From Dublin to Chicago: Some Notes on a Tour in America

by George A. Birmingham

Even after a visit to America and a considerable experience of American hotels, I cannot think of the Shelbourne Hotel as an inn, as old-fashioned, or as in any way Irish except through the accident of its situation. It evidently suggests to the American mind tender thoughts of Mr. Yeats' "small cabin, of mud and wattles made" on Inishfree. It suggests no such thoughts to us. Dinner at the Shelbourne Hotel costs five shillings, nothing to an American, of course, but a heavy price to us in Ireland. It consists of several courses and we think it quite a grand dinner. It seems to the American that he is at last reduced to the traditional Irish diet of potatoes and potheen whiskey. It is this way of thinking about Ireland which takes the sweetness out of the American's genuine affection for our country. We do not mind admitting that we are half a century behind America in every respect, but we like to think that we are making some progress.

An American's eyes soften when you talk to him about Ireland, and you feel that at any moment he may say "dear land," so deep is his sentimental pity and affection for our country. But his eyes harden when you mention Irishmen and you feel that at any moment he may say something very nasty about them. The plain fact is that Irishmen are not very popular in America. We have, it appears, managed the American's municipal politics for him in several of his principal cities and he does not like it. But I am not sure that his resentment is quite just. Somebody must manage municipal politics everywhere. For a good many years the American would not manage them himself. He was too busy making money to bother himself about municipal politics. We took over the job—at a price. He paid the price with a shrug of the shoulders. I cannot see that he has much to complain about. Lately he has kicked—not against the size of the price—it is not the American way to higgle about money—but against there being any price at all. He has got it into his head that municipal politics ought to be run "free gratis and for nothing" by high-souled patriotic men. I sincerely hope that he will realize his ideal, though I doubt whether any politics anywhere can be run in that way. It will certainly be better for my fellow countrymen to earn their bread in any way rather than by politics. But there is, no sense in being angry with us or abusing us. We worked the machine and took our wages. The American watched the machine running and paid the wages. There was not much to choose between him and us.

There is another reason why we are not as popular as we might be—as, no doubt, we ought to be—in America. We have remained Irish. One of the most wonderful things about America is its power of absorbing people. Men and women flow into it from all corners of the world, and in a very short time, in a couple of generations, become American. I have seen it stated that the very shapes of the skulls of immigrants alter in America; that the son of an Italian man has an American not an Italian skull, even if his mother also came from Italy. Whether this change really takes place in the bones of immigrants I do not know. Quite as surprising a change certainly does take place in their nature. They cease to be foreigners and become American. But the Irish have never been thoroughly Americanized. Their American citizenship becomes a great and dear thing to them, but they are still in some sense citizens of Ireland. If a question ever arose in which American interests clashed with Irish interests there might well be a solid Irish vote in favor of sacrificing America to Ireland. The Irish are a partial exception to the rule that America absorbs its immigrants. It has not thoroughly absorbed us.

This is the shape which the Irish problem has assumed in America. Here at home the question is, is England to govern Irishmen? It has obviously failed to make Englishmen of us. On the other side of the Atlantic the question is: Are Irishmen to govern America? America has not succeeded in making Americans of all of us so far.

So far. But the position of Irishmen in America is changing. There was a time when we took our place in the American social order as hewers of wood and drawers of water. We were the navvies, the laborers, the men who handled the pickaxe and spade. Now it is men of other races who do this work—Italians and Slavs. We have risen in the scale. The Irish emigrant who lands in New York to-day starts higher up than the Irish emigrant of twenty-five years ago. So long as we were at the bottom of the social scale we were bound together by a community of interest and outlook as well as by nationality. We were easily organized as a voting unit. But men, as they rise in the world, tend more and more to become individuals. They have differing interests. They look at things in different ways. They are far more difficult to organize. The sense of original nationality will remain to us, no doubt, as it remains among Americans of Scottish descent. But it may cease to be an effective political force.

The Ulster Irishman went to America in large numbers before there was any great immigration of southern and western Irishmen. He fought his way up in the social scale very quickly and became thoroughly Americanized. He has had a profound influence on American civilization and character. It has been the influence of digested food, not the force exercised by a lump of dough swallowed hastily. But in time even a lump of dough is digested by a healthy stomach and the gradual rise of the Irish in the social life of America looks like the beginning of the process of digestion.

There is something else besides the change in his social position which will in time make it easier for America to absorb thoroughly the Irish immigrant. The Irish who went to America during the last half of the 19th century left their homes with a sense in them of burning wrong. They were men who hated. They hated England and all in Irish life which stood for England. This hate bound them together. Irish political struggles, whether of the Fenian or the Parnell type, appealed to them. Ireland was, in one way or the other, up against England. But all this has changed. Irish politicians are no longer engaged in a struggle with England. They are in alliance with one set of Englishmen and only against another set of Englishmen. There is in Irish politics at home an appeal to the man of party feeling. He is keen enough for his own party, keen enough against the other party, but when he gets to America neither of the parties at home can move him to any special enthusiasm. He no longer, when at home, hates England. He hates, if hate is not too strong a word, some Englishmen. There is a great difference between hating England and hating some Englishmen, when you are so far away that all Englishmen get blurred. It is easy in Ireland to feel that Codlin is the friend, not Short. It is not so easy to distinguish Codlin from Short, Liberal from Conservative, when they are both no more than little dots, barely visible at a distance of three thousand miles. Codlin gets mixed up with Short. Some of the original party hatred of Short attaches to Codlin, no doubt. But some of the love for Codlin, love which is the fruit of long alliance, passes to Short.

I do not mean to suggest that the sense of nationality has passed away from Ireland. It has not. In some ways the spirit of nationality is stronger in Ireland to-day than it was at any time during the last century. It has certainly penetrated to classes which used to have no consciousness of nationality at all. There are fewer Irishmen now who are ashamed of being Irish. There are more men now than ever, in every class, who want the good of Ireland as distinguished from that of England or of any other country. But the sense of nationality has to a very large extent passed out of Irish political life. The platform appeal of the politician to the voter in Ireland now is far oftener an appeal to Irishmen as part of the British democracy than to Irishmen as members of a nation governed against its will by foreigners. The ideas of John O'Leary, even the ideas of Parnell, have almost vanished from Irish political life. Instead of them we have the idea of international democracy.

This change of feeling in Ireland itself will make for a modification of the position of the Irish in America. They will tend, as the older generation passes, to become more American and less Irish. This is already felt in Ireland itself. Of late years there has arisen a strong feeling against emigration. It is realized, as it used not to be, that Ireland loses those who go. The feeling is quite new. The phrase "a greater Ireland beyond the seas" is beginning to mean a little less than it did, and the general consciousness of patriotic Irishmen at home is instinctively recognizing this. But it is noticeable that this dislike of emigration has not found expression among politicians. The movement is outside politics. The local political boss is frequently an emigration agent and feels no inconsistency in his position.

It would be quite easy to exaggerate the present value of the change I have tried to indicate. The old solidarity of the Irish in America remains a fact. It is to Irish friends and relatives that our emigrants go. It is among Irish people that they live when they settle in America. It is Irish people whom they marry. But the tendency is toward a breaking away from this national isolation.