Excerpt from The Irish Labor Movement: From the 'Twenties to Our Own Day In sooth to ignore the Gaelic element in the survey generally is to leave the story of Irish Labor in the last hundred years less than a half told tale. On a broad view we might well re gard that story, till the later stages at all events, as a painful and often a lamentable record. Con nolly has spoken of a Via Dolorosa extending through three centuries. For the Irish toilers the last of the three might seem in some respects thedrabbest of all drab in general, with, at several stages, the terrible excitement of tragedy. That View is to a large extent true, But it is not all the truth. The Gaelic workers, who were numerous in all the provinces in the first half of the nine teenth century, had a Vivid interior life of their own, and unless we realize and understand that life we have only a superficial knowledge of their real position and history. Granted that for generations, through the absence of regular edu cation and of the merest elements of fair play in other regards, the minds of the Gaelic toilers had ceased to grow or to be really creative, the fact remains that they retained an enlivening share of the traditional lore and culture; of romance and poetry, of song and racy wisdom. The story is the same from Iveragh to Oriel, from Ring to Donegal. All these quarters just mentioned, long into the nineteenth century and in a measure to our own time - were centers of Irish poetical and other mental cultivation; the poet and the story-teller in homely pride of place and honor. Their history, like that of many kindred quarters, has both charm and pathos; and if it were widely known, if it had seized the popular imagination, as some day it surely will, we would all have a deeper, a more human conception of hosts of Irish workers who have gone before us. There would be not a little of glorious pride and sorrow inour minds as we looked back to their days and destinies. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.