the big farming and grazier classes who, by devious dodges, known to all, were able to make very comfortable incomes out of them.  We insisted—­and after some exemplary displays of a resolute physical force we carried our point—­that in the case of the main roads, particularly, these should be worked under the system known as “direct labour”—­that is, by the county and deputy surveyors directly employing the labourers on them and paying them a decent living wage.  In this way we removed at one stroke the black shadow of want that troubled their winters and made these dark months a horror for them and their families.  But we had still to remove the mud-wall cabins and the foetid dens in the villages and towns in which families were huddled together anyhow, and in our effort to bring about this most necessary of social reforms we received little or no assistance from public men or popular movements.  We were left to our own unaided resources and our own persistent agitation.  As I have already stated, I was elected Member of Parliament for Mid-Cork on the death of Dr Tanner in 1901, and Mr O’Shee had been previously elected for West Waterford, but not strictly on the Land and Labour platform as I was.  Nevertheless, we heartily co-operated in and out of Parliament in making the Labour organisation a real and vital force, and our relations for many useful years, as I am happy to think, were of the most cordial and kindly character.

In the Land Purchase Act of 1903 Mr Wyndham included a few insignificant clauses bearing on the labourer’s grievances, but dropped them on the suggestion of Mr O’Brien, to whom he gave an undertaking at the same time to bring in a comprehensive Labourers’ Bill in the succeeding session.  When that session came Mr Wyndham had, however, other fish to fry.  The Irish Party and the Orange gang were howling for his head, and his days of useful service in Ireland were reduced to nothingness.  Meanwhile we kept pressing our demands as energetically as we could on the public notice, but we were systematically boycotted in the Press and by the Nationalist leaders until a happy circumstance changed the whole outlook for us.  It was our custom to invite to all our great Labour demonstrations the various Nationalist leaders, without any regard to their differences of opinion on the main national issue.  The way we looked at it was this—­that we wanted the support of all parties in Ireland, Unionist as well as Nationalist, for our programme, which was of a purely non-partisan character, and we were ready to welcome support from any quarter whence it came.

Our invitations were, however, sent out in vain until, on Mr O’Brien’s re-election for Cork in October 1904, a delegation from the Land and Labour Association approached him and requested him to come upon our platform and to specifically advocate the labourers’ claims, now long overdue.  Without any hesitation, nay, even with a readiness which made his acceptance of our request doubly gracious, Mr O’Brien replied that now that the tenants’ question was on the high road to a settlement he considered that the labourers had next call on the national energies and that, for his part, he would hold himself at our disposal.