The good work began during the war.  Driven by the war cost of living, Unionist and Protestant organized with Sinn Fein and Catholic workers, and together they obtained increased pay.  Now they no longer want division.  For they believe what the labor leaders have long preached:  “Carsonism with its continuance of the ancient cries of ‘No Popery!’ and ‘No Home Rule!’ operates for the good of the rich mill owners and against the good of the workers.  If the workers allow themselves to be divided on these scores, they can neither keep a union to get better wages nor elect men intent on securing industrial legislation.  If the workers are really wise they will lay the Carson ghost by working with the south of Ireland towards a settlement of the political question.  Why not?  The workers of the north and south are bound by the tie of a common poverty.”

“All my life,” said Dawson Gordon, the Protestant president of the Irish Textile Federation, as we talked in the dark little union headquarters where shawled spinners and weavers were coming in with their big copper dues, “I have heard stories that were so much fuel on the prejudice pile.  When I was small, I believed anything I was told about the Catholics.  I remember this tale that my mother repeated to me as she said her grandmother had told it to her:  ’A neighbor of grandmother’s was alone in her cabin one night.  There was a knock at the door.  A Catholic woman begged for shelter.  The neighbor could not bear to turn her back into the night.  Then as there was only one bed, the two women shared it.  Next morning grandmother heard a moaning in the cabin.  On entering, she saw the neighbor lying alone on the bed, stabbed in the back.  The neighbor’s last words were:  “Never trust a Catholic!"’ As I grew a little older I found two other Protestant friends whose grandmothers had had the same experience.  And since I have been a labor organizer, I have run across Catholics who told the same story turned about.  So I began to think that there was a hell of a lot of great-grandmothers with stabbed friends—­almost too many for belief.

“But hysterical as they were, such stories served their purpose of division.”

From a schoolish-looking cupboard in the back of the room, Mr. Gordon extracted a much-thumbed pamphlet on the linen and jute industry, published after extended investigation by the United States in 1913.  Mr. Gordon turned to a certain page, and pointed a finger at a significant line which ran: 

“The wages of the linen workers in Ireland are the lowest received in any mills in the United Kingdom.”

Then Mr. Gordon added: 

“Another pre-war report by Dr. H. W. Bailie, chief medical officer of Belfast, commented on the low wage of the sweated home worker—­the report has since been suppressed.  I remember one woman he told about.  She embroidered 300 dots for a penny.  By working continuously all week she could just make $1.50.[2]