“The Mortar of Assimilation—and the One Element That Won’t Mix,” 1889

Before Zangwill’s play appeared, the magazine Puck published a cartoon that contains the concept of the melting pot. In it Columbia, the female symbol of the United States, draped in an American flag, is stirring a pot labeled “Citizenship” with a spoon called “Equal Rights.” Various nationalities can be seen in the pot, but only one group, the Irish, appears to resist assimilation.