What is migration in other countries is emigration with us, and the mind of the country, brooding over the dreary statistics of this perennial drain, naturally and longingly turns to schemes for the rehabilitation of rural life--the only life it knows.
We cannot exercise much direct influence upon the desire to emigrate beyond spreading knowledge as to the real conditions of life in America, for which home life in Ireland is often ignorantly bartered.[5] We cannot isolate the phenomenon of emigration and find a cure for it apart from the rest of the Irish Question.

We must recognise that emigration is but the chief symptom of a low national vitality, and that the first result of our efforts to stay the tide may increase the outflow.

We cannot fit the people to stay without fitting them to go.

Before we can keep the people at home we have got to construct a national life with, in the first place, a secure basis of physical comfort and decency.

This life must have a character, a dignity, an outlook of its own.