OCR Text |
Show To Prevent Irish Emigration. The Anti-Emigration Society of Ireland had a conference recently in Cork, presided over by the Right Rev. Dr. Sheehan, Catholic bishop of Waterford, who. in his speech, gave the following statistics as to the Irish-born element in the population popu-lation of the United States: "In 1880 a census was taken of the Irish people peo-ple then living in America, and tlie number was ascertained to be 1,885,000. In the twenty years which have since clasped the returns show that some 800,000 persons or thereabouts must have gone. I do not know precisely what the proportion would be of those who went to the United State; but I find that in PJ01, out of the 39,600 who emigrated, emi-grated, 31,000 went to the United States. Xow, if we take it that in the period to which I have referred re-ferred 700,000 of our countrymen and women of the emigrant body went to America, and add that to Ihe 1,88.1.000. we have 2.58 " .000 and 1 suppose also we may take it that the number has not decreased de-creased by the influx of time and if that be so we find, taking the population of Ireland at the present pres-ent moment to bv something like 4,400,000, .1 hat for every hundred Irishmen living in Ireland there are sixty living in America." The conference adopted plans for the stoppage of the emigration, special efforts to be made to prevent ihe sending of, free passage tickets by Irish people in America to relatives in Ireland., Michael Davitt has written proposing a national commission, commis-sion, some of its members to be priests, to visit the United States and inquire into the condition of Irish emigrants, the disappointments and failures experienced by most of them and the moral dangers besetting Irish girls in the large ..cities. The im-jx.rtance im-jx.rtance and urgency of this anti-emigration movement arc indicated by one of ll"' resolutions ' passed at the conference, which "deplores the enormous enor-mous economic loss to Ireland caused by the abnormal ab-normal emigration of the youth of the country, which has gone on continuously for the past fifty years' and declares "lliat the Hme has now come when a vigorous national effort must be made 1o check the evil, if the Irish nation, us .to be, saved from extinction in the home of the race. ; This movement to help o keep the Irish peo-i peo-i pie at home in Ireland, where the faith of Irish Catholics is most secure, certainly deserves the support of the Catholic press of America, to which the Anti-Emigration society makes a strong appeal ap-peal for co-operation. Xew York Freeman s Journal. 1 : |