section of our Island home. The schools you have
established, improved and fostered speak eloquently
of the wise and provident pastor always keeping the
advancement ofhis flock in mind A true friend of
our race, too, you have ever been ready to extend your
own and excite our sympathy for our down-trodden
countrymen across the water and keep alive in our
breasts that love for Ireland which is everywhere
characteristic of the Irish race. In one word, you have
been since you assumed control of these parishes all
things to us: guide, corrector, friend, soggarth aroon;
and therefore is the bitterness of separation doubly bit-
ter and great the sacrifice we make in severing the ties
which have bound us in the most intimate relationship
for the last quarter of a century. But the choice is not
ours. We will long miss your familiar figure, your kind—
ly smile, your genial word, your fatherly counsel. The
timely advice given in your farewell sermon, particular—
ly to the rising generation, will be long remembered,
in which you gave the assurance that their first and
most binding duty was to guard intact their religion,
and by being honest, sober and industrious, they would
give that attention due their temporal business, which

will lead to propsperity and happiness.1

Father Doyle obviously was one of those traditional rural
pastors who not only gave needed leadership to a new com-
munity, but was also accepted as a genuine friend to its
people.

Others would also be leaving the area during the decade.
The employment situation for young adults had worsen-
ed since 1881. Table 5: 1 compares the numbers of young
adults with and without occupations in 1881 and 1891; these
young people were between the ages of seventeen and thirty—

two, and not attending school.

48

 

Table 5:1, Young Adult Employment2

1881 1891
Female Male Female Male
With
Occupations 10 41 28 43

 

Occupations

In 1881 54070 of the young adults had no occupations;
by 1891 that had increased to 71%. More young women had
careers in 1891, especially as school teachers; but 77% of
them had no careers, compared to the 85% who had no oc—
cupations a decade earlier. And for the young men not on—
ly had unemployment worsened dramatically, but for those

 

. ohn A. Shreenan, Ploughing; Reg, Frank and Laurena Shreenan look-
ing on.

(Courtesy of Laurena Shreenan)

   

Niwmwuwzlmemmmsdr - .. ..