IRISH POTATO FAMINE SOURCES - Essay Example

However, the increased population created scarcity in land. The number of people was exceeding the available land. The government had to device a way for diving land. The small plots that were issued by the government could only bear the very potato. Population increase and land scarcity can, on a perspective, be said to be the first negative impact that potato brought to Ireland. Since the small land could only contain the potato crop, the people of Ireland solely relied on this crop as the staple food and also as the only source of income from its sales.

When the potato blight hit the country, the people had been caught unaware. As their crops were being helplessly destroyed before their eyes by the blight, distress captured the better part of them as they wondered of the available solutions. The blight was taking away the only source of life. The people started to starve due to lack of adequate food. Starvation made the people weak and vulnerable to all kinds of diseases. Typhus, Dysentery and Relapsing fever came upon them like plague (source 3).

With the starvation and the emergence of the deadly diseases, life took a horrific turn on many common people. Hardship became a daily companion. The population had shifted their focus from potato farming to working on the public roads (source 2 & 3). A report by Wexford Independent describes the public as low income earner (source 3). The people were working in the extremely cold weather and their wages could not allow them to buy warm clothes. The cold caused the inflammatory of their lungs and fever.

The poor salaries made the blanket a rare luxury for these people (source10). These people were also walking long distances and without food to eat. Most of them would drop and die while at work (source2). Thus, the root cause of their tribulations was cold and hunger. The poor Irish crowded the roads, begging