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8 John W. Boyle A Marginal Figure: The Irish Rural Laborer In 1894 a writer in the Lyceum observed that two groups in Irish society could not be ignored or forgotten: the farmer, since "our own prosperity " was bound up with his, and the "sturdy organised artisan," who was quick to rebel when aggrieved. "But of the unskilled agricultural labourer in Ireland," he declared, "comparatively little is heard."l There was much truth in this statement, as the woes of the tenant farmer had obscured those of the farm worker, for whom nothing had been done until the modest beginning made with the laborers' act of 1883. The charge of neglect could also be leveled against historians. Long engaged with political issues or with the struggle for the land and its political repercussions, they gave but a passing mention to what was once the most numerous class in rural society. Publications by Lee, Donnelly, Hoppen, Bew, and Clark have paid greater attention to the fortunes of the laborer and his diminishing importance in the Irish economy,2 Lee Some of the material in this article appeared in my Thomas Davis lecture, "The rural labourer," broadcast by Radio Eireann in 1957. The lecture was published in Threshold, iii, no. 1 (Spring 1959). 1. Lyceum, vii, no. 77 (Feb. 1894), p. 100. 2. Joseph Lee, The modernisation of Irish society, 1848-1918 (Dublin, 1973), pp. 92-3; J. S. Donnelly, Jr., The land and the people of nineteenth-century Cork: the rural economy and the land question (London and Boston, 1975), passim, but especially chap. 5; K. T. Hoppen, "Landlords, society, and electoral politics in mid-nineteenth-century Ireland " in Past & Present, no. 75 (May 1977), pp. 63-5, 92; Paul Bew, Land and the national question in Ireland, 1858-82 (Dublin, 1978), pp. 42-3, 142-3, 164, 170, 174-5, 185-6; Samuel Clark, Social origins of the Irish land war (Princeton, 1979), passim, but especially pp. 36-7, 113-19, 249-52, 374-5. 311 312 CHANGING LINES OF CLEAVAGE AND COHESION going so far as to assert that the dispersal and elimination of the only genuine Irish proletariat were set in motion during the great famine at midcentury.3 The rural proletarian still awaits his Gibbon, but when he appears, he will be greatly aided by the statistical data assembled and analyzed by Fitzpatrick in his recent article, "The disappearance of the Irish agricultural labourer, 1841-1912."4 An approximate indication of the numerical decrease is given by the Irish census returns. Between 1841 and 1901 the male population aged fifteen and over fell, in round numbers, from 2,400,000 to 1,500,000, a decline of slightly under 38 percent in sixty years, while the number of rural laborers decreased by 73 percent, from 1,100,000 to 295,000.5 Since the census authorities were plagued with problems of occupational classification- they had not completely overcome them even in 1901- the figures for laborers, especially those in the earlier returns, must be regarded with some skepticism. The line of demarcation was less than clear between those who could maintain themselves from the yield of their own holdings and those who gained much of their livelihood by working for others. Were "assisting relatives," frequently the sons of small farmers , to be classed as farmers or as farm workers when they might spend more time elsewhere than on the family holding? How many of the general laborers should have been assigned to agriculture? How many returned as farm workers, or even as farmers, worked as navvies or unskilled assistants in the building trades for much of the year? And what 3. Joseph Lee, "Irish agriculture" in Agricultural History Review, xvii, pt. i (1969), p. 65. Professor Lee's actual words are: "The small farmers, and especially the labourers - the real rural proletariat - were decimated by the famine, The rural proletariat was not so much transformed as buried, The majority of the rural bourgeoisie had always been bourgeoisie, who now flourished on the graves of the proletariat," 4. David Fitzpatrick, "The disappearance of the Irish agricultural labourer, 18411912 " in Irish Economic and Social History, vii (1980), pp. 66-92. 5. W. E. Vaughan and A. J. Fitzpatrick (ed.), Irish historical statistics: population, 1821-1971 (Dublin, 1978), pp. 75-8,89. The exact figures are 2,432,119 and 1,512,548. Navy and military personnel serving in Ireland were not included in the census returns for 1841 or...

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