The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1916-09-09
PENN MUTUAL LIFE
8. A. STOcKWELL, GEN. ACT.
305 Andrus Bldg.
Phones: N. w. Mic. 1904, Cent. 1904
"See Stockwell Soon"

like the records we make today of
today's events.
Here is this late instruction in
Ireland, for instance. All the world
has agreed, in a lunkheaded, unques-
tioning way, to call it the Sim Fem
rebellion" and it wasn't anything of
| the kind.
We have all accepted the notion
that it was a political uprising, and
it wasn't.
We have all put it away with the
Fenian and 1889 Instructions; and it
was very different.
And we have all agreed that the
leaders, if they were not staring crazy,
must have been trying to make some
wild, passionate and wasted protest
against something; whereas that
wasn't at all the way of it.
Nothing in the whole story was like
what was printed about it, except the
fact that some of these leaders were
poets.
Eleven hundred men rose and seized
Dublin, and for eight days were prac.
tically masters of it, OF these only
800 belonged to the organization
called Sim Fein.
The whole thing was conceived,
planned and we'll OH its way before
any Slim Feiners had anything to do
with it; and when they came in they
came as individuals, and not as men,
bers of their society.
Sim Fein never looked for armed
revolt. Sim Fein means merely for
ourselves, and the object of the Sim
Fem society was to keep alive the
Irish language, push along Irish lit
erature, and build Irish industry. 1t
was committed to peaceful methods,
and wasn't like the Fenian societies.
Yet, l suppose, to the end Of time
this will be the "Sinn Fein rebellion"
and Sim Fein will be only another
name for violence. | wonder how
many other things in history are all
messed up like this.
The fact is, the revolt was labor
revolt, and at bottom it was nothing
else!
1t is astonishing; it is ugly, maybe;
and in the present condition of things
in Europe it is disturbing. Wise men
that know how precariously oven now
we are juggling on the slack wire
don't like to think of it.
But the cold. blunt fact remains
Just the same. 1t was at bottom a
revolt of labor. Workingmen and
their leaders took arms to overthrow
the existing system OF industry and
to establish labor republic
1t grow directly and surely out of
the great Dublin strike of 1913 and of
the way that strike was suppressed
/ Policemen with clubs and police
men i'll jaunting cars firing rifles into
the crowd put down that 1913 strike.
Some observers wrote then that every
SHOT planted the sure seed of future
trouble. Nobody needed these warn
lnSs and the seed continued to be
sown with enthusiasm
The melancholy ruins of Dublin's
business center and the truly. distress
ing state OF ireland today are parts
Of the harvest.
The clubs and rifles that put down
the great strike and forced the strik-
ers back to the old conditions drove
the strike leaders to think of a sys-
TEN in which the workers might have
the control of business, employment,
and the machinery of government in.
GLIDING police and guns. James Con-
nolly's papers contain worked. out
plan for organizing such system.
Every industry was to be organized
by its own workers. who We're to be
III sole and complete control of it.
Political divisions, like states, coun-
ties and wards were to be abolished.
me workers in each industry were
to choose representatives, and these
were to constitute the general gov
ernment
At time when all men of the least
vision or reflection can see close at
hand such appalling problems OF bust
ness. labor industry and life as the
world has not known nor dreamed of
when 2.50O.O0O armed workingmen
are soon to return to England and de-
mand work that they never can GET
persons aware of the foregoing facts
are not Keen about discussing them
in public.
a parliamentary commission came
over to Ireland to investigate the in.
surrection. Its conclusions have
never been laid before parliament for
debate. And this is why they have
not.
These are Earring facts. But there
is one that is still bigger.
Some of the London newspapers
are now printing most carefully pre-
pared articles on what shall be done
to keep out of the abyss that will
open the moment the war is over.
The London Times prints the best
OF these. its evidently inspired arti-
cles being written by some astute