AN IRISH EMIGRANT - 1864

Dec 2 1864

The special correspondant of the 'Daily News' in New York in his last communication deals principally with the alledged outrages committed on emigrants arriving in that city

While he does not deny such outrages are committed,he does say that the number of them is an exceedingly small proportion to the total number of arrivals and that it is absurd to suppose they will have any sensible effect on emigration:-
"The danger of shipwreck is a much more formidable one than the chance of being kidnapped in New York, and yet the chance of being drowned at sea will never induce the mass of Irishmen to starve and wear rags at home when they can get good food and clothes here.
I admit that a laborer with a family,even if he recieves two dollars a day and his board, is still,even here,poor, and has to suffer, but of want such as he has to endure in the Old World he runs no risk; constant employment he is sure of, and his children are almost certain, if they behave tolerably well, to rise in the social scale.
It is this which,after all, lends to America one of the greatest charms in the eyes of the poor emigrants.
Men and women are not a drug in this market, everything is possible here to industry and intelligence.
Nothing,therefore,that you can say of the defects of the government will ever persuade the poorest hod-carrier who lies down in a New York tenement house that he, or 'any won belongin to him' would bet better off in a Connaught cabin, on three meals of potatoes a day,children growing up in an ancient proffession of beggars,and the poor house looming up on his horizon as a shelter for his old age.
He sees men in prominent positions at the bar, on the bench,thriving merchants,shopkeepers and farmers on all sides,officers high in the rank of the army,whose fathers he is told came from Germany or Ireland as poor as he.
He walks up 5th Avenue and sees a score of mansions owned by men who are well known to have laboured in early life with their hands, and probably thinks that if he only gave up the whiskey'bad luck to it',he might do as well himself.So you can't get him to wish himself back,you can't prevent him writing to his friends that they had better come too, and they will come,though the "Times" and "Freemans journal" warned them ever so much of the horrors that await them on this side.
It is wonderful how easy it seems in London for an Irishman to live calmly in Tipperary for a shilling a day,and wonderful what an effect American horrors,more than all the others, are supposed to be likely to have on an Irish imagination. A simple flogging in the English Army is a spectacle far more shocking to the heroes than all the 'drugging' and gagging put together that has been done by Federal recruiting agents since the war began.
Thousands of Irish Soldiers have had their backs publicly torn with the cat within the last 50 years,and the Irish press has published hundreds of accounts of it, and denunciations of it, and yet it is not generally supposed that this has prevented any large number of Irishmen from enlisting for a 'shilling a day' minus 'stoppages'.
The sound advice to give Irishmen is not to stop at hime in misery, but to come out here if they can, and when they get here to listen to the advice of the COMMISSIONERS OF EMIGRATION, who take charge of them on their arrival, and act upon it, and not to go wandering through the streets, drinking with the first man they meet.Nobody need fall into the hands of the recruiting sharks who is possessed of the ordinary amount of common sense and discretion.
There is no law imposing any conscription or public service upon them of any description, and the demand for labour is enormous and daily increasing.
Every possible precaution is taken by the commissioners of Emigration to protect new arrivals. No 'touter' or 'loafer' or bounty broker is allowed to enter the buildings at Castle Garden. On arrival of a shipload of emigrants they are addressed by the agents of the board in the building, and carefully informed of their legal rights and privilages,and advice and information are freely supplied with regard to all routes and fares.
But that enlistment is encouraged by the officials I think there is no doubt.Large placards are posted up round the building stating the amount of bounty paid to recruits entering the army and navy, and if anyone wants to enlist he gets all reasonable aid. But there is complete protection for every man who chooses to avail himself against all violence and outrage.

taken from the Belfast Gazette.[Port Fairy - Australia] Dec 2 1864.