THE CELTIC IRISH
From the outbreak of the Revolution until the fourth decade of the
nineteenth century there was a lull in immigration. In a lifetime
fewer aliens came than now debark in a couple of months. During
these sixty years powerful forces of assimilation were rapidly
molding a unified people out of the motley colonial population.
In the fermenting West, the meeting-place of men from everywhere,
elements of the greatest diversity were blending into a common
American type which soon began to tinge the streams of life that ran
distinct from one another in the seaboard States. Then came another
epoch of vast immigration, which has largely neutralized the effect
of the nationalizing forces, and has brought us into a state of
heterogeneity like to that of the later colonial era.
THE HIBERNIAN TIDE
After the great lull, the Celtic Irish were the first to come in
great numbers. From 1820 to 1850 they were more than two-fifths of
all immigrants, and during the fifties more than one-third. More
than a seventh of our 30,000,000 immigrants have brought in their
aching hearts memories of the fresh green of the moist island in
the Northern sea. The registered number is about 4,250,000, but the
actual number is larger, for many of the earlier Irish, embarking
in English ports, were counted as coming from England. No doubt
the Irish who have suffered the wrench of expatriation to America
outnumber the present population of the Green Isle, which is only
a little more than one-half of what it was before the crisis of
famine, rebellion, and misery that came about the middle of the
nineteenth century. It is, indeed, a question whether there is not
more Irish blood now on this side of the Atlantic than on the other.
It is possible that during Victoria's reign more of her subjects
left Ireland in order to live under the Stars and Stripes than left
England in order to build a Greater Britain under the Union Jack.
In his "Coronation Ode," William Watson sees Ireland as
... the lonely and the lovely Bride
Whom we have wedded, but have never won.
The truth of this shows in the way the wandering Irish still
shun the lands under the British crown. Most of the inviting
frontier left on our continent lies in western Canada. Already the
opportunities there have induced land-hungry Americans to renounce
their flag at the rate of a hundred thousand in a single year. Yet
the resentful Irish turn to the narrower opportunities of what they
regard as their land of emancipation. During a recent nine-year
period, while the English and the Scotch emigrants preferred Canada
to "the States," eleven times as many Irish sought admission in
our ports as were admitted to Canada, although Canada's systematic
campaign for immigrants is carried on alike in England, Scotland,
and Ireland.
Very likely the Irish exodus is a closed chapter of history.
Ireland's population has been shrinking for sixty years, and she has
now fewer inhabitants than the State of Ohio. People are leaving
the land of heather twice as fast as they are abandoning the land
of the shamrock. The early marriage and blind prolificacy that had
overpopulated the land until half the people lived on potatoes,
and two-fifths dwelt in one-room mud cabins, are gone forever, and
Ireland has now one of the lowest birth-rates in Europe. Gradually
the people are again coming to own the ground under their feet;
native industries and native arts are reviving, and a wonderful
rural coöperative movement is in full swing. The long night of
misgovernment, ignorance, and superfecundity seems over, the star of
home rule is high, and the day may soon come when these home-loving
people will not need to seek their bread under strange skies.
During its earlier period, Irish immigration brought in a desirable
class, which assimilated readily. Later, the enormous assisted
immigration that followed the famine of 1846-48 brought in many of
an inferior type, who huddled helplessly in the poorer quarters of
our cities and became men of the spade and the hod. After the crisis
was past, there again came a type that was superior to those who
remained behind. Of course the acquiescent property-owning class
never emigrated, and those rising in trade or in the professions
rarely came unless they had fallen into trouble through their
patriotism. But of the common people there is evidence that the more
capable part leaked away to America. The Earl of Dunraven testifies:
Those who have remained have, for the most part, been the least
physically fit, the most mentally deficient, and those who
correspond to the lowest industrial standard.... For half a
century and more the best equipped, mentally and physically,
of the population have been leaving Ireland. The survival of
the unfittest has been the law, and the inevitable result,
deterioration of the race, statistics abundantly prove.
Owing to this exodus of the young and energetic, Ireland has become
the country of old men and old women. An eighth of her people are
more than sixty-five years old as against an eleventh in England.
In half a century the proportion of lunatics and idiots in the
population of Ireland rose from one in 657 to one in 178. In 1906
the inspector of lunatics reported:
The emigration of the strong and healthy members of the
community not alone increases the ratio of the insane who are
left behind to the general population, but also lowers the
general standard of mental and bodily health by eliminating
many of the members of the community who are best fitted to
survive and propagate the race.
He may not have known that, compared with the rest of our
immigrants, the Irish have twice their share of insanity. The
commissioners of national education, after pointing with pride to
half a century's great reduction of illiteracy, add:
The change for the better is remarkable when it is remembered
that it was the younger and better educated who emigrated ...
during this period, while the majority of the illiterate were
persons who were too old to leave their homes.
THE IRISH IN THE STRUGGLE FOR EXISTENCE
A close study of two hundred workingmen's families in New York
City showed the average German family thirty dollars ahead at
the end of the year while the average Irish family of about
the same income had spent ten dollars more than it had earned.
Charity visitors know that the Irish are often as open-handed and
improvident as the Bedouins. A Catholic educator accounts for the
scarcity of Irish millionaires by declaring that his people are too
generous to accumulate great fortunes. They are free givers, and
no people are more ready to take into the family the orphans of
their relatives. In a county of mixed nationalities there will be
more mortgages and stale debts against Irish farmers than against
any others. In a well-paid class of workers there will be more
renters and fewer home-owners among the Irish than among any other
nationality of equal pay. Less habitually than others do the Irish
make systematic provision for old age. They depend on the earnings
of their children, who, indeed, are many and loyal enough. But
if the children die early or scatter, the day-laborer must often
eat the bread of charity. A decade ago the Irish were found to be
relatively thrice as numerous in our almshouses as other non-native
elements. In the Northeast, where they formed a quarter of the
foreign-born population, they furnished three-fifths of the paupers.
In Massachusetts, and in Boston as well, they were four times as
common in the almshouses as out of them, although, to be sure, a
part of this bad showing is due to more of them being aged. Nor
do their children provide much better for the future. In Boston,
those of Irish parentage produce two and one-half times their quota
of paupers. In both first and second generations the frugal and
fore-looking Germans there have less than a tenth of the pauperism
of the Irish, while in 1910 in the country at large the tendency of
the Irish toward the almshouse was nearly three times that of the
Germans. Dr. Bushee, who has investigated the conditions in Boston,
says:
It cannot be said that the ordinary Irishman is of a provident
disposition; he lives in the present and worries comparatively
little about the future. He is not extravagant in any particular
way, but is wasteful in every way; it is his nature to drift
when he ought to plan and economize. This disposition, combined
with an ever-present tendency to drink too much, is liable to
result in insecure employment and a small income. And, to make
matters worse, in families of this kind children are born with
reckless regularity.
In extenuation, let it not be forgotten that at home the earlier
Irish immigrants had lived under perhaps a more demoralizing social
condition than that from which any other of our immigrants have
come. Fleeing from plague and starvation, great numbers were dumped
at our ports with no means of getting out upon the land. What was
there for them to do but to rush their labor into the nearest market
and huddle sociably together in wretched slums, where, despite their
sturdy physique, they fell an easy prey to sickness and died off
twice as fast as they should? They lived as poorly as do the Russian
Jews when first they come; but, being a green country-folk, they
understood less than do the town-bred Jews how to withstand the
noxious influences of cities and slums.
Certainly, along with their courage and loyalty, the Irish did not
bring the economic virtues. Straight from the hoe they came, without
even the thrift of the farmer who owns the land he tills. Many of
them were no better fitted to succeed in the modern competitive
order than their ancestors of the septs in the days of Strongbow. In
value-sense and foresight, how far they stand behind Scot, Fleming,
or Yankee! In the acquisitive mêlée most of them are as children
compared with the Greek or the Semite. An observant settlement
worker has said:
The Irish are apt to make their occupation a secondary matter.
They remain idle if no man hires them; but not so the Jew. If he
can get no regular employment, it is possible to gather rags and
junk and sell them.... If employed under a hard master, he still
works on under conditions that would drive the Irishman to drink
and the American to suicide until finally he sees an opportunity
to improve his condition.
We must not forget that Irish development had been forcibly arrested
by the selfish policy of their conquerors. In the latter part of
the seventeenth century the English Parliament, at the behest of
English graziers and farmers, put an end to Ireland's cattle-trade
to England, then to her exportation of provisions to the colonies.
Afterward came export duties on Irish woolens, and, later, complete
prohibition of the exportation of woolens to foreign countries.
"Cotton, glass, hats, iron manufactures, sugar refining--whatever
business Ireland turned her hand to, and always with success--was
in turn restricted." The result was that the natural capacity of
the people was repressed, the growth of industrial habits was
checked, and the country was held down to simple agriculture under
a blighting system of absentee landlordism. Still, we cannot
overlook the success of the Scottish Lowlanders in Ulster under the
same strangling discriminations, nor forget that the 3500 German
Protestant refugees who were settled in Munster in 1709 prospered
as did their brother refugees in Pennsylvania, and became in time
much wealthier than their Celtic neighbors.
A thousand years ago an Irish scholar, teaching at Liège,
acknowledged his love for the cup in his invocation to the Muses,
and addressed a poem to a friend who, being the possessor of a great
vineyard, understood "how to awaken genius through the inspiration
of the heavenly dew."
ALCOHOLISM THE FREQUENT CAUSE OF POVERTY
It is this same "heavenly dew"--whose Erse name _usquebaugh_, we
have pronounced "whisky"--that, more than anything else, has held
back the Irish in America. The Irishman is no more a craver of
alcohol than other men, but his sociability betrays him to that
beverage which is the seal of good fellowship. He does not sit
down alone with a bottle, as the Scandinavian will do, nor get his
friends round a table and quaff _lager_, as the German does. No
"Dutch treat" for him. He drinks spirits in public, and, after a
dram or two, his convivial nature requires that every stranger in
the room shall seal friendship in a glass with him. His temperament,
too, makes liquor a snare to him. Where another drinker becomes
mellow or silent or sodden, the Celt becomes quarrelsome and foolish.
Twenty years ago an analysis of more than seven thousand cases of
destitution in our cities showed that drink was twice as frequent
a cause of poverty among the Irish cases as among the Germans,
and occurred half again as often among them as among the native
American cases. Among many thousands of recent applications for
charity, "intemperance of the bread-winner" crops out as a cause of
destitution in one case out of twelve among old-strain Americans;
but it taints one case out of seven among the Irish and one case
out of six among the Irish of the second generation. In the charity
hospitals of New York alcoholism is responsible for more than a
fifth of all the cases. Drink is the root of the trouble in a
quarter of the native Americans treated, in a third of the Irish
patients, and in two-fifths of the cases among the native-born of
Irish fathers. Contrast this painful showing with the fact that one
Italian patient out of sixty, one Magyar patient out of seventy,
one Polish patient out of eighty, and one Hebrew patient out of one
hundred is in the hospital on account of drink!
IRISH NEAR THE FOOT OF THE LIST IN CRIME
In the quality of their crimes our immigrants differ more from one
another than they do in complexion or in the color of their eyes.
The Irishman's love of fighting has made Donnybrook Fair a byword;
yet it is a fact that personal violence is six or seven times as
often the cause of confinement for Italian, Magyar, or Finnish
prisoners in our penitentiaries as for the Irish. Patrick may be
quarrelsome, but he fights with his hands, and in his cups he is
not homicidal, like the South Italian, or ferocious, like the
Finn. Three-fifths of the Hebrew convicts are confined for gainful
offenses, but only one-fifth of the Irish. Among a score or more of
nationalities, the Irish stand nearly at the foot of the list in the
commission of larceny, burglary, forgery, fraud, or homicide. Rape,
pandering, and the white-slave traffic are almost unknown among
them. What could be more striking than the fact that more than half
of the Irish convicts have been sent up for "offenses against public
order," such as intoxication and vagrancy! One cannot help feeling
that the Celtic offender is a feckless fellow, enemy of himself more
than of any one else. It is usually not cupidity nor brutality nor
lust that lodges him in prison, but conviviality and weak control of
impulses.
It is certain that no immigrant is more loyal to wife and child than
the Irishman. Out of nearly ten thousand charity cases in which a
wife was the head of the family, the greatest frequency of widowhood
and the least frequency of desertion or separation is among the
Irish. In only eighteen per cent. of the Irish cases is the husband
missing; whereas among the Hebrews, Slovaks, Lithuanians, and
Magyars he is missing in from forty to fifty per cent. of the cases.
But the sons of Irish, with that ready adaptation to surroundings
characteristic of the Celt, desert their wives with just about the
same frequency as men of pure American stock; namely, thirty-six per
cent., or twice that of their fathers.
GREAT CHANGES IN OCCUPATION AMONG THE IRISH
Thirty years ago, when the Irish and the Germans in America were
nearly equal in number, there were striking contrasts in the place
they took in industry. As domestic servants, laborers, mill-hands,
miners, quarrymen, stone-cutters, laundry workers, restaurant
keepers, railway and street-car employees, officials and employees
of government, the Irish were two or three times as numerous as the
Germans. On the other hand, as farmers, saloon-keepers, bookkeepers,
designers, musicians, inventors, merchants, manufacturers,
and physicians, the Germans far outnumbered the Irish. Where
artistic skill is required, as in confectionery, cabinet-making,
wood-carving, engraving, photography, and jewelry-making; where
scientific knowledge is called for, as in brewing, distilling,
sugar-refining, and iron manufacture, the Irish were hopelessly
beaten by the trained and plodding Germans.
For a while, the bulk of Irish formed a pick-and-shovel caste,
claiming exclusive possession of the poorest and least honorable
occupations, and mobbing the Chinaman or the negro who intruded into
their field. But the record of their children proves that there is
nothing in the stock that dooms it forever to serve at the tail-end
of a wheelbarrow. Take, for instance, those workers known to the
statistician as "Female bread-winners." Of the first generation
of Irish, fifty-four per cent. are servants and waitresses; of
the second generation, only sixteen per cent. Whither have these
daughters gone? Out of the kitchen into the factory, the store,
the office, and the school. In the needle trades they are twice as
frequent as Bridget or Nora who came over in the steerage. Five
times as often they serve behind the counter, seven times as often
they work at the desk as stenographer or bookkeeper, five times
as frequently they teach. One native girl out of twelve whose
fathers were Irish is a teacher, as against one girl out of nine
with American fathers. The Irish girls of the second generation
are twice as well represented as the native-born German girls.
Evidently it will not be long before they have their full share of
school positions. In thirty leading cities eighteen per cent. of the
teachers are second-generation Irish; and there are cities where
these swift climbers constitute from two-fifths to a half of the
teaching force.
'Tonio or Ivan now wields the shovel while Michael's boy escapes
competition with him by running nimbly up the ladder of occupations.
As compared with their immigrant fathers, the proportion of
laborers among the sons of Irishmen is halved, while that of
professional men and salesmen is doubled, and that of clerks,
copyists, and bookkeepers is trebled. The quota of saloon-keepers
remains the same. There is no drift into agriculture or into
mercantile pursuits. In the cities the Irish suffer little from
the competition of the later immigrants because, thanks to
their political control, they divide among themselves much
of the work carried on by the municipality as well as the jobs
under the great franchise-holding corporations. So far, the
strength of the Irish has been in personal relations. They shine
in the forum, in executive work, in public guardianship, and in
public transportation, but not in the more monotonous branches of
manufacture. In the colleges it has been noted that the students of
Irish blood are strong for theology and law, but show little taste
for medicine, engineering, or technology.
[Illustration: Distribution of Irish and natives of Irish
Parentage--1910]
Among the first thousand men of science in America the Irish are
only a fourth as well represented as the Germans, a fifteenth as
well as the English and Canadians, and a twentieth as well as the
Scotch. This backwardness is in part due to the overhang of bad
conditions; and the compilers of the table very properly suggest
that "the native-born sons of Irish-born parents may not be inferior
in scientific productivity to other classes of the community." The
same comment may be made on the fact that of the persons listed in
"Who's Who in America," two per cent. were German-born, another two
per cent. were English-born, but only one per cent. came from the
land of Erin.
IRISH INTELLECT AND MENTAL ABILITY
No doubt the peaks of Celtic superiority are poetry and eloquence.
Their gifts of emotion and imagination give the Irish the key to
human hearts. They are eloquent for the same reason that they are
poor technicians and investigators, for the typical Celt sees things
not as they really are, _but as they are to him_.
The Irishman still leans on authority and shows little tendency to
think for himself. In philosophy and science he is far behind the
head of the procession. Even when well-educated, he thinks within
the framework formed by certain conventional ideas. Unlike the
educated German or Jew, he rarely ventures to dissect the ideas
of parental authority, the position of woman, property, success,
competition, individual liberty, etc., that lie at the base of
commonplace thought. Here, again, this limitation by sentiment and
authority derives doubtless from the social history of the Irish
rather than from their blood. They have been engrossed with an
old-fashioned problem--that of freeing their country. Meanwhile, the
luckier peoples have swept on to ripen their thinking about class
relations, industrial organization, and social institutions.
TRAITS OF THE CELT
With his Celtic imagination as a magic glass, the Irishman sees
into the human heart and learns how to touch its strings. No one
can wheedle like an Irish beggar or "blarney" like an Irish ward
boss. Not only do the Irish furnish stirring orators, persuasive
stump-speakers, moving pleaders, and delightful after-dinner
speech-makers, but they give us good salesmen and successful
traveling-men. Then, too, they know how to manage people. The Irish
contractor is a great figure in construction work. The Irish mine
"boss" or section foreman has the knack of handling men. The Irish
politician is an adept in "lining up" voters of other nationalities.
More Germans than Irish enlisted in the Union armies, but more of
the Irish rose to be officers. In the great corporations Americans
control policy and finance, Germans are used in technical work,
and Irishmen are found in executive positions. The Irish are well
to the fore in organizing labor and in leading athletics. "Of
two applicants," says a city school superintendent, "I take the
teacher with an Irish name, because she will have less trouble
in discipline, and hits it off better with the parents and the
neighborhood."
Whatever is in the Irish mind is available on the instant, so that
the Irish rarely fail to do themselves justice. They keep their
best foot forward, and if they fall, they light on their feet. They
succeed as lawyers not only because they can play upon the jury,
but because they are quick in thrust and parry. They abound in
newspaper offices because their imagination enables them to keep
"in touch" with the public mind. The Irishman rarely attains the
thorough knowledge of the German physician; but he makes his mark
as surgeon, because he is quick to perceive and to decide when the
knife discloses a grave, unsuspected condition.
The Irishman accepts the Erse proverb, "Contention is better than
loneliness." "His nature goes out to the other fellow all the time,"
declares a wise priest. The lodge meeting of a Hibernian benevolent
association is a revelation of kindness and delicacy of feeling in
rough, toil-worn men. A great criminal lawyer tells me that if he
has a desperate case to defend, he keeps the cold-blooded Swede
off the jury and gets an Irishman on, especially one who has been
"in trouble." Bridget becomes attached to the family she serves,
and, after she is married, calls again and again "to see how the
childher are coming on." Freda, after years of service, will leave
you off-hand and never evince the remotest interest in your family.
The Irish detest the merit system, for they make politics a matter
of friendship and favor. In their willingness to serve a friend they
are apt to lose sight of the importance of preparation, fitness
and efficiency in the public servant. Hence they warm to a reform
movement only when it becomes a fight on law-breakers. Then the
Hibernian district attorney goes after the "higher-ups" like a St.
George. When the Irish do renounce machine politics, they become
broad democrats rather than "good government" men.
Imaginative and sensitive to what others think of him, the Celt is
greatly affected by praise and criticism. Unlike the Teuton, he
cannot plod patiently toward a distant goal without an appreciative
word or glance. He does his best when he is paced, for emulation
is his sharpest stimulus. The grand stand has something to do with
the Irish bent for athletic contests. Irish school-children love
the lime-light, and distinguish themselves better on the platform
than in the classroom. Irish teachers with good records in the
training-school are less likely than other teachers to improve
themselves by private study.
"The Irish are wilder than the rest in their expression of grief,"
observes the visiting nurse, "but they don't take on for long." The
Irishman is less persistent than others in keeping up the premiums
on his insurance policy, the payments on his building-and-loan
association stock. He is quick to throw up his job or change his
place in order to avoid sameness. "My will is strong," I heard a
bright-eyed Kathleen say, "but it keeps changing its object; Gunda
[her Norwegian friend] is _so_ determined and fixed in purpose!"
There is a proverb, "The Irishman is no good till he is kicked,"
meaning that he is unstable till his blood is up. Once his fighting
spirit is roused, he proves to be a "last ditcher." As a soldier, he
is better in a charge than in defense, and if held back, he frets
himself to exhaustion.
A professor compares his Celtic students to the game trout, which
makes one splendid dash for the fly, but sulks if he misses it. A
bishop told me how his prize-man, an Irish youth, sent to Paris
to study Hebrew, was amazed at the prodigious industry of his
German and Polish chums. "I never knew before," he wrote, "what
study is." A settlement worker comments on the avidity with which
night-school pupils in Irish neighborhoods select classes with
interesting subjects of instruction, and the rapidity with which
they drop off when the "dead grind" begins. Their temperament rebels
at close, continuous application. The craftsman of Irish blood is
likely to be a little slapdash in method, and he rarely stands
near the top of his trade in skill. The Irishman succeeds best
in staple farming--all wheat, all cotton, or all beets. With the
advent of diversified farming, he is supplanted by the painstaking
German, Scandinavian, or Pole. Work requiring close attention
to details--like that of the nurseryman, the florist, or the
breeder--falls into the hands of a more patient type. In banking and
finance, men of a colder blood control.
FUTURE OF THE IRISH-AMERICAN
The word "brilliant" is oftener used for the Irish than for any
other aliens among us save the Hebrews. Yet those of Irish blood
are far from manning their share of the responsible non-political
posts in American society. Their contribution by no means matches
that of an equal number of the old American breed. But, in sooth,
it is too soon yet to expect the Irish strain to show what it can
do. Despite their schooling, the children of the immigrant from
Ireland often become infected with the parental slackness, unthrift,
and irresponsibility. They in turn communicate some of the heritage
to their children; so that we shall have to wait until the fourth
generation before we shall learn how the Hibernian stock compares in
value with stocks that have had a happier social history.
[Illustration:
1821-25 12900
1826-30 37800
1831-35 70300
1836-40 135100
1841-45 187100
1846-50 593600 {FAMINE AND
{
1851-55 694700 {REBELLION IN IRELAND
1856-60 219400 HARD TIMES IN UNITED STATES
1861-65 196400 CIVIL WAR IN UNITED STATES
1866-70 239400
1871-75 295200
1876-80 141700 HARD TIMES IN UNITED STATES
1881-85 345400 FAMINE IN IRELAND
1886-90 310100
1891-95 227200
1896-1900 161200 HARD TIMES IN UNITED STATES
1901-05 184100
1906-10 155000
Immigration from Ireland 1821-1910]