terrible letter against Dublin employers in the great strike of 1913 when
he foretold that the success of the employers in starving the Dublin poor
would necessarily lead to "red ruin and the breaking up of laws.... The men
whose manhood you have broken will loathe you, and will always be brooding
and seeking to strike a new blow. The children will be taught to curse you.
The infant being moulded in the womb will have breathed into its starved
body the vitality of hate. It is not they--it is you who are pulling down
the pillars of the social order."[1] But I knew, too, that he was opposed
to violence, so I wondered what he would say to this:

"A labor leader just told me that it was his belief that industrial
revolution would take place in Ireland in two or three years. Labor waits
only till it has secured greater unity between the north and south. Then it
will take over industry and government by force."

"I had hoped--I am trying to convince the labor leaders here," he said
finally, "of the value of the Italian plan for the taking over of industry.
The Italian seaman's union co-operatively purchased and ran boats on which
they formerly had been merely workers."

Russia he spoke of for a moment. People shortly over from Russia told him,
as he had felt, that the soviet was not the dreadful thing it was made out
to be. But a dictatorship of the workers he would not like. He wanted, he
said with an upward movement of his big arms, he wanted to be free.

"Now I am for the building of a co-operative commonwealth on co-operative
societies. Ireland can and is developing her own industries through
co-operation. She is developing them without aid from England and in the
face of opposition in Ireland.