h in the book.
Marx and Engels, writing years after the completion of this work, understood that the racism directed towards the Irish was a huge weakening factor in the unity of workers. It damaged their movement, distracted from the real enemies and was artificially stoked by the media and the ruling class of the times, for precisely those reasons.
However in passages in this book, the young Engels certainly echoes some of those prejudices.
"These Irishmen who migrate for fourpence to England, on the deck of a steamship on which they are often packed like cattle, insinuate themselves everywhere. The worst dwellings are good enough for them; their clothing causes them little trouble, so long as it holds together by a single thread; shoes they know not; their food consists of potatoes and potatoes only; whatever they earn beyond these needs they spend on drink. What does such a race want with high wages?"
Given that this is could be the worst racism directed at more recent immigrants to these shores, it's important to venture the opinion that this was very much Engels at a young age. His ideas were not fully rounded and perhaps he reflected the awful prejudices of the time, and his class (he was after all from the factory owners, not the factory hands). Later in his life, he explicitly rejected such ideas and indeed had a lifelong relationship with an Irish woman, Mary Burns.
The work is clearly an important one, not simply for the documentation of the life of the workers of early capitalism, but for an understanding of the development of Marxism and also to show that Frederick Engels, a man who all to often stands in the shadow of his friend and collaborator, was also a man of formidable skills.
For those who would like to know more about the life of Frederick Engels I would recommend this article by Lindsey German.
Engels - The Condition of the Working Class in England
Hunt - TheFrock-coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels