One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

The department is encouraging tobacco and flax growing, and a very fair quality of tobacco is now being raised in Ireland.

Special schools have been established for the instruction of creamery managers and attendants, and the department has inaugurated a series of inspections which are voluntary, but the certificate of the inspectors adds considerably to the value of the butter in the market. Last year 359 creameries invited inspection, as compared with 166 in 1906 and 82 in 1905. This indicates that the value of the inspectors’ certificates is becoming appreciated.

Forestry operations are being undertaken also, and eighteen young men are now under training for professional foresters. They are the first that have ever been known in Ireland.

If anyone should attempt to distribute the credit and honor that are due to those who have accomplished the good and promoted the prosperity that Ireland is now enjoying, he would find himself in serious trouble at once. Rivalries are very keen. Nowhere else is partisanship so pronounced and so intolerant. People of different political theories and policies are seldom willing to concede honest motives to their opponents. The leaders of the national party insist that all the beneficial legislation that has been enacted by the British parliament has been yielded reluctantly by the government, not from any interest in the welfare of the Irish people, but solely to avoid a revolution. But I am sure that no one will deny that Sir Horace Plunkett has been one of the most active and disinterested and effective agents in bringing about the great reforms that have been accomplished there within the last few years. He rushes about like an American hustler, carrying out his plans for the welfare of the farmers of Ireland with intense earnestness, independent of public opinion, and as confident of his success as he is of his integrity. He was described to me by one of his friends as “the most transparently sincere man in the kingdom, thoroughly unselfish, disinterested, and patriotic, and with a sanguine disposition that nothing can discourage.” He spends $10,000 a year from his own pocket in his benevolent work, and while he was at the head of the agricultural department he turned over his entire salary to the Irish Agricultural Organization Society, of which he is the founder and the president.

Sir Horace Plunkett is the son of the late Lord Dunsany of County Meath, a very old Irish family, descended from the ancient Lords of the Pale, who have lived in the same house for seven centuries and have had an active part in the history of Ireland from the beginning of days. A famous old Irish book called “The Annals of the Four Masters” says: “There are many fierce barons in the Pale, and the traveler leaving Dublin must pass between the Baron Killeen and the Baron Dunsany,” and Sir Horace referred to the reputation of his ancestors in a speech that he made not long ago, as follows:

“I was reared in one of those old castles of the Pale, almost under the shadow of the Hill of Tara, where the Plunkett family for seven centuries have managed to cling to the same house. Of course, in the good old days, we fought for what we considered our rights, which was to treat the inhabitants of the country as mere Irish and to avail ourselves of their long-horned cattle without payment. I have never started a new creamery without a sense of restitution for their little irregularities. An old chronicle we have in the family runs thus: ‘There be in Meath two Lords Plunkett, a Lord of Killeen and a Lord of Dunsany, and so it comes to pass that whoever can escape being robbed at Dunsany will be robbed at Killeen—and whoever can escape being robbed at Killeen will be robbed at Dunsany.’ This shows that our family took an interest in the tourist traffic in those days, though our methods of developing it, judged by the polite standards of to-day, may appear somewhat crude. You will notice also the germ of the co-operative idea.” (The point of this joke lies in the fact that Sir Horace Plunkett is the originator and the most active leader in establishing co-operative societies throughout the island.)

He was educated at Eton and Oxford, and, when he got his degree, went to the United States and bought a ranch in Wyoming, which he still owns in partnership with former Senator Carey of that State. He also has large interests in Nebraska and lived there for more than ten years. He keeps up his acquaintance by annual visits.

Sir Horace Plunkett came back from America to Ireland with his soul stirred by patriotism and an ambition to do something to improve the condition of his fellow countrymen. He realized the great disadvantages under which they were laboring in their antiquated methods of farming, their rude tools and their ignorance, and in 1894 proceeded to organize a nonpolitical movement to improve their condition by carrying instruction to them because they would not go anywhere to receive it. His enthusiasm and his activities attracted the sympathy and assistance of several other patriotic people, including Lord Monteagle and R.A. Anderson, who was then collecting rents and looking after the tenants of Lord Castledown. In 1894, their work having become too large to be carried on by individuals, they organized the Irish Agricultural Organization Society with about four hundred subscribers, mostly people who were not connected with agriculture. With the exception of Lord Monteagle, Colonel Everhart, Sir Henry Bellew, Sir Joslyn Bore Booth, and a few others, the landlord class took little interest in the movement, but they are beginning to recognize the value of the society and are giving it more sympathy and support than formerly.

R.A. Anderson, the permanent secretary of the society from the beginning, told me the story as follows:

“An adequate staff was first employed who went about among the farmers holding meetings, delivering lectures, talking with them privately, explaining the advantages of education and co-operation, and organizing local societies in every county and district to co-operate with the general society in Dublin. This work has been going on ever since until we have now about ninety thousand members, mostly small landowners and farmers, although in the southern counties we have several prominent ones.