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Catholics and Protestants kept their distance; intermarriage between Catholics and Protestants was uncommon, and strongly discouraged by both ministers and priests.[44]
Public schools used the King James Version of the Bible, which Catholics were forbidden to read.[45] One response was the creation of a Catholic parochial school system. These elementary and high schools as well as numerous Catholic colleges, allowed Irish youth to be educated without contact with public school teachers or students.
Prejudice against Irish Catholics in the US reached a peak in the mid-1850s with the Know Nothing Movement, which tried to oust Catholics from public office. The image was widespread of Irish drinking, fighting, ignoring their children, gambling, and crowding poorhouses.
New York Times want ad 1854–the only New York Times ad with NINA for men.
After 1860—and well into the 20th century—the Irish believed that Protestants refused to hire them, and claimed that "HELP WANTED - NO IRISH NEED APPLY" was in operation. They called these "the NINA signs." NINA signs were common in London in the early 1800s, and the memory of this discrimination in Britain was imported to the US. After 1860 the Irish sang songs (see illustration) about NINA signs, and these songs have had a deep impact on the Irish sense of discrimination. One NINA notice has been found in US history—the one shown in the New York Times ad of 1854, leading some historians to argue that actual job discrimination was minimal.[43]
Many Irish work gangs were hired by contractors to build canals, railroads, city streets and sewers across the country. In the South they underbid slave labor. One result was that small cities that served as railroad centers came to have large Irish populations.
[edit] Stereotypes
Irish Catholics were popular targets for stereotyping in the 19th century. According to historian George Potter, the media often stereotyped the Irish in America as being boss-controlled, violent (both among themselves and with those of other ethnic groups), voting illegally, prone to alcoholism, and dependent on street gangs that were often violent or criminal. Potter quotes contemporary newspaper images:
You will scarcely ever find an Irishman dabbling in counterfeit money, or breaking into houses, or swindling; but if there is any fighting to be done, he is very apt to have a hand in it." Even though Pat might "'meet with a friend and for love knock him down,'" noted a Montreal paper, the fighting usually resulted from a sudden excitement, allowing there was "but little 'malice prepense' in his whole composition." The Catholic Telegraph of Cincinnati in 1853, saying that the "name of 'Irish' has become identified in the minds of many, with almost every species of outlawry," distinguished the Irish vices as "not of a deep malignant nature," arising rather from the "transient burst of undisciplined passion," like "drunk, disorderly, fighting, etc., not like robbery, cheating, swindling, counterfeiting, slandering, calumniating, blasphemy, using obscene language, &c.[46]
The Irish had many humorists of their own, but were scathingly attacked in German American cartoons, especially those in Puck magazine from the 1870s to 1900. In addition, the cartoons of German American Thomas Nast were especially hostile; for example, he depicted the Irish-dominated Tammany Hall machine in New York City as a ferocious tige
