THE IRISH I N THE BUILDING OF THE INTERMOUNTAIN WEST BY ROBERT J. DWYER* r
P o THE Irish people history has assigned a role in the expansion ••• of Western culture and civilization far beyond any reasonable expectation based on their numbers or their actual political influence. It is a matter not of oratorical exuberance but of sober fact that the natives of the Emerald Isle, geographically less than one-third the size of Nevada, have contributed far more than their due share to the making of the modern world. To limit attention to the story of the Irish in America is to neglect a vast panorama of their pioneering activities throughout the extent of the old British Empire and in many parts of the Latin American world. If our concern here is to trace their steps and mark their monuments in the Intermountain West, we are conscious that this is but a footnote to the story of their total achievement. It is an established fact that the Irish in America on the eve of Independence accounted for no less than 17 per cent of the total population. The bulk of this, somewhere around 400,000 were immigrants from the northern counties of Ulster, mainly Presbyterians and Dissenters, and their strength lay in the interior valleys stretching from Pennsylvania to the Carolinas. They had come to America in the eighteenth century seeking religious freedom and economic opportunity, and there is no question but that they contributed mightily to the determination of the colonies to throw off the Imperial yoke. Of the remainder, estimated at something under 150,000, the majority came from the southern and western counties of Ireland, and came under conditions of extreme hardship. For the most part they were the Catholic victims of one of the most vicious penal codes ever enacted; they came branded as criminals or indentured to servitude which was hardly distinguishable from outright slavery. •Robert J. Dwyer, Bishop of Reno, is an author and scholar of note and a native Utahn. He was prominent in local affairs in Salt Lake City and served as a member of the Board of Trustees of the Society for a number of years, being its vice-president at the time of his removal to Reno in 1952. The address here printed was delivered at the fifth annual meeting of the Society, March 30, 1957.
