n. It is through such as Ellen that the
Irish Industries Organization Society in actual life accomplishes an
important part of its work.

In the first act of "The Crossroads" we find Ellen at home, in her old
peasant dress, having made the hens lay so well in winter as to arouse
wonder in a neighbor as to whether, "Is it right for hens to be laying
that way so early in the year?" A match is being made for her by her
mother with a man that has a good farm. Ellen desires the match very
much, for this is just the farm on which to try the new methods that
shall bring prosperity to the people of the valley and so stem the
emigration to America. She does not love Tom Dempsey, this strong
farmer, and she does half-love Brian Connor, whom she had known in
Dublin, but now that he has come down to ask her to marry him she
chooses the farmer, brutal though she knows him, because as his wife she
can do the work for Ireland that she has imagined for herself. The
loveless marriage, so universal an institution all over Ireland, made it
nothing out of the way for Ellen to act as she did, even though at the
time of the action of the play a higher ideal of marriage than that of
the old matchmaking had come in. It is this institution that Mr.
Robinson, from one point of view, might be thought to be attacking in
the play; it is this institution, certainly, that is the theme of the
play. Is it a tribute to Irishmen and Irishwomen to acknowledge that
this loveless marriage has worked on the whole as well as the marriage
of sentiment, or as the marriage of sexual infatuation, or as the
marriage of comrade hearts that we believe we have in America? As a
matter of fact there were not as many loveless marriages as might seem
at first thought. The match made up between the father of the girl and
the father of the boy was the usual sort of marriage among the
stay-at-home Irish girls and boys up to 1880, but how many girls and
boys for the past one hundred and fifty years have come to America to
escape it? Look up your family traditions, you who have Irish ancestors,
and find is it not true that these ancestors, whether Reeds of Down or
Nolans of Meath, fled to America because they would wed the mate of
their choice. Even to-day boys and girls come here from the same motive,
though of course it would be preposterous to deny that to many it is
rather Eldorado than the land of freedom.

Act II reveals poor Ellen seven years later. She has lost her t