1. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-c, interview with Michel Haddy, Spring 1962.

2. Ibid., Series 4-c-1, interview with Skiyyé Samaha, 1962.

3. Robin Waterfield, Prophet: The Life and Times of Kahlil Gibran (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998), 27.

4. This phrase was common around the River Plate region of Argentina but is likely similar to the Spanish stock phrases supplied to peddlers in Uruguay. This phrase is cited in Estela Valverde's “Integration and Identity in Argentina: The Lebanese of Tucuman,” in The Lebanese in the World: A Century of Emigration, ed. Albert Hourani and Nadim Shehadi (London: Centre for Lebanese Studies and Tauris, 1992), 316.

5. Personal interview with Najibé Ghanem, September 1998.

6. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-c, interview with Michel Haddy, 1962.

7. Ibid., Series 4-c-1, interview with Tafeda Beshara.

8. Naff, Becoming American, 138–146.

9. Barrio de los Turcos was the name given to the neighborhoods occupied by the Lebanese immigrants, who were lumped with all immigrants from the Ottoman empire as Turcos. In these areas the qashé was known as cajón de Turcos, which in common parlance today means a messy drawer or crammed handbag. Valverde, “Integration and Identity in Argentina,” cf. 7, 315.

10. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-1, interview with Alice Abraham, 1962.

11. Ibid., Series 4-c-c, interview with Michel Haddy, Spring 1962.

12. “A Picturesque Colony,” New York Daily Tribune, 2 October 1892.

13. Lucius Hopkins Miller, Our Syrian Population; a Study of the Syrian Communities of Greater New York (San Francisco: Reed, 1969 [1905]), 11. New York housed the largest community of Lebanese immigrants in the United States. For instance, according to Miller, in 1901–1902, 38 percent of the 4,333 arriving immigrants recorded that city as their final destination, while the remaining 2,658 immigrants were spread out among the other states. Moreover, an overwhelming 73 percent traveled to a destination in the North Atlantic states, with the great majority among these (2,900 out of a total of 3,163) residing in New York, Massachusetts, and Pennsylvania. I state all these numbers to indicate only that: (1) statistics from the community in New York do give us a good idea of the overall pattern of employment followed by all emigrants, and (2) when Massachusetts and Pennsylvania (two highly industrialized states as opposed to those in the Midwest and the South) are added to the picture, the argument becomes even more persuasive.

14. Klich, “Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina,” 273.

15. The commentator, Rabbi Samuel Halphon, was actually chastising Ashkenazi Jewish itinerant vendors, whom he saw as a negative influence on the Jewish community in Argentina. However, his comments about the “get rich quick” aspect of peddling applies equally to the Lebanese immigrants. Quoted in ibid., 12–13, cf. 69, 275.

16. Quoted in Afif Tannous, “Acculturation of an Arab-Syrian Community in the Deep South,” American Sociological Review 8 (June 1943): 270.

17. In her work on Jewish and Italian immigrant women in the Lower East Side of New York City, Ewen noted many similar reasons why members of these ethnic communities took up peddling. Peddling, she wrote, “was also a way of avoiding the discipline of factory labor. One woman, who had just lost her job in a sweatshop, contrasted her work to that of her peddling sister by noting that 'in selling pretzels and shoelaces we need not support the contractor and the other go-betweens, as we have to do now.'” Elizabeth Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars: Life and Culture on the Lower East Side, 1890–1925 (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1985), 74, cf. 12, 169.

18. This strong identification transcended the emigrant community and made its way into American popular culture in the form of the “Syrian” peddler, who was a prominent—albeit stereotypically lewd—character in the musical Oklahoma. A more flattering portrayal of Lebanese peddlers appeared in Christgau's children's book The Laugh Peddler. Published in 1968, the book recalls Christgau's fond memories of Hanna Yusuf, a peddler who made visits to her parents' farm in the lonely Minnesota countryside. Yusuf dispelled the monotony of farm life with his charm, friendliness, and compassion, and he ultimately saved two children who were lost in a blizzard. Alice Christgau, The Laugh Peddler ( New York: Young Scott Books, 1968), 13–16.

19. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-1, interview with Skiyyé Samaha, 1962.

20. Ibid., Series 4-c-c, interview with Michel Haddy, Spring 1962.

21. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, handwritten memoirs, Faris Naoum, 1957.

22. Ibid., Series 4-c-2, interview with Mary Matti, Spring 1962.

23. Ibid., Series 4-c-1, interview with Skiyyé Samaha, 1962.

24. Naff, Becoming American, 188.

25. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-1, interview with Mary Amyuni, Fall 1962. This and similar comments are quite intriguing because they give us a glimpse into how the Lebanese emigrants “saw” the United States. It is also a telling sign of the fact that they were not simply passive bystanders in a society controlled by “others” but rather were active in defining that society from the periphery inward.

26. Ibid., Series 4-c-3, interview with Watfa Massoud, August 1979.

27. Ibid., Series 4-c-d, interview with Mayme Faris and Louis Labaki, 1968.

28. U.S. Pushcart Commission of Greater New York, Report of the Mayor's Pushcart Commission (New York, 1907), 200.

29. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-1, interview with Skiyyé Samaha, 1962

30. Ibid.

31. Ibid., handwritten memoirs, Faris Naoum, 1957.

32. Louise Seymour Houghton, “Syrians in the United States,” pt. 2, The Survey 26, no. 2 (1911): 663.

33. Ibid., 662.

34. Miller, Our Syrian Population, 29.

35. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-1, interview with Essa Samaha, 1966.

36. Ibid., Series 4-c-5, interview with Latifa Khoury, 1980.

36. Presbyterian Church in the United States, Board of Foreign Missions, “Correspondence and Reports,” Fifty-Fourth Annual Report of the Board of Foreign Missions of the Presbyterian Church in the United States (New York, 1897), 225.

38. Miller, Our Syrian Population, 16.

39. Ibid., 9.

40. Ewen, Immigrant Women in the Land of Dollars, 150–152.

41. “Don't Like Arabs,” Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, 16 July 1901, 8.

42. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-c-5, interview with Amelia and Haseby Abdelnour, Spring 1968.

43. Ibid., Series 4-c-1, interview with Tafeda Beshara, Spring 1968.

44. Miller, Our Syrian Population, 46. Of these folks, 164 were women.

45. Quoted in ibid., 149.

46. Louise Seymour Houghton, “Our Syrian Immigrants,” The Survey 2, no. 3 (1911), 436.

47. Klich, “Criollos and Arabic Speakers in Argentina,” 268–277; Knowlton, “The Social and Spatial Mobility of the Syrian and Lebanese Community in Sao Paulo, Brazil,” 298.

48. Naff, Becoming American, 178.

49. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-C-5, interview with Mayme Faris, 1980.

50. Ibid., interview with Budelia Malooley, 1980.

51. Ibid., Series 4-B, interview with Dorothy Lee Andrache (granddaughter of Sultana), January 18, 1991.

52. Ibid., Series 4-C-5, interview with Alice Assaley, 1963.

53. Houghton, “Syrians in the United States,” pt. 2, The Survey 26, no. 2 (1911): 648.

54. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-C-5, interview with Mayme Faris, 1980.

55. Ibid., interview with Eva Frenn, November 18, 1980.

56. Ibid., interview with Oscar Alwan, July 16, 1980.

57. Ibid., Series 4-C-1, interview with Skiyyé Samaha, 1962.

58. For an excellent study of the rise of the middle class in the United States, see Mary Ryan's Cradle of the Middle Class: The Family in Oneida County, New York, 1790–1865 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981), and Stuart M. Blumin's The Emergence of the Middle Class: Social Experience in the American City, 1760–1900 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989).

59. “American” reaction to immigrants ranged greatly over the social and economic map of the United States. The nativists rejected immigration as “mongrelizing” the species. See, for example, John Higham's Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativisim, 1860–1925 (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1988). The elitist romantics imagined a “pure and noble East” that should not be sullied by “modern” industrialism. Waterfield's biography of Khalil Gibran has an interesting section on this group, particularly those residing in Boston. Waterfield, Prophet, 117–134. Finally, the social workers tried hard to assimilate immigrants into the mainstream of American life.

60. Cecilia Razovki, “The Eternal Masculine,” The Survey 39 (1917): 117.

61. M. A. de Wolfe Howe, Boston: The Place and the People (New York: Macmillan, 1903), 382.

62. It is important to note that some social workers had a more critical approach to the ideal of middle-class life. For example, Simkhovitch noted that immigrant women had a stronger position within the family than “often obtains in families of a higher economic level.” Mary Simkhovitch, Neighborhood: My Story of Greenwich House (New York: Norton, 1938), 136; also see Jane Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 40–41. And young charity workers like Addams came to recognize that the “tidiness” of the middle-class charity worker was hardly a claim to cultural superiority when in fact it represented “parasitic cleanliness and a social standing attained only through status.” Addams, Democracy and Social Ethics, 18.

63. S. Adolphus Knoph, “The Smaller Family,” The Survey 37 (1916): 161.

64. Frederick A. Bushee, “The Invading Host,” in Americans in Process; a Study of Our Citizens of Oriental Ancestry, ed. William Carlson Smith (Ann Arbor, Mich.: Edwards Brothers, 1937), 49, 52–53.

65. Robert Arhcery Woods and Albert J. Kennedy, The Settlement Horizon: A National Estimate (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 1922), 185.

66. Gwendolyn Mink, The Wages of Motherhood: Inequality in the Welfare State, 1917–1942 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). See also Eileen Boris, “The Racialized Gendered State: Constructions of Citizenship in the United States,” Social Politics 2 (Summer 1995): 160–180.

67. Philip Davis, Street-Land: Its Little People and Big Problems, (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1915), 227–229.

68. Alan Wieder, Immigration, the Public School, and the 20th Century American Ethos: The Jewish Immigrant as a Case Study (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985), 49. New York City, which had the most extensive public-school system, was teaching 1,376 foreign students in 1879 and 36,000 in 1905. Gustave Straubenmueller, “The Work of the New York Schools for the Immigrant Class,” Journal of Social Science 44 (1906): 177.

69. John Buchanan, “How to Assimilate the Foreign Element in Our Population,” Forum 32 (1902): 691.

70. Cited in Richard N. Juliani, “The Settlement House and the Italian Family,” in The Italian Immigrant Woman in North America, ed. Betty Boyd Caroli, Robert Harvey, and Lydia Tomasi (Toronto: Multicultural History Society of Ontario, 1978), 119.

71. A prominent Lebanese physician in Birmingham took the congressman to task about this racial epithet in a letter to the editor which appeared in the Birmingham Ledger on September 20, 1907.

72. Discussion of this case—which captured the attention of the Lebanese community in the United States—appeared in a two-part essay entitled “Syrian Naturalization Question in the United States,” written by Joseph Ferris and published in the February and March 1928 issues of the Syrian World.

73. Houghton, “Syrians in the United States,” pt. 1, The Survey 26, no. 1 (1911), 492.

74. According to Higham, The Menace, an anti-Catholic, nativist newspaper, grew between 1908 and 1911 from a yearly circulation of 120,000 copies to 1,000,000. In many of its issues it propagandized that the Vatican was ordering Italian emigration to the United States in order to dilute and subvert its “American” nature. Higham, Strangers in the Land, 64.

75. Few have studied the history of the Arabic press in the United States. The only major study of this medium was a dissertation written by Melki; it was mostly a compilation of the biographies of the various editors of the newspapers and magazines, as well as a discussion of the topics that were generally covered. Henri Melki, “Arab American Journalism” (Ph.D. diss., Georgetown University, 1972).

76. al-Huda, 18 January 1905, 2.

77. “Wit and Humor,” al-Huda, 22 March 1898, 16.

78. Italians in the United States experienced a similar process of identity formation. For example, in Chicago an Italian-language radio hour had to appeal to all Italians, and that meant emphasizing and inventing aspects of Italian culture and experience that transcended specific villages and regions; at the same time it had to address the concerns of Italians in Chicago.

79. Enamored as he was with quantifying the “colony of Syrians” in New York, Miller found that 17.7 percent of its members were from north Lebanon (Kisrawan, North Metn), 14 percent from “northern Syria” (in reality the Bsherri, Zghorta, and Ehden regions), 21 percent from Beirut, 5.2 percent from southern Lebanon (South Metn, Shūf ), 25.1 percent from Zahleh and its environs, and 1.25 percent from Rachaya and Marj‘uyun. Miller, Our Syrian Population, 18.

80. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection, Series 4-C-5, interview with Anthony L. and George J. B., and Edna M., June 1980.

81. This is not the place to discuss at length the development of this identity, but it is certainly worth delving into, particularly as it pertains to the growth of various brands of nationalist movements in Lebanon.

82. William Essey, “Lest We Forget: Raphael, Bishop of Brooklyn,” The Word 20 (May 1976): 12.

83. Smithsonian Museum of American History, Alexa Naff Arab American Collection; Series 4-B-3, interview with Victoria Samaha, May 1962.

84. Najla Saliba of Detroit described such a situation. Her Melkite club was started by Melkites from various parts of Mount Lebanon and Syria. However, “they couldn't get together because each was from a different village or city. Everybody wanted to come forward in the name of the place he came from.” Ibid., Series 4-B-1, interview with Najla Saliba, May 1962.

85. “Talk of Abu Hatab,” al-Huda, 8 April 1905, 4.

86. Salim Mukarzel, “Knocking on the Door,” al-Huda, 22 March 1898, 9.

87. “The Visit,” al-Huda, 3 January 1899, 17.

88. Ibid.

89. Elias Qirqmaz, “The Misery of the Syrian Child in the Crib, and in the House, and in the Market,” al-Huda, 18 April 1899, 13.

90. Ibid., 14.

91. Ibid., 15.

92. Nasrallah Elias Faris, “The Syrians and Schools,” al-Huda, 17 April 1903, 2.

93. Ibid.

94. Elias Nassif Elias, “The Syrian Woman and the Qashé,” al-Huda, 26 May 1903, 2.

95. Ibid.

96. Yusuf al-Za‘ini, “The Female Qashé Sellers,” al-Huda, 12 July 1903, 2.

97. Yusuf Wakim, “Necessity for Putting a Limit of Law That Prohibits the Emigration of the Syrian Woman to American,” al-Huda, 13 January 1908, 4.

98. Ibid.

99. Elias, “The Syrian Woman and the Qashé,” 2.

100. In the 1860s American writers on sexuality, such as Doctor R. T. Trall, placed the “passional expression of love” within the house and gave responsibility for its control to the woman. And while admitting the possibility that women can experience sexual pleasure, he and other writers either subordinated female sexual desire, or lust, “to the passive, loving faculties of feminine character or denied [it] entirely.” Mary Ryan, The Empire of the Mother: American Writing about Domesticity, 1830–1860 (New York: Haworth Press, 1982), 105.

101. “Thoughts of Thoughts,” al-Huda, 12 January 1905, 3.

102. See Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789–1860 (New York: Knopf, 1986), 219.

103. Nasrallah Faris, “Men and Woman Were Created to Work,” al-Huda, 11 June 1903, 3.

104. ‘Afifa Karam, al-Huda, 14 July 1903, 2. At the beginning of this article, Karam wrote, without the slightest hint of sarcasm, “I read above the article [by Yusuf al-Za‘ini entitled “The Female Qashé Sellers”] words from al-Huda asking 'educated men to respond and criticize' without including educated women. But I ask from al-Huda to excuse this action of mine [writing in response].” At the end of the article, the editor of al-Huda wrote, “We wish if more of educated women were like the writer of this article, not afraid to appear in a literary setting nor of the objections against them by foolish people.” Both comments were indications that the entry of women writers into this field was a fairly novel event.

105. al-Huda, 5 March 1899, 15–17, and 11 September 1906, 3.

106. al-Huda, 8 April 1900, 2.

107. ‘Afifa Karam, “The Woman as She Is Today,” al-Huda, 23 August 1898.

108. Mariam Yusuf al-Zammar, “The Mother and Moral Upbringing,” al-Huda, 10 June 1908, 3. In 1903 Karam noted in al-Huda (14 July 1903, 2) that only 5 percent of “emigrant women” were educated. This is a difficult statistic to verify. Our other source of information is immigration records, which give a slightly higher figure for literacy among “Syrian” emigrant women. Immigration Commission, Reports of the Immigration Commission: Statistical Review of Immigration, 1820–1910, 61st Cong., 3rd sess., 1911, S. Doc. 756, p. 86.

109. al-Huda, 1 September 1900, 2.

110. al-Zammar, “The Mother and Moral Upbringing,” 3.

111. ‘Afifa Karam, al-Huda, 6 June 1901, 3.

112. al-Huda, 1 September 1900, 3.

113. ‘Afifa Karam, al-Huda, 21 August 1903, 3.

114. ‘Afifa Karam, al-Huda, 2 September 1902, 2.

115. ‘Afifa Karam, al-Huda, 18 January 1905, 2.

116. Ibid.

117. Sahib al-Khatarat, “Thoughts of Thoughts,” al-Huda, 12 January 1905, 2.

118. A Pure Syrian Woman, “Layla,” al-Huda, 2 March 1899, 19.

119. al-Huda, 5 March 1899, 15.

120. al-Huda, 3 November 1900, 17.

121. A. Hakim, Syrian World, 3 (October 1928): 51.

122. Antoine G. Karam, “Gibran's Concept of Modernity,” in Tradition and Modernity in Arabic Literature, ed. Issa J. Boullata and Terri DeYoung (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1997), 33.

123. Khalil Gibran, Spirits Rebellious (al-‘Arwah al-Mutamarrida) (Cairo: al-‘Arab lil-Bustāni, 1991 [1908]).

124. Nu‘aymi, “The Barren,” in Kan ya ma kan, 59–94.

125. Abdel Nour Jabbour, Ētude sur la poésie dialectale au Liban (Beirut: Publications de l'Université Libanaise, 1957), 140–142, 152.

126. There is a multitude of books on this subject for other ethnic communities in the United States. For the Italian community, see, for example, Donna Gabaccia's From Sicily to Elizabeth Street : Housing and Social Change among Italian Immigrants, 1880–1930 (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984), and Michael La Sorte's La Merica: Images of Italian Greenhorn Experience (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1985).

127. Cartoons appeared in Nahma Sandrow, Vagabond Stars: A World History of Yiddish Theater (New York: Harper & Row, 1977).