“The Great Meeting of Foreigners in the Park.”

This illustration from an 1855 publication, The Crisis; or, the Enemies of America Unmasked, depicted a labor demonstration in New York’s City Hall Park demanding relief for the unemployed during the 1854–55 panic. Both Germans and Irish took part in the demonstration. The Crisis's presentation of “foreign” labor demonstraters was meant to alarm readers who shared its “nativist,” anti-immigrant position. This wood engraving was one of the few images of organized working-class action published before the Civil War.

Source: (Cunnington) J. Wayne Laurens, The Crisis, or the Enemies of America Unmasked (Philadelphia, 1855)—American Social History Project.