It must be remembered that, for reasons fully set out in the earlier portions of the book, I am treating the Irish Question as being, in its most important economic and social aspects, the problem of rural life.  The Department’s scheme of technical instruction, therefore, need not here be detailed in its application to the needs of our few manufacturing towns, but only in its application to agriculture and the subsidiary industries.  I do not suggest that the questions relating to the revival of industry in our large manufacturing centres and provincial towns are not of the first importance.  The local authorities in these places have eagerly come into the movement, and the Department has already taken part in founding, in our cities and larger towns, comprehensive schemes of technical education, as to the outcome of which we have every reason to be hopeful.  Not only that, but it is highly necessary for the Department to consider these schemes in close relation to its work upon the more specially rural problems, for, as I have said elsewhere,[48] the interdependence of town and country, and the establishment of proper relations between their systems of industry and education, is a prime factor in Irish prosperity.  But the rural problem, as I have so often reiterated, is the core of the Irish Question; and to deal at all adequately with technical education, so far as we carry it on upon lines common both to Great Britain and Ireland, would lead us too far afield on the present occasion.  I must, therefore, content myself with indicating my reasons for leaving it rather on one side, and pass on to a brief description of the Department’s educational work in respect of its two-fold aim of developing agriculture and the subsidiary industries.

In the case of agriculture our task is perfectly plain.  We know pretty well what we want to do, for we are dealing with an existing industry, and with known conditions.  The productivity of the soil, the demand of the market, the means of transport from the one to the other, are all easily ascertainable.  What most needs to be provided in Ireland is a much higher technical skill, a more advanced scientific and commercial knowledge, as applied to agricultural production and distribution.[49] This, in our belief, depends, more than upon any other agency, upon the soundness of the education which is provided to develop the capacities of those in charge of these operations.  Our chief difficulty is that of co-ordinating our teaching of technical agriculture with the general educational systems of the country—­a difficulty which the other educational authorities are all united with us in seeking to remove.