bias. West Point-trained resident engi- neer Edmund French wrote to Jervis from Sing Sing, April 25, 1838, figure 37: Irish RIbbonmen, wood engraving in Harper's Weekly, January 1, 1859 Courtesy The Historical Society of the Tarrytowns. Photo: J. Kennedy "The affair that resulted in the death of one of the overseers on Section 10 appears to have been nothing more than one of the usual Irish fighting frolics. "^^ But if temperance and nativism colored the views of West- chester landowners, and the engineers and contractors were ruled by economic consciences, then the day-to-day realities of poor pay and shanty living drove the laborers' response. A drink or two to ease the day's burden might be one answer; labor protest was another. Aqueduct workers held strikes for higher pay in April and July of 1838: The turn-out of the laborers ... commenced on section 15, under contract to Timothy N. Terrell. The per diem pay, during the winter months, was 6S'h-75 cents; and the contractor posted a notice, that the pay for the month of April would he from 75-81'/4 cents. The demands of the men, however, was 87'/2-100 cents per day ....^^ The contractor refused the raise in pay, causing the laborers to quit in a body, and march in a "tumultuous manner" from the Croton Dam to Sing Sing, compelling those who were willing to work to join them, until they amounted to a crowd of several hundred. By April 10, Engineer Assistant Horatio Allen wrote a letter to Jervis from Sing Sing, assuring the Chief that: All disturbance among the laborers has ceased, but very few more are at work than when you passed through the line The object is, I believe, to make the men feel the want of work, and then to re- employ them. I think it would be well to let it be known that men are in demand.'^^ A Strike in April 1840 again expressed laborers' discontent with wage levels. Philip Hone, who would be appointed a member of the 1848 Board of Water Commissioners, wrote in his diary: There has been a flare-up amongst the Irish laborers on the Croton Aqueduct occasioned by the contractors reducing their wages from $1 to 75 cents/day. Large numbers turned out and marched from Westchester to Harlem, prevented others from working, and commit- ted some acts of violence upon the workers.^^ The laborers' demands only confirmed nativist pre-conceptions about their unruly behavior. Moreover, the engineering corps and contractors, ruled by market logic, remained firm in the wage reduc- tion. So New York Mayor Isaac Varian viewed the crowd protest as a "mob" and called in the militia. The building of the Aqueduct brought protest — both by landown- ers through whose property the great public works project would course, and by the laborers who dug the tunnels and cemented the siphons which would carry rural water resources to the City of New York. Not surprisingly, those with less economic and political power fared worse. The laborers lost their strikes. They did, however, gain a foothold in the county. In Westchester, intolerance of the intemperant immigrant labor- ers faded, albeit slowly. Irish workers soon settled in the communi- ties through which they had labored, convening for Catholic masses on river piers and in private houses in Yonkers, Dobbs Ferry, Beekmantown, Sing Sing and Verplanck, and establishing the coun- ty's first Catholic parishes by 1850.^^ Early plans for the Aqueduct (1835), set forth by the City's Committee on Fire and Water, had projected that "the cost of the 39 work will consist almost entirely of labor: even the value of the materials ... used will consist in the labor bestowed upon them. And the whole of the labor and the materials will be furnished by the two counties of New- York and Westchester." The committee forecast large sums of money would be spent weekly in pay to sev- eral thousands of citizens, and the money would "regularly return to the city, to reward the industry of other classes of our citizens at home, giving energy to enterprise and vigour to exertion."^" No violence seems to have come of the landowners' protests, perhaps because their material goals had been achieved. The out- come was foretold in an article in the New York Sun, June 16, 1837: Being mainly speculators themselves, the Commissioners must have known that landholders are seldom diffident in taking advan- tages of public improvements, to enhance the price of property. As the Water Commissioners finally explained: The cost of the land required was twice or three times what the owners estimated it at for farming purposes, the water and mill privi- leges, laying useless since the construction of the Erie Canal, all at figure 38: Bridge at Sleepy Hollow, wood engraving in "From Croton to