lay the Carson ghost by working with the south of Ireland towards a
settlement of the political question. Why not? The workers of the north and
south are bound by the tie of a common poverty."

"All my life," said Dawson Gordon, the Protestant president of the Irish
Textile Federation, as we talked in the dark little union headquarters
where shawled spinners and weavers were coming in with their big copper
dues, "I have heard stories that were so much fuel on the prejudice pile.
When I was small, I believed anything I was told about the Catholics. I
remember this tale that my mother repeated to me as she said her
grandmother had told it to her: 'A neighbor of grandmother's was alone in
her cabin one night. There was a knock at the door. A Catholic woman begged
for shelter. The neighbor could not bear to turn her back into the night.
Then as there was only one bed, the two women shared it. Next morning
grandmother heard a moaning in the cabin. On entering, she saw the neighbor
lying alone on the bed, stabbed in the back. The neighbor's last words
were: "Never trust a Catholic!"' As I grew a little older I found two other
Protestant friends whose grandmothers had had the same experience. And
since I have been a labor organizer, I have run across Catholics who told
the same story turned about. So I began to think that there was a hell of a
lot of great-grandmothers with stabbed friends--almost too many for belief.

"But hysterical as they were, such stories served their purpose of
division."

From a schoolish-looking cupboard in the back of the room, Mr. Gordon
extracted a much-thumbed pamphlet on the linen and jute industry, published
after extended investigation by the United States in 1913. Mr. Gordon
turned to a certain page, and pointed a finger at a significant line which
ran: