is expected to result…in a greater proportion becoming full-fledged American citizens.” Regardless of which side of the debate Americans fell on, the interest in proper distribution came from, in part, the belief that the native born could influence the immigrant’s willingness to assimilate and, as a Galveston Daily News reporter argued in 1910, that a “separation from the large foreign colonies in the great cities,” would “make [immigrants] less clannish and facilitate their assimilation by the Nation, politically and socially.”168

Residents of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston had relatively little to fear regarding the growth of immigrant enclaves in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries due in part to the small size of the Italian and East European Jewish population, but also because in most cases the immigrants showed a tendency to spread out across the cities.

In Texas’ urban areas, there were a number of factors that affected the immigrant’s decision on where to settle and housing cost may have been foremost among these.

When East European Jews moved into Dallas many of them settled in the neighborhood

168 Though many Americans believed that ethnic enclaves in the United States inhibited the assimilation of immigrants, there were some who believed these spaces were actually beneficial to the immigrants’ education on American modes of life. Israel Zangwill maintained that, with respect to Jewish immigrants, the immigrant “ghetto” presented an opportunity for Jews to be educated in the English language and learn skills with which to make a living by their family and friends. Noting that Jewish immigrants tend to move into more desirable neighborhoods as they become financially able to do so, Zangwill saw the problems presented by the American ghetto as transitory and mostly insignificant. “America’s Ghetto Children,” GDN, February 18, 1900; “Finding Places for Immigrants,” GDN, June 26, 1910.

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referred to as Goose Valley, where they found affordable real estate and cheaper rent, only to leave that neighborhood once they became financially able to do so. Immigrants were also likely to consider the distance between home and workplace when choosing where to buy or rent a home. For both Eastern European Jewish and Italian immigrants who frequently operated small businesses out of their homes, the availability of housing that would accommodate such an arrangement played a role in settlement decisions. For

Orthodox Jewish immigrants, settlement patterns were also dictated by proximity to synagogues.169

An examination of the residential distribution of Eastern European Jews and

Italians in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston in 1900 and 1920 reveals that only in a few cases did the concentration of these immigrants approach 50 percent of the immigrant population in any particular ward or district. The more popular areas of settlement are indicated in Graphs 5.1 to 5.12, and Figures 5.1 to 5.6. The one glaring exception appears with East European Jews living in Galveston in 1900, who greatly favored the city’s Fifth Ward. Nearly 70 percent of the population lived in this area of the city near the bay. This high concentration may be accounted for by the location of the city’s

Orthodox congregation, Ahavas Israel, which was also in the Fifth Ward.

Though the clustering of immigrant groups was not intense in Dallas, Houston, or

Galveston in either 1900 or 1920, East European Jewish and Italian immigrants did favor some areas over others. In 1900, approximately 45 percent of Dallas’ Italian population lived in the Second and Fourth Wards, but the remaining population was spread throughout the city. Both of these areas of settlement were near concentrations of East

European Jewish immigrants. Those Italians living in the Second Ward resided just south

169 Biderman, They Came to Stay, 90-97.

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of Goose Valley along the railroad tracks, a location that made for cheaper rent. Newly arrived Mexican immigrants would move into this same neighborhood in the 1920s. By

1920, Italian immigrants were still spread throughout the city’s neighborhoods, though the concentration of immigrants had shifted slightly eastward, with some Italians moving into the area near Deep Ellum that had been popular among East European Jews in 1900 and was historically inhabited by the city’s African American population. 170

Of the three cities, Houston had the highest rate of residential concentration among Italians in 1900. About 58 percent of the Italian immigrant population resided in the Third and Fourth Wards. As was the case in Dallas, cheaper rents near railroad yards attracted newly arrived Italians into the Third Ward. By 1920, the center of the immigrant population had shifted a bit, as 34 percent of Italians lived in north Houston in an area that was previously part of the Fifth Ward.171

Italians settled in all of Galveston’s twelve wards in both 1900 and 1920, with a fairly even distribution. Many who lived along the gulf side of the city would lose their homes and businesses in the devastating hurricane of 1900. Those who resided in the north central bayside section of the Island City, like the Fifth Ward Italians, experienced less destruction. Just before the storm, about 15 percent of Italians lived in this area, which was also home to 33 percent of the city’s African Americans. In 1920,

Galveston’s black population remained in the Fifth Ward, but the Italian immigrants had

170 Comparative data on white and black residential distribution used in this chapter derives from a 1 percent sample of households taken from Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010; Biderman, They Came to Stay, 62-67, 90-91. 171 Houston had stopped using the ward system by 1920. The 1910 and 1920 census was divided into eight precincts, which were precursors to the City Council Districts. The numerical categories used in Graphs 5.4 and 5.10, however, correspond to the wards of earlier decades. Houston Public Library Reference Services, email to the author, December 20, 2011.

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started shifting west. Though the concentration was still a fairly low 30 percent, these immigrants appear to have favored the Sixth and Seventh Wards where some 40 percent of the city’s native-born white population lived.

Graph 5.1 Residential Distribution of Italian Immigrants in Dallas by Ward, 1900

30

25

20

15

10 Population 5

0 Percentage of Italian Immigrant Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Ward

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas County.

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Graph 5.2 Residential Distribution of Italian Immigrants in Dallas by Precinct, 1920

30

25

20

15 Population 10

5 Percentage of Italian Immigrant Percentage

0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 31 32 33 89 93

Precinct

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas County.

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*The dots in Figures 5.1-5.6 represent the greatest concentration of immigrants within a particular ward or precinct.

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Graph 5.3 Residential Distribution of Italian Immigrants in Houston by Ward, 1900

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 Population 10 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 Percentage of Italian Immigrant Percentage Ward

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Harris County.

Graph 5.4 Residential Distribution of Italian Immigrants in Houston by Precinct, 1920*

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 Population 10 5 0

Percentage of Italian Immigrant Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6

Precinct Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Harris County. * Though the ward system was no longer in use in Houston by 1920, the precincts used in Graph 5.4 generally match ward boundaries of 1900.

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Graph 5.5 Residential Distribution of Italian Immigrants in Galveston by Ward, 1900

50 45 40 35 30 25 Population 20 15 10

Percentage of Italian Immigrant Percentage 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ward

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Galveston County.

Graph 5.6 Residential Distribution of Italian Immigrants in Galveston by Ward, 1920

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 Population 10 5 0 Percentage of Italian Immigrant Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ward

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Galveston County.

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Eastern European Jewish immigrants were more likely than Italians to congregate in specific areas of Texas’ cities. As many of these immigrants were Orthodox, the necessity of being able to walk to the synagogue was one reason for concentrated settlements of Jewish immigrants and the areas near Orthodox synagogues prove to the places of greatest East European Jewish concentration. This was particularly the case in

Galveston in 1900. Nonetheless, East European Jews lived in almost every residential area of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston in 1900 and this trend changed very little in 1920.

In 1900, the largest concentration of East European-born Jews in Dallas, some 36 percent, lived in the northern part of the city in a neighborhood often referred to as

“Goose Valley,” the area around the Congregations of Tiferet Israel and Anshe Sphard in

Figure 5.4. Bordered by railroads, Goose Valley was an area of undesirable real estate where newly arrived immigrants were able to find affordable housing. Congregation

Tiferet Israel was established in this neighborhood in 1902. The second most popular neighborhood among Dallas’ East European Jewish population was in the vicinity of

Deep Elm in East Dallas. The Orthodox congregation of Shaareth Israel was located in this area from 1892 to 1920. Though some East European Jewish immigrants into the

1920s remained in Goose Valley, many moved southward into the area around City Park, near the second locations of Shaareth Israel and Anshe Sphard. As the immigrant population shifted, so too did the Orthodox congregations that served them. Tiferet Israel remained in its North Dallas location, but Shaareth Israel moved to the northeast side of

City Park where it remained until 1956.172

Though Houston also had a few neighborhoods that were popular with Eastern

European Jewish residents, the immigrant population was represented in each of the

172 Biderman, They Came to Stay, 90-92, 84-85.

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city’s wards. In 1900, just over half of Eastern European Jews clustered in an area near the center of the city that overlapped the border of the Second and Third Wards, as is shown in Figure 5.5. The city’s Orthodox congregation, Adath Yeshurun, was located in the center of this residential area. By 1920, 32 percent of the population remained in the old Third Ward but shifted southward a bit, along with the synagogue. The area that was once part of the Fifth Ward also grew in popularity in 1920, and 27 percent of the population lived in that section around the Orthodox congregation, Adath Israel. The city’s third Orthodox congregation, Adath Emeth, which was established in 1911, was located in the old Sixth Ward of the city. This area had been home to 23 percent of the

East European Jewish immigrant population in 1900, but appeared far less popular by

1920.173

The residential spread of East European Jews in Galveston in 1900 proves the most exceptional of all three cities; the concentration of this population in a single neighborhood appears greater than any ward or district in either Houston or Dallas. In

1900, 67 percent of foreign-born Eastern European Jews lived in Galveston’s Fifth Ward, a compact area encompassing only 36 small square blocks in the north central part of the city along the bay. The Fifth Ward was also home to the city’s two Orthodox congregations, the Young Men’s Hebrew Association, which formed Congregation

Ahavas Israel in 1895, and the Hebrew Benevolent Association. By 1920, Eastern

European Jewish immigrants had spread a bit. Increasing numbers of immigrants began moving southward into the Eighth Ward on the gulf side of the city, as is shown in Figure

173 Though Houston had stopped using the ward system by 1920 and the 1910 and 1920 census was divided into eight precincts that were precursors to the City Council Districts, the numerical categories used in Graphs 5.5 and 5.10 correspond to the wards of earlier decades.

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5.6. The Fifth Ward still contained some 29 percent of the Eastern European immigrants, but it seems the possibility of homeownership may have been the reason for the migration into the Eighth Ward. In 1900, approximately 90 percent of East European Jewish householders in the Fifth Ward rented their homes, and by 1920, that figure had dropped to 75 percent, which may be a reflection of an increasing economic status among the population. Among Galveston’s East European Jews who lived in the Eighth Ward in

1920, however, the rate of immigrants renting homes was about 54 percent. It seems that

East European Jews who moved into the Eighth Ward in this period were taking advantage of their ability to purchase a home. The swath of land encompassed by the

Fifth and Eighth Wards, running from the bay to the gulf in the central part of the city, was home to about 47 percent of the immigrant Jewish population in 1920.

Graph 5.7 Residential Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants in Dallas by Ward, 1900

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 10

Immigrant Population 5 0

Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Ward

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas County.

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Graph 5.8 Residential Distribution of East European Immigrants in Dallas by Precinct, 1920

50 45 40 35 30 25 20 15 Population 10 5 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 31 32 33 89 93

Percentage of East European Jewish Immigrant of East European Percentage Precinct

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas County.

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Graph 5.9 Residential Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants in Houston by Ward, 1900

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

Immigrant Population 1 2 3 4 5 6 Ward Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Harris County.

Graph 5.10 Residential Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants in Houston by Precinct, 1920

70 60 50 40 30 20 10

Immigrant Population 0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage Ward

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Harris County.

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208

Graph 5.11 Residential Distribution of Eastern European Jewish Immigrants in Galveston by Ward, 1900

70 60 50 40 30 20

Immigrant Population 10 0

Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12

Ward

Source: 1900 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Galveston County.

Graph 5.12 Residential Distribution of East European Jewish Immigrants in Galveston by Ward, 1920 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 Immigrant Population 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Ward

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Galveston County.

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Given the residential distribution of Italian and East European Jewish immigrants, urban-dwelling Texans had little reason to fear by 1920 that tightly knit ethnic enclaves of Southern and Eastern European immigrants were going to form in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. Though some neighborhoods, like Goose Valley in Dallas, may have seemed at various points to be dominated by Italians or East European Jews, the areas of concentration in Texas cities was not on the scale of other major U.S. cities. Studies of

Italians and East European Jews in cities of the North and Northeast reveal greater residential segregation of immigrant populations than was generally the case in Texas cities. Italians in Buffalo, Manhattan, and Chicago settled in tight, though not necessarily ethnically homogenous, communities or “Little Italies.” East European Jews also settled in ethnic enclaves in New York’s Lower East Side and Chicago’s West Side.174

There was, of course, some residential concentration among Orthodox Eastern

European Jewish immigrants in Texas cities who needed to live within walking distance of their synagogue. However, even the most ethnically Eastern European Jewish neighborhood in 1900 (found in Galveston’s Fifth Ward) had thinned considerably by

1920. Residential mobility was one of the most apparent attributes of Italian and Eastern

European Jewish settlement patterns in the early twentieth century, as is indicated by

Figures 5.1 through 5.6. Such mobility was not the case in other U.S. cities like Chicago, where, as Rudolph Vecoli noted in his study of Italians, there was a remarkable

“continuity of ethnic concentration.” The mobility found among Italian and East

174 Donna Gabaccia, From Sicily to Elizabeth Street: Housing and Social Change Among Italian Immigrants, 1880-1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984); Hull-House Maps and Papers: Residents of Hull House (New York: Arno Press, 1970), 15-19; 92-93; Robert M. Lombardo, “Chicago's Little Sicily,” Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society 100, no. 1 (Spring, 2007): 41-56; Moses Rischin, The Promised City: New York’s Jews, 1870-1914, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977) 77-78; Virginia Yans-McLaughlin, Family and Community: Italian Immigrants in Buffalo, 1880-1930, Illini Books ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 116-117.

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European immigrants in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, was also apparent among

Italians in Albuquerque, New Mexico, whose immigrant population also shared Texas’

Italians high rate of small business ownership and low rate of blue-collar workers.175

Perhaps one reason for the greater residential dispersal of Texas’ urban-dwelling

Italians and, to some degree, East European Jews, is a relatively high rate of home ownership among the immigrant populations, as is shown in Graphs 5.13 and 5.14. The only major U.S. cities that matched the rate of home ownership among Texas’ immigrant populations are Philadelphia and New Orleans. Like Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, at the turn of the century these two cities had large numbers of single-family dwellings and low numbers of mutli-family dwellings that could house three or more families. New

York, Chicago, and even Boston, to an extent, had higher rates of multi-family houses, apartment buildings, and in the case of New York, tenement buildings. It is possible that

Italian and East European Jewish immigrants were perhaps more interested in purchasing homes than maintaining ethnic neighborhoods. This is not to say that immigrants did not want to create ethnic communities through close residential proximity to others in their group. Certainly Jewish residents of Dallas considered the need for cohesion when they began moving into the area around City Park in the 1920s. But an interest in purchasing a home and the availability of such homes in neighborhoods across the cities, might have

175 Nicholas P. Ciotola, "Italian Immigrants in Albuquerque, 1880 to 1930: A Study in Western Distinctiveness." Journal Of the West 43, no. 4 (2004): 41-48; Rudolph J. Vecoli, “Chicago's "Little Italies," Journal of American Ethnic History 2, no. 2 (Spring, 1983): 17-18.

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led Texas immigrants to settle in a pattern not seen in some of the larger urban areas of the United States where home ownership was less of an option.176

In her study of Galveston’s ethnic groups, Susan Hardwick identified the effect that city’s geography had on ethnic residential patterns that were “closely-spaced but gently dispersed.” Galveston’s small size and close residential districts meant that island residents did not need to live next to one another to maintain relationships. While this may not have been true for the larger cities of Dallas and Galveston, the possibility of preserving an ethnic group identity without residential segregation certainly held true for

Italian and East European populations on the island.177

176 Kenneth Baar, "The National Movement to Halt the Spread of Multifamily Housing, 1890-1926." Journal of the American Planning Association 58, no. 1 (Winter, 1992): 39. 177 Susan Hardwick, “Galveston: Ellis Island of Texas,” Journal of Cultural Geography 20, no 2 (Spring/Summer 2003): 83.

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Graph 5.13 Percentage of Home Owners and Renters Among East European Jewish Immigrant Householders in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 50 Home Owner 40 Renter

Immigrants 30 20 10 0 Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia.

Graph 5.14 Percentage of Home Owners and Renters Among Italian Immigrant Householders in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 50 Home Owner 40 Renter 30 20 10 0 Percentage of Italian Immigrants Percentage

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia.

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The residential dispersal of Italians and East European Jews in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston did not, however, entirely ease the minds of Texans whose concern about an increasing population of unassimilated immigrants was expressed in articles and editorials in Texas newspapers. As was the case across the country in the early twentieth century, native-born Texans did not know that the tide of immigrants entering the United

States would be virtually halted by the passage of restrictive legislation in the 1920s. For their part, Italians and East European Jews in Texas’ urban areas tried to assuage the fears of native-born Texans through some subtle and not-so-subtle expressions of commitment to their city, state, and country. Ethnic organizations, community leaders, and local

Jewish and Italian-language newspapers all sought to define immigrant groups as loyal

Americans and Texans and at the same time they strove to preserve ethnic identity. In an environment that lacked the large immigrant populations of New York, Chicago, or

Philadelphia, the effort to maintain “Old World” traditions was fraught with pitfalls. In an area so thoroughly dominated by the native born, as Texas’ cities were, the defense of immigrant loyalty to the United States in the heated climate of the 1910s and 1920s was also a challenge.

In the effort to integrate socially, economically, and culturally into Texas cities,

Eastern European Jewish immigrants undoubtedly benefitted from the earlier arrival of a

German and Alsatian immigrants, many of whom were Jewish and prominent in the business and professional world of Texas. Having been present in Texas for nearly half a century by the time large numbers of East Europeans began arriving in the late nineteenth century, this Western European population familiarized Texans with a Jewish presence in the cities. The opportunity for interaction between Jews and non-Jews in Texas’ urban

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areas suggests that the social void between the two groups was not that great when new arrivals began settling in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. Texas Jews had opportunities to join non-Jewish social and fraternal organizations in Texas, and East European Jews in

Houston were among the membership of associations such as the Masonic Order, the

Eastern Star, and the Rotary Club. Opportunities for Jews to comingle with the Gentile population also existed at Jewish events like weddings and Purim balls. An advertisement for the ninth anniversary celebration of the founding of Houston’s Yiddish library in February of 1920 issued an invitation the general public. Though it is unclear whether any non-Jews attended the event, this invitation shows Jews’ willingness to interact socially with the Gentile population.178

Despite relatively cordial relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish populations of Texas cities, Jews must have bristled at the publication of editorials and articles in local newspapers that stereotyped their ethnic group. A column titled “Family

Doctor” appearing in the Galveston Daily News in February of 1900 reported on a study that purported to explain the allegedly longer lifespan of Jewish men and women. After declaring that the “Teuton of the nineteenth century in physical development surpasses all other races and rules the world,” the article’s author argued that “centuries of oppression have stamped out the physical vigor” of the European Jewish “masses,” leaving them physically stunted but mentally vigorous. Employing a mix of positive associations and negative stereotypes, the researchers explained Jewish longevity as a factor of a frugality,

178 Marilyn Kay Cheatham Goldman, “Jewish Fringes Texas Fabric: Nineteenth Century Jewish Merchants Living Texas Reality and Myth,” (PhD diss., Texas A&M University, 2003), 213-214, 230-231; Maas, Jews of Houston, 44-45, 47; “Houston Yiddish Library Anniversary to Be Kept” HP, February 9, 1920.

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sobriety, a tendency to work indoors, avoidance of manual labor, and healthy diet resulting from adherence to Kosher food laws. 179

Anti-Semitism in urban Texas may not have been as prevalent as in other areas of the country, but several incidents suggest that Jews were actively fighting intolerance in the cities. On June 6, 1915, the Dallas Morning News published an address given to the

Dallas Pastors’ Association by Rabbi William Greenberg of Dallas’ Reform congregation, Temple Emanu-El. In his address, Rabbi Greenberg identified what he described as a complete misunderstanding and misrepresentation of “the Jew, his world, his ideals and aspirations.” The Rabbi blamed anti-Semitism on “falsehoods relating to the Jew,” including a perceived hostility towards Jesus Christ and Christianity, and claimed that such accusations and misunderstandings “have poisoned the very heart of the world.” He implored Dallasites to “batter down the barriers that have separated

God’s children from one another,” and to instead “emphasize the essentials of religion and human life whereby we may create a common platform upon which Jew and

Christian may harmoniously unite.” Houston’s Jewish residents were also concerned with halting the spread of anti-Semitism. Speaking at the opening of Congregation Adath

Israel’s Hebrew School, the editor of the Jewish Herald, Edgar Goldberg, suggested that progress on anti-Semitism could be made though the education of Gentiles on Jewish ideals and practices, though he did not intimate that the current situation in Houston was particularly dire. The rabbi simply hoped that a more “cheery” relationship between Jews and non-Jews could be attained through “enlightenment and better understanding.”180

179 “Longevity of the Jews,” GDN, February 21, 1900. 180 “Houston” Texas Jewish Herald, undated, Henry Cohen Papers, Rosenberg library, 70-0033 Box 1 # 32; “Says Jews Revere Christ as Prophet,” DMN, June 8, 1915; “Hebrew School Building Informally Opened,” JH, August 14, 1920.

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The effort to stamp out anti-Semitism in Texas cities increased the visibility of

Jews and illustrates their influence in these urban communities. In February of 1914, the

Jewish Herald published an article calling for Houston movie theaters to stop showing films that featured offensive caricatures of Jews. Houston theaters were running “The

Mystery of the Amsterdam Diamonds,” which included the portrayal of a Jewish jeweler who was attempting to smuggle stolen goods into the United States. Offended by this representation, Jewish residents issued an ultimatum to theater owners: Either stop featuring films depicting “false, untrue and frequently ridiculous characterizations of the

Jew” or lose Jewish patrons. Ten Houston-area theater managers responded to these demands, replying that they were indeed “desirous of Jewish patronage” and pledging to stop showing films that “defame the Jew.” This incident was not the first in which

Houston’s Jews had fought against theatrical performances and movies that caricatured them. In 1908, an editorial in the Jewish Herald chided Jewish Houstonians for their attendance and implicit sanctioning of a vaudevillian performance that mocked Jews. In

1909, the Jewish Literary Society led a boycott of theaters that ran shows featuring Jews as characters of ridicule and contempt. The reaction of Houston’s theater managers in

1914 indicates that the entertainment industry in Houston was finally recognizing the economic power wielded by the Jewish community.181

Perhaps due to their more recent arrival or to the fact that there were fewer prominent Italians in Dallas, Houston, and Galveston during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Italians appear to have been more openly criticized in Texas newspapers than were Jewish immigrants. In January of 1891, the Dallas Morning News

181 “Houston Picture Shows Must Stop Obnoxious Films,” JH, February 26, 1914; “Defamatory Films Not To Be Shown in Houston,” JH, June 25, 1914; Maas, Jews of Houston, 48-49.

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published an article titled, “Hundreds of Dirty Italians,” which discussed an increase in

Italian immigration. The author of the piece remarked upon the recent arrival of 140

Italian immigrants in New York, whom, he complained, were “uncleanly beyond description, feeble…and amoral.” The writer likened the Italian immigrant to the

Chinese immigrant in the predominance of single males over families in this immigrant group, and stressed their tendency towards return migration as an indicator of their transient nature. The publication of such attitudes in the Dallas Morning News provided local residents with a lens through which they might have viewed Italian immigration.

Texas residents also participated in this criticism of Southern and Eastern

European immigrants. Houston journalist and Maine native, George M. Bailey, mocked immigrants and used derogatory terms in reference to certain ethnic groups, including

Italians, in his Houston Post humor column titled “Early Morning Observations.” In a column from January of 1920, Bailey joked that “Italy has limited the number of hours during which hard lickr [sic] may be drunk. We don’t think the thirstiest wop could asked for more time, since the hours fixed are the working hours, and besides a man who can’t get enough in seven hours is certainly a hog.” A few weeks later, Bailey warned the “future immigrant,” whom he referred to as pestilent, “shaggy” and “cootied,” not to come to the United States but to take his “hide” elsewhere. The regular reader of Texas’ major newspapers would have had an awareness of the anti-immigrant sentiment that was spreading throughout Texas and other parts of the country.182

Native-born Americans were fearful of immigrants for a variety of reasons. Some of the anti-immigrant sentiment, particularly in the last decade of the nineteenth and

182 “Hundreds of Dirty Italians,” DMN, April 11, 1891; “Early Morning Observations,” HP, January 7, 1920; “Early Morning Observations, HP, January 18, 1920; “George M. Bailey,” 1920 United States Census, Harris County, Ward 3, District 46, Family 123.

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beginning of the twentieth century, was fueled by racism, but there were a multitude of other types of friction between the native-born and foreign-born populations. Economic competition and religious and cultural differences all gave rise to a concern for the future of the United States. The fears of the native-born population ranged from apprehension that newly arrived immigrants would simply not make good Americans being unfit for citizenship to the belief that these newcomers were adding disproportionately to the criminal element within the United States. An editorial appearing in the Houston Post in

November of 1920 played on these fears, warning that “the scum of Europe” threatened to increase the “criminal ranks” in the United States at a moment when “the United States is experiencing the worst crime wave in its history.” Throughout the early twentieth century, Italians appeared in Texas newspaper headlines as thieves and assassins.

Mysterious unsolved murders and stories of alleged “Black Hand Society” activity, which referred to Italian criminal syndicates operating in the United States, caused anxiety among Texas residents. Reports of assassinations and extortion attempts must have frightened not only the native-born population, but also the Italian immigrants who tended to be the victims of such crimes. But Italians had an additional reason to worry over such stories, as they attracted negative attention and linked Italian immigrants with criminal activity.183

One solution to these problems, according to Texans, was to attract immigrants who planned to stay permanently in the United States, particularly families, because these

183 “Italian Murder Case,” HC, November 22, 1901; “The End Has Been Reached,” HC, January 30, 1902; “A Conductor Was Stabbed,” HC, June 11, 1903; “Deadly Sixshooter Active in Houston,” GDN, March 18, 1910; “Back from Italy,” GDN, April 4, 1910; “Shooting At Dallas,” GDN, October 4, 1910; “Dallas Italians Excited,” GDN, October 5, 1910; “Infernal Machine Found Under House,” DMN, February 24, 1915; “Dallas Mystery Murder Still Riddle to Police,” HP, January 3, 1920; “Body of Mulatto Woman Found on Yale Street,” HP, September 24, 1920;“The Immigration Problem,” HP, November 27, 1920.

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immigrants were less likely to commit crimes and more likely to become dedicated adherents to the ideals of their adopted country. The immigrant who came to the United

States to settle, raise a family, and assimilate posed little threat to American institutions.

An editorial in the Houston Post in February of 1920 maintained that “a great weakness in America is in the divided allegiance of such large numbers of its people. If America is to grow stronger in national spirit, something must be done to eliminate hyphenism and to keep out those who are not prepared to give undivided allegiance to the American government. There can be no place here for the dual nationalist.” By 1920, there was a feeling among many Americans that immigrants in the United States should shed their ethnic identities and adopt modes of living that did not conflict with American ideals of capitalism, democracy, and the country’s Protestant heritage.184

In theory, the sentiment was clear enough. But how did these expectations translate to real life for Italian and East European Jewish immigrants in Texas’ urban areas? There was a certain amount of public pressure to assimilate and naturalization was one of the most recognized indicators of an immigrant’s willingness to pledge his commitment to the United States. Both the Houston Post and the Galveston Daily News published information on the naturalization process and publicized the names, nationalities, and addresses of immigrants who had declared their intent to naturalize.

Newspapers additionally reported the names of those immigrants who had successfully naturalized and the names of those whose petitions had been denied. One Houston Post article emphasized the ease of the process, noting that there was no waiting period to declare one’s intention to naturalize and that “a foreigner can make his declaration on the

184 “Dual Nationality Impossible,” HP, February 20, 1920.

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day he lands from the old country if he so desires.” The pressure Americans put on immigrants to become citizens can be detected in these articles.185

Because of their high rate of return migration, Italians were more vulnerable to accusations that they were not committed to staying in the United States and therefore, unlikely candidates for American citizenship. East European Jews who had fled religious persecution and violence in Europe were far less likely to return to their homeland and those living in Texas cities in 1900 displayed a high rate of naturalization. Over 70 percent of the adult, male East European Jewish population claimed U.S. citizenship in the federal census. Though the percentage of immigrants declaring alien status in 1920 had increased from 1900, as is shown in Table 5.1, a significant percentage of this population had also declared their intent to naturalize in 1920, suggesting that the rate would increase in coming years.

Table 5.1 Citizenship status of East European Jewish Immigrants by City, 1900 and 1920

Naturalized Declared Intent Alien 1900 1920 1900 1920 1900 1920 Dallas 77 57 16 14 7 29 Houston 72 59 10 20 18 21 Galveston 71 54 17 30 12 16 Sources: United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Harris, and Galveston Counties, 1900 and 1920.

Even though nationwide Italians showed much higher rates of return migration, there was little questioning of Italian immigrants’ patriotism in the

Dallas Morning News, Houston Post or Galveston Daily News. This absence may be due, in part, to the high rates of naturalization among Italian immigrants in

185 “American Citizens,” GDN, January 1, 1900; “Naturalization Cases Heard in District Court,” HP, November 4, 1900; “In the Local Courts,” GDN, February 9, 1910; “The Legal Record,” GDN, July 9, 1910; “47 Citizenship Applications Approved By Federal Court,” HP, November 6, 1920.

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these cities. In 1900, approximately 50 percent or greater of the Italian-born, adult, male populations of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston were naturalized U.S. citizens. By 1920 that rate had dropped a bit in Dallas and Houston, as is indicated in Table 5.2, but the percentage of immigrants who had declared their intent to naturalize suggests a willingness among Italians to pursue an American identity.

Table 5.2 Citizenship status of Italian Immigrants by City, 1900 and 1920

Naturalized Declared Intent Alien 1900 1920 1900 1920 1900 1920 Dallas 51 44 4 11 45 45 Houston 66 49 14 20 20 31 Galveston 48 61 23 25 29 14 Sources: United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Harris, and Galveston Counties, 1900 and 1920.

In addition to showing a desire for American citizenship status, Italians and East

European Jews also demonstrated their commitment to life in the United States by settling with their spouses. The concern over immigrants’ marital status centered on the belief that single men without families had little motivation to remain permanently in the

United States and become the type of responsible citizens that Americans hoped would populate the country. A Dallas Morning News article appearing in April 1891 quoted

Colonel John Weber, Commissioner of Immigration at the Port of New York, who argued that “Italian immigration to America…is purely transient in nature.” The colonel believed that “one of the strongest proofs of [their transient nature] lies in the fact that few if any of them bring their families,” and added that “when a man comes here and leaves his wife behind he means in eight cases out of ten to return.” In this regard, native-born Texans

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would have found little cause for concern with the Italian and East European Jewish populations. A majority of Italian and East European immigrant men were married in all three cities in 1920, and no fewer then 90 percent of these men were living with their spouses.186

It appears that Weber’s statement on the transient nature of Italian immigrants would not have applied to Italian immigrants living outside Texas in many of the major cities of the United States, either. The marital status of adult East European Jewish and

Italian male immigrants is shown in Graphs 5.15 and 5.16. Only in Galveston and

Philadelphia did the rate of Italian immigrants who had never been married reach 30 percent of the foreign-born adult, Italian male population. Additionally, the rate of married immigrant men living with their spouses was also high both in Texas and other cities across the country; only New Orleans’ rate of married East European Jewish men living without a spouse appears high by comparison. Even that relatively low rate of 20 percent is likely related to the small sample size of New Orleans’ East European Jews, rather than an indication of a transient population. For Texas, in particular, the combination of high rates of naturalization and married immigrant men living with their spouses suggests that the Italian and East European Jewish immigrants of Texas cities did not qualify as the transient immigrant population that concerned native-born Americans.

186 “Hundreds of Dirty Italians,” DMN, April 11, 1891.

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Graph 5.15 Marital Status of East European Jewish Immigrants in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 50 Married

Immigrants 40 30 Single 20 Divorced 10 Widowed 0 Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Graph 5.16 Marital Status of Italian Immigrants in U.S. Cities, 1920 90 80 70 60 50 40 Married 30 Single 20 Divorced 10 Widowed

Percentage of Italian Immigrants Percentage 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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Graph 5.17 Percentage of East European Men Living With and Without Spouse in U.S. Cities, 1920 100 90 80 70 60 Spouse Present 50 Spouse Absent 40 30 Immigrants 20 10 0 Percentage of East European Jewish of East European Percentage

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

Graph 5.18 Percentage of Married Italian Men Living With and Without Spouse in U.S. Cities, 1920

100 90 80 70 60 Spouse Present 50 Spouse Absent 40 30 20 10

Percentage of Italian Immigrants Percentage 0

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Galveston, and Harris Counties and 1920 IPUMS database for Boston, Chicago, New Orleans, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.

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For all the concern over divided loyalties, the immigrants’ continued interest in

European affairs and their desire to associate by ethnic group does not seem to have elicited much opposition in Texas cities, even in the 1920s. Both Italians and East

European Jewish immigrants in Texas expressed interest in international affairs. For East

European Jews, this interest manifested itself largely in a concern for those Jews who remained in Europe. Some Jews, for example, joined the Texas Zionist Association

(TZA) in hopes of establishing a Jewish state in Palestine. The TZA was largely an immigrant-based movement that caused some consternation among German Jews who feared that the drive to build a Jewish homeland would lead to charges that the Jewish population were not loyal Americans. An excerpt from an October 1908 address delivered by Federation of American Zionists president Dr. Harry Friedenwald, reprinted in the Jewish Herald, reflects why individuals outside the movement may have been concerned:187

We recognize that the Jews cannot live a normal Jewish life and develop along lines of Jewish thought and ideals in a non-Jewish environment. Amid Christian surroundings the fountain of Judaism either becomes a stagnant pool or it runs dry. The Zionists are convinced that it is necessary to establish a Jewish center in Palestine, where the Jews will have the opportunity within the near future of being the majority.188

Texas Zionists, however, may have interpreted the movement’s goals somewhat differently. Jacob De Haas, secretary of the Federation of American Zionists, traveled to

Texas in 1904 to build support for Zionism. Though the movement in Texas was relatively small and divisive, De Haas observed a strong spirit of Zionism in Texas cities

187 Stuart Rockoff, “Deep in the Heart of Palestine: Zionism in Early Texas,” in Lone Stars of David: The Jews of Texas, eds. Hollace Ava Weiner and Kenneth D. Roseman (Waltham, Mass: Brandeis University Press, 2007), 96-97. 188 “Fear What the Goyim Say,” JH, October 29, 1908.

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where many Jews wished to strengthen Jewish identity among the population. In

December of 1920, the Houston District of Zionists held a special “flag day” celebration featuring an auction of Zionist flags to raise funds for the purchase of land in Palestine.

Rabbi Abromowitz spoke at this gathering on the “duty which American Jews, living in this country, owe to their ravaged brethren in other countries.” The rabbi urged

Houston’s Jews to take up this opportunity “for becoming the redeemers of their old

Jewish homeland and the saviors of their people.” In this sense, the TZA movement’s goals seem more directed towards aiding Jews outside of the United States, rather than creating a home for the exodus of Jews from Texas.189

Texas Zionists did not view the movement for a Jewish homeland as being in conflict with their dedication to the United States or to Texas. In 1909, the TZA began making plans for a colony in Palestine, which was to bear the name, “Texas.” Though the Texas Palestine Land Company failed to raise money for the purchase of land, the effort was revived in the 1930s. Again the plan failed, but the goal of colony establishment, in which Texans would be given priority, was ultimately aimed at relocating European Jewish refugees rather than American Jews. Public officials’ support of the Zionist cause also suggests that native-born Texans did not feel the movement undermined Jewish commitment to Texas, nor Jewish patriotism toward the

United States. Texas’ Governor Oscar Colquitt and other elected officials appeared at

TZA conventions in 1911 and 1912, where they spoke favorably of the cause.190

Thus it appears that East European immigrants were encouraged to define themselves as a unique group with interests outside United States borders. Similar

189 Rockoff, “Deep in the Heart of Palestine,” 93; “Duty of American Jews is Told at Flag Celebration,” HP, December 17, 1920. 190 Rockoff, “Deep in the Heart of Palestine,” 98.

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patterns appear with regard to the Italian population. On May 17, 1920, the Houston Post reported on the arrival of Bruno Zuculin, the Italian consul from New Orleans, who stopped in Houston on his campaign across the American South to sell twenty-five million dollars in Italian bonds for the “industrial and economic reconstruction of Italy” following World War I. Though the money was to be spent “entirely in the United States for coal and other raw materials,” as the Post article explained two days prior, the bond issue was promoted in such a way as to appeal to Italian immigrants’ loyalty to their homeland. At a meeting of the city’s Italians on May 18, Zuculin expressed the Italian government’s hope that immigrants would purchase a large portion of the bonds because

Italy “would like to have the assurance that Italians in America still have a place in their hearts for Italy and are interested in her welfare.” Confident that he could raise one million dollars among Texan Italians, Zuculin portrayed the Italians of the Lone Star

State as patriotic men and women who felt allegiance to both their adopted home and their mother country. “The Italian people in my district,” he reasoned, “bought American

[war] bonds because they loved America and now they should buy some Italian bonds because they also love Italy.” Patriotism was clearly not a zero-sum game. Italian immigrants could support Italy without affecting their commitment to the United States.

Prominent local men, including Houston mayor, A. Earl Amerman, addressed the meeting and praised Houston’s Italians for their support of the United States through purchase of American war bonds, and encouraged them to do the same for Italy in “her hour of need.” Reports on the Houston meeting indicate that Italians had purchased the

Italian bonds, with one individual contribution of five thousand dollars.191

191 “Italian Consul Will Arrive Here Tonight,” HP, May 15, 1920; “Houston Italians Urged to Invest in Italian Bonds,” HP, May 17, 1920; “Italian Consul Visits Houston; Is Entertained,” HP, May 18, 1920.

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Immigrants expressed their identification with Italians and Jews in Europe through the activities of ethnic and fraternal organizations. Zionist groups in Texas cities hosted picnics and dances to increase awareness of the movement and to raise money for the purchase of land in Palestine. Italian societies convened special meetings to celebrate their Italian heritage, such as a July 1907 gathering of the Italians of Houston, Galveston, and the Island City’s neighboring town, Dickinson, in celebration of the hundredth anniversary of Giuseppe Garibaldi’s birth. They also gathered to discuss international events. When Italy’s King Humbert I was assassinated by an anarchist in 1900,

Houston’s Societa Margherita di Savoia and Christofo Colombo met to pass a resolution on his death. The organization resolved to observe the death by draping a flag in mourning for six months and barring members from organizing social events, like picnics and dances, for three months. Expressing their disapproval of radical movements and, likely, their fear that as Italians they might be perceived as anarchists themselves, the society also resolved to “condemn all anarchistic societies,” and requested that their local political “representatives pass laws prohibiting [anarchist societies] in the State of

Texas.” The Societa Margherita di Savoia and Christofo Colombo met again to plan a memorial service for the king, deciding to hold high mass at the Church of the

Annunciation. A procession to and from the church was planned, and city and county officials were invited to attend.192

Galveston’s Italians also observed the king’s death. The Galveston Daily News published numerous notices in the wake of the king’s assassination regarding special meetings of Italians and Italian Americans. Italian consular agent Clemente Nicolini and

192 “The Italians of Houston,” HP, August 1, 1900; “In Honor of Italy’ Dead King,” HP, August 6, 1900; “Island City News Items: Mass for Italy’s Dead King,” HP, August 17, 1900; “Festeggiamenti E Commemorazione,” Il Messaggiero Italiano, July 13, 1907.

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Galveston’s Italian societies organized a special mass at St. Mary’s Cathedral and the elaborate nature of the affair shows Italians’ strong feelings about the loss of the king.

Black cloths and gold and silver wreaths adorned the altar and Italy’s coat of arms was placed next to a picture of the king at the front of the church. According to the News, a band playing a funeral dirge led marchers to the church where almost “the entire Italian colony,” was joined by foreign consuls and “nearly all of the county and State officials in

Galveston.”193

Though their king was important to them, the need to assert their opposition to anarchism concerned Italians in Galveston almost as much as their plans to mourn his death. In late October, the Italians of Galveston met to discuss the presence of anarchists in the Island City whom, the group claimed, had defiled pictures of the king and attempted to derail the efforts of “loyal Italians” to plan the memorial service. That news of the alleged anarchist activity had been passed through secret channels and not witnessed by journalists or law enforcement, calls into question the veracity of the reports. The most important element of the story, however, was that Italian residents, who wished to “go on record as loyal citizens to this country,” hoped to show their intense opposition to anarchism and their efforts to halt radical activity in Galveston by promising to turn these Italians over to law enforcement. By presenting themselves as active agents in the fight against radicalism in Texas, which was often assumed to be a problem created by an influx of immigrants into the United States, the membership of

Galveston’s Italian benevolent society hoped to avoid accusations of disloyalty to the

193 “Little Locals,” GDN, July 31, 1900; “Cable to Italian Queen,” GDN, August 1, 1900, “Little Locals,” GDN, August 13, 1900; “Memorial Services,” GDN, August 14, 1900; “Special Notice,” GDN, August 16, 1900; “In Honor of King Humbert,” GDN, August 17, 1900.

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United States. Creating a patriotic image was important to immigrants throughout the early twentieth century at a time when Texas’ newspaper headlines were filled with stories about “anarchists,” “reds,” “radicals,” “Bolshevists,” “Communists,” and

“agitators.”194

A pervasive feeling of loyalty to the United States increased Americans’ sensitivity to radical activity and ultimately led to a demand for stricter legislation on the deportation of alien residents who either belonged to radical organizations or who promoted ideas considered subversive by the U.S. government. By 1918, the U.S.

Congress had approved a bill allowing for the deportation of immigrants who belonged to radical organizations, including the Industrial Workers of the World (I.W.W.). When

President Wilson appointed A. Mitchell Palmer as Attorney General in 1919, the country was primed for Palmer’s series of coordinated raids in cities across the United States.

Palmer’s agents arrested several hundred Russians suspected of radical activity in

November of 1919, and two months later he orchestrated another crackdown in thirty- three U.S. cities. The January 1920 raids resulted in three thousand immigrants suspected of membership in the Communist Party being held for deportation.195

As labor unrest faded in 1920, the public interest in the deportation of suspected immigrant radicals would also subside. But in the period directly following armistice, suspicion of immigrant radicals had been pervasive in states throughout the country, including Texas. Conflicting stories that the South was either free of radicals or in

194 “Anarchists in Galveston,” GDN, August 25, 1900; “Houston Free From Radical Agitators,” HP, January 3, 1920; “Dallas is Free of Radical Activities,” DMN, January 4, 1920; “Four I.W.W. Members in Dallas Held By Police,” HP, January 11, 1920; “Federal Officers Here Probe I.W.W. Activity,” HP, January 17, 1920; “Houston Citizens Resolve to Crush Menace at Polls,” HP, March 3, 1920; “United Americans Ready for Finish Fight with Reds,” HP, March 29, 1920; “The South Free from Radicalism,” HP, April 21, 1920. 195 Higham, Strangers in the Land, 221-233.

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danger of coming under attack from such groups put Texans on edge about the possibility of a subversive element in their midst. News articles and editorials connected strong radical movements within the United States to areas with high proportions of foreign born among the population. One writer in the Houston Post in 1920 confidently remarked that “in the South, where the majority of men are natives and where they are much more closely identified with the native population, and responsive to American influences, there has been little trouble.” Where immigrant colonies did exist in the Lone

Star State, Texans hypothesized that these were comprised “of a better class than that which settled in the Northern cities,” and were “not in sympathy with the anarchist tendencies of so many of the immigrants…who have poured into Northern industrial centers.”196

There were, however, several newspaper reports of I.W.W. activity in the state.

Following the arrest of two men in Beaumont, Texas, an east Texas city not far from

Houston, federal agents appeared in the Magnolia City to investigate, where they found that the two Wobblies arrested, Harry and Raymond Carder, had been residents of the city. I.W.W. activity was also detected in Dallas. In January of 1920, two of four men arrested by Dallas police were allegedly in possession of I.W.W. membership cards.

Beyond suspicion of Italian anarchists in Houston and Galveston, as issued by the Italian organizations of those cities, there is little evidence of radical groups with Italian or East

European Jewish membership operating in Dallas, Houston, or Galveston. The absence of reports on radical activity involving immigrants leads to the conclusion that any possible radical organization among the urban-dwelling Italians and East European Jews

196 “The South’s Sturdy Americanism,” HP, January 5, 1920; “The South Free From Radicalism,” HP, April 21, 1920.

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in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston, went mostly unnoticed by the native-born population.

In the early twentieth century, East European Jewish immigrants in Texas cities established branches of the Arbeiter Ring (Workmen’s Circle), a national Jewish secular organization with a Yiddish-language and socialist orientation. The existence of this fraternal organization was a close as the immigrant population seems to have come to having a radical presence in the public sphere.197

Despite assertions of the region being free of radical activity, the seemingly confident Texans were not comfortable with complacency and sought to implement

Americanization programs in their battle against the perceived radical threat. The attempts on the part of the native-born population to familiarize immigrants with

American institutions manifested itself in classes and lectures. Often the push to educate immigrants centered on English language instruction, which was considered one way in which “foreign influence” could be contained. Houston’s night schools offered immigrants the opportunity to learn English and become “acquainted with American life.” An editorial appearing in the Houston Post in October of 1920 encouraged employers to induce their immigrant employees to attend the night schools as a way to make them more efficient workers and “solve the immigration question.” English- speaking ability was another area in which East European Jewish and Italian immigrants would have satisfied nativists. Both groups had high rates of English language proficiency, as is indicated in Table 5.3 198

197 “I.W.W. Busy in Texas Shown By Papers Nabbed,” HP, January 16, 1920; “Federal Officers Here Probe I.W.W. Activity,” HP, January 17, 1920; “Four I.W.W. Members in Dallas Held By Police,” HP, January 11, 1920; Maas, The Jews of Houston, 43; Oliver Pollak, "The Workmen’s Circle in the Midwest, 1900-1950," Western States Jewish History 32, no. 4 (200): 313-328; Winegarten and Schechter, Deep in the Heart, 80,98, 124, 131. 198 Higham, Strangers in the Land, 256; “Houston’s Night Schools,” HP, October 30, 1920.

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Table 5.3 Ability to Speak English among East European Jewish Immigrants and Italian Immigrants Aged 14 and Older in Texas Cities, 1920

East European Jews Italians Dallas 97% 89% Houston 99% 88% Galveston 94% 87%

Source: 1920 United States Federal Manuscript Census for Dallas, Harris, and Galveston Counties.

Americanization agents believed that the fight against radicalism could be most effectively waged with children in the classroom. The United Americans, a Chicago- based nativist organization with the professed the goal of “assisting the government [in stamping] out the I.W.W., bolshevism, and red doctrines,” embarked upon a campaign across Texas, targeting school-aged children and through these students, their immigrant parents. The group, whose Texas headquarters were located in Houston, released a statement in April of 1920 regarding the Americanization program they intended to implement in Texas schools, which had been “arranged in a way to be comprehensive to the child’s mind.” The United Americans sent literature and pamphlets to teachers requesting that the instructors “spend a few minutes each day in giving lessons on

Americanism” with the goal of “teach[ing] foreigners the benefits derived from [the democratic] form of government.” Even very young children were included in this effort.

Another Houston Post editorial in March of 1920 strongly urged that Americanism be taught in kindergartens “because of the fact that [dealing] with small children…brings a better opportunity for American teachers to come into contact with the mothers of the

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children and to win their sympathy.” The writer reasoned that “in the presence of the child, race, language, traditions and prejudices disappear, and the way is opened for the agent of Americanism to instruct the mother in many practical ways.” Citing Americans’ failure to reach immigrants through “propaganda during the last few years,” which instead created suspicion among “the more simple-minded aliens,” the writer believed that through children, educators could establish trust with immigrants and would ultimately find that work in public schools and kindergartens “in the foreign sections of

[Texas] cities should yield a better return on investment [than] any other institution having the same purpose.”199

In some cases, immigrants took it upon themselves to educate their brethren on the importance of assimilation and to demonstrate to native-born Texans their lack of sympathy for radical political and social movements. Texas’ Italian ethnic associations’ condemnation of anarchist groups in the wake of King Humbert’s death offers one example. Texas Jews, and in particular, Jewish women, promoted the Americanization of immigrants and Jewish identification with American institutions. An editorial appearing in the July 2, 1914 issue of the Jewish Herald posited that the July Fourth holiday held special significance for Jews, who had a history of being persecuted as outsiders and being subject to harsh laws. The editorialist maintained that the Declaration of

Independence, in its proclamation of the equality of men, was imbued “with the spirit of the Old Testament,” which contained Moses’ decree that “one Law and one Judgement” shall be applied “toward the stranger and toward the native of the land.” “The good Jew

199 “To Present United Americans Project,” DMN, November 8, 1919; “United Americans Make Keen Drive On All Radicals,” HP, February 29, 1920; “United Americans Ready for Finish Fight with Reds,” HP, March 29, 1920; “United American Campaign Well Organized Here,” HP, April 19, 1920; “Chicago Soap Box Orators at War,” DMN, July 22, 1920; Jeffrey E. Mirel, Patriotic Pluralism: Americanization Education and European Immigrants,” (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2010), 18-32.

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is a good American,” he maintained, “and will give his thought, his love, his substance, yea, his life…for his land and his heritage.” Jewish social and religious activities in

Texas often stressed commitment to the United States. A Purim celebration in Galveston in 1910 included a musical performance by children singing both Purim songs and

“American national hymns.” At the close of the event, the children were given small

American flags as souvenirs of the evening.200

Jewish commitment to the United States was underscored by lectures and sermons given by rabbis, who battled charges of radicalism that nativists leveled against the

Jewish immigrant population. In May of 1920, Rabbi Henry Barnstein, who led the reform congregation of Beth Israel, delivered an address to Houston’s Renaissance

Society titled, “Our Duty Toward the Foreigner,” in which he “warmly refuted the charge that Russian Jews are mostly adherents to bolshevism.” Rabbi Barnstein argued that although Americanization is a necessary step towards integrating the “foreign element” of the United States, Americans must convey ideals to the immigrants “by a living example, not by words” as “theory alone will not achieve any serious results.”

Nonetheless, Rabbi Barnstein, who anglicized his name to Barnston, did deliver sermons on the subject. A January 30, 1920 notice in the Houston Post advertised that the rabbi’s evening services would cover the matter of “Judaism and Americanism.”201

East European Jews also played a part in publicizing what commitment to

America meant to immigrants. In 1920, a Russian immigrant and former rabbi, Joseph

Goldman, visited Houston to share his experience with Bolshevism in Europe. Speaking at the First Baptist church, Goldman told of the loss of his wife and six children “in a

200 “Purim Pleasures,” GDN, March 20, 1910; “The Glorious Fourth,” JH, July 2, 1914. 201 “City News,” HP, January 30, 1920; “Our Duty Towards Foreigner Rabbi’s Lecture Subject,” HP, May 12, 1920.

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reign of terror precipitated by a bolshevist mob” and of losing his son in Word War I.

The Houston Post reported that Goldman “quietly gave his son to the American cause” when the United States entered the war, and then tragically lost the young man when he was hit by a German shell in 1917. Goldman’s story not only served as a lesson in

Jewish patriotism, but it also attempted to dissociate Russian immigrants from radical movements.202

Jewish women also entered the fray, and Houston’s Council of Jewish Women was one of the most outspoken groups for the Americanization of immigrants in Texas.

Countless notices for meetings, fundraisers, and social events designed to advance the association’s goal of educating the immigrant appeared in the Houston Post throughout

1920. It was in this year that the council established a school for adult immigrants as part of their Americanization work. In 1919, the Americanization Committee of the Council of Jewish Women invited immigrant parents to a Thanksgiving festival featuring entertainment provided by their children, as part of a committee project emphasizing national holidays. The councils’ efforts toward the education of adults and children as part of a larger Americanization program was closely tied to the settlement house movement in Texas cities.203

For all of this Americanization work, there appears very little evidence in the city newspapers that Texans were worried that the Italian and East European Jewish population posed much of a threat to American institutions. German Jews in Texas urban

202 “Rabbi Goldman to Speak Here on Bolshevism,” HP, March 25, 1920. 203 “Council of Jewish Women,” HP, January 18, 1920; “Houston Council of Jewish Women Aid Immigrants,” HP, March 14, 1920; “Entertainment and Dance by Council of Jewish Home,” HP, March 24, 1920; “Americanization School is Opened by Jews Here,” HP, January 28, 1920; “Kindergarten Neighborhood House,” DMN, November 1, 1903; “Neighborhood House Children to Entertain Parents Tonight,” DMN, November 24, 1919.

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areas may have feared that a newly arrived and unassimilated Jewish immigrant population threatened their status among native-born whites by virtue of their common faith, so they embarked upon a campaign to Americanize the immigrants. Generally, however, reports of Americanization programs in Texas seemed optimistic. Perhaps it was the relatively small size of these immigrant populations in Dallas, Houston, and

Galveston that allowed the newcomers to escape some of the more virulent anti-European immigrant sentiment that affected other areas of the country. Or perhaps it was a desire on the immigrants’ part to assimilate that calmed the fears of the native-born populations of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston. Certainly, these two immigrant groups displayed a willingness to do so, as is indicated by high rates of naturalization and English proficiency.

To be sure, there were those individuals whose fear of a foreign influence made their desire for the Americanization of immigrants not only urgent but sometimes violent.

The resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s, which found solid footing in a spirit of nationalism, was felt in Dallas where the organization had an estimated 13,000 members.

Presiding over the national Klan was Dallas dentist, Imperial Wizard Hiram Wesley

Evans. This incarnation of the Klan not only targeted African Americans, but also

Catholics, Jews, and the “new immigration,” and was responsible for at least sixty-eight separate floggings in the Trinity River bottoms, including at least one assault on a Jewish resident, and other acts of violence.204

204 For more information on Klan activities in Dallas, see Michael Phillips’ White Metropolis, Race, Ethnicity, and Religion in Dallas, 1841-2001 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2006), Charles C. Alexander’s Crusade for Conformity: The Ku Klux Klan in Texas, 1920–1930 (Houston: Texas Gulf Coast Historical Association, 1962) and Darwin Payne’s Big D: Triumphs and Troubles of an American Supercity in the 20th Century (Dallas: Three Forks Press, 2000). Higham, Strangers in the Land, 289-291; Phillips, White Metropolis, 86, 97-101.

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Texas’ foreign-born Italian and East European Jewish residents seem to have escaped much of the physical violence that was directed toward African Americans, though this does not mean that they failed to perceive the threat of Klan violence as real.

The Klan had many supporters in Texas cities and was powerful enough in the first years of the 1920s to get state and local officials elected to office. The influence the Klan had on the lives of Texas immigrants and the fear that the organization instilled in these urban communities should be not underestimated. In May of 1921, as streetlights were simultaneously extinguished in downtown Dallas, a group of “stern shrouded men” paraded down Dallas’ Main Street surprising a Saturday night crowd. Bearing an

American flag, and banners emblazoned with phrases like, “100 Per Cent American,”

“White Supremacy,” “All Native Born,” “Gamblers Go,” “Degenerates Go,” and “For

Our Daughters,” the nearly eight hundred Klansmen were an eerie sight, proceeding in silence in what one observer called “perhaps the strangest parade Dallas has ever seen.”205

But the secret society had its detractors as well. There were those, like Rabbi

David Lefkowitz of Dallas’ Temple Emanu-El, who openly opposed the group based on its anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant principles and use of violence, and others, like Dallas

Morning News president George Dealey, who opposed the disruptive influence the Klan had on the economic and social life of Texas’ urban areas. The Dallas Morning News waged a campaign against the Klan. One News editorialist wrote a scathing response to the May 1921 Klan parade in which he accused the Klan of “slander” against Dallas:206

The spectacle of eight hundred masked and white-gowned men parading the streets of Dallas under banners proclaiming them Knights of the Ku

205 “Klan Marches in Awesome Parade,” DMN, May 22, 1921. 206 “Governor Refers to Ku Klux Klan,” DMN, June 18, 1921.

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Klux Klan and self-appointed guardians of the community’s political, social and moral welfare has a ridiculous aspect…It was slander on Dallas, because the only conditions which could be given to excuse the organization of such a body do not exist. This exhibition bore false- witness against Dallas to everyone who has heard of it. White supremacy is not imperiled. Vice is not rampant. The constituted agencies of government are still regnant. And if freedom is endangered, it is by the redivivus of the mob spirit in the disguising garb of the Ku Klux Klan. They seek to institute a reign of terror. They will not succeed, except over the minds of the humble and ignorant.207

In June of 1921, Texas Governor Pat Neff criticized the Klan as a force of lawlessness that threatened the “peace and tranquility,” of the state. Three years later, the political power of the group faltered with the election of Miriam “Ma” Ferguson over the

Klan-backed candidate, Felix D. Robertson, in the 1924 Democratic gubernatorial primary. Between this loss and the 1925 murder conviction of Klan leader, David

Stephenson, the group’s popularity plunged. It lost almost 12,000 members in Dallas alone and dropped to 18,000 members statewide in 1926. Though the Klan’s presence was strong in Dallas and other areas of Texas, its influence was not so powerful that it could cow urban-dwelling Texans into silence and submission. The public campaigns of individuals like Rabbi Lefkowitz and institutions like the Dallas Morning News are indicators of this reality.208

In her study of Italians in Denver, Janet Worrall concluded that the Klan made life

“miserable” for the western city’s Catholics through verbal assaults and threats. It is likely that the average Italian and East European Jewish immigrant maintained a low profile with regard to Klan activity to avoid attracting attention, as Worrell found to be

207 “Dallas Slandered,” DMN, May 24, 1921. 208 Phillips, White Metropolis, 86, 97-101; “Houston Ku Klux Klan to Have Open Meeting,” HP, November 23, 1920; “Imperial Wizard of Ku Klux Klan Tells Purposes of Klan,” HP, November 27, 1920; “After 50 Years Ku Klux Klan Marches Again in Houston,” HP, November 28, 1920.

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the case among Italians in Denver, but outspoken public opposition of Jewish religious and native-born community leaders suggests that intimidation, rather than physical violence, was the preferred method of social control among the Klan in these areas of urban Texas. Immigrants, therefore, likely felt frightened in the Klan’s immediate presence, like during Dallas’ downtown parade, but did not feel an immediate physical

209 threat in their daily lives.

That Italian and East European Jewish immigrants felt some pressure to assimilate in urban Texas is clear. Yet, their seeming ability to retain elements of their social, cultural, and religious identities and to integrate these in ways with which the larger populations of Dallas, Houston, and Galveston were comfortable, suggests a few things.

First, the Italian and East European Jewish immigrant groups in urban Texas felt little pressure to completely abandon their ethnic identity and loyalty to their native home, despite the absence of a large ethnic community such as was present in places like New

York or Chicago. Therefore, in the case of Texas’ urban areas at least, the presence of a large, tightly knit immigrant community was not a prerequisite to the maintenance of practices unique to an ethnic group. There are, unfortunately, few sources for determining how Italian and East European Jewish immigrants in Texas’ cities perceived the pressure to assimilate. The construction of organizations that fostered Jewish culture and preserved the Yiddish language is an indicator that East European Jewish immigrants did not want to abandon their ethnic identity. These immigrants, however, must have realized that in moving to areas that lacked large ethnic communities some level of assimilation would occur. A high rate of English speakers among both groups and

209 Janet Worrall, "The Impact of the Ku Klux Klan and Prohibition on Denver's Little Italy." Journal Of The West 43, no. 4 (2004): 32-35.

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naturalization rates suggests that the immigrants who came to Texas’ urban areas were engaged in the process.

Second, it appears that the native-born population of Dallas, Houston, and

Galveston may have felt less threatened by the presence of these Italian and East

European Jewish immigrant communities in the early twentieth century than did native- born Americans in other areas of the country. There was little of the residential segregation of immigrant groups that concerned assimilationists in other parts of the

United States. Generally, the Italian and East European Jewish immigrants in Texas urban areas seemed receptive to American social and political ideals, were interested in becoming citizens, in learning English, and establishing themselves economically in these cities. Of course, the threat of violence that Southerners relied upon to police the behavior of the foreign and native born, surely made Italian and the East-European

Jewish newcomers uneasy. But on the whole, the immigrants who settled in Dallas,

Houston, and Galveston in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries appear to have found a measure of success in establishing the institutions they needed to manage their social and religious lives in an area so distant from the major immigrant centers of the United States. They effectively negotiated their integration Texas’ urban areas without sacrificing their identities as Italians and Jews.

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Conclusion

In May of 1914, Russian-born Meyer Golman departed the German port of

Bremen aboard the Cassel. Along with his wife and children, Golman arrived in

Galveston in June and then traveled to Dallas. His three sons, Julius, Hyman, and

Abraham, all found work at Schepps Bakery in South Dallas. Julius, the eldest of the three, had arrived in the United States a year before the rest of the family, and perhaps his position as a delivery driver for the bakery led to Hyman’s and Abraham’s employment there. Julius eventually became a manager at Schepps, a business which had been started by Russian immigrants Joe and Jennie Schepps, who had settled in Dallas in 1901. The

Golman family first lived on Holmes Street, not too far from the bakery, in the heavily

Jewish populated neighborhood near City Park. A few years later Meyer moved his family several blocks north to Beaumont Street. Both residences were within walking distance of a railroad down which the Julius Schepps Freeway, named after Joe’s and

Jennie’s son, would be constructed years later.210

Landing in Texas in 1914, the Golman family was among the last East European

Jewish immigrants who would arrive during the Galveston Movement. The leaders of the immigration plan hoped to decrease anti-Semitism and the demand for immigration restriction through the dispersal of individuals and families across the southwestern

United States. Yet, less than a decade after the Golmans’ arrival, nativists in the United

States won a victory with the passage of immigration restriction laws in 1921 and 1924,

210 “Meier Golmann,” Galveston Passenger Lists, 1896-1948, June 1914, Cassel, Image 17, Ancestry.com; “Hyman Golman,” U.S. City Directories, Texas, Dallas, City Directory, 1915, Image 197, Ancestry.com; “Hyman Golman,” 1920 United States Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 20, District 39, Family 232; “Julius Golman,” 1920 United States Census, Texas, Dallas County, Dallas, Precinct 20, District 39, Family 232; “Julius Golman, 1930 United States Census, Texas, Dallas, Dallas County, District 54, Family 180; “Schepps Reached City in 1901,” DMN, December, 8, 1969.

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which imposed numerical limitations on the immigrants admitted to the United States annually. The immigration restrictionists’ objective was to reduce the number of people coming from Eastern and Southern Europe and to some extent the legislation worked as intended, though eventually European immigrants learned how to use non-quota exemptions to their advantage.211

Despite a generally favorable attitude Americans held regarding immigration restriction in the 1920s, the Dallas Morning News printed an article in October of 1930 that projected growth of the Italian population in Texas with a more positive attitude towards the Southern European immigrant than might be expected at the time. The piece reflected Texans’ belief that immigrants who settled in the Lone Star State were of a different character than those who settled in the Northeast:

Two hundred Italians gathered in Dallas to celebrate Columbus Day. “There are 70,000 Italians in Texas, and I am happy to see that they are good citizens,” the Italian consul said in addressing the Roma Club banquet Saturday night. There will be some surprise at his figures, showing as they do a considerable increase from 8,000 immigrant and 20,000 American-born Italians in Texas, according to the census of 1920. They are law-abiding, hard-working, attending their own business. The lawless, gangster type of Italian that has troubled some Northern States is notable for its absence in Texas. The merchant, restaurateur and farmer type is what is found in Texas. And Texas has experienced no trouble from these residents. Had they stayed in Italy they would have been good citizens, so they make good citizens here. The increase in Italian population in the United States is expected to be considerable as compared with 1920...On a percentage basis Texas will be seen to have received more than the country as a whole, since the number in this State will have almost trebled, if Consul Vitali G. Gallina is correct in his estimate. It is improbable that the Italian stock of the United States will equal that rate, of course.212

Yet, by 1930, the growth of the Southern and Eastern European immigrant population had either slowed dramatically or halted all together. The decline was the result of the

211 Daniels, Guarding the Golden Door, 47-57. 212 “Italians in Texas,” DMN, October 16, 1930.

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virtual elimination of immigration from Italy and Eastern Europe as a result of the 1924 restrictions, as well as a natural decrease among European immigrants who had arrived in the mid-nineteenth century.213

As they had in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Texans have continued to celebrate their immigrant heritage in the 1930s and beyond. A 1938 Dallas

Morning News article on international Christmas traditions included testimonials given by the city’s Italian, Syrian, German, Greek, and Polish immigrant populations. There is no question that Italian and East European Jewish immigrants stayed in Texas cities and impacted their development. Most histories on these two populations in Texas after the

1920s stress the emergence of ethnic leadership, institutional growth, and the immigrant’s cultural influence on the state.

Over time, as Italian and East European Jewish immigrants who arrived in the

United States as children grew into adults and the second generation came of age, the foreign born became increasingly part of mainstream society as their ethnic identity coalesced with their status as Americans and, specifically, Texans. Some of the

Orthodox synagogues, like Shearith Israel in Dallas, became Conservative congregations towards mid-century, shedding some of the traditions that the East European immigrants had carried with them to the United States. For the Jewish community, a fear that the younger generation was losing a sense of its heritage was alleviated by the growth of

213 Fourteenth Census of the United States. Population 1920. Composition and Characteristics of the Population (Washington: GPO, 1921), 28; Fifteenth Census of the United States:1930. Population Volume III, Part 2 (Washington: GPO, 1932), 1007-1008, 1016-1017, 1019.

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Jewish institutions, like the Jewish Community Center, which were designed to foster a sense of Jewish identity in the children of immigrants.214

Texas’ Italian immigrants and their descendents have also shown interest in the preservation of an ethnic identity. Religious celebrations, like the observation of the feast of Saint Joseph, continued among Italians of foreign and native birth throughout the century. Italian associations also started emerging in Texas in the 1970s and 80s, when white Americans began expressing a renewed interest in their ethnic heritage. Houston’s

Italian Cultural and Community Center formed in 1976 as an umbrella organization for more than twenty Italian clubs in the city.215

An examination of the foreign-born Italian and East European Jewish populations in urban Texas shows that the immigrant history of the state is not simply a story of

German and Mexican settlers, nor is it a narrative that unfolds only in the rural areas at the center of the state’s agricultural industry. Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, though proportionately small in relation to the native-born population, made the long journey to Texas to take advantage of the opportunities offered by small urban environments during a period of economic growth. They were, in a sense, pioneers within their immigrant group, moving into a region that lacked large ethnic populations that supplied a measure of support for their counterparts in places like New York and

Chicago. The immigrants settled in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston and created organizations and institutions that provided immigrants not only with the opportunity to

214 Biderman, They Came to Stay, 133-134; Winegarten and Schechter, Deep in the Heart, 132. 215 “Saint Joseph’s Day Feast Spread in Italian Home,” March 20, 1931; “Italian Catholics Heap Altars with Saint Joseph’s Day Offerings,” DMN, March 19, 1940; “Italians to Honor Saint Joseph’s Day,” DMN, March 19, 1956; The Italian Club Dallas, http://italianclubdallas.org/default.asp (accessed February 8, 2012); Italian Cultural and Community Center, http://www.iccchouston.com/about/ mission/(accessed February 8, 2012).

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socialize and worship with others in their ethnic group, but also with systems of financial support to assist members during difficult times.

Moving the study of Eastern and Southern European immigration outside the confines of the immigrant centers of the American Northeast, allows new details to emerge regarding the early twentieth century immigrant experience. Perhaps most significant is the role that small business ownership played in the lives of Italian and East

European Jewish immigrants in Texas. The self-employed status that was quite typical among these populations in Dallas, Galveston, and Houston was not nearly as common to the lives of those Italians and East European Jews residing in the urban metropolises of the northern and eastern United States. Small business ownership granted the immigrants a level of independence that could not be reached by the unskilled blue-collar worker or the immigrant toiling in the factory. However, the immigrants in Texas cities who entered into entrepreneurial ventures took on a risk of failure that immigrants working in the employ of another did not. Because many Italian and East European Jewish immigrants came to Texas not directly from Europe, but often after settling in another state first, it is clear that the individuals who left Europe and traveled thousands of miles to the United States were seeking improvement in their economic status. Texas did not always satisfy this need for the Italian or East European Jewish immigrant, and some left the state, but it appears likely that even those who settled first in distant states like New

York and Massachusetts, or who came directly from places abroad, were aware to some degree of the opportunities available for small business ownership in Texas’ urban areas.

The immigrants’ entry into white-collar jobs as business owners, office workers, and, sometimes, professionals, also suggests something about the racial structure of the

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Texas urban environment, where unskilled manual laboring positions were almost exclusively the province of African Americans in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Though the native-born black population had made some economic gains in the late nineteenth century, by 1900 white Texans were increasingly interested in solidifying a racial order that kept blacks in certain jobs and apart from white society.

Judging by the low rate of employment in blue-collar work, Italian and East European

Jewish immigrants did not have much difficulty entering higher status jobs and this indicates that with regard to employment patterns, these immigrant populations were considered as white members of society by the native-born.216

But as members of a society that was dominated by the native born, immigrants who were interested in the preservation of an ethnic identity had to build institutions that would support their cultural traditions and religious practices. There should be no assumption that the construction of immigrant organizations in Texas was a forgone conclusion, even with regard to the East European Jewish population who entered urban communities where an earlier wave of Western European immigrants had already laid the foundations of Jewish life. Not content with Texas culture and society as it existed upon their arrival, the Italian and East European immigrants established social and benevolent organizations, religious institutions, and educational associations to pursue their interests as individuals with practices and traditions that set them apart from the native-born population. Yet, the way in which they defined themselves as Italians, Orthodox Jews, or even Zionists, does not appear to have conflicted with their identities as Texans and

Americans, even from the perspective of the native-born population.

216 Kretzmann, “A House Built Upon the Sand,” 125-136.

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Italian and East European Jewish immigrants were certainly not the first foreign- born groups in the Lone Star State to embark upon a process of building folk islands in the middle of a sea of native-born Texans. Austrians, Czechs, French, Germans, Irish,

Mexicans, and Swedes were among the various ethnic groups who established social organizations in Texas cities in this period. These ethnic group associations were the precursors to the multitude of ethnic clubs and societies that exist in Texas today and the groups who set up booths at the Texas Folklife Festival in San Antonio each year. The study of Italian and East European Jewish organizations and the immigrants who formed them, shows that the immigrants who traveled to Texas’ urban areas in the early twentieth century had faith that they could create an ethnic community wherever they went and that in Texas there was need for such a support system. However, as the question of immigrant assimilation began creating anxiety within American society, these same groups negotiated the preservation of their identity by clarifying that they shared the ideals that Americanization agents so passionately promoted. The immigrants defined their own interests as running parallel to, and sometimes intimately bound up with, those held by Americans.217

The immigrant’s assimilation need not be conceived as a process of either the retention or loss of tradition. Among first generation Italian and East European immigrants, ethnic identity would be reformulated to some degree in the United States, particularly in the absence of a large foreign-born community. Celebrations of

217 Dallas City Directory, 1920, 42; Morrison and Fourmy Directory Company, General Directory of the City of Galveston, 1901-1902 (Galveston: Morrison and Fourmy Directory Company, Compilers and Publishers 1901), 249; Morrison and Fourmy Directory Company, Directory of the City of Galveston, 1909-1910 (Galveston: Morrison and Fourmy Directory Company, Compilers, Publishers and Proprietors, 1909), 50; Morrison & Fourmy Directory Co.’s Galveston City Directory, 1921, 46; Morrison & Fourmy Houston City Directory, 1920-1921, 66; Morrison and Fourmy Directory Company, Houston City Directory, 1925 (Houston: R.L.Polk & Co., Compilers and Publishers,1925), 56.

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Christopher Columbus, for example, became important public events for Texas’ Italian population. The obstacles set before immigrants who wanted to recreate religious and cultural traditions did not prevent them from doing so. The native-born population of

Texas’ urban areas, far from discouraging ethnic association, often found cause to celebrate it as well. Italians were urged to buy Italian war bonds as a show of patriotism to their homeland and local officials professed their support for Zionist causes.

The immigrants who settled in Texas were not unlike their counterparts in other regions of the United States in terms of education and marital status, though on average they were slightly more likely to speak English. But generally, the differences between the urban-dwelling immigrants in Texas and those in the North and East were slight. Yet, their experience seems quite unlike that of their counterparts in other major U.S. cities.

Texas’ immigrants were less likely to work in blue-collar jobs or concentrate within certain neighborhoods, and more likely to own a home and a business. To some degree, the differences were factors of the economies and geographies of the small, urban environment. But they also resulted from immigrants seeking out opportunities within these urban areas. The creation of an economic niche in small business ownership is one indication of this; Italians and East European Jewish immigrants were involved in these entrepreneurial ventures to a greater degree than their native-born counterparts. The immigrants’ tendency towards residential mobility, residential dispersion, and home ownership shows their active pursuit of the best housing opportunities.

Some of those immigrants who settled in Texas’ urban areas moved to the Lone

Star State after first settling in another area of the United States and mobility is a defining characteristic of their experience. Once the Italian and East European Jewish immigrants

251

arrived in Texas they moved about their new environment, often relocating their families and businesses. For the group of immigrants who left Europe seeking financial stability or an end to religious persecution and a safe future for their families, the journey did not always end in New York or Louisiana. Yet, they did not move aimlessly. Many found success in Texas and stayed there, spending their lives on the periphery of the great communities of the Eastern United States. But an important aspect of the immigration narrative involves the decisions immigrants made not only before leaving home or in the days and weeks after landing in America, but also in the years and decades that followed.

Not content to simply settle where they had “landed,” Italian and East Europeans crossed the Atlantic, the United States, and the even the distance between Texas cities. They continued to move even within these cities, seeking out new neighborhoods, new places for worship, and new locations for their businesses. Certainly, this mobility was made easier in a smaller, less populated urban environment like Dallas, Galveston, or Houston, where Italians and Eastern European Jews found opportunities that were not available to them in the larger immigrant centers. The study of foreign-born East European Jewish and Italian immigrants in these urban areas of Texas suggests the important role that western migration played in the immigrants’ pursuit of greater urban-based opportunities in the United States.

More than four million immigrants live in Texas today, only slightly fewer than the number of foreign-born residents of New York State. Though these immigrants have settled in Texas for job opportunities, as did migrants in the early part of the twentieth century, many toil in low-paying, manual labor positions. There is much concern among the native-born population about future immigration and the assimilation of those

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currently living in Texas. Many fear that illegal immigrants are undeservedly receiving government assistance, and call for increased deportations and heightened security along the Mexican border which includes the construction of a physical barrier between Mexico and the United States.218

Yet, little over a century ago Texans regarded immigration differently. Though there was concern about job competition and assimilation at the turn of the century as well, Texans believed that immigrants, particularly farmers and agricultural workers, were central to the development of the region and to Texas’ ability to compete with other states in terms of population and industry growth. Though earlier in the nineteenth century these immigrants had been primarily western Europeans, increasing numbers of southern and eastern Europeans along with large numbers of Mexican immigrants made their way into the state to help to build railroads, plant and harvest crops, build the mining and petroleum industries, and take part in the state’s commercial development.

Texans hoped to control this immigration by urging arrivals toward areas where laborers were needed and by encouraging them to assimilate into the dominant culture. To be sure, attitudes regarding immigrant laborers shifted over the twentieth century partly due to the onset of the Great Depression, but immigrants’ role in the development of agriculture and other industries was generally recognized. But if Texans pursue the prohibition of government assistance and restriction of educational opportunities granted to illegal immigrants as other southern and southwestern states have done, negative economic consequences (not to mention damage to the person) will accompany a decrease of the immigrant population. The loss will be seen not only in a reduction of

218 “State and County QuickFacts,” U.S. Census Bureau, http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/ 48000.html, accessed February 29, 2012.

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consumers and taxpayers, but also in a shrinking workforce that has become an integral part of the state’s economy over the last century and a half.

254

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Dissertations and Theses:

Barker, E. Shannon. “Los Tejanos de San Antonio: Mexican Immigrant Family Acculturation, 1880-1929.” Ph.D. diss., George Washington University, 1996.

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Hewitt,William Phillip. “The Czechs in Texas: A Study of the Immigration and the Development of Czech Ethnicity, 1850-1920.” Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 1978.

Kallison, Francis. “100 Years of Jewry in San Antonio.” M.A. thesis, Trinity University, San Antonio, Texas, 1977.

Kessler, James Lee, Rabbi. “B.O.I., A History of Congregational B’Nai Israel, Galveston Texas.” Ph.D. diss., Hebrew Union College Jewish Institute of Religion California, Los Angeles, California, 1988.

Kretzmann, Stephen. “A House Built Upon Sand: Race, Class, Gender and the Galveston Hurricane of 1900” Ph.D. diss., Wisconsin-Madison, 1995.

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Phillips, Joseph Michael. “The Fire this Time: The Battle over Racial, Regional, and Religious Identities in Dallas, Texas, 1860-1990.” Ph.D. diss., University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 2002.

Rozek, Barbara Jane., "Words of Enticement: The Effort to Attract Immigrants to Texas, 1865-1914." Ph.D. diss., Rice University, 1995.

Schlam, Helena Frenkil. “The Early Jews of Houston.” M.A. thesis, Ohio State University, Columbus Ohio, 1971.

Stone, Bryan Edward. “West of Center: Jews on the Real and Imagined Frontiers of Texas.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, Austin, Texas, 2003.

Twomey, Dannehl Maureen. “The Influence of Alex Sanger on the Development of Dallas Texas.” Ph.D. diss., University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma, 1987.

Unpublished Articles

Scarmado, Rosalie. “St. Anthony’s Catholic Church: A Century of History and Faith.” Catholic Archives of Texas, Austin, 1996.

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