BACK PAGES: AN ASSERTION that Ireland was the only country in the world whose population in 1951 was less than it had been at the start of the century prompted The Irish Timesto consider why there was such a high emigration rate and low marriage rate.
It could not be entirely attributed to economic reasons, an editorial suggested, because the country had never been more prosperous than during the previous five years. Young people, it concluded, were being attracted to the “tawdriness of life” and the “meretricious gaiety” of English and Scottish cities. An anonymous letter writer from Co Dublin, using the pen name “Wild Goose” (as allowed in those days), took issue with its analysis:
Sir – I have read with considerable, if somewhat cynical, interest your article in today's Irish Times, headed "Human Exports". Perhaps my own experiences may in a small way help to illustrate, at least, why some of the so-called "white- collared" workers emigrate.
I have now been unemployed since early in April last, and, in spite of excellent references as to my integrity and achievements as general manager of an Irish industry, I have utterly failed to find other employment.
Two years ago I borrowed in order to purchase my house, and this fact, coupled with the fact that my wife and family of four children must be housed and fed, has resulted in the rapid dwindling of such small savings as I had accumulated, since I have no income whatever, other than my salary. What alternative is there but emigration, however unwillingly. At 40 years of age, it certainly holds no attractions for me, since I have already experienced the necessity in my youth. I had hoped that, having returned home five years ago, I should not again be forced to leave Ireland by lack of employment.
As regards the owning of motorcars by farmers, this is no true sign of prosperity. It is merely a sign that certain persons may be prosperous. It doesn’t mean that their prosperity is being shared, for example, by better wages and conditions for the agricultural workers. It would seem that our real trouble in Ireland is the fact that, while there is undoubted prosperity, that prosperity runs only in narrow channels: it does not percolate to the strata from which comes the bulk of the emigrants.
This can be said of both agriculture and other industry, and is as true today as it ever was in the “bad old times”.
I have had a good deal of experience in selecting candidates for employment in Irish industry, and it has always shocked me to note the very large numbers of applicants with high academic qualifications engaged in “dead-end” jobs with the poorest salaries.
No wonder the marriage rate is low, and that of emigration high! No amount of soap-box blather by our politicians about partition, national prosperity, increasing employment, and the cost of living, is going to blind all the people all the time.
If the people find that conditions of employment are such that they do not provide a decent living wage, and if the unemployed, after all reasonable efforts, fail to get work, then the most sensible and courageous who can find the money to do so, will – indeed, must – emigrate. If they return to this country, as some do, it is only after they have either saved enough to enable them to be less dependent on home conditions, or to take over a family business, or merely on a holiday visit, or as representatives of “foreign” concerns.
Only a very small percentage of emigrants who have really made their way outside Ireland ever return to live permanently in the country: and surely this fact speaks for itself, and must, to some extent, be a condemnation of our economic and/or our social conditions. – Yours, etc.
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