ABSTRACT
Together, emigration, the postponement of marriage, and the great rise in British living standards, which so powerfully and profitably reoriented Irish agriculture towards livestock farming, caused dramatic improvements in the quality of Irish rural life between 1851 and 1876. The great famine was a watershed in Irish demographic history, marking the end of one period of rapid population growth and the beginning of another period of pronounced decline. In 1881 the labourers' movement was temporarily revived in Cork and other parts of Ireland. In fact, the farm-workers' agitation gathered such momentum that it threatened to arouse strife between labourers and farmers as intense as the struggle already raging between tenants and landlords. Together, agricultural prosperity and the emigrant stream had radically changed the style and quality of rural life for the better. By drastically reducing their number, emigration greatly benefited the labouring classes.
