well as they can, but they do not get over the ground like English
navvies. They are very regular, very quiet, very sober, and never give
the least trouble. Of course, they had to be taught, and they did not
like the big navvy shovels. They were used to the six-foot spades with
no cross-bar. Yes, you might think it harder work with such tools, but
then the Irish labourer dislikes to bend his back. The long handle
lets him keep his back straight, there's the difference. However, we
insist on the big, short shovels, and they have taken to them all
right. These men are not so strong as they seem, and they are not
worth nearly so much as English navvies. They may be willing, but they
have not the same stamina. The English navvy eats about two pounds of
beef for his dinner and washes it down with about two quarts of ale.
These men never see meat from one year's end to another. They live on
potatoes, and bits of dry bread and water. At three in the afternoon
they are not worth much, clean pumped out--might almost as well go
home. No, they don't live in hovels. Those who go home but once a
week are housed in good wooden sheds, or corrugated iron buildings,
with good beds and bedclothes. There are about forty of them in a hut,
with a hut-keeper to look after them and to keep order. For this
excellent lodging they are charged sixpence a week, and all their prog
is supplied at wholesale prices. We buy largely in Dublin, bring it
down, of course, carriage free, and both the men and their wives and
families are supplied to any amount. They effect a saving of at least
twenty per cent., but probably much more, as village stores are
terribly dear. The whole district has found out this advantage, and
they flock to the hut-store from all parts. So Balfour is a boon to
the country at large."
Next day I went down sixteen miles of line to a spot about a mile from
Oughterard. It was pay-day, and I clung to the engine along with the
engineer, Mr. Wood, and a pay-clerk, armed with several yards of
pay-sheet, and a couple of black tin cash-boxes. A wild and stony
country, a range of high mountains on the left, wide, flat plains on
the right, through which the Corrib serpentined, with big rocks rising
from the channel brilliantly white. "They whitewash the rocks, so that
they can be seen by the boats and the Cong steamer. Englishmen would
blow them up and have done with them, but Irishmen prefer to whitewash
them and sail round them. More exciting I suppose, matter of taste."
This from the engineer, a Saxon of the usual type. On through bogs,
past nameless lakes, and a chaos of limestone rocks and huge granite
boulders, lakes, bogs, rocks, in endless succession, with the long
mountain reek beside us, and a still higher range in the purple
distance. Now and then a green patch sternly walled in, a few cows
grazing, a lonely donkey, a few long-tailed black sheep, or a couple
of goats. Here and there acres of white blossom, looking like a
snowfall. This was the bog bean, growing on a stem a foot high, a
silvery tuft of silky bloom hanging downward, two inches long and the
bigness of a finger. Sometimes we dashed past walled enclosures so
full of stone that they looked like abandoned graveyards, and the only
use of the fences, so far as I could see, was to keep thoughtless
cattle out. Very little tillage. Just a few ridges of potatoes, but
the people who had planted them seemed to have vanished for ever. At
long intervals a diminutive white cot, but nothing else to break the
succession of lake, rock, and bog. Moycullen, six miles from Galway,
is to have a station; another will be built at Ross, ten miles, a
third at Oughterard, sixteen and a half miles. Not a stone laid as
yet. At Ross a great excavation. The men had just laid bare a huge
boulder of granite, weighing some thirty tons, and Mr. Wood, observing
my interest in this relic of the ice-age, gave it to me on the spot.
"No granite _in situ_ hereabouts, the living rock is mountain
limestone, but no end of granite boulders, which are blasted to the
tune of half-a-ton of tonite per week." Ten miles from Galway a
cutting was being regularly quarried for building purposes, and most
of the sixteen or seventeen miles of line I saw was fenced with a
Galway wall of uncemented stone four feet six inches high and
eighteen inches thick. "The men build stone walls with great skill,"
said Mr. Wood, "but half the number of English navvies would do more
excavating."
The pay-clerk stopped the engine at every gang, and the men came
forward for their money. All had the same well-nourished sturdy look,
and all seemed well satisfied with their wages. They conversed in
Irish, but they mostly understood English, even if they could not
speak it themselves. Whole villages were there seemingly of the same
name, and strange were the distinctive appellations. There was John
Toole and John Toole Pat, John Pat Toole and Pat Toole John.
Permutation was the order of the day. There was Tom Joyce Pat and Pat
Tom Joyce, Tom Joyce Sally and Tom Joyce boy. Besides this change
ringing a little colour was thrown in, and we had Pat Tom Joyce Red
and Pat Tom Joyce Black, Red Pat Tom Joyce and Black Tom Joyce Pat.
This is called Joyce's country, before Balfour's time depopulating to
desolation, now thriving and filling up, re-Joyceing in fact. Nearly
seventeen hundred men are at work here and at the other end, and in
1894 the great civiliser will steam from Galway to Clifden,
inaugurating (let us hope) a new era of prosperity.
In Oughterard I met an American tourist who said, "I should think Home
Rule would about settle Old England. The Irish people show a most
unfriendly spirit, and I have come to the conclusion that there is no
such word as gratitude in the Irish language. There is some change in
this district, and the people seem willing to work, but wherever the
agitators have been everything is going to the bad. Nothing but
distrust and suspicion. No Irishman would invest in Irish securities.
They prefer South Americans! That startled me. I am told that Tim
Healy is worth L30,000, all got out of Home Rule, and my informant
says that Tim would not risk a penny in his own country. Tim is a
blackguardly kind of politician, but he is mighty cute, and shirks
Irish securities. Where are the business managers of the Irish nation
coming from? That's what I want to know."
I told him of the Galway Harbour Commissioners, who, having been
forgiven a Government debt of nearly L10,000, conceived the idea of
building a new, grand, splindid, iligant, deep dock, which should
increase the trade of the place by allowing ships of great draught to
unload in the harbour. Let me repeat the story for the readers of the
_Gazette_.
The Harbour Board consulted an eminent engineer, who said the right
thing would cost L80,000. They sent him to the right about, and called
in another man. "Now," said they, "we can only raise L30,000 by loans
from the Board of Works. Will not that suffice? We give you 5 per
cent. on the outlay, &c., &c., &c." The new man said L30,000 was
ample, took the job, and the work was commenced. Ultimately they
borrowed L40,000, which they spent, along with the L10,000 in hand.
Then it was found that big ships could not get to the dock at all! No
use in a deep dock unless you can swim up to it. To get the big
vessels in you required to hoist them out of the water, carry them a
few hundred yards, and drop them into the dock. As the Galway men
still groan beneath the cruel English yoke, this operation was found
impracticable. During some blasting operations a big rock was tumbled
out of the dock in process of manufacture, dropping in front of
another dock in full working order. The stone was just in the way of
the vessels, but as there was no Parliament in College Green, the
Harbour Board had not the heart to fish it up. So it crashed through
the bottom of a Henderson collier, the owner of which sued the Harbour
Board for damages, and was awarded a thousand pounds. The money never
was paid, and never will be. The fortunate winner of the suit will
sell his claim for L5 in English gold. He was thought to have done
well in winning, and my informant, a typical Irishman, admired the
complainant's successful attack on the Harbour Board. "But what good
come of it at last," I ventured to put in. "Nay, that I cannot tell,"
said he, "But 'twas a glorious victory."
The Galway Harbour Board spent L50,000 or so on a deep dock which they
have not got, and the harbour is in pawn to the Board of Works, which
collects the tolls, and otherwise endeavours to indemnify itself. The
Harbour Board meets as usual, but it has no powers, no money, no
credit, no anything. This is a fair specimen of the business
management which characterises the breed of Irishmen who favour Home
Rule. The party paper, once a fine property, has in their hands sunk
below zero, and they built New Tipperary on land to which they had no
title; so that the money was completely thrown away. Almost every
Board of Guardians in the country is insolvent, except in those cases
where the Government has kicked out the Poor Law Guardians elected by
the Parish, and restored solvency by sending down paid men to run the
concern for a couple of years. This has been done in several
instances, and in every case the paid men, drawing salaries of several
hundred a year, have in two years paid off debts, leaving all in good
working order, with a balance in the bank. The inference is obvious.
Would the Belfast folks have made such a fiasco of a dock? Would
Englishmen have exposed themselves to the ridicule of a story which is
curiously remindful of Robinson Crusoe and his big canoe? Would the
Galway folks ever have built the railway they wanted so badly; or sans
England and Mr. Balfour, would not the Connemara men have proceeded to
starve until the end of time? A keen old railway man who had
thravelled, and who had done railway work in California, said to me,
"Whin we get an Oirish Parlimint the labourers may jist put on their
hats and go over to England. Thank God, we'll know something besides
farm work now, the whole of us. We can get railroad work in England.
There'll be none in Oireland, for every mother's son that has money
will cut the country. I could take ye fourteen Oirish miles from
Galway, along a road that was spotted wid great jintlemen's houses,
an' ivery one of thim's in ruins. The owners that used to live in
them, and be a blessin' to the counthry, is all ruined by the land
agitation. All are gone, an' their foin, splindid houses tumblin'
down, an' the people worse off than iver. If the Bill becomes law the
young men will all be off to England and America. There'll be no work,
no money in the counthry. Did ye hear what the cyar-dhriver said to
Mr. Morley?"
I confessed that the incident escaped my recollection.
"Why the cyar-man was a dacent boy, an Mister Morley axed him how was
thrade, an' av he was busy."
"No," says the dhriver, "things is quite, very quite," says he.
"Ye'll be busy when ye get Home Rule," says Mister Morley.
"But that'll only last a week," says the cyar-man.
"An' why so?" says the Irish Secretary, bein' curious an' lookin'
round at the dhriver.
"Och," says Pat; "'twill only take a week to dhrive thim to the
boats."
"Who d'ye mane, wid yer dhrivin' to the boats?" says owld Morley.
"All the dacent folks that has any money to pay for dhrivin'," says
Pat, "for bedad they'll be lavin' the counthry."
"That was a thriminjus rap for owld Morley, but 'twas thrue, an' the
Divil himself couldn't deny it."
"An' can ye tell me why the farmers should have all the land an' not
the labourers? An' could ye say why them murdherin' Land Leaguers in
Parliament wasn't hung up, the rampagious ruffians?"
I could throw no light on these points. My friend had much to say
about the Land League M.P.'s, and a score of times asked me why they
had not been hanged.
A hard question to answer, when you come to think of it. Does anybody
know?
Oughterard (Connemara), May 23rd.
No. 27.--CULTIVATING IRISH INDUSTRY.
The city of kings. Pronounced Athen-rye, with a bang on the last
syllable. A squalid town, standing amid splendid ruins of a bygone
time. "Look what English rule has brought us to," said a village
politician, waving his hand from the ivy-covered gateway by which you
enter the town to the mean-looking houses around. "That's what we
could build when we were left to ourselves, an' this is what we can do
afther sivin hundhred years of the Saxon." The ruins in question are
the remains of fortifications erected after the Norman Conquest of
Ireland by the Normans, a great entrance gate, and a strong, oblong
keep. The ruins of the Dominican Friary, founded in 1241 by Meyler, of
Birmingham, have a thrilling interest of their own, which has its
pendant in the story of a Mayence verger, who holds British visitors
to the cathedral of that city in breathless rapture as he tells how it
is said that a Mayence bishop of eight hundred years ago was said to
be of English extraction, or like the Stratford mulberry tree, which
is said to be a cutting of a tree said to have grown on the spot where
a tree is said to have stood which is said to have been planted by
Shakespeare. Galway abounds in ruined fortalices, tumble-down abbeys,
ivied towers and castles, none of which were built by the Irish race.
The round towers which dot the country here and there, with a few
ruined churches, are all that the native Irish can claim in the way of
architecture.
The people here are full of interest. The fair at Athenry is something
to remember. A very good time it was, cattle selling higher than of
yore. The men were queerly, quaintly dressed, speaking Irish, getting
extremely drunk on vilest whiskey, leaving the town in twos and
threes, tumbling in groups by the roadside, reeking heaps of imbruted
humanity. The women were numerous, tall, decent, and modest. All wore
the shawl as a hood, the shawls of strange pattern unknown in England.
All tucked up the dress nearly to the waist, showing the invariable
red kirtle. All, or nearly all, were shod with serviceable shoes, such
as would astonish the Parisian makers of bottines. But these shoes
were only for show. The ladies walked painfully about in the
unaccustomed leather. They seemed to have innumerable corns, to
wrestle with bunions huge and dire, to suffer from unknown pedal
infirmities. Outside the town the ladies put on their shoes. Outside
the town, after the fair, they took them off again, sitting on the
roadside, stripping their shapely feet, bundling the obnoxious,
crippling abominations into Isabella-colour handkerchiefs, which they
tucked under their arms as they bounded away like deer. It was
pleasant to watch their joy, their freedom, their long springy step as
their feet once more struck their native heath. They do not spare
their shoes by reason of economy, but because they walk better without
them. Donned for propriety, doffed for convenience. The young lady who
is "on the market" is expected to wear leather on high days and
holidays, and she submits--another martyr to fashion. Yet even as the
hart panteth for the water-brooks, so longeth her sole after her
native turf.
It was at Athenry that I first obtained a precise legal definition of
the term Congested District, to the effect that wherever the land
valuation amounts to less than 30s. per head of the population the
district is held to be congested, and may receive assistance under the
Act of 1891. The chief item of the Board's income is the sum of
L41,250 a year, being interest at 2-3/4 per cent. per annum on the sum
of L1,500,000 referred to in the Act as the Church Surplus Grant. The
Board may, under certain conditions, use the principal, if needful.
Two other smaller sums are also available, and the unexpended balance
of the Irish Distress Fund has been applied to the completion of the
Bealdangan Causeway in Connemara. This was Mr. Balfour's suggestion.
There is a widespread idea that only the sea-board is touched, and
that only fishermen have reaped the benefit of the Act. This is
entirely erroneous. The Board works unceasingly at the development of
agriculture, the planting of trees, the breeding of live stock and
poultry, the sale of seed potatoes and seed oats, the amalgamation of
small holdings, migration, emigration, weaving and spinning, and any
other suitable industries, as well as in aid of fishing and fishermen.
Besides the innumerable direct and indirect methods by which
agriculture and industries are assisted in production, the Board has
laboured successfully in the establishment of such means of
communication, by railway, steamship, or otherwise, as will enable
goods to be imported and exported at rates sufficiently low to make
trade possible and profitable to producers and consumers in remote
congested districts. Another popular error arises from regarding the
work of the Board as merely a means of relief during periods of
exceptional distress. Mr. Balfour would be the first to deprecate this
notion. His scheme was constructed with a view to bringing about a
gradual and lasting improvement in the poor districts of Ireland, by
putting the people in a way to help themselves, and not by doling out
large sums in charity. The works, which are wrongly called "relief
works," are in every instance a well-considered effort to permanently
and materially improve the trade and resources of a given area in
connection with agriculture and miscellaneous industries. Such was the
invariable principle of every action of the Board while under Mr.
Balfour's administration. The people have been taught better methods,
and helped to carry out the instruction they had received. The Royal
Dublin Society has in some instances employed an instructor, whose
duty it has been to teach the people the best system of cultivating
portions or plots of their holdings, and to encourage them by gifts of
seed and by giving prizes to those who were most successful in
carrying out the instructions of their teacher. It is conceded that by
proper management, by the adoption of modern methods of farming such
as are well within the grasp of the smallest landowner, the produce of
Irish farms might be increased from one-third to one-half. Consider
the effect of this unassailable proposition on the eternal question of
rent. The question can hardly be over-estimated. Compare the solidity,
the practicability, the substantial usefulness of this kind of help,
with the weak pandering to sentiment displayed by the present
government. The Board admits that no matter how vigorously and
constantly agricultural improvements are inculcated, the tenants of
Ireland are tardy in their adoption. The small farmers dislike change,
and at the present moment they are rapidly slipping back into their
old grooves. They believe that the old system will pay when they have
no rent-days to meet. The Balfour Administration encouraged honesty,
industry, self-reliance. The Morley Government puts a premium on
idleness, unthrift, retrogression, and dishonesty. It is easier to
half-till the land, paying small rents or none at all, than to get the
utmost out of the land with the object of paying the landlord his
due.
The Board is carrying on the afforestation of Ireland, which in many
parts is almost without trees. When the potato crop failed in 1890 Mr.
Balfour commenced to plant trees on the western sea-board. In 1891 a
sum of L1,970 was spent in draining, fencing, and roadmaking, and in
planting 90 acres of 960 acquired by the Tory Government for the
purpose. In 1892 a further sum of L1,427 was spent in carrying on the
work. It is said that a previous Liberal Government had rejected the
scheme on the ground that trees would not grow in a situation exposed
to the salt gales of the Atlantic, but Mr. Balfour's trees have
thriven remarkably well. He tried all sorts, convinced that something
should be done, and that an ounce of experiment was worth a pound of
theory. Sycamore, ash, elm, beech, birch, poplar, alder, larch, Scotch
fir, spruce, silver fir, sea buckthorn, elder, and willow--he gave
them all a chance, some as main plantations, some as shelter belts.
All proved successful except the silver fir. Besides this, three
hundred and fifty holdings have been planted with shelter belts, and
about six hundred and fifty more were being planted when Mr. Balfour
loosed the reins.
An eminent Irishman, a great authority on this subject, assures me
that he could dictate similar facts for a week without stopping to
search his memory. Mr. Gladstone proposes to place the poor people of
Ireland under a Government utterly inexperienced in the administration
of great matters, utterly unreliable where the handling of money is
concerned, utterly ignorant of business methods and business routine.
The fate of the destitute poor and the fortunes of the well-to-do
classes are to be at the mercy of men whose business ventures have
been absurdly unsuccessful, who believe that to aid the poor you must
rob the rich, and that the No-rent Manifesto, the Plan of Campaign,
and the Land League, with its story of outrage and murder, were the
perfection of modern statesmanship. The Balfour system teaches men to
help themselves. The Morley system teaches men to help themselves to
their neighbour's goods.
My friend gave a few more instances of useful assistance rendered by
what the poor folks call the Blessed Board. Special arrangements have
been made to enable the farmers to improve the breed of horses. The
Queen presented an Arabian horse named Tirassan to the County Donegal.
Bulls of superior breed have been sold to decent, honest farmers at
one-third of their cost, and this small figure was payable in two
yearly instalments. About two hundred black-faced Scotch rams and
Cheviot rams have been located in Donegal and Galway free of charge,
and young boars of the pure Yorkshire breed are sold to certain
selected farmers at a nominal charge on certain conditions calculated
to prove useful to the neighbourhood. The breeding and rearing of
poultry has received a world of attention, and the poor folks who make
a little money by the sale of eggs have been supplied with the best
information and substantial assistance.
In a former letter I described the Aran sea-fisheries, and before that
I adverted to the fact that the Shetland fishermen came to the Irish
Coast, caught ling, and brought it back salted to sell to Irish
fishermen. The Board has engaged an experienced fish-curer from Norway
to show Irishmen how the thing is done, and English and Scotch
fish-curers have been sent to several stations to give instruction in
mackerel and herring-curing. Fifteen fish-curing stations are now in
full swing, and the poor Irish fishermen, instead of buying salt ling
at 2d. a pound, are now selling it at L18 to L20 per ton. A big
steamer has been chartered to carry the salt, the fish, and for other
useful purposes.
Contrast this work and these results with the work of the Irish
agitators and with that of Messrs. Gladstone, Morley, and Co.
Sentiment and starvation versus salt fish and satiety. A red-faced
Yorkshireman who knows all about fish-curing, said:--"When first I
came here I'm blest if the men wasn't transparent. You could see
through 'em like lookin' through the rungs of a ladder. Now the
beggars are growin' double chins. Now they're a-gettin' cheeky.
They're like a hoss as has had a feed of corn. They was meek an' mild
enough when I come over. Now they're a-gettin' perky, an' a-talkin'
politics. They usen't to see no agitators. They never had no meetin's;
why? there was no chance of a collection. Sometimes I gets down on 'em
proper. 'Tother day I says, 'You chaps, wi' yer Home Rule, I says,
reminds me of a character in the Bible, I says.' Bein' Catholics, they
don't read the Bible for theirselves. The priests read it for 'em. But
one of 'em cocks up his nose, an' he says, 'We're like a character in
the Bible, are we? Well,' he says, 'who was he?'
"'You're like the wild ass that sniffed up the wind instead of goin'
in for sommat more substantial,' I says. That's what I told 'em. They
did look down their noses, I tell you. An' they fell to talkin' i'
Irish. They couldn't answer me, do what they would."