Farming with a Pen 3 



mind into any industrial direction whatever? The 

 mechanism is left to waste the energy as if at the 

 will of the winds, and this is the case of Ireland. 



It is now the winter season, which provides its 

 own work on the farm, but while I write these 

 chapters for their benefit, the peasants of Con- 

 naught around me, at least three-fourths of them, 

 spend their nights and days in dancing, visiting 

 and exclusively idling in one way or another, while 

 the children in the schools, under teachers brought 

 up in the same degrading atmosphere, are qualify- 

 ing, at the nation's expense, to make themselves 

 thoroughly useless, like their elders, unless as raw 

 material for export to build up more sane 

 communities abroad. For the rest, consult the 

 statistics and see the pitiful use which the Irish 

 make of their incomparable opportunities. The 

 seat of failure is in the industrial psychology at 

 home, not in the breed of people, who prove them- 

 selves fit for anything after they leave Ireland. 



What, then, are the local forces which derange 

 the mental mechanism and keep the industrial 

 department of the Irish mind unfit to support 

 progressive life in its own country ? Up to our 

 time, it has been explained on directly political 

 grounds, but the last serious disability of this 

 kind disappeared long ago, and the industrial 

 incapacity remains. We must go deeper than this 

 for the causes of our national failure. The 

 following chapters attempt to present the mental 

 factor in the problem, as revealed in our farming, 

 and, in addition, I give a good deal of space to 



