The Irish in Chicago

The Irish in Chicago examines the history, religion, politics and literature of one of the city's most influential ethnic groups. The Irish community of nineteenth-century Chicago was shaped by three major forces: nationalism, Catholicism and politics. Nationalism gave Irish immigrants and their children an ethnic identity, while the parish offered spiritual comfort and community in urban neighborhoods. Priests and politicians shared the community's leadership. Politics gave the Irish wealth and opportunities that were denied them in business; in fact, for Chicago's Irish, politics was a business. The most powerful of Chicago's Irish politicians was Richard J. Daley, mayor and chairman of the Cook County Democratic Central Committee, who perfected Irish machine politics during his twenty-two-year administration. The literary contributions of Chicago's two pioneering Irish-American writers, FInley Peter Dunne and James T. Farrell, Chronicle one hundred years of American urban ethnic life. Dunne's Bridgeport is the first fully realized ethnic neighborhood in American literature. Farrell's Washington Park novels and Studs Lonigan detail the lives of Chicago's "steam-heat" Irish between 1900 and the Great Depression. Today, most of the Chicago Irish live in the greater metropolitan area. This move to the suburbs symbolizes Irish-America's social and economic success. The suburban Irish, cut off from old neighborhood and parish roots, have little interest in Irish nationalism.