ncreased
during the war, it has become almost impossible for Dublin laborers to get
a day's job. For the unemployed are flocking for the good wages from the
four fields of Ireland. On the days the man is out of work the woman must
go out to wash or "char." I understood these conditions better after I
spent a night in a typical one-room home in the dockers' quarters near the
Liffey.

Widow Hannan was my hostess. The widow is a strong, black-haired young
woman who took an active part in the rebellion of 1916, and whose husband
was killed fighting under James Connolly. We slept in the first floor
front. In with the widow lay her three children, and in the cot
catty-corner from the bed I was bunked. Just when the night air was
thinning to gray there was a shattering rap on the ground-level window. The
half-dressed young factory daughter clambered over the others and ripped
down the rain coat that served as a night-time window curtain. Against the
square-paned window was hunched a forward-shouldered woman.

As she was being beckoned to the door, I rose, and to do my hair had to
wedge myself in between the breakfast-table and the filmy mirror that hung
among the half-tone pictures of the rebels of 1916. On the iron mantel,
gray with coal dust, there was a family comb.

"God save all here," said the neighbor entering. "Mary, himself's had no
work for four days. Keep the young ones out of the grate for me. I've got
to go out washing."

"My sister-in-law has a husband and seven children to support," said the
widow in explanation to me. "During the war, he could do with her going out
just once in a while--now it's all the time." Then to the sister-in-law:
"I've a wash myself today."

The big shoes that must once have belonged to the visitor's man, hit the
floor loosely as she walked slowly out. Then as lodger I was given the only
chair at the breakfast-table. The mother and girl sat at a plank bench and
supped their tea from their saucerless cups. As there was no place else to
sit, the children took their bread and jam as they perched on the bed, and
when they finished, surreptitiously wiped their fingers on the
brown-covered hay mattress. Before we were through, they had run to the
street and back to warm their cold legs inside the fender till the floor
was tracked with mud from the street, ashes from the grate, and bits of
crumbled bread.

In the evening I heard the murmur of revolution. With the shawled mothers
who line