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. The agricultural
proletarian, like all other labor, should be organized in a national
union. That is bound to come. But the agricultural laborer should, I
think, no more than labor in the cities, make the raising of wages his
main or only object. He should rather strive to make himself
economically independent; or, in the alternative, seek for status by
integration into the co-operative communities of farmers by becoming a
member, and by pressing for permanent employment by the community rather
than casual employment by the individual. Agricultural labor
undoubtedly will have to struggle for better remuneration.
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