XPost: misc.immigration.usa, sac.politics, alt.global-warming   
   XPost: can.politics   
   From: leftwings@hillaryclinton.com   
      
   The Potato Famine and Irish Immigration to America   
      
   Between 1845 and 1855 more than 1.5 million adults and children   
   left Ireland to seek refuge in America. Most were desperately   
   poor, and many were suffering from starvation and disease. They   
   left because disease had devastated Ireland’s potato crops,   
   leaving millions without food. The Potato Famine killed more   
   than 1 million people in five years and generated great   
   bitterness and anger at the British for providing too little   
   help to their Irish subjects. The immigrants who reached America   
   settled in Boston, New York, and other cities where they lived   
   in difficult conditions. But most managed to survive, and their   
   descendants have become a vibrant part of American culture.   
      
   Even before the famine, Ireland was a country of extreme   
   poverty. A Frenchman named Gustave de Beaumont traveled the   
   country in the 1830s and wrote about his travels. He compared   
   the conditions of the Irish to those of “the Indian in his   
   forest and the Negro in chains. . . . In all countries, . . .   
   paupers may be discovered, but an entire nation of paupers is   
   what was never seen until it was shown in Ireland.”   
      
   In most of Ireland, housing conditions were terrible. A census   
   report in 1841 found that nearly half the families in rural   
   areas lived in windowless mud cabins, most with no furniture   
   other than a stool. Pigs slept with their owners and heaps of   
   manure lay by the doors. Boys and girls married young, with no   
   money and almost no possessions. They would build a mud hut, and   
   move in with no more than a pot and a stool. When asked why they   
   married so young, the Bishop of Raphoe (a town in Ireland)   
   replied: “They cannot be worse off than they are and . . . they   
   may help each other.”   
      
   A major cause of Irish poverty was that more and more people   
   were competing for land. Ireland was not industrialized. The few   
   industries that had been established were failing. The fisheries   
   were undeveloped, and some fishermen could not even buy enough   
   salt to preserve their catch. And there was no agricultural   
   industry. Most of the large and productive farms were owned by   
   English Protestant gentry who collected rents and lived abroad.   
   Many owners visited their property only once or twice in their   
   lifetime. Their property was managed by middlemen, who split up   
   the farms into smaller and smaller sections to increase the   
   rents. The farms became too small to require hired labor. By   
   1835, three quarters of Irish laborers had no regular employment   
   of any kind. With no employment available, the only way that a   
   laborer could live and support a family was to get a patch of   
   land and grow potatoes.   
      
   Potatoes were unique in many ways. Large numbers of them could   
   be grown on small plots of land. An acre and a half could   
   provide a family of six with enough food for a year. Potatoes   
   were nutritious and easy to cook, and they could be fed to pigs   
   and cattle and fowl. And families did not need a plough to grow   
   potatoes. All they needed was a spade, and they could grow   
   potatoes in wet ground and on mountain sides where no other   
   kinds of plants could be cultivated.   
      
   More than half of the Irish people depended on the potato as the   
   main part of their diet, and almost 40 percent had a diet   
   consisting almost entirely of potatoes, with some milk or fish   
   as the only other source of nourishment. Potatoes could not be   
   stored for more than a year. If the potato crop failed, there   
   was nothing to replace it. In the years before 1845, many   
   committees and commissions had issued reports on the state of   
   Ireland, and all predicted disaster.   
      
   The Blight Strikes   
      
   In the summer of 1845, the potato crop appeared to be   
   flourishing. But when the main crop was harvested in October,   
   there were signs of disease. Within a few days after they were   
   dug up, the potatoes began to rot. Scientific commissions were   
   set up to investigate the problem and recommend ways to prevent   
   the decay. Farmers were told to try drying the potatoes in ovens   
   or to treat them with lime and salt or with chlorine gas. But   
   nothing worked. No matter what they tried, the potatoes became   
   diseased: “six months provisions a mass of rottenness.”   
      
   In November, a scientific commission reported that “one half of   
   the actual potato crop of Ireland is either destroyed or remains   
   in a state unfit for the food of man.” By early spring of 1846,   
   panic began to spread as food supplies disappeared. People ate   
   anything they could find, including the leaves and bark of trees   
   and even grass. Lord Montaeagle reported to the House of Lords   
   in March, people were eating food “from which so putrid and   
   offensive an effluvia issued that in consuming it they were   
   obliged to leave the doors and windows of their cabins open,”   
   and illnesses, including “fever from eating diseased potatoes,”   
   were beginning to spread.   
      
   The blight did not go away. In 1846, the whole potato crop was   
   wiped out. In 1847, a shortage of seeds led to fewer crops, as   
   only about a quarter of the land was planted compared to the   
   year before. The crop flourished, but not enough food was   
   produced, and the famine continued. By this time, the mass   
   emigration abroad had begun. The flight to America and Canada   
   continued in 1848 when the blight struck again. In 1849, the   
   famine was officially at an end, but suffering continued   
   throughout Ireland.   
      
   The Famine Takes Its Toll   
      
   More than 1 million people died between 1846 and 1851 as a   
   result of the Potato Famine. Many of these died from starvation.   
   Many more died from diseases that preyed on people weakened by   
   loss of food. By 1847, the scourges of “famine fever,”   
   dysentery, and diarrhea began to wreak havoc. People streamed   
   into towns, begging for food and crowding the workhouses and   
   soup kitchens. The beggars and vagrants who took to the roads   
   were infected with lice, which transmit both typhus and   
   “relapsing fever.” Once fever took hold, people became more   
   susceptible to other infections including dysentery.   
      
   Little, if any, medical care was available for the sick. Many of   
   those who tried to help died too. In one province, 48 medical   
   men died of fever, and many clergymen died as well.   
      
   Nowhere to Turn   
      
   Many Irish believe that the British government should have done   
   more to help Ireland during the famine. Ireland had become part   
   of Great Britain in 1801, and the British Parliament, sitting in   
   London, knew about the horrors being suffered. But while the   
   potato crop failed and most Irish were starving, many wealthy   
   landlords who owned large farms had large crops of oats and   
   grain that they were exporting to England. Meanwhile, the poor   
   in Ireland could not afford to buy food and were starving. Many   
   believe that large numbers of lives would have been saved if the   
      
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