What's The Matter With Ireland? Part 8

The H.C. of L. has done an extraordinary thing. It is the high cost of living that has caused the sickness and death of Carsonism. Carsonism is a synonym for the division of the Ulsterites by political and religious cries--there are 690,000 Catholics and 888,000 non-Catholics.[1]

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 h.e.l.l 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]

"Pay's not the only thing," continued Mr. Gordon. "Working condition's another. Go to the mills and see the wet spinners. The air of the room they work in is heavy with humidity. There are the women, waists open at the throat, sleeves rolled up, hair pulled back to prevent the irritation of loose ends on damp skins, bare feet on the cement floor. At noon they s.n.a.t.c.h up their shawls and rush home for a hurried lunch. It's not surprising that Dr. Bailie reported that poor working conditions were responsible for many premature births and many delicate children. Nor that the low pay of the workers made them easy prey to tuberculosis. He wrote that, as in previous years, consumption was most prevalent among the poor.[3]

"Why such pay and such working conditions?" asked Mr. Gordon. "Because before the war there were only 400 of us organized. Labor organizer after labor organizer fought for the unity of the working people. But no sooner would such a speaker rise oft a platform than there would be calls from all parts of the house: 'Are ye a Sinn Feiner?', 'What's yer religion?' or 'Do ye vote unionist?' There was no way out. He had to declare himself. Then one or the other half of his audience would rise and leave. With low wages, of course, the workers could not get a perspective on their battle. They were prisoners in Belfast. They never had money enough even for the two-hour trip to Dublin. Rail rates are high. Excursions almost unknown.

Then came the war. At that time wages were:

"Spinners and preparers, $3.00 a week.

"Weavers and winders, $3.08 a week.

"General laborers, $4.00 a week.

"But how much did it cost to feed a family of five? Seven dollars a week.

The workers had to get the difference. They couldn't without organization.

With hunger at their heels, they forgot prejudices. Catholics began to go to meetings in Orange halls. Protestants attended similar meetings in Hibernian a.s.sembly rooms; at a small town near Belfast there was a recent labor procession in which one-half of the band was Orange and the other half Hibernian, and yet there was perfect harmony. Other unions than ours were at work. For instance, the Irish Transport and General Workers' union began to gather men under the motto chosen from one of Thomas Davis' songs:

"Then let the orange lily be a badge, my patriot brother, The orange for you, the green for me, and each for one another.'

"What happened? Take our union for example. From 400 in 1914, the members.h.i.+p mounted to 40,000 in 1919--that is the number represented today in the Irish Textile Federation. With the growth in strength the federation made out its cost-of-living budget, and presented its case to the Linen Trade Employers. At last the federation succeeded in obtaining this rate:

"Spinners and preparers, $7.50 a week.

"Weavers and winders, $7.50 a week.

"General laborers, $10.00 a week."

But, say the leaders, there will always be chance of disunion until the political question is settled. Ulster labor decided to a.s.sist in that settlement. So it killed Carsonism. And now it is trying to lay the Carsonistic ghost.

This is the way labor killed Carsonism. I saw it done. I was in at the death. There was a parliamentary seat vacant in East Antrim. Carson, whose choice had hitherto been law, backed a Canadian named Major Moore. But labor put up a sort of Bull Moose candidate named Hanna. The Carsonists realized the issue. During the campaign they reiterated that Carsonism was to live or die by that vote. The dodgers for Major Moore ran:

East Antrim Election WHAT The Enemies of Unionism WANT The Return of Hanna WHY?

Because as _The Freeman's Journal_ of May 10, 1919, states: "IF HANNA WINS, HIS VICTORY WILL BE THE DEATH KNELL OF CARSONISM."

Are YOU going to be the one to bring this about?

VOTE SOLID FOR MOORE and show our enemies EAST ANTRIM STANDS BY CARSON

At the meetings the Carsonists continually stressed the point that this election meant more than the election or defeat of Moore. It meant the election or defeat of Carson and his ally, G.o.d.

"G.o.d in His goodness," declared a woman advocate at a meeting held for Moore at Carrickfergus, "has spared Sir Edward Carson to us, but the day may come when we will see ourselves without him, and I want to be sure that no one in Ulster will have caused him one pain or sorrow."[4]

"It is owing to Sir Edward Carson under Almighty G.o.d," stated D.M. Wilson, K.C., M.P., at a meeting at Whitehead, "that we have been saved from Home Rule, and the man that knows these things would rather that his right arm were paralyzed than be guilty of any act that would tend to weaken the work of Sir Edward Carson."[5]

"I am fully persuaded," added William Coote, M.P., at the same meeting, "that the great country of the gun running will never be false to its great leader."[6]

One evening near a stuccoed golf club at a cross roads in Upper Green Isle, with the v of the Belfast Lough s.h.i.+ning in the distance, I waited to hear Major Moore address a crowd of workers. As the buzzing little audience gathered, boys climbed up telegraph poles with the stickers "We Want Hanna," and a small, pale-faced man with a protruding jaw was the center of a political argument for Hanna. At last the brake arrived. The major, a tall, personable man, stood up in the cart. But all the good old Ulster rallying cries he used, seemed to miss fire.

"Sir Edward Carson's for me--"

"Stand on your own feet, Major Muir," interrupted a worker.

"Heart and soul, I'll fight Home Rule--"

"What aboot Canada, Major Muir?" The major did not reply as he had at a previous meeting at Carrickfergus that he hoped that the time would come when there would be a "truly imperial parliament in London--one that would represent not only the three kingdoms but the whole empire."[7] Instead he went on:

"The Unionist party stands for improved social legislation."

"What aboot old age pensions?" and "Why didn't the Unionist party vote for working-men's compensation, Major Muir?"

As he was preparing to drive away from the booing crowd, one of his supporters began to distribute dodgers. I had two in my hand when the small, pale-faced man with the jaw applied a match to them, and cried out as they flared in my hand:

"That's what we do with trash."

Who won? When the election returns were made public in June, they read: Major Moore, 7,549; Hanna, 8,714.

Laying the ghost of Carsonism by the permanent settlement of the Irish political question was attempted last spring. It was then that Ulster labor backed the rest of the Irish Labor party at Berne when it asked for the "free and absolute self-determination of each and every people in choosing the sovereignty under which they shall live."

THE SINN FEIN BABY IN BELFAST

The pacific endeavors of the high cost of living are greatly aided by the natural kindliness of the people. I think I have never met simpler charity to strangers. For instance, in the little matter of appealing for street directions, I found the shawled women and the pale men would go far out of their ways to put me on the right path. Even when I inquired for the home of Dennis McCullough, they looked at me quickly, said: "Oh, you mean the big Sinn Feiner"? and readily directed me to his home.

In the red brick home in the red brick row on the outskirts of the red brick town of Belfast, Mrs. Dennis McCullough, daughter of the south of Ireland, gave testimony that the goodheartedness of her neighbors prevails over their prejudice even in time of crisis. Her husband, a piano merchant, has been in some seven prisons for his political activities. He had told of plank beds, of food he could not eat, of the quelling of prison outbreaks by hosing the prisoners and then letting them lie in their wet clothes on cold floors. He had spoken of evading prison at one time by availing himself of the ancient privilege of "taking sanctuary": he went to the famous pilgrimage center of Lough Derg, and though no sanctuary law prevails, the military did not care or dare to violate the religious feelings of the inhabitants by seizing him there. And then he had told of the last time: before his last arrest he had taken great care not to provoke the authorities because Mrs. McCullough was about to give birth to her first child; but one evening when the couple and friends were seated about a quiet Sunday evening tea table, six constables entered and hurried him off to jail without even presenting a warrant. It was at this point that Mrs. McCullough gave her testimony:

"Our house is just a little island of Sinn Fein in this district. The neighbors knew my husband had been arrested. The papers told them that the arrests had been made in connection with that Jules Verne German submarine plot. But when my baby was born, my neighbors forgot everything but the fact that I was a human being who needed help. One neighbor came in to bake my bread; another to sweep my house; another to cook my meals. They were very good.

"Often at five o'clock, I watch the girls coming home from the mills. At six o'clock they eat supper. At seven the boys and girls walk out together, two by two." Mrs. McCullough laughed. "You know, I think that's all I have against the Ulsterites--there's nothing queer about them."

By the grate, Dennis McCullough held the baby in his arms with all the care one uses towards a treasure long withheld. His drawn white face was close to the dimpled cheeks.

The rank and file of the Belfastians, then, are joining the priests, co-operationists, labor unionists and Sinn Feiners in their fight for self-determination. For it is believed that as long as the Irish people, Irish or Scotch-Irish, remain under the domination of England, they will continue to suffer under exploitation by her capitalists. And the people of the north and the south are unanimous that English exploitation is what's the matter with Ireland.