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Title: What's the Matter with Ireland?

Author: Ruth Russell

Release Date: April 15, 2004 [EBook #12033]

Language: English

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What's the Matter with Ireland?

By Ruth Russell

1920

TO MY MOTHER

CONTENTS

I. WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH IRELAND II. SINN FEIN AND REVOLUTION III. IRISH LABOR AND CLASS REVOLUTION IV. AE'S PEACEFUL REVOLUTION V. THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND COMMUNISM VI. WHAT ABOUT BELFAST?

ELECTED GOVERNMENT OF THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND (AMERICAN DELEGATION)

January 29, 1920.

Miss Ruth' Russell, Chicago, Illinois.

Dear Miss Russell:

  I have read the advance copy of your book, "What's the Matter with
  Ireland?", with much interest.

  I congratulate you on the rapidity with which you succeeded in
  understanding Irish conditions and grasped the Irish viewpoint.

I hope your book will be widely read. Your first chapter will be instructive to those who have been deceived by the recent cry of Irish prosperity. Cries of this sort are echoed without thought as to their truth, and gain credence as they pass from mouth to mouth. I hope we shall have many more impartial investigators, such as you, who will take the trouble to see things for themselves first hand, and who will not be imposed upon by half-truths.

  Having visited Ireland, I feel you cannot doubt that the poet was
  right—

    "There never was a nation yet
    Could rule another well."

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?

Do you not think that if the elected Government of the Republic were left unhampered by foreign usurpation, we might in the coming years hope to rival the boast of Lord Clare in 1798:

    "There is not a nation on the face of the habitable globe which has
    advanced in cultivation, in manufactures, with the same rapidity in
    the same period as Ireland—from 1782 to 1798."

and that progress like this, with the present social outlook in Ireland, would mean the peace, contentment and happiness of millions of human beings?

Yours very truly,

(Signed) EÁMON DE VALÉRA.

FOREWORD

"And tell us what is the matter with Ireland."

This was the last injunction a fellow journalist, propagandized into testy impatience with Ireland, gave me before I sailed for that bit of Europe which lies closest to America.

It became perfectly obvious that Ireland was poor; poor to ignorance, poor to starvation, poor to insanity and death. And that the cause of her poverty is her exploitation by the world capitalist next door to her.

In Ireland there is no disagreement as to the cause of her poverty. There is very little difference as to the best remedy—three-fourths of Ireland have expressed their belief that the country can live only as a republic. Even the two great forces in Ireland that are said to be for the status quo, I found in active sympathy with the republican cause. In the Catholic Church the young priests are eager workers for Sinn Fein, and in Ulster the laborers are backing their leaders in a plea for self-determination. But there are, of course, those who say that a republic is not enough. In the cities where poverty is blackest, there are those who state that the new republic must be a workers' republic. In the villages and country places where the co-operative movement is growing strong, there are those who believe that the new republic must be a co-operative commonwealth.

I

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH IRELAND?

OUT OF A JOB

Is Ireland poor? I decided to base my answer to that question on personal investigation. I dressed myself as a working girl—it is to the working class that seven-eighths of the Irish people belong—and in a week in the slums of Dublin I found that lack of employment is continually driving the people to migration, low-wage slavery, or acceptance of charity.

At the woman's employment bureau of the ministry of munitions, I discovered that 50,000 Irish boys and girls are annually sent to the English harvests, and that during the war there were 80,000 placements in the English munition factories.

"But I don't want to leave home," I heard a little ex-fusemaker say as we stood in queues at the chicken-wire hatch in the big bare room turned over by the ministry of munitions for the replacement of women who had worked on army supplies. Her voice trembled with the uncertainty of one who knew she could not dictate.

"Then you've got to be a servant," said the direct young woman at the hatch. "There's nothing left in Ireland but domestic jobs."

"Isn't—you told me there might be something in Belfast?"

"Linen mills are on part time now—no chance. There's only one place for good jobs now—that's across the channel."

The little girl bit her lip. She shook her head and went out the rear exit provided for ex-war workers. Together we splashed into the broken-bricked alley that was sloppy with melting spring sleet.

"Maybe she doesn't know everything," said the little girl, fingering a religious medal that shone beneath her brown muffler. "Maybe some one's dropped out. Let's say a prayer."

Through the cutting sleet we bent our way to Dublin's largest factory—a plant where 1,000 girls are employed at what are the best woman's wages in Dublin, $4.50 to $10 a week.

"You gotta be pretty brassy to ask for work here," said the little girl. "Everybody wants to work here. But you can't get anything unless you're b-brassy, can you?"

We entered a big-windowed, red-bricked factory, and in response to our timid application, a black-clad woman shook her head wearily. Down a puddly, straw-strewn lane we were blown to one of the factories next in size—a fifty to 100 hand factory is considered big in Dublin. The sign on the door was scrawled:

"No Hands Wanted."

But in the courage of companionship we