There's the revolutionary rub. The Irish farmers make up the largest body of workers in Ireland. The Irish farmer sweated and bled for his land. Would he yield it now for nationalization? I put the question up to William O'Brien, the lame, never-smiling tailor who is secretary of the Irish Labor party. He said that the farm hand should be taken into consideration.
The farm hand would profit by nationalization. At present he is condemned to slavery. At a hiring fair—called a "slave market" by the labor unions—he stands between the mooing cows and snorting pigs and offers his services for sale for as little as $100 a year. He may wish to get more money. But his employer is also very often his landlord. What happens? In the spring of 1919, 35,000 farm hands went on strike. Lord Bellew of Ballyragget and Lord Powerscourt of Enniskerry used the eviction threat to get the men back to work, and in Rhode, evictions actually took place.
The small farmer on bad land would profit by re-distribution. Many such live in the west and northwest of Ireland. Take a farmer of Donegal. There there's stony, boggy land. Fires must be built about the stones so that the soil will lose its grip upon them and they may be hauled away to help make fences. Immovable boulders are frequent, so frequent that the soil cannot be ploughed but must be spaded by hand. Seaweed for fertilizer must be plucked from the rocks in the sea, carried up the mountain side and laid black and thick in the sterile brown furrows. Near Dungloe in Donegal, one holding of 600 acres was recently valued at $10.50, and another of 400 at $3.70. So the Labor party is confident of bringing over the farmers to its point of view.
On the whole, it is said, the way of the labor propagandist is easy, for capital in Ireland is very weak. First, there is very little of it. In 1917 the total income tax of the British Isles was £300,000,000; Ireland with one-tenth the population contributed only one-fortieth of the tax. In the same year, the total excess profits tax was £290,000,000 and Ireland's proportion was slightly less than for the income tax.[4] Second, what capital there is, is not effectively organized. The first national commercial association is just forming in Dublin.
Whether the future prove the numerical strength of labor or not, the leaders are determined that labor will be organically strong. It is developing a pyramid form of government. Irish labor fosters the "one big union." In some towns all the labor, from teachers to dock-workers, have already coalesced. These unions select their district heads. The district heads are subsidiary to the general head in Dublin. When each union inside the big union is ready to take over its industry, and their district and general heads are ready to take over government there will be a general strike for this end. The strike will be supported by the army—the Citizens' Army of the workers.
"There you have," said James Connolly, who promoted the one big union, "not only the most effective combination for industrial warfare, but also for the social administration of the future."[5]
"Certainly we mean to take over industry by force if necessary," affirmed Thomas Johnson, treasurer of the Irish Labor party. He is a big-browed man with thick, pompadoured, gray hair, and the aspect of a live professor. Some people call him the coming leader of Ireland. In answer to my statement that it wouldn't be a very hard job to take over Irish industry, he smiled and said: "That's why we welcome the entrance of outside capital into Ireland. The more industry is developed, the less we will have to do afterward."
THE REPUBLIC FIRST
Labor agrees with Sinn Fein not only that Irish industry must be developed but also that Ireland must have independence. After the national war, the class war must come. First freedom from exploitation by capitalistic nations, and then freedom from capitalistic individuals. Many socialists, it is said, do not understand why Ireland should not plunge at once into the class war. It was a matter of regret to James Connolly that many of his fellow socialists the world over would never understand his participation in the rebellion of 1916. Nora Connolly, the smiling boy-like girl who smokes and works by a grate in Liberty Hall, says that on the eve of his execution, when he lay in bed with his leg shattered by a gun wound, her father said to her: "The socialists will never understand why I am here. They all forget I am an Irishman."
But James Connolly's fellow socialists in Ireland understand "why he was there," They back his participation in the national war. And they know every Irishman will. So they go to the workers and say: "Jim Connolly died to make Ireland free." Then while the workers cheer, they swiftly show why Connolly advocated the class war, too: "Jim Connolly lived to make Ireland free. He believed that the world is for the man who works in it, but in Ireland he saw seven-eighths of the people in the working class, and he knew that to these people life means crowded one-room homes, endless Fridays, no schools or virtually none, and churches where resignation is preached to them. So his life was a dangerous fight to organize workers that they might become strong enough to take what is theirs." At Liberty Hall, one is told that the martyr's name is magnetizing the masses into the Irish Labor party. And, in order to propagate his ideas, the people are contributing their coppers towards a fund for the permanent establishment of the James Connolly Labor College.