of it--may bring wages nearer to subsistence level. The art of warfare
is too much in the hands of specialists for trust to be placed in
revolution. A machine-gun with a few experts behind it is worth a
thousand revolutionary workers, however maddened they may be. Does
political action, on which so many rely, promise more? I do not believe
it does. I believe that to appeal to legislatures is to appeal to
bodies dominated by those interested in maintaining the present social
order, although they may act so as to redress the worst evils created by
it. In Ireland, for this generation at least, it would be impossible to
secure in a legislative assembly majorities representative of the class
we wish to see emancipated. It may seem as if I had closed all the paths
out of the social labyrinth; but the way to emancipation has, I think,
already been surveyed by pioneers. A policy of social reconstruction is
practical, and needs but steady persistence for its realization. That
policy--I refer to co-operative action--has been adopted in various
forms by workers in many countries; and what is needed here is to study
and coordinate these applications of co-working, and to form a general
staff of labor who will, on behalf of the workers, examine the weapons
fashioned by their class elsewhere, and who will draw up a plan of
campaign as the staff of an army do previous to military operations. It
will be found that economic action along co-operative lines has, in one
country, barriers placed before its expansion which could be set aside
by supplementing this action by methods elaborated by the genius of
workers elsewhere.

It is not my purpose here to repeat in detail methods of organization,
partly technical, which can be found fully described in many admirable
books, but rather to indicate the order of advance, the methods of
coordination of these, and their final absorption and transformation in
the national being. There is a great deal of ignorance about things