The National Being · Chapter
VII explained
This chapter addresses the plight of the agricultural laborer in Ireland, proposing cooperative organization and collective farming as solutions to poverty, emigration, and rural decay.
What happens
This chapter addresses the plight of the agricultural laborer in Ireland, proposing cooperative organization and collective farming as solutions to poverty, emigration, and rural decay. It argues for integrating laborers into cooperative communities to achieve economic independence and a true rural civilization.
Themes in this chapter
Cooperative Economics and Rural Community
The chapter extensively discusses organizing agricultural laborers into cooperative societies and collective farming as a path to economic independence and community solidarity.
Emigration and Rural Decay
The narrator notes that 300,000 rural laborers have emigrated due to low wages and lack of opportunity, and warns of continued flight without reform.
Critique of Individualism and Materialism
The chapter criticizes urban civilization as a 'nightmare' and emphasizes the need for communal life over individualistic, materialistic society.
Characters to notice
- Unknown Narrator
The narrator reflects on the condition of agricultural laborers and advocates for cooperative reform.
Key passages
“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.”
Rural laborers have been the largest group among Irish emigrants, with 300,000 leaving for factories abroad in the narrator's lifetime.
Highlights the scale of emigration due to poor rural conditions.
“The agricultural proletarian, like all other labor, should be organized in a national union. That is bound to come.”
Agricultural laborers must be organized into a national union, which is inevitable.
Advocates for unionization as a necessary step.
“The creation of a rural civilization is the greatest need of our time.”
Building a rural-based civilization is the most urgent priority today.
Central thesis of the chapter.