‘If it is not too expensive, then you can send me sugar’: money matters among migrants and their families

Abstract

Discussions about money among migrants and their families have long been a financial and emotional concern. Earning money, or more money, and securing a family’s present and future well-being were significant factors when men and women made the decision to immigrate abroad over the twentieth century. With postal services globally systemized, literally tons of letters crossed oceans and continents for migrants, their families, and others to remain in touch. Letters, as historians and other scholars note, provide a plethora of information and insight on the lives and experiences of migrants and non-migrants. These micro-narratives set against the backdrop of national and local macro-narratives, contribute to understanding the state of mind and the state of heart of correspondents whose reason for writing was directly linked to migration. In this paper, we examine issues that relate to money and its emotional underpinnings as conveyed by a number of migrants and their more sedentary families over the first half of the twentieth century. The letters we examine in our paper are part of the Digitizing Immigrant Letters Project collection housed at the University of Minnesota’s Immigration History Research Center (archives.ihrc.umn.edu/dil/index.html). The letters, originally written in Italian, Ukrainian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Croatian, and Latvian, were translated into English as part of the Digitizing Immigrant Letters Project. Here, we examine migrant family letters using an interdisciplinary, comparative approach drawn from economic theory, social history and migration history. Some of the questions we explore are: What kind of monetary issues mattered and to whom? In what ways did these issues impact migrants and their families? How did money and familial intimacy intervene with processes of migration? What are some of the prominent links between money, family and migration discussed in migrant correspondence?

Keywords:

• Migration
• letters
• family
• household finances
• emotions

Acknowledgements

Sonia Cancian and Simone A. Wegge extend sincere thanks to the Immigration History Research Center Archives at the University of Minnesota Libraries. The authors deeply appreciate the efforts of the anonymous referees of this paper, as well as friends and colleagues who have vetted earlier versions of this work, particularly Marcelo Borges, Isabelle Felici, Donna R. Gabaccia, Steven King, Judith Misrahi-Barak, Anne-Marie Motard, Daniel Necas, Linda Reeder, Marlou Schrover, and Elizabeth Zanoni. For many helpful and insightful comments that improved this paper, we thank our discussants at the 2013 German Historical Institute of London conference titled “Writing the Lives of the Poor” in London, U.K., the 2014 Social Science History Association meetings in Toronto, Canada, and at a 2015 research seminar held at the Department of Études Montpelliéraines du Monde Anglophone, Université Paul-Valery Montpellier 3 in Montpellier, France.

Notes

1. See especially Mckay (2007); Singh (2006).

2. See Blegen (1955) and Schapera (1941). A broader literature on letters exists. Letter collections have long been a focus of study for scholars in literature and history. We name just a few examples to underscore some of the variety of reasons for collections of letters. For example, Isak Dinesen’s communications from her time in Africa were collected in Letters from Africa (Dinesen and Lasson, 1981). Her purpose for writing these letters was manifold: besides the description of life in Africa, she discusses the complicated financial dealings she and her family faced as well as her observations on life in Africa, women, and culture. As an established writer early in her life, the potential audience for her letters went well beyond the letter recipients. In contrast, Quaker Women (Holton, 2007) is a very different set of letters: the various authors are from three generations of Quaker women, with the center being Helen Clark, the daughter of the radical Quaker and British politician John Bright; these letters circulated between a set of several families in a mostly Quaker network that spanned both time, across three generations and three centuries, and space, Britain to Pennsylvania. In this community, women were the memory keepers and wrote most of the letters. Among other purposes, the letters served to connect women across a Quaker community spread out over a wide distance.

3. We briefly touch on how economic stress probably affects one’s personality and ability to handle financial stress.

4. See the following link, archives.ihrc.umn.edu/dil/index.html

5. For more details, see Cancian and Gabaccia (2013), http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/dil/index.html.

6. The set of rhetorical arguments is also not straightforward and requires a nuanced approach. The DIL letters are between family members, and we see letter writers in the DIL series manifesting feelings of guilt, resilience, making do, desperation, and sometimes plain rudeness. We find that this was fairly common across the different language and ethnic groups we examined.

7. Much data is summarized in Berend (2006): for comparisons of life expectancy between 1900 and 2000, see p. 4; for comparisons of labor productivity see pp. 176–177; for per capita GDP comparisons, see pp. 187–888.

8. See Landes (1998, pp. 240–242, 247, 251–252), and Berend (2006, p. 429).

9. Often migrants received help from family members, in terms of either a gift or a personal loan. Migration historians have direct evidence that over the nineteenth century remittances became a very common way of financing migration to North America.

10. See Wegge (1998, 2008).

11. Wegge (2015) compares Hessians who settled in South America to those who settled in Australia in the 1840s, 1850s and 1860s. Those who settled in South America were the richest and less likely to use family networks over time.

12. It is not clear how working days are counted here, as 469 work days is well above 365. In addition, how she paid 800 roubles for wheat when she earned 7 roubles is not clear.

13. Interestingly, this excerpt also points to the high rate of poverty among elderly people in the US in the years prior to social security being established in 1935.

14. This collection is entirely available online at: http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/dil/Vuk/vuk.htm. Clarification notes added by translator, Marija Dalbello.

15. Both the Delfino and Grebenstchikoff collections can be consulted online at http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/dil/Delfino/delfino.htm and http://ihrc.umn.edu/research/dil/Greben/greb.html, respectively.

16. Money was mentioned only one other time, on 6 October 1926 as a result of a postal delay: ‘I don’t understand how the bank in this town sent the money order for the payment of your room and board to Reggio Emilia instead of Reggio Calabria. The other day, I received it, and I imagine that the Mother Superior has doubted my sincerity. I mailed it right back and made sure that there would be no mistake this time. It’s not my fault, therefore, I’m excused. Your younger brothers are fine. Giovannino and Cosimo assiduously attend school and do well …’.

17. See these letters for questions about prices and wage in North America: Granovsky 25 November 1915; Anna Paikens 14 April 1957.