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CHAPTER XVII....concluded
It is well known that America, while the home of the strong, the adventurous, the honest and industrious of the emigrants from Europe, is also the asylum of the broken-down and the unfortunate. Female frailty seeks refuge from exposure in those convenient hiding-places, the great cities of the Western World. Nor is it always the case that a first fall is atoned for by a future of virtue, or even a career of prudence; and thus the sad wreck which has happened at one side of the ocean is unfairly counted against the moral character of the race at the other. Here then, in the first place, is frailty imported from the old country, and under circumstances not altogether favourable to reformation and moral strength.
Then, without seeking other evidence than may be found in public records, and in the statute-book of the United States, it can be shown how fatal to youth and inexperience has been the long passage in the emigrant sailing ship. As mentioned elsewhere, Congress was compelled, so late as 1860, to pass a law for the protection of female passengers from the foul and systematic attempts of officers and seamen to effect their ruin. Regulations have been made, rules laid down, penalties proclaimed, notices posted, partitions and barriers erected; but all precautionary measures have been, in too many instances, found ineffectual to counteract the watchful wickedness of evil men, and the utter defencelessness of women exposed to the perils of a protracted sea voyage. Even so late as 1866 the Government Commissioner of Emigration reports to the Secretary of State that these protective laws have been systematically violated, and calls for more stringent measures. Nor when the poor Irish girl has escaped her enemy on ship-board, and reached the shelter of Castle Garden, is she entirely in safety; and not rarely has it occurred that the indignant officials have beaten back the prowling wolf, as he sought to get his intended victim within his grasp. Numerous instances, not alone of seduction on board ship, but of lawless violence, are on record; but the Act of 1860 is of itself sufficient evidence of the fact that protection was required, without the necessity of its illustration by harrowing and revolting details.
Terribly suggestive of ruin to female honour were the words addressed by Mr. Thurlow Weed in 1864, on the occasion of laying the foundation, stone of the Emigrant Hospital at Ward's Island. Referring to the helpless condition of the emigrant before the present admirable system was organised in New York, he says: `Families were frequently plundered of all the money they possessed, and left to the charity of the city. Young and friendless females coming from abroad, to find their friends, or seeking employment, were not unfrequently outraged.' Again: `Thousands of emigrants arrived with railroad tickets purchased abroad, for which they had paid not only double and treble the regular fare, but upon their arrival here, they found themselves with bogus tickets and bogus drafts. Innocent and unprotected girls came consigned to houses of prostitution.' Mr. Weed was referring to what frequently occurred some years before; but it is notorious that similar evils have existed at a later period, and are not yet effectually suppressed. The panderers to the lust of great cities are constantly on the watch to drag into their dens of infamy the young, the innocent, and the unsuspecting. There is scarcely a House of Protection under the care of a Religious Order in America, which cannot record cases of young girls snatched from the jaws of danger. Many, it is true, are saved; but what can the helpless do against, the snares and traps and frauds of those who live by the vilest crime? The contest is unequal: the lamb is helpless in the talons of the vulture, or the fangs of the wolf. As a single instance of the peril awaiting the unsuspecting, may be mentioned that of a young and handsome Irish girl who was lately trapped into hiring, in a Western city, with a person of infamous character. She was fortunately observed by a poor old Irish woman, who, knowing the peril in which the young creature stood, boldly rushed to her rescue, and, at personal risk to herself, literally tore the prey from the grasp of the enemy. The rescued girl was taken to the Refuge in the Convent of Mercy, where she was at once in safety; and though she lost all her clothes, save those in which she then stood, she congratulated herself that she had never crossed the threshold of a house of ill-fame.
Perils by sea, and perils by land, is it wonderful that fraud and violence so often triumph over innocence and helplessness?--that human wrecks occasionally strew the highways of the centres of wealth, of luxury, and of vice?
I have in another place referred to the evils of overcrowding, in lowering the tone of the community, and exposing the humbler classes to dangers of various kinds, moral as well as sanitary. Besides the temptations of poverty and passion, of youth and thoughtlessness, there is the terrible mischief of daily and hourly association in the densely-populated lodging-house, in which it too often happens that, even with the best intentions, the most ordinary decency cannot be maintained. There is not a physician or a clergyman in New York who will not say that this system is fraught with danger to the health of soul and body. It is in the last degree unfavourable to the development of virtue; and the same state of things, wherever it is to be found, whether East or West, North or South, must be productive of evil fruits.
There are also the natural consequences of the vicious habits of parents--the drunkenness of the father or the mother, more usually the former--so fatal to the character of their children. This habit alone is quite as destructive in its consequences as orphanage, which, from this more than any other cause, is so prevalent in America, where, at least in the towns, the average duration of human life--especially that of the hard-working classes who are not temperate--is so short. Then there is vanity, love of dress, and perhaps individual perversity, acted upon through all the evil influences of great cities--with the wiles and snares of the fowler ever spread for the destruction of the fluttering bird. These and other causes will explain why it is, that in some, yet comparatively few, places in America a certain percentage of women of bad repute are necessarily of Irish origin.
But, however deplorable that, in any part of the United States, Irish women should form an appreciable percentage of the whole of the class of unfortunates, still, when compared with the Irish female population of those great cities, whether Irish born or of Irish extraction, the number is small indeed. In very many places the proportion is infinitesimal; and there are cities and districts throughout the States in which there has never been known an instance of an Irish girl having come to shame--in which the character of the Irish woman is the pride and glory of all who belong to the old country, or have a drop of genuine Irish blood in their veins.
I have frequently marked with interest, how the countenance of the faithful pastor brightened with enthusiasm as the good conduct of the female portion of his flock was the theme of conversation. I remember an excellent Irish priest--one of those men who are justly looked upon as the fathers of their people--describing the character of his congregation. It was in a town of considerable importance, eminent for its manufacturing industry, and in which the Irish element was particularly strong. 'Good, sir! the Irish girls good! Why, sir,' said their pastor, 'the fall of an Irish girl in this town is as rare as--as--as a white blackbird'--and a pleasant laugh imparted additional raciness to an illustration which its author regarded as both neat and happy. 'Our Irish girls are an honour to their country and their race--they are the glory of the Church; to their influence we look for much of what we hope for in the future. They will yet lift the men to their level by the force of their example.' This was the grave testimony borne by a Western Bishop. 'They are the salvation of their race in this country--the salt of the earth,' said an enthusiastic Southern Prelate. The salt of the earth, indeed; and if the salt should lose its savour, wherewith shall the earth be salted? 'My belief is, that the Holy Ghost has them in special charge, for the good they do, and the evil they prevent.' This was the wind-up of a long eulogium pronounced upon Irish girls by an eminent ecclesiastic, who spoke with all the earnestness and gravity of the most profound conviction.
That would be a sad day for the Irish in America when Irish women lost the reputation which, notwithstanding the evil produced by adverse circumstances and special causes, they universally enjoy. The Irish nature is impetuous and impulsive and passionate, and the young are too often liable to confound license with the display of manly independence; hence even the light yoke of the Church is occasionally too burdensome for the high-mettled Irish youth, in an especial degree the American-born sons of Irish parents. In what, then, if not in the beautiful faith and piety, the unblemished purity of Irish women--in the never-failing example of sister, wife, and mother--are those who love the race to look for a counteracting influence to a freedom fraught with danger, and for that strong yet delicate chain of gold with which to bind the wayward and the headstrong to the Church of their fathers? As yet, as possibly for some time to come, congregations are more numerous than churches, flocks than pastors, children than schools or teachers--such schools and teachers as are most required; and in the meantime, until in churches and pastors, schools and teachers, protection is everywhere afforded to endangered youth, in the piety and purity of the sister and the mother is there the best safeguard against the risk of apostacy, and the deadlier blight of infidelity. Long may the virtue of Irish women constitute one of the noblest claims on the respect and sympathy of the generous-minded people of America!
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