If Belfast could once shake off
the memory of her immigrant origin, and look to Ireland rather than
Great Britain as her native country, she would perceive that the gain
of Catholic Ireland must be her gain also. Her prosperity can never be
sure or certain as long as it stands out against a background of Irish
poverty. The linen industry can never rest secure as long as there are
so few industries to support it. The linen merchants cannot really gain
by their isolation. Belfast at present has a great export trade. She
clothes Great Britain in fine linen. But what about her home trade?
Would not Belfast be even more prosperous if she could clothe Ireland
too?--if Ireland could afford to put aside her rags and replace them
with "purple and fine linen" from the factories of the North?
Might not Belfast, in that case, be able not merely to enrich her
merchants but to raise the social conditions of her own people? For it
is unhappily the case that the researches of the Women's Trade Unions
have disclosed in Belfast conditions of sweated labour that have
surprised and alarmed even the most hardened investigators. The lofty
buildings and humming mills of Belfast are revealed to be resting on a
swamp of social misery.
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