workings of
Providence, that I was able to battle and plan and accomplish solid
work for the amelioration of the labourers' lot.

When Mr William O'Brien was labouring for the wretched "congests" in
the West and founding the United Irish League to make the great final
onslaught on the ramparts of landlordism, a few of us in the South
were engaged unpretentiously but earnestly to get houses and
allotments for the agricultural labourers, and to provide them with
work on the roads during the winter months when they could not labour
on the land. Ten years previously we had laid the foundations of what
we hoped would be a widespread national movement for the regeneration
of the working classes. The founder of that movement was the late Mr
P.J. Neilan, of Kanturk, a man of eminent talent and of a great heart
that throbbed with sympathy for the sufferings of the workers. I was
then a schoolboy, with a youthful yearning of my own towards the poor
and the needy, and I joined the new movement. Two others--the one John
D. O'Shea, a local painter, and the other John L. O'Shea, a carman
(the similarity of their names often led to amusing mistakes)--with
some humble town workers, formed the working vanguard of the new
movement, what I might term a sort of apostolate of rural democracy.
Our organisation was first known as the Kanturk Trade and Labour
Association. As we carried our flag, audaciously enough, as it seemed
in those days, to neighbouring villages and towns, we enlarged our
title, and now came to be known as "the Duhallow Trade and Labour
Association." I was then trying some 'prentice flights in journalism
and I managed to get reports of our meetings into the Cork Press, with
the result that demands for our evangelistic services began to flow in
upon us from Kerry and Limerick and Tipperary. But, even as we grew
and waxed stronger we still, with rather jealous exclusiveness, called
ourselves "the parent branch" in Kanturk. We are, by the way, a very
proud people down there, proud of our old town and our old barony,
which has produced some names distinguished in Irish history, such as
John Philpot Curran, Barry Yelverton and the adored _fiancee_ of
Robert Emmet.

In time we interested Michael Davitt in our movement, and we achieved
the glorious summit of our ambitions when we got him to preside at a
great Convention of our Labour branches in Cork, where we formally
launched the movement on a national basis under the title