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 ever produced; 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 nine P.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 three A.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 let you 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 are entirely 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 spoke in 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 have two 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:
“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. Their condition 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 in unity
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 the farmers 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.
ENGLISH.
I spent a few weeks in England in 1881, and visited three agricultural
regions in the east, the north, and the south. An article on the last is
to appear in _Harpers’ Magazine_. The following is drawn principally from
my visit to the east. Some account of my stay in the north and of a few
days in a manufacturing county may appear hereafter.
My authority for the statements in the following article is almost
entirely notes taken at the time, assisted in a small degree by
recollections. But it cannot be assumed that this essay is without faults.
With regard to another country, I was advised to tell what I saw and how
it impressed my mind, and not to endeavor to draw conclusions. But what
a traveller sees and hears is greatly influenced by his own opinions. He
goes to a foreign land, and if of different religious institutions from
his own, he inquires on this point; of a different form of government, he
asks political questions. He notices, also, differences in dress, food,
and manner of living.
The first family with whom I boarded in Huntingdonshire was that of Mr.
Jackson, a carpenter, who, besides working at his trade, rented a few
acres. His wife, who was a farmer’s daughter, had a small dairy of three
cows. Jackson appeared to have a splendid constitution. He was short and
somewhat thick-set. He began his trade at eighteen, and was an apprentice
five years and a journeyman three, when, having put by some money, he
married at twenty-six. His wife was near thirty. One of them said that
they had prospered with the help of the Lord.
Mrs. Jackson also had been able to save something wherewith to furnish
a house. She learned a trade, and was also companion or lady’s-maid to
sick ladies and those going to Brighton. One of them made her a wedding
present of neat china.
Jackson and his wife have four children,—the eldest about six, or as she
says, “Four little children, not one of them able to put on a shoe nor a
stocking.” She attends to her dairy, boards the apprentice, and has no
servant.
Their children are sweet and clean. Three of them go to the public school
in the village. It is called the national school. Mrs. Jackson gave the
eldest three pence to pay for their instruction for a week; which is
at the rate of about twenty-four cents a quarter for each of them. The
penny is a trifle over two cents, the shilling a little under a quarter
of a dollar; but in turning sterling money into our own, it will avoid
repetition to consider the English penny as two cents, and four shillings
as a dollar.
The Jacksons’ house seemed a perfect palace compared to that of any
working farmer that I saw in Ireland. Coming freshly from that country, I
thought it must be the gem of the village, but I was mistaken. The busy
activity of the Jacksons, who have a young family to keep, was more like
what I have seen at home than what I saw in Ireland.
The house has a peculiar name placed on the front, something like
Hallelujah House. Doubtless it was built by a dissenter. I saw another
bearing title Bunyan Lodge.
A lodging-room was assigned to me, and I ate by myself in one of the
front rooms below. (Thus to take lodgings is very common in England.)
Jackson and his wife ate in the kitchen. When they had finished, she gave
the apprentice what she chose. My room had strips of carpet on the floor,
neat white curtains at the window, a suitable toilet service, linen
sheets and pillow-cases. There stood in it a neat red chest with iron
bands at the corners, and a white fringed cloth covering the top. It was
locked, expressive of thrifty housekeeping.