Irish Immigration to American

Irish Immigration to American Immigration has come a long way in our country. Immigrants have come to this country to capture The American Dream that we see portrayed, nearly every day, on our television screens. Irish immigration occurred as a major rush in 1845. These immigrants came pretty much only came with the clothes on their backs, a little bit of faith, and hope to start a new life in this new world. Like most other immigrant groups, the Irish had it bad. However, unlike other groups of immigration, the Irish had more advantages with their education, politics, and labor unions, which helped them pave their mark in their new American homeland. The Irish famine of 1845, which killed nearly one-eighth of the entire population was the main reason why the Irish immigrated. This was major was because potatoes were the major source of food in Ireland (Donnelly). People ate potatoes to live and survive. People without much money were able to grow them, for they grew in great quantities on just small pieces of land. People had farms of them and grew them to sell them and make money. Potatoes were a godsend for the Irish. Unfortunately, in 1845 a disease or blight struck Ireland. When the blight hit, stemming from a fungus, potato fields turned black. Potatoes rotted soon after they were dug up from the ground. Racked with hunger, people sometimes ate the rotten potatoes anyway and became sick. As the blight spread across Ireland people became desperate (Goldstein 20). The effects of the blight have taken a toll far too great for the people to handle in Ireland and it was time to finally move. Families had no choice and knew that there will be a long period of time before this famine would end. Some believed that they might not even survive through it. The Irish packed their bags and got on ships to America. Some landlords actually bought some Irish their tickets because they knew it would save them money. The method was for the landlords to just but their way out. The landlords bought the people their tickets to ship them off to America. The landlords made promises of money, clothes, and food, so they packed the people in cheap, dirty, and unseaworthy ships. These ships got there name of coffin ships (Johanson). Many of the people who bordered these ships had diseases which were very contagious and easily contracted. People left and right where getting sick and even dying before they even stepped one foot on America. The rides to America on boats took up to eight weeks and with bad weather up to 10 weeks. Still though with all of these mishaps the Irish people still manag ed to have a positive state of mind and were still hopeful of all the fortunes America can bring for them and their families/ Upon arriving in America, The Irish, who were sick, were quarantined and treated. People started to fear that with their conditions they might not even be allowed to enter America. The conditions were horrible and many diseases could not be cured for they were too strong, epically the ones children had. In America the Irish felt as if its a new marriage between two worlds. Some people even poured some soil they brought from Ireland as a symbol of their combination. Now in America families knew it was time to finally experience that America like they always dreamt about. Education is very important for someone who wants to make something out of their lives in America. The Irish knew education offered a promising path to success in America. However, parents found it very difficult for their children to attend school in America. The reason was because most Irish were Catholics. Public schools in America mostly taught by the protestant culture and read from King James or protestant bible.(Henderson) Parents needed a solution, so they came up with the idea of building schools. Parents and cities began to build religious schools to teach their children both academics and Catholic studies.(Jones) When it came to University levels of education, many Irish Americans enrolled in Jesuit Universities, such as Fordham University. With many Irish Americans now enrolled in universities and colleges, they began to receive degrees and enter better professions such as teaching, medicine, engineering, and law. As the number of Irish grew in big cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, and New York so did the political power in the Irish communities. Many Irish politicians organized rallies in neighborhoods with family and friends. With politics rising in the communities, Irish Americans soon became mayors and city councilors. The politicians were effective,  but not always ethical: Some Irish politicians used such tactics like bribing people in exchange for votes(Goldstein.p49) In New York a democratic party called Tammany Hall used such tactics. Tammany Hall won most of their votes from their peers, the Irish communities. Tammany Hall helped immigrants with jobs, social services, and sometimes they even just flat out paid them.(Bayliss) Despite its corrupt reputation, Tammany Hall helped many Irish new comers. Tammany Hall also helped many Irish politicians rise higher in politician ranks. Most famous was Alfred Smith who went from Tammany Hall to New York government, becoming governor in 1919. He also ran for presidency in 1928, but eventually lost to republican Herbert Hoover. Alfred Smith reached very high positions in the offices of government, but he missed one major step left for the Irish Americans to achieve, Presidency. However, that all was changed in the 1960s. Nearly 30 years after Alfred Smiths run and nearly 100 years after the potato famine, John F. Kennedy was elected president of the United States. Many people did not like the idea of him becoming president, epically because he was Catholic. With Kennedys victory, the last Irish barrier to Irish achievement had fallen. An Irish catholic had reached the highest point of office in America. When the Civil War ended, many Irish Americans went back to work in factories, mills, farms, and mining companies. America was now literally booming with population growth. Cities were now filled with cars, railroads, buildings and so forth. The people who were keeping all of this together were the Irish. With these steady jobs in place more Irish began to go out into newer professions, including the most popular job irish hold in the 20th century, the police force. These jobs were very dangerous and women and children worked these jobs, neither of them had no rights. Some jobs with miners had cave-ins which were common. Poisonous gases sometimes seeped into mines and killed many workers. It was a point that where miners lives were in complete control of the mining company. People can conclude that even though the Irish had there politics and education in line they still had a tough time, just like any other group of people like the now freed blacks or any other ethnicity. However, with this mistreatment the Irish actually stood up for themselves with their unions. All across the nation, laborers began to form construction, factory, and mining unions. They joined prominent national groups such as the Knights of Labor and the American Federation of Labor. They had strikes and fought for child and women rights.(Griffin) We can see here that with the Irish bonding together and working as a whole we can see that they fought for rights like no other group of immigrants and they got what they were looking for. The Irish have come through a long way to get and start a new life from Ireland to America. Fortunately, they had some better ways to things than others. Their politics, education, and labor unions helped them secure their presence in America and helped them start their new generations in this once known foreign land. The Irish are now no longer new comers in America.

Bishop’s poetry Essay

I agree with this assessment of Bishop’s poetry. Her poems on the syllabus certainly pose interesting questions about identity, awareness and one’s place in the world, indeed the universe, and they do so by means of a unique style. This style is influenced by Bishop’s acute awareness of the poet’s craft and her ability to work with both traditional forms (sestina and sonnet, for instance) and free verse. The questions that interested me most are those posed in ‘Questions of Travel’. These fascinated me because Bishop dedicated so much of her life to travel, yet in this poem she questions the motives behind travel and exploration. One stylistic feature that is characteristic of Bishop is the conversational tone and it is evident in the opening lines, as she states ‘There are too many waterfalls here’. The question raised in my mind is ‘How can there be â€Å"too many† waterfalls? ’ Surely the waterfalls are a sight of natural splendour? Yet, reading on, we see that everything in this place of natural beauty over-powers the poet – the streams are crowded, they hurry ‘too rapidly’, there are ‘so many’ clouds. Why is this? She says that the streams and clouds ‘keep travelling, travelling’ and this poses the question of her own travels; has travel become as monotonous as the relentless waterfalls or is it a type of addiction or compulsion for the poet? This question poses more questions when we consider the poet’s alcoholism and the part played by addiction in her life. The questions raised in the next stanza address themes, which are central to her poetry – home, exclusion, and the quest for new horizons. Bishop wonders if the idea of a place is more satisfying than the place itself – ‘Should we have stayed at home and thought of here? ’ This apparently simple question is loaded with difficulties for Bishop as ‘home’ was never a simple concept for her. She is acutely aware of herself as an outsider in this culture and feels she is ‘watching strangers in a play in this strangest of theatres’. Bishop describes the urge for travel as a ‘childishness’ and the image of travellers rushing to ‘see the sun the other way around’ is an image of thrill-seekers consuming views and experiences without understanding or insight (‘inexplicable and impenetrable’). I find this very relevant, as we live in a society, which is obsessed with consuming things and experiences, often at the expense of understanding. This image also prepares us for the question at the heart of this poem: ‘Oh, must we dream our dreams and have them too? I found this question very interesting because dreams are not reality and there are other references to illusion in this poem – ‘strangest of theatres’ and ‘pantomimists’. The question of why we travel and explore is not explicitly answered in the poem but one wonders if it has something to do with flight or escape from reality. The disparity between the real and the imagined is alluded to again in another thought-provoking question: ‘Is it lack of imagination that makes us come To imagined places, not just stay at home? ’ All of our preconceived, modern ideas about travel – choice, freedom, excitement, broadening of horizons, understanding of other cultures – are turned on their head and challenged in the questions raised here about travel. In both ‘Questions of Travel’, and ‘The Prodigal’, Bishop deals with being away from ‘home’ and returning. In both poems, the idea of returning is difficult and complex; Bishop is not even sure where home is: ‘Should we have stayed at home, wherever that may be? ’ Her sense of displacement is much stronger than her sense of belonging. Similarly, in ‘The Prodigal’, the alcoholic in exile must struggle with ‘uncertain staggering flight/his shuddering insights, beyond his control’ before he can face the journey home. A stylistic feature of Bishop’s work, which I really enjoyed, was her tendency, in some poems, to move from sensory description of the apparently mundane to profound awareness and insight, even epiphany. This can be seen in ‘In the Waiting Room’ where Bishop begins with a description of a dull dentist’s waiting-room, ‘full of grown-up people, arctics and overcoats, lamps and magazines. This is a scene from everyday life in Worcester, Massachusetts. The setting is ordinary, yet the title denotes a place of anticipation and expectation, and raises questions. What can the young Bishop be anticipating or expecting? What is to come? The National Geographic – a magazine we could easily expect to see in any waiting-room – transports the child, in her imagination, to ‘the inside of a volcano’, a far cry from the blandness of the dentist’s waiting-room. The images of other races and civilizations are both horrifying and compelling but the child cannot stop reading them.

Should the Drinking Age be Lowered in the United States

Should the United States follow other countries in their quest to end the debate on the drinking age? The United States can take a look at other States such as: Germany, the Netherlands and France, and see how successful they are. Many teenagers would jump on the bandwagon of lowering the drinking age just because they want to have the ability to drink, the argument of being able to die for the United States but can’t drink and it would take away the â€Å"Forbidden Fruit† of drinking. Much of the older generations would jump on the bandwagon of keeping the drinking age the same because they had to wait to drink, because drinking has adverse effects on the brain and drinking could lead to binge drinking. The United States define an adult as†¦show more content†¦Statistically speaking, there are 195 sovereign countries in the world and only 15 have drinking ages higher than the age of 18, that is only 7.8% of the world. There must be a good explanation for this phenomenon. Some of the most notable countries that have a lower drinking age than 21 are: Germany, France and Canada. There are a few countries that even allow you to buy alcohol at any age, such as: Bangladesh, Cambodia, Comoros and Guinea-Bissau. WHO has reported that Germany’s life expectancy for males is around 76 years old; the life expectancy of Germany seems especially high considering they can drink at a young age, which almost contradicts the American mindset on drinking. Many arguments against lowering the drinking age are legitimate arguments. Science has proven that alcohol can have adverse effects on the frontal lobe of the brain, which is the part of the brain that makes decisions. The frontal lobe is not fully developed until a person’s mid-20’s. â€Å"The potential for chronic problems such as greater vulnerability to addiction, dangerous risk-taking behavior, reduced decision-making ability, memory loss, depression, violence, and suicide is gr eater.† (Drinking Age ProCon.org). Statistics have proven that the younger you are, the more likely you are to binge drink. In the UnitedShow MoreRelatedThe Drinking Age Of The United States Should Be Lowered929 Words   |  4 Pagestend to dispute today, whether the drinking age of the United States should be lowered from 21 to 18. The drinking age for people to drink alcoholic beverages was made into law by the National Minimum Drinking Age Act. This ant enforced all states to raise their legal drinking age to 21. To get this law pass, the congress tried to strongarm the states, if the states did not comply, the government would take away their highway funds. Both arguments for it to be lowered and to keep it the same are beneficialRead MoreThe Minimum Drinking Age Act1700 Words   |  7 PagesNational Minimum Drinking Age Act made all 50 states raise the legal drinking age to 21(Dejong). The debate is on whether the age should be lowered or not. Statistically, having the age at 21 has been very helpful in keeping the nation safe. If there is not an issue with age now, would it make sense to lower the age and create unnecessary problems? In this case, the negative effects outweigh the positive. Simply because there is no good in lowering the age. The legal drinking age has been set atRead MoreFor Years, The Debate About Deciding A Minimum Legal Drinking1638 Words   |  7 Pagesyears, the debate about deciding a minimum legal drinking age (MLDA) has plagued the United States. The arguments can include that intoxicated driving accidents will increase if the MLDA was lowered or that the current MLDA is not decreasing drinking among young adults at all. The torn arguments between ages eighteen and twenty-one have not proven one age to be the right answer to the problem of deciding a drinking age, but if the MLDA was lowered to age eighteen, it would be the most beneficial choiceRead MoreDrinking Age Drinking847 Words   |  4 Pages There has been a n ongoing discussion in the United States on whether the drinking age should be lowered to eighteen like most of the world or if it should stay at twenty-one. Underage drinking has been a major questionable issue for years, yet why is it not under control? Teenagers are continuing to buy alcohol with fake identification cards, getting into bars and drinking illegally. As a recent teen, I have proof that these things are going on not only in college but in high school as well. ThereRead MoreShould The Minimum Drinking Age Be Lowered?1138 Words   |  5 Pagesquestion whether drinking should be lowered to eighteen or not? Citizens have gave details regarding the affirmative and negative views of the minimum drinking age be lowered to eighteen. Do you think that it is wise to lower the minimum age? Would you look at the negative and positive impacts? Is it more important to give our citizens these full rights? Currently, in the United States the legal drinking age is twenty-one. But a s we all know many teenages are involved in underage drinking. But the mainRead MoreControversial Analysis: Drinking Age1278 Words   |  6 PagesCarolina Quiroga April 02, 2012 Leslie Jones English 102 The Drinking Age and Young Adults. Because underage drinking is a major problem for young adults, the drinking age has become a very controversial issue. In the 1990s, the drinking age was 18, but it was changed to 21 in 1984. The Federal Government informed states to choose between raising the drinking age to 21 or foregoing highway funding. This decision obviously affected 18 to 20 year olds who could no longer buy alcoholic beveragesRead MoreLowering The Legal Drinking Age857 Words   |  4 PagesAs we know, the United States has the highest drinking age in the world. By 1988 the entire U.S had adopted the Federal Uniform Drinking Age Act, which set the drinking age to twenty-one. However, in 1920 the United States banned the sale, production, importation, and transportation of alcohol. This era known as the Prohibition sparked the popularity of hidden underground bars and events. The Prohibition Era is a prime example of how people did anything to intake alcohol and eventually this ledRead MoreMinimum Legal Drinking Age Should Be Lowered1253 Words   |  6 Pages Minimum Legal Drinking Age Should the drinking age be lowered from 21 to a younger age? Ever since the end of prohibition in 1933 the United States government has placed the issue of minimum legal drinking age sensitively in the hands of the states, letting each decide for itself what the minimum age should be. At that time all agreed that the minimum legal drinking age should be 21, where it remained for all states until 1970.Between 1970Read MoreProhibition Of The National Minimum Drinking Age Act1376 Words   |  6 Pagesregulations instituted by the government were suggestions. After the Prohibition laws were lifted in 1993, the drinking age was set at twenty one but was later lowered to eighteen because of the passage of the 26th amendment which lowered the voting age to eighteen. In order to combat drunk driving, The National Minimum Drinking Age Act was passed and stated that states must raise their drinking age to twenty one or lose 10% of their funds to pay for their highways. The organization MADD (Mother’s AgainstRead More The Problems of Underage Drinking Essay526 Words   |  3 Pagescontroversy of underage drinking has been a serious and difficult issue for many colleges, communities, and parents over the past several years. Fifty states in the U.S have already set their minimum alcohol drinking and purchasing age to twenty one. Yet many people, especially teenagers, oppose this legal drinking age and want it to be lowered. Nevertheless, the legal drinking age should not be lowered from twenty one to eighteen because of three main reasons. The higher minimum drinking age can help reduce

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