IRISH
137
IRISH
merchandise. The humane provisions of modern
times with respect to hght, ventilation, and cleanliness
were wholly unknown. More often than not the ships
were undermanned, so that in case of a storm the
passengers were required to lend a hand in doing the
work of sailors. The provisions supplied were always
uncooked, scanty in amount, and frequently imfit for
use. With favourable weather the voyage lasted
from six to eight weeks, .\gainst head-winds and
storms the old hulks were frequently from twelve to
fourteen weeks on the way. With the emigrants al-
ready predisposed by famine and hardship, it is not to
lie w'ondered at that fever broke out on board ship and
tliat many died and their remains were tossed over-
board during the voyage. This was especially true
in the British vessels, in which the death-rate exceeded
tliat of the vessels of all other nationaUties (see Kapp,
"Immigration", p. 34).
As a result these emigrant ships on reaching the United States were in many instances little else than floating hospitals. When they arrived in port the ship- master made haste to discharge his himian cargo, and the sick and dying, as well as those who had survived unharmed, were put ashore on the whar\'es and public landing-places and were left to their fate. Some of the sick, when they reached New York, were fortunate enough to gain admis.sion to the Marine Hospital; others were carried to the sheds and structures which had been provided by the brokers and agents of the shipowners, under their agreement with the munici- pal authorities to provide for such sick emigrants as they might land. But the treatment of the emigrants in these institutions was little less brutal tlian they liad experienced on shipboard. The food there was often unfit for any human being, still less for the sick. Sanitary conditions were ignored, and medical attend- ance was rarely adequate to the existing needs. Not only the sick and the dying, but often the corpses of the dead, were huddled together. One instance is speci- fied where the bodies of two who had died four or five days before were left unburied on the cots whereon they had died, in the same room with their sick com- panions (see Maguire, "The Irish in .America", p. ISO). So fatal were these conditions that it has been estimated by medical statisticians that not less than 20,000 emigrants perished by ship fever and in the various emigrant hospitals in .American ports in the year 1S47 (Kapp, "Immigration", p. 23).
Those of the emigrants who sur\'ived the hardships of the voyage and retained strength enough to go about encountered troubles of a different kind. Board- ing-house runners, ticket-sellers, and money-changers .swarmed about the landing-places. Boarding-house charges were fraudulently multipUed, money-brokers practised their calling at extortionate rates, while the selling of fraudulent railroad tickets was one of the commonest practices by which the poor immigrant was plundered. As a result the able-bodied immi- grant was compelled to remain in and around New- York without means to help himself or his family, and thus oftentimes became a charge upon the charity of the public. So gross did these abuses become that a number of the most prominent citizens of New York applied to the Legislature for relief. Included in these were Archbi.shop Hughes, .\ndrew C'arrigan, John E. Devlin, Charles O'Conor, James T. Brady, John Mc- Keon, Gregory Dillon, and other men of Irish blood who were identified with the Iri.sh Emigrant Society, which had been organized for the purpose of aiding the Irish immigrants arriving at the port of New York.
The result of their exertions was the creation by Act of the Legislature of the State of New York of the board generally known as the "Commissioners of Emigration", composed of men of the highest standing in the community, who served without compensation and to whom was entrusted the general care and super- vision of the immigrants as they arrived. Gulian C.
Verplanck, distinguished ahke as scholar and public-
spirited citizen of New York, served during twenty-
three years as president of this board, and although
not of Irish blood, his long and faithful service in be-
half of the Irish immigrants ought not to pass without
honourable mention in these pages. Under the watch-
ful supervision thus established the evils complained
of were gradually overcome, notwithstanding persist-
ent opposition from shipowners and emigrant run-
ners. In 1855 the first state emigration depot was
opened in Castle Garden at the lower end of Man-
hattan Island, and since then millions of immigrants
have streamed through this gateway, under the in-
spection and protection of the officials, on their way to
the various places throughout the land where they
were to make their homes. In 1S74 the Congress of
the United States assumed control of the question of
immigration, and the admission and supervision of the
arriving immigrant are now in charge of a Commissioner
General of Immigration appointed by the Secretarj' of
the Treasury. In 1884 a Home and Mission House
were established in close proximity to Castle Garden
for the protection of Irish immigrant girls. This in-
stitution was founded by Cardinal John McCloskey,
with the co-operation of other prelates, and was placed
in charge of Rev. John J. Riordan, a zealous Irish
priest who gave his life in its service. The beneficent
work of the Home in sheltering unprotected women,
and in promoting their moral and material welfare, is
universally recognized.
Speaking of the distribution of the immigrants upon their arrival in the United States, Bishop J. L.Spalding estimates (Mission of the Irish People, p. 113) that only eight in one hundred of the Irish emigrating to the Linked States have been employed in agricultural pur- suits, a percentage smaller than that of the emigrants from any other country, the remaining ninety-two going to make up the tenement-house population in the larger cities. He as.serts further (op. cit., p. 166) that the agricultural settlers became such more by accident than from choice, following the lines of the railroad or canals on which they laboured, saving their wages and ijuying lands. This tendency of the Catholic Irish to congregate in the large cities was seen to be attended by consequences so injurious both morally and materi- ally to the well-being of the immigrants, that efforts were made from time to time to withdraw them from the large cities at which they arrived and to settle them on the land. Bishop Fenwick of Boston planted a colony in Maine, and Bishop Reynolds of Charleston, S. C, diverted some of the emigration from Liverpool to his diocese. About 184S-1S50 two French bishops, Mathias Loras of Dubuque and Joseph Cretin of St. Paul, induced and helped many of the Irish to settle in the States of Iowa and Minnesota, and in 1850 Bishop Andrew Byrne of Little Rock welcomed a colony of Irish Catholics brought over by Father Hoar of Wex- ford. Of these latter only a small number remained in .Arkansas, the rest going to Iowa where they estab- lished a colony known as "New Ireland".
.\fter the Civil War the question of Catholic coloni- zation engaged the attention of various of the prelates, including .\rchbishop John Ireland (then Bishop) of St. Paul, who established the St. Paul Cathohc Coloni- zation bureau; through his efforts various colonies were established in Minnesota. Later, in May, 1879, the Irish Catholic Colonization .Association of the United States was established at Chicago, under the auspices of various archbishops, with the co-operation of eminent Irish Catholic laymen, and during the en- suing decade it assisted many immigrants to find homes in the Western states. Other local or parish societies took up the work of colonization in their own neighbourhood, and successful colonies were estab- lished in Minnesota and Kan.sas. In all these organ- ized efforts at colonization the promoters have aimed to provide for the religious needs of the colonists, by
