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Facts About Ireland’s Population
By DENIS L. O’CONNELL
The following article appeared in the Dearborn Independent:
for February 14, 1920. Mr. Ford’s weekly publication is clearly
not a partisan of the Irish cause. All Americans of Irish blood
should welcome this clear and impartial statement of facts by
Mr. Ford’s own observer in Ireland.
Cork, Ireland, January 20, 1920.
The surest sign that a country is well governed and prosperous is the
growth in population. There is only one white man’s country in the
world where the white race decreases and on that showing Ireland’s
present government must not be suitable to the country. Compared
with the other oppressed nationalities in Europe, Ireland’s population
figures give food for reflection.. That the Russian Czar’s rule in Poland
was alien, unjust and oppressive was obvious but despite that, Russian
Poland increased in people while Ireland decreased.
The following table shows the respective populations between the
years 1871 and 1915.
Russian Poland Ireland:
1871 6,193,710 5,398,179
1881...... 7,319,980 5,145,770
1897 10,500,000 ~ 4,529,917
1912 we 12,776,100 4,384,710
1915 . 12,247,600 4,337,000
In other words, that while Russian Poland increased almost one hun-
dred per cent in forty-five years, Ireland on the contrary lost 19.7 per
cent of its people. Had the population of Ireland increased in the ratio
during that period, Ireland would have within its shores in 1915 at least
10,675,000 instead of 4,337,000.
In the portion of Poland given to Germany to rule in the sixty-five
years from 1855 to 1910 the population grew from 1,392,636 to 2,099,831,
or an increase of 50.8 per cent. The figures in Ireland had in the same
time shrunk from 6,014,665 to 4,385,421. Yet under both Russian and
German rule the Poles were dissatisfied with the government, which they
considered to be foreign and unjust. In the years between 1846 and 1910
the Poles living under the dual monarchy of the Hapsburgs increased
from 4,461,400 to 8,211,770. The figures were almost the reverse in
Ireland. In 1846, immediately after the great famine, Ireland’s people
counted 8,287,848 and in 1913 they only amounted to 4,379,076. All
Poland is now free and the world has to consider how much greater would
the Poles be today if they had developed their own country and people
in their own way—in the way that was most suitable to their national
requirements.
Friends of Irish Freedom
National Bureau of Information
Washington, D. C.
(over)
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