ed. The solution of the rural
problem embraces many spheres of national activity. It involves, as I
have already said, the further development of manufactures in Irish
towns. One of the best ways to stimulate our industries is to develop
the home market by means of an increased agricultural production, and a
higher standard of comfort among the peasant producers. We shall thus
be, so to speak, operating on consumption as well as on production, and
so increasing the home demand for Irish manufactures. Perhaps more
urgent than the creation or extension of manufactures on a larger scale
is the development of industries subsidiary to agriculture in the
country. This is generally admitted, and most people have a fair
knowledge of the wide and varied range of peasant industries in all
European countries where a prosperous peasantry exists. Nor is there
much difficulty in agreeing upon the main conditions to be satisfied in
the selection of the industries to meet the requirements of our case.
The men and boys require employment in the winter months, or they will
not stay, and the rural industries promoted should, as far as possible,
be those which allow of intermittent attention. The female members of
the family must have profitable and congenial employment. The
handicrafts to be promoted must be those which will give scope to the
native genius and aesthetic sense. But unless we can thus supply the
demand of the peasant-industry market with products of merit or
distinctiveness, we shall fail in competition with the hereditary skill
and old established trade of peasant proprietors which have solved this
part of the problem generations ago. This involves the vigorous
application of a class of instruction of which something will be said
in the proper place.

So far the rural industry problem, and the direction in which its
solution is to be found, are fairly clear. But there is one disadvantage
with which we have to reckon, and which for many other reasons besides
the one I am now immediately concerned with, we must seek to remove. A
community does not naturally or easily produce for export that for which
it has itself no use, taste, or desire. Whatever latent capacity for
artistic handicrafts the Irish peasant may possess, it is very rarely
that one finds any spontaneous attempt to give outward expression to the
inward aesthetic sense. And this brings me to a strange aspect of Irish
life to which I have often wished, on the prop