are only in this paper to be taken as symptomatic of the Irish-born and
descended population, gradually growing in the city to a commanding
influence. Peter McCartee was an alderman in 1815, and John McManus
marshal of police in the same year. Irish names grew to prominence not
only in the police and fire departments, but in the ranks of the
teachers in the public schools. Of this eminence in three branches of
the public service perhaps the greatest stress should be laid on the
last. As school teachers, women and men, the Irish and Irish-descended
have held the front place, in brains as well as numbers, for a hundred
years in New York, holding it still, from William H. Maxwell, the great
superintendent of the past twenty years, down to the latest teachers in
the primary grades.
As early as 1833 it was computed that there were 44,000 of Irish birth
or descent in New York City, which at that time meant Manhattan Island
only. But the days were at hand when the combination of famine with
brutal oppression was about to result in the casting forth from Ireland
literally of millions of our people. That America should receive the
greatest share was inevitable, and that New York should receive, if only
for a temporary stay, the majority of these was natural. From 1846 to
1860 fully a million and a half of the famine-driven children of Ireland
were poured upon the shores of America. And they came, for the very
largest part, poorly clad, unlettered, uncouth, often weakened sorely in
body by prolonged semi-starvation. Thousands—men, women and
children—died of ship fever, of sea-sickness in debilitated frames, of
inability to digest the wretched food supplied them on the long passage
in the overcrowded sailing ships of the day. How many died of heartbreak
alone, God only knows. But the survivors! In their bodies, at least,
they soon vindicated the indestructibility of the Celt. Unskilled,
except in a very small fraction, they took up the hardest kind of labor.
They built the railroads, the canals; they “carried cities upon their
backs.” It was a terrible story, working slowly to a happier
consummation. They brought an instinctive loyalty to American
institutions. Bitter were the prejudices they had to face, but they
managed to outlive them all.
Naturally, in such case, they clung together. New York already had given
the Irish exiles a home. Here their real qualities had had time to
assert themselves, and here, accordingly, the newcomers of the later
forties and early fifties settled freely. In politics they became
Democrats, simply because Democracy never joined in their proscription
as emigrants unfit to be Americans, while other parties did in lesser or
greater degree. In religion they remained Catholic or Protestant as they
came, and that meant largely Catholic.
This large substratum of newcomers from Ireland found here, as has been
intimated, a large and fairly prospering Irish-born and Irish-descended
population—furnishing men of eminence to all the higher callings—judges,
lawyers, clergymen, physicians, merchants and manufacturers. With an
assimilation more rapid than with any other race, the famine-exiles took
up the order of American life. Their children filled the public schools
and found Irish teachers there. They attended and supported churches
whose hierarchy from archbishop to priest was almost wholly Irish. Thus
the Celtic complexion of the city was enhanced, and it is no doubt true
that at the outbreak of the Civil War, the population of New York
(Manhattan) was nearer to one-third than one-fourth of Irish blood.
It is not the purpose to pursue here the history of the Irish in New
York City from the outbreak of the Civil War through the half century to
our day. To the battle for the Union, however, the New York Irish
furnished magnificent quotas of fighting men, and capable officers,
earning names for bravery and skill, as would be expected of their race.
Indeed, it was the whole-souled devotion of the Irish all over the
northern states and their brilliant services in the field and on the sea
that threw down the last barriers of prejudice against their people in
America. Such a name as Phil Sheridan’s was one to charm with, not to
name another of the galaxy of great Irish captains of the war.
The Irish immigrant stream was, however, still flowing. From 1861 to
1900 they numbered over 2,000,000 souls, but this later flood came in
somewhat better estate than their forerunners—fairly equalling in
condition the concurrent German immigration and easily surpassing all
others. It is for the most part, naturally, of these comers since 1860,
that our Irish-born of today are composed, and through the entire
country they can be found in substantial positions. But it is of their
children and the children and grandchildren of the earlier immigration
that the wonder-story of worldly uprise is to be told. New York, of
course, has its share, and a large one, in this. If we can pick out from
the later decades of the nineteenth century such names as James T. Brady
and Charles O’Conor at the bar, A. T. Stewart among the merchants,
Eugene Kelly among the bankers, William H. Grace, the great pioneer
merchant of South America and twice our mayor; Archbishop Hughes,
Cardinal McCloskey among the clerics, John W. Mackay among the great
capitalists, Augustus St. Gaudens among the sculptors, O’Callaghan,
Murphy and O’Reilly among the historians, how many names of eminence in
every walk of art, science, law, religion, commerce, manufacture can be
furnished from the Irish-born and Irish-descended of today! There are
the great builders like John B. McDonald, who constructed the subway;
James Coleman, who built the great Croton dam; but why enter on a list
as long as that of the ships in Homer? Be it Thomas Fortune Ryan or John
D. Crimmins in the world of finance, the representatives of Irish brain
are there. It is of record that the second president of the New York
Chamber of Commerce, which was founded in 1768, was Hugh Wallace, an
Irishman. It is worthy of remark that Alexander E. Orr, also a native of
Ireland, was president of the same body, until a year ago, and that his
successor is J. Edward Simmons, also of Irish blood, who in his time has
been lawyer, bank president, President of the Stock Exchange, President
of the Board of Education and President of the New York Clearing House.
It is, however, to the collective work of the Irish of New York one had
better turn. From the United States census of 1900 it is deduced that
the natives of Ireland in Greater New York numbered 285,000, while the
children of Irish parents numbered 308,000, and the descendants of Irish
in the third and fourth generations numbered 200,000, or a total of
793,000 of Irish blood in a total for the city of 3,437,000—a proportion
little less than one in four. With the increase of the city’s population
since 1900 it is not quite likely that the Irish stock has kept pace,
and a diminishing ratio in point of numbers may be expected. The inflow
from southeastern Europe, from Poland, Russia and Italy has greatly (and
happily) exceeded the stream from Ireland. Yet here in New York will be
found, when the census of this year is taken, an Ireland of not far from
a million, in its expected total approaching 5,000,000 souls.
Not all of that million remembers Old Ireland as Motherland, but it must
be the task of societies like ours to awaken the sleeping memories.
There is no way of arriving directly at the proportion of the city’s
wealth which is the possession of the Irish million. It would,
doubtless, prove a mighty total, for Irish thrift and Irish talent for
accumulation have been proven here to be as existent and constant as the
carefully nurtured legend to the contrary. If there was some uproarious
spending among the earlier arrivals on their first contact with earned
American gold, and if they rose slowly, at first, from the poor estate
in which they came, yet the families they raised in decency, the
imposing array of churches and schools they paid for the building of,
and still sustain, are first hand proofs that they are sound and normal
in the greater civic virtues. The Catholic churches in Greater New York,
from the great cathedral of St. Patrick and the splendid St. Francis
Xavier of the Jesuits to the smallest suburban chapel, number 257
edifices, and it is safe to say that ninety-eight per cent. of the funds
for rearing them and keeping them have come from the Irish immigrants
and their children, not in great gifts, not often in large individual
subscriptions, but dollar by dollar and dime by dime from the building
of St. Peter’s in Vesey Street a hundred years ago down to the present
day. The Catholic parochial schools—the creation, one may say, of the
past quarter century—most of them imposingly housed, number 154,
instructing 120,000 pupils and almost all at the cost of Irish Catholic
contributions. It is not proper here to discuss the church policy, which
puts this charge upon its faithful over and above the share they pay in
common with other citizens to the public school fund but it may here be
noted that the parochial schools are a significant monument to Irish
generosity and the deeper devotion which puts the moral and religious
above the mere utilitarian. The public school pupils number over
600,000, but the seating capacity of the schools has never filled the
wonderfully growing demand. The alternative of half-day classes in the
most congested neighborhoods has even failed to take in all the children
seeking instruction. The public schools attract a large proportion of
the Irish-descended children of the great city, and, as has been noted,
the number of Irish-descended teachers is very high in comparison with
those from other nationalities. Here, however, side by side with the
great educational work of the municipality, is a school system
instructing one-fifth as many children in the name of religious ideality
and entirely supported by the resident members of the Catholic faith. In
addition to these are thirty-seven colleges and academies of higher
learning and two religious seminaries educating for the priesthood. The
450 edifices, thus scantily summarized, represent a total valuation,
according to the best authorities, of not less than $40,000,000, and
possibly, with work in progress, approach the great total of
$50,000,000. This is a very noble portion of Ireland’s monument in New
York.
Great as these sums may be, they give but a sorry measure of the value
of the churches to the Irish themselves, furnishing as they have done a
moral anchorage beyond the power of words to describe. Most necessary
were they to a people taken rudely from their homes and sent naked and
adrift in a new and strange world, where the battle was no longer the
mere struggle for existence but a conflict for power and wealth, in
which the sharpest wits, acting through the loosest morals, were often
the victors. Well may the New York Irish view this array of churches,
schools and colleges with some glow of pride—and gratitude.
It is not that the Protestant Irish of New York were wanting in their
share of church building. They more rapidly merged in the American
branches of their respective sects, but it is well to remember that an
“Irish Presbyterian Church” existed on Orange Street in New York in
1811, as well as an “Erin Lodge of Freemasons,” and that Irish
Protestant clerics like the late Dr. John Hall have in goodly numbers
filled the most important pulpits in New York and Brooklyn for over a
century and a half. The famous John Street Methodist Church was founded
by Irishmen. It is probable that in the greater city there are 200,000
persons of Protestant faith, who are either native Irish or in whole or
in part of Irish descent.
In such an establishment as St. Vincent’s hospital, in the New York
Foundling Asylum, the Roman Catholic Orphan Asylum, the Catholic
Protectory, the House of the Good Shepherd are other highly valuable
proofs of organizing genius and generous sustaining power on the part of
the Irish of New York.
Among the long-established and wisely administered savings banks of the
city, none has a prouder record or a firmer base than the Emigrant
Industrial Savings Bank, which has been distinctly, almost wholly, Irish
in its administration and until lately in its depositors. In the last
few years it has attracted great numbers of Italians, scared out of
their first implicit faith in the many irresponsible “banks” set up by
their countrymen. With its deposits over $98,000,000, an army of
depositors numbering over 122,000, and an unbroken history of successful
management of sixty years (it was incorporated in 1850) the Emigrant
Bank is surely a magnificent exhibit of Irish trust and Irish
efficiency. Its president, Thomas Mulry, was, up to the first of the
year, Commissioner of Charity for New York. In that office he was
succeeded by Michael J. Drummond, one of the Emigrant Bank’s trustees.
Like Mr. Mulry, Mr. Drummond is Irish-born, and is a former president of
the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick in the City of New York.
The individual thrift of the Irish has, indeed, been notable. Their
favorite investments have been in real estate and these, in thousands of
instances, have proved the foundation of the Irish fortunes of today.
The Catholic Club has taken a notable place among the best institutions
of the kind in the city; its membership is largely Irish stock.
In the public offices, the police and fire departments, the number of
Irish-descended is very large. An idea is abroad that this is wholly in
consequence of the adherence of the Irish population to the fortunes of
the political organization known as Tammany Hall, but it is only a
half-truth. Tammany Hall, during a great part of its history, has been
the “regular” Democracy, and that was enough for many who had grown up
with it, but the forces of revolt from within the Democratic party have
frequently overthrown Tammany, and it was generally Irish names that
then came to the front. The late Mayor William H. Grace is an instance.
In the recent election Tammany met a pretty general defeat, but its
Irish-descended nominee for mayor, William H. Gaynor, was elected, and
foremost among those of the victorious opposition, who will share the
great city’s government with him, are William A. Prendergast, son of
Irish parents, as Comptroller; George McAneny as president of the
Borough of Manhattan, and John Purroy Mitchel, grandson of John Mitchel,
the famous Irish patriot of 1848, as President of the aldermen. In the
civil service examinations the Irish hold their own and more, so that
whatever political party may be in power the racial ratio in New York’s
public offices is not likely to change for many years to come, where
merit and moral and physical fitness are at all the test of appointment.
It would be easy to point to great individual instances of successful
Irishmen in the wholesale and the greater retail business of the city,
but enough has been said here to show how strong is the hold of the
Irish here and how great their stake in the fortune and wealth of the
city. Nevertheless, one may well be surprised to note how little that is
distinctly Irish, as apart from Catholic or Protestant, Democrat or
Republican (to mention a couple of lines of emotional and rational
cleavage), meets the eye in the city’s edifices or public monuments. In
the churchyard of St. Paul’s Protestant Episcopal Church are three
notable monuments—a monolith to the memory of Thomas Addis Emmet,
another to the memory of Dr. William James MacNevin, and a monument in
the wall of the church itself over General Montgomery of Revolutionary
fame. In Trinity churchyard is the tomb of Robert Fulton. In Central
Park there is a bust of Thomas Moore, the Irish poet. The list ends
somewhere there—pretty meagrely.
There are and have been many Irish societies, patriotic, social,
benevolent, literary and musical, but although the existence of one runs
back over a century and a quarter and has always included in its ranks
the most flourishing of Ireland’s sons, without any regard to politics
or religion, it has never owned a home of its own. Like the others, it
is housed from occasion to occasion wherever the choice of its officers
may lead it, yet it has long owned a considerable building fund. Another
body, large in numbers, is understood to own a building site, but there
the matter rests. This, to the lover of Ireland, is not an encouraging
condition. One would expect to see a number of splendid edifices devoted
to Irish social, scientific and artistic objects. One would expect to
see fine monuments in public places to the great men of Irish-American
history—such even as those late-comers, the Italians, have erected to
their countrymen, to wit: the fine Columbus pillar, the Garibaldi, the
Verdi and the Verazzano monuments.
Should there not be a trumpet note of change sounded over these glaring
deficiencies? Should not there be at least one great Celtic Institute
founded with a large and imposing auditorium for Irish gatherings, and
with suites of rooms and smaller assembly halls for such organizations
as the American-Irish Historical Society’s New York Chapter, for the
Gaelic, the literary, the artistic, musical, benevolent and social Irish
organizations of the city not religious in character? It is easily
within the reach of accomplishment. It but needs the effort of a few of
the really rich and public-spirited men of Irish blood to give it the
proper financial basis and provide thereafter for its economical
management.
Among other things it would insure the much-neglected history of our
race in New York a chance to be the object of real service, instead of
as now, the hobby of comparatively few.
In another particular a deficiency is noted, which there is at present
some effort making among the churches to supply, namely, a care for the
social welfare, for the spread of uplifting, refining influences among
the young men and women of the Irish race after they have finished their
terms at school. Local Homes for the Irish young men and women informed
in their directorates with intelligent, animating spirit, should
flourish all over New York. The Y. M. C. A. has sufficiently blazed the
way. It is a great and inviting work. Such life could be given to these
Homes that their attraction would be irresistible. The good they would
do, the results they would achieve for civic uplift and domestic and
social refinement would well repay all they would cost in money and
care.
To kindred objects the New York Irish have been continual givers rather
than large donors in the American sense, but last year the gift of
$4,500,000 by John M. Burke, of New York, for founding and endowing a
Home for Convalescents indicates that the rich Celt is falling into the
line of broad and bold American philanthropy. What more vital to the
standing and the future of the race in New York can be thought of than a
great Celtic Institute or the Neighborhood Homes as outlined above?
It is true that in the case of the Irish immigration of the past sixty
years the material had to be taken as it came to these shores, and that
not everything could be done with it, or for it, at once; but the
situation is no longer the same. Looking over the external sources of
future population for the whole United States, as well as for New York
City, it becomes pretty evident that the Irish race will not furnish any
but a diminishing quota; that the future of the Irish race in America
depends almost entirely on the Irish already here. It is also true that
the social condition of the Irish stock is bettering every day. Other
European races, broadly speaking, are doing the laborers’ work of the
country as well as the city. The Irish millionaire, the Irish captain of
industry, the Irish leader in thought and education is largely
represented here. We produce great laymen as well as great clerics, and
it becomes daily more incumbent on the prosperous to turn with the open
purse and the hand of uplift to the less favored by fortune, in order
that they may make hereafter for the fame and condition of the race in
America. That there is a tendency among the very well-to-do children and
grandchildren of the Irish immigrants away from Irish association is
largely true. It is so with German-descended in a degree, as to their
racial fellows, but these latter did not have behind them the history of
bitter, poverty-smitten struggles for a foothold here, which befel the
bulk of the Irish immigration. The Germans came from a prosperous land,
seeking greater prosperity. Even the poorest Italians, coming from a
hungering country, bring with them the dower of a historic past, rich
with the highest artistic embellishment and spiritual fulfilment. Back
of the Irish immigration was an immediate past of hunger, oppression,
intolerance and passionate, ineffectual revolt, and long vague memories
of distant splendors that came to them, partly in legend and partly in
the ruins of pillar-towers, castles, abbeys and half-obliterated
carvings over graves. Out of these legends and these ruins and graves
came to them the true whisperings of the race. The Celtic renaissance in
Ireland itself grows because these whisperings are a little better
heard. A like cultivation may follow here if the race is true to itself.
It is within the memory of many like myself that to be Irish has taken
on a substantial social consideration but grudgingly accorded thirty or
forty years ago. So many have arrived at fortune, have done great public
service, have attained social heights that it becomes a matter of social
self-defense with them to see that no child of their race shall lack for
the incentive and something of the opportunity to enter and carry on the
battle of life under inspiring conditions.
In attempting to visualise the Irish share in New York itself, the
preceding considerations appear to be as necessary as the mere record of
mighty numbers and massed achievement, but enough has, perhaps, been
said to show that, by and large, the Irish here have survived their
greatest trials, have largely developed the civic virtues and reached a
plane of prosperity inferior to no race on the continent. They are
one-fourth of New York’s population, and probably hold almost an equally
high fraction of its personal wealth, bating, of course, that enormous
increment which comes to the metropolis from its commanding position as
the continental centre of investment. May the Irish chapter of New York
in the next fifty years be more inspiring still.
HOW THE CELEBRATION TOOK SHAPE.