“16th of June, 1881.“On demand we jointly and severally, or any two of us, promise to pay Messrs. Kelly & Co., limited, Patrick Street, Cork, or order, the sum of £10, for value received.“David Smith.“Michael McBride.”
“16th of June, 1881.
“On demand we jointly and severally, or any two of us, promise to pay Messrs. Kelly & Co., limited, Patrick Street, Cork, or order, the sum of £10, for value received.
“David Smith.“Michael McBride.”
McBride added that he supposed that he signed “a thousand a year,” and lost as “often as I have hairs on my head.” On the above note for ten pounds the borrower was to pay ten shillings interest and sixpence other charges for the use of the money for three months, which is over twenty per cent. annually.
He said that of private bankers and money-lenders at exorbitant rates there are twenty in Cork, some of them pawnbrokers. In various towns there are many poor people who pawn their clothing on Monday and redeem it on Saturday.
McBride said that the great cause of the present embarrassment is the three bad years of 1877, 1878, and 1879. Oats, wheat, barley, and potatoes were bad. Some oat-fields were never cut. McBride said that seventy per cent. of the farmers around Cork are unable to pay their debts, and would be bankrupt if forced to do so. They would need three good harvests to bring them up. “They will never pay the same rents again. Theircondition is owing to high rents, bad harvests, and American competition.”
After leaving the county Cork I spent a few days in Dublin. From persons on the train thither and in that city I obtained information concerning other portions of Ireland. To this I add the testimony of an Irish gentleman well known in politics, whom I met in London.
A young man from the county of Limerick said that that county is all pasture. Not more than forty per cent. of the farmers in his neighborhood could afford to save hay and straw and feed cattle in winter for manure. Farms average from forty to fifty acres, some being as small as ten. He knew one man who farmed over three hundred acres, and paid three pounds and five shillings per acre therefor. He had two or three acres in potatoes, and the same in oats, but all the rest in pasture.
“Can he make money?” I asked.
“Not these late years,” he replied. “He is served with an ejectment because he can’t pay his rent.”
None of our farmers will be surprised that a man cannot make money on grass-land at a rent of about sixteen dollars per acre.
Another passenger, who was from Tipperary, said that, with few exceptions, the farmers of that county can keep cattle in winter and keep up their farms. Take the whole of Ireland, however, and farm-lands are deteriorating in value. In Tipperary and Limerick lies “the Golden Vale,” celebrated for its fertility. I had an impression that Tipperary was wild and riotous. In London I spoke to the political gentleman above alluded to, who knew the county well. In politics he is not inunity with Parnell, and is opposed to the Land League; but not, if we may judge by his conversation, to sanguinary measures.
“Tipperary,” said he, “has not of late suffered so much as some other districts. Thirty or forty years ago the farmers were entirely at the mercy of their landlords. They took the law into their own hands and fought for their farms, shooting down the landlords or their agents. Many of them were hanged or transported. The land bill of 1870,” he continued, “extended to all Ireland, restrains the landlord from evicting tenants without leases, unless paying them for their improvements.” He says that the present trouble is caused mainly by landlords demanding increased rents.
My intelligent fellow-traveller from the county Tipperary further said that the provisions of the proposed land bill, by which the tenant is to hold his land as long as he pays his rent, will do away with all abuses. The Three F’s of the land bill are: First, Free sale,—that is, the tenant is to have the privilege of selling his right in the farm; second, Fixity of tenure; and, third, Fair rent, to be determined by a court.
I remarked that this third F is against the free operation of trade; that everything should be sold at its value in the market. “No one puts such restrictions upon trade as you Americans,” he replied.
When I arrived at Dublin I lodged at two different temperance houses. In one I met a plain man from the county Galway, in the west. He kept a shop, and was a dealer in hides. He traded from town to town. He said that his priest and bishop were good men, and that young boys and girls were signing the pledge. Of thefarmers of Galway he estimated that seventy per cent. are unable to pay their rent unless they sell horse, cow, and calves; and even then they would be left in debt to the shopkeeper. He complained greatly of the recent coercion act, under which, he says, worthy citizens are apprehended or are in danger.
One fellow-lodger was a Methodist minister from the county Fermanagh, in the north. He had been attending the Cork Conference. He complained of the increase of luxury among farmers in buying tea and bread and in the clothing of their daughters, and spoke of their spending two days a week at market, and five or six shillings each time in treating each other.
“But your congregations are not of this class?” I said.
“Indeed they are,” he answered. “There are plenty in my congregation who come home tipsy every market night.”
He afterward took out change and called for a bottle of ale. They sent out and got it for him.
I was much interested in the conversation of two men who were dining at the house. One of them, a young man, said that the three F’s would not satisfy the Land-Leaguers. They wanted the extermination of the landlords and the possession of the land. The other did not agree with him. He said, “It would be a nice thing for you to be paying two pounds and ten shillings for land, and a Land-Leaguer over the fence be getting it for half the money. I am an Orangeman,” he added, “and the son of an Orangeman, and the grandson of an Orangeman, yet I am greatly in sympathy with the poor, suffering tenantry of this country.”
He said of himself that he had been in the army nine years; that he was a landlord in a small way, five or six hundred pounds a year; and that he was now lying out of rents. Rather than disturb tenants he had paid as high as ten per cent. for money, and “glad to get it at that.” He was originally from the county Cavan, northwest of Dublin. He said that the average size of farms there is about twelve acres. Some have thirty. About twenty per cent. of the farmers own horses. Many keep donkeys, but these are unfit for farming. They put out manure with jennets, which are not fit for ploughing. The poor farmer must wait until the richer one has done ploughing so as to hire horses, and then the land is ploughed shallow and injured. Both speakers were agreed on the trouble of hiring horses. You must pay ten shillings a day for a pair, feed them and the ploughman, and give him several glasses of whiskey, added one. If you have cash in hand, you can get horses when you will; but the small farmer cannot pay until he has harvested his crop. He generally pays labor in exchange for horses.
A suggestion that the British government should buy the lands of Ireland, rent them for the space of thirty years, and that the people should then become possessors, met with some favor. The Irish politician whom I met in London found two objections to this plan: First, that it would take from the country the cultivated class; and, second, that for thirty years it would drain the country of money.