VII.



It would be a bitter reproach on the household of our nation if there
were any unconsidered, who were left in poverty and without hope and
outside our brotherhood. We have not yet considered the agricultural
laborer--the proletarian of the countryside. His is, in a sense, the
most difficult problem of any. The basis of economic independence in
his industry is the possession of land, and that is not readily to be
obtained in Ireland. The earth does not upheave itself from beneath the
sea and add new land to that already above water in response to our need
for it. Yet I would not pass away from the rural laborer without,
however inadequately, indicating some curves in his future evolution.
These laborers are not in Ireland half so numerous as farmers, for it is
a country of small holdings, where the farmer and his family are
themselves laborers. Labor is badly paid, and, owing to the lack of
continuous cropping of the land, it is often left without employment at
seasons when employment is most needed. No class which is taken up
today and dropped tomorrow will in modern times remain long in a
country. Employers often act as if they thought labor could be taken up
and laid down again like a pipe and tobacco. None have contributed so
to thicken the horde of Irish exiles as the rural laborers. Three
hundred thousand of them in less than my lifetime have left the fields
of Ireland for the factories of the new world. Yet I can only rejoice
if Irishmen, who are badly dealt with in their motherland, find an
ampler life and a more prosperous career in another land. A wage of ten
or eleven shillings a week will bind none but the unaspiring lout to his
country. But I would like to make Ireland a land which, because of the
human kindness in it, few would willingly leave. The agricultural