The Tide of Irish Emigration

Dominion, Volume 31, Issue 142, 12 March 1938, Page 1 (Supplement)

The Tide of Irish Emigration

THE tide of Irish emigration, having been diverted from the shores of the United States, now is directed upon Great Britain, and that once again our country is being drained annually of an increasing quantity of its young blood,” states a Dublin paper.

“The discovery that our people still are content to act as hewers of wood and drawers of water for others is as galling to us as the information that their own citizens have grown too soft for heavy labour must be to the English.

“Perhaps, in this last paragraph we may detect one of the reasons why the outcry against Irish immigration periodically raised across the Channel, aways has come to nothing. It begins to look, indeed, as if the immigrants from Ireland are no less necessary to Great Britain than the certainty of jobs in Great Britain is to so many Irishmen.

“One cause of this sudden leap in the emigration figures during the past two years must be, in very large measure, the British programme of rearmament, and the industrial activity which has attended that programme. A second cause lies In the fact that, while prosperity thus has come upon Great Britain, the Free State is still in the throes of depression. “Mr. Sean Lemass, no doubt, tells the literal truth when he repeats that his new industries have absorbed so many tens of thousands of people; but the twofold fact remains that not only is there a huge hard core of unemployment, but also the conditions of work in England seem to make a stronger appeal to many Irishmen. “Everything suggests that emigration will continue so long as the British

permit it. Under present conditions the twenty-six counties seem to be incapable of maintaining a greater population than three millions: as soon as the population reaches that level it overflows through some safety-outlet or other.

“It is for Mr. de Valera and his Ministers to make their decision. Either they must accept the fact of emigration as a good thing which makes their task substantially lighter or they must bend all their energies to the reducing of it. Their policy hitherto has done much to destroy life on the land and to drive young people to the towns, where, as often as not, they fail to find satisfactory employment.

“Factories are not a solution of the problem: the young man or woman who is faced with the alternative of an ordinary wage in an Irish factory, or the emergency wages that are being paid in so many British industries under the stress of the rearmament programme will not take long to make the choice.

“If emigration is to cease, less attention must be paid to the industrial side of the Government’s programme, and more to the agricultural side. There is no reason—no fundamental reason, at least —why Ireland should not benefit by England’s renewal of prosperity, however temporary that renewal may be. If a vigorous and determined effort is made to restore the prosperity of agriculture the young people will be induced to remain on the land. “Once they are lured from agriculture into the towns, they have set their feet on the high road to England, whether as factory hands, soldiers, labourers or servant girls.”