The first of these changes was due to the Irish famine of 1846. Previous to this time the immigration to this country from Ireland had been small, averaging not more than twenty thousand annually between 1820 and 1846. In the decade preceding the famine the average number of arrivals had been less than thirty-five thousand annually. In 1846 the number was 51,752, and this was more than doubled the following year, the report showing 105,536 arrivals in 1847. In 1851 the number of arrivals from Ireland had risen to 221,253. Since that time the number has fluctuated, but between fifty and seventy-five thousand annually come to this country from Ireland.[171] A large proportion of these immigrants—forty-nine per cent during the decade from 1870 to 1880—have been women who were classed as “unskilled laborers.” Two occupations were open to them. One was work in factories where as manufacturing processes became more simple unskilled labor could be utilized. The Irish immigrants, therefore, soon displaced in factories the New England women who had found, as has been seen,[172] new opportunities for work of a higher grade. The second occupation open to the Irish immigrants was household service. Here physical strength formed a partial compensation for lack of skill and ignorance of American ways, and the Irish soon came to form a most numerous and important class engaged in domestic employments.[173] A second important European change, influencing the condition of domestic service, was the German Revolution of 1848 with the events preceding and resulting from it. Before this period the emigration from Germany had been insignificant, fewer than fifteen thousand having come to this country annually between 1830 and 1840. In 1840, owing to political reasons, the number had risen to 29,704. It soon became evident that the hopes raised by the accession of the new monarch were without foundation, and emigration rapidly increased until the number of emigrants coming to America reached 74,281 in 1847. During the year of the Revolution the number decreased, but the failure of the cause of the revolutionary party and the political apathy that followed again increased the movement towards America. This reached its climax in 1854, when the sympathies of the Court had been openly expressed during the Crimean War in favor of Russian despotism. During this year the number of Germans arriving in this country was 215,009—a number equalled but once since that time, although the number has averaged nearly a hundred and fifty thousand annually during the last decade.[174] A large number of these immigrants have been women, the proportion of women emigrating from Germany being greater than from any other foreign country except Ireland.[175] The ranks of domestic service have been recruited from their number also, the Germans being second only to the Irish as regards the number and proportion engaged in this occupation.[176]