During the 1820s New Haven's population grew dramatically, as Irish immigrants and young people from the surrounding rural communities moved to the city in search of newly-created economic activities. But New Haven's burgeoning commercial and industrial enterprises offered no employment to blacks, and even the few occupations traditionally open to African-American workers were soon taken up by new arrivals hungry for work. "Aristides," writing in the New Haven Chronicle, gives voice to a new sense of white economic nationalism, arguing that even efforts "calculated to elevate the character of our coloured people" were an injury to white working men.