What's the Matter with Ireland?

Excerpt

I

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH IRELAND?

OUT OF A JOB

Is Ireland poor? I decided to base my answer to that question on personal investigation. I dressed myself as a working girl—it is to the working class that seven-eighths of the Irish people belong—and in a week in the slums of Dublin I found that lack of employment is continually driving the people to migration, low-wage slavery, or acceptance of charity.

At the woman's employment bureau of the ministry of munitions, I discovered that 50,000 Irish boys and girls are annually sent to the English harvests, and that during the war there were 80,000 placements in the English munition factories.

"But I don't want to leave home," I heard a little ex-fusemaker say as we stood in queues at the chicken-wire hatch in the big bare room turned over by the ministry of munitions for the replacement of women who had worked on army supplies. Her voice trembled with the uncertainty of one who knew she could not dictate.

"Then you've got to be a servant," said the direct young woman at the hatch. "There's nothing left in Ireland but domestic jobs."

"Isn't—you told me there might be something in Belfast?"

"Linen mills are on part time now—no chance. There's only one place for good jobs now—that's across the channel."

The little girl bit her lip. She shook her head and went out the rear exit provided for ex-war workers. Together we splashed into the broken-bricked alley that was sloppy with melting spring sleet.

"Maybe she doesn't know everything," said the little girl, fingering a religious medal that shone beneath her brown muffler. "Maybe some one's dropped out. Let's say a prayer."

Through the cutting sleet we bent our way to Dublin's largest factory—a plant where 1,000 girls are employed at what are the best woman's wages in Dublin, $4.50 to $10 a week.

"You gotta be pretty brassy to ask for work here," said the little girl. "Everybody wants to work here. But you can't get anything unless you're b-brassy, can you?"

We entered a big-windowed, red-bricked factory, and in response to our timid application, a black-clad woman shook her head wearily. Down a puddly, straw-strewn lane we were blown to one of the factories next in size—a fifty to 100 hand factory is considered big in Dublin. The sign on the door was scrawled:

"No Hands Wanted."

But in the courage of companionship we mounted the black, narrow-treaded wooden stairs to a box-littered room where white-aproned girls were nailing candy containers together. While we waited for the manager to come out, we stood with bowed heads so that the sleet could pool off our hats, and through a big crack in the plank floor we could see hard red candies swirling below. Suddenly we heard a voice and looked up to see the ticking-aproned manager spluttering:

"Well, can't you read?"

Up in a loft-like, saw-dusty room where girls were stuffing dolls and daubing red paint on china cheeks, an excited manager declared he was losing his own job. The new woman's trade union league wanted him to pay more than one dollar a week to his girls....