Irish poverty is recognized in the school laws; the Irish Education act passed by Parliament in 1892 is full of excuses for children who must go to work instead of to school. Thousands of Irish youngsters must avail themselves of these excuses. Ireland has 64,000 children under the age of 14 at work. But Scotland with virtually the same population has only 37,500.[17]
Eight-year-old Michael Mallin drags kelp out of a rush basket and packs it down for fertilizer between the brown ridges of the little hand-spaded field in Donegal.
"Is there no school to be going to, Michael?"
"There do be a school, but to help my da' there is no one home but me."
The act says that the following is a "reasonable excuse for the non-attendance of a child, namely, … being engaged in necessary operations of husbandry."[18]
Ten-year-old Margaret Duncan can be found sitting hunched up on a doorstep in a back street in Belfast. Her skirt and the step are webbed with threads clipped from machine-embroidered linen, or pulled from handkerchiefs for hemstitching. A few doors away little Helen Keefe, all elbows, is scrubbing her front steps.
"But school's on."
"Aye," responds Margaret, "but our mothers need us."
The act plainly states that another reasonable excuse is "domestic necessity or other work requiring to be done at a particular time or season."[19]
William Brady has a twelve-hour day in Dublin. He's out in the morning at 5:30 to deliver papers. He's at school until three. He runs errands for the sweet shop till seven.