Gregory Martin
Demography 145
Things Covered in Discussion Section
January 29 + February 1
• Immigrant hubs (e.g., Poles in Chicago, Somalis in Minneapolis, Cubans in Miami)
• Are current immigrant groups natural allies (parallels to the Irish and slaves)?
• The role of immigrants in the U.S. economy
• Fertility of immigrations keeps U.S. slightly around replacement level; immigration keeps
U.S. growing
• Can the United States handle immigration geographically? Compared to other countries?
• The new face of immigration? The European Union; “south-to-south” immigration
February 5 + February 8
• Calculating growth rates
• Irish Rebellion (1641), Act of Union (1800), Great Famine (1840s)
• Repeal Movement and Daniel O’Connell
• Population growth in Ireland (success of the potato; breaking up of farmlands; increasing
nuptiality; high levels of natural fertility; not too high level of mortality)
• Estimates of daily consumption between 8 and 12 pounds of potatoes a day, along with lots
of milk
• Reversal of nuptial order following the Great Famine
• 200,000 emigrants per year between 1847 and 1854
• Naturalization Act of 1798 (part of the Alien and Sedition Acts)
• Voting rights (see http://www.infoplease.com/timelines/voting.html): “1855 Connecticut
adopts the nation's first literacy test for voting. Massachusetts follows suit in 1857. The tests
were implemented to discriminate against Irish-Catholic immigrants.”
• Know Nothing movement, American Party (and the party’s platform)
February 12 + February 15
• Political positions on immigration of leading presidential candidates Barack Obama, Hillary
Clinton, John McCain, Mike Huckabee
• Language differences: “illegals” versus “undocumented immigrants”
• Shaquille O’Neal as an Irish man? (blacks and Irish commingling)
• New York Draft Riots and labor’s role in the riots (see
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/317749.html)
• Important themes from the book (as decided by the class):
o Repeal Movement (many Ireland Irish were anti-slavery) and the shift to Irish
Americans being fearful of an influx of competing labor from an emancipated South
o Voting rights / Alien and Sedition Acts / nativist parties
o Northern labor argument: “slaves are well treated and have an easy life compared to
us”
o Democratic Party (not anti-Catholic, not anti-Irish)
Union of working class, Southerners
Jacksonian democracy
o Political control leads to acceptance
Firefighters, police (defend yourselves, oppress others, exert political control)
o Employment (Irish go from taking any job to creating a class of laborers beneath
them)
o Lack of bond towards those with shared/mutual interests
February 19 + February 22
• Lifetables (lx, ndx, nqx, Tx, ex)
• Critique of graphing styles
o Interval, axis, and scale issues
o Throw out junk data
o Bad labeling
o Pairing data can be confusing
o Color themes
o Sort or group charts by a logical order
o Ratios are key
February 26 + February 29
• Modern Chinese immigration to the United States; Chinese-American communities
• Background of events in China: Opium Wars, Taiping Rebellion, weak Qing Dynasty
• Makeup of Chinese immigrants in the 19th century (coolies versus merchants)
• Contrasting desires of Chinese immigrants with Irish immigrants (here for a limited time
versus here to stay); similarities with Latino immigration?
• Acceptance of Chinese labor (national, mining, railroad industries), to an extent
• Anti-Chinese sentiment (even from an enlightened man like John Marshall Harlan)
• Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
March 4 + March 7
• Demographic transition / fertility decline / Green Revolution
• Shifting views on the Chinese, from the Treaty of Tientsin (Tianjin) (1858) to the
Burlingame Treaty (1868) to the Chinese Exclusion Act (1882)
• Issues effecting acceptance of Chinese labor: wartime interruption of supplies, railroad
connection with the East
• Some small businesses cannot compete with Chinese labor; anti-coolie clubs (“made by
WHITEMEN”); shorter work day advocacy
• Henry George: Chinese labor is an inexhaustible supply; it’s impossible for low wage
workers to exert upward pressure on wages; non-Chinese not willing to live like Chinese;
Chinese send wages home; capitalists, not producing class, benefit (parallels with Latino
immigration?)
• “Expressions of hostility toward Negroes…acquired a secessionist connotation. Argument
against Chinese…remained untainted.”
• Workingmen’s Party of California (motto: “The Chinese must go”) and the push for antiChinese clauses in the updated California constitution
• Constitution clauses:
o Lumping Chinese with idiots, insane people, and criminals in not being able to vode
o Forbidding employment of Chinese
• Were these clauses lawful federally? Or were they passed to send a message?
• Some abolitionists supporting the Chinese
• Burlingame Treaty renegotiations in the wake of the Hayes-vetoed federal bill outlawing
more than 15 “Mongolian” passengers on a boat being able to arrive in the U.S.
• Contrasts with the Irish: was political power (or lack thereof for the Chinese) the key
difference in the success of the two groups?
Future Discussion Sections
• March 18 + 21: Saxton chapters 7 – 12 (finish the book)
• April 1 + April 4: Suro chapters 1 – 3
• April 8 + April 11: Suro chapters 4 – 7
• April 18: Special section with Katharina Steiner, Austrian economist
• April 22 + April 25: Suro chapters 8 – 13
• April 29 + May 2: Suro chapters 14 – 18 (finish the book)