IRISH FARMERS.
In 1881 I spent four weeks in Ireland, principally in the south, in the county Cork. Desiring to learn the condition of the farmer who himself follows the plough, I inquired among various classes of people. I boarded four days with a farmer, and about as long at a castle; down in the southwest I talked with a citizen who had been boycotted; travelling third-class on railways, I conversed with other passengers; in Dublin with fellow-boarders; in London with a prominent Irish politician. Of these interviews I took notes, so that I am not obliged to depend alone on memory for my simple story. I try to give conversations, but must allow the reader to draw inferences.
For many years I have known farmers living in comfort and accumulating property by the labor of their own hands upon their own soil. Such are Quaker farmers in Chester County and “Pennsylvania Dutch” in Lancaster. In Ireland I wished to visit a similar class. But I found no one who owns the land he ploughs, or ploughs that which he owns.
I was assured in Philadelphia by persons knowing Ireland that I could not find the house of a working farmer in which I would be willing to live. This discouragedme, but by means of introductions from two or three young women hying at domestic service, I obtained a good opening into the land. One gave me a letter to her confessor in Cork, whom we will call the “Riverend Lawrence O’Byrne.” I found him intelligent and genial; in person rather tall and thin but with a color in his cheek. He was at a loss to recommend me to any working farmer’s house, saying that I should live on potatoes and skimmed milk; but I thought that I could live so for some days if those people did all their lives.
In further conversation, Mr. O’Byrne lamented the degradation caused by liquor, and declared that the bulk of the Irish people cannot be induced to take any interest in lyceums or intellectual culture.
Nearly thus he described to me the aim of the farmers in the present agitation. It is fifty years or more since Griffith, an agent of the English government, made a valuation of Irish lands. Since then rents have risen in some cases one hundred per cent., and the Land League is trying to reduce them to Griffith’s valuation.
When tenants are evicted, others are forbidden to take them at the price demanded, and the evicted are supported by contributions to the Land League. I myself call it an agricultural strike.
Mr. O’Byrne says that there is much competition in renting farms, no other business being open to the people. This confirms the opinion of a publisher in Philadelphia, who had attributed the state of Irish affairs to the want of manufactures.
Mr. O’Byrne kindly made inquiry for me, and I founda farmer willing to take a boarder. To see him I went by rail to a certain station. Near by I entered a humble dwelling, where a man was working at his trade, besides being a petty government officer. He talked pleasantly on Irish affairs, and said that some landlords have granted a reduction in rent of twenty-five per cent. I repeated what an editor in New York had said of the present condition of Irish affairs,—that bad harvests, the competition of American beef and mutton, and the consequent decrease in the value of real estate had made the farmers unable to pay their rent.
The Irishman admitted that American meat is much cheaper than theirs, but said that it had not brought down the price of their own. He said that four or five landlords and agents had been killed; at this a woman present smiled; and a man added that it is a pity there were not more. This was the only sanguinary remark that I heard a poor Irishman make.
At the railroad station the train from the west was behind time, and the agent suspected disturbances. When it came it was mostly filled with soldiers, who called out for water; but who reported no immediate disturbance. At this station I was met by the farmer and his wife with whom I was to lodge, who took me home in their cart. I call him Maurice Collins. He was not very poor for an Irish cultivator. He was doubtless considered quite fortunate in owning a horse and cart, even if the cart had no box and no seats, but was simply a bed or frame. Upon it lay a great bag of corn-meal, upon which sat Mrs. Collins and myself. I steadied myself down-hill with one arm at her waist, while my right hand grasped a projection of the cart. I expressedsurprise at the number of ruined and abandoned dwellings, for we were within ten miles of one of the largest towns in Ireland. Collins said that farms once separate have been thrown together. When the population of a country falls thirty-seven per cent. in about thirty-four years, or from over eight millions to about five, it is not strange that abandoned houses are found when built like these, of stone. Dwellings of mud and straw are more readily demolished. Collins’s house was on rather a sterile hill. To reach it we rose above the lower and more fertile ground. On our arrival a chair was brought out to enable us to alight from the cart. On entering the house we were followed by a young man, who staggered under the weight of the great five-bushel sack on which we had sat in the wagon.
There were twelve in the family,—six boys, one girl at home and one away, the old aunt, and the domestic. The living room had an uneven floor of earth. Within the front door stood the slop-barrel. A dresser of dishes stood on the left, and beyond it there was a red-painted, two-storied hen-coop. A hen and chickens occupied the lower story, and a setting hen the upper one. A second door faced the front door. It generally stood open, discovering a little muddy yard. A great settle or couch of wood stood on the same side of the room. Beyond it, on a low seat, sat a little fair, weak-eyed old woman, the aunt. She sat beside a small fire on the hearth, holding the baby. With her left hand she turned a crank and wheel, which by some invisible agency created an underground draught to kindle the fire. The fire was generally of coals. It bore no proportion to the fireplace, which occupied a large part of the third side of the room.I saw the girl hang over the fire a large Dutch oven, called here a bastible. It was a round iron vessel with a lid. On its top she kindled a fire of furze, and hung the bastible to bake the large cake within, made of flour not fully screened, sour milk, and soda.
At nightfall the barefooted little ones gathered to the blaze, although it was in the month of June. The babe in arms was Tim, the three-year-old Norah, and the five-year-old, in trousers surmounted by a red woollen frock and blue apron, was Dennis. At one end of the long fireplace stood the heavy cradle. A steep staircase, almost like a ladder with a railing, led to the rooms above, for this house, roofed with slate instead of thatch, had a loft with a board floor. Wet weather makes the uneven earthen floors inconvenient. The water gathers in little pools. The door to my room was at the foot of the staircase. There were only two apartments on the ground-floor.
The fourth side of the apartment was lighted by a small window and the doorway through which we entered the house. There were only two windows down-stairs, one in this room and one in mine. They were little iron-barred windows. I thought that they might be taxed, but I was mistaken. Collins told me that the glass came from England. They used to have glass-manufactories in this country.
I had taken tea before my arrival, and Mrs. Collins gave me some milk. She and her husband had been to Cork, where, she said, they had a cup of tea and a penny bun at a baker’s. (The penny is about two cents.) In the evening we had a good talk. I commented on the nice hen-house standing in the corner, and Mrs. Collinstold me that they had lost several chickens by the fox. “And do you still have foxes in Ireland?” I asked, in some surprise.
“We do,” she replied.
“And that is what the gentlemen hunt?”
“It is,” she said.
“And can you kill the foxes?” I inquired.
“No, ma’am,” was the reply.
This I afterward thought must be an error, as foxes are vermin; but a gentleman born in the north of Ireland has told me that they would be evicted for killing foxes. Sometimes hunting clubs pay for poultry killed by foxes.
In the evening I spoke of the sun’s setting so late and our being so far north, and asked the eldest son, a youth of fourteen, whether he had studied geography. He said he had, but his mother told me that he had been obliged to leave school at eleven, and her manner seemed sad and disapproving. There are no free schools in Ireland like ours. The poorest citizens need not pay in the national schools, but others must. A gentleman in Dublin, who publishes a school journal, told me that he doubted whether these schools would ever become entirely free to the public, like those in my own State. He had never heard that such a movement was contemplated.
In further conversation Mrs. Collins told me that they had lost seven cows in eighteen months, and that they were nearly broken down. They had to incur some debt to replace them, and they must meet the rent or be thrown upon the world. Their lease would expire in about six years. Do not these misfortunes make themdwell very near to the Divine Father, in humble submission and prayer?
About ten o’clock in the evening the wooden table was put before the fireplace. The old aunt had gone to bed. Collins was in one end of the fireplace, a boy asleep in the other, and the eldest slept on the settle. Mrs. Collins made tea and put a bowl of white sugar on the table. She told me that sugar cost about five cents a pound (two and a halfpence). They cut pieces off of the great cake baked in the Dutch oven, and ate their supper without any of the precious butter, which must go to market. Little Norah had given a low laugh when her mother handed her a bit of warm cake without anything spread on it. Mr. and Mrs. Collins had milk in their tea. The tea cost about forty cents a pound. Collins helped himself quite freely to the cheap and nutritious sugar, one of the blessings which the poor man owes to free trade.
Collins and his wife gave up their own room to me. It was the other room on the ground-floor. It also had an earthen floor, with perhaps the addition of a little cement, but it was not level. There I slept, and here were set my simple meals, more luxurious, however, than their own. Some of the dishes were of china, which belonged to Collins’s grandmother. I had plenty of milk, eggs, butter, tea, and baker’s bread. They gave me goat’s milk, richer than cow’s milk, for tea. For me especially Mrs. Collins procured meat, a bit of jowl, but I am not partial to it. They did not, however, go to the extravagance of eating it themselves. I was told of a farmer’s family who had jowl and cabbage for a Sunday dinner. A watch was set for theagent, lest, seeing such evidences of prosperity, he might raise the rent. Collins and his wife seldom ate meat. He told me that he had two eggs in the morning and the mistress one. They raised turkeys. Twenty-four were running with one hen. The servant fed them with a mixture of nettles, corn mush, and thick milk, but she said they scarcely ever ate a turkey even at Christmas.
In the morning, at breakfast, Mrs. Collins had some cold mush or stirabout cut up and boiled in sheep’s milk. This saved bread and tea. I observed one day within the back door, and by the chicken-coop, a little trough with corn-meal. There seemed to be always food there. The chickens came in and helped themselves. Seeing a fowl eating, I said to the aunt, “That rooster ought to be fat.” She did not understand me, and I tried again:
“That cock ought to be fat, he eats so much.”
“He do ate a dale, God bless him,” she said. She meant “prosper him,” I think. Some neighbors visited the family one morning, and from my room I heard earnest talk. They spoke of the rumored arrest of Father Murphy, which had caused much excitement. One man came in who was full of talk of the Cork races on the preceding day. At first, Mrs. Collins allowed him to think that they were present, but they went to sell butter, and did not go to the race-ground.
The girl swept the earthen floor with a bunch of twigs without a handle. I mention these little things to show the poverty of the country. They had no almanacs at Collins’s and no clock, except a Connecticut one, which did not run. Collins once intimated that it was painful to have such a poor harness for his horse.
One day I walked over to the school. I passed a house licensed to sell beer and spirits to be drunk on the premises. It was whitewashed, and looked better than most of the farm-houses. The boys told me that tea and sugar could be bought there. Bread was sold, but I could buy no sticks of candy for the children. A carpenter-shop and a blacksmith’s forge stood near this public-house, but I saw no country stores like ours at home.
The Collins family carried water some distance uphill from a spring. This part of the country is supplied from springs. They had excellent roads, apparently macadamized, and free from tolls. When I spoke in Cork of the great cost of such roads I was told that they were probably made after the famine, when the government gave laborers employment. The roads, however, seemed deserted. Once I saw a man on horseback, and occasionally market carts were seen, but of plain carriages, like those of the farmers in Eastern Pennsylvania, I remember none. Poverty hangs like a cloud over the land. Yet the people seem honest. The servant-girl at Collins’s said to me, “Nothing do ever be taken.” I wished to know whether it was safe to leave my towels to dry on furze bushes near the road. Afterward, in a gentleman’s house,—a gentleman who lived in a disturbed section, and whose tenants were not paying rent,—I was told that they would not be afraid to have plate in the house; the people there were honest.
Collins and his wife were trying to better their condition by going to a market-town and buying butter, which she brought home and reworked and packed into firkins to sell in Cork. This consumed so much of their timethat it was hard for me to see much profit in it. They may have received five dollars a week more than the butter cost them. Mrs. Collins was pleased in telling me of one firkin or tub that brought the highest market price. But during their absence the elder boys were left alone at the farm-work. Nor did I see the great pressure of labor found among our Pennsylvania German farmers. This may be in part owing to open winters in Ireland, which enable the former to work the year round, in part to the fact that the patient, ox-like labor of the German is not a trait of the Irishman, and partly to a national disregard of time, producing such a proverb as “Hours were made for slaves.” When I apologized for having talked so long to a poor man and his wife, she answered, “Sure, many a year we’ll rest in the grave.” Calling on my friend Collins and his wife before I left the county, I found they had gone with their horse to the funeral of a much-respected neighbor, and as they were so long absent, had doubtless accompanied the funeral to the place of interment, twenty miles. A manufacturer in the county Cork said that the Irish girls in the mills are not greedy enough. They would rather have less wages and more play. They were not indolent, but a bit of fun would call them off. A Quaker lady in Cork said to me, “None of the Irish are thrifty. They do not value their time.” And afterward, “They are a thrifty people in the north. They make use of their time.” She herself was born in Ireland, but when she spoke of the Irish she did not mean to include herself. When any one called the Irish lazy, I replied that they did not seem so in America. They left their temperate climate, came to our country,and constructed railroads under our broiling suns. I heard in Ireland that girls who go to America say, “If we had worked as hard in Ireland as we do in America, we would have been well off there.”
I spoke of Mr. and Mrs. Collins’s drinking tea at supper. Once when they were absent, Mary, the servant, came into my room to hide the teapot, lest the boys should want sugar and bread.
“What do you give them for dinner?” I asked.
“Stirabout and new milk,” she replied.
“Potatoes?” I suggested.
“They do not care about potatoes,” she said.
Our corn-meal, among its many other Irish uses, seems likely to supersede the national dish. What a change since 1847, the year of the potato famine! This family used Indian meal because it was cheaper than oatmeal, but they did not like it so well. As for the inferior animals, they occasionally give horses corn-meal, but generally feed them in winter on oats, turnips, bran, and hay. Indian meal and bran are fed to cows with young calves. To pigs corn-meal is given the year round, occasionally adding a few boiled potatoes, the sortings. They are fattened on meal and sour milk when it can be spared. Poultry abounds here, and Ireland exports large quantities of eggs. I never saw corn-meal at home stand so constantly in the chicken-trough as at Collins’s.
I have said that the domestic came into my room to hide the teapot. The cup which cheers but not inebriates is in immense demand here. The old aunt wanted tea. The children worried the girl for tea. The beggar-woman insisted on tea. The three-year-old Norah saysshe has a pain and wants tea. It might be a very happy thing for Ireland if the people would confine themselves to such cups as these; but, while all other manufactures are languishing in the county Cork, malt liquor and whiskey distilleries are flourishing. (However, Scotland, a Quaker told me, excelled Ireland in regular drinking.) As to what constitutes moderate drinking, I was amused by the remarks of a girl in Cork. Speaking of young men, she said that she did not object to a bottle of porter at dinner and one in the evening, but seven or eight bottles a day she thought gluttony and a sin. Porter, however, is not dear. On draught it sells at about eight cents the quart imperial. Whiskey is quite another thing. I hear that the tax on a gallon is twelve shillings and ninepence, or about three dollars. It has been said that Ireland pays more for liquor than for rent; yet estimates given me show that while over nine millions of pounds sterling are spent yearly on intoxicating drink, the rent of the country amounts to thirteen million pounds. Let no one jump to the conclusion that it is the working farmers who expend this great amount, for doubtless the small landlords are great consumers.
Distillers and brewers are great men in such a country. I heard of several celebrated Protestant churches indebted to them for funds. A distiller gave twenty thousand pounds and a brewer ten thousand pounds to assist in building or renewing an Episcopal cathedral in Cork. It is said to have cost Guinness, the great brewer, two hundred thousand pounds to remodel St. Patrick’s Episcopal Church in Dublin and to build the appurtenant houses. And a distiller gave a great sum to repair Christ Church in the same city.
To return to my farmer, Collins, in whose house I saw no intoxicating liquor drunk. He rented seventy acres, of which twenty were bog, nearly worthless; the peat for burning being all cut from the bog land in this neighborhood. (Nor is the county Cork, taken altogether, a rich agricultural tract. Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary, 1837, gave the acreage at about one million seven hundred thousand, of which about seven hundred thousand acres were bog and mountain.)
Collins’s lease was for thirty-one years, of which six remained. He has built the part of the house in which we live, having slate-roofed it. He has also built a stone stable and a small dairy, with slate roofs. The landlord gave him almost nothing toward these improvements, not even the flooring of the loft. The stone Collins got off the place. When he came here the walls of the fields were mostly of clay or mud, and he has built stone ones. In this neighborhood the walls are mostly built of stone. In some cases they are covered with earth, and grass and other plants are growing on them. “These walls,” I said to him, “must take up a great deal of room. That one beside your house is a yard across the top.”
I have given Collins’s rent at about one hundred and seventy dollars for seventy acres. Land sold in fee simple, apparently a rare thing, generally brings twenty times the annual rental. Yet, as a lawyer in Cork informed me, the average value here now, under present depressing circumstances, is not over seventy-five dollars per acre.
I have spoken of some of Collins’s land as of inferior quality. His report of its produce, I therefore infer, isabove the average crop. He says that on this land wheat ought to bring fifteen hundred-weight per acre, the hundred-weight of one hundred and twelve pounds. (This is twenty-eight bushels, which would be considered a fair crop in the wheat-growing region of Pennsylvania.)
Collins says that on land of best quality in good years wheat is expected to bring twenty-five hundred-weight. On his own land oats frequently brings fourteen hundred-weight to the acre, or about forty-three bushels. This land produces about one and one-half tons of hay, and better land about two tons per acre. A patch of potatoes is called a potato-garden, even if it contain several acres. The manner in which potatoes are planted was strange to my eye. The land is laid out in beds about four feet wide. Between those beds are deep trenches one and a half feet wide. These beds or ridges are made by turning six sods in with the plough. There are four rows of potatoes to a bed. These are hand-weeded, and never hoed. The people manure as heavily as they can for potatoes; and then, without additional manure, put the land into wheat. Barn-yard, guano, and artificial manures are used. On Collins’s soil potatoes turn out about five tons to the acre, or about one hundred and eighty-six bushels. Potatoes have degenerated in Ireland; but of late a new kind, the Champion, has encouraged the people much. At an exposition in Cork in 1880, some farmers claimed to have raised from thirteen to fifteen tons per acre, or about five hundred bushels. Turnips are manured, sowed in drills or rows in May and June, thinned, hoed, and hand-weeded. They turn out twelve tons to the acre. Two men canfork out an acre in a day, and two men can top an acre a day, leaving the tops on the ground.
Domestic animals sell high for food. Beeves sometimes weigh thirteen and fourteen hundred-weight, and bring about three pounds per hundred-weight. Good fat calves of three months sell for five pounds. Fat sheep, weighing dressed about one hundred and twenty pounds, will bring three pounds, or near fifteen dollars. Mrs. Collins had an exceptional pig, supposed to be a fine bacon pig, lean and fat well mixed, or a “ribbon” pig. (An Irishman is said to have fed his pig one day and starved him the next, that there might be a streak of fat and streak of lean.) That pig of Mrs. Collins’s weighed when dressed one hundred and eighty-two pounds, and she got four pounds and ten shillings for it, or about twenty cents a pound. In view of such prices the saying of my Cork landlady is not strange: “May the Lord of heaven spare us the American meat! It keeps the market within our reach.”
Fruit did not seem plentiful in the county Cork. “The children would pluck gooseberries,” was a reason given for not having them. A certain priest was supposed to have strawberries and gooseberries in his garden, but probably fruit-loving children did not disturb those of his reverence. When a retired lawyer took me into his garden he unlocked the gate. He had cut down an old orchard and would not plant another, because the neighboring children would get at the fruit. Thus, the saying of the domestic, “Nothing do ever be taken,” does not seem to apply to fruit.
I had several conversations with Collins. He freelyexpressed his disapproval or dislike of the British government. Working farmers rarely or never subscribe for a paper, but often buy one at a market-town. Collins had got one in Cork, and wished me to see a speech in it. He said that it alluded to a manufacturer at Blarney who took a prize at our Centennial.
“What would you think,” said Collins, “when people manufactured goods that they could not send them right off from here to market, but must send them to Liverpool, and have them unloaded and carted there, and then sent back, causing that expense? Would you think that was just?”
“That is not so now?” I asked.
“Indeed it is; that manufacturer’s goods must all be sent that way; and would you think that was justice?”
“It is pretty hard on him,” I answered.
“And is it justice?” he insisted. “You shall have the paper and read the speech.”
In Cork I called to see Mr. Mahony, the manufacturer referred to, who told me that there is no government regulation to hamper their manufactures in any way. It is doubtless a matter of convenience to ship from a great port like Liverpool, vessels not caring to stop and take on small quantities at Queenstown.[167]
As Collins, his wife, and I were riding on the cart, going to the market-town for butter, I asked whether he expected that there would be a time when there would be no rents to pay. He answered that he did not.
“I understood you to say the other evening that you did,” I continued.
“No,” he replied; “there has been a proposition for the government to take the lands, and the people to pay rent for thirty years——”
“And then the land be theirs?” I interrupted.
“Yes” he answered; “but they will never grant that. More moderate things they have refused. All we want is reduced rents, as the people can no longer pay high ones.”
On our return journey I had an admirable opportunity to talk with him as he walked by the wagon. I had called on a magistrate in the market-town, a Protestant gentleman, who had seemed very ignorant or uncommunicative. He had, however, suggested over-population as a reason for the condition of Irish affairs. This magistrate bore a military title. I handed to him the introduction given me at Cork by the “Riverend Lawrence O’Byrne.” Collins had suggested an officer of the market as suitable to introduce me. But I was in haste, and carried the letter. The magistrate said that he did not know the person. “No,” said Collins, on my return, “you were wrong in two things. You said you were from Philadelphia, and they are afraid of the Americans, or do not like them, and Father O’Byrne is not their kind of man.”
I told Collins that some papers in America had said that their magistrates should be elected, as with us in some States. He replied that they are appointed from the aristocracy, the land-holding class, and, of course, in cases of dispute between landlords and tenants, their sympathies are with their own class.
“If you were in America we should say that your head is level,” I said; but I had to interpret the slang.
“There has been a change in Ireland,” he added, “within some years. Formerly the wealthy classes and the learned could makejupesof the Irish people, but of late years there has been more education, and the people see things differently. Ireland was a dark country before the Catholic emancipation. Before the passage of that act no Catholic could hold office in this country. Now many places are open to them in the excise and elsewhere.”
Collins intimated that the English are wrong in fearing the Catholic priests, for they counsel the people to peaceful measures, and they are the only persons who have sufficient authority over them to quiet them down. I spoke of Father Murphy and of priests who had presided at Land-League meetings.
“Yes,” said Collins, “when peaceful measures were advised.”
I replied that the government would not trust them because it thought that the people might become excited and burst from the priests’ control, and because they feared that the priests might deceive them. The remark did not please Collins. He said that the people were excited at the report of Father Murphy’s arrest because they are so united to their priests. “One is already in prison,” he said, “Father Sheehey; and many meetings have been held to petition the government to release him and other leaders of the Land-League movement.”
In a disturbed region in another part of the county Cork I was told of a priest who had refused to join theLeague. The members would not send their children to the national school under his supervision, and the people thus opposed to him did not call him Canon Desmond, but only Desmond. On the other hand, I was told of two influential priests lately sent out of Cork by the bishop for being too active in the Land League. They were placed in country curacies—promotion backward—on account of the influence of a wealthy Catholic clique, which does not in politics hold to the Conservative, late Lord Beaconsfield party, “like the Protestants,” but holds to the Liberal party, which is midway between the Conservatives and Land-Leaguers. It was added that one of these priests had gone to Rome to lay his case before the pope, not having been able to get the archbishop to interfere. The archbishop did not think it prudent to entertain the complaint.
Another of Collins’s remarks may seem unjust to the government. He said that men’s constitutions have changed. They are no longer able to live on potatoes. They must have Indian meal and bread and tea. “I think I would have been dead,” he said, “if I had been kept on potatoes; and when men’s constitutions are altered, any laws the government can make cannot have effect.” But it is free trade in Great Britain and Ireland that makes bread and tea cheap.
The great domestic manufactories of the people demand a word. Collins wore to market one day a gray frieze coat (there pronounced frize). Calling at the house, I found an old woman engaged in spinning wool for the boys’ clothing,—wool that had been beautifully carded at a factory. Collins’s coat seemed to be black and white wool mixed, but the frieze is often dyed blueor red, and is also used for women’s petticoats. The question of the want of manufactures is a great and somewhat puzzling one. At Dublin it was surprising to find that even the matches in my chamber were marked London. The want of coal has been given as one reason of the want of manufactories, but there is great and abundant water-power. The want of capital is also given as a cause of the lack of manufactures, and if we look into this point we come to two of the open sores of Ireland,—absent capitalists and want of national unity. In Guy’s Almanac may be found a list of landholders of one thousand acres and upwards in the county Cork, leaseholders of over ninety years being put down as absolute owners. There are three hundred and seventy-five of these landholders, of whom about two hundred have residences in the county, and the remainder are entirely non-resident,—nearly fifty per cent.! As regards the want of capital, I asked a Protestant banker why they did not combine and form companies to manufacture. He replied, “As soon as eight Irishmen combine to do a thing, nine will combine to oppose them.” The want of unity is owing, at least in part, to their being still two nations, if I may be allowed to say so, the conquerors and the conquered. Methodists and Quakers born in Ireland may be heard speaking contemptuously of the Irish. A woman of Scotch Presbyterian origin remarked, “It’s a common saying, it’s a blessed land and a cursed people.” A Friend in Dublin said to me that the Protestants of the North are as bitter as the Catholics, “and more blamable, as they have the Scriptures.” And I find the statement in my note-book that those who desired to beconsidered the “upper ten,” and Protestants from country localities, speak very contemptuously of the Land League. Finally, the laws are unequal, the qualification for voters being higher in Ireland than in England.
On manufactures an Irish gentleman said to me, “There are lots of American shoes brought to Cork. Blacksmith’s tools, agricultural implements, and carpenter’s tools are brought to this country from America. There’s a finish and a style about them that they don’t do here.” A Catholic manufacturer attributed the want of manufactures to the lack of skill and knowledge in the people; but does this account for the decline in manufactures? As lately as 1837 there were one hundred thousand hides tanned yearly at Cork. It had seven iron-foundries, five factories of spades and shovels, numerous and extensive paper-mills, and two large houses making flint-glass.[168]But where are most of them now? My sprightly little landlady at Cork, a Catholic, expressed in very simple terms a natural reason for this decline, saying, “We want energy, for there’s not an atom of trade that the English did not spoil. There was a cotton-factory here in Cork, and the English sent their goods in and sold them a half-penny lower. They put their foot upon these things, bless them! They have crushed us out of the market in various ways. There is a little screed of linen manufacture in the North, but I believe that they cannot make it as good in England.”
However, Mr. Mahony, a successful manufacturer of tweeds at Blarney, says that manufactures are reviving in Ireland. He thinks that three hundred power-loomshave been established within fifteen years. There is also ship-building in the north.
I talked with another working farmer. He had a tidy place near Cork, perhaps the neatest farm-house I saw, although there was no floor and no window in the principal room. Two hearty children and a domestic were present. The wife had been confined that morning, and the husband’s breath indicated potations. “Such,” said my landlady, who accompanied me, “do not employ a physician, but a ‘knowledgable woman.’ She is not recommended for skill in her profession, but ‘she is lucky.’ Had we gone into the room where the baby was, it would have been insisted on that we should take a glass of punch or we’d take away the beauty of the baby.”
Dan Donovan, the father, said that he had sixty-five acres, all tillable, for which he paid the landlord one hundred and forty-two pounds yearly. He was also obliged to pay twelve pounds a year to the widow of the man who rented the farm before him. His taxes amounted to about twenty-five pounds, if not more, making the whole outlay in money about eight hundred and fifty dollars a year for sixty-five acres. He had been there about four years, and was only a yearly tenant, but he had manured the farm and put it in heart. That he was one of the very thriving farmers was evidenced by his stock of eight cows, eight calves, a pair of horses and a foal, a pair of donkeys, and twelve pigs. He employed more hands than an American would employ on so small a farm,—four “boys” or laborers at six shillings a week and their diet and lodging, which cost him asmuch more. He told us that he could not get ahead at all. “I am in debt to my master. He’s a very intelligent man and fond of me. When I paid last year’s rent the landlord promised some abatement this year.”
Donovan is a voter. To a person of experience I mentioned how many hands Donovan employed. He answered, “He cannot get along with less, as he hauls manure from the city and hand-weeds.” The speaker himself has four persons hand-weeding grain-fields, “taking out thistles and dock-roots that a previous tenant left as a boon.”
On another walk I saw two men beside the road, one of them a remarkably neat old man, a farmer. They confirmed what I had heard, that very few around there could afford to save their hay and straw and feed cattle during the winter to manure their farms. “How do they manage, then?” I asked.
“Like that man,” pointing to a handsome field opposite; “let land at five pounds an acre to those who have manure-pits.”
Such, I understand, are men who, having donkey-carts, go around Cork gathering from houses the offal and garbage to throw into these pits.
I have said that Donovan was a voter, and this brings up the most serious complaint that the Irish have against the British government,—the inequality of the suffrage. This inequality does not exist in country districts. In counties in both countries the payment of an annual rent of twelve pounds entitles a man to vote for members of Parliament. But as Ireland is much poorer, doubtless the number of these voters is less. The inequality spoken of exists in boroughs. In England those livingin towns have household suffrage, and even the lodger franchise; but in Irish towns the parliamentary voter must pay four pounds rent.
I have seen an estimate that in England two men out of five are voters; and in Ireland only one out of five is a voter. As to the operation of this high property qualification, we may observe that the county of Cork, having a population in 1871 of over five hundred thousand, returns under fifteen thousand votes. The city, having within the parliamentary boundary nearly ninety-eight thousand, gives under five thousand votes! But here is an illustration of the old rotten borough system of England: The county of Cork, with over fourteen thousand voters, elects two members at large. The city of Cork, with over four thousand six hundred voters, elects two members, while four boroughs in the county elect each a member; Bandon having four hundred and thirty voters, Mallow two hundred and ninety-three, Youghal two hundred and eighty-nine, Kinsale one hundred and ninety-four.
If, now, we come to teachers as voters, I hear that of the teachers of Ireland not more than one-twentieth can vote for members. This probably refers to teachers of national schools, nearly resembling our public schools.
I boarded some days at a castle, the residence of a gentleman who formerly belonged to one of the learned professions. Had his tenants been paying rent, it is possible that I should not have been received as a boarder. To this castle I went by rail. On the way I saw soldiers, of course, but they were so common that I hardly noticed them. The castle was a handsome stonebuilding in a grove. The wall of the old part measured six feet in the embrasures of the windows. The new part measured three feet. I was shown into a great parlor, barely furnished, with a turf fire in the grate. It was in June. I call my host Mr. Loftus. The family were Protestant and Conservative, holding to the Church of Ireland, as the Episcopal Church is called since its disestablishment.
The tenants of Mr. Loftus sent a delegation to him. They offered rent on the basis of Griffith’s valuation, which Mr. Loftus declined. He offered to allow them about one-fourth of the proposed reduction, or over sixteen per cent. on the rate of rent. But they went away without accepting his offer. Not to receive his rents was inconvenient for him, to say the least, as he had annuities to pay and bills to meet. Here I may add that a lawyer in Cork told me that the present unsettled state of affairs puts everybody on his guard against spending money, and so the laborers suffer. Some landlords have gone without their rent for two years, perhaps longer. Thus the bottom seems to be dropping out of society.
Another peculiarity in Irish affairs is the subletting of land; thus I heard of a farmer who has three landlords above him. To begin at the top, Mr. Prior lets land to the Osbornes, who get it from him on a perpetual lease for two shillings and sixpence per acre. The Osbornes let land to Daniel McBride, who has bought out a lease, but who has to pay also ten shillings and three pence per acre. Daniel McBride has other occupations, and does not work the land himself, but rents to a farmer, who takes a portion of the land, and paysMcBride seventeen shillings per acre. As said farmer holds thirty-six acres, possibly he has one or two laborers’ houses which he rents out to men who would thus have four landlords above them.
To return to Mr. Loftus, the gentleman with whom I boarded. He spoke to me of the condition of the laborers in this district, which is but a poor one. It is natural for the aristocracy to look at this point, when farmers who are refusing them rent are themselves receiving rent from laborers. “The farmers of this country,” said Mr. Loftus, “are the worst in the world. They drive the laborers very hard, and treat them badly. Often they do not give them a house fit to put a pig into. The houses are roofed with sods, as they want the straw for farming purposes. Nearly all the poor people lie on straw beds, and it is hard to get straw from the farmers. They allow the laborer about one-fourth of an acre for his potato-patch, and charge him rent of from two pounds to four pounds, sometimes in advance. The laborer’s wages may be counted at one shilling a day the year round, and as his wife works in harvest, we may reckon hers at sixpence a day for six months. I speak only of my own neighborhood. I do not know the rates in others. There is near here a cluster of about a dozen cabins, all upon one farm. They are mud-walled and wretchedly roofed. A quarter of an acre of miserable boggy land is set apart for each tenant, and there is a large pool of stagnant water opposite each house. The tenant pays in advance three pounds and ten shillings yearly. The farmer sometimes makes the whole rent of his farm by what he receives from these people. I think the place a nuisance, and liable to breed a fever. Noneof these houses have windows, and many have no doors, except bunches of furze. The walls are propped up on the outside with pieces of bogwood to keep them from tumbling down.”
The laborer, having no outbuildings, must necessarily protect his precious domestic animals under his own roof. Most laborers have a goat, and the poorest have poultry, but since the potato famine pigs have not been kept as before. Sometimes, however, there is a donkey.
“The children of the laborer,” said Mr. Loftus, “go to the national school until they are about twelve years old. In most cases they go winter and summer without shoes and stockings. The laborer takes great pride and pleasure in being able to send his children to school. Laborers go to mass on Sunday, and in the afternoon may often be seen in the house, or beside a ditch, reading a newspaper. After mass they play ball in parties against each other, or have a fiddler and dance on the green or under trees. And they play cards, especially in Dublin county, where you can see them on Sundays playing on the banks of the ditches,”—i.e., under shelter of a wall.
“What games do they play?” I asked.
“Forty-five and spoil five,” he replied.
The laborer has no political privileges. Unless he pays a rent of over five pounds he pays no poor-rates, and no other taxes except the county or grand jury cess, and for malicious injuries, such as burnings. He pays this tax, but is not allowed to vote. “Would you put us under the Papists?” once cried an Irish Protestant on the question of universal suffrage.
On one occasion, when Mr. Loftus’s man was drivingfor me, he spoke of the desire or the efforts of the laborer to keep his little family together, for in the unions or poor-houses the sexes are separated. Mr. Loftus pointed out to me a building which he called the curse of the country. It is a union. “Children,” he said, “brought up there are well fed, and idle, and never want to work.” The number of these houses and the amount of money paid to sustain them seem almost incredible. Mr. Loftus’s district is very heavily taxed, about five shillings in the pound, or twenty-five per cent. on the valuation of a man’s annual income. The farmer pays this rate, but the landlord allows him half. The county of Cork, with a population of about five hundred thousand, has sixteen poor-houses. The one in Mr. Loftus’s district contains about four hundred inmates, and the one in Cork over one thousand. The Cork poor-rate amounts to from two and one-quarter to four shillings a pound annually on every pound valuation of houses and lands, but the valuation for taxes is only about sixty per cent. of the annual income.
When the country is poorest these taxes are heaviest. Very few who go into the unions ever get out, excepting children. Said a guardian of the poor, “What causes the immense number of paupers in Ireland is the able-bodied persons going away and leaving the old. All the lower classes here speak of America as their home or final place of settlement. When the people send part of the money for their children, the board of poor-law guardians will sometimes supplement it gratuitously and send the children out. And at their own expense the board sometimes sends out lots of young women that are in the unions.”
The region in which Mr. Loftus lives is a disturbed one. On a recent Sunday a Land-League meeting was to be held in the town. It had been extensively advertised in the newspapers. On the day before the meeting was to be held the lord lieutenant issued a proclamation forbidding it. About two hundred dragoons and infantry and one hundred armed police arrived at the town, bringing with them provisions, as no farmer nor storekeeper would dare to sell any to them. One storekeeper had already been boycotted for not joining the Land League. On the appointed Sunday, after mass, or about one o’clock, some five or six thousand people came together, with bands of music. Five or six Roman Catholic clergymen were among them. The people desired still to hold the meeting by erecting a platform on some other spot. Two stipendiary, or salaried, magistrates were present, and with them the priests entered into an agreement that the soldiers and police should not interfere with the people if they listened to no speeches, but simply formed in an orderly procession and paraded in the town. The affair went off peaceably, and the people went quietly home, although feeling much discontent at the action of the priests. If they had not obeyed the contract, the priests would have retired and left them to the mercy of the armed men.
At dinner, one day, in the course of conversation, Mr. Loftus said, “The country is well enough if it was left alone.”
“But,” said I, “you approve perhaps of one agitator, O’Connell; you like the effects of Catholic emancipation?”
“O’Connell!” he cried; “the best man Ireland everproduced; a clever man. Not such a fellow as this Parnell, that nobody knows where he sprung from; not fit to clane O’Connell’s shoes in cleverness. O’Connell never allowed any quarrelling or disturbance. He kept up the agitation, but the people were kept in order. The repeal collections were kept up, but there was nothing like the burning, wounding, and killing that is going on in these times.”
I asked whether there might not be a home parliament for local affairs, and delegates to a general parliament. He answered that the people are so much given to contention that they could not carry on affairs. “If half a dozen of them,” he added, “come together at a poor-law meeting, they can’t behave themselves.”
After my return to Cork, an acquaintance advised me to visit a town in the southwest, where manners are more primitive. Accordingly I travelled thither, where women in a shop may be heard talking the Irish language. I went third-class. The railway terminated at the town. Falling into conversation with an intelligent fellow-traveller, he said that he had many men constructing a road. He was a steward or overseer. Looking out at the country, I asked, “Why are there no barns?”
“They have nothing to put into barns,” he replied. “They sell their hay in the fields, and thresh their grain and get it quickly into market. They even sell their straw sometimes to meet their rent. Then when spring comes the landlord endorses for them in the bank. This answers for one year. On the next year the farmer must go to a money-lender, to whom he signs a note for twenty-five pounds, receiving only twenty pounds.”
An intelligent Protestant, to whom I read this statement, made some corrections. He said that the landlord would only endorse for the rent, and the money-lender would charge ten or fifteen per cent.
I cannot substitute a name for that of my next witness. It is too well known, having been mentioned in Parliament. John Coppithorne is a Methodist. In politics, a Conservative. He says that if poor Beaconsfield were in there would not be any of these disturbances. He has a shop. He is a dyer, coloring frieze for country-folks. He rents several acres of land, and, finally, unfortunately for him, he lets “cars,” or keeps a small posting establishment. It is on account of letting vehicles to the police that he is boycotted. He has lived for fifty-two years in the town of Skibbereen, in the southwest, near Cape Clear. Skibbereen is the terminus of the railroad, but beyond lies Skull, the residence of Father Murphy. Father Murphy is a quiet Catholic priest. One day a police-officer went into his house to get him to use his influence with the people. But Father Sheehy was already in jail, and the people, seeing the policeman, flew to the idea that Father Murphy was to be apprehended. A riot impended, and a message was sent to Skibbereen for a reinforcement of police. Not many police-officers were there, but they sent as many as they thought they could spare, and unfortunate John Coppithorne let them have cars to convey them, having no idea that the people would break out as they did. Mrs. Coppithorne was extremely alarmed when the mob attacked their house. They began about nineP.M., and continued at intervals until daylight, or about half-past two. It was not alone the breaking of windows, doors,and shutters which was alarming, but the accompanying sounds. The women were dreadful, howling and laughing. They brought stones in their aprons and encouraged the men. Horns were blown all night on the surrounding hills,—conch-shells and cows’ horns. The military arrived by special train at threeA.M., “and their arrival was as grateful as at Lucknow,” said Mrs. Coppithorne.
At an early hour of the night some of the mob suggested to the priest that if the armed police were withdrawn they themselves would disperse. The stipendiary magistrate agreed to the proposition. The stipendiary, or paid magistrate, commands the armed forces, soldiers and police, in case of riot. So the police withdrew to barracks, and the mob took the priest on their shoulders and carried him home. The magistrate retired to his hotel, and then the mob came back in double force. Having before confined their efforts to the upper windows, they now attacked the doors and shutters below, and plundered the shop.
After all it was a false alarm, as Father Murphy was not apprehended. Tears came into Coppithorne’s eyes when I asked him the amount of his losses. I hear that he claims damages to the extent of eight hundred pounds. He says that his business, worth perhaps two hundred pounds a year, is almost entirely ruined. Sometimes the people will come creeping in, perhaps with a permit to get frieze left to be dyed before the riot. There was a man in the shop while I was there, who wanted some frieze which some one had left for a petticoat. He had lost the ticket. The clerk declined to let him have it. “Only that the book was torn,” he said, “I could letyou have it.” So the inconvenience of tearing books is not all on one side.
John Coppithorne is familiar with the pecuniary condition of the farmer. We could hardly expect him to be prejudiced in the farmers’ favor. It is therefore remarkable that he confirms the report of the desperate condition of many of them. Of working farmers around him, he estimates that ten per cent. have barns. About fifty per cent. sell their hay. Then horses and cows are fed in the winter on the young shoots of the furze, chopped up for the purpose. (It is like donkeys eating thistles.) Fifty per cent. of the farmers sell their straw, and buy guano and phosphates. These are the small, unthrifty farmers. The large ones buy these, and use barn-yard manure also. But about fifty per cent. are never forehanded enough to be able to make manure in the winter sufficient to keep their land up to the standard. Poor creatures that have only a few acres can be seen going security for each other in the spring to buy guano for their potato ground. They live on potatoes, fish, milk, and Indian meal gruel.
About the same percentage sell all their grain to meet their rent and pressing demands, and then buy, often on credit, to feed themselves and animals. They buy their seed grain on credit at a high rate, paying, if they pay at all, after the next harvest. Legal process is not infrequently used to oblige them to pay. If money had not been sent into Ireland, and relief afforded by benevolent persons, half of the farmers would not have had seed potatoes in the spring of 1880.
Others at Skibbereen said that the competition is too great when farms are to be rented, and some farms areentirely too small to support a family, even if they had them rent free. Near the sea-coast an existence can be eked out by fishing, but there are many in Ireland cultivating five acres or less.
During my visit to Skibbereen I saw a funeral. The corpse was followed by wailing women, for this old custom still prevails. They buried the body at the graveyard of the abbey, an old ruin, where the dead were buried coffinless during the famine. It was so desperate that these people, who have so great a regard for funeral observances, would bury their dead, in some cases, in fields near the houses, and the parish cart went round and took up dead bodies that were buried in trenches. This great famine was caused by the potato-rot. A gentleman told me that at that time nineteen-twentieths of the people rarely ate bread.
But whether Ireland has not long been subject to famines is to me a question. Within two or three years we have seen one averted by liberal contributions, and there was one in 1822, or twenty-five years before the great potato famine just mentioned.
While in the county Cork I met another person well qualified to speak of the condition of farmers. Michael McBride’s occupations were multifarious. He kept a shop, and a public-house distinct from it. He farmed many acres of land in different tracts. He sold his cattle at the fair. A public-house is a drinking-place, but McBride said that he drank no liquor himself. He was not a member of the Land League. He turned out a tenant and suffered by the League. While we talked in a retired corner of his “public,” he occasionally spokein a loud voice, as though for others to hear, in this manner: “England is getting sixteen million pounds a year out of this unfortunate country, and plunging people into jail under the coercion act for saying nothing but the truth.”
McBride appointed an hour for me to call again. In the evening he had to go out and raise contributions for the poor of the parish. “A very wild summer, thank God,” he said, meaning a cold summer, unfavorable to agriculture. (“We thank God for everything,” said my landlady; “good, bad, or indifferent. One of my English cousins could not believe that there was any reality in thanking God for bad things.”) McBride said that he held much land.
“Of course you employ some one to work it for you?” I asked.
“Oh, bedad, yes,” he replied.
He said that there are men who sell their clover green when in want of money, and who will even take off two or three crops in the year and sell them green.
The poor farmer sells his hay, straw, and turnips to pay his rent, and therefore cannot make barn-yard manure in the winter. Guano was selling at thirteen pounds the ton. “It is a great evil to rely on,” said McBride. “The poor farmer may sell his oats at the glut of the market at five pounds a ton, and afterward buy Indian meal at seven pounds to feed his animals and himself.”
In February, McBride paid seven pounds per ton for hay, but in the preceding summer at harvest the same quality was less than two pounds per ton. He showed me a note which he had signed to prevent a small farmer or poor man from being turned out. Such must havetwo endorsers; but McBride’s signature was enough, because he was a man of means. At first he refused. The man cried, for he was to be served with a writ if he did not pay that day. The note runs in this manner: