What's the Matter with Ireland?

Ruth Russell walks Dublin's streets in working clothes to learn what a search for employment means for Irish women. Her account follows visits to employment offices, factories and a working girls' home, where low wages and scarce jobs push women toward work across the channel. Conversations, wage figures and descriptions of crowded housing connect the political question of Irish independence with the daily cost of food and shelter.

Published in 1920, What's the Matter with Ireland? presents Russell's sympathetic view of the republican cause and the social changes its supporters seek. Its chapters take up Sinn Fein, labor, the cooperative movement, the Catholic Church and Belfast. A scene at Liberty Hall brings readers into a public welcome for a countess returning from prison, followed by calls for a workers' republic. Read today, this short work offers a journalist's close observations of poverty alongside the arguments linking national government with economic reform.