I was rather shocked to find out that Many of the Irish Land Owners had the choice of Feeding and Paying the Taxes on their Irish workers or sending them to the USA.
Many Land Owners opted to pay their way to the USA because it was cheaper.
I am not sure how much choice the Irish Workers had in that matter. It is like You can go to the USA or I will stop providing you with Food.
I that is what I listened to on PBS.

Added:"New taxes imposed on landlords for poor relief - the amount levied depending on the number of paupers resident in a parish - encouraged landlords to reduce their tax bill by reducing the number of poor peasants. Sometimes this could be achieved by 'forgiving' the rent, which would then be used to buy a passage, or by the landlord buying the tenant's home, land and crop at a price that would allow the family to emigrate."
http://www.proni.gov.uk/index/exhibitions_talks_and_events/19th_century_emigration_to_the_north_america_online/helping_hands/the_irish_poor_law.htm

This site has a different story:
http://www.irishhistorylinks.net/History_Links/IrishFamineGenocide.html

I'm glad my ancestors from Ireland that made the trip, regardless how or why, eventually settled in Omaha, NE.:D That was like winning the lottery 2 or more times in just one lifetime!!;):cool: However, Texas, IS a great place to live. :)

It depends on the time period there several waves of Irish Immigration to the USA.
I added this site to the previous post:
The Irish poor law | Public Record Office of Northern Ireland

Some Brothers from My Family immigrated to the USA from some little Village the boarder between Austria and Italy.
They went to Vera Cruz Mexico and My Granfather stayed long enough to aquire a Mexican Wife who I am related to and She Died and He married another Mexican Woman.
Sometime while all that was going on He ended up in New Mexico around 1902.
I always wondered about whay the went to Mexico. My Aunt went to that little Village on Vacation and found out the Speak both Italian and Austrian.

And in the Pic of of My Great Grandfather with his 2nd Wife He certainly looks Italian. I think that Italian and Spanish are similar enought for someone to communicate and that is why they went to Mexico and settled in New Mexico.
And of course New Mexico is right next to Texas.

Slave owners seemed to have had no problem damaging their Property when said Property became disobedient or even a supposed threat.

Whatever the condition of the huddled masses in their home countries, when they stepped ashore here they were free.

With all the attendant responsibilities for their own lives and well-being.

There were cruel, sadistic slaveowners and overseers.

But most of them recognized that a damaged slave did not improve production.

Even to this day, mistreating your farm machinery by driving it too hard may bring increased short-term productivity but is a long-term path to failure.

I do not consider communism at all related to slavery. I think that is propaganda.


If your second supposition were true, then we would be talking about the industrialized South overwhelming the teeming labor markets of the Northeast.

Under the French and Spanish slavery system, slaves could earn money, own property, and buy their way to manumission. They had great incentive to be industrious and work hard.

Under the model American slave system (South Carolina's, later adopted by all other slave states to some degree and forced upon Louisiana for entry into the Union) slaves could not own property, could not earn money and could not be manumitted except under extraordinary circumstance. Thus, the slaves had no incentive to work or innovate other than coercion.

Because they had no positive reinforcement in law or fact, they were not as productive as whites and thus began the perception that black people are lazy and dumb. Under those circumstances I am sure I'd be dumb and lazy, too. And would probably have ended my short, miserable life hanged in some damned tree.

This New Basin Canal example has got me thinking more about the general differences between chattel slaves and wage slaves. How is war effected by the difference between chattel slaves and wage slaves? Two things come to mind. Like the canal example, chattel slave owners wouldn't have been willing to risk their slaves in war as soldiers because they could easily lose their investment. Also, chattel slaves are unlikely to make good soldiers (perhaps--I'm not sure about this. It may be false) because they aren't invested in the interests of the owners. Wage slaves however are easily risked in war, just like the Irish canal builders and being 'free' they are invested in the system and inclined to defend it. So were the horrific wars of 20th century Europe fueled by wage slavery? Would those wars have been possible if Europe had instead been exploiting the labor of chattel slaves instead of wage slaves?
Related to that--how did slavery in the south effect the waging and outcome of the Civil War? Did the North have an advantage since it employed wage slaves instead of chattel slaves?

A few scars is one thing, death another. That wikipedia piece on the New Basin Canal says the danger was Yellow Fever and lots of people died. It estimates that between 8-20k people died building a 3 mile long canal. So it was the risk of completely losing one's investment that was motivating the slave owners. A bunch of scars on the slaves back from a severe whipping and the loss of a few days of work from the injury are minor by comparison.

Could be that Catholicism provided a cultural connection that Protestantism didn't.

There is a house in, I think, Alabama, that was built by a guy that owned a plantation and a bunch of slaves. He is considered today to be one of the biggest jerks that ever lived in Alabama if not the entire world.

He never stopped telling people how dumb and lazy his slaves were. But then he felt the same way about anyone that worked with his hands and everyone was second class to him. But his slaves were the worst in that they had the brains of little children and could hardly remember to eat unless he told them when it was time to do so.

When he wanted to build his house he had to import workers from New York since everyone knows that people in Alabama are all dumb and lazy. The workers built the basement of the house, finished it out, and then started on the rest of it. Every now and then the owner would stop by to see how things were going and to let the workers know that they were dumb and lazy.

Then the Civil War broke out and the New Yorkers used the war clause of their contract to pack up and go home. The owner then told his slaves to get up and finish building his house.

The slaves told him they would love to do so, but since they had the brains of little children and were just born dumb and lazy they didn't think they should take on so complicated a task.

He had to admit they were right, so the house was never finished and today is a part of a state park. The tools the New York builders used are still laying right where they left them when they walked off the job.

I'm not sure if this is the best motivational story I can come up with. Perhaps I am just to dumb and lazy to think about it anymore.

What about the 70 million that willingly took a bullet for Chairman Mao?

Well My realatives could have stayed at home for that. One of My Aunts has done research but has not come up with a reason whey My Relataives left their Home.
Also as stated about the Irish immigration; plenty of Catholic Irish arrived Here and in the State I was born in PA there was plenty of German Catholics.
When Quaker William Penn Sold large tracts of Land in PA to Gaman Immigrants so many of the came over He worried it was going to turn into a seperate German Speaking Country. A lot of Germans are also Catholic.

I think it depends on what a persons definition of Slavery. Americans view Slavery from the American prespective of it. Slavery may have a broader definition that our Definition. As an example Slavery in the Bible is different than USA Slavery was.
I don't have any trouble fitting Communism into #2 or #4 except that the People were not owned by an individual the were owned by the State.
Slavery
1. system based on enslaved labor: the practice of, or a system based on, using the enforced labor of other people 2. condition of being enslaved laborer: the state or condition of being held in involuntary servitude as the property of somebody else 3. hard work: very hard work, especially for low pay and under bad conditions 4. state of being dominated: a state of being completely dominated by another


Calling somthing Propaganda (a lie) dose not discount the actual facts.

Concerning how workers felt towards Slavery in the Pre-Civil War years that is not something I made up that is something that I read about and it is one of the reasons they did not want Slavery Spreading to the new States.

You're stuck on this 'I didn't do it, it's not my responsibility.' That's beside the point. The unusual history of the relationship calls out for intelligent, imaginative response.

If it's done right, the gain is worth the investment. It's not being done well at present. How's that saying go?

'The wheels of justice grind slowly but they grind exceedingly fine.' Karma has way of expressing itself.