The Bridgeport times and evening farmer., 1920-09-07
BELFAST Crippled
BY STRIFE, SAYS
CONNECTICUT man
Daniel D. Bridwen of Hart
ford Writes of Powder
Magazine" in Ireland.

the newspaper business in Hartford.
Bullets from midnight rifles,
showers of stones in broad daylight,
whirling armored cars by night and
by day, machine guns splitting steel
tacketed death and baTbed wire en-
tanglements on business streets
these are factors this week, as in
last, in the tragedy of Belfast, metro
polls of Ulster and disputed city
where Nationalist and Unionists,
Sim F'ein and English soldiers CRAP
pie. In the spring of 1914, when the
writer was in the Siren City, it was
termed by the Irish press the pow
der magazine of the British Empire
And now the same papers call it the
powder magazine of Ireland
'"To follow the events developing
in fast and tragic succession in the
key city of the North it is needed to
start with the geographical situation.
Ulster is the northernmost of the
four provinces of Ireland and reaches
from Bloody Fore1and, a bold head
land far in the distant west, in County
Donegal, to Bangor and the stormy
Irish Sea in the east. 1t has nine
counties from Donegal washed by
the waters of the Atlantic and living
by its fisheries, to Counties Down and
Antrim on the other side of the
island. producing fax and making the
world famed linen and building giant
ships. Ulster is the most populous
and is the richest of the four
provinces, but is exceeded by Lem
ster and Munster in fertility Of soil.
Rising on the forested slopes of
Sieve Croob in the POLITICALLY named
Mountains of Mourne the River
Lagan seeks the Irish Sea by a course
of about forty miles. flowing into
Belfast Tough some thirteen miles
from that sea. In its last two miles
it parts the County Down from the
County Antrim. In those two miles
Belfast sits astride the river, the
wealth and business mostly on the
Down side and the poorer area most
1y to the east and on the Antrim side.
1t is 1872 miles southwest of Glasgow
and 1856 west of Liverpool and 113
north of dear old Dublin. The popu-
lation is somewhere about 100000 or
425, 900 and is figured to be a few
thousands above Dub1in's. It is for
the most part extremely prosperous,
except as the events of tn last two
months have affected the economic
condition
"It is a cosmopolitan population as
compared with that of any other city
in the island. This is in large degree
due to its story as city of COM
merce and manufacturing, with labor
Gin Belfast spelled l-a-b-o-u-r) COM
ing at times from cities in many
parts of the U. K. Omitted Kingdom)
and several nations in Europe.
Religion is a factor in the trou-
bIes, but is complicated and woven
into other influences, for labor and
economic considerations makes
strange bedfel1ows. Somewhere
about 100000 or $4,000 of the in
habitants are Presbyterians, some
where about $4,000 are of the
Church of Ireland corresponding to
the Episcopalians,) about $4,000 or
10000 Catholics, about $4,000 Meth
odists, about 900 or 10000 of min
or Protestant denominations and the
rest are Jews and orientals, for there
are Japs. Chinese, Hindus and other
orientals in the city.
1.-THE basic strains of the population
are Scotch, Celtic, English and
French blood. To these may be add
ed small infusions of later French,
WEIGH and Portuguese and the neg
1igible trace of oriental
"Over three centuries ago Scotch
pioneers began to occupy lands in
the north of Ireland and in the open
ing years of the seventeenth century
were in stable numbers in several
parts of Ulster, then a wild, little
tain and hill, river and valley and
loughs and 1owlands. The First
James of England peopled sections
by the Ulster Plantation planting
humans in some of the choicest tracts
and backing them up by royal grants.
A generation later Cromwell and
Ireton drew the Iron Hand where the
Red Hand of O'NeilI had held sway
and amid cruel scenes partly made
tural life of much of the North.
Later came the Second James Of
England, a Catholic sovereign, who
drove Protestant Sotch and English
from the low lands to Londonderry,
where English guilders had settled,
and to Enniskil1en. In turn came
William of Orange and James was
forced to flee to France.
I'm the meantime the Revocation
of the Edict of Nantes had hurled
many hundreds of Huguenots from
France to Ulster and these trained
artisans had begun the culture of
flax and other growths for manufac-
turing purposes and the first crude
factories of Ulster were due to
France. The Huguenots were follow
ed by others of their kin from France
and to this day the influence of the
Huguenot is seen in Ulster in blood,
as well as IN manufacturing. 1t is
blood we'll thinned and mixed, but
the trace is there.
prior to the American Revolution
Belfast was a small fishing town. Its
development began as/the eighteenth
century was going out. When the
nineteenth century came in Belfast
had $4,000 souls. In 1850 it had
$4,000. Its census is taken in 10
years and in-1901 it had 274,0OO and
in 1911, $4,000 inhabitants.
"a Bridgeport man who saw Bel
fast Immediately before the World
War began landed in Londonderry
and took the Great Northern Rail-
road through Armagh and Lisburn
and entered at the Great Victoria
street station. Immediately after
the war started he went into the
same station on a trip up from Dub
lin by way of Drogheda and Armagh.
On another occasion he broke into
Belfast by water.
Coming by sea a traveller views
quays N('xeesO and docks galore, al
most equal, so it would seem to
string along the lower reach of the