Ireland

Eastern cities, Ireland advocated a Westward
movement. Procuring in 1879 trac*s of railroad
land which colonists could purchase on easy pay-
ments and for which he held himself responsible,
he established numerous settlements with the
aid of Dillon O'Brien, whom he appointed head
of the Catholic Colonization Bureau. It was in
this connection that Ireland became associated
with the Canadian railroad magnates. The set-
tlers who survived the northern frontier hard-
ships became prosperous, and Ireland's towns are
now thriving rural centers. Incidentally, the
widely scattered pamphlets of his Bureau aided
in bringing settlers from Europe and the East.
Nationally known now, Ireland was a leader in
the Third Plenary Council of Baltimore (1884),
where he delivered the oustanding sermon, "The
Catholic Church and Civil Society," in which
he sounded a note of patriotic allegiance which
reverberated through his later lectures. When
St. Paul was made an archdiocese, he was named
archbishop, May 15, 1888, with five, and later
eight, suffragan bishops. He always dominated
the whole province, since the bishops appointed
were invariably priests of his training.

In 1886-87, Ireland and John J. Keane [q.v.]
consulted with Pope Leo concerning the advisa-
bility of a national Catholic University under
the American hierarchy. Two years later such
an institution was founded at Washington, and
Ireland continued its stout supporter. While in
Rome the two bishops refuted a memorandum
submitted by Vicar-General P. M. Abbelen of
Milwaukee, which urged the appointment of Ger-
man bishops and priests and the retention of the
foreign tongue (La Question Allemande dans
L'Sglise o,ux £tats-Unis, Rome, Dec. 26, 1886).
At this time, on behalf of Jesse Seligman, Ire-
land procured a petition from Leo XIII asking
Russia to delay enforcement of the ukase compel-
ling Jews to withdraw from the provinces outside
the pale (North American Review, September
1903). In 1891, Peter Paul Cahensly of the im-
perial reichstadt presented a memorial urging
the appointment of racial bishops in the United
States on the basis of the racial strength of vari-
ous Catholic groups, thus bringing to a crisis
earlier attempts to foster foreignism in America
for European political reasons. Ireland again
led the fight in opposition, declaring that the
Church in America would retain its autonomy
and that its bishops were able to ward off any
foreign interference. Furthermore, he insisted
that parochial schools skould teach in English.
Despite a fierce conflict, Ireland, supported by
some farsighted bishops, won the day. Not un-
til .1914 were Catholics in agreement on this

Ireland

question and non-Catholics appreciative of the
significance of this struggle.

Although not deeply concerned about Irish
politics, he stood with the bishops who success-
fully prevented a condemnation of the Ancient
Order of Hibernians. When at the request of
Canadian bishops, the Knights of Labor were
condemned in Canada, Gibbons, Ireland, Keane,
and Denis O'Connell, with the aid of Cardinal
Manning, won for Catholic workingmen the
right to join such organizations (see Catholic
American, Mar. 5, 1887). Ireland spoke with
balance when discussing the clashing interests
of labor and capital, and he never forgot that un-
skilled labor was left unorganized. When Cleve-
land's policy in the railroad strike of 1894 was
violently denounced, he frankly commended the
President's action (J. F. Rhodes, History of the
United States from Hayes to McKwiley, 1877-
1896, 1919, p. 428). In an essay on "Personal
Liberty and Labor Strikes" (North American
Review, October 1901), he condemned acts of
violence and picketing and urged individual free-
dom of action, whether that of employer, em-
ployee, or non-unionist. He was outspoken in
opposition to radical demands for the recall of
judges.

On the centennial of the establishment of the
Catholic hierarchy, Ireland delivered in the Bal-
timore Cathedral, Nov. 10, 1889, an address on
"The Mission of Catholics in America," which
rang with loyalty to church and state. He sug-
gested national congresses of laymen, but the
gatherings of 1889 and 1893 wefe too circum-
scribed to accomplish any new departure. In his
address before the National Education Associ-
ation in St. Paul (1890) he aroused a hornet's
nest, when he exclaimed: "I am a friend and
advocate of the state school. In the circumstances
of the present time I uphold the parish school"
(see National Education Association, Journal of
Proceedings and Addresses, 1890, p. 179). He
defended religious schools as a necessity when
religion and morals could not otherwise be
taught; and he urged a compromise whereby the
state would pay for secular instruction at in-
spected free parochial schools in which religious
teaching would be conducted by the denomination
concerned. A year later, he arranged his experi-
mental plan with the school boards of Faribault
and Stillwater, by which parochial buildings, on
a year's contract, were turned over to the city,
which would pay running expenses, while reli-
gious devotions and instructions before and after
school hours would be under local pastors. This
scheme was not given a fair trial. Aggressive
Protestants were opposed, and even moderate

495