Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1880-12-13
IRISH COLONIZATION.

ciety was held at Chicago on Wednesday
evening. Bishop Spaulding presided and
made a brief speech, and was followed by
Bishop Ireland of Minnesota. He said that
he agreed with Bishop Spau(ding in regret
ring that the Irish population of this coun-
try had quilted a form of slavery at home
for one equally bad here. This waa all the
more to be regretted because the Irish had
had such agolden opportunity of attaining
Independence. Upwards of three hundred
thousand Irish had landed on American
shores within the last fifty years, but unlike
all other emigrants they had stayed in the
large cities. Would that some kind angel
had stood upon the shore of the Atlantic
and driven the Irish to the virgin fields of
the West. Enough Irish had gone at farming
to show how successful they might be
in this employment. In Illinois the canal
company had failed to pay its laborers, and
had given them land scrip instead, and many
of the laborers were obliged to dig the soil
in order to keep from starving. From this
had resulted prosperous colonies in LaSalle
and other counties. Later, in 1857, Thomas
L'Arcy Magree. and others had undertaken
to establish
COLONIES IN MINNESOTA AND IOWA.
These had been usually successful. He
had known of one colony, in Waseka county
which had been planted there at that time,
which was at first forced to struggle with the
h~ardships of a new country, but which now
numbers over four hundred families of pros
porous people. He had been told of this
settlement that it did not contain a pauper,
a drunkard, or a fallen away Catholic. He
had spent q day at the elevator, looking at
these farmers delivering their grain, and he
had found that their farms average a yield of
two thousand to twenty-five hundred BUSH
els of wheat, which sold for IS cents per
bushel, and any of them, he had been told,
would think nothing of paying from $50 to
5000 for building a new church.
The colonies which had been placed within
the past five years, half a dozen or more in
number, are all now prosperous. They had
had bad crops once or twice, but they were
prosperous and independent. Not 2 per
cent. of the colonists had returned to city
life. One man, perhaps, had found his
clearinghouse didn't suit him, or a
woman had found that she could
not bear to go an eighth of
a mile to see a neighbor, when she had
formerly been used to having from 800 to
400 neighbors in the same block with her,
but the other ninety-eight had gone on and
prospered until any n of them is at pres
ent rich enough to buy out a dozen of their
old city neighbors. One of the most promi-
nent features of the colonies was the i'm
proved
MORAL CONDITION OF THE CoLoNIsTs.
Drunkenness is a vice almost unknown,
and the whole tone of these people has be-
come elevated, doubtless from the feeling of
independence and felf-respect acquired by a
man who walks around his own quarter of a
section of land and reflects that he is his
own master. He could see no way of solv-
ing the Irish problem but by that of coloni-
zation. He had found that to go
to one of the colonies in most
cases requires at least 800, and he
would not advise anyone to go
without at least that amount to begin with,
although he had known many to succeed
with much less than this, but these were par
ticalarly brave souls, who would have sue
ceeded anywhere. He knew one man who
had gone on to one of the colonies with so
cents in his pocket who now owps a farm
worth $1,000. He would not advise those
who are doing we'll in the city to 60 to the
colonies, but all of those who are obliged to
labor by the day, and who feel that the time
will come when they will no longer be
able to satisfy their employers, and when
they will be obliged to be supported by the
charity of others, to go while the strength is
still in their limbs, and work out for them.
selves q home for their old age, and an hon.
est, honorable employment for their sons
He would advise the Irish to be guided by
example of the other nationalities which
come to this country. He had
FREQUENTLY BEEN ASKED
by Irish emigrants whether be would want
them to live as Norwegians do, and he had
told them that he would; that while the Nor.
wegian goes out upon a farm frequently and
burrows into a hillside for two or three
years, at the end of that time he has a large
house of his own. The great curse of the
Irishmen, he said, is their lack of foresight,
and it is in this alone that they fall behind
other people. He could not conceive of
any NOR 9 pitiable condition of affairs
than the magnificent power of intellect with
which the Irish race is endowed being
smothered out in the purlieus of the large
cities. Irishmen have already shown that
they are capable not only of holding their
W on farms but of buying out their Ger
man, Norwegian, and American neighbors,
and there could be no valid reason why,
while there is yet an opportunity, as many
of them as possible should not go to
the fertile lands which only lack willing
workers. In former times the Irish
people had come to America to dig the
canals and build the railroads, and had
then disappeared, while the ~colonists
would remain and their descendants,
endowed with all of the splendid natural
abilities of the race, developed and fostered
under circumstances to which the race had
long been a stranger.
He closed his remarks by giving a few
practical directions as to the true req uire-
ments for entering the colony, and the meet
ing broke up evidently well satisfied with the
truth of which they had been told.
Southern Express Accused of Fraud,
MEMPHIS, Tenn, Dec. 1.-THE st. Louis,
Iron Mountain & Southern railroad com.
pany instituted a suit in the United
| States circuit court here. to-day. for the re-