The Irish Labor party has been accused of accepting Russian roubles, of hiding bags of bolshevik gold in the basement of Liberty Hall.  Whether it has taken Russian gold or not, it is frankly desirous of possessing the Russian form of government.  James Connolly, who is largely responsible for the present Labor party in Ireland, was, like Lenin and Trotsky, a Marxian socialist, and worked for government by the proletariat.  The Irish Labor party celebrated the Russian revolution by calling a “bolshevik” meeting and cheering under a red flag in the assembly room of the Mansion House.  And in its last congress, it reaffirmed its “adherence to the principles of freedom, democracy, and peace enunciated in the Russian revolution.”

How strong are the revolutionaries?  The Irish Labor party is new but it already contains about 300,000 members.[1] It plans to include every worker from the “white collar” to the “muffler” labor.  And the laborers alone make up seven-eighths of the population.  For while there are just 252,000 members of the professional and commercial classes, there are 4,137,000 who are in agricultural, industrial and indefinite classes[2]—­most of the farmers are held to be laborers because outside the great estates, holdings average at thirty acres and are worked by the holders themselves.[3]

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.