Patrick Forde and The Irish World

Galway Observer, 11th November, 1922

Few people in this generation have any idea of the revolution in American opinion in regard to Ireland brought about by Patrick Ford and The Irish World in the latter half of the 19th century. Patrick Ford was a born editor with a remarkable gift for expression, a love of liberty and hatred of oppression that flowed with the momentum of a might river, and a moral intrepidity that found a joy in combat in proportion to the strength of his adversary. The success of the paper was not merely great but phenomenal. At a period when the New York Times had a circulation of fewer than 10,000 and the New York World fewer than 30,000 the circulation of The Irish World rose first to a million and then to the stupendous figure of a million and a half. The paper was read over the entire world. The scoundrels of Downing street opened it in fear and trembling and the Anglo—maniac tribe over here turned blue with envy. Under its influence the scattered sons of the Gael were organized as they had never been organized before.

When the Irish World was established by the indomitable Patrick Ford in 1870, writes J. St George Joyce, one of the most powerful factors in the regeneration of Ireland was created. All the landlord excesses of those days, all the legalized infamous that proceeded the Land League agitation were noted and denounced by The Irish World. But Patrick Ford and his paper did more — infinitely more — than merely denounce the outrages of the infamous Irish land system. They appealed just as vigorously, just as earnestly, for material aid for the famine stricken people of Ireland. These appeals, repeated in other circumstances in other conditions, were nobly responded to by the Irish race in America, and at his death Patrick Ford could proudly boast — which he never did — that he had sent more money for Irish relief an for the support of Ireland's national propaganda than any Irishman that ever lived.