teem with Irish labourers; they are the best
fellers of wood and diggers of potatoes. They
are, in America, emphatically toilers by the
sweat of their brow. They form a striking
contrast with their companion in labour, the
negro: all the world over, he has to be driven
to his work all the world over, he is lazy, and
only exerts himself on compulsion of some sort
or other. The Irishman works heartily and
sturdily. He is impudent, he is obstinate, he
is inclined to get into hot discussion with his
comrades but he works with a will. I have
often seen Irishmen working on New England
farms; I never saw one with an inclination to
indolence. This indefatigable capacity for hard
toil enables the Irishman to outbid every
competitor. And his lot is not to be despised. Let
him once find work on a New England farm,
and he has capital wages, comfortable lodging,
healthy meals, good land to work on, plenty to
drink, and people to bicker with. He was never
born to manage a farm; he is not thrifty; as
good a piece of ground as there is in the peerless
Shenandoah valley of Virginia would go to ruin
under his control; but set him his farm work—
leave him no option but to dig this acre of potatoes,
or reap that field of wheat—and he stands
unrivalled. The rule is, of course, not an
universal one; there are exceptional Irishmen
who, from obeying, do learn to command; from
inhabiting a farm, and plodding on it, these
get to be thrifty and able to manage. Such an
Irishman sometimes takes his place among the
independent farmers; one of the richest farmers
in Massachusetts—a man who gets from his land
some three or four thousand dollars a year—is
an Irishman who emigrated to America twenty
years ago without twenty shillings in the pockets
of his patched trousers, who plodded and
plodded, bought a little plot, added to it, and
now sends his daughters to fashionable boarding
schools, his sons to the university, and his
wife to town in a two-horse carriage. Among
the farmers in the rural districts of New
England—and especially in New Hampshire—it is
the custom to treat the labourers and servants
much as if they were members of the family.
The Irish "helps," male and female, take their
places at the table with the farmer, his wife,
sons, and daughters; they are helped from the
same dishes; they join in the conversation, they
enjoy their post prandial pipes with the "boss,"
on the little lawn in front of the farmhouse.
They are provided with bedrooms in no respect
inferior to those occupied by the master and
mistress; they join in many of their amusements
—go a-fishing or picnicing with them; they
sit in the parlour and hear the papers or books
read in the evening; and, in short, partake of
all the comforts and enjoyments of home. And
the constant companionship of the average
New England farmer's family is no mean
advantage to the poor, ignorant Irish emigrants.

The New England farmer who so democratically
admits his poorest and most ignorant
"hand "to his table and his family circle, is
almost without exception a man of some education,
and of vigorous and independent habit of
thought. He is not only capable of reading
and writing, but he has a keen love of papers
and books; is admirably posted in the politics
and events of the day; is himself a most
enthusiastic politician, and fairly revels in
argumentation with a rustic opponent. He has been
educated at one of those free schools of which
New England people are justly proud: working
on the farm, when a boy, during the summer
months, and availing himself of the bleak
winters to attend the little rustic school which
a wise legislation has provided for him. Thus the
Irish labourer, separated from the association of
other ignorant Patlanders like himself, having
in the association of the farmer's family and in
the comforts of the farmer's house an efficacious
substitute for the public-house, becomes more
intelligent and more industrious, and is gradually
moulded into an useful member of democratic
American society. Treated as an equal, ambition
of a worthy kind is begotten in him; if he
be as good as the "boss," and worthy to break
bread with him, why not aspire to be a "boss"
himself? And so it comes about that now
and then examples appear, of Irishmen
becoming landed proprietors. But the larger
part of the emigrants who penetrate beyond
the cities, are of a nomadic, restless, roving
disposition. They wander about the country
in the summer time, picking up a farming job
here and there, indisposed to remain
long in one place, working with a will, but
thriftlessly spending their earnings as fast as
they make them. Labour is so much in
demand, that they never have to go far without
employment, and in return for whatever work
they do, they receive what must seem to them,
coming from over-crowded Ireland, a very
handsome wage. Notwithstanding all its
advantages, the Irishman in America does not
appear to take so kindly to farm work as to the
irksome drudgery which is his lot in the cities.
After all, he prefers to live in "Dublin," if it be
only the imitation Dublin which hangs on the
outskirts of every American city. Here he has
his mates and his wife, and here he cheerfully
digs gutters, and clears streets, for the privilege
of living in an over-crowded and dirty nest of
children of Erin like himself. And here, in the
cities, he is a godsend to the corporations,
who get their more humble jobs done better
and cheaper by the Paddies than by any other
workmen.

The mass of Irish remain in the Northern
and Eastern States. To the South the Irishman
is loath to go, for he finds in the negro a
competitor who contests the market with him
at great advantage. No white race can compete
with the negro on a cotton, rice, or sugar
plantation. The Irishman cannot exist on so
little as the black man. The Irishman is the
more vigorous labourer in the North; but
the Southern sun melts him, gives him
sunstroke, paralyses him, while the hotter the
day, the livelier the negro. It is amusing to
note what an instinctive antipathy exists
between these two rival races for securing the
work of the American employer. Each seems