party. The
Republican "bosses" have thus been able to impose on the city officials
of the worst kind, who have served them faithfully to the disaster of
the community.[253:1] None the less, notwithstanding particular
exceptions, it is a fact that as a general rule the corrupt
maladministration of affairs in American cities is the direct result of
Irish influence.

The opportunities of the Irish leaders for securing control of the city
administration, or of certain important and lucrative divisions of this
administration, have been furthered, particularly in such cities as New
York and San Francisco, by the influence they are able to gain over
bodies of immigrants who are also in the fold of the Roman Catholic
Church, and who, on the ground of difference of language and other
causes, have less quickness of perception of their own political
opportunities. The Irish leaders have been able to direct in very large
measure the votes of the Italians (more particularly the Italians from
the South), the Bohemians, and the other groups of immigrants from
Catholic communities. As the Irish immigration has decreased both
absolutely and relatively, the numbers of voters supporting the
leadership of the bosses of Tammany Hall and of the similar
organisations in Chicago and San Francisco have been made good, and in
fact substantially increased, by the addition of Catholic voters of
other nationalities.

I wish the English reader to grasp fully the significance of these facts
before he allows the stories which he hears of the municipal immorality
which exists in the United States to colour too deeply his estimate of
the character of the American people. That immorality is chiefly Irish
in its origin and is made continuously possible by the ascendency of the
Irish over masses of other non-Anglo-Saxon peoples. The Celts were never
a race of individual workers either as agriculturists or in handicraft.
That "law of intense personal labour" which is the foundation of the
strength of the Anglo-Saxon communities never commanded their full
obedience, as the history of Ireland and the condition of the country
to-day abundantly testify. It is not, then, the fault of the individual
Irishman that when he migrates to America, instead of going out to the
frontier to "grow up" with the territory or taking himself to
agricultural work in the great districts of the West which are always
calling for workers, he prefers to remain in the cities to enga