Stanford University

Culture

Musical Dialogue with Jordi Savall

-

Join the Catalan conductor and multi-instrumentalist for a free lecture and demonstration of Turkish and Iberian traditions with musicians Hakan Güngör and Yurdal Tokcan.

TO RSVP FOR THIS EVENT, PLEASE SEND EMAIL TO: davisr@stanford.edu

Co-sponsored by Stanford Live, The Europe Center's Iberian Studies Program and the Mediterranean Studies Forum.

Jordi Savall Catalan Spanish viol player, conductor and composer Speaker
Lectures

Four-Handed Monsters: Four-Hand Piano Playing and Nineteenth-Century Culture

Paragraphs

In the course of the nineteenth century, four-hand piano playing emerged across Europe as a popular pastime of the well-heeled classes and of those looking to join them. Nary a canonic work of classical music that was not set for piano duo, nary a house that could afford not to invest in them. Duets echoed from the student bedsit to Buckingham Palace, resounded in schools and in hundreds of thousands of bourgeois parlors. Like no other musical phenomenon, it could cross national, social, and economic boundaries, bringing together poor students with the daughters of the bourgeoisie, crowned heads with penniless virtuosi, and the nineteenth century often regarded it with extreme suspicion for that very reason.

Four-hand piano playing was often understood as a socially acceptable way of flirting, a flurry of hands that made touching, often of men and women, not just acceptable but necessary. But it also became something far more serious than that, a central institution of the home, mediating between inside and outside, family and society, labor and leisure, nature and nurture. And writers, composers, musicians, philosophers, journalists, pamphleteers and painters took note: in the art, literature, and philosophy of the age, four-hand playing emerged as a common motif, something that allowed them to interrogate the very nature of the self, the family, the community and the state. In the four hands rushing up and down the same keyboard the nineteenth century espied, or thought to espy, an astonishing array of things. Four-Handed Monsters tells not only the story of that practice, but also the story of the astonishing array of things the nineteenth century read into it.

All Publications button
1
Publication Type
Books
Publication Date
Journal Publisher
Oxford University Press
Authors
Adrian Daub
Number
978-0199981779

Stanford scholar reveals the surprising cultural history of four-hand piano playing

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Appeared in Stanford Report, December 8, 2014.

German studies professor Adrian Daub examines the social mores of 19th-century Europe through a study of "four-handed monsters" - when the hands of two layers intermingled on the same piano.  It was a phenomenon that both fascinated and repelled.  

In 19th-century Europe – long before LPs, CDs or mp3s – there were only two ways to listen to, say, the latest Beethoven symphony: either you were lucky enough to hear it performed at the local concert hall, or you played it at home yourself.

Not with a full orchestra, of course, but in a piano transcription, an arrangement that compressed symphonic violins, oboes and tubas onto a single keyboard score. And, to really mimic the range of a whole orchestra, amateurs played "four-handed," with two pianists sitting side-by-side.

These close-contact duets took off among the nascent middle class. Historian Edward Cone dubbed the players "four-handed monsters," both for the style's raging popularity and for its scandalous stigma.

"Piano four hands represented a safe space in which touching and nearness were permitted or even desired – something that was unusual at the time," said Adrian Daub, associate professor of German studies and affiliated faculty of The Europe Center at Stanford

Daub takes Cone's descriptor as the title of his new book exploring this largely forgotten phenomenon, Four-Handed Monsters: Four-Hand Piano Playing and Nineteenth-Century Culture.

Four-hand playing "bridged the divide between serious musicians and total amateurs," Daub said.

"This was a welcome vehicle for the greatest composers of the 19th century and at the same time it was the much-maligned party game – the equivalent of Twister – for the 'philistine' bourgeois."

Using a range of musical and literary sources, Daub's study is the first to examine the cultural valences of this strikingly intimate tradition.

Drawing from novels, memoirs and letters, Daub's survey reveals, for instance, how 19th-century anxieties surrounding creativity, industrialization, sex, virtue and politics were exercised through the act of four-hand piano playing.

Daub's previous research projects, one on Richard Wagner and sexuality, and another on the metaphysics of marriage in the 19th century, put him in a unique position to examine the phenomenon of four-hand playing and how "the dangers and the utopian promises it seemed to make … tell us much about the 19th century."

As Daub put it, "it's almost incredible how much people were able to read into what to modern eyes seems a pretty harmless pursuit." Whether this was a fear of moral dissoluteness or a "promise of a better way of engaging with the other sex or other people more generally," four-hand playing "was asked to do a lot, far more than comparable modes of performance."

Heather Hadlock, associate professor of music at Stanford, sees Daub's study as an important contribution to music scholarship. "Until recently, transcriptions and arrangements were dismissed as having little artistic value or historical significance," Hadlock said.

Daub's study, however, is the first step toward rectifying this oversight, revealing how four-hand piano duets in the 19th century resounded far beyond the parlor.

Romantic undertones

As pianos became increasingly affordable over the course of the century, more and more middle-class families made the instrument a centerpiece of domestic life. While solo piano playing never went out of style, the increased musical range and social interaction offered by four-hand playing caught on.

"Four-hand arrangements became the standard vehicle for the private, or semi-private, consumption of music of all kinds," said Daub. "Symphonies, operas, chamber music, dance music and so on, from trivial waltzes to apocalyptic Mahler symphonies."

"The collaboration of four hands across the whole range of the modern piano allowed two players to reproduce virtually any repertoire within the privacy of the home," said Stanford music Professor Thomas Grey.

Well-versed in both music and literature, Daub amassed a staggering number of allusions to four-hand playing from 19th-century sources. He also collected references from four-hand practitioners and mined digital databases.

From William Thackeray to Charles Dickens to Thomas Mann, four-hand playing makes appearances in famous novels of the period.

Even the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote on – and composed – four-hand pieces, saying that they "may be taken as a divining rod for a good marriage."

Cumulatively, Daub said, these "short, often banal episodes are transformed into fleeting glimpses of a larger phenomenon, which in itself was too quotidian and ubiquitous to merit discussion in its own day."

In large part, Daub said, the popularity of the activity was driven by the romantic undertones of four-hand playing.

Daub quotes the composer Robert Schumann, for instance, who reported, "a four-hand piece allows us reveries together with our beloved, provided she plays the piano."

"Togetherness on the keyboard was to become a symbol for togetherness in marriage," Daub said.

Forced intimacy

Four-hand playing, though, also had a dark side: the erotic possibilities created when fingers touched, bodies sidled and harmony was made.

Composers, well aware of the situation, took advantage of the forced intimacy by crafting pieces that caused the hands to overlap and interlock, generating as much contact as possible.

Daub quotes novelist William Thackeray, who wrote of a "pretty little duet à quatre mains, where the hands cross over, and hop up and down the keys, and the heads get so close, so close. Oh, duets. Oh, regrets."

At the same time, literary treatments of four-hand playing projected notions of propriety and virtue. Daub cites a telling passage in Dickens's David Copperfield to comment on how four-hand piano playing reflected such social mores.

The novel's eponymous narrator, watching a recital by two young women, begins to rethink his opinion of one's moral standing:

"The innocent beauty of her face was not as innocent to me as it had been; I mistrusted the natural grace and charm of her manner; and when I looked at Agnes by her side, and thought how good and true Agnes was, suspicions arose within me that it was an ill-assorted friendship."

In Daub's reading, the narrator's shifting perceptions of his beloved is mediated by watching her play four-hand piano, the music laying bare her "true" character.

Four-hand playing also emerged as a potent political symbol because of the collaboration and unity inherent in the practice.

Music scholar Hans Moldenhauer, writing in 1950 after having been exiled from Nazi Germany, looked back at four-hand playing wistfully: "Dictatorial practices have no place in [four-hand] pianism."

Daub comments on the writer's "clear sense that four-hand piano playing doesn't allow for a Führer principle." For Moldenhauer, there was something beautifully communal about the four-hand "republic."

But by the time Moldenhauer extolled its virtues, the practice was quickly losing popularity. The practice continues today (all of the Stanford scholars quoted in this article are four-hand players), but people no longer attach as much interest to it.

Still, Daub, who has attended a number of four-hand concerts, says that seeing two people at one keyboard "instills a surprising sense of intimacy."

"What other mode of performance has the onlooker asking themselves: 'Should I be watching this?'"

Nate Sloan is a doctoral candidate in musicology and writes about the humanities at Stanford.

Media Contact

Corrie Goldman, director of humanities communication: (650) 724-8156, corrieg@stanford.edu

Dan Stober, Stanford News Service: (650) 721-6965, dstober@stanford.edu

Hero Image
14625 monsters banner
All News button
1

The Patchwork Ecosystem of Local Shopping Streets: Globalization and Gentrification from New York to Shanghai

Professor Sharon Zukin's talk will describe how, in cities across the world, the everyday spaces of local shopping streets are undergoing dramatic transformations.  Globalization brings new products and people, while different types of gentrification reshape the street's aesthetics and atmosphere.  How do we "read" these changes?  Do they destroy the sense of the "local" to make every street, in every city, more alike?

Professor Zukin is the author of a number of books on cities, culture and consumer culture, and urban, cultural and economic change.  She received the Lynd Award for Career Achievement in urban sociology from the American Sociological Association, and the C. Wright Mills Book Award for Landscapes of Power.  You can learn more about her work here: http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/web/academics/faculty/faculty_profile.jsp?faculty=420

Presented by the Program on Urban Studies and co-sponsored by the Anthropology Department, Center for East Asian Studies, Center on Poverty and Inequality, The Europe Center, Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, Sociology Department, Stanford in Government and Urban Beyond Measure.

Building 200
Room 002

Sharon Zukin Professor of Sociology Speaker Brooklyn College, CUNY
Lectures

How Conquest Transformed Northern Europe

This lecture is the first in a new series co-sponsored by The Europe Center and the Stanford Archaeology Center on how modern Europe has been shaped by the concepts, materials and ideology of its past inhabitants.

This first speaker highlights both the ecological and socio-political ramifications of conquest.  Based on work undertaken in Poland, Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, Dr. Aleksander Pluskowski discusses the way that relationships created during one of the most dynamic epochs of European history, the period of crusading, have left a profound legacy for modern Europe.  The process of crusading resulted in massively modified landscapes and catalyzed population reconfiguration at the frontiers of Europe, during the period of Christian expansion.  The archaeo-historical backdrop to these events is presented, along with a discussion of how Europe and the relationship Europe has with non-Christian societies, was permanently altered.

Aleksander Pluskowski's research focuses on frontier societies, colonization and ecological diversity in medieval Europe.  He is primarily concerned with the nuanced relationships between ecology and culture, moving towards a complete integration of environmental and social archaeology, history and art history.  His ultimate aim is to further a holistic understanding of this formative period of European society, contributing to the management of cultural and ecological heritage today.  His other interests include cult praxis in the past and the construction of religious identities.

"How Conquest Transformed Northern Europe"
Download pdf

Building 500
488 Escondido Mall
Terman Labs

Aleksander Pluskowski Lecturer in Archaeology Speaker University of Reading, United Kingdom
Lectures

A tight race for the Scottish independence vote

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Scottish voters go to the polls this Thursday to determine whether to remain part of the United Kingdom, or to become an independent Scotland.  The latest polls show a neck and neck race, a development that would not have been believable just months ago when the "No" campaign held a dominant lead.

Christophe Crombez, Belgian-American economist and consulting professor at Stanford's Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Stanford Global Studies Division, discussed the pros and cons of Scottish independence on KQED Radio's "Forum with Michael Krasney" (Mon, Sep 15, 2014).  Joining him were Adam Ramsay, a senior campaigner for "Yes Scotland", co-editor of Open Democracy and author of 42 Reasons to Support Scottish Independence, and Geoff Dyer, Financial Times' US diplomatic correspondent.

Visit KQED Radio's Forum web article "Will Scotland Vote for Independence?" to download a recording of this interview.

Hero Image
Yes and No voters wait for Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond to do a walkabout in Perth, central Scotland, September 12, 2014.
Yes and No voters wait for Scotland's First Minister Alex Salmond to do a walkabout in Perth, central Scotland, September 12, 2014. The referendum on Scottish independence will take place on September 18, when Scotland will vote whether or not to end the 307-year-old union with the rest of the United Kingdom.
Dylan Martinez / Reuters
All News button
1

Anti-Semitism surge in Europe reflects loss of values, historical awareness, says Stanford scholar

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Appeared in Stanford Report, August 29, 2014

A worrying spike in anti-Semitism in Europe is a stark reminder that prejudice against Jewish people is still a reality there today, say Stanford scholars. Anti-capitalism has been a particular source of anti-Semitism, according to Professor Russell Berman.

European leaders need to speak out more strongly against the escalation of anti-Semitism, a Stanford professor says.

"They should be willing to enforce the law," said Russell Berman, a Stanford professor of German studies and of comparative literature who is affiliated with the Europe Center on campus.

In recent weeks, slogans invoking anti-Semitism have been heard during European protests against the Palestinian deaths in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. In France and Germany, synagogues and Jewish community centers have been firebombed. In Britain, a rabbi was attacked near a Jewish boarding school.

"Protesters who storm synagogues should be arrested and prosecuted. Too often police have shown a blind eye when political protests have transformed into anti-Semitic mob actions," said Berman, the Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

He said that European societies in the long run have to find a way to grapple with their failed immigration policies and achieve more effective integration, he said. This includes more efficiently integrating immigrants into the cultural expectations of their new societies.

"Post–World War II Europe had as a core value a rejection of the anti-Semitism that led to the Holocaust. Europeans have to develop a pedagogy that can pass that value on to the new members of their communities," said Berman.

Roots of hatred

The recent eruption of anti-Semitism in Europe has multiple causes, according to Berman. The continent's lagging economy, the influx of immigrants from Muslim countries and the ongoing Israeli and Palestinian conflict are large factors.

And as last year's European parliament elections revealed, right-wing extremism has grown across Europe, he said.

"The far right is historically a home of anti-Semitism wrapped in nationalism and xenophobia. Some of this development can be attributed to the ongoing economic crisis, but some is certainly also a reaction against what is sometimes called the 'democracy deficit' in the European Union," Berman said.

Some Europeans believe their national political life has been subordinated to a "transnational bureaucracy" in the form of the European Union, Berman said. He added that this breeds resentment, and one expression of that is anti-Semitism, which is coinciding with traditional European nationalism.

Berman added, "Clearly this does not apply to all Muslims in Europe, but it has become an unmistakable feature in those population cohorts susceptible to radicalization as a response to a sense of social marginalization."

In Europe, immigrant populations are often clustered in de facto segregated neighborhoods, forming a parallel society, Berman said.

"While policies of multiculturalism have in the United States often contributed to productive integration, in Europe they have worked differently and undermined social cohesion. In that context, anti-Semitism has festered," he said.

Ongoing conflicts in the Middle East have also fanned the flames of European anti-Semitism, Berman said. Meanwhile, protests did not arise in Europe when Muslims and Christians were massacred in recent months in Syria and Iraq.

"A year ago, one could still make an at least conceptual distinction between anti-Zionism [criticism of Israel] and anti-Semitism [hatred of Jews]," he said.

The events in the past months in the streets of Europe have erased that distinction, Berman said.

"The politics of criticizing Israel have been fully taken over by anti-Semites, whether from the traditional European far right, the extremist left or parts of the immigrant communities," he said.

Anti-capitalism, economic downturns

When the European economy soured, leaving many young people unemployed at a time of surging globalism – all against a "residual" communist backdrop that still exists in parts of Europe – anti-Semitism was the result, according to Berman.

"That inherent anxiety and free-floating animosity in Europe turns into hostility to minorities," he said. "It can generate both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim prejudices, but anti-capitalism is today, as it has been historically, a particular source of anti-Semitism."

Berman calls this left-wing anti-Semitism – the targeting Jews as the symbols of capitalism – which he says has a long history. "A socialist leader of the 19th century once called anti-Semitism 'the anti-capitalism of fools,' and that's part of what we still see today," Berman said.

Opportunity, education, the future

Amir Eshel, a professor of German studies and of comparative literature and affiliated faculty member of The Europe Center, said Europe needs to do a better job of integrating Muslim immigrants into their new societies. In particular, he said, more economic opportunities must be given to people from disenfranchised communities.

"Nothing is as important as giving people opportunities to make their lives better," said Eshel, the Edward Clark Crossett Professor in Humanistic Studies. He is also an affiliated faculty member at the Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.

Eshel points to important roles for the media and educational systems to play in clamping down on anti-Semitism. There are programs in place – International Holocaust Remembrance Day, for example – to remind people about the evil inflicted on Jews in Europe more than 60 years ago.

"What has changed is that young people are less biographically connected to these crimes of the past," said Eshel.

"When this happens, as the Holocaust drifts further in time, a certain sensibility arises that one should not be bound by the lessons of the past," he said.

Anti-Semitism in Europe, he said, is the worst he's seen or known about since the end of World War II. He's especially worried about the large numbers of Muslims from Britain and France who have joined the jihadist movements in places like Syria and Iraq.

"It's not going to be easy to track them if they return," Eshel noted, "and it'll be a challenge for many years in Europe."

Fear among Jews

History Professor Norman Naimark said that some French Jews are leaving the country because of ongoing anti-Semitic violence.

"Germany has also experienced an ongoing problem on both the extreme left and right, but there the authorities and the Jewish community seem to have the situation under control," added Naimark, the Robert and Florence McDonnell Professor in Eastern European Studies.

Naimark, the director of the Stanford Global Studies Division and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, described European anti-Semitism as following an oscillating curve up and down, especially in times of Middle East crises.

"England seems particularly susceptible to these kinds of oscillations," he said.

Hero Image
Memorial plaque stained with anti-Semitic vandalism in Mazowieckie, Poland, March 19, 2012.
A memorial plaque stained with anti-Semitic vandalism in Mazowieckie, Poland, March 19, 2012. This incident and other more recent ones reflect an increase in anti-Semitism in Europe.
Jendrzej Wojnar/AP
All News button
1

2015 TEC Lectureship on Europe and the World with Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

  • -
  • -
  • -
  • -
  • -

This year's TEC Lectureship on Europe and the World will feature a series of two lectures given by Joel Mokyr, the Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History at Northwestern University and Sackler Professor (by special appointment) at the Eitan Berglas School of Economics at the University of Tel Aviv.  The talk titles are listed below.

 

Wednesday May 20th
"Culture of Growth: Origins of the Modern Economy"
(also the title of his forthcoming book)

Why and how did the modern economy emerge? An understanding of the origins of Modern Economic Growth that started with the Industrial Revolution requires a more complete analysis of the growth of the “useful arts” (applied science and technology) in Europe before the Industrial Revolution between 1500 and 1700. The cultural beliefs of the educated elite changed dramatically in this era. An economic approach to cultural change sheds considerable light on what changed in this era that made the modern economy possible.

 

 

Thursday May 21st
"Long-Term Economic Change in China and Europe: The Needham Paradox Revisited"

Many eminent scholars have argued for decades now on the origins and causes of the “Great Divergence” between Europe and China. Cultural factors that determined the big difference in the  willingness to engage in and accept intellectual innovation and scientific research in practical application played an important role and created the “Needham Puzzle.” An economic analysis of the roots of this cultural gap shows how it came about and what its effects were on long-term economic development.

Please plan to stay for the reception immediately following the May 21st lecture

 

 

Professor Joel Mokyr, Northwestern University

 

Joel Mokyr specializes in economic history and the economics of technological change and population change. He is the author of Why Ireland Starved: An Analytical and Quantitative Study of the Irish Economy, The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress, The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, The Gifts of Athena: Historical Origins of the Knowledge Economy, and The Enlightened Economy. His most recent book is A Culture of Growth, to be published by Princeton University Press and Penguin in 2016. He has authored over 80 articles and books in his field. He has served as the senior editor of the Journal of Economic History from 1994 to 1998, and was editor in chief of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History (published in July 2003), and still serves as editor in chief of a book series, the Princeton University Press Economic History of the Western World. He served as President of the Economic History Association 2003-04, President of the Midwest Economics Association in 2007/08, and is a director of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He serves as chair of the advisory committee of the Institutions, Organizations, and Growth program of the Canadian Institute of Advanced Research. He served as chair of the Economics Department at Northwestern University between 1998 and 2001 and was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford between Sept. 2001 and June 2002.

Professor Mokyr has an undergraduate degree from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a Ph.D. from Yale University. He has taught at Northwestern since 1974, and has been a visiting Professor at many universities, including Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a foreign fellow of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and a Fellow of the Econometric Society and the Cliometric Society. His books have won a number of important prizes including the Joseph Schumpeter memorial prize (1990), the Ranki prize for the best book in European Economic history and more recently the Donald Price Prize of the American Political Science Association. In 2006 he was awarded the biennial Heineken Prize by the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences for a lifetime achievement in historical science. He is currently working on the intellectual and institutional origins of modern economic growth and the way they interacted with technological elements. His current other research is an attempt to apply insights from evolutionary theory to long-run changes in technological knowledge and economic history.

The Bechtel Conference Center
Encina Hall
616 Serra Street

Joel Mokyr Robert H. Strotz Professor of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Economics and History Lecturer Northwestern University
Lectures
The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World
Date Label

The Contemporary

This project examines the  “contemporary” with a focus on defining moments such as: 1945, 1973, 1989, and 2001. In recent years the concept of the contemporary has been taken up within limited disciplinary discourses and in the context of distinct geographical settings. The horizon of this project, however, is the global. We employ a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to the hybrid term “contemporary” as it intersects various fields and serves as a heuristic device to understand phenomena in politics, culture, and the arts.

European immigrants to America in early 20th century assimilated successfully, Stanford economist says

News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, an "open borders" United States absorbed millions of European immigrants in one of the largest mass migrations ever. New research by Stanford economist Ran Abramitzky challenges the perception that immigrants lagged behind native-born Americans in job pay and career growth.
 

BY CLIFTON B. PARKER

European immigrants to America during the country's largest migration wave in the late 19th and early 20th centuries had earnings comparable to native-born Americans, contrary to the popular perception, according to new Stanford research.

"Our paper challenges conventional wisdom and prior research about immigrant assimilation during this period," said Ran Abramitzky, an associate professor of economics at Stanford, faculty affiliate of The Europe Center and author of the research paper in the Journal of Political Economy.

New research challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant assimilation during the bygone era of open borders and mass migration.
Photo Credit: Lewis Hine/Library of Congress
New research challenges conventional wisdom about immigrant assimilation during the bygone era of open borders and mass migration.

Abramitzky and his colleagues found the average immigrant in that period did not face a substantial "earnings penalty" – lower pay than native-born workers – upon their arrival.

"The initial earnings penalty is overstated," said Abramitzky.

He said the conventional view is that the average European immigrants held substantially lower-paying jobs than native-born Americans upon first arrival and caught up with natives' earnings after spending some time in the United States. But that perception does not hold up to the facts, he said.

Abramitzky's co-authors include Leah Platt Boustan from the University of California, Los Angeles, and Katherine Eriksson from California Polytechnic State University.

The researchers examined records on 21,000 natives and immigrants from 16 European countries in U.S. Census Bureau data from 1900 to 1910 to 1920.

"Even when U.S. borders were open, the average immigrant who ended up settling in the United States over the long term held occupations that commanded pay similar to that of U.S. natives upon first arrival," Abramitzky said.

In that bygone era of "open borders," Abramitzky said, native-born Americans were concerned that immigrants were not assimilating properly into society – yet, on the whole, this concern appears to be unfounded. "Such concerns are echoed in today's debate over immigration policy," he added.

At the same time, Abramitzky said that immigrants from poorer countries started out with lower paid occupations relative to natives and did not manage to close this gap over time.

"This pattern casts doubt on the conventional view that, in the past, immigrants who arrived with few skills were able to invest in themselves and succeed in the U.S. economy within a single generation," Abramitzky and his colleagues wrote.

Age of migration

America took in more than 30 million immigrants during the Age of Mass Migration (1850-1913), a period when the country had open borders. By 1910, 22 percent of the U.S. labor force – and 38 percent of workers in non-southern cities – was foreign-born (compared with 17 percent today).

As the research showed, immigrants then were more likely than natives to settle in states with a high-paying mix of occupations. Location choice was an important strategy they used to achieve occupational parity with native-born Americans.

"This Age of Mass Migration not only is of interest in itself, as one of the largest migration waves in modern history, but also is informative about the process of immigrant assimilation in a world without migration restrictions," Abramitzky said.

Over time, many of the immigrants came from the poorer regions of southern and eastern Europe.

Abramitzky pointed out that native-born Americans in the late 19th and early 20th centuries were concerned about poverty in immigrant neighborhoods and low levels of education among children, many of whom left school early to work in industry.

Consequently, American political progressives championed a series of reforms, including U.S. child labor laws and compulsory schooling requirements.

Still, some natives believed that new arrivals would never fit into American society. And so, in 1924, Congress set a strict quota of 150,000 immigrant arrivals per year, with more slots allocated to immigrants from northern and western European countries than those from southern and eastern Europe.

But those early-20th-century fears of unassimilated immigrants were baseless, according to Abramitzky.

"Our results indicate that these concerns were unfounded: The average long-term immigrants in this era arrived with skills similar to those of natives and experienced identical rates of occupational upgrading over their life cycle," he wrote.

How does this lesson apply to today's immigration policy discussion? Should the numbers of immigrants and their countries of origin be limited and those with higher skills be given more entry slots?

Abramitzky said stereotyping immigrants has affected the political nature of the contemporary debate.

"These successful outcomes suggest that migration restrictions are not always necessary to ensure strong migrants' performance in the labor market," he said.

Hero Image
Image of "First sight of New York Bay -- arrival of a European steamer" by James Wells Champney
First sight of New York Bay--arrival of a European steamer.
James Wells Champney/New York Public Library
All News button
1
Date Label
Subscribe to Culture