One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Since 1881 the land courts have adjusted the rents of 360,135 farmer tenants, involving 10,731,804 acres of land. The total rents paid for these lands annually before adjustment was £7,206,079. They were reduced by judicial order to a total of £5,715,158, a difference of about $7,500,000 a year in American money, in favor of the tenants.

Therefore it is perfectly natural that landowners—and especially those who have had a good deal of trouble with their tenants—are anxious to dispose of their estates for cash, which they can invest to much better advantage. The Duke of Leinster, for example, who is a minor, has realized more than £800,000 in cash, which his trustees have invested in brewery stocks, railway bonds, and other securities which pay regular dividends and give him no anxiety.

Mr. Bailey, one of the commissioners, told me that the good estates have been disposed of without difficulty. The disposition of the poor land has been more difficult, because the tenants are not as eager to get it, the owner is not always satisfied with the price, and the commission is not willing to make advances upon small bits of land among the bogs and rocks and other tracts of unfertile soil that would not be considered good security by anybody. The commissioners have treated these transactions very much as they would have done if they were mortgage bankers. They have refused to make advances on land that a banker would not have considered good security. They have not been willing to make advances on farms that cannot be made to pay. There have been complications in certain cases that have perplexed them, but, as a rule, the law has been working out in a most satisfactory and gratifying manner. The chief object of the commission and the purpose of the law has been to break up the great estates of Ireland so far as possible in farms of not more than one hundred acres, and sell them to the occupants, so as to create a nation of peasant proprietors, and that, he says, is being accomplished more rapidly than any one had reason to expect. Of course Mr. Bailey does not pretend that everybody is satisfied. That would be impossible. The millennium has not yet come, and the Wyndham Act has not brought it, although it has undoubtedly done more than any previous legislation to promote peace in this distracted country, and offers promises of future prosperity and contentment.

Naturally some of the landowners have not been willing to sell their property, and their tenants have been trying to force them to do so. That accounts for the “cattle driving” and similar disturbances that you read about in the newspaper cablegrams from Ireland. It is to be regretted that the tendency of the newspapers is to publish sensational occurrences and unfortunate events. If a man commits a great crime it is advertised from one end of the world to the other. If he does a good deed very little is said about it, and a false impression concerning conditions in Ireland has been created by the widespread publication of every little outrage or disturbance that occurs over there, while the enormous usefulness and the satisfactory application of the Wyndham Land Act has been almost entirely neglected by newspaper writers.

There have, however, been a good many little disturbances occasioned by the efforts of the tenants of certain estates, particularly those that are now devoted to cattle-breeding, to force their landlords to divide up the pastures and sell them. At present there is more money in the cattle and sheep business than in any other kind of farming in Ireland, and, as you drive out into the interior, you can see the loveliest pastures in the world filled with fat, sleek animals feeding upon the luscious grass. I do not believe there are richer or more beautiful pastures in any land, and Irish beef and mutton command a premium because of their flavor and tenderness. Hence prosperous cattle-breeders cannot be blamed for refusing to sell their pastures and go out of business, and there is no law to compel them to do so. But the rough and reckless elements in the villages, and in many cases among their own tenantry, often try to persecute them by cattle and sheep “driving,” as it is called, until they are willing to cry quits. The popular method is to break down the gates or the hedges,—they do not have fences in Ireland,—turn the cattle and sheep into the road, and run them as far as possible away from their proper pastures, scattering them over the country. This is done in the night, and the next morning the owner is compelled to take such measures to recover as many of the strays as he can. Various means are adopted to prevent such outrages. Armed guards are employed who defend their cattle, sometimes at the cost of life and bloodshed, which, of course, provokes bad feeling and greater trouble. Hundreds of men have been arrested and punished by long terms of imprisonment, but “cattle-driving” still goes on in various parts of the country with some serious results. But it is comparatively insignificant when compared with the great good that is being accomplished by the breaking up of the big estates whose owners are willing to dispose of them.

Thus far the Wyndham Act has been carried out without much friction; the chief difficulty having arisen from the eagerness of the landlords to dispose of their estates, which is so much greater than anticipated, that the funds provided have not been sufficient, and the landlords who have sold their property have been compelled to wait for their pay. In November, 1908, Mr. Augustine Birrell, chief secretary for Ireland in the British cabinet, introduced into the House of Commons a bill for the appropriation of more than $760,000,000, to be raised by an issue of bonds to pay for the estates that have already been sold and for those that may be sold in the future. That amount of money he asserted would be necessary to carry out the plans of the government under the Land Act of 1903.

This proposition of Mr. Birrell is without doubt the most stupendous munificence ever offered by any government to its subjects. The money thus appropriated does not pay for any service performed. It is a direct appropriation from the public treasury to the people of Ireland for the simple purpose of relieving their poverty and placing them in circumstances which will permit them to enjoy life without the hardships and sufferings and fruitless labor which they and their forefathers have for generations endured.

The advances of the British government to the Irish peasants, if this bill becomes a law, will reach nearly $1,000,000,000, but it is to be repaid by them in small installments. Mr. Birrell, in his explanation of the purpose of the bill to the House of Commons, stated that up to the 31st of October £25,000,000 in round numbers (which amounts to about $125,000,000 in our money) had already been expended by the estates commissioners in purchasing farms from the large landholders in Ireland for the benefit of the tenants who occupy them, and that £52,000,000 (which is the equivalent of about $260,000,000) is due to other landowners who have sold their estates under the Act of 1903. These transactions have been completed with the exception of payment of the price.

The transactions concluded under the Land Act of 1903 up to Oct. 31, 1908, provide farms for about 126,000 Irish families, at a cost of $385,000,000 to the British treasury, which is to be refunded by the owners of the farms in sixty-eight years, with interest at 3¼ per cent. Three-fourths of 1 per cent of this annual interest, to be paid by the man who owns the farm, goes into a sinking fund to meet the principal of bonds which have been issued to provide the purchase money. The remaining 2½ per cent is paid by the farmer in lieu of rent, and is used to meet the annual interest upon the bonds. Thus the farmer gets his land in perpetuity by the payment of sixty-eight annual installments of an amount equal to 3¼ per cent of its present value. The average cost of the 126,000 farms thus far purchased is $1,790.

The British government advances the money and becomes responsible for the payment of the interest and principal. The annual interest is only a trifle. In some cases it is only a shilling a week, and it runs up to as high as a pound or two a week in special cases, the average being estimated at $59 a year for the 126,000 farms, or $5 a month for the purchase of a farm, and whatever improvements may happen to be upon the land. If these improvements are not adequate, if the house is not comfortable, and if barns, stables, fences, and other permanent improvements are needed, the government advances the money to provide for them upon the same terms,—sixty-eight annual payments of 3¼ per cent of the cost.