The Paddy Camps: The Irish of Lowell, 1821-61
"In Mitchell's work we see the Lowell Irish as an immigrant community who struggled with poverty and discrimination and tried to establish a foothold in a new and sometimes hostile land. The emergence of leaders, the building of churches, and the development of a parochial school system represented the flowering of a community, not merely declension from a golden age of native laborers in an industrial paradise."