Irish Immigrants In America

“One thing I think is certain that if the emigrants knew before hand what they have to suffer for about the first six months after leaving home in every respect they would never come here.”

-John Doyle, letter to wife (1818)

John Doyle wrote of the struggles that the Irish immigrants have to face in America for their first six months in the new world. Little did he know that in a couple of decades, the Irish population of America would increase almost fivefold. The story that he would tell of his immigration would be strikingly different than the stories of the nearly 700,000 refugees that would make the voyage across the Atlantic thirty years after he did. The conditions for the Irish Catholics in America would all but get better.

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The Irish people did the most amount of work for the least amount of pay. They would build canals, roads, train tracks, and worked mines and quarries. They worked under the worst conditions, and many died during work. The women worked as house servants, in laundries, and factories. Many of the Irishmen went from job to job, not being able to keep one for long. Letters that they wrote home expressed their experiences and what America was really like, as demonstrated in the poem ‘I Am the Little Irish Boy’ by Henry David Thoreau. I am the little Irish boy; That lives in the shanty; I am four years old today; And shall soon be one and twenty; I shall grow up; And be a great man; And shovel all day; As hard as I can. Down in the deep cut; Where the men lived; Who made the Railroad. For supper; I have some potato; And sometimes some bread; And then if it’s cold; I go right to bed. I lie on some straw; Under my father’s coat; My mother does not cry; And my father does not scold; For I am a little Irish Boy; And I’m four years old. The poem puts in words what the Irish Americans experienced every day. The everyday struggle for life affected families, and everyone worked no matter their

Americans encountered large numbers of poor Irish, which might have prepared them a little bit more for the upcoming influx of settlers through Ellis Island a couple decades later. Without this Irish encounter, later immigrants wouldn’t have had the same impact on America. The cultural exchange of the Irish and American benefitted the American people and the Irish immigrants. For example, the building of the majestic St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City that still stands today as a testimony to the shaping of the Catholic American population and Irishmen that worked so hard in America. Many of the Irish became more sophisticated and educated after coming to America. The American’s gained a sense of appreciation for different cultures and treated later immigrants much better than the poor peasants that came from Ireland. The Irish explored America. They came in on ravaged ships, thinking they would step onto gold roads when they got off. In reality, the conditions in America were no better than those on the ships. The Irish had to explore the true America. They discovered how the American people treated foreigners. Americans, I think, explored their communal self also. This is both negative and positive. They got to see how much better they were than other people and other cultures. American’s also saw how terrible and tyrannical they were to these cultures, who they thought inferior to