Читать книгу One Irish Summer - William Eleroy Curtis - Страница 4

Holycross Abbey, County Tipperary

The people of Ireland are more prosperous to-day (July, 1908) than they have been for generations. Their financial condition is better than it ever has been, and is improving every year. The bank deposits, the deposits in postal savings banks, the government returns of the taxable property, have advanced steadily every year for the last ten years, and in Ireland, during the last ten years, there has been a gradual and healthful improvement in every branch of trade and industry. The people are more prosperous than in England or Scotland, except in certain sections where poverty is chronic because of climatic reasons and the barrenness of the soil. Nevertheless, they are not so prosperous as they ought to be under the circumstances, and it would require a book, and a large book, to repeat the many theories that are offered to explain the situation. It is a question upon which very few people agree, and they probably never will agree. There are almost as many theories as there are people. Therefore a discussion is not only disagreeable but it would lead immediately into politics. It is safe to say, however, that every Irishman who is willing to take a farm and cultivate it with intelligence and industry will prosper if he will let politics and whisky alone. Idleness, neglect, intemperance, and other vices produce the same results in Ireland as elsewhere, and under present conditions industry and thrift will make any honest farmer prosperous.

The moral and intellectual regeneration of the country is keeping step with the material regeneration. All religious qualifications and disqualifications have been removed; the church has been divorced from the state, and each religious denomination stands upon an equality in every respect.

The penal laws have been repealed and the tithe system has been abolished.

Local representative government prevails everywhere.

Nearly every official in Ireland is a native except the lord-lieutenant, the treasury remembrancer, and several agricultural experts who are employed as instructors for the farmers and fishermen by the Agricultural Department, and the Congested Districts Board.

The primary schools of Ireland are now free; free technical schools have been established at convenient locations for the training of mechanics, machinists, electricians, engineers, and members of the other trades.

Two new universities have been authorized,—one in the north and the other in the south of Ireland,—for the higher education of young men and women.

Temperance reforms are being gradually accomplished by the church and secular temperance societies, which are working in harmony; the license law has been amended so as to reduce the number of saloons, and three-fourths of the saloons are closed on Sunday throughout the island. The Father Mathew societies are gaining in numbers; the use of liquor at wakes and on St. Patrick’s Day has been prohibited by the Roman Catholic bishops, and the number of persons arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct is decreasing annually.

Every tenant that has been evicted in Ireland during the last thirty years has been restored to his old home, and the arrears of rent charged against him have been canceled.

The land courts have adjusted the rentals of 360,135 farms, and have reduced them more than $7,500,000 a year.

More than one hundred and twenty-six thousand families have been enabled to purchase farms with money advanced by the government to be repaid in sixty-eight years at nominal interest.

Several thousand families have been removed at government expense from unproductive farms to more fertile lands purchased for them with government money to be repaid in sixty-eight years.

Thousands of cottages, stables, barns, and other farm buildings have been built and repaired by the government for the farmers, and many millions of dollars have been advanced them for the purchase of cattle, implements, and other equipment through agents of the Agricultural Department.

More than twenty-three thousand comfortable cottages have been erected for the laborers of Ireland with money advanced by the government to be repaid in small instalments at nominal interest.

The landlord system of Ireland is being rapidly abolished; the great estates are being divided into small farms and sold to the men who till them. The agricultural lands of Ireland will soon be occupied by a population of independent farm owners instead of rent-paying tenants.

The Agricultural Department is furnishing practical instructors to teach the farmers how to make the most profitable use of their land and labor, how to improve their stock, and how to produce better butter, pork, and poultry.

The Agricultural Department furnishes seeds and fertilizers to farmers and instructs them how they should be used to the best advantage.

The Irish Agricultural Organization Society has instructed thousands of farmers in the science of agriculture and has established thousands of co-operative dairies and supply stores to assist the farmers in getting higher prices for their products and lower prices for their supplies.

The Congested Districts Board has expended seventy million dollars to improve the condition of the peasants in the west of Ireland; to provide them better homes and to place them where they can get better returns for their labor.

Thousands of fishermen have been furnished with boats, nets, and other tackle; they have been supplied with salt for curing their fish; casks and barrels for packing them; have been provided with wharves for landing places and warehouses for the storage of their implements and supplies; and government agents have secured a market for their fish and have supervised the shipments and sales.

Thousands of weavers have been furnished with looms in their cottages at government expense, so that they can increase their incomes by manufacturing home-made stuffs.

Schools have been established at many convenient points in the west of Ireland, where peasant women and girls may learn lace-making. The government furnishes the instruction free, supplies the materials used, and provides for the sale of the articles made.

Work has been furnished with good wages for thousands of unemployed men in the construction of roads and other public improvements.

District nurses have been stationed at convenient points along the west coast, where there are no physicians, to attend the sick and aged and relieve the distress among the peasant families, and hospitals have been established for the treatment of the ill and injured at government expense.