Mat O'Connor

Mat O'Connor is a canvasser for Richard J. Tierney in the Royal Exchange Ward election, but his appearance in the Wicklow Street Committee Room shows him suspended between campaign work and dependency: he has been hired to solicit votes, yet spends much of election day waiting indoors and hoping his employer will pay him. His sympathetic responses to Old Jack and agreement with Hynes place him within the scene’s debate about family authority, working-class dignity, and political opportunism, without giving him the power to resolve any of it.

Identity and Circumstances

Mat O'Connor is described as a grey-haired young man whose face is marked by numerous blotches and pimples. His awkward contrast of youth and premature greyness is echoed by his husky falsetto. He is not introduced through a public speech or a successful canvass, but through small, patient gestures: he forms tobacco into a cigarette, undoes the cylinder when someone addresses him, rolls it again, and then licks the paper. The unhurried repetition gives him a subdued presence in a room whose business is political persuasion.

On October 6, a dismal, cold day, O'Connor has been engaged by Tierney’s agent to canvass one part of the ward. Inclement weather and boots that let in water have kept him for much of the day beside the fire with Old Jack, the committee-room caretaker. The contrast between the election address soliciting votes and the canvasser waiting out the day indoors defines his limited practical role: he is employed to move through the ward, but the conditions of the day have left him sitting still.

Campaign Work and Dependence

The campaign’s printed appeal presents Tierney as a candidate seeking voters’ favour and influence. O'Connor’s connection to that appeal is labor rather than authorship: an agent has hired him to canvass, and the scene does not show him persuading voters or advancing the campaign. Instead, he asks Old Jack whether Tierney has said when he will return. The question makes the candidate’s absence a practical concern, not merely a matter of political visibility.

The committee-room conversation reveals the financial uncertainty behind the canvassing. When Hynes asks whether Tierney has paid him, O'Connor answers that he has not and voices the hope that Tierney will not leave them in the lurch that night. Hynes reassures him that payment will come, but the exchange leaves O'Connor dependent on a promise rather than money already received. His position therefore exposes a disparity within the election operation: a candidate’s name appears formally on the address, while the person doing the canvassing waits, cold and unpaid, for the employer to return.

Sympathy for Old Jack

As Old Jack tends the fire, O'Connor listens to his account of a son who drinks and speaks disrespectfully to him. Old Jack says he sent the boy to the Christian Brothers and tried to raise him decently; now, he laments, the son drinks away the money from each job and takes the upper hand when his father has had a drink. O'Connor responds by saying that such things ruin children. His remark is brief, but it gives Old Jack’s grievance immediate recognition rather than treating it as mere background talk.

O'Connor also asks the son’s age and suggests that Old Jack put him to work. The question and advice are practical, not a resolution: Old Jack has already said that he told his son to find a job, only to see him drink what he earned. When the older man falls silent and gazes into the fire, O'Connor shakes his head in sympathy. His support is real but limited; he can affirm the complaint, while the conversation offers no remedy for the household conflict.

Political Judgment and Narrative Role

Hynes’s arrival shifts the conversation from Old Jack’s family troubles to electoral politics. He challenges the contempt directed at Colgan because he is a working man, arguing that an honest bricklayer has as much right as a publican to serve on the Corporation, and perhaps a better claim than those who defer to anyone with a title. O'Connor answers that Hynes is right. The assent aligns him with the principle of working-class representation, even though he is currently canvassing for Tierney.

That alignment sharpens the scene’s irony. Hynes contrasts Colgan, who would represent labour, with Tierney, whom he says wants some job or other; meanwhile, O'Connor is waiting for Tierney to pay him for the work already done on Tierney’s behalf. The text does not present O'Connor as a campaign strategist or give him a developed political programme. Instead, his brief agreement and unpaid status make him a point of contact between political principle and the material arrangements of electioneering. He can recognize the force of Hynes’s criticism, but remains within the campaign whose candidate is its target.