Hello everybody. I'm Jarrett Ross the GeneaVlogger and on today's vlog I will be
discussing how dutch Jewish migration led to the 8-hour workday. Today's video
is part of the migration series of project genealogy, a collaboration of
genealogy youtubers making videos around one topic. Be sure to check out the video
before mine by family history fanatics with "five tips for writing about
immigration" and the video after mine "My family tree; three migration stories"
by useful charts but you can check out the entire series by going to the
playlist which will be linked in the description.
The first Jews to start arriving in the Netherlands began in the late 16th
century after the union of Utrecht which allowed for religious freedom in
Amsterdam Sephardic Jews began to arrive and by the early 17th century there were
multiple safari communities that had been built which then evolved into one
community by the mid 17th century their community was flourishing and soon
Ashkenazi Jews began arriving into the Netherlands as well
most of these Ashkenazi Jews were arriving either due to the 30 Years War
or do the Khemelynsky uprisings but under the laws in the Netherlands both
Sephardic Jews and Ashkenazi Jews could live quite freely and these communities
started to really flourish. Now the Sephardi and Ashkenazi communities were
quite separated and even marriage between them was seen as a scandal up
until the 1800s when the pullian came in and started to reform how things were
done within the Dutch government by the mid 1800s it was starting to become more
common for Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews to be marrying and having families
together but in my own family by the mid 1800s they had started to immigrate from
Amsterdam over to London and through my research I
was able to identify three pairs of immigrant ancestors these immigrant
ancestors include my fourth great-grandparents Abraham Joseph Moscow
and his wife Jane Fairman, my other fourth great-grandparents Samuel De Haan
and his wife Clara Stijsel and my third great-grandparents Raphael Nunes Vaz and
his wife Reina Robles. When I first really started getting into genealogy
research and found this connection of all of these Dutch Jewish ancestors
moving to London I thought it was really odd that they all also worked as cigar
rollers. Abraham Moscow eventually became a cook and this is actually listed on
his death certificate from the G.R.O. and what was also interesting was that they
all moved to the same area of London in the East End right around the same
streets, literally just blocks away from each other. Well one thing that I had
wondered was why would they move from Amsterdam to London where it seemed that
Amsterdam had been a haven for a long time now I did learn that Jews had been
going back and forth between Amsterdam and London for many many years going
back to the 1600s so it wasn't really uncommon necessarily that a bunch of
Jews would go to London but was really interesting about the Dutch Jews who
were immigrating during the mid 19th century was that they all had these
similar jobs of being cigar makers its hat makers button makers part of this
likely has to do with the fact that for a long time in the Netherlands Jews had
been barred from most craft guilds so if you were a cigar maker in the
Netherlands and you were Jewish you weren't able to join a guild
as well if you were Jewish and you had a skill that was controlled by a guild you
not only couldn't join that guild but you also couldn't open up your own shop
so you couldn't open up a boot making shop if you were a boot maker couldn't
open up a hat making shop if you were a Hatter eventually guilds were abolished
in the Netherlands around the 1820s during the French reign over the
Netherlands but as just a few decades later that this
migration of all of these Dutch Jews Ashkenazi and Sephardi within the same
sorts of jobs are all moving to the same area of London in London there was a lot
of work and they all move mostly to the East End in a big part because that was
near where all the cigar factories were because that was near the tobacco dock
this migration from the Netherlands into London included both Ashkenazi and
Sephardi Jews in London the communities were still somewhat separate just like
back in the Netherlands but there was still a lot of intermarriage and there
was a lot of intermingling especially because many of these children both
Safari and Ashkenazi had gone to the Jewish freed school in London now the
working conditions were not great with in these cigar factories but being able
to join different types of guilds and unions allowed these Jews to have better
chances in terms of having a life and being able to work this migration
eventually gained the name of Shutts or huts and it's believed that this
nickname comes from the Dutch word for good which is pronounced but it isn't
known if that is truly where the term comes from it's also believed that there
may be a hebrew word that it comes from but these Jews were very specifically
different than many other Jews especially those that came later in the
1880s after the assassination of the Tsar because the Jews in the Netherlands
had gained such specific customs even the Ashkenazi and Safari apart from all
of the other Jews around the world a big one being that they ate seafood which
was considered not kosher, so they were often looked at very differently than
the Jews who immigrated to London from Eastern European countries. Now a big
part of this movement is that London was not always the final stop many of the
Jews who would go to London from the Netherlands would then continue on to
either the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, as well as a few
other places but those are the five main countries
that they would go to and many of the Jews who would arrive to the US such as
my own family continued doing that cigar work while in the US. "And my grandfather
brought my father and mother and family over to this country, paid for them to
come over. Then my father, who didn't like it or couldn't make a living. So they went back!
They stayed there for a while and then he brought them over again to this
country. My grandfather, Morris Moscow did that and then they
stayed here." "Abraham went back and forth?" "Yeah." "Why?" "He didn't like America."
"What didn't he like?" "I don't know, but I know I always remember my mother arguing
with him about it and she used to say 'In England we starved! This is the country
that gave us something to eat.' She loved America." "Did he work in Boston?" "Yeah,
he became a cigar packer and he worked in the cigar factory packing cigars."
One of the main figure heads of the American labor movement is Samuel
Gompers who is part of this migration Samuel Gompers parents had been born in
Amsterdam and immigrated to London right around 1850 samuel was born in london he
lived in the East End he grew up going to the Jewish Free School he went into
the cigar rolling industry when he was young his family moved to the US when he
was still young and he continued his work in the cigar factories but quickly
joined unions. Interestingly enough Samuel Gompers is actually a relative of
mine but that's not super uncommon because anyone who has Dutch Jewish
ancestry is often related to most everyone else who also has Dutch Jewish
ancestry, especially in cases like mine where I descend from both the Ashkenazi
community and the Sephardic community. A lot of Samuel Gompers thinking was
shaped by his experience says in the cigar factories in London
and in the US but as well it was shaped by his parents experiences especially
going from Amsterdam to London and through Samuels ideas he quickly found a
platform in these unions and rose in the ranks to become a major voice in 1886
the American Federation of Labor unions was started and Samuel Gompers one of
the founding members was elected as the president he became a figurehead for the
labor movement and his big thing was about bread-and-butter issues which were
often looking at the more finite things how long were the work hours when was
time off how many days did you have to work how much of a wage did you get all
sorts of things that affected all of the smallest workers within a company
another thing that Samuel Gompers pushed for was that unions have members that
were of a specific craft so such as he was a cigar roller there would be a
union of just cigar rollers there would be a union of just boot makers there
would be a union of just hat makers and that is really a big part of the
American Union system you find unions of stevedores you find trucker unions you
find all sorts of unions of people with specific skill sets but the biggest
issue that Samuel Gompers pushed for from the beginning of his presidency in
the AFL was for the eight-hour workday the idea being eight hours for work
eight hours for sleep and eight hours for what you will defining a 24-hour day
and this is something that most everybody is used to nowadays Samuel
Gompers fought for this eight-hour workday for a long time he really
believed in it and he did a lot of work to push that ideal all over
unfortunately Samuel Gompers passed away before he could see the passing of
what's known as the FLSA which is what would come to define by law the
our workday Samuel Gompers has become the face of the American labor movement
and if you watch pretty much anything or read anything about the American labor
movement Samuel Gompers is going to be talked about and most likely he'll be
talked about at length but it's thanks to his history that brought him to where
he was his parents had gone from Amsterdam to London looking for better
ability to work in the cigar rolling trade and then they moved to America
looking for more ability and all of that shaped the way that he would then go on
to shape the American labor movement thank you so much for checking out my
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and be sure to check out all of the other videos of this migration series of
project genealogy. I'm the GeneaVlogger. See in my next video!