Excerpt from Economics for Irishmen

This is less an academic treatise than an attempt to show why Ireland goes out of existence as a nation, and its data are derived from direct observation of actual life and its conditions rather than from books or from party propaganda. In some ways the economic position of Ireland is unique, and requires the economist to work in the field and in the workshop rather than in the study.

The critic will find the substance of the argument in Chapters XII. and XIII., but if some of the conclusions seem strange, it may be well to see whether these are not fully supported by the facts in the previous chapters. Unless the nation is to die out wholly, we must face truths that are as yet strange or new to us in Ireland, and there can hardly be a greater cause of decay than the fear of the people to discuss some of its main causes.

The plan of the work is for three little volumes, on Production, Distribution and Consumption, but with publishers asking for the first, I have decided not to defer its appearance for the completion of the other two. Hence the omission here of such questions as Transit, which had better be discussed under "Distribution, " and such questions as Taxation, which properly come under the head of "Consumption."

As an economist, one must be concerned with the common good, as affected by Wealth and Industry, and it has been my aim to present the matter from a completely detached standpoint, uninfluenced by any of the sectional prejudices that help to keep the people of Ireland divided and poor and weak. We waste life quarrelling about our decay, let us rather study its causes and seek to overcome it.

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