Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 8.djvu/175

 IRISH

135

IRISH

data which could be obtained, showing 250,000 as the total of immigrants of all nationahties arriving in the United States during that time. In his notebook for ISIS, Bishop Connolly says: "At present there are here [New York] about sixteen thousand Catholics — mostly Irish; at least 10,000 Irish Catholics had ar- rived in New York only within these last three years. They spread", he adds, "over all the large states of this country and make their religion known everj-- where." And beginning about this time, namely, the close of the second war with England, 1S12-1S15, the stream of Irish emigration, which before had been largely Presbyterian, was changed, so that Catholic Irish have ever since constituted the bulk of such immigration into the United States. The number re- corded as arriving from Ireland in the year 1S20, the first year of the official registration of immigrants, is 3614, and judging from these figures and from the proportion of immigrants arriving prior to the War of Independence, we may safely say that, out of the above official estimate of 250,000 as the total number of immigrants during the period from 1776 to 1S20, at least 100,000 were Irish.

Since the j'ear 1820 the number of immigrants ar- riving in the United States from Ireland is shown by the official records as follows; —

1S21 to 1830 50,724

1S31 to 1840 207,381

1841 to 1850 780,719

1851 to 1860 914,119

1861 to 1870 435,778

1871 to 1880 436,871

1881 to 1890 655,482

1891 to 1900 403.496

3,884,570 and for the years 1901 to 190S inclusive as follows; —

1901 30,561

1902 29,138

1903 35,300

1904 36,142

1905 37,644

1906 34,995

1907 34,530

1908 21,382

259,692 (see Reports of Com. General of Immigration for 1906-7-8 and "Immigration", p. 4338), the above figiu-es indicating that emigration from Ireland dur- ing the past eight years has been maintained at nearly the same average as during the last preceding decade. As a result the population of Ireland has diminished according to the censuses from 1861 to 1901 at the following rate per cent; —

1861 1871 1881 1891 1901

11-S 6-7 4-4 9-1 5-2

(see Statesman's Year-Book, 1907). The greatest immigration in any one year was in 1851 when 221,- 253 persons are recorded as arriving; next to this was the yev 1850 with arrivals numbering 164,004. The arrivals during the decade 1841 to 1S50 were nearly four times greater than those of the preceding ten years, and this number in turn was exceeded by the figures for the next succeeding decade 1851-1860, when the highest level in the history of Irish immi- gration to the United States was reached. The sta- tistics given above show a total immigration from Ireland between 1820 and 1907 of 4,144,262 persons, to which add 100,000, the number as above estimated for the years 1776 to 1820, making a total of 4,244,- 262, exclusive of the Irish who were in the United States prior to the Revolution. But there are reasons for believing that the figures thus given understate the actual volume of Irish immigration. During the decade 1841-1850 Irish labourers went

every year in large numbers to England in search of employment, and many of them remained, especially in Liverpool, the population of which became in time to a large extent Irish. In 1846 alone, 278,005 Irish of both sexes were reported to have left Ireland for Liverpool, whence most of them embarked for America (see " British Commis- sioners' Report", cited in O'Rourke's "History of the Great Irish Famine", pp. 487-8).

Many such emigrants sailed directly to the United States and arrived in largest numbers at the port of New York. During the years 1847-70, the State of New Y'ork through its Emigration Commission main- tained a system of registration of aliens arriving at that port, and the records thus kept show the total of Irish immigrants largely exceeding the number re- ported by the National Bureau of Statistics. These variations may be explained by remembering that under the New Y'ork system immigrants were classi- fied according to the country of their nativity, while in the Federal reports for the most part classification is made according to the "country of last permanent residence" of the immigrant, so that those who had left Ireland and had sojourned for a while in England were not classified as Irish immigrants. Again dur- ing the same period there was a large immigration to Canada, some of it officially promoted and assisted by public money (O'Rourke, op. cit., p. 483). Much of it was destined for America, but was diverted to Canada by EngUsh shipo\\'ners, who found it easier to deliver their human freight there than at the port of New Y'ork, where the condition and circumstances of the immigrant were more carefully scrutinized.

The United States Bureau of Statistics estimates the total immigration into Canada between 1821 and 1890 at 3,000,000, of which it is safe to assume that more than half came from Ireland. No official record has been kept of immigrants arriving in the L'nited States from Canada, except in certain cases neither numerous nor important enough to be men- tioned here, and it is impossible to state the precise number of persons of Irish birth who, sooner or later after their arrival in Canada, crossed the borders and thus increased the Irish element in the L'nited States. That the number was very large there is abundant evidence. In an official statement pre- sented in 1890 in the Canadian House of Parliament, the opinion was expressed that over one-half of the immigrants arriving in Canada ultimately removed to the United States. (See Immigration into the U. S., in U. S. Bureau of Statistics, 1909. p. 4335.) And it has been argued that if the 3,000,000 immi- grants arriving in Canada had had to remain there, the total population of the Dominion must have in- creasetl far beyond 5,371,315, the figures officially reported in 1901. These considerations, we think, justify a revision and correction of the estimate of Irish immigration into the United States (for the period 1820 to 1903), which up to the present time has been officially quoted at "about four millions"; we would say that, taking the entire period from the beginning of the War of Independence (1776) to and including 1908, such immigration easily numbers five and a half million souls.

Recurring to the statistics of recorded immigration, we find the number of persons of Irish nativity in- cluded in the resident population of continental United States at the close of each decennial period since 1850 to be as follows: —

1850 961,719

1860 1,611,304

1870 1,855,827

1880 1,854,571

1S90 1,871,509

1900 1,615,459

[see Abstract of 12th (1900) Census, p. 9].