On Emigration

From An Claidheamh Soluis, July 18, 1903.

In a letter to the Freeman’s Journal of Friday last, the Hon. Secretary of the Anti-Emigration Society directs attention to the grim figures revealed by the latest emigration returns issued by the Board of Trade.

    ‘They show,’ she writes, ‘that 23,401 Irish emigrants left the United Kingdom in the first six months of the current year as against 20,610 in the corresponding period of 1902, and that the outflow has therefore increased by 2,791 for the half year. Over two thousand of this increase came into last May, when an army of 7,971 left, as against 5,812 in May, 1902. The loss in May would be equivalent to the annihilation of a town of about the size of Bray, or Queenstown, or Tralee, or Newtownards, or of Ballinasloe and Castlebar put together. And May was not the heaviest month, for 8,489 left in April.

    ‘Apart from the general increase,’ continues the writer, ‘there is matter for anxiety in the fact that Irish emigration to Canada has doubled for the six months, having risen to 1,422, as against 713 in the first half of 1902, and this in the face of the repeated warnings that the Canadian North-West is no place for the Irish emigrant, nor indeed for any emigrant without capital.’

So Canada’s gigantic advertisement at the Cork Exhibition has been a sound investment—or does the fact to which the writer draws attention rather constitute a testimonial to the efficacy of the Irish metropolitan and provincial press as advertising mediums for the ‘famous 160 acre free farms’? In the same issue of the Freeman Father McCann, P.P., of Ring. renders a public service by calling the attention of school managers to a particularly slim dodge of the Canadian emigration-agent—the free circulation, through the National School, of ‘shoals’ of copy-books interleaved with roseate descriptions of the advantages offered by Canada to immigrants.

In face of discouragements like those disclosed by Miss O’Reilly’s letter, workers are apt to ask with a numb feeling of impotency, ‘What can we do?’ The first and most necessary thing to do is to create an animus against emigration. 

In the Irish-speaking countrysides—with which Gaelic Leaguers are intimately concerned, though every individual Irish-born man and woman, whether Irish-speaking or not, is of moment from the Gael’s point of view—in the Irish-speaking areas, we say, the whole tide of public opinion at present runs full in favour of emigration: boys and girls are deliberately reared for export, just like cattle and pigs. To turn the tide the other way is the immediate duty of the hour; and the turning of the tide will demand the loyal and whole-hearted co-operation of public men, priests, press, and schools.

We suggest that much might be done by directing well-aimed criticism—in certain cases, even ridicule—against intending emigrants, both individually and collectively. There is a deal too much posing about many emigrants—too much mock pathetics, a kind of ‘I’m sitting on the style, Mary,’ carried ad absurdum. Let us plainly tell the emigrant that he is a traitor to the Irish State, and, if he knew but all, a fool into the bargain. 

We must not be understood as implying that the majority of emigrants leave the country in mere wantonness, or just ‘for fun and fancy,’ like the old woman in the folk-tale who indulged in unbecoming antics. 

But—and we have more than a superficial acquaintance with several of the districts chiefly in question—we believe that many of them do. We believe, moreover, that in a vast number of instances the emigrant, far from being a martyr, is a mere weakling and coward who emigrates mainly because he is too lazy or proud to do what he regards as ‘menial’ work at home;—on the far side of the Atlantic, he is much less squeamish. 

Within the last few weeks, in a parish in the West of Ireland with which we are personally acquainted, instances have come under our notice of the emigration of young girls, who, in a factory in their native parish, could earn from 10s. to £1 per week; and from the next parish but one we have seen young men emigrate, though offered openings at home at wages commencing at 14s. per week: the literal fact being that, being able to read and write, they regarded manual work as beneath them. 

Since we initiated our little attempt at an employment bureau we have encountered more than one intending emigrant who reminded us of a small boy we knew long ago: when asked what occupation he would like to follow when he grew up, he replied, ‘Do you know, then, I’d like to be a pensioner!’

A department in which Gaels in America could effectively aid the Anti-Emigration movement at home, would be in the polite but firm suppression of the writer of the ‘American letter.’ The ‘American letter’ has been by far the most effective emigration-agent that has ever come into play in Ireland. Here is a ludicrous, yet pathetic, instance of the operation of an American letter which lately came within our ken. A boy emigrated from a Connemara village. Very soon, glowing letters began to reach home. 

His younger brother’s love of adventure was stimulated. The emigration-fever was on him. The climax was reached when the boy in America wrote home: ‘If you only saw me now, you wouldn’t know me. I’m driving my own coach-and-pair already.’ The younger boy took literally the next steamer that sailed from the Cove of Cork. On reaching New York he found that his brother had not lied, or even exaggerated: he was a bus-driver.

PH Pearse