During my recent visit to Boston, I was much impressed by the friendliness displayed towards the Saorstát by the leading men of Irish birth and descent with whom I came in contact. It is popularly estimated that over 60% of Bostonians belong to the Irish race. In some of the streets I passed through, there were more characteristically Irish names over the doors than perhaps any street in Dublin could lay claim to. The majority of the Municipal Councillors are of Irish origin. In the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which has a population of nearly four million, about 45% are of Irish extraction, and it is noticeable that the mayors of its principal cities, such as Springfield, Worcester, Lynn, Salem, etc. have Irish names.
The present mayor of Boston, Mr. Nichols, is a native American, belonging to the Republican party and a Protestant, although the city has a strong Democratic and Catholic majority. His term of office expires at the end of this year, and it is generally conceded by the different parties that he will be succeeded by his predecessor, Mr. Michael J. Curley, who has already occupied the mayoral chair for two terms of four years each. According to the State law, a mayor of Boston cannot succeed himself. It has been said, with perhaps some reason, that Mayor Nichols was put into office by ex-Mayor Curley in order to keep out another Democratic aspirant to mayoral honours, who was considered capable of rigging the political machine in his own favour if he got into power. Curley has, however, been acknowledged by his political opponents to have obtained better results than Nichols from the money expended, and to have kept down taxes whilst in office.
I was invited by Mayor Curley to a luncheon at the Woolston Country Club outside Boston. With him were half a dozen of his personal friends, including a brother of Deputy Batt O'Connor, who is a successful contractor, and Mr. Jos. O'Connell, Attorney at Law. All the party were most friendly disposed towards the Saorstát.
Mr. Curley told me that after the first of next January when he will occupy the mayoral chair again (for there is no doubt in his mind in the matter) that if the Saorstát Minister visited Boston, he would be given an official reception by the City. He told me that he was invited some time ago to subscribe $1,000.00 to the funds for a newspaper which is being established in Dublin, but when he realised that its object was to create trouble, he refused. Mayor Curley is about 48 years of age, was born in this country and has a good knowledge of Gaelic, which he learned as a child from his parents.
I called on Mr. James J. Phelan, who is reputed to be worth several millions, but he happened to be absent in New York at the time. He wrote me a letter immediately afterwards, inviting Mrs. MacWhite and myself to visit his summer residence at Manchester, about thirty miles from Boston, which we accepted. His first greeting to me was that I should have come to this country three years ago. He used some extremely uncomplimentary language towards my predecessor.1 Amongst other things, he held him responsible for the fact that the President did not visit Boston when he was here last year. While discussing general conditions in Ireland, Mr. Phelan expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the Industrial Trust Company is being managed. He considered the alteration of the date of publication of the Balance Sheet as undesirable, and did not think the explanation given him by either Mr. Douglas or Mr. Smith-Gordon as satisfactory. Instead of doing business in accordance with the charter of the Trust, he seemed to think that they had undertaken risks of a speculative nature. He does not believe that there are any wealthy Irish-Americans who would invest money in Ireland on the expectation of getting a lower rate of interest than they would elsewhere. He could understand a wealthy man contributing a definite sum to an Irish enterprise for national or sentimental reasons, but to ask him to forego a part of the interest would be too severe a trial to his business instincts. Mr. Phelan has a very high opinion of the members of the Executive Council whom he met, and he left no doubt in my mind that he is deeply interested in the future of the Saorstát. He told me that he intends to pay me a visit in the near future in Washington.
Judge Daniel T. O'Connell of the Superior Court of Massachusetts, who was Director of the Irish Bureau at Washington in 1920-21, was appointed to his present office early this year. He was formerly a member of the Clann na Gael, but is not at present, though he is on very close terms with its leaders. On his invitation, I met ten of his colleagues at the Court House, and I had a place on the Bench while they were discussing the interpretation of certain provisions in the Anti-Trust Laws. Judge O'Connell is of the opinion that members of different Irish societies, who were the backbone of the fight for Irish freedom in this country some years ago, did not get the recognition they merited from the Saorstát Government after its establishment and, as a result, some of them drifted into other camps, or became indifferent to the new order of things in Ireland. Had the President come to Boston, and had these people an opportunity of assisting at a banquet in his honour, it would have done much to dispel the resentment which they feel. He thought that I should take the first opportunity of establishing contact with these people, so as to dispel the illusion under which some of them labour, and which has been exploited to the disadvantage of the Saorstát.
Ex-Congressman Joseph O'Connell is a brother of the Judge and a leading lawyer. It was on his initiative that Chief Justice Kennedy visited Boston last year.2 He has only just returned from Ireland, where himself and his wife spent three weeks, and he was most enthusiastic about everything he saw there. He assisted at the Devoy funeral and, like all the other Irish-Americans present on that occasion, was most favourably impressed by the military and general arrangements. He visited nearly all the principal places of interest from Glengarriff to the Glens of Antrim. He met an American business man in Belfast, who came there under the impression that the six county capital was the principal business city in Ireland. This man, after a walk through the principal streets which he considered exceedingly shabby, described the place as 'a bum town' and left again for Dublin the next day. Until Mr. O'Connell was making arrangements for his trip to Ireland, he was not aware that we had a passport visa office in Boston, and he expressed his disappointment when I informed him that the office would probably be closed down during the winter months. He said that the Irish people in Boston were well worth cultivating, and that their number was sufficiently important from a national point of view to merit a whole time Consular Agent there, and that he, himself, would write to the Minister for External Affairs, pointing this out to him.
When I paid a formal call on Governor Allen of Massachusetts, I asked Mr. O'Connell to accompany me, as it is usual, on such occasions, to have a man of local standing do the introducing. My reception was of a most cordial nature, and the Governor presented me with a gold seal of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He made many inquiries as to the conditions in the Saorstát, and expressed his pleasure that things were going on so well, and that peace and contentment had succeeded years of turmoil and strife. He said that nearly half the citizens of his State belong to the Irish race, although they were at one time almost exclusively Anglo-Saxon. After the Revolution, however, the English began to move out, and the Irish to move in. He considers Massachusetts to be one of the best governed States in the Union.
After visiting the Governor, I called on the Mayor, who received me most amicably. He was surrounded by a number of City Councillors, all of whom were of Irish origin. One of them, Commissioner Murphy, was actually born in Cork, which city he left about 25 years ago. He takes a keen interest in the developments at home and, according to him, the Irish in Boston opposed to the Saorstát are negligible. He said that I should not allow myself to be deceived by the presence of four or five hundred persons at a dance or an outing organized by them, because the Irish people like getting together, and the majority of those who take advantage of such functions do so caring little or nothing of the colour of their politics, so long as they, themselves, have an enjoyable time. Mayor Nichols invited me to sign the Roll of Honour, and wanted to arrange for an official banquet for me, but I let him know that my stay in the city was too short to permit me to accept. As I have said, he is a Republican in politics, and as the Municipal elections are to take place in about six weeks time, my presence at a banquet under his Chairmanship might be used to the advantage of his party. He expressed regret that he had not an opportunity of welcoming President Cosgrave to his city last year, and a large number of citizens were equally disappointed. He told me that the Irish element in the city was over half a million. In the City Directory, there are more Sullivans than Smiths, and the Kellys are a good third.
In many respects, Boston resembles Dublin. There is no doubt as to its being the most Irish of all the cities in the United States.
The principal Secretary to the Mayor is a Cork man named Reade. His father was the Chief Engineer at one time for the Cork, Bandon and Southcoast Railway. The City Comptroller, whose name is Connolan, told me that his father came from near Kilmallock, and that 75% of the Municipal employees were either born in Ireland or of Irish parentage.
When it got to be known that I was in Boston, Major General Logan and his brother, Theodore, called to see me, and insisted that I should visit their home at Cohasset, a locality about an hour's drive by motor from the city of Boston. Their father, who came from Galway, died some years ago, but their mother, who was born in Kanturk, is still living, and at the time of my visit seven or eight of her children and a number of grandchildren were staying with her. General Logan commanded the 26th Division in the Great War, but he is now retired. Four of his brothers were military officers also, and the fifth is a priest. They are reputed to be very wealthy, and have large interests in the First National Bank of Mass. Theodore Logan is a director of the Federal Trust and is very much interested in the development of the Saorstát. He told me that there are a number of his business relations who are following very closely the steps that have now been taken by Mr. C.C. Buckley towards establishing a new industry in Cork. I will shortly have the pleasure of meeting General Logan here in Washington, as he visits this city frequently.
A close friend of the Logan family is a Mr. Frank Commerford, the head of the International Power and Paper trust, which controls more water power than, perhaps, any other corporation in the world. While this trust was being organized, Commerford was its legal adviser, and I am told that he was put at its head much against the wishes of the Directors because of his Irish parentage and his religion, but they could find no other person who understood the intricacies of such a huge combine. Mr. Commerford was married in Rome last June. He was accompanied there by General and Mrs. Logan. He was out of town during my stay in Boston, but he expressed a desire to meet me in the near future.
I visited my family at East Gloucester, which is about 40 miles north of Boston, and at church there one Sunday, when it got to be known that I was the Saorstát Minister, all the Irish members of the congregation insisted on greeting me. I also had occasion to call at a very large Ford and Lincoln Garage and Service Depot at Salem, Mass., where the majority of the employees, including the Manager and Foreman are Irish or of Irish parentage. When my identity became known, they also insisted on demonstrating their feelings towards the Free State.
Such has been my general experience in Boston and its neighbourhood. In fact, the impression made on me during my visit there by the people I met would lead me to conclude that whether of Irish or native American origin, they are most friendly disposed towards the Saorstát.
