IRISH INDUSTRIES
It is usually supposed that there is very little romance about industry
or business of any sort. In general, this is doubtless true, but there
is an element which enters into certain kinds of industry, which if not
exactly romantic, is assuredly not prosaic.
The cottage industries, as they have come to be popularly known, of
Ireland, have this element of romanticism, or assuredly picturesqueness,
which is not usually associated with the matter-of-fact throbbing loom
and busy shuttle.
This particular phase of industry has of late become somewhat of a fad,
so far as people taking an interest in its product goes, though there is
a very real, tangible, and practical side to it for the workers, who,
perforce, might otherwise be in idleness.
The public-spirited men and women who have encouraged this special
industry, or industries rather, for it comprehends lace-making,
embroideries, and homespun woollens, are to be thanked and congratulated
by reason of the success which has resulted from their efforts.
Everybody has a vague idea that there are certain products which come
out of Ireland in large quantities. When called to specialize or
enumerate them, they stop short at fine linen and bacon. Beyond
this--what? There is but one way to find out, if one is not to visit
Ireland itself, and that is from the government publications, Chamber of
Commerce reports, and the like. These are dry reading, however, for some
people impossible reading, and there is very little romance about them.
When one actually visits Ireland, and sees the Limerick pig in all his
gaucheries, and his product in sausages, hams, and bacons, there is
perhaps more romance connected with it, for there is a certain
picturesqueness which invariably surrounds him. It may be a red-skirted,
blue-coated colleen, or it may be a green-trousered, pot-hatted gossoon,
who is
[Illustration: _Limerick Pigs_]
[Illustration]
driving him to market, or it may be that the environment of his home is
so squalid as to be picturesque, and suggests primitive conditions and
romantic times that have long gone past in other parts of the world.
To consider seriously just why the industries of Ireland are at the low
ebb that they are, one has to realize that Ireland has ever been
backward and unprogressive in developing her resources, though mostly
this is because of oppression, as they call it in Ireland, and
oppression, as a matter of fact, it is, or has been.
Primarily there is a scarcity of coal in Ireland. There are no workings
that are profitable, and of a good quality, that are opened up at the
present time; at any rate, not of a quality to be compared with that
obtainable elsewhere and in countries which have prospered more fully
than has Ireland.
One thing Ireland has, and has wofully neglected, is its supply of
water-power such as has made many similar regions on the Continent of
Europe thrifty and prosperous.
It might be used to generate electricity; it assuredly could do so, as
there are several swift flowing waters that would fill the requirements
admirably,--the Falls of Ballyshannon, for instance. Perhaps some day,
when some ingenious individual succeeds in getting motive-power out of
the rise and fall of the tides, Ireland will become the most prosperous
of any country in the world.
In the seventeenth century, smelted iron--Ireland being very rich in
iron ore--was exported to London in large quantities. This trade does
not exist to-day. As early as the sixth century Irish woollens were
exported to Nantes, and in the fourteenth century there was a large
demand for Irish serges in Italy.
The woollen industry was given a great impetus in 1667 by the Duke of
Ormonde, who induced five hundred Walloon families to settle at
Clonmell, at Killarney, and at Carrick-on-Suir; but in 1698 the English
manufacturers persuaded the Irish Parliament to prohibit the exportation
of woollens.
From Dean Swift we learn that by this act twelve thousand families were
thrown out of employment in and near Dublin, and thirty thousand more
elsewhere.
It is of late years only that the cottage
[Illustration: TORC CASCADE.]
handicrafts, knitting, spinning, weaving of homespuns, and lace-making,
have been given the great impetus which has now made them established
industries, like the cottage cutlers of Barmen and Essen, in Germany,
who fashion knife-blades from the crude product which they obtain from
the large steel works near by.
Formerly paper-making was very extensively conducted in the county of
Dublin; but this is no longer the case. Who does not know the famous
Irish linen? Strange to say, the best quality was known as _Royal_ Irish
linen. This assuredly was an effort on the part of some astute Irishman
to capture outside trade, but his astuteness apparently did not extend
to other things.
The dictionaries received a new word in Balbriggan, which was the name
of the cotton hosiery first made a hundred and fifty or more years ago
at Balbriggan.
Irish whiskey distilleries and the breweries of porter and stout have
come to be recognized as premier establishments in their line, and,
whatever the opponents of the liquor trade may say, these industries
have done Ireland much good. Far more good, be it acknowledged, than
that other brewer, Cromwell, ever did for it.
The shipbuilding industry of Belfast ranks among the first
establishments, if it is not the very first, in the world, and the
allied industries, which produce ropes, cables, chains, and rigging, are
likewise foremost in their class. These are mainly centred around
Belfast, but an echo is heard at Londonderry, on the north coast.
Porcelain of a rare and unique quality is manufactured at Belleek. So
frail and delicate and so translucent is this ware that it stands quite
in a class by itself.
The paramount industry of Ireland is the spinning and weaving of linen
and flax, mostly centred around Belfast. The great linen ware-houses of
Belfast, with branches throughout the English-speaking world, and even
on the Continent, are almost household names, and no product of a
similar nature elsewhere produced at all enters into competition with
the real Irish product. Besides the great establishments at Belfast,
there are others, nearly as great, at Ballymena, Londonderry, Coleraine,
and Lisburn.
[Illustration: _A Cottage Spinner_]
[Illustration]
This great industry grew up at the summary closing of the woollen mills,
prospered, and, if at first it did not take the place entirely of the
woollen industry, it did so finally.
In the mid-nineteenth century it has already reached huge proportions,
and, while to-day the public undoubtedly buys a great deal that is _not_
linen in the expectation that it _is_ linen, and a great deal of linen
that is _not_ Irish linen in the hope or the belief that it _is_ Irish
linen, there is no question but that the trade has already advanced
beyond the point where it was when it stood alone and supreme in the
world.
The trade has reached its present magnitude from the very small
beginnings of a Huguenot refugee named Crommelin, who settled originally
at Lisburn.
The superiority of Irish linen is due primarily to the bleaching, which,
of itself, depends upon the water and atmosphere, which at Belfast and
the other places mentioned is apparently not equalled elsewhere in the
world.
To get the same results, it is said that a certain German manufacturer
buys Irish yarn,--that is, linen spun in Ireland,--weaves it into cloth
in Bohemia, sends it back to Belfast to be bleached, finally brings it
back to his establishment in Germany, and sells it as--what?
The most varied and most successful cottage industries are at Limerick,
Carrickmacross, Cork, Youghal, Kinsale, Crosshaven, Ardora, and Clones.
Their specialty is lace of a delicate and elegant variety.
The cottage woollens are mostly made in Donegal and Connemara, while the
art of embroidery is followed most extensively at Belfast, Dublin,
Dalkey, Garryhill, Sligo, Strabane, and Ballintra.
There is one phase of trade that the Irish have neglected to develop of
late,--the fisheries. More or less philosophically, as they think, they
lay this to the Scotch, who are much more successful at the industry
than themselves. This is not the fault of the Scotch; it is the folly of
the Irish. At any rate, there is an inexhaustible supply of mackerel,
herring, cod, hake, sole, turbot, lobsters, and even oysters to be found
on the south and southwest coast of Ireland.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries this
[Illustration: A COTTAGE LOOM.]
was a trade which was worked, and successfully worked, as records show,
by Spaniards, Dutch and French fishermen, who came from their own
fishing-grounds to angle in these more plethoric Irish waters.
It was only in the nineteenth century that the Irish took up the
industry in at all a commensurate manner, and by the famine years of the
late forties they had 19,833 vessels, manned by 130,000 men and boys, in
the trade. Then it steadily declined through succeeding years until
1894. In 1900 there were only 6,500 registered boats, employing 25,360
men, and the harvest which they gathered from the sea had but the value
of £300,000. Truly this is a sad tale, and not a creditable one. The
chief fishing stations are at Kinsale, Baltimore, Valentia, and
Bearhaven. There are salmon to be had in almost every river estuary, and
the taking of them has not been neglected, as has deep-water fishing.
The chief industry of most countries is perhaps agriculture. Even in
Ireland crops are raised,--crops of a sort must be raised,--but they are
grown to nothing like the extent that they ought to be.
Probably Ireland's record is not as bad as England's in this respect;
but landlordism, whatever that vague term may really mean, is certainly
responsible for the minute proportions of this industry. In 1831
1,270,000 were engaged in agriculture, approximately 65-1/2 per cent. of
the population; in 1891, 49-1/2 per cent., showing plainly that
agriculture in Ireland is rapidly on the down grade.
The most fertile counties are Tipperary and Limerick; Kerry is generally
poor; but "Mounster," as Spenser called it, was "of the sweetest soyle
of Ireland."
Cattle-raising in Ireland is truly preëminent, as bald, unromantic
statistics show. In Ireland there are 138 horses per thousand of the
population. In England, but 36 only. There are 996 cattle in Ireland as
against 152 in England; 951 sheep as against 511; and 278 pigs as
against 69.
The small farmer in Ireland is, it is true, uneducated to a surprising
degree. He knows nothing of rotation of crops, and cultivates seldom
more than two varieties. Artificial enrichment of the soil is a profound
mystery to him, and he apparently would rather work
[Illustration: EMBROIDERING.]
a piece of reclaimed peat-bog than the most fertile valley that ever
grew the products of the field.
Truth to tell, the genuine Irish peasant hates the cultivation of the
soil; he dislikes to dig in the earth, as he does to fish in the sea;
but he rejoices in cattle-raising, and, above all, cattle-trading. He
likes to drive them to market; he makes a regular holiday of it, and so
do the rest of his family, as one who has ever met such a composite
caravan on the road well knows.
It is said that twenty thousand Irish go to England every autumn for the
harvest. It seems a pity that these twenty thousand workers could not
have the opportunity of working at home. The author does not pretend to
explain this; he recounts it simply as current rumour, which doubtless
could be authenticated.