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The Irish and America term paper |
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Such enormous numbers of Irish men and women made their way to the New World for so many different reasons that nobody is quite sure of the actual numbers involved. It is estimated that in the period between 1717 and 1775 something like a quarter of a million Irish people settled in the North American continent and, between 1820 and 1920, something like four-and-a-quarter million people emigrated from Ireland to earn for living in the United States.Millions, who went on the move, did it because of their families in Ireland. They crossed the Atlantic under fearful conditions and they died by thousands because of cholera on arrival. They were unskilled laborers who usually settled in the cities of the eastern coast, and they were the men who built the railroads of America and, in the main, were the hewers of wood. Also they were the builders of roads and houses, and diggers of gold and silver, they began to build San Francisco and Virginia City. As a result, the Irish laborers of the 1840s sent about a million dollars back to their homeland, and by thel870s, more than ten million dollars was flowing back to Ireland.The Irish gave America at least ten Presidents, if not. a round dozen, and southern Ireland ultimately produced John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan.
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