Ruth Russell

“ At one end of the cabin is a smoky dent that indicates the fireplace; and at the other there may be a stall or two. The small, deep-set windows are, as a rule, "fixed." Rural slums are rivaled by city slums. Even in the capital of Ireland the poor are housed as badly as in the west of Ireland. Looking down on the city of Dublin from the tower of St. Patrick's cathedral, one can see roofs so smashed in that they look as if some giant had walked over them; great areas so packed with buildings that there are only darts of passageways for light and air. ”

“ I imagine, too, that having seen the character of British rule there, you must realize better than before what it was your American patriots of '76 hastened to rid themselves of. In a country with such natural resources as Ireland, can you believe it possible that if government by the people obtained there could be such conditions of unemployment and misery as you found? ”

“ His Sinn Fein beliefs had imprisoned him in his hotel, for his home was beyond the town and he would not ask the British military for a pass. Opposite the breakfast room we could see the drawn blue shades of Limerick's dry goods store. A woman staggered by with a burlap bag of coal on her shoulders. A donkey cart with a movie poster reading: "Working Under Order of the Strike Committee: GOD AND MAN," rolled past. A child hugging a pot of Easter lilies shuffled by. "There's no idea that the people want communism. There can't be. The people here are Catholics." ”

“ And in the path made by the heartily boohed motor lorries, the American's machine commenced its victorious passage to the Mansion House. In order to get through the crowd to the reception we sprang to the rear of the motor. Clinging to the dusty mudguard, I remarked to Miss Pankhurst that we would not look very partified. And she, pushed about by the tattered people, said she did not mind. Long ago she had decided she would never wear evening dresses because poor people never have them. ”

“ The sudden set of the president's jaw indicated that this man who had fought in the 1916 rebellion till even his enemies had praised him, was the man who had decided there would be no reception at the bridge. No. There would be no armed revolt till all peaceable methods had failed.
If Sinn Fein succeeded in getting separation, would it establish a bolshevistic government? DeValera returned that he was not sure what bolshevism is. As far as he understood bolshevism, Sinn Fein was not bolshevistic. But perhaps, by the way, bolshevism had been as misrepresented in the American press as Sinn Fein. ”

“ Driven by the war cost of living, Unionist and Protestant organized with Sinn Fein and Catholic workers, and together they obtained increased pay. Now they no longer want division. For they believe what the labor leaders have long preached: "Carsonism with its continuance of the ancient cries of 'No Popery!' and 'No Home Rule!' operates for the good of the rich mill owners and against the good of the workers. If the workers allow themselves to be divided on these scores, they can neither keep a union to get better wages nor elect men intent on securing industrial legislation. ”

“ THE REPUBLIC FIRST Labor agrees with Sinn Fein not only that Irish industry must be developed but also that Ireland must have independence. After the national war, the class war must come. First freedom from exploitation by capitalistic nations, and then freedom from capitalistic individuals. Many socialists, it is said, do not understand why Ireland should not plunge at once into the class war. It was a matter of regret to James Connolly that many of his fellow socialists the world over would never understand his participation in the rebellion of 1916. ”

“ He believed that the world is for the man who works in it, but in Ireland he saw seven-eighths of the people in the working class, and he knew that to these people life means crowded one-room homes, endless Fridays, no schools or virtually none, and churches where resignation is preached to them. So his life was a dangerous fight to organize workers that they might become strong enough to take what is theirs." At Liberty Hall, one is told that the martyr's name is magnetizing the masses into the Irish Labor party. ”

“ THE WORKERS' REPUBLIC Like the countess, the Irish Labor party wants a workers' republic. But it wants a republic first.
The Irish Labor party has been accused of accepting Russian roubles, of hiding bags of bolshevik gold in the basement of Liberty Hall. Whether it has taken Russian gold or not, it is frankly desirous of possessing the Russian form of government. James Connolly, who is largely responsible for the present Labor party in Ireland, was, like Lenin and Trotsky, a Marxian socialist, and worked for government by the proletariat. ”

“ The countess is a daughter of the Gore-Booth family which owned its Sligo estate before America was discovered. As a girl the countess used to ride fast horses like mad along the rocky western coast. Then she became a three-feathered débutante bowing at Dublin Castle. Later she painted pictures in Paris and married her handsome Pole. But one day some one put an Irish history in her hands. In a sudden whole-hearted conversion to the cause of the people, the countess turned to aid the Irish labor organizers. She drilled boy scouts for the Citizens' Army. ”

“ Here are two reasons advanced by the Vice-Regal Committee on Primary Education, Ireland, in its report published by His Majesty's Stationers, Dublin, 1919:
Many families are too poor.
England does not encourage Irish education.
Irish poverty is recognized in the school laws; the Irish Education act passed by Parliament in 1892 is full of excuses for children who must go to work instead of to school. Thousands of Irish youngsters must avail themselves of these excuses. Ireland has 64,000 children under the age of 14 at work. But Scotland with virtually the same population has only 37,500. ”

“ Labor organizer after labor organizer fought for the unity of the working people. But no sooner would such a speaker rise oft a platform than there would be calls from all parts of the house: 'Are ye a Sinn Feiner?', 'What's yer religion?' or 'Do ye vote unionist?' There was no way out. He had to declare himself. Then one or the other half of his audience would rise and leave. With low wages, of course, the workers could not get a perspective on their battle. They were prisoners in Belfast. They never had money enough even for the two-hour trip to Dublin. Rail rates are high. ”

“ If the workers are really wise they will 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. ”

“ Irish labor fosters the "one big union." In some towns all the labor, from teachers to dock-workers, have already coalesced. These unions select their district heads. The district heads are subsidiary to the general head in Dublin. When each union inside the big union is ready to take over its industry, and their district and general heads are ready to take over government there will be a general strike for this end. The strike will be supported by the army—the Citizens' Army of the workers. ”

“ The only regular income was $1.12 a week earned by the eldest girl, aged 16, in a factory. Owing to want of food and unhealthy surroundings, she was in so run down a condition that it seemed certain she would become tubercular if not at once removed."
The Irish wage can't buy the "good old diet." Milk and stirabout and potatoes once grew rosy-cheeked children. But bread and tea is the general diet now. War rations? Ireland was not put on war rations. To regulate the amount of butter and bacon per family would have been superfluous labor. Few families got even war rations. ”

“ Instead of migrating, a girl may marry. But her husband in most cases can't make enough money to support a family. To keep an average family of five, just going, on food alone, costs $370 a year. Some farm hands get only $100. An average unskilled worker obtains $260 a year. An organized unskilled worker receives $367, and an organized skilled worker, $539. Therefore, if a girl marries, she has not only to bear children but to go out to work beside. Their constant toil makes the women of Ireland something less than well-cared-for slaves.
Take the mother in Dublin. ”

“ CAUSE AND REMEDY OF SOCIAL CONDITIONS. The empire does not consider the cause of revolt. [1] But the republic is interested not only in the cause but also in the remedy.
Relief, the republic has said, must come through Sinn Fein—ourselves. Neither the Sinn Fein leaders nor the people believe in the power of the Irish vote in the British House of Commons. At the last general elections the Sinn Fein party pledged that if its members were elected they would not go to the British parliament, but would remain at home to form the Irish parliament, the governing body of the Irish republic. ”

“ The last two men had recently escaped from prison and were wanted by the police—both, as they say in Ireland, were "on the run."
"England kills Irish industry," said the succinct Arthur Griffith as he rose from the right hand of DeValera to address the delegates. "Early in the nineteenth century, England wanted a cheap meat supply center. She therefore made it more profitable for the landowners in Ireland to grow cattle instead of crops. Only a few herders are required in cattle care. ”

“ When we bring her plans that mean life or death to just villages, the matter is too small to discuss. She is bored.
"Ireland offers opposition in the person of the 'gombeen man.' He is the local trader and money lender. And co-operative buying and selling takes away his monopoly of business.
"Paddy Gallagher up in Dungloe in the Rosses will give you an idea of the poverty of the Irish countryside, of the extent that the poverty is due to the gombeen men, 'the bosses of the Rosses,' and of the ability of the co-operative society to develop and create industry even in such a locality. ”

“ The Irish wage must choose a tuberculosis incubator for a home. Ireland is a one-room-home country. In the great "rural slum" districts, the one-room cabin prevails. Country slums exist where homes cannot be supported by the land they are built on—they occur, for instance, in the rocky fields of Galway and Donegal and in the stripped bog lands of Sligo. Galway and Donegal cabins are made of stones wrested from the ground ”

“ In former years, however, they had much the same experience as we have in Ireland ... and it would be necessary to go back over twenty-five years to come to a point where the mortality from tuberculosis among women equalled that now obtaining with us. It would seem that the hardships associated with poor economic conditions—insufficient wages, bad housing and want of fresh air, good food and sufficient clothing—tell more heavily on the female than on the male, and with the march of progress and better conditions of living ... tuberculosis amongst women is automatically reduced. ”

“ I put the choice up to the table.
"If you haven't anybody of your own to live with," advised a husky-voiced, mufflered girl next me as she warmed her fingers about her mug of tea and regarded me from under her cotton velvet hat with some suspicion, "you should get the job living with the family. It takes five dollars a week to live by yourself." ”

“ He is a big-browed man with thick, pompadoured, gray hair, and the aspect of a live professor. Some people call him the coming leader of Ireland. In answer to my statement that it wouldn't be a very hard job to take over Irish industry, he smiled and said: "That's why we welcome the entrance of outside capital into Ireland. The more industry is developed, the less we will have to do afterward." ”

“ It rather welcomes the party that would push Irish industry. For with Irish industry developed Irish labor would become scarce and high. Already the British labor party has declared in favor of the self-determination of Ireland, and it is expected that with its accession to power there may be a final granting of self-determination to Ireland.
As we were leaving the Mansion House—to which some of us were invited to return to a reception for the delegates that evening—I found intense reaction to the speakers of the day. I asked a young American non-commissioned officer how he liked DeValera. ”

“ Indeed I had it from an Irish-American priest in Dublin that many of the Irish bishops were in a bad way, because neither the English government nor the people trusted them.
"Priest-ridden?" The bishop smiled. "Priest-ridden? England would like us to control these people for her today. We couldn't if we would. Priest-ridden? Perhaps the other way about."
The second reason, it was said, is due to the fact that the workers feel that the Church is standing with the capitalists. ”