A gentleman from Erie, Penn., who had been traveling about Ireland for several weeks made a suggestion which seemed to me to be worth adopting, and I proposed it to several organizations for promoting the welfare of Ireland without exciting much enthusiasm. There seems to be an apprehension that somebody will make political capital out of it, and very little is done without such motives. Politics and whisky are the curses of Ireland. However, the plan is to apply to Ireland the principle of “the old home week” that has been so popular and successful in New Hampshire and other parts of New England, only it is proposed to make it a month instead of a week and have special days set apart for reunions in the different counties, at which as many natives of those counties and children of natives as possible may come over from the United States to visit their old homes and birthplaces. They can thus renew their acquaintances with their former neighbors and the playmates of their childhood, revive their interest in Irish affairs, and stimulate the patriotism and love of “the ould sod” which are marked characteristics of the race.

It would be easy to make arrangements with the different steamship lines to give low rates, not only those which touch regularly at Queenstown, but also the Holland, Antwerp, Italian, Scandinavian, and other lines which go by but do not stop at Irish ports. The tide of emigration is westward and there are comparatively few steerage and second-class passengers going east on the Cunard and White Star steamers that touch at Queenstown. The steamship companies would make a low rate for the round trip which would give an opportunity for thousands of Irish-born citizens of the United States to spend a short vacation across the sea visiting their old homes and the homes of their fathers. The fact that everybody is doing the same would be a great incentive, and for a few weeks Ireland would be crowded with her former sons and daughters.

A very important result of such a visitation would be to leave in Ireland large sums which would quicken business, increase the demand for labor, create a market for everything that is made or grows, and flood Ireland with money. Each visitor would contribute his share, although it might be a little, but the total of the expenditures of such pilgrims would be enormous and create a condition of prosperity greater than Ireland has ever seen. Five million dollars has been expended in New Hampshire by visitors from other States since the Old Home Week celebrations and the advertisement of abandoned farms were first undertaken. If that amount of money should be spent in Ireland it would be of everlasting benefit to the people. If ten thousand visitors came from the United States and spent only a hundred dollars each, which is a very low average, it would leave a million dollars in circulation here.

It might be natural also, as has occurred in New Hampshire, that many natives who went to the States in their childhood and have become wealthy and are now approaching the period of their rest and leisure would purchase homes in Ireland and spend their declining years in the scenes of their youth as Mr. Croker is doing, and three or four other persons I met. There was a man at the hotel from Chicago looking for a country place. He expects to invest a hundred thousand dollars in an Irish home somewhere near Dublin. Then, think of the contributions that would be made in aid of the churches, the benevolent institutions, and other charities as well as to insure the comfort and happiness of individuals in whom the visitors might be interested. One might suggest many other ways in which Ireland might be benefited by such celebrations, and those who participate in them will certainly have a deep sense of gratification for their share. Perhaps the most important result would be to correct the misapprehensions that are almost universal concerning the material condition of Ireland. Things are much different in many respects from what Irish-Americans have been led to believe by newspaper articles and other publications, and it is right and necessary that misapprehensions should be corrected.

If the month of July, three or four years ahead, were selected for reunions of the sons of Ireland, it would give sufficient time to make the necessary arrangements, and local organizations in the different countries could fix their own dates most convenient for reunions of those who would come from those particular localities. Irishmen in Australia, Canada, South Africa, and other parts of the world would be glad to join their American cousins in carrying out such a plan. I met an American priest at Cork who was enthusiastic over the suggestion and declared that twenty families in his own parish would undoubtedly come over on such an occasion to visit their old homes. And he expressed the surprise that I felt about the improved conditions of the Irish people and the prospects for peace and happiness and prosperity in the island.

There are now nearly two million natives of Ireland in the United States, and nearly six million people whose parents were born there or who were born there themselves.

The following statement will show the number of natives of Ireland in the United States as returned by each census since 1850:

The census of 1900 shows 3,991,417 citizens of the United States both of whose parents were born in Ireland.

Since the census of 1900 was taken the average arrivals from Ireland have been about thirty-eight thousand per year, which has added at least three hundred thousand to the total of 1900, and, making due allowance for deaths and departures, increased the number of natives in the United States to nearly two millions.

The improved conditions in Ireland during the last few years have caused a considerable decrease in emigration. At the present time a smaller number of people are seeking work in other countries than ever before since the famine of the ’40s. This is the most significant evidence of the prosperity of the country and the success of the government in promoting contentment and improving the condition of the peasants by the enactment of the land laws and the work of the Congested Districts Board, of which I have written at length in previous letters.

Low tide in emigration was reached during the first six months of 1908, when the total number departing from Ireland was only 13,511, being a decrease of 8,713 in comparison with the corresponding period of 1907. Of these 9,974 went to the United States and 1,598 to Canada; 1,868 went from Leinster Province, 3,762 from Munster, 4,611 from Ulster, and 3,270 from Connaught.

The total number of emigrants from Ireland in 1907 was 39,082, but unless something extraordinary happens the total for this year will fall below 25,000.

During the last fifteen years the population of Ireland has decreased 292,370, and during the last fifty years it has fallen off three and one half millions. During the last fifteen years the population of Scotland has increased 689,825 and that of England and Wales has increased 5,461,197. The birth rate in Ireland is larger than it is in either England or Scotland, and the death rate is about the same, so that the decrease in population has been entirely due to emigration.

Since the distribution of the great estates in Ireland among the tenants in small farms there is a growing complaint concerning the lack of labor; and the emigration of young men to the United States and the migration of farm laborers who spend from five to nine months in Scotland every year where wages are higher than in Ireland are creating a very serious problem.There are in Ireland about 400,000 farms, of which 165,000, embracing three-fourths of the total area, average more than thirty acres, and that is all one man can cultivate. All farms more than thirty acres in extent, and many of smaller area, require hired labor, which has usually received about 12 shillings per week until the last two or three years, when farm wages were advanced to 14 shillings and 16 shillings a week—that is, $3.50 and $4. The recent census shows that 217,652 men are employed as laborers upon these 165,000 farms and that an average of 76,870 extra hands are employed during the harvest. During the last three years, although the area under cultivation has been growing smaller annually, it has been difficult to obtain a sufficient amount of labor to carry on the harvests, and wages, in many cases, have advanced to 18 shillings a week.

Notwithstanding the demand for home labor, 24,312 persons, including 750 women, left Ireland in May, 1907, and went to England and Scotland, where they remained to work on the farms until the following November. Most of them went from the northwestern part of Ireland, from counties Mayo, Roscommon, Donegal, Galway, and Sligo, which have the least land under cultivation in the country.

An investigation made by the estates commissioners showed that 3,245 of these persons had holdings of five acres, 987 had holdings of between five and ten acres, 912 between ten and fifteen acres, 458 between fifteen and twenty acres, 471 between twenty and twenty-five acres, 93 between twenty-five and thirty acres, 102 between thirty and forty acres, and 75 had farms of more than forty acres. Most of them left their little farms to be cultivated by their wives and sons and daughters during their absence. Among the migrants were 9,308 sons of farmers, who work on their father’s farms when they are in Ireland, but go to England and Scotland because they are able to make more money than by staying at home.

The average wages of these migrants was 26 shillings a week, and they varied from 20 to 30 shillings, according to intelligence, with food, lodging, and in many cases their traveling expenses one way. It is customary for the Scotch and English farmers to pay the railway fare over and leave the migrant to buy his ticket home in the fall. Most of the migrants save the larger part of their wages. It is estimated that the average net savings was £12, or $60 per person, and that the total amount taken back to Ireland at the end of the season was about £275,000, or $1,375,000 in American money. These savings are sufficient to keep their families through the rest of the year with the aid of their small farms, fishing, weaving, lacemaking, and other home industries.

According to the reports of the estates commission, the number of farm hands employed in 1871, in addition to the owners of the land and their families, was 446,782, or more than twice as many as are employed at present. In 1881 the number was 300,091. The number of occasional laborers or extra harvest hands employed in 1871 was 189,829, as against 76,870 employed in 1907, which indicates in a striking manner the decay of agriculture in Ireland.

At the same time wages have increased 30 per cent and the cost of boarding farm hands has increased 40 per cent. The hands now demand better accommodations and better food, and everything they require is much more expensive than it was thirty years ago. The average wages for steady farm hands in Ireland with board, according to the official statistics, is $12 a month, while ten years ago labor was plenty at $9 a month. Wages of household servants are about the same and have advanced as rapidly.

The census statistics of Ireland are quite interesting and show that for the last ten years the population has remained fairly stationary, the excess of births over deaths making up the loss by emigration. The latest vital statistics available are for the year 1905, which show a population of 4,391,565, an excess of births over deaths of 27,671; an emigration of 30,676, and a net decrease in population of 2,915. The following table shows the number of births, deaths, and emigrants for ten years:

Through the efforts of Mr. Boland, M.P., the foreign commerce of Ireland is now given independently in the statistical reports of the United Kingdom, and the following table shows the imports and exports for recent years:

It will be noticed that there was a considerable increase every year in both columns, but the increase in exports was considerably greater than in imports. This increase was particularly noticeable in live stock shipments to England. In 1905 there were 1,852,423 head of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and swine shipped from Ireland to England, and in 1907 the shipments had increased to 2,025,292 head.

The exports of butter also increased, and Ireland now has the lead among the nations that contribute to the British poultry market. In 1907 the value of the poultry exported from Ireland to Great Britain was £725,441.

Ireland ought to furnish all the bacon that the British people eat. Irish bacon is the best in the world, and brings the highest prices, but, notwithstanding that fact, more bacon was imported into England from the United States, from Denmark, and from Canada than from Ireland.

The exports of manufactured goods—linens, woolens, and other textiles—from Ireland during the fiscal year 1907, exceeded £20,000,000. The imports of similar articles amounted to £27,000,000. The Irish import a vast amount of bacon from the United States when they ought to supply their own market.

The following table will show the commerce between the United States and Ireland during the last three years:

The falling off of the exports from Ireland in 1908 was due entirely to the panic of that year in the United States, which caused an almost total stagnation of trade for several months.

There is no limit to the demand for Irish agricultural produce at good prices, but the cultivated area of the island continues to diminish annually, and the area given up to pasturage and the breeding of cattle and sheep increases. The Irish farmer has an unlimited market for bacon, hams, butter, eggs, poultry, potatoes, and other vegetables in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, and other great manufacturing cities which are now very largely fed by Holland and Denmark. More eggs and poultry, more butter and bacon, are imported into England from Denmark than from Ireland, notwithstanding the difference in distance and cost of transportation. The provision dealers of the great manufacturing cities of England always have agents in Ireland, and the Department of Agriculture and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society are both active and efficient in securing and cultivating markets for Irish products. They are advancing large sums of money to establish co-operative dairies and to improve the dairy cattle, the swine, and poultry of Ireland, but many of the farmers are indifferent to their opportunities and with the happy-go-lucky characteristic of the Irish race are happy and satisfied so long as they have enough to feed their own mouths.

Sir Horace Plunkett, who has been especially active in trying to improve the condition of the farmers of Ireland, says: “The settlement of the land question and the new system of governmental aid to agriculture are proceeding rapidly and doing great good, but along neither of those two lines of national advancement, nor along both combined, is agricultural prosperity to be attained. The result depends entirely upon voluntary individual effort and co-operation. The British market will take all the produce we can send, and the more we send of uniform quality—and this can be done by co-operation—the more it will pay for our produce. It follows that every dairy farmer in Ireland is not only interested in seeing that every farmer in his district forwards the best butter he can produce, but he is also concerned to see that farmers in other districts do the same. The ownership of the land by the occupier, which has been brought about by legislation, will not of itself give the Irish farmer the prosperity he hopes for. It is not only the farms, but the habits of the people upon the land which need improvement. Capable under certain influences of surprising industry, they lack the qualities which secure the fruits of industry, because their education and economic circumstances have not developed the industrial habit. They are surely clever in their resourcefulness and shrewd in their bargainings, but as a rule in the management of their farms and commercial dealings they display a total lack of the most elementary principles of either technical or business knowledge. In spite of a passionate devotion to their country, they emigrate to America whenever they can obtain the money to pay their passage, and seem to have no fixed purpose or ambition to develop the resources that lie around them.”

The factories of Ireland are confined almost entirely to the northern province of Ulster, although a few mills and other textile manufactories are scattered in other parts of the island. The textile and other manufacturing industries have enjoyed unprecedented and extraordinary prosperity for eight or ten years.

Household industries, particularly the manufacture of handwoven tweeds and various kinds of lace, received a gratifying impetus from the advertising obtained at the Irish village at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, under the patronage of Lady Aberdeen, who for twenty years had interested herself in the practical and successful development of lacemaking and hand weaving of woolen fabrics. Her energetic efforts have been supplemented by the Royal Irish Industries Association and the Royal Dublin Society, both of which hold annual exhibitions, offer prizes for excellence of design and workmanship, and provide agencies for the sale of homemade and convent-made products in London and other cities.

The Congested Districts Board has given much practical aid and encouragement by loaning money to people who cannot afford to buy looms, by sending teachers in industries throughout the island into the households, by establishing fixed schools at central points, and by furnishing thread and other materials to lacemakers and weavers, for which it collects payments after the product is sold. All through the poor districts of Ireland, where for centuries there has been a desperate struggle for existence, thousands of looms and spinning-wheels may now be found in the cottages of the poor peasants, where both the parents and the children have been instructed in spinning and in weaving by government teachers. And in almost every village on the west coast there is a lace school attended by from twelve to fifty young women under the instruction of a patient and tactful teacher working with thread advanced to them without payment by the Congested Districts Board. The lace produced is sold for them at the agencies of the board, and they are thus enabled to contribute several pounds a month to the incomes of their families.It is a familiar joke that our principal imports from Ireland are priests, politicians, policemen, and baseball pitchers, but they are not all by any means. I do not know what other country has furnished so many famous Americans—generals, admirals, statesmen, politicians, financiers, merchant princes, actors, writers, lawyers, and other professional men too numerous to mention. If you will look through the list of the generals during our Civil War, if some one will make up a catalogue of millionaires and mining kings and empire-builders and captains of industry they will realize that all the Irishmen who have come to the United States have not gone into politics or pugilism or baseball teams. I must say, however, that the Irish have almost the monopoly of the prize ring and the baseball diamond.

Cardinal Logue made a speech upon his return from America in 1908, in which he discussed this subject at length and related what he had himself seen of Irish millionaires and other successful business men in the United States. He spoke particularly of New York City, and alluded with gratification to the fact that the subway of New York City and the new tunnel under the Hudson River were both built by Irishmen.

“I was proud to know,” he said, “of the vast number of our countrymen who were honored citizens of the United States. They have asserted themselves, especially in New York, and occupy the leading positions there. You find Irishmen prominent in every walk of life, you find them among the most distinguished of the judges on the bench, you find them among the most successful barristers, you find them among the most eminent in medicine and in the other learned professions, and then I found that the largest contracts in New York [and he might have said in the entire country] had been allotted to Irishmen, because of their ability to organize and carry out great works. I visited the tunnel under the Hudson and was proud to think that that great work had been carried out by an Irishman who had carved out his own advancement and had made his own way in life by his native talent and genius. Then, again, when they were undertaking the stupendous work of building subways under the city of New York they gave that contract to an Irishman, who succeeded in completing it to the satisfaction of everybody, and it was one of the greatest works ever undertaken by man.

“And they succeed in other branches of life also, equally well,” continued the cardinal. “As I was sailing up the Hudson River one day we passed a city called Hoboken, and I was told that it was inhabited exclusively by Germans with the exception of two solitary Irishmen, and one of them, Lord, is mayor of the city and the other is prefect of police. That is an indication of how our people are going ahead in America. And even in the humbler walks of life I found them hard working, well educated, and giving every sign of having retained their own faith and that love for Ireland which is the characteristic of our race in every part of the world. Some of them of the third and fourth generations were as warm and as strong in their love for Ireland as those born in this dear old land of ours.”

Cardinal Logue forgets that the ancestors of the men he speaks of in America were once kings of Ireland, and they have the right to success; but I often wonder what would have happened if all the great Irishmen we read about—the Duke of Wellington, Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, General Sheridan, A.T. Stewart, John W. Mackey, John McDonald, Thomas F. Ryan, and the thousands of other famous Irishmen—had remained here instead of going out into a wider field of fame and usefulness. The result would be incomprehensible.

And there is a good deal of truth in the joke about the kings of Ireland. At the time of St. Patrick and up to the Norman invasion in the twelfth century Ireland was divided into many little kingdoms in addition to the four grand divisions which correspond to the provinces to-day. The O’Connors were kings of Connaught, the O’Brians of Munster, the O’Neills of Ulster, the McMurroughs of Leinster, the Kavanaughs of Wexford, the O’Carrolls of Tipperary, the MacCarthys of Cork, the O’Sullivans and the O’Donaghues ruled in the southwest, the O’Flahertys in Galway—and so on through a long list. What is a county now was a kingdom then, and the descendants of the rulers still bear their names.