  We present results suggesting that magnetic monopoles can account for chiral
symmetry breaking in abelian gauge theory. Full U(1) configurations from a
lattice simulation are factorized into magnetic monopole and photon
contributions. The expectation <psibarpsi> is computed using the monopole
configurations and compared to results for the full U(1) configurations. It is
shown that excellent agreement between the two values of <psibarpsi> is
obtained if the effect of photons, which "dress" the composite operator
psibarpsi, is included. This can be estimated independently by measurements of
the physical fermion mass in the photon background.
