FROM THE BOTTOM UP
CHAPTER I[ToC]
BOYHOOD IN IRELAND
The world in which I first found myself was a world of hungry people.
My earliest sufferings were the sufferings of hunger—physical hunger. It was not an unusual sight to see the children of our neighbourhood scratching the offal in the dunghills and the gutterways for scraps of meat, vegetables, and refuse. Many times I have done it myself.
My father was a shoemaker; but something had gone wrong with the making of shoes. Improvements in machinery are pushed out into the commercial world, and explanations follow. A new shoemaker had arrived—a machine—and my father had to content himself with the mending of the work that the machine produced. It took him about ten years to find out what had happened to him.