Magee College, the leading Presbyterian institution of Ireland, occupies
a beautiful site about fifteen minutes' walk from the center of the
city. It was built and endowed by the widow of Rev. William Magee of
Lurgan, was opened in 1865, and is under the care of the general
assembly of the Irish Presbyterian Church. There are several
departments, a staff of seven professors, and an average of two hundred
and fifty students, most of whom are studying for the Presbyterian
ministry. Magee is the only college in Ireland which has been founded
and supported entirely by private benefactions. It has never received a
dollar from the state, although there is an annual grant from the Irish
Society, which owns the city of Londonderry. Under a recent act of
parliament it is united with Queen's College, Belfast, on equal terms in
the new university bill. There is no religious test for students or
professors, although the latter, upon accepting appointment, are
required to sign a pledge that they "will not do, write, or say anything
which might tend in any way to subvert the Christian religion or the
belief of any person therein." Magee has always taken a high stand for
scholarship, and although the building is small it is noble in design,
massive in construction, and well equipped for its purpose.
The principal business of Londonderry is to make shirts, collars, and
cuffs, which are shipped to Australia, South Africa, India, and other
British colonies. There are several large factories which employ about
two thousand men to do the heavy work and twenty thousand women who do
the stitching and laundering by old-fashioned methods. An American buyer
I met in Belfast spoke rather contemptuously of the Londonderry shirt
factories, which, he declared, "are not in it for a minute" with those
of the United States. He insists that a single factory in Troy makes
more shirts and collars than all the factories in Londonderry combined,
and that by their modern machinery and processes the Troy factories can
make and finish half a dozen shirts while they are making one there.
Londonderry is unique for another reason. The ordinary relations of
husband and wife and their domestic responsibilities are reversed here.
Many women work in the shirt factories whose husbands stay at home, keep
the house, do the cooking and washing and take care of the children,
because there is nothing else for them to do. There is a large excess of
women in the population. They number two to one man, which is not due to
natural causes, but because women are attracted here from the
neighboring towns and counties to obtain work in the factories, and the
young men have to leave Londonderry and go elsewhere to find employment.
Many of them go to the United States and Canada. Three lines of American
steamers touch here every week--the Anchor Line, the Allan Line, and the
Dominion Line--which offer low rates of transportation and carry many
third-class passengers away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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