Page:Historic towns of the middle states (IA historictownsofm02powe).pdf/32

xxii that would more naturally stimulate the study of political and economic history in the nineteenth century than old Castle Garden at the lower end of New York City, through which millions upon millions of immigrants have entered the Western world to find contentment and prosperity? Many of these came from Ireland; and the municipal life of New York City has been profoundly affected by that fact. To answer the question why these people left Ireland and, in leaving, why their destination was New York rather than some port in the British colonies, is to review the history of the Irish land system, the Irish Church and the political administration of Ireland for several generations.

An enormous element of the present population of New York, as well as of the country at large, is made up of a comparatively recent German immigration, to understand which one must learn something of the German revolutionary movement of 1848, the growth of German militarism and the conditions under which educational progress in Germany has outstripped the average material prosperity. Still more recently there has been a huge immigration of Russian Jews, with local effects of a