The prosperous, clean-shaven Cohen, his broad chest splendid with diamonds, looks the other way.

I don’t recognize him, my frent,
I ain’t dot kindt of Shoo;
I own a shtore, un’ bay my rent,
Und make it bay me, too
De Besht of goots are on de shelef,
Beir Moses Cohen un’ Co.—
Oh, I begun like him myselef—
But dot vas long ako.¹³

While Pat Murphy and Isaac Cohen played the principal immigrant roles, other national types did appear often enough to form something of a caricature. The German, or "Dutchman," and the Chinese had been around since the 1850’s. The Italian, however, who was just beginning to enter in large numbers, was new. Some ethnic groups, the Scandinavian and Slavic, for instance, were ignored, probably because their areas of settlement were places other than New York, the publishing and theatrical capital.

The comic German was portrayed as slow moving, ponderous, and dull witted. His dialect, with "py gollies" scattered through it, was as stereotyped as his figure. He was rank with sauerkraut and Limburger, fodder which was obviously made of decomposed vegetable and animal matter, and which symbolized the decaying civilization of the European monarchies. The German might work as a butcher or could blow a large bass horn in one of these street bands that threatened to play unless they were given money. More likely, the German ran a lager been saloon.

The most objectionable trait about the German was his association with seditious political philosophies. "Almost all our Socialists come from Germany. There is something in the German intellect, or the German diet, or the German atmosphere which breeds the spirit of- discontent today as it bred the spirit of dissent in the days of Martin Luther."¹⁴ The public mind usually confused socialism with anarchy; all that the average person knew was that both groups were composed of slovenly, hairy foreigners, who liked to destroy private property with dynamite bombs. The famous German-born anarchist, John Most, came to America in 1882 and made -himself a frequent butt for paragraphers. The incendiary speeches in heavy dialect that the humorists put into his mouth helped establish the German as a bomb thrower.

His name it was Deinameit Schwartz;
He was born in the slums of Berlin.
His beer he demolished in quarts—
He possessed large abundance of "chin."

35

He came to America’s shore
With a new patent bomb-shell or ball;
With a thirst for destruction and gore,
And a liver distended with gall.

He was met by ten brazen-tongued bands;
Escorted ’neath banners of red.
And ’mid anarchist shouts and demands
For a speech, to his quarters was led.¹⁵

Although Germans had been suspect since the "Forty-eighters," it was the Haymarket Riot of 1886 that definitely associated anarchism with the Germans. Of the eight men arrested for inciting the riot, five were German born; and when, seven years later, the members of this group who had not yet been hanged were pardoned by the Illinois governor, John Peter Altgeld, the American people had proof positive that the Germans possessed a racial affinity for radicalism.

The Haymarket Riot was one of the most important incidents bringing about stiffer immigration laws. Judge said that the noise of the bomb exploded at Chicago was heard around the earth. "The people of this country will not forget that bomb as long as they live, and it will take but one or two other experiments of the kind to inaugurate such socialistic destruction among the red-capped ruffians as will leave very few of them alive."¹⁶

One of the ego defenses brought about by discrimination is a displacement of aggression in the form of hostility toward other out groups. The Irish, first in line, had pecking privileges. Mrs. McMugg asked Mrs. O’Pugg if she had heard about the Anarchists. "Oi did. And it’s a shame that the guvyment doan’t shtop dem furinars from comm’ to Amerika." Pat told the train conductor that the railroad ought to have enough money to run immigrant cars so that he wouldn’t have to sit next to a "Ditchman." But the group that the Irish showed the most hostility to was the Chinese.

Mrs. O‘Coork: "Arra worra, an’ so poor little Teddy do be dead. Phat happened ’im?"
Mrs. McQuirk: "Poor Angel! It wor an accident. You know how the broth av a bye wud amuse hisseif breakin’ Chinymm’s windies an t’rowin’ bricks at the haythen?"
Mrs. O’Coork: "Yis; bliss th’ dear choild’s sowl."
Mrs. McQuirk: "Wull, this avenin’ he t’rew a brick at a Chinyman, but he made a mishtake, poor bye, an’ hit an Oirish leddy. She kilt ’im"¹⁷

The Chinese were pictured wearing a cotton blouse and pantaloons, a peaked straw hat, and sandals. They fixed their hair into long queues that hung below their knees and which little boys liked to swing upon. The Chinese supposedly worshipped idols, smoked opium, and ate rats and dogs.

Miscegenation was the theme of some of the jokes. The Chinese were supposedly interested in the Christian religion only when they could go to a mission Sunday School taught by a pretty American girl. The magazines complained about the practice of allowing young girls to teach the Chinese and go with them on picnics where there was no white man to chaperon. It was suspected that these relationships led to interracial marriages. When a minister approached a Chinese and asked him to join the Sunday School, the Oriental said, "No." He already had one wife in China and another in California and did not want any more.

The Italian stereotype appeared only infrequently in the magazines. Italian women wore peasant dress and carried huge bundles on their heads. When they met on the street, they asked each other if their bundles were on straight. The men wore peaked hats and had drooping mustaches. Some were organ grinders and fruit peddlers, but most worked at construction. The Italian was supposed to be hot-blooded and volatile, given to quick argument and frequent violence. The following description of an Italian construction crew appeared in Truth:

In three weeks a filthy, scurvy, half-starved crew of jabbering Italians arrives as near the waste land as they can be carried in a travel-car that is fitted up with bunks like the den of a Chinaman. The bunks are full of foul straw and swarm with vermin. Several of the Italians are scarred with the pits of a recent disease. All are incredibly dirty. Each is the potential nursery of a host of bacteria. Each man helps steal the fence-rails that serve for fire wood, the vegetables, and the occasional poultry that thicken the hell-broth (brewed of a night by Hecates in battered pots and rusty tomato cans), the mouldy crusts and fetid garbage of which dog-kennels are robbed to swell their abominable meals. Each contributes stolen beer-dregs to the general intoxication, which begins after working hours, continues in increasing riot, and, not infrequently, ends in murder at midnight.¹⁸

There can be little doubt that humor was an important medium for the transmission of ethnic stereotypes. Jokes are easily remembered and quickly passed on, especially in a society that rewards good humored people. Thus were images of Irish and Jews, Germans and Italians, and immigrants in general built up in the dominant class mind, and native Americans then used these caricatures to help classify their rapidly changing national experience.

There is some evidence that even immigrants appreciated these stereotypes. They flocked to see themselves in Harrigan and Hart comedies, and the German language Puck and Der Yiddischer Puck carried immigrant humor similar to that of the English language edition. For the newly arrived, ethnic jokes served as a mirror reflecting gaucheries and greenness. These comic portrayals showed them how not to act. Immigrant stereotypes thus exercised what Constance Rourke believed to be the role of humor in America: a fashioning instrument working on the eccentricities of a polymorphous people in an attempt to achieve a common type.¹⁹

But it would err too much on the side of benevolence to suspect nothing invidious about these caricatures, especially when they appeared alongside editorials criticizing unlimited immigration. Fault was found with the newcomers’ life styles, the smelly foods they ate, and their habit of non-bathing. They were indicted for bringing in crime and for spreading revolution and anarchy. But the most telling argument was economic. Immigrants (often recruited as strike breakers) denied the American laborer his right to work, it was claimed. In short, the humor magazines did not look upon the "oppressed" of European monarchies with sentimental eyes. "The oppressed," snarled Bierce, "are dirty, vicious, and irreclaimably ignorant. They are mostly cut-throats, thieves, and communists."²⁰

When apologists pointed out that all Americans had been immigrants, Life claimed that there was really no comparison between the recent immigration and the first settlers.

The men and women who established our first colonies and founded our system of government were not the refuse of foreign populations, but the very flower of manhood and womanhood. . . . It was a case of natural selection on the grandest scale. Only the strong and the courageous were the first venturers that composed the nucleus of the nation, who were really moved by nobler considerations than mere fortune-hunting.²¹

Studied today, the ethnic humor of the nineteenth century is other than amusing; it is a record of prejudice. Immigrant caricatures had to be important, though perhaps subliminal, influences in changing public opinion about America being the refuge for the homeless and the poor. Although the comic Irishman appeared as early as 1830, and ethnic humor vestigially remains in the Polish joke, the heyday for this sort of comedy (judging from the files of extant periodicals) came between 1880 and 1900. It was exactly during this period that public opinion about immigration began to shift, and several restrictive laws were passed. Until

this time Congress had usually encouraged immigration. The Statue of Liberty dedicated in 1886 and eulogized by Emma Lazarus, "Give me your tired, your poor …" stands today a monument of historical irony, a beacon for the past but not the future.

NOTES

    ¹Punchinello, 1 (June 27, 1870), 195.
    ²Truth, 12 (Nov. 11, 1893), 10.
   ³Truth, 12 (June 3,1893), 4.
    ⁴Judge’s Library (March, l891), p. 2.
    ⁵Puck, 8 (Dec. 8, 1880), 223.
    ⁶Wasp, 8 (Dec. 20, 1882), 37.
    ⁷Truth, 12 (Nov. 11, 1893), 4.
    ⁸Wasp, 8 (July 22, 1882), 452.
    ⁹Puck, 8 (Dec. 8,1880), 220.
    ¹⁰Life, 30 (Dec. 23, 1897), 554.
    ¹¹Truth, 12 (May 6, 1893), 2.
    ¹²Abraham Cahan, The Rise of David Levinsky (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1917), p.90.
    ¹³Puck, 11 (June 7, 1882), 248.
    ¹⁴Troth, 12 (July 8, 1893), 2.
    ¹⁵Texas Siftings, 6 (June 5, 1886), 9.
    ¹⁶Judge, 10 (May 22, 1886), 10.
    ¹⁷Puck, 27 (May 28, 1890), 211.
    ¹⁸Truth, 12 (July 22, 1893), 5.
    ¹⁹Constance Rourke, American Humor (Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1953), p. 232.
    ²⁰Wasp, 10 (May 12, 1883), 4.
    ²¹Life, 12 (July 26, 1888), 178.