of many years' experience in this work.
An industry must have the same freedom of movement as an individual in
possession of all his powers. An industry divided against itself can
no more prosper than a household divided against itself. By the means
I have indicated the farmers can become the masters of their own
destinies, just as the urban workers can, I think, by steadfastly
applying the same principles, emancipate themselves. It is a battle in
which, as in all other battles, numbers and moral superiority united
are irresistible; and in the Irish struggle to create a true democracy
numbers and the power of moral ideas are with the insurgents.

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. T