It would be a bitter reproach on the household of our nation if there were any unconsidered, who were left in poverty and without hope and outside our brotherhood. We have not yet considered the agricultural laborer--the proletarian of the countryside. His is, in a sense, the most difficult problem of any. The basis of economic independence in his industry is the possession of land, and that is not readily to be obtained in Ireland. The earth does not upheave itself from beneath the sea and add new land to that already above water in response to our need for it. Yet I would not pass away from the rural laborer without, however inadequately, indicating some curves in his future evolution. These laborers are not in Ireland half so numerous as farmers, for it is a country of small holdings, where the farmer and his family are themselves laborers. Labor is badly paid, and, owing to the lack of continuous cropping of the land, it is often left without employment at seasons when employment is most needed. No class which is taken up today and dropped tomorrow will in modern times remain long in a country. Employers often act as if they thought labor could be taken up and laid down again like a pipe and tobacco. None have contributed so to thicken the horde of Irish exiles as the rural laborers. Three hundred thousand of them in less than my lifetime have left the fields of Ireland for the factories of the new world. Yet I can only rejoice if Irishmen, who are badly dealt with in their motherland, find an ampler life and a more prosperous career in another land. A wage of ten or eleven shillings a week will bind none but the unaspiring lout to his country. But I would like to make Ireland a land which, because of the human kindness in it, few would willingly leave. The agricultural proletarian, like all other labor, should be organized in a national union. That is bound to come. But the agricultural laborer should, I think, no more than labor in the cities, make the raising of wages his main or only object. He should rather strive to make himself economically independent; or, in the alternative, seek for status by integration into the co-operative communities of farmers by becoming a member, and by pressing for permanent employment by the community rather than casual employment by the individual. Agricultural labor undoubtedly will have to struggle for better remuneration. Yet it has to be remembered that agriculture is a protean industry. It is not like mining, where the colliery produces coal and nothing but coal, and where the miners have a practical monopoly of supply. If miners are dissatisfied with wages and are well organized they can enforce their terms, and the colliery owners may almost be indifferent, because they can charge the increased cost of working to the public. But agriculture, as I said, is protean and changes its forms perpetually. If tillage does not pay this year, next year the farmer may have his land in grass.