Add to this already remarkable list, a Grady in the South, a Blaine in the North. Nothing that I might say regarding these distinguished men of Irish origin would add to the already large stock of knowledge possessed by the public concerning them. Their names are household words. They lived but as yesterday. Their influence is still felt.
In treating a subject of this character one could hardly forget the debt of gratitude the Irish people in America owe to Patrick Donahoe, the venerable founder of the Boston Pilot, and his brilliant and scholarly successor as editor of that paper, the lamented John Boyle O’Reilly. Coming down to the present time, we would not be doing justice to ourselves did we not pause in admiration of the present gifted editor of the Pilot, James Jeffrey Roche, and also of Stephen O’Meara, the manager of the Boston Journal. Time permits only a passing notice of these brilliant lights in American journalism. In this hasty review of the men of Irish blood who have taken such an active part in American newspaper work, I doubt not that many worthy men have escaped notice. It is inevitable in such an undertaking. Experience teaches that if one were to put the works on the Irish in America together, something and somebody would be missing.
Enough has been shown to establish the fact that Irishmen by birth or blood may justly claim a large share of putting the American newspaper on its feet, so to speak. This is not said in any boastful vein. The only desire is to show that in the building up of this great industry Irishmen did their share of the work. Effort has been made to keep within the bounds of actual facts, most of them being obtained from unwilling witnesses, men who, when they are forced to include in their chronicles men of our race, endeavor oftentimes to make them out “Scotch-Irish.”
Men like Burk, Carey, Dunlap, Brown and Duane may have been “adventurists and refugees.” God grant us more such “adventurists and refugees,” for they lived useful lives here. They left their imprint on the land. The historian who would apply the term “adventurists and refugees” to such men should reflect that, had the American cause failed, Washington, Adams, Jefferson and many other patriots would have come within their term of “adventurists and refugees,” and probably would have been seeking liberty elsewhere, as were these men, far from the land of their nativity.
These pioneers in American journalism came here,
“Where no caste barrier stays the poor man’s son,
Till step by step the topmost height is won;
Where every hand subscribes to every rule,
And free as air are voice, and vote, and school.”
“They may sleep in their silent tomb,” to quote the words of Thomas D’Arcy Magee, another brilliant Irish-American journalist, “but the remembrance of their virtue will be cherished while liberty is dear to the American heart.”