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.

“You get too tired for school work.  How does your teacher like that?”

“Ash!  She can’t do anything.”

Intuitively he knows that he can protect himself behind the fortress of words in the school attendance act:  “A person shall not be deemed to have taken a child into his employment in contravention of this act if it is proved that the employment by reason of being during the hours when school is not in session does not interfere with the efficient elementary instruction of the child."[20]

Nine-year-old Patrick Gallagher may go to the Letterkenny Hiring Fair and sell his baby services to a farmer.  Some one may say to Paddy: 

“Why aren’t you at school?”

“Surely, I live over two miles away from school.”

The law thinks two miles are too far for him to walk.  So he may be hired to work instead.  Reads the education act:  “A person shall not be deemed to have taken a child into his employment in contravention of this act if it is proved to the satisfaction of the court that during the employment there is not within two miles ... from the residence of the child any ... school which the child can attend."[21]

Incidentally England does not encourage Irish education.  England does not provide enough money to erect the best schools nor to attract the best teachers.  But England agreed to an Irish education grant.[22] She established a central board of education in Ireland, and promised that through this board she would pay two-thirds of the school building bill and teachers’ salaries to any one who was zealous enough to erect a school.  Does England come through with the funds?  Not, says the vice-regal committee, unless she feels like it.  In 1900 she agreed with Ireland that Ireland’s teachers should be paid higher salaries, but stipulated that the increase in salaries would not mean an immediate increase in grants.