Optimistic Views
Optimistic Views
The more optimistic reports from the new settlers emphasise that anyone who is prepared to work hard will succeed. The necessity of having enough money on arrival to facilitate the initial settlement is also stressed.
A farm labourer in Illinois wrote to his friend in Kildare in 1854 that he was doing well enough
“come to this country and I know you will do well—one thing is certain you can be your own master a good deal sooner”.
He even offered to lend his friend the money for the passage. This sentiment of America as a land of social mobility without class divisions also occurs in a letter from a doctor to his nephew in Ulster in 1874 in which he observes that
“every man is his own landlord in this country –“jack is as good as his master”.
In the remote parts of America, an industrious youth may follow any occupation without being looked down upon or sustain loss of character, and he may rationally expect to raise himself in the world by his labour. This is a very different state of things from what we find in this old country, of rich and poor, fashionable and vulgar, respectable, idle and common hard working people. In America, a man's success must altogether rest with himself - it will depend on his industry, sobriety, diligence, and virtue; and if he do not succeed, in nine cases out of ten the cause of failure is to be found in the deficiencies of his own character."
Dublin Weekly Register, November 11th 1848
Extract from letter by Margaret McCarthy to her parents, 22 September 1850
(18) QRO file 11821, PRO, Dublin
Richard O Gorman a middle class Irish emigrant from Dublin viewed emigration in positive materialistic terms. He wrote in 1859,
“New York itself will be in 50 years the finest city on this earth –barring Paris-if even that excels it – it is only being built now – yet its situation is glorious…..
The progress of the country in all matters of material wealth is miraculous - There is in the Yankee - wondrous energy -self reliance - power of combination - readiness in the use of all his powers - He has rough and ready work to do, and he does it - The business of the day is to till land - cut down timber - drain swamps - get rid of Indians - build railways, cities, states - and our Yankee does it with surprising speed - and what he can't do himself, he knows how to get others to do for him “….
From the late 1850s America experienced rapid social improvement and the Irish gradually moved, as David Doyle describes it “ from slums to apartments to terrace housing, from hardship, labouring and domestic service to artisan skills and real savings, and thence to home-ownership and privately funded education at primary and secondary level”. Writer Andrew M. Greeley notes that by the period of World War One, people from Irish Catholic backgrounds already exceeded the US national average on three major indices of success: college attendance and graduation, professional careers and white collar careers.
Greeley, Andrew “The Success and assimilation of Irish Protestants and Irish Catholics in the United States”, SSR, Vol. 72, No. 4 (July 1988)
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