The Washington herald., 1912-04-07

Dublin, April 6-Those leaders OF
public opinion in Ireland who for ten
years past or longer have been working
with all the powers and means at their
disposal to check the emigration evil are
seeing at last some ray of hope.
The reports of the labor troubles at
Lawrence, which have come over to the
papers here from their American corre-
spondents. have done more to strengthen
the hands of the Anti-Emigration League
than any other agency since the league
was started.
The publication broadcast of the scale
of wages paid in the highly protected
mills of Lawrence and side by side with
the scale of figures Of the cost OF living
have set thousands of young men and
women thinking that it would be much
better for them to stay at home than to
cross the ocean in search Of fortune.
Emigration n Curse.
Next to landlordism in its worst form,
the greatest curse of this island for two
generations has been emigration or
course, all who know the alphabet Of
Irish political and social life are aware
that landlordism and emigration have
been twins ever since the terrible famine
of 1871. That famine and the fearful re-
directly from landlord infamy and not
from any act of God, as the pious evan
geIists who ran the soup kitchens used to
fervently suggest.
And IL was Iandlordism which kept the
stream of emigration at flood tide from
1871 to the present moment. for, though
the feudaI and heartless system itself
is dead or dying. the evil 1t worked in
the years of its pnbridled iniquity still
lives so far as emigration is concerned,
and is likely to stay with us for many
years TO come
But II IL is to remain, those who are
fighting emigration will spare no effort
to decrease the volume every year. and
hope to be able ultimately to reduce the
flow to the tinieSt OF streams.
The number of emigrants In March
last year was ISIS. There is not much
ground for hope that the number for
March this year will be much smaller.
During January and February 1.4o4
young men and young women left Ire
land. most of them for the remainder Of
their lives More than half of these went
TO the United States.
Ireland has been robbed by emigration
OF too many OF her strongest and most
ambitious youths. Every young man and
woman who went to America, Australia,
or Canada had been fed, clothed, and
educated in ireland from infancy up to
manhood and womanhood. To leave
their country when they had reached
maturity was to infiict an economic loss
upon ireland which famous statisticiah
has figured amounts in volume to many
hundred millions OF pounds.
The national council Of Sim Fein has
sent a memorial to President Taft ask
ing the American government to adopt
such measures as IL may deem proper for
the correction or stoppage of certain fea-
lures which still make emigration to
American popular and attractive.
The Prepaid Ticket.
In the forefront of these is the prepaid
passage ticket. 1t is estimated that one
third of the emigrants from ireland do
not pay their own passages. They cross
the Atlantic on tickets sent to them by
relatives or friends in the United States.
The yearly number of these prepaid tick
ete Is said to be about 12000. They are
the instruments by which ireland Is
drained annually of whole regiments of
her most capable sons and daughters.
There is a law already in force in the
United States which forbids any person
in any manner whatever TO prepay the
transportation of any alien or foreigner
into the United States. Despite this
law it Is a fact well known that nearly
all those assisted emigrants receive with
their prepaid passages a promise Of work
in America soon after arrival.
= Much OF the exodus from this country
Is directly due to the activity of the
agents Of steamship lines and to entic-