He said that of private bankers and money-lenders at exorbitant rates there are twenty in Cork, some of them pawnbrokers. In various towns there are many poor people who pawn their clothing on Monday and redeem it on Saturday.
McBride said that the great cause of the present embarrassment is the three bad years of 1877, 1878, and 1879. Oats, wheat, barley, and potatoes were bad. Some oat-fields were never cut. McBride said that seventy per cent. of the farmers around Cork are unable to pay their debts, and would be bankrupt if forced to do so. They would need three good harvests to bring them up. “They will never pay the same rents again. Their condition is owing to high rents, bad harvests, and American competition.”
After leaving the county Cork I spent a few days in Dublin. From persons on the train thither and in that city I obtained information concerning other portions of Ireland. To this I add the testimony of an Irish gentleman well known in politics, whom I met in London.
A young man from the county of Limerick said that that county is all pasture. Not more than forty per cent. of the farmers in his neighborhood could afford to save hay and straw and feed cattle in winter for manure. Farms average from forty to fifty acres, some being as small as ten. He knew one man who farmed over three hundred acres, and paid three pounds and five shillings per acre therefor. He had two or three acres in potatoes, and the same in oats, but all the rest in pasture.
“Can he make money?” I asked.
“Not these late years,” he replied. “He is served with an ejectment because he can’t pay his rent.”
None of our farmers will be surprised that a man cannot make money on grass-land at a rent of about sixteen dollars per acre.
Another passenger, who was from Tipperary, said that, with few exceptions, the farmers of that county can keep cattle in winter and keep up their farms. Take the whole of Ireland, however, and farm-lands are deteriorating in value. In Tipperary and Limerick lies “the Golden Vale,” celebrated for its fertility. I had an impression that Tipperary was wild and riotous. In London I spoke to the political gentleman above alluded to, who knew the county well. In politics he is not in unity with Parnell, and is opposed to the Land League; but not, if we may judge by his conversation, to sanguinary measures.
“Tipperary,” said he, “has not of late suffered so much as some other districts. Thirty or forty years ago the farmers were entirely at the mercy of their landlords. They took the law into their own hands and fought for their farms, shooting down the landlords or their agents. Many of them were hanged or transported. The land bill of 1870,” he continued, “extended to all Ireland, restrains the landlord from evicting tenants without leases, unless paying them for their improvements.” He says that the present trouble is caused mainly by landlords demanding increased rents.
My intelligent fellow-traveller from the county Tipperary further said that the provisions of the proposed land bill, by which the tenant is to hold his land as long as he pays his rent, will do away with all abuses. The Three F’s of the land bill are: First, Free sale,—that is, the tenant is to have the privilege of selling his right in the farm; second, Fixity of tenure; and, third, Fair rent, to be determined by a court.