COLONIZATION AND FUTURE EMIGRATION.
God has apparently chosen the United States as the theatre for the demonstration of the truth that the Catholic Church is the church of the people. She has always been the church of the people; many of her most severe persecutions have been caused by the stand she has taken in behalf of popular rights and individual freedom against the tyranny of kings and the exactions of nobles. But never before has she been furnished with so large a field for the manifestation and development of her popular and democratic character as has been prepared for her here. It is her destiny, we believe, to save the republic from the ruin to which the sects and their offspring, the atheists, would lead her. Even those of our Catholic readers who may not fully share this belief will admit that, to all seeming, the Catholic Church is destined to play an important part in the future history of our country—at least that she has grown in numbers, material wealth, and social influence during the last thirty years to an almost marvellous degree.
A better or more certain method of accomplishing the work of the church in the United States could scarcely have been devised than the congregation of a large share of the Catholic emigration in our great cities. The Catholic Church in the United States is not “a foreign church” in any other sense than the Bible, or Shakspere’s plays, or Homer’s poems are “foreign” books; she is, as they are, and far more than they are, the common inheritance of all, and she is as much at home here, and as rightfully at home, as she is or ever was in any other land. Indeed, the church of God is not and cannot be foreign to any of God’s creatures. But a large proportion of her children in the United States at present are either of foreign birth or are the descendants of foreign-born persons in the first or second generation. These people did not bring the Catholic Church with them to America: they found her here; she had always had an existence here since Christopher Columbus planted the cross upon San Salvador, and since the Jesuit priests sailed up the St. Lawrence and down the Mississippi rivers. If, however, the emigration which has poured into this country since 1840 had not arrived, or had it come from non-Catholic countries, and had the growth of the church here been dependent wholly, or even chiefly, upon the natural increase of American Catholic families and upon converts from Protestantism or heathenism, the church in America to-day would have been numerically insignificant; which is only the same as to say that, if emigration had ceased after the first European exodus, the population of the United States to-day would be equally insignificant.
We may form some idea of what the progress of the church under these conditions would have been here by remembering what it has been in England since the cessation of the active persecutions which followed the Reformation. There are about 1,800,000 Catholics in England to-day. Of these not less than 800,000 are Irish, French, German, Spanish, and Italian emigrants or their children; the remaining 1,000,000 represent all the converts of English birth, as well as the descendants of the old Catholic families who always retained the faith. Half a century has elapsed since the English Catholics were emancipated from the last remnant of the persecuting and restrictive legislation which had oppressed them since the days of Elizabeth. During this half-century the church in England has been free—free in its own government, free in its work of propagating the faith and of bringing back the English people to the religion which their fathers had cherished for a thousand years.
Yet, with some advantages that Catholics in the United States did not and do not yet possess, the growth of the church in England during the last fifty years has been vastly less than the progress she has made in this country during the same period. In 1830 there were more Catholics in England than in the United States; since then the church in both countries has been equally free, with the advantages at the start on the side of England. But now the Catholics in the United States outnumber those in England more than fourfold.
In 1830, according to the most trustworthy estimates, there were 600,000 Catholics in England and 475,000 in the United States; now they number two millions there and from six to seven millions here. In England to-day the church has a cardinal, twelve suffragan bishops, and 2,064 priests; in the United States she has a cardinal, 66 archbishops and bishops, and 5,297 priests. In England, according to the English Catholic Directory for last year, there were 997 Catholic churches, 7 theological seminaries, 312 ecclesiastical students, 15 colleges, 38 asylums, and 5 hospitals. In the United States, according to the American Catholic Directory for the same year, there were 5,292 Catholic churches, 34 theological seminaries, 1,217 ecclesiastical students, 62 colleges, 219 asylums, and 95 hospitals.[[112]]
We have drawn out this comparison for the purpose of accentuating our former remark that the marvellous growth of the church in the United States during the last half-century has been mainly due to emigration from Catholic countries. Had it not been for these accessions, it is doubtful, in our opinion, whether the church in the United States would to-day equal in numbers the church in England. But would its growth have been so great, so pronounced, so commanding to the attention of all beholders, had this emigration been directed away from the cities and dispersed throughout the rural and agricultural sections of the country? A little reflection will, we think, show that this question must be answered in the negative. It would have availed the church nothing had these emigrants been placed in their new homes under conditions where the preservation of their faith in any practical form would have been almost impossible; where they would have been deprived of the care and counsel of their spiritual guides and of the sacraments necessary for salvation; where their children would have remained unbaptized, their marriages have been degraded to civil contracts, and their souls starved and enfeebled by the absence of the Bread of Life. Yet that this would have been the fate of the great majority of them, had they not congregated in the cities, cannot be doubted, unless, indeed, God had chosen to work another miracle in their behalf and to create for them a miraculous supply of priests—a supply so large that every little hamlet in the far-off wilds of the West and North should have been furnished with a spiritual director.
Some boast of having even nine millions of Catholics in the republic; but it can be shown that there are perhaps half as many more Americans now living who are the children of Catholic parents in the first or second generation, but who have lost their faith and grown up as Protestants or without any religion at all, chiefly because their parents had gone into districts where there were no priests, and where the exercise of their religion, save as a spiritual meditation, was impossible.[[113]] It was only when the Catholic emigrants began to arrive here in large numbers, and to dwell together by hundreds and thousands and tens of thousands in the great cities, that it became possible, humanly, to provide for their religious wants and for their Catholic education. How nobly they have themselves furnished the material means for this work the statistics given above show. They have mainly done it for themselves. In England the Irish Catholics, in their works of charity and in the erection of their churches, have often been aided by the contributions of their wealthy English fellow-Catholics; but in America the foreign-born and the descendants of the foreign-born Catholics have for the most part built their own churches, their own convents, seminaries, and schools, and have received but little aid from their co-religionists of native ancestry. Indeed, in some instances within our own knowledge it is the latter who have been the beneficiaries of the former; and many an American Catholic to-day is indebted to the charity and self-denial of German, French, and Irish Catholics for the services of the priest who was the means of his conversion, and for the erection of the church in which he hears Mass. We repeat that all this was made possible by the congregation of our Catholic emigrants in the cities, and that the most deplorable consequences would have followed had not this congregation taken place.
It is not, moreover, in spiritual matters only that our emigrants have been wise in congregating in the cities. One must remember the condition in which the great majority of them landed here during the years when emigration was at the flood-tide, and then compare with that their present state and the future which is before them and their children. They were desperately, or apostolically, poor, because they came from lands where it was impossible for them to acquire anything beyond the means of bare subsistence. They were uneducated, because they had been the subjects of governments whose studied policy it was to keep them in ignorance. They had neither the capital nor the knowledge necessary to render them successful as independent agriculturists. Labor was most abundant in the cities, and in the cities they remained. What have they done there? If you seek their monument, look around you! Behold not only the 57 Catholic churches (12 of them built almost or quite exclusively by Germans, 1 by Poles, 1 by Italians, 1 by Bohemians, 1 by Frenchmen, and 30 by Irishmen), the 17 monasteries, the 22 convents, the magnificent Protectory, the theological seminary, the 3 colleges, the 22 select schools, the 19 asylums, the 4 homes for aged men and women, the 4 hospitals, and the 85 parochial schools of which the city and diocese of New York alone boast; but the great business houses, the large manufactories, the numberless smaller though important factories, stores, and shops belonging to the foreign-born and foreign-descended population of this metropolis; make a similar examination of what this class of our citizens have done in Brooklyn, Baltimore, Boston, Hartford, Portland, Springfield, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, St. Paul, Albany, Buffalo, Newark, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Chicago, San Francisco, and twoscore more of our large cities; and then compare these truly magnificent religious, moral, charitable, commercial, and industrial results with all that the same people could have accomplished had they been scattered as sheep without shepherds throughout our Western and Northern wilds, destined to lose their faith, deprived of the support and strength which common association and common interest afford, and doomed, most probably, to lives of hopeless poverty and unremunerative struggle. God has been too good to them, and to the country in which they have become so important a factor, to permit this, and what the arrogance of man has so often stigmatized as folly has proved to be the highest and best wisdom both for eternal and for temporal ends. The whole number of foreign emigrants who have landed in the United States during the first 75 years of this century was 9,526,966. We showed in a former article[[114]] what proportion of these has remained in the cities; and we have now pointed out some of the results of this congregation.
We must not be understood, however, to convey the idea that a very considerable proportion of our foreign-born Catholic citizens have not made homes for themselves in the rural districts of the country, under conditions which rendered it possible for them to continue the active exercise of their religion, and that the happiest results have not followed. In the New England States, in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, in Illinois, Indiana, and Ohio, in Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, and Minnesota, the number of Irish and German Catholic farmers—well-to-do, prosperous, and faithful—is very large. In the New England States the increase of this class has of late been marked. The farms throughout this section are generally small; their native owners, especially when they are young men, find it difficult to extract from them incomes large enough to supply their desire for the luxuries of life; they are often anxious to try their fortunes in the cities or in the West; whenever one of them offers his little estate for sale the purchaser is most likely a German or Irishman, whose wants are more modest, and who finds it quite possible to derive from a farm of twenty or thirty acres a comfortable subsistence for his family. This change in the proprietorship of the soil in New England has gone on to an extent much larger than is generally known; and one would labor under a serious mistake who supposed that the foreign-born and foreign-descended population of New England was altogether, or even unduly, congregated in the cities. There are in New England, according to the last Catholic Directory, 539 Catholic priests, 508 churches, 167 chapels and stations, with a Catholic population of about 890,000 souls; and it is evident from an examination of the list of the churches that a large proportion of them are in the small towns and rural districts of these States. It may be unwelcome news to our Protestant readers, but it is true, that nearly 25 per cent. of the present population of New England is composed of Roman Catholics. It may be still more unpleasant for them to learn that nearly 70 per cent. of the births in that region are those in Roman Catholic families. New England, indeed, promises to be the first portion of the country which is likely to become distinctively Roman Catholic. The immigration into New England is small, but it is mostly composed of Catholics; the increase of population is very largely Catholic; the emigration is almost entirely non-Catholic. From this digression from our main subject we return with the remark that the rural Catholic population in the Middle and Western States—a population largely composed of foreign-born citizens and their descendants—constitutes a most important factor in the material strength of the Catholic body, and that, as we shall show, the future course of foreign emigration should, and most probably will, tend mainly to increase this class.
The late decline in emigration to the United States, and the present lull, amounting almost to stagnation, which has taken place in it, together with the fact that there is abundant reason to suppose that this lull is but temporary and that emigration will again ere very long pour in upon us, suggest some reflections respecting the changed character which that emigration will probably assume, the changed conditions under which it will be carried on, and the changed duty of the Catholic body in the United States towards it. What was so essentially necessary in the past will be necessary, under these new conditions, no longer; what was so often impossible in the past will now become generally easy of accomplishment. The Catholic Church in the United States has passed through the stage of its infancy and feebleness, and has entered upon the period of its manhood and strength. Firmly planted throughout the land, it fears nothing and can watch over and abundantly protect the faith and the education of its children. In every State and Territory, save Alaska, at least one bishop; in seven States two bishops; in five States three bishops; in one State six, in another State eight bishops, and with more than 5,000 priests—surely with this army of shepherds the sheep and the lambs of the flock can be fed and guarded from the wolves of infidelity, sectarianism, and bigotry. God has built up his church in the republic in the manner, and chiefly through the agencies, which we have pointed out, and has thus fitted her, armed her, and made her strong for the great work which still lies before her. That work is the conversion of the non-Catholic portion of our fellow-citizens; the nurture of Catholic children; and the care, the protection, and, if need be, the conversion of the emigrants who, in the future, are to come to us from the Old World. It is only with this latter branch of her duty that we now deal. Emigrants to the United States have hitherto arrived here chiefly as isolated individuals, or at best as isolated families. There have been some attempts at colonization—that is, in bringing in one company a large number of individuals and of families, destined to migrate together to a spot already selected for them, and which they are to occupy as a community. Most frequently these attempts at colonization have been successful. Where they have failed the failure has been due to some incapacity or dishonesty on the part of the agents who had the matter in charge, and not to any vice in the system itself. There is evidence to show that emigration in future will be to a great extent, and may be almost wholly, conducted on the colonization principle. We have already said that emigration from Ireland in the future would most probably be confined within small limits; but if anything could stimulate it, it would be the development in Ireland of wise plans for colonization, carried out by men of probity, experience, and practical wisdom. Our chief sources of emigration, however, for some years to come, are likely to be England, Scotland, Germany, France, Austria, Bohemia, Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, Belgium, Italy, Poland, and Russia. There are causes at work which even now are stimulating emigration from each of these countries, and these causes may attain great strength. As an instance of the curious manner in which apparently insignificant causes, originating at a distance, produce large effects, we may mention the fact that the shipping of fresh meat from this country to Great Britain—an enterprise only in its infancy—has already so seriously unsettled the relations existing between landlords and farmers in England and Scotland that the latter are declaring their inability to make both ends meet, and are turning their thoughts towards emigration. So general and so serious is this feeling that the leading journal of Scotland has sent to this country a trusted member of its permanent staff (the editor of its agricultural department for many years), with instructions “to make the fullest possible inquiry into everything connected with the stock-raising department of agriculture” in the United States, extending his researches to Texas, “where he proposes to examine thoroughly the system of cattle and sheep breeding and raising carried on in that State on so immense a scale, and to obtain all the information that is to be had with respect to the breeds of cattle, the methods taken to improve the quality of the stock, and Texan agricultural methods and circumstances generally.” He is then to visit other States for the same purpose, and “all along his route he will take note of all the phases and conditions of agriculture, and of the suitability of the States for advanced farming.” The results of his investigations, published in Scotland and England, will enable the farmers there “to determine the full significance of the competition of American cattle-growers in the British dead-meat market,” and in all probability determine many of them to emigrate to this country, with their capital and their skill, to engage in this competition on the American side.
Farming in England and Scotland—especially in Scotland—has long been a precarious and hazardous business; and now the reduction of four or six cents a pound in the price of beef which has been caused by the importation of about 1,000 tons of American beef and mutton every week at Glasgow and Liverpool, threatens to be the last straw to break the back of at least the Scotch farmer. Irish agriculturists likewise depend to a great extent for their profits upon the money received for their cattle, and they, too, will feel as severely as their Scottish friends the ruinous consequences, to them, of a reduction of twenty-five per cent. in the market value of their principal commodity. Thus the emigration of the well-to-do farmers of the United Kingdom is likely to be stimulated, and these agriculturists, most probably, would need but little persuasion to induce them to emigrate, if they emigrated at all, in colonies, and not as isolated families or individuals. So, also, as respects the future emigration from the Continent of Europe. Different causes are at work in each of the countries above named, but they all tend to the same result.
We have already hinted that the emigration of the future will be of a different class from the emigration of the past. At the present moment, and probably for some time to come, it would be dishonest, cruel, and unwise to encourage the emigration to this country of people without capital—those who must earn daily wages in order to live. Hitherto the great majority of our emigrants have been people of this class, and most fortunate is it that they came in such vast numbers. The time will again arrive, no doubt, when this class will be once more necessary and welcome among us, and when they will come, as they have come before, in thousands and tens of thousands. But at present they are not needed here; to bring them hither would be cruel to us as well as to themselves. The emigrants whom we need, and who are for some time most likely to come, are those who possess considerable worldly wealth at home, but who, like the English, Scotch, and Irish farmers of whom we have spoken, find it difficult to provide sufficiently for their increasing families, or wish to secure for them, in the New World, better fortunes than they can hope for in the Old. On the European Continent, and especially in Germany, other causes are at work which are morally certain to promote emigration. The war in the East may be localized—although all the probabilities point to a different conclusion—but even now it has increased the burdens which oppress the German people, and rendered the “blood-tax” that they are compelled to pay heavier and harder to bear. There is probably no intelligent man in Germany who does not look forward to a not distant day when that country will be again engaged in a desperate conflict; and meanwhile the military service exacted from every German citizen, and the cost of maintaining the army, press with a crushing weight upon the country. A thoughtful and experienced writer in one of our daily journals—a writer who, if we mistake not, has himself had extensive experience in the organization of emigration enterprises—thus treats of this subject:
“But it is in Germany that the fears awakened throughout Continental Europe will contribute most powerfully to a renewal of interest in the subject of emigration among classes to whom this country even now presents all requisite advantages. The stern methods employed by Bismarck to repress emigration movements—his interference with the freedom of American citizens who dared to speak of the attractions held out by the fertile West, and his suppression of whatever seemed likely to facilitate emigration to the United States—were all called forth by the anxious desire of people to escape the liability to military service. The military glories of the empire had charms for the cities, which acquired delusive appearances of prosperity. Among the population of rural districts the situation was different. The burdens and penalties of war, and of a system which exacts incessant preparation for war as a condition of national safety, have among these people stimulated the feeling in favor of emigration to a degree which the action of the Imperial Government has imperfectly controlled. The dread, vague before, will now be a reality. What, as a mere contingency, has sufficed to foster the wish to leave the Fatherland is now so near a certainty that the movement in favor of emigration needs but a guiding hand to assume large proportions. And the emigration available is of the description which, discreetly operated upon, should be attracted rather than repelled by the considerations which have driven wage-earners back to Europe. Those who would gladly get out of Germany to save their sons from service in the army look to the land for a livelihood, and would form valuable accessions to the Western States. As far as Germany is concerned, the difficulty is in reaching this class. Agencies that might be freely used in England or Holland are in Germany unavailable. All that seems possible there is to provide authentic information through channels which would not conflict with local law or incur the suspicion which, in view of recent experience, interested representations are likely to excite. Might not our consular agencies be utilized, not as emigration bureaux, but as means of supplying to those who seek it information in reference to lands and farms in the West and South, and to other matters connected with the opening or purchase of farms, and stocking and working them? The laborious head of the Statistical Bureau some years ago compiled a volume of statistics which to the working-men of the Old World was invaluable. The manual at present needed would deal with the phases of the emigration question, and would be much more than an accumulation of figures. It would be more legitimate than half the matter which emanates from the department and is printed at the public cost; and it would contribute to a revival and increase of the only immigration which can be honestly encouraged in the face of hard times.”
The French have never shown much anxiety for emigration; but the arrivals of emigrants from that country have increased during late years, and were slightly larger last year than in 1875. In France the burdens which are felt in Germany are also a cause of suffering, if not of complaint; and emigration from France, if the proper means for stimulating and directing it were employed, might reach large proportions. In Holland causes like those to which we have alluded as potent in Great Britain exist. The emigration from Russia has hitherto been of a peculiar character; it has consisted mainly of the Mennonites, whose anti-war principles impelled them to escape from the military service exacted from all Russian subjects, and from which only the temporary and partial concessions of the czar exempted some of them. The mission now undertaken by Russia is of a character which will compel her ruler, ere he has finished his task, to press every one of his subjects into the military service, directly or indirectly. The desire for emigration from Russia may be expected to increase, although some time will probably elapse before large results can be hoped for from it. The emigration from Austria has thus far been small. The total arrivals of emigrants from that country at the port of New York during the last 30 years have been only 21,677, of whom 1,210 came last year and 1,088 in 1875. But Austria is a country especially fit to emigrate from, and the incentives which are powerful in Germany will ere long be felt in Austria also. From Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Belgium, Denmark, and Poland emigration of the better class may with reason be anticipated; and even from Italy, which has sent us 42,769 emigrants since 1847, considerable accessions may be expected.[[115]]
We have before us a collection of documents relating to colonization in the West and Northwest. One of them describes the admirable plan of the Coadjutor-Bishop of St. Paul for Catholic colonization in Minnesota. In a powerful letter addressed, on the 16th of September last, to the President of the Board of Colonization of the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union, the bishop dwells upon the evils which have followed the settlement of our Irish emigrants in the large cities—evils which we have no wish to belittle; but he also confesses that the misfortunes of those who went into the rural districts were equally deplorable. He remarks:
“Those who—exceptions to the rule—did move forward into the country, in search of homes on the land, suffered in many instances from the absence of proper and systematic direction no less than their companions in cities. They lost their faith. They strayed away from church and priest, from Catholic associations, and in certain States to-day there are whole districts where you hear the purest of Celtic names, and where, nevertheless, not one man proclaims himself a Catholic or smiles at the mention of the old land.”
And then, after a charming picture of a certain little Irish Catholic colony in the West, of which he says that, beginning in poverty and hardship twenty years ago,
“To-day those families are prosperous—rich; their children are as innocent and as true as if they had always breathed the atmosphere of the most Catholic of lands; the number of families has doubled, through mere natural increase; their district of country is for ever secured to the church,”
Bishop Ireland goes on to say that the results of his own colonization labors in Minnesota may be thus described:
“We began last February. Our first step was to secure the control of 117,000 acres of land, situated in Swift County, belonging to the St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. There was at the time in the county about as much more vacant government land open for settlement under the pre-emption and homestead acts. The price of the railroad land was fixed, so that during the time it was to remain under our control the company could not advance its figures. We at once placed a priest in the colony, whose duty it was to direct and advise the immigrant as well as to minister to his spiritual wants. An office was opened in St. Paul, where the immigrant would be received on his arrival from the East, and where all letters of inquiry would be answered. Two weeks after publication of our plans had been made in the Catholic press, immigrants commenced to arrive, and up to the date at which I am writing over eight hundred entries have been made by our people on government land, and about 60,000 acres of railroad land have been occupied. We permit no speculation, so that each quarter section generally represents a family, persons, as a rule, being allowed to take more land only when they have grown sons, who soon will themselves need a home.”
He then gives a letter from the register of the Land Office, showing that the number of land entries made in Swift County from January 1 to June 1, 1876, was 1,317, and saying that over 800 of these were made by “your people.” The register adds:
“In this connection allow me to bear testimony to the intelligence, integrity, and good order always manifested by your colonists in all their business relations with this office. I can now call to mind no instance in which one under the influence of liquor has been in this office. Cases of profanity are extremely rare; in no instance have we had trouble or contention with any one. They are model colonists. I know this opinion to be shared by all who come in contact with them.”
The bishop adds:
“We have already in the colony two churches; one more will be built in spring. Two promising towns have sprung up—De Graff and Randall. In De Graff there are some forty houses, stores or residences, a large brick-yard, a grist-mill; a grain elevator and a convent school are to be put up during the winter. The settlers, whom I had the pleasure of visiting a month ago, are full of hope and delighted with their prospects. Last spring Swift County was a wild, untenanted prairie; to-day on every side new houses and freshly-broken ground meet the eye. Our expenses in organizing and directing the colony were large; still, we were able to meet them by direct revenue from the colony itself. Each settler paid a small entrance fee, and we sold town lots. We have also reserved from sale some choice sections of land, which can at any time, if there is need, be disposed of at a high advance over the original price; so that we are safe against all losses in our enterprise. As soon as a settlement is formed the land advances at once in value; one farm bought in Swift County last spring at two dollars per acre has been sold since at nine dollars per acre, and a settlement that embraces three or four hundred families always affords room for a valuable town-site. The two excellences which I deem our Minnesota plan possesses are the following: We had control of the land; this is necessary to ward off speculation and preserve the land for our own colonists. No sooner would twenty families be settled in a district than the surrounding land would be bought up by speculators or strangers, if you had not complete control over it in some manner. Next, we began the colony with a priest on the spot; the presence of a priest does more than any other agency to attract immigrants and to encourage them in their difficulties. We have been so well satisfied with our work in Swift County that our programme for next year includes the opening of two new colonies.”
Our space does not permit us to summarize even the accounts of the other Catholic colonization movements which have come under our notice. These movements are serious and important, and those engaged in them should take every possible precaution to prevent them from falling into the hands of careless, incompetent, or dishonest persons. The work, it appears, will have two chief departments—the home and foreign agencies. The former will undertake and supervise the task of selecting and securing proper localities for colonies, and of procuring as settlers families and individuals already resident here, but whose interests would be promoted by their translation to these new homes; the foreign agencies would be employed in diffusing the necessary information among the classes in Europe who would be most likely to emigrate, and who would be the most desirable emigrants, and in inducing them to join new colonies already established or to form others of their own. The Catholic Advocate, of Louisville, Ky., in some well-considered remarks on the subject, says:
“Now, it is our opinion that a great impetus could be given to this good work if the directors of the colonization project could so manage as to awaken the Irish people at home to the value of the movement; if they could have their plans placed in all their development before that class in Ireland from which emigration recruits its numbers. This could be best and most efficiently done by inducing the formation of corresponding organizations in the old country. There are very many thousands of people in Ireland, with farming-stock worth two and three and four hundred pounds sterling, holding their lands by an insecure tenure and at a rack-rent, who would come out to this country to-morrow, with all their valuables converted into gold, if they knew or understood the advantages of the colonization scheme. As it is now, they only hear about it. It comes to them by newspapers, as a kind of far-off echo. It is not brought forcibly to their notice. Its benefits are not urged upon them personally. There is no persuasion about it, and it is as a dead interest to the great majority of the people, who, if they only knew and understood it thoroughly, would grasp at it. The British government was very earnest in its efforts to colonize Australia and New Zealand some years ago, and the advantages it had to offer were far and far away from those offered by the Catholic colonization movement amongst us. But how did the British government act? It sent agents amongst the Irish and English and Scotch, prepared with maps and pamphlets and lectures, to impress the value of their project upon the people at home and put it immediately before their eyes. What was the consequence? Numbers of emigrants came forward, and of a class which had the means to colonize, and they settled in Brisbane, Queensland, and New Zealand, where they are to-day prosperous and promising. We do not say that paid agents should be sent to Ireland for the purpose we indicate, but it would be very easy to communicate with influential persons there to put before them the value of forming organizations in connection with Bishop Ireland’s scheme, with the St. Louis scheme, and any others that may be started. What is required is emigrants with some capital, and this is the way to get them.”
Bishop Ireland, in the letter from which we have already quoted, sets forth at some length what such a body as the Irish Catholic Benevolent Union could do in this work. It could constantly agitate the subject of colonization, and it could establish a national bureau of information, which would collect information, publish pamphlets, secure the co-operation of bishops and priests, and open colonies of their own. But the “crowning stone in the work of colonization,” in the bishop’s opinion, would be “the formation of joint-stock colonization societies.” He says:
“By no other means can the poor among our people—those most in need of homes—be colonized. However successful our Minnesota plan may seem to have been, it does not reach the poor. We have received hundreds of letters from most deserving persons, to whom we were obliged to answer that we had no place for them in our colony. How many there are who have simply means to bring them West, but who can neither pay for land nor maintain themselves while waiting for the first crop! A joint-stock company would give them land on long time, at reasonable rates of interest, and would also advance them small sums to assist them in opening their farms. The plan might be somewhat as follows: The executive power of the company should be in the hands of most reliable business men. Stockholders would be promised that their money would be paid back in five years, with interest at six per cent. per annum, and, in order that men of all classes might take part in the work, shares would be put at low figures. The inducement to take shares is that good is done to our fellow-countrymen without any loss to ourselves. The company purchases a tract of land; cash in hand, the land would cost but little. Immigrants, in purchasing it from the company, would give back a mortgage, promising to pay the full price in four or five years, with interest at eight per cent. per annum. An industrious settler could not fail to meet such obligations. If he failed to do so, the land reverts to the company, worth much more than it was when first purchased. The company derives its expenses from the two per cent., which it charges the settlers over what it pays its shareholders; but to protect itself the better it could sell the land at a slightly increased figure, especially a few choice pieces; it could also lay out for its profit a town-site, and sell the lots.
“There should be colonies in every State where cheap lands are to be found. The movement should be made general, our entire Irish Catholic people entering into it: one class coming forward with advice and money, the other profiting, for their own good and that of their religion, of the assistance offered to them. What is to be done must be done quickly. The time is fast passing when cheap lands can be had in America. Already the tide of immigration—bearing, alas! but a small number of our people—has crossed the Missouri, leaving in its wake but inconsiderable portions of unoccupied land, and reaching even now the limits of the arable lands of the continent. Patriotism and religious zeal are two great incentives to action for Irish Catholics. Colonization is a work upon which both can be most easily brought to bear.”
Already one such joint-stock company has been formed—on the 10th of April last—in St. Paul, in which the bishop and the coadjutor-bishop of that see have taken shares.
It will henceforth be the duty of the church in America to see that no Catholic family landing on our shores and seeking a new home in our Western States and Territories shall be permitted to stray beyond her control, but shall be conducted to localities where her priests are already prepared to receive them, and where their fellow-citizens will be bound to them by the ties of faith. Catholics in this land are already about as one in six. We receive accessions every day from the ranks of the Protestant sects; few, if any, of our own number fall away from us; the emigration of the future, to a great extent, will be in our hands. Thus will the church in America—where to-day, to use his own words, our Holy Father “is more truly Pope than in any other land”—grow in strength and beauty, and thus will she be prepared, when the hour comes, to save the republic for which her sons, from the hour of her birth until now, have shed their blood, and given their toil and their prayers, in unstinted measure.