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Welsh workforce rooted to the USA

“Well the Welsh were white, they’re Protestant, they’re not quite Anglo-Saxon but they’re not far off it and they are skilled. So they are perceived to be a respectable valid contribution to the country. There’s no fear that they’re dead drunken bums.” Bill Jones

By Chris Scott and Nicholas Li

Wales has a long and storied history with the United States. From the very founding of the country through Thomas Jefferson to the present day with Hillary Clinton, many of Welsh descent have influenced the American way of life.
In fact the leaders on both sides of the Civil War, Jefferson Davies and Abraham Lincoln, too had Welsh blood flowing through their veins.

But what attraction has the United States held for the Welsh and its people? Here we explore how the Taffs not only influenced the country but helped build it and in fact realised their own American dream.

“Welsh people were among the people from Britain and Europe who immigrated to America from the very earliest periods of European emigration there,” explains Dr E Wyn James co-Director of Cardiff University’s Centre for Welsh American Studies.

The first permanent overseas Welsh colonies were established in New England and Pennsylvania during circa1660 and circa1720 by those escaping religious persecution.

Dr James describes how religion in Britain was viewed at that time: “We had an established Anglican church that everyone had to be a member of and if you weren’t a member of that you were at a legal disadvantage and quite often persecuted in some way or the other. So you get people leaving Wales then, especially Quakers and Baptists from the 17th century on.”

“Welsh people were among the people from Britain and Europe who immigrated to America from the very earliest periods of European emigration there.”

E Wyn James

However, apart from those few religious dissenters, immigration then remained stagnated for the next 70 years before picking up again in the 1790s. But this new wave of migrants was different to those first Welsh to brave the high waters several decades earlier. Instead of looking for personal freedom, they were in search of free land.

Co-director of Cardiff University’s Centre for Welsh American Studies, Bill Jones explains. “The USA didn’t just attract industrial workers it attracted people looking for cheap or free land, actually it was the indigenous people’s land but that was something that was unfortunately glossed over at the time,” he said. “In the first half of the 19th century there is much more of a rural than an industrial movement but that changes in the second half of the century.”

As the industrial revolution started to take shape and Britain emerged as the world leader in the newly emerging global economic system, this influx of migrants not only increased to the United States but their identities shifted. As did migration patterns.

“Those people that are now moving from rural areas are tending to move to South Wales’ coalfields or into England and less so overseas,” Dr Jones explains. “That’s partly in terms of what was happening in the United States with the closing of the frontier in the 1890s as well as one of the key movements in the United States was from the rural areas (into the cities). So they would be trying to make settling unattractive to rural migrants.”

"It becomes a bit of a continuum there as in the 1850s-1860s its coal industry there expands dramatically which attracts in more coal miners."

Bill Jones

From the 1820s up until the global economic crash in 1929, there was a steady stream of workers going over to the USA in search of a better life. This is where the conundrum occurs as it was during the 19th century when the UK and Wales became dominant in terms of industrialization so why were people leaving?

Dr Jones offers some conjecture to the dichotomy. “The first thing that has to be said is the whole free trade, free market ideology of the 19th century. We’re dealing in a time where rather that is totally opposite to today and opposite to what emerged at the beginning of the 20th century. Any restriction on emigration of people moving anywhere were being done away with. It’s phenomenal to think of it that those 38 million (immigrants) that went to the United States in the 19th century were doing so with unrestricted access.

“The second thing is, without going all Marxist here, is it’s all the logic of capital; looking for opportunities. The Welsh economy happened in several stages, you think of things

Welsh Cowboy (Nicholas Li, 2013)

like tinplate at the end of the century, copper in the middle years of the 19th century, some companies began to transport their technology to the United States in order to improve their economic performance.”

What was happening during the 19th century on a large scale basis and for one of the first times in history was that not only were people emigrating all over the world but businesses were as well and were taking their workers with them.

These industrial workers increased even more after the 1850s when steam technology was making transportation both a lot more affordable for workers and families to travel overseas.

Wales-USA Flags Pin Badge

A steam train could be taken to Liverpool where a ticket to New York could be purchased for between £3 or £4. The cost of transportation would sometimes be covered by employers but was still relatively cheap for those who had to find the money themselves.

“It didn’t mean the lowest of low could go and generally speaking the Welsh migrants, even though they might say they were poverty stricken, had something behind them,” Dr Jones said. “The crucial question was how they managed to finance it. Some just upped and left leaving but basically you sold up everything or the pattern was that the male breadwinner would go out there, earn some money, send it back and then more members of the family would go over as that became possible.”

Two destinations soon emerged as most attractive to the Welsh; Pennsylvania and Ohio, especially Scranton, PA. The attraction? Coal.

“Coal,” Dr Jones reiterates. “(The attraction) starts off as iron and follows the traditional South Wales pattern. First of all, iron workers are attracted out there as there are attempts to establish an iron industry using anthracite in the area.

“Then it becomes a bit of a continuum there as in the 1850s-1860s its coal industry there expands dramatically which attracts in more coal miners. Now coal mining families are attracted to go there partly because they believe they will get a more privileged position in the mining industry because of their skills but there are also opportunities in textile industries there for daughters before they got married and also for merchants and other businesses to serve the Welsh community. So that area becomes the largest concentration of Welsh in the USA.”

Life wasn’t always rosy for the new Welsh immigrants, however, and while generally the Welsh did well in the American society, there were some downfalls.

“We have to be careful when we talk about the success the Welsh had in the industrial sector,” Dr Jones explains. “We can’t overdo it. You don’t get a Welsh Carnegie. But they are in the upper ranks of management and you do get the odd few people who become large coal miner owners themselves.

“Many of them would find the same booms and slumps that they would have had here in the UK and indeed there was some tragic reports of somebody who emigrated for three days and was then killed in a mining accident. The death-rate was just as high over there.”

So what was the attraction?

“Generally speaking the wages were higher but with it came the possibility of more upward mobility, the Welsh are very successful, the Welsh males anyway, in terms of becoming bosses in the mines, etc. Their skills were a basis of upward advancement. A very strong thing in the testimonies that have survived is not necessarily for them themselves to get a significantly successful life but their children.

“The Welsh had the basis for that upward mobility and the measure of it is to be seen in the second generation who easily move into white-collar middle-class America.”

This status enjoyed by Welsh migrants is unusual in American history as many migrants, with the Irish being the obvious example, were looked down upon by first the colonists and then the Americans. But Dr Jones explains there was a simple explanation why the Welsh were different.

“The dominant ideology in America was the WASP society; White Anglo-Saxon Protestants,” he said. “Well the Welsh were white, they’re Protestant, they’re not quite Anglo-Saxon but they’re not far off it and they are skilled. So they are perceived to be a respectable valid contribution to the country. There’s no fear that they’re dead drunken bums.”

The economic links established during the 19th century continue to this day with companies with trade links in both countries numbering into the hundreds. The Welsh and American commercial ties emerged right at the start of the global economy and as the world markets continue to get stronger so do the ties between the two countries. So continues a historic partnership that has literally lasted ages.