<P> Irish Catholics had arrived in large numbers in the 1840s and 1850s in the wake of the great famine in Ireland when starvation killed millions . Their first few decades were characterized by extreme poverty, social dislocation, crime and violence in their slums . By the late 19th century, the Irish communities had largely stabilized, with a strong new "lace curtain" middle - class of local businessmen, professionals, and political leaders typified by P.J. Kennedy (1858--1929) in Boston . In economic terms, Irish Catholics were nearly at the bottom in the 1850s . They reached the national average by 1900, and by the late 20th century they far surpassed the national average . </P> <P> In political terms, the Irish Catholics comprised a major element in the leadership of the urban Democratic machines across the country . Although they were only a third of the total Catholic population, the Irish also dominated the Catholic Church, producing most of the bishops, college presidents, and leaders of charitable organizations . The network of Catholic institutions provided high status, but low - paying lifetime careers to sisters and nuns in parochial schools, hospitals, orphanages and convents . They were part of an international Catholic network, with considerable movement back and forth from Ireland, England, France, Germany and Canada . </P> <P> The "New Immigration" were much poorer peasants and rural folk from southern and eastern Europe, including mostly Italians, Poles and Jews . Some men, especially the Italians and Greeks, saw themselves as temporary migrants who planned to return to their home villages with a nest egg of cash earned in long hours of unskilled labor . Others, especially the Jews, had been driven out of Eastern Europe and had no intention of returning . </P> <P> Historians analyze the causes of immigration in terms of push factors (pushing people out of the homeland) and pull factors (pulling them to America). The push factors included economic dislocation, shortages of land, and antisemitism . Pull factors were the economic opportunity of good inexpensive farmland or jobs in factories, mills and mines . </P>

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