I am partly Irish, and this portion of my heritage stems back many years. In the 1890’s, a move from Ireland to the United States brought my great-great-grandfather and his family into this country. He certainly was not alone in this move, or even among a minority. My great-great-grandfather came to the United States along with droves of other Irish people, as the compelling notion of emigration became a reality in the late 18th Century.
The Irish have faced much throughout their time as a people. They had many problems with the English in their earlier history, and still have many problems with the battle between Protestants and Catholics. The potato famine was also a very trying period for the Irish, as much of the Irish population was wiped out after the potato crop failed. This failure, due to the fungus Phytophora Infestans, not only lead to the death of many Irish people, but it also left the agricultural business in Ireland with a bad reputation (Cordasco 413). Many people were scared of the failing economy in Ireland that was heavily dependent upon agricultural production.
In Ireland there were mostly common farmers, who many times had trouble enough just supporting their own families. Work, for many, only enabled them to live very modestly, and the failure of the potato crop put most Irish into deep despair for money and food. This despair became an economic hole that was continuously dug deeper until the end of the potato famine, several years later. Shortly following the famine wages were still low, hunger was still common, and overall living conditions for many people were horrendous. In the early 1860’s a City Hall official described the living conditions of Dublin’s poor. He said that there are "64,000 people, out of a population of 249,733, 50,000 at least of whom reside in a fetid and poisonous atmosphere…The entrance to the courts is very narrow-a sort of great stench valve, or over-ground sewer. As a general rule, there is a green slimy steam oozing from a surcharge and choked-up cess pool, through which the visitor is compelled to wade" (O’ Grada 241). These conditions hardly seem fit to support the lives of rats, or any other rodent for that matter, yet families had to live in these inhumane situations. With life like this many of the Irish couldn’t take the suffering, and the seemingly hopeless future of Ireland any longer, so leaving became a necessary choice for them.
From the years of the Irish Potato Famine until the 1920s, the majority of Irish emigration occurred. Many of the people of Ireland departed for the eastern ports of the United States of America. Between 1845 and 1855 about one and a half million people came to the United States, a majority of whom came from West and South-West Ireland. In the years following that, emigration became a routine part of Irish life and the number of Irish entering the United States continued to rise (Cordasco 413). The Irish left Ireland for the United States because of religious persecution, starvation, political oppression, and economic underdevelopment (Cordasco 414). Starvation was a major cause of emigration during the famine, and during other periods other factors were more central contributors to Irish emigration. Unlike my family, most Irish emigrants struggled financially and left their homeland due to Ireland’s lack of industrialization, and the resulting poor economic conditions.
My great-great-grandfather, Edward Dodds, worked with sheep and in the woolen business in Ireland before he came here. While in Ireland he amassed a great wealth of knowledge concerning sheep care and wool production. The sheep and woolen business had been in my family for some number of years before him, and his parents owned a large sheep farm in Ireland. He therefore was quite a wealthy man in Ireland, and this was very unusual as Ireland had such a high poverty rate in the latter part of the 19th Century. The American Woolen Mill offered my great-great-grandfather passage to America, so that he could work in one of their United States sites. The conditions in Ireland were deteriorating and my great-great-grandfather was well aware of this, so the job offer in America was very tempting. He also lost many friends and relatives during the potato famine, and believed that bringing his family to America would be better than remaining in Ireland. So he left, and brought his wife and children with him.
They all embarked upon the long sea voyage from Ireland to the United States, just as many of their countrymen had. The ships that most Irish people traveled on were very crowded and very filthy. Many of the ships could be similarly compared, concerning conditions, to earlier African slave ships. Sickness was very widespread and comfort was all but out of the question. Most emigrants leaving Ireland were very poor though, so cheap transportation was the only possible means of travel to reach the new land of America. Emigration was as much a part of Irish culture in the late 19th Century as was Irish dancing. A major difference being that the dancing brought joy versus the sadness that accompanied the emigration trend. The Irish Quarterly Review quoted a scene of emigrants leaving the ports of Dublin as "not a departing crowd of paupers but unhappily an exodus of those who may be regarded as having constituted, as it were, the bone and sinew of the land; the farmers and comfortable tenantry, the young and strong, the hale and hearty, the pride and prime of our Nation" (Laxton 10)! Emigration had entered the lives of the people of Ireland, including, of course, that of my family.
Even though my great grandfather had money and a prosperous occupation in Ireland, many other Irish people were poor and either jobless, or working too hard for not even enough money to put food upon their families’ plates. Ireland was not at all industrialized during the 19th Century, excluding some large cities, and the economy was still based heavily upon agriculture, which was not very profitable. This heavy reliance on agriculture and the lack of industry, in Ireland, greatly added to the high rate of emigration ("Ireland" 262). It is not as though they wanted to leave, but with all of the death from starvation and poverty around them, the Irish needed to leave in order to survive. They were a strong people, and their exodus to America only made things better for all concerned. Not only did the people who arrived in America benefit because of the increase of jobs but also the people who remained in Ireland benefited. With a smaller population, the economy was better able to provide jobs and food for those who remained. Those who left departed in search of steady work with a decent salary, so that they could provide for their families and themselves.
A great answer to this lack of work was the United States. After the second Industrial Revolution that began around 1871, the United States continued to grow economically, more than ever. New sources of power were harnessed during this time, and revolutionary new production techniques and processes were created. These improvements helped establish booming new factories and an abundance of employment opportunities ("Industrial Revolution" 773). These jobs were, in fact, mostly unskilled labor positions, that the one-time farmers and merchants of Ireland could fill with relative ease. The Irish made their presence in the United States looking for jobs, and jobs there were, but not all was a golden peach for everyone.
My great grandfather had it better than most, in so many ways. First off, he was located to the United States in a job move, and was guaranteed employment at an American Woolen Mill upon his arrival. Also, his position at the textile mill was that of a superintendent and so he was treated better than many other factory workers were. His wife, Margaret, and children that were of age, also worked in the mill, at various positions. My grandmother’s mother, Nellie, worked in the weaving sheds starting in her teen years. I know that the jobs Edward’s children had were relatively safe and that they did not suffer as many other children did with poor labor conditions in America. Many other children in America who worked outside of their home, however, were faced with terrible exploitation, danger, and even abuse (Wood 68). Seeing as many immigrant families were poor and there was the need for all members of the family to contribute, much immigrant-child labor abuse occurred.
The way of life for my great-grandfather’s family when they first came here was also very close-knit, with all members contributing what they could. His family settled in the town of Lansdowne, Pennsylvania, where the American Woolen Mill was located. While in America, Edward continued to build upon his wealth and at the time of his death was a very rich man. He owned two houses in Lansdowne, and he had both an upstairs and a downstairs maid, along with a cook, and a housekeeper. This was not at all common of most Irish immigrants, seeing as many of them lived in almost slum-like conditions with: poor furnishings, little to no land, poor sewage, and high rent. My family was very blessed with their wealth, and the ease with which it helped them settle into America.
My family may have been more prosperous economically than most Irish immigrants, but they still had their fair share of problems. They too faced personal problems that I bet many other Irish families faced in this foreign land, no matter what their economic status. My great-great-grandfather was, what many people would consider, a stereotypical Irish man. Edward had flaming red hair and was a fair-skinned, good-sized man, at around six feet tall. What made him even more stereotypical were his stubborn attitude and his devout love for the Irish culture. Although he very much wanted to come to America, after living here he deeply disliked it. He never really liked to be in America because he found it to be a very dirty country compared to Ireland. He also was a very bitter man according to my grandmother, and this, along with him being very set in his ways, led to a partial family break up. My grandmother’s mother, Nellie, was the last child born of my great-great-grandfather’s first wife. His wife died while giving birth and it is entirely possible that he attributed a small amount of the blame for that death to Nellie. When she grew up Nellie fell in love with a half-English, half-French man, and she decided to marry him. This did not go over very well with my great-great-grandfather. He despised English people, and was completely against inter-cultural marriages. To top it all off, Nellie’s husband was a protestant and her father, Edward, being an Irish-Catholic, could not accept this. He disowned my great-grandmother Nellie, and she only saw him twice after that. One time he made her cry because of his demeaning attitude with her, my grandmother recounted to me, and the other time was his funeral. This family breakup was a very serious issue and I know made life much more difficult for Nellie and her family (Interview).
As soon as they stepped of off the docks in America, the lives of most Irish people changed drastically. They were foreigners in a strange land, a people who had little knowledge of American life, and who were in for rough times. For many Irish people "their first encounters and experiences were trying: they ran the gauntlet of thieves and pickpockets on the dockside, ticket sharks and ruthless boarding house runners, and countless, colorful confidence tricksters, clad in lively green waistcoats-all with a recognizable line of blarney" (Laxton 163). The Irish in America probably suffered even more hardships after the ordeals at the ports of the United States.
Many of the natives of America, who themselves were all actually immigrants, viewed the Irish with a lot of suspicion, primarily because the Irish were generally poor, anti-English, and Catholic. There were even anti-Irish groups that existed in America, the so-called land of the free. The American Native Party and The Know Nothings were two groups that thrived on making the lives of the Irish even harder, and violence was not at all an uncommon form of the persuasion of these groups. Also, after a brief intercession occurring during America’s Progressive era, the United States continued their volatile anti-Catholic tradition. Being surrounded with rumors of Catholic plots to establish papal tyranny, magazines such as the Menace and the KKK sprung up in the 1920’s (Cuddy 23). The United States, as a whole, also tried to assimilate the masses of Irish immigrants into American culture. Americanization, as that attempt was called, was both organized and official, and became strongest around the time of World War I. Public schools, many American institutions, businesses and political parties all contributed to the effort of Americanization (Mohl 17). Along with this homogenization attempt, there was indeed a "no Irish need apply" mentality in the United States from the time of the famine all the way into the mid-1900s (Cordasco 415).
Many of the Irish attempted to escape this persecution by settling in urban areas, which offered many unskilled jobs in factories, a feeling of community because of the higher concentration of Irish in the cities, and an escape from Protestants in rural areas. This worked to a certain extent to alleviate the persecution, but still the Irish were treated as second-class citizens. The Irish were subjected to payment of high rents and very unsanitary housing facilities (Cordasco 416). The Irish, along with many other immigrants, were treated very badly in the factories in which they were employed, as well. The conditions within the factories were very unhealthy, and many people each year either became very ill, crippled by machines, or died from any one of many causes. Work was work, though, and with the general suppression of unions at that time period, the Irish had no choice but to endure these hardships. Payment was much better than it was in economically depressed Ireland, but the immigrants were still underpaid, with women immigrants being paid even less than their male counterparts. The Irish were a tough group of people, however, and their will to survive and succeed pushed them continuously forward. The Irish worked hard because they knew that no matter how difficult life was in America, it was nearly impossible for most people in Ireland because the economy of Ireland was a weakling compared with the booming economy of the United States. Many Irish workers in America sent much of their hard-earned money back to Ireland, so that they could support their families there, and pay for the future emigration of their family members. The American economy was a great help for the Irish because it gave them a chance, a chance that they took and never looked back.
Even though Anti-Irish prejudices remained in the United States up until
nearly fifty years ago, the chances the Irish were given here have superseded
any possibilities that Ireland had. My great-great-grandfather and his
family made the decision to come to this country a long time ago. They
had to leave their relatives and friends back in Dublin, and they ventured
on an uncertain trip to a new land. This move paid off well for them, though.
My predecessors worked hard in this new country, and they were able to
survive here, living among many in the land of the free. Now, just over
a hundred years later, they have family extended throughout the United
States, and I am sure that all are thankful for their location of upbringing.
One of these present-day descendants is even now writing about the trials
and tribulations of his great-great-grandfather’s family that left Ireland.
A family, among many Irish people, that realized the bleakness of the very
poor economy in Ireland and made a move to industrialized America. Now,
I am one of more than 40 million people in the United States cite Irish
ancestry, and many of our relatives came from the economic slump in Ireland
during the 19th Century (Cordasco 417). The cultural melting
pot of the United States has indeed turned the people from Ireland into
Americans, but Americans with a wee bit of blarney in their blood.
Cordasco, Francesco. Dictionary of American Immigration History. New Jersey: The Scarecrow Press, 1990. 413-417.
Cuddy, Edward. "Anti-Catholicism" Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. Eds. Buekner and Kantowicz. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. 23-24.
"Industrial Revolution." Collier’s Encyclopedia. 1994 ed.
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Laxton, Edward. The Famine Ships: The Irish Exodus to America. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1996.
Mohl, Raymond A. "Americanization" Historical Dictionary of the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. Eds. Buekner and Kantowicz. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. 17-18.
O’Grada, Cormac. Ireland:A New Economic History 1780-1939. Oxford: Claredon Press, 1994.
Wood, Stephen B. "Child Labor Legislation" Historical Dictionary
of the Progressive Era, 1890-1920. Eds. Buekner and Kantowicz. New
York: Greenwood Press, 1988. 68-69.
Akenson, Donald Harman. Small Differences: Irish Catholics and Irish Protestants Kingston and Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1988.
Campell, Patrick. Death in Templecrone. New Jersey: Princeton Academic Press, 1995.
Cuddy, Edward. "Irish-Americans" Historical Dictionary of theProgressive Era, 1890-1920. Eds. Buekner and Kantowicz. New York: Greenwood Press, 1988. 222-223.
"Immigration." Collier’s Encyclopedia. 1994 ed.
Morash, Christopher. Writing the Irish Famine. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995.
O’Grada, Cormac. Ireland: Before and After the Famine. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1988.
"Textiles." Collier’s Encyclopedia. 1994 ed.
Wallace, Georgia. Telephone Interview. 29 Nov. 1998.