Last Winter Was a Hard One

DESCRIPTION: Two Irish women lament the hard times. Neither woman's husband could find a job, and both families suffered. They curse the Italians who have arrived to take Irish jobs. They look forward to better times when their husbands find work
AUTHOR: Words: Jim O'Neil / Music: Jack Conroy
EARLIEST DATE: 1880 (sheet music)
KEYWORDS: work poverty unemployment foreigner hardtimes
FOUND IN: US(MA,MW) Canada(Mar)
REFERENCES (4 citations):
Dean-FlyingCloud, pp. 89-90, "When McGuinness Gets a Job" (1 text)
Cazden/Haufrecht/Studer-FolkSongsOfTheCatskills 98, "Last Winter Was a Hard One" (1 text+fragments, 1 tune)
Ives-DriveDullCareAway-PrinceEdwardIsland, pp. 111-112,248, "Last Winter Was a Hard One" (1 text, 1 tune)
DT, LASTWNTR*
Roud #4607
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Longshoreman's Strike (The Poor Man's Family)" (theme)
NOTES [247 words]: The sheet music to this is "respectfully dedicated to comptroller John Kelly." John Kelly (1822-1886) was a New York politician. A one-time representative, the Dictionary of American Biography credits him with running Tammany Hall 1873-1882. Thus he would be the chief politician responsible for municipal employment.
See one version of "When McGuinness Gets a Job" [Sheet Music: digital id sm1880 11975], published in New York in 1880, at the Library of Congress American Memory site. - BS
This seems to be a good example of the Irish situation in New York: They rose the socio-economic ladder, but not securely. William H. A. Williams, 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream, University of Illinois Press, 1996, p. 176, writes, "It was no accident that the term 'lace curtain' was coined in the 1890s.... By 1900, American-born Irish were over-represented in lower-middle-class positions, such as clerks, salespersons, teachers, and bookkeepers, and were under-represented in the poorer jobs. True, compared to the accomplishments of Germans, Scandinavians, and the recently arrived Jews, Irish success was, as Timothy Meagher pointed out, unspectacular and fragile. The Irish tended to 'slip' more than other groups. Yet, based on the economic distance they had to travel and the vast numbers that had crowded the bottom of the latter, the Irish in America had turned a corner. Even among the great numbers of working-class Irish, the majority were now skilled or semi-skilled." - RBW
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