One Irish Summer

by William Eleroy Curtis

Mr. Birrell in his explanation estimated on Oct. 31, 1908, that the additional sum of $760,000,000 will be necessary to complete the work, to provide every family in the rural districts of Ireland with a farm of their own, and with the intention of doing that he asks an appropriation of that amount, which will bring the cost of the Irish land policy of the British government up to nearly $900,000,000.

This does not include the expenditures of the Congested Districts Board, which have been $440,000 annually for several years, and in the future are to be $1,250,000 a year.

Nor does it include several millions of dollars which have been expended under previous land acts, to purchase farms for the tenant occupiers.

Nor does it include the $25,000,000 appropriated several years ago upon the motion of James Bryce, now British ambassador at Washington, to build cottages for the agricultural laborers,—the farm hands of Ireland.

Mr. Wyndham, the author of the Land Act of 1903, stated in the House of Commons that 159,000 farmers had applied for the assistance of the government to purchase their holdings, and that 176,000 more would probably apply, out of a total of 490,000 farmers in Ireland. His estimates are not so high as those of Mr. Birrell; he believed that $600,000,000, or $800,000,000 at the outside, would be sufficient, instead of $900,000,000, as estimated by Mr. Birrell. He is convinced that 20 per cent of the 490,000 farmers in Ireland would not apply for farms, and that the average price of the farms purchased would not exceed $1,500.

Of the farms already purchased, the average price in Leinster province was £528 ($2,640); in Munster, £452 ($2,260); in Ulster, £242 ($1,210); and in Connaught, £211 ($1,055).

Connaught is the poorest of the poor provinces, and in 1908, out of a total of 29,000 farmers who applied, only 2,000 came from Connaught. Taking the most liberal estimate that he could imagine, Mr. Wyndham stated that $800,000,000 would be the maximum required.

The Wyndham Land Act is not the first experiment of the kind. It is not the first attempt of the government to break up the big estates of Ireland into small farms and homes for the people who are now working them under the present system. W.F. Bailey, one of the commissioners who are carrying out the provisions of that act, gave me an interesting sketch of the history of the movement from the date of the passage of what is known as “the Irish Church Act” in 1869, which was the original endeavor to create a peasant-proprietor system by the aid of state loans.

“Under the Irish Church Act,” said Mr. Bailey, “commissioners were appointed to sell to the tenants of lands belonging to the church their holdings at prices fixed by the commissioners themselves. If the tenant refused to buy on the terms offered, the commissioners were authorized to sell to the public for at least one-fourth and as much more as they could get in cash, and the balance secured by a mortgage to be paid off in thirty-two years in half-yearly installments. They sold farms to 6,057 tenants, and the government loaned the purchasers a total of £1,674,841 which was issued by the commissioners of public works.

“In 1870, the following year, what is known as the Landlord and Tenant Act was passed by Parliament, under which the commissioners were authorized to advance two-thirds of the purchase money agreed upon instead of one-fourth, to be repaid in thirty-five years with 5 per cent interest, and all agricultural and pastural lands in Ireland were included in its provisions. Under this act 877 tenants purchased their holdings for a total of £859,000, of which the government advanced £514,526.