THE DARK
SIDE OF IMMIGRATION:
POVERTY AND POVERTY RELIEF AMONG GERMAN
IMMIGRANTS
espite numerous hardships and
occasional disasters, the story of
German immigration to the United
States is generally an optimistic one. Final-
ly, the great majority of German immigrants
benefited from the move. Indeed, most
Americans living today would not be here if
their ancestors had not immigrated success-
fully and flourished at least modestly since.
That large numbers of immigrants from
German-speaking countries did settle in the
United States and ultimately make signifi-
cant contributions to American life is, of
course, an indisputable fact as well, one
confirmed by many a scholarly and popular
article or book. But there is another side to
immigration which receives comparatively
little attention. Published accounts tend to
chronicle the lives of successful people:
those who left their mark, became famous,
or were at least pillars of the community.
The discussion which follows here, howev-
er, will examine another side of immigra-
tion—desperate poverty. It focuses on those
people who left only a barely perceptible
mark and who might have left no trace at all
had it not been for the accurate bookkeeping
of one charitable organization.
Since the mid-eighteenth century the
need to assist inexperienced newcomers in
the task of settling in after immigration had
become obvious. In fact, the "Mayflower"
expedition itself, which for many is the key
event associated with the beginning of
organized European immigration, was only
possible because of an act of charity. Not a
single one of the Pilgrim Fathers, who, it
must be said, had planned their adventure
with singular ineptitude, would have sur-
vived the first winter if the local Indians had
not taken pity on them and provided them
with food. Because of the generosity of the
indigenous people the "Mayflower" set sail
for home in April 1621 with fifty-four indi-
viduals. Remarkably, about half the original
number was still alive.¹ In later centuries
charitable assistance to immigrants was usu-
ally done on an ethnic basis. Older Italian
immigrants helped more recent ones, the
Irish-Americans helped their compatriots
from the old country, the Portuguese helped
the Portuguese, and so on. Of course, the
Germans had their immigrant-aid societies
as well. The oldest organization which had
as its objective the support of immigrants
from German-speaking countries is the
German Society of Pennsylvania in Phila-
delphia, which traces its history back to
1764. Philadelphia at that time was the
largest city in the country and its political
center.
In what might be considered confirma-
tion of the stereotypical German love of
order and official documentation, the
records of the German Society of Pennsyl-
vania are remarkably complete. The Society
has virtually complete documentation of its
charitable activities on behalf of German
immigrants from 1869 to 1914, including
ledgers which document daily contacts with
the poor and indigent. Prior to the First
World War the files were complete back to
1800 and even earlier. The older records
were apparently lost or misplaced in storage
at some point during the period of intense
anti-German sentiment which marked
America's entrance into World War I and
extended into the years between the two
world wars.² The present discussion will
focus on the time from 1869 to 1875. The
D
THE DARK SIDE OF EMIGRATION_____
amount of extant material is sizeable. The
surviving records begin on 28 September
1869. Between that time and 31 December
1875, close to 12,000 cases are documented,
11,955 to be exact. Some of the cases refer
to "repeat customers," which would lower
the number of individual cases to about
8,000. On the other hand many of them
involve families, frequently large families.
In all, the files detail the fate of more than
20,000 persons of German extraction who
were in need of support during the six years
and three months under scrutiny.
The entries in the ledgers typically
provide the name, age, and occupation of
the client, the time the person has spent in
the country (sometimes with exact date of
arrival and the name of the ship), his or her
home in Germany (town, state, province),
and "action taken," the result. They provide
a rich, almost inexhaustible source for gen-
eral history, social history, immigration his-
tory, etc. and constitute a mine for genealo-
gists. For now, however, the focus will be
on the individual human stories which
emerge from the other rather laconic ledger-
entries.
The stories themselves need to be
understood against the background of urban
society in the second half of the nineteenth
century. The urban landscape provided
many opportunities indeed for charitable
activities. Most major cities underwent pop-
ulation explosions with ail the concomitant
problems. A large percentage of immigrants,
mostly people from a rural background,
ended in one of the large cities on the
Eastern seaboard, where they formed an
urban underclass. In the 1860s in New York,
where the situation has been researched
best, a full three-quarters of the population,
1.2 million human beings, were living in
just 37,000 tenements.³ At the end of the
century, the population density of the Lower
East Side was higher than in the slums of
Bombay. The results were not surprising.
One example among many is the fact that
one-third of all newborn babies in the Italian
quarter died within the first year.
4
Given the sad lot of the urban immi-
grant in general, it is not surprising to find
that the Philadelphia records deal only with
the problem cases, the less attractive side of
society. The very existence of these records,
on the other hand, is evidence of prosperity,
for it was well-to-do ethnic Germans who
organized to help their fellow countrymen,
often helping them to help themselves.
Nonetheless, the records make for pretty
depressing reading. They give witness to
human lives subjected to various kinds of
misery—some of their own making, some
through no fault of their own. There are
incredible stories, mostly sad and poignant,
but occasionally hilarious, although the
hilarity is usually unintentional.
Some people needed assistance on a
very basic level. There's the woman from
Bavaria, twenty-five years old and in the
country for six months, who had boarded a
train in Pittsburgh for New York and got off
in Philadelphia, believing she had already
reached her destination. The German
Society did get her to New York without fur-
ther incident. Or the farmhand from
Württemberg, twenty-four years old and
just arrived from Germany, who reported on
April 6, 1870, that he was unable to find the
house where he had left his belongings. The
agent of the Society assigned to the case
subsequently noted in the file: "We couldn't
find him."
5
Not only had the young man lost
his no doubt meager possessions, it seems
he had also managed to get himself lost as
well, which makes one wonder what hap-
pened to him and how he fared later. Yet in
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________________________ZIMMERMANN
a way, the young immigrant faced a situa-
tion which confronted many immigrants. He
had probably never left his small village in
Swabia before, and a large urban center
must have been thoroughly confusing and
disorienting to him.
Most cases were far more serious. The
Society had to deal with basically two
groups. The first group consisted of the tran-
sients, many of whom arrived from New
York, where they had just landed. While the
majority of immigrants seem to have
planned their adventure reasonably well,
others trusted to luck, only to encounter
very bad luck. They needed support to speed
them on their way, usually in a generally
westward direction. Other transients consti-
tuted something akin to a seminomadic
tribe. They moved around, from New York
to Baltimore, from Baltimore back to New
York, then on maybe to Cincinnati, Chicago
or St. Louis, in search of work, often based
on the vaguest of rumors about possibilities
there. The grass was always greener some-
where else. The New York Philadelphia
Baltimore route seems to have been a veri-
table interstate of misery along which
moved a continuous stream of displaced
humans. Some were cripples who moved
around because they had no better
prospects, relying on the handouts of vari-
ous charities.
As a group the transients were compar-
atively easy to deal with. Fifty cents or a
dollar would support one of them for the
moment. Since many of them had covered
the distance from, for example, New York
City or Buffalo on foot, a new pair of boots,
that is, a new pair of used boots, would con-
stitute a significant improvement in their sit-
uation. Some approached the Society for
small things to improve their chances on the
job market. One entry reads simply: "Asks
for a little support to buy a comb and soap."
Others could be sent to the so-called House
of Industry, where they were given a bed
and a meal in exchange for chopping fire-
wood. If they were acutely ill, they could be
sent to the Poor Hospital. Or, of course, they
could be denied support if they were con-
sidered undeserving. The officials of the
German Society had strong views and took
a dim view of lying, for instance. If an indi-
vidual smelled of alcohol while pleading his
or her case, there was little likelihood of
support.
The second large group of immigrants
who sought the aid of the German Society
consisted of residents of the Philadelphia
area. For a variety of reasons most were
long-term welfare cases. Many of their sto-
ries read as if they could be extended into
novels or, indeed, as if they were five-line
abstracts of a novel: "6 children, 18, 16, 15,
13, 11, 9 years old, no parents. Their father
died 4 years ago, their mother 2 years ago.
The three oldest earn $9.50 per week. The
only girl, 15 years old, does the housework"
(7 April 1870). The tragedy of six children
and teenagers staying together while strug-
gling to maintain a semblance of family-life
beggars the imagination. The three oldest
boys were 16, 14, and 11 years old when the
second parent died and they were left to pro-
vide the only financial support, the sole
female in the group taking over the role of
the housewife. No support is mentioned in
the ledger, and the case does not show up
later. Yet theirs was clearly a deserving case.
One can only surmise that assistance was
eventually rendered outside the normal
channels. Their situation may also serve as
an example of the resilience frequently
exhibited by common people in the face of
great adversity.
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THE DARK SIDE OF EMIGRATION_____
The individuals requiring support
came from all levels of society, albeit in dif-
ferent proportions. From the upper strata
and the intellectual walks of life there are
students, teachers, lawyers, physicians,
architects, former military officers, and
even former priests. Some doubtlessly had
dark spots in their past, others may have
been motivated by a desire for adventure. In
immigration they faced downward mobility.
Not infrequently one encounters entries like
"formerly teacher, now laborer." Some
examples of downward mobility are partic-
ularly striking: On 3 December 1869, an
eighty-four-year-old man who had injured
himself in a fall petitioned the Society for
help. He claimed to be a former president of
the German Society. Historical sources con-
firm the truth of his claim. He had indeed
been president just one generation earlier,
but from the entry in the ledger it is obvious
that the agent had no clue about who he was.
It was good for him that one of the directors
of the Society had preserved some institu-
tional memory and initiated more discreet
support. The 'better classes,' however, made
up only a minority. In the middle, socially as
well as numerically, ranked the tradespeo-
ple, butchers, blacksmiths, brewers, carpen-
ters, etc. who had left the overflowing pool
of the unemployed in Germany and did not
find themselves better off in America. The
majority of the poor was made up of mem-
bers of the underclass and of lower-class
occupations like basketmakers, daylaborers,
farmhands, and weavers from Saxony and
Silesia.
Although the parallel might seem a bit
far-fetched to some, it is instructive here to
recall a piece of modern literature to illus-
trate the situation many poverty-stricken
immigrants faced. Those familiar with
Frank McCourt's Angela's Ashes
6
may rec-
ognize in the detail of that autobiographic
novel the same phenomena as reflected in
the laconic ledger entries preserved at the
German Society of Pennsylvania. The eth-
nic background is, of course, different,
namely Irish. The time and place are differ-
ent as well. The social and economic back-
drop is depression-era New York City and
the economically depressed Ireland of the
1930s and 40s rather than Philadelphia and
the German states in the latter third of the
nineteenth century. But the human face of
suffering among immigrants is very much
the same. As in the novel, the records of the
Society tell a tale of grinding poverty: un-
sanitary, unhealthy, and disastrous living
conditions, and poverty-induced infant and
child mortality. As with their Irish counter-
parts later, the German immigrants who had
not yet made it in the new environment,
indeed those who might never make it,
faced poverty-induced illnesses, alco-
holism, and an uneasy relationship between
welfare recipients and welfare providers
who let their clients know who was calling
the shots, while at least some of the latter
desperately tried to maintain their dignity.
Severe illnesses were frequent. The
atrocious, crowded living conditions were a
fertile breeding ground for every kind of
germ. Particularly in an age unaware of
antibiotics disease found many victims.
Tuberculosis was widespread, as were non-
specific but debilitating health problems:
fever (in most cases probably malaria) and
rheumatism. The German Society had a ros-
ter of physicians who provided pro bono
health care for the poor and a list of phar-
macists who helped out with medicine at
cost, but they could only do so much. And
matters were often exacerbated by epi-
demics. The winter of 1869/1870 saw an
outbreak of scarlet fever. Entries from that
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_______________________ZIMMERMANN
period tell a horrifying story: "Both parents
sick and within 10 days 6 children died." A
woman reports: "Husband sick. Has 3 chil-
dren, 1 died. Asks for a contribution to the
funeral cost." Another entry reads: "6 chil-
dren, of which 2 will be buried this morn-
ing. 2 other children still sick." Then, after
only a brief respite, in the fall of 1871 one
year later, a smallpox epidemic broke out,
lasting until the spring and ravaging many
families. One entry of many reads: "Sugar
factory worker, from Westphalia, 56 years
old, 12 years in the country, 5 children, wife
died of smallpox, he himself ill."
Many of those who applied to the
German Society for aid were older people,
some of whom had moved to the United
States surprisingly late in life, especially
considering the life expectancy in those
days. Some came in their sixties, and
prospects for them looked very dim. Many
supplicants were widows, widows with chil-
dren, and widowers with children trying to
keep the family together. If they were
healthy, women relied on traditional meth-
ods to make a living. "Supports herself and
her children by washing" is a frequent entry.
Illness, of course, made a woman in partic-
ular a welfare case at a moment's notice.
Single men with disabilities, "cripples" no
euphemisms in those daystried to eke out a
living as peddlers, selling pencils or match-
es on the street. The Society would buy
matches wholesale and provide them with a
modest stock.
Alcoholism, the traditional bane of the
working class, was also present. Two exam-
ples may suffice: "The husband is a drunk-
ard and does not provide for his family;" "X
is recommended as an acceptable person,
but occasionally he drinks too much." But
men had no monopoly here. There was a
woman who could "not be recommended
[because s]he sold her husband's clothes in
order to buy liquor." Alcohol was also re-
sponsible for downward social mobility. A
certain individual asked for assistance
claiming that he used to be the editor of a
German newspaper in Erie, Pennsylvania.
The record of his case notes that he "drinks
heavily and is in very bad shape." A check
of the gentleman's name in Arndt/Olsons's
authoratative bibliography of German
newspapers in America,
7
confirms that an
individual by that name had indeed been the
editor of a newspaper in Erie. If the assess-
ment of the Society's case worker is accu-
rate, then the former newspaper man had
very much come down in the world.
At times the agent handling a case
would make rather cryptic entries. On the
surface, for instance, an entry like "from
Baltimore, has been oyster catching," or
simply "worked in oystercatching" does not
seem to indicate any grounds for seeking aid
from the German Society. One has the feel-
ing that there must be more to the story.
Then come slightly more expansive entries:
"Back from oystercatching, lost 3 fingers on
his right hand to the cold" or "Back from
oystercatching, suffers from severe frost-
bite." Another former oystercatcher reports
that he did not understand what he was sup-
posed to do and was consequently severely
beaten by fellow oystermen. The context for
the events which the case worker likely
knew but omitted in the official files is that
oystercatching in the Chesapeake Bay was a
notoriously vicious business. It was quite
common that oyster boat captains refused to
pay their seasonal workers or put them sim-
ply ashore on some remote beach in the
middle of the night. Naturally Germans
were not the only victims of this exploita-
tion; inexperienced immigrants of all ethnic
backgrounds were innocent victims of the
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THE DARK SIDE OF EMIGRATION_____
caprice of oyster boat captains and the bru-
tality of their crews. The German immi-
grants can, however, lay claim to one small
victory against the unfair practices of the
oyster dredging industry in the late nine-
teenth century. While many responsible and
forward-looking people saw that something
had to be done, it was a German-American
who spearheaded the efforts which were
ultimately undertaken. Louis (Ludwig)
Henninghausen, who was born in Fulda,
served as an officer in the 46th New York
Regiment, a German regiment, during the
American Civil War. He later became a
lawyer and was for many years president of
the German Society of Maryland. He made
it his mission in life to improve the lot of the
oystermen and succeeded to a large extent.
The oyster-catching interests, of course,
adamantly opposed government oversight
of the industry. They held that any impedi-
ment to free enterprise was un-American
and brought forward arguments which
sound curiously familiar: Limiting the free-
dom of the oyster industry to cheat their
workers out of their wages would make oys-
ters too expensive and thus uncompetitive;
it would reduce consumer choice; and the
American public would finally be unable to
afford oysters.
There were, of course, those who did-
n't belong to any of the groups mentioned
thus far, among them some who might be
called "deportees." The deportees were
social misfits, effectively cast out by their
home communities. A large number of this
kind of immigrant came from Switzerland,
where the welfare system was villagebased
and those who did not fit in were easily
identified and ostracized. One agent makes
the following statement about a twenty-two-
year-old man from Switzerland: "Mad! Was
sent to America by his village!" What did
the Philadelphia folks do? "Sent to New
York!" In this case the circumstances are
stated expressly, and it is clear that the
man's home village had indeed insisted that
he emigrate. In other instances the specifics
are less obvious, but there were groups of
immigrants from Switzerland and other
German-speaking territories as well whose
town or village had forceably uprooted them
in this age-old way of ridding taxpayers of
troublemakers and other burdens on the
public treasury. In fact, such tactics proba-
bly lie at the base of the emigration of many
deafmutes and others with birth defects.
There were, of course, laws against bringing
individuals into the country who were from
the start likely to become welfare cases, but
there has always been a gap between the
laws and the enforcement of the laws.
As if abject poverty were not enough
of a burden to bear, many of those already
living in circumstances dire enough that
they had sought aid from the German
Society of Pennsylvania also had to deal
with other catastrophes. On Christmas
morning 1870, a large fire in one of the
poorest areas destroyed a whole block and
sent many German families to the German
Society for succor. The reverberations of
catastrophes elsewhere also made them-
selves felt in Philadelphia. In the aftermath
of the big Chicago fire of October 1871,
refugees came east. They had lost every-
thing. Or had they? Major catastrophes and
calamities attract their own kind of vultures
and, while most were probably genuine,
some of the stories of alleged victims of the
Chicago fire read as if they had been made
up to cash in on a wellknown and widely
publicized event.
Which brings one to the question of
welfare cheats. The German Society tried its
best to weed them out, but its members were
—62—
________________ZIMMERMANN
philosophical about the matter. In its printed
annual reports the Society notes that invari-
ably some undeserving applicants would
slip through. They were very concerned,
however, about those who were legitimately
in need of help but too proud to ask for aid
or reluctant to ask because they did not want
anybody to know about their situation. In
this respect the weeding-out efforts, the
checks of the German Society to eliminate
the less desirable elements seem to have
been counterproductive on occasion. There
are many cases where the agent noted that a
given address was false. While many ficti-
tious addresses quite obviously were part of
an individual's attempt to defraud, many
other cases seem genuine enough. One is
drawn to the conclusion that the applicants
in question lied about where they lived once
they realized that the agent would check
with neighbors etc., thus revealing the
extent of their neediness and the secret
which they so wanted to conceal. A few
even straightforwardly refused to provide an
address.
A large portion of the Society's chari-
table efforts was directed towards invalids.
A broken leg or arm, badly healed under the
treatment available then, might cripple a
person for life. That individual would then
be unable to work or properly provide for
his family. The concept of occupational
safety and health was largely absent. The
number of workrelated accidents as reflect-
ed in the records is truly horrifying, and a
number are particularly gruesome. On 17
April 1873, for instance, Louise Braun, only
seven months in the country and probably
still quite young, had to face the conse-
quences of a terrible accident. Louise was
the "widow of Wilhelm Braun since 1 April,
on which day the latter [the language used
in the original has a distinctly bureaucratic
character] worked in the sugar factory Front
& Bainbridge Street and fell into a vat with
hot molasses and died immediately. Has a
girl of 4 weeks." Two days later, Louise
Braun "goes into service." The Society had
found her a position as a domestic servant, a
job which was always in demand. The
record goes on to say that the "child will be
taken care of," likely in an orphanage. Yet
the child was only four weeks old at the
time; the mother had become a widow when
the infant was just one week old. Under the
circumstances, Louise Braun could, in fact,
count herself lucky because the Society had
provided her with a job within a few days of
the catastrophe. In industrial accidents there
was little if any compensation. As a rule, the
company could put the blame a coworker.
The pertinent legal doctrine at the time was
"presumption of agreement." It was
assumed that anyone accepting a job auto-
matically agreed to any dangerous and haz-
ardous working conditions. That most felt
compelled to take the job regardless of the
dangers in order to feed the family did not
enter into the equation.
Among the most dangerous jobs of all
were those with the railroad. Stories abound
of workers losing arms and legs. If a work-
er actually lost his life, the railway company
typically tried to renege on what little com-
pensation it was obligated to pay. In such
cases, the German Society provided Ger-
man-speaking lawyers. One realizes rather
quickly that the railway companies, at least
in the United States, laid out the network of
tracks literally in the pools of blood left
behind by the cheap, largely immigrant
labor force. It is sobering to think that the
same railway barons who reaped the profits
of railway construction used their wealth to
fund museums, libraries, colleges, and uni-
versities,
8
while those who did the actual
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THE DARK SIDE OF EMIGRATION_____
work and lost life, limb, or eyesight in the
process have as their epitaph a threeline
entry in a ledger of a private povertyrelief
agency.
When a new century dawned in 1900,
the stream of immigrants had fallen off con-
siderably. German immigration had peaked
in the 1880s, and the economy was general-
ly in good shape. In contrast to the thou-
sands of applicants per year it saw twenty
years earlier, in 1900 the German Society
only had to deal with 815 cases, an indica-
tion that conditions had improved. There are
fewer horror stories than in the past. Most
cases are relatively unremarkable support
cases: widows getting a supply of coal for
the winter, a family asking for a used stove,
a woman receiving $1.43 for children's
shoes. The technological progress since the
1870s is obvious as well. Now there are
bicycle mechanics and electricians rather
than unskilled laborers. The situation seems
to have "normalized" in the sense that
administration and bureaucracy play a
greater role. There is extensive communica-
tion and correspondence with government
agencies in Germany about property and
inheritance matters. Inevitably, of course,
there are still a number of oddball cases. On
21 February 1900, attention is drawn to a
woman who had been supported repeatedly:
This woman is, despite the fact that her hus-
band currently resides in the Eastern
Penitentiary, pregnant. On 7 June her hus-
band writes a letter to the German Society
asking how this could have happened. Later
that year an anonymous letter demands sup-
port for a poor family in Germantown, but
"[t]he investigation revealed that this is an
Irish family of drunkards."
As a whole the Philadelphia records
illuminate the historic reality of immigrant
life in the United States from an angle only
rarely seen. In providing a detailed view of
the nineteenth-century reality without ideal-
ization and mythologization, they provide
insights into the circumstances of a segment
of the German immigrant population which
is frequently forgotten. The tale which
unfolds is often astonishing. The traditional
image of the huddled, downtrodden masses
coming from Europe destined to make their
fortune in God's own country is so deeply
ingrained in the American consciousness
that embracing an historic reality which
includes failure, poverty, and suffering is
difficult. But the complete spectrum of the
emigration and immigration experience will
become clear only if the historical records
include the less successful as well as those
who prospered. The huge number of support
and welfare cases of just one urban center
brings home the fact that failure, too, was a
constantly present possibility.
— Manfred Zimmermann
University of Cincinnati
1
Kate Caffrey, The Mayflower (London: Stein
& Day, 1975), 141.
2
See my "Quellen zur deutschen Einwan-
derungsgeschichte in der Bibliothek der
German Society of Pennsylvania in Philadel-
phia," Yearbook of German-American Studies
34 (1999): 133-140.
3
Marvin Gelfand, "Welcome to America,"
American Heritage 43,2 (April 1992): 62.
4
Page Smith, The Rise of Industrial America: A
People's History of the Post-Reconstruction
Era (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984), 366.
5
The translations from the original German
entries are my own.
6
Frank MacCourt, Angela's Ashes: A Memoir
(New York: Scribner's, 1996).
7
Karl J. R. Arndt & May E. Olson, The German
Language Press of the Americas (München:
Verlag Dokumentation, 1973).
8
In the wake of recent corporate scandals, the
ethics of accepting "dirty money" have come
to haunt third-level educational institutions; cf.
John L. Pulley, "Tainted Gifts," The Chronicle
of Higher Education XLIX, 17 (January 3,
2003): A32-A34.
NOTES
Oil painting of St. John's Lutheran,
the first German-language church in Charleston
by Francis Hill