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twelve Missouri to Manhattan Immigrants deal with their emotions in a variety of ways when they live far from their home country. For James Shaughnessy, like so many others, migration had been a matter of sheer necessity. He fled a terrible famine in Ireland during the 1840s rather than end his days starving by the side of the road or terminally ill in a workhouse infirmary. He had little reason to reflect calmly on his cultural identity or to fret about his feelings as he landed in the new world and sought employment that would pay for the necessities of life. But things were different for his children. His decision to go west to Missouri proved to be a happy one, as he met Catherine, his future wife there, and as her family helped both him and his brothers to acquire land sothattheycouldbecomefarmers.NotwithstandingthefactthatMissouri suffered greatly during the Civil War, and that his wife had almost died at theageofnineteen,JamesandCatherinewentonprovidefortheirchildren in ways that James could not have done in Ireland as a person of his social class there. His children grew up benefiting from the opportunities that America offered them, while learning also to appreciate the culture of the old country in which their family had its roots. The children of immigrant families make many journeys. Those who were Irish-American at that time foundtheirexperiencesreflectedintheworksofwriterssuchasFinleyPeter Dunne and James T. Farrell. Young Lonigan In1932JamesT.Farrell’sfirstnovelwaspublished.YoungLonigan:ABoyhood in Chicago Streets tells the story of a fictional Irish-American who had been born thirty years earlier, just two years before the birth of Farrell himself in that same city. Farrell (1904–1979), the grandson of Irish immigrants, would continue to write novels about the fate of members of Chicago’s Missouri to Manhattan 213 immigrant Irish community, some of whom remained poor while families such as the O’Shaughnessys prospered and rose in society. Reinforced by the closed structure of ethnic neighborhoods in Chicago, the pervasive influence of an Irish Catholic background on the consciousness of some immigrants was such that Farrell could tell Ezra Pound in 1932, “As to the Irishness of it [Young Lonigan], I generally feel that I’m an Irishman rather than an American.”1 WoodrowWilson,deadeightyearsatthetime,wouldmostprobablyhave disapprovedofFarrell’sformulation.Albeithyperbolic,itdispensedentirely with both the hyphen and the hyphenated identity of an Irish-American in a way that left the author proudly proclaiming himself not an American but a foreigner. It is doubtful if any of the O’Shaughnessys felt that way, notwithstanding their links with the old country. For they became solidly established in the Midwest as citizens of the United States, and their desire to learn more about Ireland and their Irish heritage did not displace or diminish that allegiance. Material Prosperity MovingtoliveinNewYorkfrom1917,JamesO’Shaughnessyappearstohave coped better with his material prosperity than did Finley Peter Dunne, anotherChicagoresidentwhomadethemovetoManhattan .Jamesadvanced fromthefinancialuncertaintiesofjournalismtoadvertising,andtoasecure niche as chief executive of the American Association of Advertising Agencies . He eventually became a comfortable suburban consultant. He was a Catholic whose sister was a nun and two of whose daughters also entered the convent.Andany“Irishdisrespect forthepursuitoftidy bankbalances andbusinesscareers,”suchasIbsonperceivesamongIrish-Americans,was not obvious in his case. If Ibson is right that “the Irish have had a singular relationship with American culture’s worship of success” and that “[t]hat relationship is grounded in Catholic otherworldliness camouflaged as a seemingIrishsimilaritytoAnglo-SaxonProtestants,”anysuchotherworldliness was no bar to business in the case of James O’Shaughnessy. It may, however, explain his tendency to rhapsodize the benefits of advertising as a creative and social and even moral force. Finley Peter Dunne, on the other hand, found it very difficult to cope with his material success when 214 An Irish-American Odyssey he moved from Chicago to New York. He no longer penned Dooley pieces andappearsgenerallyto haveneglectedhiswritingtalentsinfavorofother pursuits.2 Deaths JamesO’Shaughnessydiedagedeighty-fiveonNovember27,1950.Thomas reprised his own design of the Irish Fellowship Club’s banquet program of 1910 for its half-centenary banquet in 1951, but he did not take part in those festivities “due to the recent death of my brother James.”3 Thomas himself died on February 11, 1956, “in relative obscurity” according to Barton, although the Chicago Tribune did report briefly the passing of this “stained glass [and] mural artist, noted for his work [and] credited with initiating Columbus Day.”4 While Thomas may be regarded as being at least as important in the world of Irish-American visual art as was his brother James in the business of advertising, his passing was...

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