A voluntary organizing body like the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, which was the first to attempt the cooperative organization of farmers in these islands, is the only kind of body which can pursue its work fearlessly, unhampered by alien interests. The moment such a body declares its aims, its declaration automatically separates the sheep from the goats, and its enemies are outside and not inside. The organizing body should be the heart and centre of the farmers’ movement, and if the heart has its allegiance divided, its work will be poor and ineffectual, and very soon the farmers will fall away from it to follow more single-hearted leaders. No trades union would admit representatives of capitalist employers on its committee, and no organization of farmers should allow alien or opposing interest on their councils to clog the machine or betray the cause. This is the best advice I can give reformers. It is the result of many years’ experience in this work. An industry must have the same freedom of movement as an individual in possession of all his powers. An industry divided against itself can no more prosper than a household divided against itself. By the means I have indicated the farmers can become the masters of their own destinies, just as the urban workers can, I think, by steadfastly applying the same principles, emancipate themselves. It is a battle in which, as in all other battles, numbers and moral superiority united are irresistible; and in the Irish struggle to create a true democracy numbers and the power of moral ideas are with the insurgents.
VII
It would be a bitter reproach on the household of our nation if there were any unconsidered, who were left in poverty and without hope and outside our brotherhood. We have not yet considered the agricultural laborer—the proletarian of the countryside. His is, in a sense, the most difficult problem of any. The basis of economic independence in his industry is the possession of land, and that is not readily to be obtained in Ireland. The earth does not upheave itself from beneath the sea and add new land to that already above water in response to our need for it. Yet I would not pass away from the rural laborer without, however inadequately, indicating some curves in his future evolution. These laborers are not in Ireland half so numerous as farmers, for it is a country of small holdings, where the farmer and his family are themselves laborers. Labor is badly paid, and, owing to the lack of continuous cropping of the land, it is often left without employment at seasons when employment is most needed. No class which is taken up today and dropped tomorrow will in modern times remain long in a country. Employers often act as if they thought labor could be taken up and laid down again like a pipe and tobacco. None have contributed so to thicken the horde of Irish exiles as the rural laborers. 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 cooperative 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. Yet it has to be remembered that agriculture is a protean industry. It is not like mining, where the colliery produces coal and nothing but coal, and where the miners have a practical monopoly of supply. If miners are dissatisfied with wages and are well organized they can enforce their terms, and the colliery owners may almost be indifferent, because they can charge the increased cost of working to the public. But agriculture, as I said, is protean and changes its forms perpetually. If tillage does not pay this year, next year the farmer may have his land in grass. He reverts to the cheapest methods of farming when prices are low, or labor asks a wage which the farmer believes it would be unprofitable to pay. In this way pressure on the farmer for extra wages might result in two men being employed to herd cows where a dozen men were previously employed at tillage. The farmer cannot easily—as the mine-owner—unload his burden on the general public by the increase of prices. There are many difficulties, which seem almost insoluble, if we propose to ourselves to integrate the rural laborer into the general economic life of the country by making him a partner in the industry he works on. But what I hope for most is first that the natural evolution of the rural community, and the concentration of individual manufacture, purchase and sale, into communal enterprises, will lead to a very large cooperative ownership of expensive machinery, which will necessitate the communal employment of labor. If this takes place, as I hope it will, the rural laborer, instead of being a manual worker using primitive implements, will have the status of a skilled mechanic employed permanently by a cooperative community. He should be a member of
