1

morals, and democracy. They furnish few leaders but many excellent citizens." Professor Becker of Cornell says that "the Swedes, although they have in considerable numbers become farmers in the Northwest, have more often taken entire possession of certain districts, as in Minnesota, where they are not assimilated by the native population, but form alien communities preserving their language and customs." 2 Professor Coolidge of Harvard writes, "The Scandinavians, in spite of the fact that they cling to their own language with tenacity and often live rather secluded lives, are viewed with general favor; for they have the reputation of being steady and industrious, and, unlike most of the other immigrants today, they go chiefly to the country rather than to the towns." They certainly are clannish, but consider themselves Americans over and above their racial origin. Mattson, born in Sweden, a colonel in our Civil War, later Secretary of State in Minnesota, said of the Scandinavians, "Though proud of their Scandinavian ancestry, they love America and American institutions as deeply and truly as do the descendants of the Pilgrims, the starry emblem of liberty meaning as much to them as to any other citizen." Bostwick says, "The Scandinavian farmer is one of the very best assets of the West, and his steadying influence is felt all along the line where he has been present to exert it, from law-making down to the cultivation of the soil. . . . He has a peculiarly pleasing, ingratiating manner, from which all trace of trying to curry favor is absent, and which combines the simple-heartedness of a child with hard headed common-sense and ability to succeed in practical matters." 5

The Scandinavians can be relied upon in the coming struggle to preserve American institutions. As Orth says: "This son of the North has greatly buttressed every worthy American institution with the stern traditional virtues of the tiller of the soil. Strength he gives, if not grace, and that at a time when all social institutions are being shaken to their foundations." "

CHAPTER XII

THE IRISH

A SINGULARLY affectionate race, when treated with kindness and firmness, yet quick to take offense and quarrelsome, they wait for no oncomer. They are their own worst enemies. Born to toil, their bones are found along the pathway of every railroad and trench. Improvident, they rarely achieve wealth. They formerly were in the ditch; now in the city hall. Their ingratiating manner, facile nature, quick perceptions, and genius for local politics with its jobs, patronage, spoils, and all kinds of combinations, have largely turned our city governments over to them. Their leaders have the same control over them in politics that the priests have over them in religion and the conduct of life. The political results are not good, although this leadership does control the ignorant vote and thus ameliorates the mistake of the universal franchise in purely local affairs. The Irish nature is not timid physically, but mentally and supernaturally is easily overawed. Rarely do the Irish rise to the highest positions such as United States Senators; to the Presidency and Supreme Court not at all. Sometimes they produce great merchants and manufacturers but not often. They do not have great concentration of mind and are generally incapable of sustained and continuous mental effort. Their minds are as a flash but not deep, impressionable but not creative, fitfully energetic but naturally indolent. In science, literature, art, inventions, and the higher walks of industry they cut little figure. Like the Jews, the race and its nature are inextinguishable, irrepressible, and unchanging. The vigor and undying pugnacity of the race, however, have rendered its strain of blood one of the most valuable in the world when profusely diluted.

The soft voice of this Celtic wooer with his melodious tongue and insinuating manner has led to the mingling of the race with all classes of Americans, to the benefit of the latter. It gives force, dash, and combativeness, needed much in solving the problems of America. The Irish are always ready for war and are never backward in the fight.

Their women are chaste and prolific; their men strong and hardy. They have an undying hatred of England. The potato famine in Ireland in 1848 brought hundreds of thousands to America. During the eighty years from 1840 to 1920, 4,111,467 Irish came to America. Few went back. They are gradually being absorbed but not easily. They are found mostly in the cities and do not take readily to agriculture. It is doubtful whether they will contribute much to the problem of self-government. John Flynn of Trinity College, Dublin, says: "The Celt is not usually a successful ruler. His temperament is against him. He is of that race 'which shakes all nations and founds none.' He has charm and ability; but he is passionate, explosive, volatile. He has a long memory for injuries and a short one for benefits. Cromwell is remembered while Swift is forgotten." Demolins, a brilliant French writer, says: "Owing to their original mode of life, more pastoral than agricultural, the Celts have no liking for the absorbing pursuits of agriculture; they have more inclination for the liberal professions than for the commoner callings, and achieve more success in the former. Owing to their traditional clan organization, they show more taste for public than for private life, for political than for agricultural, industrial, or commercial struggles. In the AngloSaxon world, the Celtic populations mostly fill the ranks of the lower proletariat, or higher in the social scale - the liberal and political professions." 2

Lecky describes the Irish of the eighteenth century well when he says: "A strangely chequered character was forming, tainted with some serious vices, very deficient in industry and energy,

in self-reliance, self-respect, and self-control, but capable of rising, under good leadership, to a lofty height of excellence, and with its full share both of the qualities that attract and fascinate the stranger, and of the qualities that brighten and soften the daily intercourse of life. It was at once eminently passionate and eminently tenacious in its gratitude and its revenge." 1

Froude, on the other hand, says of the Irish, "Light-hearted, humorous, imaginative, susceptible through the entire range of feeling, from the profoundest pathos to the most playful jest, if they possess some real virtues they possess the counterfeits of a hundred more. Passionate in everything - passionate in their patriotism, passionate in their religion, passionately courageous, passionately loyal and affectionate - they are without the manliness which will give strength and solidity to the sentimental part of their dispositions; while the surface and show is so seductive and so winning that only experience of its instability can resist the charm. . . . Amidst their weaknesses, their confident boastings, and imperfect performances, the Irish have shown themselves at all times, and in all places, capable of the most loyal devotion to any one who will lead and command them. They have not been specially attached to chiefs of their own race. Wherever and in whomsoever they have found courage and capacity, they have been ready with heart and hand to give their services; and whether at home in sacrificing their lives for their chiefs, or as soldiers in the French or English armies, or as we now know them in the form of the modern police, there is no duty, however dangerous and difficult, from which they have been found to flinch, no temptation, however cruel, which tempts them into unfaithfulness. Loyalty of this kind, though called contemptuously a virtue of barbarism, is a virtue which, if civilization attempts to dispense with it, may cause in its absence the ruin of civilization." 2

There were few Irish in America in 1776, aside from the Scotch

Irish from the North of Ireland, and they were not Irish. The real Irish were then and still are almost exclusively Catholic, and all thirteen of the American Colonies, including Maryland after 1704,1 were intolerant of the Catholic religion. The Catholics were regarded with suspicion and suffered from legal disabilities of one kind or another. The Irish claim that they came to America in large numbers during colonial times and that they formed a large part of the American Revolutionary Army. This is incorrect. Their number was negligible and their influence slight. There has been much heated discussion on this subject, the real trouble being that the Irish writers vociferously claim that the Irish include all Scotch-Irish and hence they appropriate all that the Scotch-Irish have done. The fact is there were very few real Irish in the colonies prior to 1770. A comparatively few came as "indentured servants," but only a few. How many cannot be ascertained, there being no record. Arthur Young (than whom there is no better authority) wrote in 1776: "The spirit of emigration in Ireland appears to be confined to two circumstances: the Presbyterian religion and the linen manufacture. I heard of very few emigrants except among manufacturers of that persuasion. The Catholicks never went; they seemed not only tied to the country but almost to the parish in which their masters lived."2 Henry J. Ford says: "There was very little emigration from Ireland, outside of Ulster, until after the War of 1812."3 Henry Cabot Lodge says: "I classified the Irish and the Scotch-Irish as two distinct racestocks, and I believe the distinction to be a sound one historically and scientifically. The Scotch-Irish from the North of Ireland, Protestant in religion and chiefly Scotch and English in blood and name, came to this country in large numbers in the eighteenth century, while the people of pure Irish stock came scarcely at all during the colonial period, and did not emigrate here largely until the present century was well advanced." 4 In fact there is no record of Irish Catholics leaving Ireland nor of