The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE.HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn How the Irish Came to America This book which I have just laid down gives a sober account of a single European event which had a fundamental effect on the...
...Almost all of these went to the United States...
...All they can say is that it was a sort of fungus...
...The great hunger which devastated Ireland from 1845 to the early 1850s changed the island country so devastatingly that it never seemed the same again...
...To the newcomers, the wages offered seemed princely...
...People died faster than they could be buried...
...Tho potatoes turned brown or black and rotted away—and this went on year after year...
...What the blight was the authors do not know, 1 hough I am sure they have made (•very effort to find out...
...There were riots in Philadelphia, New York and other cities...
...These immigrants did not have the capital, the temperament or the experience to fit them for life on the frontier...
...Finally, the Irish were freely welcomed and allowed to make their enormous contribution to American wealth...
...This concentration gave the thousands of new citizens opportunity to exercise their extraordinary gift for politics...
...The outside world seemed a cold and dangerous place...
...The authors make little attempt to dramatize the suffering that resulted from starvation and pestilence...
...As animosity died down, the newcomers organized themselves solidly in the Democratic party—where, for the most part, they have remained down to the present day...
...And there were the same accusations of boondoggling which we used to hear in this country...
...They spend a good deal of space explaining political background, but they never once try to heap the blame for the calamities on the governing British...
...When the potato crop failed, they were sunk...
...The British statesmen tried almost exactly the same sort of relief experiments which we used during our Great Depression...
...the Irish volunteered with enthusiasm: Weren't they always against ever)" sort of slavery...
...Obvious economic advantages conquered stupid anti-foreignism...
...Before this, there had been very little migration...
...The Irish were especially bound to home, family, country and religion...
...To the horrors of starvation were added those of disease...
...There were public buildings, railways, drainage schemes, etc...
...Food was exported to England and the Continent in great quantities because there were people over there who could pay for it...
...And their lusty part in this great struggle served to establish them finally as patriotic citizens...
...They describe variations in misery...
...But they always maintain a scholarly restraint...
...The principle of laissez-faire was considered more sacred than human life...
...At the end of 1847, it was found that at least 230,000 persons had dared the dangers and discomforts of the sea in order to escape to the New World...
...I could think of countless other equally useful and distinguished citizens who would never have been born on these shores had the potatoes not rotted on that little island 110 years ago...
...It was common to have 20 or 30 per cent of them die in the course of the journey...
...The emigrants who fled from the wasted land to the United States made this a different place from what it would have been without them...
...But by 1846 life had become so unbearable and death so common that anything seemed better than remaining...
...They lived almost exclusively on potatoes and had no money with which to buy other food...
...Within five years, something like a million people had perished...
...For a long time, people preferred to die at home...
...canals and railways were being built...
...Of the 8 million inhabitants on the island, 5.5 million lived on the land...
...But, on the other hand, this was our first great period of expansion...
...They insert realistic drawings from popular English journals...
...THE.HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn How the Irish Came to America This book which I have just laid down gives a sober account of a single European event which had a fundamental effect on the history of the United States...
...Common labor was needed as never before...
...And, in fact, crossing the ocean in those days was an experience that well might chill the stoutest heart...
...At one point, the authors of The Great Famine mention Phil Sheridan as Ireland's great gift to America...
...In this country, there was the well-known prejudice against Roman Catholics...
...The question of why the Irish, 80 per cent of whom came from rural districts, settled in such close-packed cities as Boston, New York and Philadelphia the authors answer in a very satisfactory manner...
...They cite figures...
...Without straining my mind...
...Despite all the contrary advice given them by their priests, they preferred to remain in the warm nests of fellow countrymen which had been provided for them in the crowded urban centers...
...The Midwest was being settled...
...Its title is The Great Famine, and it was written by two Irish scholars, R. Dudley Edwards and T. Esmond Williams (New York University, $5.00...
...Most of these had to scratch for a living on one or two rented acres each...
...Relief measures were instituted, but they were utterly inadequate...
...The Irish land system was practically an invitation to disaster...
...The sailing vessels could carry but a couple of hundred miserable passengers packed in the hold...
...When the War Between the States broke out...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 43
