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.