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, is above 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 can fork 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 freely expressed 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.