It is a familiar joke that our principal imports from Ireland are
priests, politicians, policemen, and baseball pitchers, but they are not
all by any means. I do not know what other country has furnished so many
famous Americans--generals, admirals, statesmen, politicians,
financiers, merchant princes, actors, writers, lawyers, and other
professional men too numerous to mention. If you will look through the
list of the generals during our Civil War, if some one will make up a
catalogue of millionaires and mining kings and empire-builders and
captains of industry they will realize that all the Irishmen who have
come to the United States have not gone into politics or pugilism or
baseball teams. I must say, however, that the Irish have almost the
monopoly of the prize ring and the baseball diamond.
Cardinal Logue made a speech upon his return from America in 1908, in
which he discussed this subject at length and related what he had
himself seen of Irish millionaires and other successful business men in
the United States. He spoke particularly of New York City, and alluded
with gratification to the fact that the subway of New York City and the
new tunnel under the Hudson River were both built by Irishmen.
"I was proud to know," he said, "of the vast number of our countrymen
who were honored citizens of the United States. They have asserted
themselves, especially in New York, and occupy the leading positions
there. You find Irishmen prominent in every walk of life, you find them
among the most distinguished of the judges on the bench, you find them
among the most successful barristers, you find them among the most
eminent in medicine and in the other learned professions, and then I
found that the largest contracts in New York [and he might have said in
the entire country] had been allotted to Irishmen, because of their
ability to organize and carry out great works. I visited the tunnel
under the Hudson and was proud to think that that great work had been
carried out by an Irishman who had carved out his own advancement and
had made his own way in life by his native talent and genius. Then,
again, when they were undertaking the stupendous work of building
subways under the city of New York they gave that contract to an
Irishman, who succeeded in completing it to the satisfaction of
everybody, and it was one of the greatest works ever undertaken by man.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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