Clarke rails against “poor, pitiable” Irish job-seekers:

“… since I came here and especially since I was appointed Canal commissioner, I have been invelloped [sic] in a moving mass of importunate office hunters – and appointments are nearly all made and the crowd have pretty much dispersed. The very blind and the lame, the halt and the maimed were all ready patriotically to serve their country. Poor pitiable objects came imploring by seeking an office, a post and a place, because they had “a wife and nine small children and one at her breast.” The multitude attended with pretty much the same feeling of eager anxiety that is said to take place at the drawing of a lottery – each hoping that he would draw a prize. An inordinate lust for office – and an insatiable hungering and thirsting for money are at present crying evils in America. Ambition and Avarice and Covetiousness are predominant features in our republic. I hope my son that you may never be left under the power of either the one or the other of those mean, wicked and deadly vices ..”

While the letter seems to be a cynical rant against all who sought work on the public payroll, Clarke, the rich owner of an iron furnace who had served in the state legislature, neglects to say that most of the “poor, pitiable objects” who stood at his door were probably immigrant Irishmen, thousands of whom labored – and often died – under terrible working conditions while constructing the canals and railroads of Pennsylvania. Clarke’s young son, who received this letter warning against “Avarice and Covetiousness”, later owned his own bank, and also served as a Canal Commissioner and a State Senator.