Those, however, who would blame Ireland for its present position of industrial stagnation forget that it was not always thus—they do not bear it in mind that Ireland had a great commercial past, that it had its own mercantile marine doing direct trade with foreign countries, that it had flourishing industries and factories and mills all over the country, but that all these were killed and destroyed and driven out of existence by the cruel trade policy of England, which decreed the death of every Irish industry or manufacture which stood in the way of its own industrial progress.

Those who sought the economic reconstruction of the country had accordingly to contend against a very evil inheritance. The commercial spirit had been destroyed; it should be educated anew. The desire to foster home products and manufactures had ceased to exist; it should be re-born and a patriotic preference for home manufactures instilled into the people. Pride in one's labour—the very essence of efficiency—had gone out of the country. It should be aroused again. Economic reform should proceed first on educational lines before it could be hoped to establish new industries with any hope of success. The pioneer in this work was the Hon. (now Sir) Horace Plunkett who returned to Ireland after some ranching experiences in the United States and set himself the task of effecting the economic regeneration of rural Ireland by preaching the gospel of self-help and co-operation. It is no part of my purpose to inquire into the secret motives of Sir Horace Plunkett, if he ever had any, or to allege, as a certain writer (M. Paul Dubois) has done, that Sir Horace promoted the movement for economic reform in the hope of reconciling Ireland to the Union and to Imperialism. I may lament it, as I do, that Sir Horace, who now believes himself to be the discoverer of Dominion Home Rule, did not raise his voice either for the Agrarian Settlement or for Home Rule during all the years while he was a real power in the country. I am not however going to allow my views on these questions to deflect my judgment from the real merit of the work performed by Sir Horace and his associates in the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society, which in the teeth of considerable difficulties and obstacles succeeded in propagating through Ireland the principles of self-help and co-operation.

From the first, the Society had many and powerful enemies, most of the opposition springing from interested and malevolent parties. But there is, perhaps, no man in all the world so quick to see what is really for his advantage as the Irish farmer, and so the movement gradually found favour, and co-operative associations began to be formed in all parts of Ireland. The agricultural labourer has all along regarded the Creamery side of co-operation with absolute dislike. He declares that it is fast denuding the land of labour, that it tends to decrease tillage, and is one of the most active causes of emigration. They say, and there is ocular evidence of the fact, that a donkey and a little boy or girl to drive him to the Creamery now do the work of dairymaids and farm hands. But, whilst this is a criticism justified by existing conditions, it does not mean that co-operation is a thing bad in itself, or that there is anything inherently vicious in it to cause or create the employment of less labour. What it does mean is that the education of the farmer is still far from complete, that he does not yet know how to make the best use of his land, and that he does not till and cultivate it as he ought to make it really fruitful. Besides the Creamery system there are other forms of co-operation which have exercised a most beneficent influence amongst the peasantry. These include agricultural societies for the improvement of the breed of cattle, a number of country banks, mostly of the Raiffeisen type, co-operative associations of rural industries, principally lace, and societies for the sale of eggs and fowls, the dressing of flax, and general agriculture.

A direct outcome of the Co-operative Movement was the creation by Act of Parliament in 1899 of the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction in Ireland—a Department which, though it possesses many faults of administration and of policy, has nevertheless had a distinctly wholesome influence on Irish life. In relation to the Co-operative Movement the judgment of Mr Dillon was once again signally at fault. He gave it vehement opposition at every point and threw the whole weight of his personal following into the effort to arrest its growth and expansion. Happily, however, the practical good sense of the people saved them from becoming the dupes of parties who had axes of their own, political or personal, to grind, and thus co-operation and self-help have won, in spite of all obstacles and objections, a very fair measure of success.

Meanwhile a remarkable development was taking place in the matter of bringing popular and educative literature within reach of the masses. Public and parish libraries and village halls were widely established. These were supplementary to the greater movements to which reference has been made, but they were indicative of the steady bent of the national mind towards enlightenment and education, and of a desire in all things appertaining to the national life for more and better instruction. Another important movement there was to which little reference is made in publications dealing with the period—namely, the organisation of the town and country labourers for their political and social improvement. It was first known as the Irish Democratic Trade and Labour Federation, but this went to pieces in the general confusion of the Split. It was resurrected subsequently under the title of the Irish Land and Labour Association. I mention it here as an additional instance of the regenerative agencies that were at work in every domain of Irish life, and among all classes, at a time when the politicians were tearing themselves to pieces and providing a Roman holiday for their Saxon friends.

[CHAPTER VIII]

THE BIRTH OF A MOVEMENT AND WHAT IT CAME TO

Whilst Ireland was thus finding her soul and Mr Gerald Balfour pursuing his beneficent schemes for "killing Home Rule with kindness," the country had sickened unto death of the "parties" and their disgusting vagaries. Mr William O'Brien, although giving loyal support and, what is more, very material assistance to Mr Dillon and his friends, was not himself a Member of Parliament, but was doing far better work as a citizen, studying, from his quiet retreat on the shores of Clew Bay, the shocking conditions of the Western peasantry, who were compelled to eke out an existence of starvation and misery amid the crags and moors and fastnesses of the west, whilst almost from their very doorsteps there stretched away mile upon mile of the rich green pastures from which their fathers were evicted during the clearances that followed the Great Famine of 1847, and which M. Paul Dubois describes as "the greatest legalised crime that humanity has ever accomplished against humanity."

"To look over the fence of the famine-stricken village and see the rich green solitudes, which might yield full and plenty, spread out at the very doorsteps of the ragged and hungry peasants, was to fill a stranger with a sacred rage and make it an unshirkable duty to strive towards undoing the unnatural divorce between the people and the land" (William O'Brien in an Olive Branch in Ireland).

Mr Arthur Balfour had established the Congested Districts Board in 1891 to deal with the Western problem, where "the beasts have eaten up the men," and when Mr O'Brien settled down at Mallow Cottage he devoted himself energetically to assisting the Board in various projects of local development. But his experiences proved that these minor reforms were at the best only palliatives, "sending men ruffles who wanted shirts," and that there could be only one really satisfactory solution—to restore to the people the land that had been theirs in bygone time, to root out the bullocks and the sheep and to root in the people into their ancient inheritance. It was only after years of patient effort that he at last succeeded in persuading the Congested Districts Board to make its first experiment in land purchase for the purpose of enlarging the people's holdings and making them the owners of their own fields.[[1]] The scene was Clare Island, "the romantic dominion of Granya Uaile, the 'Queen of Men,'" who for many years brought Elizabeth's best captains to grief among her wild islands. The lordship of this island of 3949 acres, with its ninety-five families, had passed into the hands of a land-jobber, "with bowels of iron," who sought to extract his cent. per cent. from the unfortunate islanders by a series of police expeditions in a gunboat, with a crop of resulting evictions, bayonet charges and imprisonments.