In Praise of Laboring Men and Women

What would the Irish laborers who dug the Erie Canal think of us today?

A couple of years ago, Dr. McCullough and I attended an event in Buffalo, New York and afterwards had dinner in a restaurant near where the Erie Canal flows into Lake Erie.

Visiting this terminus of the canal, I pondered the guys who dug it—all 363 miles of it, between Albany and Buffalo, in the years 1817-1825. When the project was proposed to President Jefferson in 1808, he declared it was “little short of madness,” and refused to federally fund it. None of the engineers had any formal training, and the toughest western stretch was dug mostly by Irish immigrants who’d just arrived in New York.

This was before dynamite and the steam shovel were invented, so the poor Irish fellows had to do it all with primitive, dangerous black powder explosives and by hand. As the work progressed through the Montezuma marshland in the Finger Lakes:

Thousands of Irish laborers were sickened or died in the swamps from what was called “Genesee fever,” but which was actually malaria. Irish immigrant labor gradually overtook local workers and anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment swelled along the canal construction route. The Irish workers were often paid in whiskey in addition to (or sometimes in place of) their meager wages of $12 a month. While brawling and skirmishes with locals were a frequent problem, the Irish workers proved willing to do the dirtiest and most dangerous work, including blasting rock with unpredictable black powder.

Historian Gerard Koeppel, author of Bond of Union: Building the Erie Canal and the American Empire, quotes the lyrics of a popular Irish work song: "We are digging a ditch through the mire, Through the mud and the slime and the mire, dammit! And the mud is our principal hire; In our pants, down our boots, down our necks, dammit!"

When the canal was finally completed it became an instant commercial success that lowered the cost of grain transported from Ohio to New York City by 90%.

I wonder what those poor Irish laborers would think of our country today. What would they say if someone told them they possess “white male privilege” and are part of America’s “white male patriarchy”?

Those of us who work desk jobs should always strive to remember all the hard work that laboring men and women have done to build and maintain this country.