MY LITTLE FARM

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

ECONOMICS FOR IRISH-
MEN"

THE SORROWS OF
IRELAND."

MY LITTLE FARM

BY "PAT",

a

MAUNSEL © COMPANY, LTD.
DUBLIN AND LONDON

1915

LOAN STACK

TO HIS FRIEND
WHO ONCE SAVED THE AUTHOR'S LIFE

295

PREFACE

THIS is less a handbook in scientific agriculture
than a headbook in profitable farming, but it is
for both, and for the cultivation of character as
essential to cropping. The profit is no longer
possible without the science, but the science must
either show the profit or remain under suspicion.
The expert, working at the Government's ex-
pense, can do anything with a plot of half a rood,
so long as he is not asked to balance the product
against the cost, but the practical farmer wants
to see the net profit on a working scale, and he
is right, because the final measure of science in
all industrial application is the economic value.
No other standard can be safely admitted into
industrial practice.

I have passed severe examinations, written
successful books, edited too successful news-
papers, lived the life of London, died the death
of Ireland and come to life again, on the first
day ; but I have done no work, lived no life,
and filled no place demanding of me so much
breadth of knowledge, elasticity of judgment
and variety of action as the conduct of a once
wretched little farm in the West of Ireland.
One must insist on the experience of the retro-
spect, because it is so commonly assumed that the
farm may best be entrusted to the fool of the

viii PREFACE

family, while the brilliant brothers go off in orna-
mental occupations which require less than half the
capacity of the capable farmer. It is clear that
our first step landward is the industrial discipline
of the agrarian mind, not merely for the farm, but
also because of the character which could be
developed by better farming to the advantage of
all other pursuits and to the credit of the nation
as a whole. The significance of this will be the
plainer when we note that about three-fourths of
the Irish population is always directly or indirectly
agrarian. What, then, would be the use of writing
about the agricultural industry without reference
to the agrarian character ? The necessity is not a
pleasant one, and the official may not touch it at
all, but if we are ever to move on, it must be
touched by somebody. The alternative is State
endowment of decay.

Hence the great failure of the official formula,
at least in its chief purpose, which is the improve-
ment of the peasant ; the great waste of the
Agriculture Department, though in itself admir-
able, and, I believe, the most generously endowed
in the whole world, per unit of productive value.
The Department may teach agriculture, but no
industrial influence in existence among us is
permitted to prepare the agrarian mind for the
agricultural teaching. It is like a university
condemned to accept its students from the
primary school, and deprived even of the right to
prepare them for matriculation. Its teachers, now
well trained and the hardest workers that I know

PREFACE ix

in any public service, have to start with the
agrarian mind at the length of a generation
farther on than it can see, with dominant vested
interests in the wall of prescriptive density inter-
vening. Experts follow each other round and
round, year by year, illuminating all our farm
assets from bulls to bees, but only to find previous
effort fruitless, unless among the few who can do
the thing for themselves. The mental " atmos-
phere " is not industrial, and never can be indus-
trial under the present scheme of supply, which
fortifies a triumphantly defiant ignorance by
means of the very funds annually voted in Parlia-
ment for the peasants' primary " education."

The mischief is farther enlarged by our Irish
methods of criticism, always either denouncing or
defending the Department in absolute terms,
according to the gains expected or refused- The
expectant can see no fault, the disappointed no
virtue. There is never an attempt to adjust the
blame and to show how much of the failure is
inflicted on us by Ireland herself, in spite of the
competent and expensive men employed by the
Department to help us. Their failure is the
measure of our sense, their service to us doubled
the day we secure them fair play and a field as fit
as they could find elsewhere. Under the double
curse of politics at the top and the State endow-
ment of industrial illiteracy at the bottom, they
can but do their best and hold their tongues to
keep their posts. Above all, they must never
touch the main secret of their failure, but rather

x PREFACE

deny it at the official pinch, so that the first need
of the prudent official is to violate his first duty,
and prudence is always one of the official virtues.
The prescriptive density stands unchallenged,
while the Treasury pours out gold through the
Department for our industrial education, and
much more gold through the primary schools for
our mental bondage to make the purpose of the
Department impossible. In one important aspect,
the Department is profoundly instructive : it
shows that it cannot instruct, and it reveals the
reasons to us, even in spite of official prudence.
That is why I give so much space to the Depart-
ment in this preface. The rest of the chapters
are occupied with matter of more importance.

Influenced by that impelling spectacle, I have
attacked the agricultural problem in my own way,
clear outside all the factions, by working a farm
scientifically for the profit, strictly conditioned by
the necessities of economic production, and in no
way dependent on subsidised theory. I have no
money for anything like that. I must make a
profit or stop, but to make a profit, I must be
scientific, and to be successfully scientific, I must
be severely practical. The lessons I have to offer
are economic data in the concrete. You may
pick them up in your hand, look them over, take
them to the market, and calculate to a penny
what it costs to produce them there. The total
result and its derivation are the subject of this
book, which cannot be the less value for the
exacting conditions of its creation.

PREFACE xi

One most valuable result is the conversion from
heather to clover without tilling a yard, and
showing a return on the investment something
like twenty times the average on the scores of
millions in surplus capital which this poor country
has invested abroad, while our soil goes to grass
and our grass to heather.* This is something
more than mere success in farming. It implies
a practically unlimited extension in the basis of
food production, with corresponding gain to
the quantity and kind of human life. Is it not
natural that, knowing this, I should want others
to know it ? To myself, it would seem criminal
to refuse. Yet the Department, while knowing
all about it for years, has done nothing whatever
to hand on the gift, though endowed by the State
for this purpose. That is bad, but it is not the
worst. The influence and authority of the Depart-
ment, in so far as they count, have been used to
deny my results, though these are permanently
visible in concrete form, and have been inspected
by inquirers from various countries abroad. Some
of the best farmers in Scotland have come to me
and confessed that they had something to learn
in Mayo.

The scientific workers in the Department have
had no part in this official treachery against the
farmers. I have not found a trace of evidence for
any such thing, and that is what I expect of men
scientifically educated. They are competent
agriculturists to a man, know how to do the thing

* The Department takes f of a perch, per crop omitting cost !

xii PREFACE

as well as I do, and will be only delighted to do it
for the farmers whenever the nation has the sense
to relieve them of the politician. I need not
waste space on the personal aspect of the matter,
having no personal complaint to make.

The farmer himself is our last court of appeal,
and his law of jurisprudence is his pocket. He
can apply his own tests to the demonstration I
submit, which is not an academic experiment,
but actual work done at a profit. I offer him
no quack short cut to a pet obsession, but a
careful account of long experience on the farm
all round. I do not ask him to drop what he is
doing and to start something he has never done,
in which he would probably do worse. The profit
of production depends less on the product than on
the producer, and he must depend on the capacity
derived from his own experience. He cannot
depend on the experience of others, however
profitable, in forms of production that are strange
to him. What he is doing is what I am doing,
but I am doing most of it differently, and doing
my best to show him how he can pocket the gain
of the difference. He will find it attempted in
three main sections : (i) How the land can increase
its production ; (2) how the value of the produce
can be farther increased in consumption ; and
(3) a collection of somewhat various matter
throwing farther light on the other two.

The little farm, however profitable in itself,
cannot remunerate me at my rate as a writing
man, and the difference, on the time given to it,

PREFACE xiii

is already over .£5,000. People wonder why I
continue, because money is their highest measure
of human motive. That is often the case with
those who have never had money. I choose to
make this use of my life, knowing that the things
most worth living for are never measurable in
money. It emancipates me from the slavery of
writing to order, and I should not exchange my
knowledge of Ireland and her people for five
thousand pounds. Thus farming is not the first
motive in My Little Farm, but there is enough
for the farmer to make Ireland another kind of
country in a few years. I am more interested in
character than in crops, but either may be seen
through the other. Humanity is more to me than
vegetables, and there are plenty of men to write
merely technical treatises on farming — if there is
anybody to read them. Of course, I need not
spend my whole life to exploit the economics of
a peasant farm. In a few years, when the educa-
tional value of it is established, I can, if I like, sit
down on it, dream my dreams, look on at the cows
eating the grass, and at the clearance of the Irish
out of Ireland, which must increase in proportion
as the cow is capitalised. As occupants of the soil,
Irishmen are nowhere in competition with cows,
because the Irishman cannot be improved in
Ireland, and the cow can.

I write to please nobody but myself, and I
consult no conscience but my own. I would
help the peasant ; therefore, I would not attempt
to please him. I paint him as I see him, not as

xiv PREFACE

he sees himself. But it is fair to note that his
worst characteristics are imposed on him rather
than inherent. I do not think any other peasantry
in the world could be any better under the
organised brutalism that has morally deformed
agrarian Ireland, where religion is still carefully
directed to encourage theft and murder. The
future of Ireland is with the numerical dominion
of the peasant. National hope is limited by his
moral emancipation, and this depends on the
truth reaching him, against which he is fenced
round on every side, with the British and their
purse co-operating in the enslavement. The
future of Ireland is with the peasant, and the
future of the peasant is with the School.

I am indebted for help and advice in the early
and ignorant stages of my farming to Messrs.
Paul & Vincent, Messrs. Morgan Mooney, Mr
George Ryce and Mr. John Kelly, who happened
to be the Department's instructor in my district
at the time, and the most conscientious public
servant I have ever met.

I should like a farming pupil, preferably
of the educated class for company, and " My
Little Farm " might do more for him than
could be done on the big farms. Should he fail
as a farmer, he could have every opportunity to
develop as a detective.

The Author desires to thank the editors of
The Morning Post and The Saturday Review for
leave to republish a Study in Congestion and
Farming as a Profession, These are the only
reprints in this book.

CONTENTS

PREFACE vii

PART I
TO ADVANCE PRODUCTION

I FARMING WITH A PEN .... i

II THEN AND Now 16

III THERE is No BAD LAND . . 28

IV THE HEATHER PLOT . . 42
V ON THE FENCE 55

PART II
TO ECONOMISE CONSUMPTION

VI Cows AND MEN 69

VII THE REGIONAL PROBLEM ... 60
VIII CALVES AND STATESMEN ... 98

IX THE NURSERY 108

X PREVENTIVE PATHOLOGY. . . . 1 23

PART III
VISIBLE PROOFS

XI MY VISITORS 139

XII TENDENCY AND ACCIDENT . . 1 54

xvi CONTENTS

XIII WASTE 161

XIV EMERGENCIES 166

XV THE WAGES OF SIN .... 174

XVI BULLS i?8

XVII AT THE SHOW 185

XVIII PAGANISM IN AGRICULTURE 188

XIX FARMING AS A PROFESSION 191

XX A STUDY IN CONGESTION 197

XXI FOOD PROBLEM INDIVIDUALISED 205

PLAN OF

AS IT WAS.

Based upon the Ordnance Survey Map with the sanction of the
Controller of H. M. Stationery Office,

THE FARM

AS IT IS.

The paddock, once in five "fields" — the old map omitting a line.
Now the five " fields" are one, and most of it has been converted
from heather to clover without tillage. The lines removed were
earth fences, now replaced by und«r-drains, and so it is with the
lines removed from the other fields. Gardens apart, there were
in all eighteen patches. The number is now reduced to seven,
and the areas are enlarged in proportion, with the fence spaces
and head lands saved in addition. See Chaps. II and III.

Out-houses, haggard and stock yard.

The house.

Garden cot.

The heather plot.

Kitchen garden.

F G H The stream running west,
— ^; Roads,

MY LITTLE FARM

PART I.
TO ADVANCE PRODUCTION

CHAPTER I.
FARMING WITH A PEN

" PSYCHOLOGY " is a fearsome word to begin a
book mainly about farming. Let us try to reduce
its terrors. Our conscious activity of mind, with
that of the five senses in its service, is what we
call our psychology, and behind it is its driving
power, which we call our energy. Here is a very
wonderful scheme, exquisitely designed for our
benefit, and lodged free of charge in each of us to
begin the world. All the inventions of mankind
are crude compared with the amazing mechan-
ism of man himself. To be thus endowed and
set down in a world of endless opportunity is no
small thing, and our life is the result of the
scheme acting on the opportunities.

The first of the great facts demanding our atten-
tion is that the driving power is always a limited
quantity, while the mechanism, for application
and direction, is comparatively unlimited. Hence
the importance of applying the power economi-
cally, in reproductive directions, for the benefit and

2 My Little Farm

support of our lives, instead of squandering it on
the barren waste, where no harvest can be reaped
against the coming winter. The mechanism is pre-
pared to conduct the energy either way, for waste
or for wisdom, according to the will and judgment
in the upper storey of the human workshop.

It follows that in so far as the limited fund of
energy is expended in any pursuit or in any set of
pursuits, good or bad, there is so much the less of it
left for any other pursuit ; and we may add here
the desperate fact that the mechanism itself varies
its efficiency by the nature and amount of the work
(or play) on which we keep it active, irrespective
of our advantage or disadvantage. It is easy to
infer the value of keeping the faculties consciously
active on the things that matter, and of bringing
up the young mind in familiar practice with these,
so that maturity and efficiency may find their
meeting point at pleasure. Keep the growing
mind of youth filled with an exclusive interest,
or exclude a particular interest from it, and the
effect for good or evil may follow to the end of life.
In the recent literature of industry we find a
striking illustration of this. The technical capa-
city in textile manufacture is found to be higher
in England than in Germany, and Dr. Shadwell
attributes the difference to the fact that the
young folk in the English factories start a year
younger than the Germans. If that one year can
make this great difference, or even a large fraction
of it, what of the nation that brings up the bulk
of its youth without any attempt at turning the

Farming with a Pen 3

mind into any industrial direction whatever? The
mechanism is left to waste the energy as if at the
will of the winds, and this is the case of Ireland.

It is now the winter season, which provides its
own work on the farm, but while I write these
chapters for their benefit, the peasants of Con-
naught around me, at least three-fourths of them,
spend their nights and days in dancing, visiting
and exclusively idling in one way or another, while
the children in the schools, under teachers brought
up in the same degrading atmosphere, are qualify-
ing, at the nation's expense, to make themselves
thoroughly useless, like their elders, unless as raw
material for export to build up more sane
communities abroad. For the rest, consult the
statistics and see the pitiful use which the Irish
make of their incomparable opportunities. The
seat of failure is in the industrial psychology at
home, not in the breed of people, who prove them-
selves fit for anything after they leave Ireland.

What, then, are the local forces which derange
the mental mechanism and keep the industrial
department of the Irish mind unfit to support
progressive life in its own country ? Up to our
time, it has been explained on directly political
grounds, but the last serious disability of this
kind disappeared long ago, and the industrial
incapacity remains. We must go deeper than this
for the causes of our national failure. The
following chapters attempt to present the mental
factor in the problem, as revealed in our farming,
and, in addition, I give a good deal of space to

4 My Little Farm

the scientific and technical conduct of the farm
itself. In this way, I hope to find a double
answer to the question above submitted, illustrat-
ing the larger problem through the medium of
agricultural criticism.

Friends outside often wonder how I can " stick
it " for long periods in Mayo, surrounded by a
painfully sordid life, a high native intelligence
drilled against intelligent living, and a collective
will deprived of even those primitive impulses
which work upward from the lowest levels of
normal existence. Well, I have never been able
to accept the misfortune of the neighbour as good
ground for avoiding him, but there are reasons
more personal and more imperative. One of these
is certainly in reverence for the character of my
father, who lived and worked where I am here,
and who, I believe, was never in the course of his
life accused of a falsehood. A straight man in a
triumphantly crooked environment, he brought
up a big family as well as it could be done, if
short of his own moral stature, and he transmitted
to me as much of his most inconvenient virtues
as a minor capacity could well assimilate. I think
I am doing as he would like to have done, and in
doing it, I am often forced to reflect whether,
from the enlarged consciousness of another world,
he may not be watching the attempt. Disabled
during the last three of his eighty-four years, he
got into debt, for the benefit of other people, and
then left the land for him that could discharge the
obligation. That was how I found myself a

Farming with a Pen 5

farmer, with the pen, and not the plough, as the
only implement by which I had so far justified
my existence ; surely the first man ever known
to go farming with a pen. There was also a
derelict brother The farm might make a living
for him, and I could live without it.

It appears that madness, with enough method
in it, may be excess of sanity. Fail at something
never done before, and your critics will point to
the moon for explanation ; succeed at it, enlarging
the limits of life, and you may find yourself
denounced for not being mad. It appears there
are vested interests even beyond the boundaries
of human achievement, and mediocrity is ever
disturbed by what has never been before, though
the whole of human progress is founded on it.
Meantime, not less than nine-tenths is mediocrity.
In the whole world to-day there is little to satisfy
us that was not at one time quite unprecedented,
and so we may safely measure a people's capacity
for progress by their relative attachment to pre-
cedent and initiative. It is not easy to move
forward by looking only backward, but in Ireland
we have the unnatural instance of a historic people
determined to look no other way, which accounts
for the stumbling. It is only when they do not
know where they are that people have need to
look backward, and even then, they have at least as
much need to look forward. The vision of a fallen
people is always backward, and their only vision
when they are fallen to rise no more.
After fifteen years in the Strand writing,

6 My Little Farm

writing, writing, I had produced little or nothing
for more than a day's notice, though feeling that
I could do something better. I wanted to write,
really, in books, what I thought, instead of
writing, in newspapers, what other people pre-
tended to think. What if the plough should give
the pen its opportunity ? I might have to put
up with plainer cooking and poorer company, but
possibly compensated by better health and the
treasure of loneliness. I might even have at
times to do some of the farm work with my own
white hands. What matter if it stopped the
grinding of an immortal soul for the money value
in moral dust ?

It was the little farm that wrote the books, and
such was the necessity which set me astride of two
islands, in pursuit of two professions, contrary to
all prudent counsel ; but the best that I have done
is due to the audacity of the decision. I know this
now, though it was not easy to see then. Yet
when the battle is won, we ought to be thankful
that our will in daring is so mercifully adjusted
to our capacity in doing. A little out of fit, and
we either miss what we could do or go to bits in
reaching what is beyond us. The nicety of the
balance, in its terrible, silent play between tragedy
and triumph, is one of the mysteries of our
existence. There is only one rule in the matter,
and it is not always safe : better lose by courage,
than by fear. In the one case, you end either as
a man or as a corpse ; in the other case, you are
morally dead from the beginning.

Farming with a Pen 7

It is a misfortune of mankind that every man
must be born into a mob, and I think the best
thing that ever came to me was the longing to get
out of mine. The younger the better, and after
the first deliverance, I dragged myself in and out
of succeeding mobs, only to find that they were
in every case much the same — an organised
attempt to average human values at the expense
of the top for the benefit of the bottom. Your
mob may be a " set " in society, a literary " school,"
a cult in criticism, a " departure " in art, a political
party or, in its most vicious form, an Irish League.
In any form, it starts the question : Why should
a man be coerced to accept for his standard an
average below his value ? Having survived so
many baptisms on the way to discover myself, I
longed for the hills, and came to see a good
furrow as a thing of beauty. The Irish, of all
peoples, have need to see that until the individual
is permitted, the community is blind. As a
people, we bind each other down in a hundred
deadly fetters, crippling the individual for the
alleged convenience of the crowd, and for their
destruction in the end. Every interest of Irish life
proclaims it, and agriculture most of all, because
the mob cult can dominate the agrarian mind
more easily than any other. There is never more
than one in ten who can really see. Destroy him,
as the Irish always do, and all are blind.

The philosophy of the matter may be clear
enough to me now, but it was not so when I had
to decide between the Strand and Mayo as my

8 My Little Farm

essential base. Indeed, all the argument seemed
to be for the Strand, and every friend was on the
same side ; on the Mayo side, nothing but an
apparently blind impulse driving me against all
reason into solitude. The apparently blind im-
pulse reveals itself now as the clearest vision of my
life, which shows how shallow may be the best of
argument compared with the undefinable forces
by which we are sometimes driven against our
finest schemes of intellectual prudence. I am
sorry for the life never led by higher light than
argument.

I knew that, even in the wilderness, I could live
by the pen, without a penny from my farming,
and besides, the farm must for a time take every
cent I could spare for increased capital ; but there
was the farther motive of making my little bit of
Ireland a standard in profitable productiveness,
that my neighbours might share in the industrial
value of any additional capacity that I could bring
to the business. If my life could advance their
lives without serious loss to me, that alone would
be ample reward. In a closely congested district,
where every man clamoured for an increase of
land, it seemed to me that the net product of the
average acre around me could readily be doubled,
and without much increasing the average expendi-
ture in labour. How could any man in any
country ignore such an opportunity to help his
fellow man ? There is no special credit in the
desire to do it, but rather a special ignominy in the
refusal.

Farming with a Pen 9

My own acres, now more than doubling the net
production, show that my estimate of the room
for improvement was not wrong, and while some
of the neighbours follow close in the ascent, there
is hardly a man within many miles who has not
gained something considerable from my agrarian
gospel. There is seldom a fine day at home
without some time spent to show somebody how
to do something, and they often come long
distances to see how easy we have made the
" impossible." Though the gratuitous interpreta-
tions are always various and often vicious, the
motives of my excursion into agriculture are as I
confess them here, and after our fourteen years,
not one man can complain that I have once
behaved contrary to the purpose. I am assured,
and can believe, that the good I have done for
the people, in their work and in their lives, is
admitted even by those who are known to have
attempted to murder me : I am guilty of showing
that, to live by the land, the Irish must think ;
but, to their masters, thought is " sin," and the
mastery is complete — for the present.

From the start, I simply felt that I could help
the people, thought that if I could I ought, and
saw that the attempt must count on no reward
of any kind, not even the emptiest of verbal
gratitude. I was in a position to give something
for nothing, having no less left, and expecting only
the liberty to do right. It is well for me that I
expected little. On the whole, and up to this
date, my reward has been in falsehood, slander,

to My Little Farm

cunning, fraud, perjury, treachery and cruelty,
with several attempts to take my life, and, worse
than all the rest, thievery. I set down these
words in cold care that each may be the right
word, expressing no more than the accurate fact.
The words ought to be carefully used, for their
significance goes far beyond the personal. The
qualities which they indicate are cultivated for
social virtues, as a kind of moral ammunition
against mental emancipation — which is scarcely an
encouragement to scientific farming. As directed
in the battle against myself, most of these Irish
virtues are badly outranged, and only amuse me,
but there are several exceptions. A character that
has so far outgrown the parish testimonial is not
likely to worry about falsehood,- slander, cunning,
fraud, perjury, treachery and cruelty ; but murder
ends my teaching, and theft deprives me of the
means to show the thief how, in a given time, he
can produce more than he can steal. " On the
whole and up-to-date," it is as I describe, or worse,
but no absolute conclusion follows. In the most
unexpected corners of the west, I have met men
honestly at war with the popular virtues and
gloriously guilty of the greatest crime in Con-
naught — Conscience. They occur here and there
like the seeds of a divine survival left behind
among the nether weeds to witness the defeated
purposes of Providence.

All communities have their thieves, but in
normal communities theft is not a virtue, and the
people as a whole co-operate in tracking down

Farming with a Pen n

the thief for the common good. In most of
Ireland, you will find the thief a person as
" respectable " as yourself, if not more so. He
is often held up to you as an example in the devout
and punctual practice of his " religious duties,"
and he is the last man to quarrel with constituted
authority — so long as constituted authority
accommodates thieving. He comes to you this
morning and borrows an implement, on the
friendliest footing. He comes to you to-night and
steals another implement, which he has " spotted "
before leaving the yard in the morning. He
comes to you to-morrow to return the borrowed
implement, and to " spot " another, still on the
friendliest footing. Offer him work and wages for
the time he can spare in thieving, and if he accept,
it is only " to oblige you." The friendly footing
must always be kept upi — but always at your
expense. Hand your thieving friend over to the
police, and you are an " informer." The moral
sense of the community makes you the offender
and him the victim, which shows that the offence
against society is in detecting the theft, and not in
committing it. Again, let us guard against
absolute inference. It has been my privilege to
employ at least three persons in fourteen years
who were not thieves ; perhaps less than ten per
cent, of the whole ; but their honesty is the more
to be honoured in a region where the official
morality makes thieving such a respectable pursuit.
I can think of nothing that does more to harm
agrarian Ireland to-day than the fixed conviction

12 My Little Farm

that no man can prosper on honesty. In Con-
naught at least, it is the invariable view of the
average man that any man above him must have
got there by fraud, and where fraud is accepted
as the essential means to approved distinction, it
follows that honesty is folly. Yet all this is quite
natural in the circumstances. Up to this, these
people have seen few rising among them, except
by grinding them down, and the market value of
the verities has remained accordingly low. The
Irish nation is a native body, perpetually damned
by the infliction of a foreign soul, the bastard
spirit of the Tiber and the Thames, two of the
dirtiest sources corrupting mankind.

Relieve them of this, and you have a normal
people. Continue it, as now, for a medium of
government, an official morality, and the curse
remains, necessitating its own continuity from
age to age. The Irish are not primarily to'blame.
The wonder is that they are not worse. They are
what they have been made, and the method has
never been more triumphant than to-day. How
can industry in any form prosper on such a footing ?
It is waste of means attempting, unless in so far
as the footing can be changed, but the footing
becomes more firmly fixed every year, and is much
worse now than when I left Ireland thirty years
ago.

Here in the mental and moral waste, at the
dead of night, the day's work done, I sometimes
sit alone and think what can it be behind the brutal
hostility against myself ; and always with the same

Farming with a Pen 13

result, the same conclusion on evidence in view.
It is well known that I have wronged no man, not
even my worst enemy ; as well admitted that I
have done something for all, much for some, and
sometimes most for the man that robbed me.
Why, then, an enemy ? From information
received, I know that I am strongly suspected of
having a conscience, the one crime never to be
forgiven.

So far as I can trace the history of my guilt in
this, the suspicion started in the following manner.
Years ago, while I was yet new to my country, we
got up an " Industrial Revival." With due energy
and attention to business, we more or less revived
everything but industry, which, wisely shy of our
wild ways and of our confidence in the virtue of
falsehood, went on in its own shrewd course,
neither expanding to the cult of our crude inflation
nor contracting before the menace of its dominion.
In Ireland, we were going to produce at home
our own food, our own clothes, our own shelter,
&c. Wishing to have our programme of produc-
tion normal and symmetrical, neither overvaluing
trifles nor excluding essentials, I had myself the
misfortune to propose that we should produce at
home also our own Conscience, instead of inces-
santly borrowing the official counterfeit from
foreign sources at deadly rates of usury. It
seemed to me in my innocence that a really great
nation, defying the world in the moral symmetry
of her inherent power, had as much need to grow
conscience as cabbage ; but from the day I

14 My Little Farm

delivered that almost childishly plain truth, I
found all eyes watching me asquint, and most
men drawing apart, as if I had been suddenly
transformed into a tiger. To this day, I have
never been able to discover how I was wrong,
and yet not one of my masters ever attempts
to rescue me from my alleged error. It would
add greatly to my comfort, and somewhat
to my cash, if some superior person would show
me how a nation can be the better for pro-
viding her conscience by import only, at frightful
expense, while the native product, free of charge
and of vastly superior make, is persistently sup-
pressed, with Government, " religion " and
revenue co-operating for the suppression. The
real greatness of modern nations dates in every
case from the day they insisted on Home Rule in
Conscience.

I am not discussing conscience in- any polemic
or theological sense of the term, but simply as an
industrial factor, for its value in trust and duty
in the application of capital and labour to produc-
tion. No industry of any sort can proceed far
without it. The greater the scope of the enter-
prise, the larger the element of delegation and
trust. Nothing extensive in industrial production
is achieved by the man who can venture no
farther than his own eye may at all times see.
Indeed, the point of large expansion is reached
only when he can transfer his authority with
confidence in an honest result. How can anything
of the kind be attempted in the Irish conditions

Farming with a Pen 15

which I have described ? It is practically useless
discussing industry with the Irishman while the
expenditure for its development is misappro-
priated wholesale for his moral bondage. Until
he may have property in mind, he can have neither
property nor efficiency in anything. Where a
man is held to merit murder because he has a
conscience, hope implies moral revolution.

Give a man the whole earth, with his mind the
instrument of another, and he remains essentially
a slave. This is how we come to find agriculture
in Connaught chiefly hindered by the popular
practice of theft as a social virtue. The thieving
nabit, bad enough before, got its charter from
boycotting, under the moral sanction of
" patriotism " ; but it remains to work against
everybody who has anything to stea), and it is
found more convenient to compromise with the
practice than to revoke the charter. How can
industry flourish in such conditions ? Let others
beat about the bush, and pocket Government
salaries for accommodating the elaborate fraud
I have not time for trifling while a nation is dying.
The Irish nation has either to establish private
property in mind or perish. Irish nationality
must choose between a home made conscience and
an imported coffin. I suppose I need hardly tell
the reader that this is not my first sermon on the
present text, and it is but fair to acknowledge
that several bishops have had the moral courage
to follow my lead in declining to approve organised
barbarism for patriotic virtue.

CHAPTER II.
THEN AND NOW

THERE are two little farms, in different townlands,
but meeting on a stream and conveniently worked
as one. Separately, they measure something over
thirty-two statute acres ; jointly, about an acre
more, but the difference does not affect the
purpose. The valuation is £6, the purchase
annuity .£5 135. iod., about 33. 7d. an acre.

For estimating production, as attempted before
my time, we can take the total as twenty-one
acres, the rest being waste, under water, sedge,
bent, heather and virgin bog. About a fourth of
the workable area was tilled, in uncertain rotation,
the rest pasture, and there was not a rood of the
grass that could at any time be successfully
reserved for hay. The river valley, gushing
spring water from under the hills, was excellent
for snipe, but we were not poachers, and it would
not pay to licence a gun, everybody else being a
poacher. That was the state of things when I
escaped from my beloved country as a small boy in
1882, but it was considerably worse when I
returned in 1901, except that the bog had been
cut away for fuel, and the track left ready for
reclamation.

At present the " waste " land is the best I have,

(6

Then and Now 17

and the worst rood from end to end will make
fair meadow, even without manuring. An area of
about two acres remains still not sufficiently
drained for the plough, but it is sufficiently
reclaimed for good results in permanent pasture.
In its present state, and at 35. yd. an acre, the land
is as good as I have seen in England at £2 an
acre, and the difference is enough to bring me as
near to the Manchester market as the farmer
living in Lancashire, not to mention my greatly
diminished cost of production apart from rent.
This may not apply to every single product of the
farm, but farm produce is readily convertible into
forms more portable. I cannot send a horse and
cart to Manchester with a load of unpressed hay,
but I can send the hay in live beef to Dublin for
less than 2-J- per cent, of the beef value.
Enormous harm has been done by idle spouters
getting Irish farmers to believe that the railways
made their position impossible. How much saner
it would be to tell them how their less marketable
produce can be converted into more marketable
forms. Besides, I have sometimes seen our local
price for hay considerably higher than the Man-
chester price on the same day, and this year (1915)
our local price for roots is 50 per cent, above
the price in England.

On the most generous estimate, the gross
production before I came could not be more than
£60 a year. Now, I get a yearly average of ^115
for cattle alone, all raised on the place, none ever
bought unless a suckling calf ; and in proportion to

B

i8 My Little Farm

the value of the animals, my bill for bag stuffs is
considerably less, the feeding value of the home
produce being so much higher. In another
chapter it is shown in more detail how this result
is assisted by the improved quality of the cow
herself and by the new methods of feeding her
from home production. There were eight cows,
and calves, with a pony, all about the average.
Now there are eighteen and a big horse, worth on
an average per animal about twice as much in
money. It is amazing how people persist in
breeding from bad stock to return them a low
result for the produce of their labour ; and how,
while wasting their life and work in this way, they
will go five miles with a load of stuff for 2d. in 55.
on the price. My cow is my market, and unless
she can yield a satisfactory price for my produce,
she must go, to make room for one that will. I
cannot afford to keep bad cows. The smaller the
farm the better the cow ought to be. The poorer
the farmer, the less he can afford the loss in feeding
bad ones. By " good " and " bad " here, I do
not mean merely the size or even the money value,
but the productive and reproductive capacity of
the cow in proportion to cost.

In addition to cattle and the field routine for
their maintenance in all seasons, here is a list of
our present products which were not formerly
produced at all: — Rhubarb, strawberries, goose-
berries, apples, plums, pears, early potatoes,
onions and a seasonal succession of other garden
stuffs, which go far against the bill for house-

Then and Now 19

keeping. I can pay the purchase annuity out of
a strawberry plot which is less than thirteen
perches, leaving me the rest of the land for nothing.
The rhubarb is specially successful, and I see that
these intensive products, on a larger scale, could
be made much more profitable than cows, had it
not been for the organised virtue of thieving. Yet
the thieves have the necessary land of their own,
as good as mine or better, and comparatively idle ;
but they must enjoy the general holiday for three
or four months of the working year, when I am
grubbing up the gardens for the products which
they prefer to steal. As I have said elsewhere,
all are not thieves, but they are sufficiently
numerous, sufficiently intelligent and sufficiently
respectable to prevent the more profitable pro-
duction on any extensive scale, which means that
they make the advance of civilisation impossible in
industry, not to mention their own material loss
in the wages which might be earned from the
products which they keep unproducible. They
proceed on the general idea that it is not wrong for
a man to steal anything the neighbour has in
excess of himself ; in other words, that the produc-
ing scale of the lowest must be the consuming
scale for the highest. It is a source of consistent
wonder why I have more than one pair of boots,
one suit of clothes and two shirts ; and I am not
alone in my acquaintance with the highly respect-
able man who, after refusing 2s. 6d. for the day,
will stay out of bed all night to steal the value of 6d.
Without going into detail, the general character

20 My Little Farm

of the field cropping can be inferred from the area
and the stock carried, but I may mention the rate
of production per acre in a few of the heavier
items: — Mangolds, 50 tons; potatoes, 12 tons;
hay (in two cuttings), 3 to 4 tons ; and oats at a
like rate ; but, having ceased to thresh, I cannot
give the quantities in grain and straw. It isjall
eaten unthreshed, and seems to make very good
fodder, particularly for the young bulls, which
have so far come out specially healthy and fertile.
There is a chapter in Section III on the very
important business of rearing and treating young
bulls to assure their fertility. I once threshed
the oats, but other people took the grain,
and the straw was left to me. That manner of
distribution did not appeal to me, and there was
much anger when I stopped threshing, which was
regarded as a selfish attack on the vested rights of
those who had stolen my kernal and left me the
husk. In such a perfect habitat for the blight
parasite, I have ceased to grow potatoes, except
earlies and for home use. I prefer products which
can flourish the more in the conditions which kill
the potato. I do not think a man's working time
is worth sixpence a day growing potatoes with the
spade and cooking them to feed for bacon, but that
is how most of my neighbours spend their working
time. Yet when they come to work for me, at
six or seven times as much per day as their work
is worth to them at home, they invariably insist
that they come only " to oblige me." In my
fourteen years, there is not one such " obligation "

Then and Now 21

that has not been discharged in coin of the realm,
at something more than the local rates, and still
it is " to oblige me " every time.

The total area now tilled is no more than it was
when I came, but the produce is at least three
times as much. An increase in the food value per
unit is equally certain, if less easily put into
accurate terms, but a fair idea may be inferred
from comparing the standard analysis of bad
cereals and good legumes. In such a comparison,
however, the whole advantage or gain is not in
the food values, because the acre after legumes, as
compared with the acre after grain, must have its
reserve fertility increased by the value of at least
£i. The nitrogen fixed in the soil from the air
by a crop of vetches cannot be worth less than 109.
per acre at present prices, and a value not less than
this in nitrogenous fertility must be taken out by
the grain crop. Assuming the cereal to equal the
vetch in feeding value per acre, which it does not,
the .£1 per acre in plus fertility has still to be
considered, and then there is the farther gain of a
second crop in the same year from the soil pro-
ducing the vetches. I am putting these plus
values of the legume at the lowest point rather
than at the average, and at every point the esti-
mates of science are checked by the practical
results of experience, since I am not in a position
to be scientific at the expense of the taxpayer.

Before me, there were two men and two women.
The work now is the equivalent of one man's at
most. The product of the one man's work is
three times as much as the product of the two

22 My Little Farm

men's work was, not to mention the assistance of
the women ; and the one man never works as hard,
unless during the general holiday. He works
regularly, with industrial intelligence in the
direction, and there is practically nothing else to
account for the difference. The cattle work is so
arranged that one man can do it all in three hours
a day. To make sure of this, I have done it all
myself, for weeks in succession, and found that,
barring accidents, I could get through with the
eighteen cattle and the horse in an hour and a half
twice a day. It takes a little longer when young
calves are fed three times a day, but this is only
a very short time in their lives. In addition to the
regular farming, the one-man equivalent finds
time for some other work every year, and the
improvements of a permanent kind effected for
the past ten years seem to be considerably more
than for the previous ten generations. A youth of
seventeen now in my employment (a typical
average lad) is worth more in his work than the
whole average family of five or six anywhere about
me, and I think he has a much better time of it
than they. He certainly lives at a far higher level,
both physically and mentally, with a collection of
standard literature at his disposal in the long
winter evenings when the day's work is done,
while the crowd of his age and class go hunting
from house to house and pelting the iron roofs
with stones for their amusement. He is the only
lad of the peasant class that I know in all Ireland
at present enjoying the least chance of an intel-

Then and Now 23

lectual existence, though there can hardly be
another peasantry in the world more mentally
inclined by nature. Waste of mind is waste of life
at its best, and this means national ruin ; but crime
is openly preferred to culture by those who control
the collective psychology. Not far from me,
there was an empty building. Nobody had any
use for it, and somebody suggested that it ought
to serve some public purpose. It was bought, and
the roof pulled down, for no reason that could
ever be discovered but to prevent it becoming a
reading room — while the progressive communities
of the world are taxing themselves to provide
books and libraries. The Local Government
empowers us to apply the Free Libraries Act, but
in the only attempt that I know of to start a
reading room in Connaught, the bulk of the books
were stolen. So much is crime preferred to cul-
ture. Is it any wonder that the work of one
little boy, intelligently directed, can be more pro-
ductive than that of three or four average men ?
Paying wages, I am not in a position to waste
working power ; I must either make the expendi-
ture reproductive or stop farming. From end to
end of the year, my agricultural neighbour has
not a shilling a day for his work on his own land,
but I must pay wages at more than twice this rate
of his working value, necessitating more than
twice his result in production, per unit of energy
applied. Working for himself, he can limit his
standard of living to his rate of production,
however low, while I must meet the wage bill

24 My Little Farm

many months before the product comes in view.
Bound by these obligations, I must of necessity
go for a maximum of production at a minimum
of labour cost, and since this cannot come from
multiplying the power of the man, -per se, it must
come from multiplying the productiveness of the
process.

Here we reach what seems to me to be one of
the most important points in any practical study
of Irish farming and of the peculiar conditions in
which our peasant production is carried on, with
a standard of living kept down to accommodate
a half barbaric standard of production, and the
soil consequently held at less than half its proper
use to the national existence. What I am forced
by the circumstances to do is, for example, to
produce 50 tons of mangolds from the same plot
from which my neighbour would produce 15 or 20
tons, and with no more labour than he applies ;
or, to put it another way, while he applies his
labour to an acre for a given result, I get an equal
result from less than half the acre and less than
half the amount of his labour. What is more, I
must do it, because I have to get back the wages
expended, and cannot cover my failure by sinking
to his lower standard of life. In this levelling up,
there is a farther asset to be noted : while I produce
more from the half acre than my neighbour
produces from the acre, I have the other half acre
free to produce something else. Now I will leave
the patriotic reader to think it out for himself
what the Irish nation would gain by having about
three-fourths of the peasantry in the employment

Then and Now 25

of the remaining fourth, under the double neces-
sity for better work on the one side and better
management on the other, with a doubled effici-
ency of brain in the business of agricultural
production, and an agrarian character advancing
at the same rate, instead of rotting in a sink
of artificially protected Congestion. In other
countries, where crime is not officially preferred to
culture, the desire for a higher standard of living
impels the peasant proprietor to work for the
maximum production, and character is necessarily
advanced at a like degree ; but I see no sign of this
in a country where the peasant dares not even claim
personal property in what he calls his own mind.
The soil of Ireland is usurped by men who
are not farmers. They are only labourers, and
incompetent at that.

The national significance of it for the future
will be more clearly realised when we reflect that
considerably more than half the agrarian popula-
tion of Ireland live by little farms about the size
of mine and less, all now on the way to become
peasant proprietors, each employer his own
labourer, and each labourer his own employer,
but all alike methodically deprived by their
" education " of that freedom in mental and
industrial motive which we invariably find at the
foundation of successful proprietorship in other
countries. Until the Irish peasant is moved up
mentally, this huge expenditure on his material
improvement must remain waste in the main ; and
by the terms of the Home Rule contrivance, he
would, in about twelve years after the enact-

26 My Little Farm

merit, be no longer entitled to have his failure
financed from the pockets of his British neighbours.
Unless he could in those twelve years be lifted to
the status of personal property in mind as well as
land, the " free constitution " must at the end of
that period, confront a stoppage of the " foreign "
funds, an incapacity to replace them at home, and
a recurrence of organised calamity expressed in a
howl of revolution from the green hills of Ireland.
I do not believe that the necessary mental trans-
formation could be achieved in twelve years by
any provision in view. The industrial redemption
of agrarian Ireland requires nothing less than the
death of a whole generation and the education of
a new one under totally different auspices. There
can be no other country in the world where the
gospel of uselessness is so expensively triumphant
in the degradation of industrial character.

This contrast, " Then and Now," is not mere
writing. It is work, pressing for expression ;
energy, translated into life ; life, advancing itself
in action ; and the painful discipline of sacrifice
to a pleasant purpose ; in a country where few or
none are prepared to take the pains essential to the
pleasure, and where the strengthening thrill of
conquered crisis is practically unknown. I need
add not a line to the limits of my personal ex-
perience. Argument is unnecessary. There is
blood on the track that I have trodden these
fourteen years attesting pain at every point ; and
a thousand little farms like mine, however
profitable, could not possibly compensate the
sacrifices of living such a life, the more painful

Then and Now 27

because nearly all the pain has been gratuitous,
and deliberately inflicted to prevent success,
apparently in fear that the peasant, industrially
emancipated, might be a less convenient instru-
ment in our foreign monopoly of the native mind.
The pain is over now, its consecrated savages
all silent, their treachery defied by triumph.
The net gain to me is my knowledge of Ireland,
which is much. Starting from a filial motive,
I continue from a national one ; because so much
of Ireland, her character and her destiny depends
on the future of her little farms, not merely for
her farming, but also for the higher efficiency in
every other pursuit of life which is derived
from intellectual application to agriculture. I
have not forgotten the young chemists and
engineers from the little farms of Scotland who sat
in the same classes with me at college, and I have
yet to meet the first Irishman of the kind from an
Irish farm of the same size, though we know how
to accumulate funds out of poverty for those
forms of " education " which help only to export
us as human raw material.

Let me not make a picture to deter the enter-
prising peasant. More than half my complaints
would not apply to him at all in the circumstances.
To a hundred of the attacks that hurt me, he
would be invulnerable, because unaccustomed to
the life I had enjoyed before coming to Connaught.
I am not a peasant ; I am only trying to be one, and
finding the chief hindrance in the moral conflict.

The means and methods of the contrast above
described are discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER III.
THERE IS NO BAD LAND

BY far the largest factor in my transformation is a
thoughtful use of artificial manures, but there
were several stages before that. Intelligent farm-
ing begins in geology, and I determined to begin
from the very beginning. Having spent about a
month most scientifically, under good direction,
I astonished myself by the amount of agricultural
chemistry and economic botany that a man with a
knowledge of laws and principles could master in a
month ; and even now, after fourteen years, I find
very little added by the needs of practice to that
first month's work. In other words, the amount
of science necessary in doubling the production of a
Connaught farm can be acquired in less than one-
third of the time which the Connaught farmer
spends on his annual holiday.

I found the uplands an impoverished peaty
loam, on a base of limestone gravel, with a ferric
stratum intervening, in some places solidly im-
pervious to the necessary percolation under rain and
to the necessary evaporation under heat, though
a good deal of the " flag " had been empirically
broken by the uninstructed muscle of preceding
generations. They had apparently found out that
it was good to " break the flag " ; it remained for

28

There is no Bad Land 29

me to find out why. So far, a fairly simple
diagnosis, inferring for prescription : plenty of
potash, plenty of phosphates, some lime on the
most peaty spots, and then, either tilled or
pastured, a leguminous growth to put in the re-
quired nitrogen from the air instead of paying
£12 per ton for it. Very much of the most
costly manures required I always get out of the
air for nothing, but the way of doing it demands
intelligence. It is one of the differences between
farming with your head and without it.

Every field I have is more or less hilly, and, in
the upper parts, mostly of the make described in
the last paragraph ; but every one is skirted at the
lower levels with streaks of clay, and, farther out,
margins of deep peat, tempered with alluvial iron,
nearly level with the water before I lowered it.
These lower levels are now by far the most pro-
ductive parts of the field, but the prescription
must be changed : as before, but with the lime
everywhere, and in much increased quantities, not
less than 10 cwt. in each of two dressings, with a
year between. Apply in October or November,
in dry weather, and harrow in. I have a bagful
of scientific and other proofs for everything I say
here, but I remember a professor who, having
edged my appetite for proofs, often refused to
quote them, and set me to hunt them up for
myself, which gave them something like double
effect in my mind when I had found them.
Besides, what I say here is enough for the man
who wants to know, and nothing is enough for the

30 My Little Farm

man who does not. Let him give up his land and
become an honest labourer. For the credit of
agriculture and for the good of Ireland, the sooner
he loses his land the better. Meantime, I would
put a tax of many shillings per acre on him, to be
exempted only by his passing an examination.
Leaving a nation's soil in the occupation of a lazy
and illiterate man is about as bad as putting it in
pawn with a usurer, and industrial illiteracy
becomes more economically intolerable throughout
the world every day. Progressive civilisation can
no longer be supported anywhere by any form of
industrial production dependent on brute force
only, and this fact is at the bottom of the failure
in Irish farming. The knowledge is not enough
to make the soil and the labour on it progressively
productive, and the production can never be
enough to establish the necessary knowledge so
long as the expenditure on " education " is
conducted to perpetuate the ignorance. The
farmer has no better right to the soil than any
other man, except in so far as he can produce
more from it.

My stream is the one thing on the farm that
has behaved in a uniformly admirable manner
from the first. Fed from permanent springs up
the country, it runs into the middle of my land,
turns a right angle there, and runs out at the other
side, with the result that every field, without
exception, touches water at some point. The
contrast in the drawings at the front shows how
the " bottoms " adjoining the stream were every-

There is no Bad Land 3*

where fenced off as unworkable, and how these
partitions are now removed, making a clean sweep
from end to end. The dividing fences had been
planned intelligently enough in their way, along
the line between the workable and the unworkable
areas, often tapping springs in their course ; but a
line dividing such areas, and aiming at the springs,
was necessarily crooked, which made wiring very
difficult, and left the lower end of every working
area an irregular zig-zag, with the utmost waste
in work and headlands. They were all earth
fences, with not more than 100 yards of hedge in
the whole place, but every one of them is now
replaced by a deep drain, sunk well into the sub-
soil of limestone gravel, so that the high waterlevel
no longer prevents the lime and the necessary aera-
tion assisting economic vegetation on the surface.
In some of these drained " bottoms " I found very
rich deposits of various kinds which had all through
the ages been held useless by the excess of water
and the exclusion of air. Men who have plenty
of such land held useless, and who cry out for an
increase of land, come wondering now at my
clover on the track of sedge and flaggers ; but
while I lower the water level, they make holiday,
expecting the Government and the taxpayer to
make good the loss.

The field of five acres which we call the paddock,
where the calves and the young bulls are herded,
may stand to illustrate the whole, in fencing,
draining arid manuring alike. The area was in
five patches, only one of which could be tilled.

32 My Little Farm

Two acres of it were " bottom," adjoining the
stream, and two acres at the other end were cut-
away bog, some of this a surface of bare sand,
some thickly coated with heather, and some so
deep in marsh that no cow could walk in it.
There is not a yard of it now without clover, and
£?5 to £$° worth of young cattle get their only
grazing on it every year, which proves it to be more
productive than the whole farm was when I began.
The conversion from marsh and heather to clover
and crested dogstail has been accomplished
absolutely without tillage, and the soil seems to
be still improving, though five years have passed
since I expended the last cent on it. It is
admitted by those around me that in any average
year I get back more than the whole cost of the
reclamation, and yet those who have land of the
kind, all waste, look on with their hands in their
pockets. Some, however, are beginning to move,
now that they see the reclamation permanent and
the whole cost coming back once a year. Here
is an industrial investment at 100 per cent, per
annum, in a country which exports her working
power and has a surplus balance of many millions *
invested abroad, for much less than five per cent,
all round.

* This is only the balance on which dividends are paid
at a single Irish Bank, and it consists chiefly in Govern-
ment securities. What of all other heads? It is clear that
what Ireland lacks is not capital, but the character to afford
it reproductive security. The men among us who control
"Education" to keep the Irish mind incapable of this are very
large investors of our idle capital in foreign countries. They
gather up the money out of our poverty, and they keep us afraid
to ask questions.

There is no Bad Land 33

This field is rather famous. It has been visited
by bishops, peers, baronets, knights, statesmen,
politicians, royal commissioners, experts, travelled
foreigners and even farmers ; all attracted by the
Connaught short cut to reclamation without
tillage, and all as incredulous when they come as
they are convinced before leaving. I never knew
one of them either to believe before he saw or to
doubt after seeing ; and considering such incapa-
city for intelligent belief, in rather intelligent
people such as I describe, we must not wonder at
the suspicion of facts shown by the Irish peasant,
who cannot believe even in himself. I do not
think they could believe it even by seeing had it
not been for my foresight in preserving a plot of
pure heather across the fence among the private
lawns and gardens. I take them first into the
field, tell them what it was a few years ago, and
describe the method of the change. " Yes, it is
very wonderful," they reply, but I can see that
they do not believe a word of it. Then I take
them to the heather plot, the final refuge of my
receding credit, and I find it pleasant to
follow the effulgence of beautiful Faith as
it advances over their wondering faces. To
the Irishman who reads this, and has not seen,
I must, I suppose, be either the best farmer
or the best liar in a land of farmers more
gifted in falsehood than in farming. Either
way, it is a sort of distinction, but the picture
I have on view, worked out in the most con-
crete verity, is, in so far as I know, the only

c

34 My Little Farm

thing of the kind in the United Kingdom,
though the profit of it is more obvious than the
painting.

I might have had a visit from the German
Emperor, for I and he are the only two men I know
in Europe doing anything like this with land ; but
I fear my Imperial colleague is at present absorbed
in pursuits more unpleasant to himself and less
worthy of the higher crown we ought to share. It
is a loss that he cannot come over, because I find
on comparing notes that he has much to learn
from me, though the bag stuff which I have found
most useful has all come from Germany, and
cannot be got anywhere else. In his capacity as
farmer, he attacks his moor in the German way,
with any amount of method and patience, but
with strikingly less intelligence than we have
shown in Mayo, assisted by the potash of Stassfurt.
Accordingly, I have much more economic results
to show, though there are circumstantial grounds
for believing that His Imperial Majesty has been
somewhat more satisfactorily supplied with capital.
Perhaps that is the reason he is less satisfactorily
rewarded in dividends. Prussia has had a good
deal of such moor as we meet here in the West of
Ireland, but the area is narrowing now, since other
German capitalists have followed the example of
their Emperor in reclamation. They and their
Emperor together have not done as much in this
way for Germany as I have done for Ireland,
though they have attracted more than twice as
much attention. The United IrisU League does

There is no Bad Land 35

not work in Germany. The German Govern-
ment would have the decency to hang its
officials.

Returning after my month of science in Dublin
able to see everything with a new eye, I went
carefully over the five-acre plot of five " fields,"
and found three divisions of botanical habitat, as
distinct as if they had belonged to different
latitudes in different continents or to the differen-
tiated altitudes of a mountain five miles high.
There was the patch of impoverished upland, dry
enough, yet sour, with sorrel taking supreme
possession ; the skirts of waterlogged clay, grey
with a species of stunted sedge, which seemed
never to change either its quantity of its colour
with any season of the year ; and then the bog-
track, with banks of heather and with open pools
holding water under a green scum at mid-summer.
Fertility implied a different treatment for each
division, and, to complicate the necessity, all three
divisions ran in and out among each other. What
I have said above about artificial manures and
their different application will apply again here,
but there was much to do before manuring,
because manure may be lost without oxygen in
the soil, and because the required air is excluded
by excess of water. The whole area looks now as
if of uniform quality. It is only a plot of five
acres, but, for purposes of demonstrating the
needs and means of economic reclamation, it is
big enough to put nearly half of Ireland -inside its
four fences

36 My Little Farm

I was building a house. It must stand on the
limestone gravel, with a drainage at least three
feet lower, which, on discharge, meant a con-
siderable outer cutting, permanently open, and in
some places nine feet deep. This by-product of
the builder's plan gave me an outlet from the bog,
and next summer I had the pools on fire, burning
out as much as I could of the bog vegetation, and
leaving a seed bed of ashes for clover. The stuff
dug for the foundation of the buildings must go
somewhere. I carted it on to the bog, increasing
the seed bed, and harrowed all down after a little
levelling of the bank edges. This was in summer.
Late in autumn I applied 7 cwt. to the acre of a
mixture two parts of best superphosphate to one
part of best kainit, and harrowed down again.
Harrowing is cheap, and it assists the action of
air on the soil. Next March, I seeded down my
bog-track with Italian ryegrass and broad-leaved
English red clover, choosing both for their capacity
to grow high, bush out, and kill everything but
themselves. I rolled the place heavily and
repeatedly during the spring drought to close
cracks and to prevent the peat drying to a greater
depth than the deepening roots of the clover.

In June, I had, surely, the strangest crop ever
seen in Ireland* — sedge, bent, sorrel, bog cotton,
heather and rushes, with clover and rye grass
looking fine and steadily suppressing the native
competitors ; but what must I do with this
curious " crop " ? It occurred to me that if I

* Sections were shown at Ballsbridge.

There is no Bad Land

37

could cut them all away together early, the natives
must go wholly under in a second growth ; but
any man that has ever attempted to cut heather
with a scythe would rather have any other job,
I was delighted to find the scythe running through
the stuff readily, the potash and phosphates
having already set in a deadly dry rot in the stems
of the heather. Having carted off the " hay " I
gave the land a good dressing of farmyard dung,
and in autumn I had the finest pasture that I
knew within fifty miles, though I had expected
nothing of value before next year.

Next year, without farther manuring, I mowed
two great crops. With a machine and two horses
on " the bog," I was personally cutting the second
crop one fine day, when who should come down
from a motor car into the field but Sir Horace
Plunkett, Lord Shaftesbury and Sir Henry
Doran ? They agreed that it was " the best crop,
first or second, they had seen that day," and they
had travelled far. What shall we say of an agricul-
tural community kept drilled to discredit a
demonstration like this, and to persecute a man
who has given so much of his life to establish the
economic practicability of it for their benefit ?
There is an end now of the discredit and the
persecution, but only because both are successfully
defeated and defied. These people do not desire
the productiveness of the land. They only desire
the land, on terms to accommodate their organised
incapacity at the expense of the landowner and
the taxpayer. They never had any personal

38 My Little Farm

reason for attacking me. It was rather because
I had persistently pointed out to them the
economic fact that no gain in rent could ever be
more than a fraction of the gain in good farming.
They are now coming to see the truth of it, and
organised barbarism has to shut its foul mouth
before the irresistible evidence of industrial
sanity. There is even some danger of my becom-
ing " popular," a sort of social disease which has up
to now destroyed possibly useful Irishmen in large
numbers. In my part of Ireland at least, persecu-
tion is still as much a compliment as " popularity "
would be an insult.

The work in the paddock was my first serious
performance on the agricultural stage, and it
taught me something. On such soil, I should not
now begin with phosphates and potash, but rather
with potash and slag, adding a good deal of lime
on the wilder areas, especially the pure peat and
the stiff clay. With this combination, the process
would be more slow, but more permanent and
less expensive. I should not now confine the
seeding to red clover and Italian ryegrass, but
add some alsike, Timothy and rough-stalked
meadow grass to take permanent possession on the
death of the two first, which takes place largely on
any soil in two to three years. At that time,
however, I meant to plough up the whole field as
soon as the fertilisers could give me a sufficiently
workable surface. This has not been done,
because I have found the red clover and ryegrass
followed thickly with indigenous herbage of good

There is no Bad Land 39

quality and long life, chiefly white clover and
crested dogstail, which, if not grown to seed,
makes admirable pasture for young cattle. In so
far as I can see, the crested dogstail is the only
superior grass indigenous to our part of Ireland,
though Timothy appears to assert its right of
existence quite as successfully with me. On this
field, about a hundredweight of milk is consumed
daily for a large part of the milking season, and
then there is the consumption of the solids fed
in the milk. This appears to maintain the
fertility, which must go down without it, but
then, is there any soil that can maintain its
production without some return in manuring
from the consumption of the produce or its
equivalent ?

Let us now consider the cost. Seven cwt. of
potassic superphosphates, then at £4 2s. per ton =
£i 93. per acre. Allow an equal sum for labour
and the dung on two acres of the plot. We are
still probably within £3 an acre, but it is hard to
be quite accurate with the labour element. For
instance, the cost of making the fences would
have to be deducted from that of making the
drains in place of them, and the deepening of the
stream is more benefit to other fields than to this.
Then there are the " broken " days. In hay
time, the morning is wet, and we go draining.
At 10 45 we go back to the hay, and I have not
been able to ascertain every trifle of this kind.
What I can do accurately is to estimate the cost of
the work when done, and this will make the whole

40 My Little Farm

capital outlay on the field about £3 an acre. I
cannot charge the main cutting against it, because
this was done for the drainage of the house, while
the field could not possibly be such a success
without it. In addition to the drains closed,
there are some still open, but the peat dug out of
them and dried has made valuable bedding. On
the whole, at £3 an acre, we must be near enough
to the mark for any practical farmer to form his
own judgment, and I hope it is the spirit of this
book to stimulate judgment rather than to dictate
it. There is no use inviting men to capital
expenditure with their eyes shut. They must see
where they go or remain where they are, and too
many of them will remain where they are even
when they see where to go.

I think the fair conclusion is that there is no
" bad land," but only bad farmers and bad owners.
It must be clear to anybody that the capital value
of my field, as it is, will many times over cover the
cost of changing it from what it was, with a rent-
value still at 35. yd. an acre and a production value
as I have shown. I am satisfied that, on all work-
able land, the worst can always be made as pro-
ductive as the best at something less cost than the
difference in letting value between them. It is
so at least as a general fact, and probably more so
in the peasant farms than elsewhere. In any case,
for myself, I would always prefer the " bad " land
at its lower capital liability. Let the peasant
mind once grasp this and we are on the way to an
economic revolution in food production, but it is

There is no Bad Land 41

not in Ireland that I expect to see the lead,
though the Irish have probably the best oppor-
tunity in the world. I expect nothing of value
from the Irish while they remain afraid to think
and give up their minds to the direction of their
slave drivers.

CHAPTER IV.
THE HEATHER PLOT

THE paddock is a long field, running from end to
end, between the house and the public road ; then
a plantation, with a break in it at the middle to
give a sense of distance about the house, which
looks south, with gardens, orchard and lawn. The
sun shines to us across the paddock all the after-
noon, with the young cattle generally in view.
I like to keep calves where they can be seen easily
and often. Next come three fields, abreast, and
then the little river ; beyond that, the largest
field of all, bought separately. Thus we have four
main divisions, to accommodate a four course
rotation, apart from the strip from side to side
occupied by the buildings, gardens, planta-
tions, &c.

Through the yard, north of the house, a private
road connects all the fields conveniently, and the
yard is washed down into a Timothy meadow on
low ground at the back, with the outlet from the
yard lined by a row of ash, flourishing immensely,
though planted only in the subsoil. They say ash
is a severe test of soil, but when we planted it
there .was no soil here. After the dung heap is
shifted in spring, I grow nearly as much mangels
on the track of it as my neighbours can get out of
their year's crop.

42

The Heather Plot 43

As a whole, the plan works out rather effectively,
and gives the house an air of distinction quite
large for the size ; a big advance on peasant
dignity, yet not at all beyond peasant means,
assuming efficiency. The whole thing, to begin,
is only a typical peasant farm about the average,
and what interested me was to see what could be
done with it.

The peasants' homes could be made beautiful
for practically nothing. Of two ways to do a
necessary piece of work, one makes an eyesore from
the start, the other a delight for generations.
Yet we live in unrelieved squalour, while the
Government gives us young trees free, to be
planted this year by the official expert, and torn
out next year by the pig. The taxpayer bears the
cost of the continuous destruction, and we cannot
be induced to fence the trees. The level of
civilisation is readily inferred. The essentials of
civilisation are probably lower in agrarian Ireland
at present than they were a thousand years ago.

At the south-eastern extremity is the kitchen
garden, as far from the yard as I could go, because
poultry and gardening do not agree. Then
comes the heather plot, the centre of agricultural
interest, which has been visited by travellers from
three continents. Choice vegetables and heather
nearly a yard long flourish on opposite sides of the
paths, and this was the contrast which Mr. T. W.
Russell came to see — when I was " not at home."
His instructive visit is described in the chapter on
" My Visitors."

44 My Little Farm

I have grown great crops of many kinds, but my
half rood of heather is by far the most valuable
bit of the farm, though the total produce for ten
years of precious preservation would not make five
shillings an acre in the market. The heather
grows closer and closer, longer and longer, killing
out everything else ; and I am pleased, because I
feared that it might die in the shelter of the
plantations. This plot is the final proof as to
whether I am really a farmer or the most audacious
liar in Europe. Without the heather, nobody
could believe me about the reclamation. Even
with the heather, Mr. Russell cannot believe it,
and thus, through him, we have the authority of
the Agriculture Department exercised to dis-
courage the reclamation of the land, which is a
novel way of earning a salary from an Agriculture
Department, probably impossible in any country
but Ireland.

I should be almost ashamed to admit how much
money I have made from my half rood of virgin
heather. When the liabilities were discharged for
possession here, I had not much ready cash, and
many a time in the past fourteen years have I been
rudely roused from my literary dreams by demands
for money ; but I had the heather plot always
there, surer than a milk cow, and more than twice
as prompt in yielding money. Time after time,
year after year, I " wrote up " my heather, this
aspect of it now, another next, each as " fresh " as
it could be made by the trick of the trade ; for
this editor in March, for the other in April, and

The Heather Plot 45

so on, getting a cheque every time, and each
cheque worth more than all the heather that the
plot could produce in three hundred years : I am
still open to write any number of interesting and
instructive articles, long or short, on this half rood,
provided the pay is large enough.

Like the rest of our gifted race, I am afflicted, or
fortified, by periods of abnormal indolence,
probably due, in my case, as the natural reaction
after much longer periods of over activity. At
least, that is how I like to explain it, rather than
submit to the general cult of normal indolence
occasionally disturbed by work. The Irishman is
to other men like the racehorse to other horses,
tempered to justify his existence by a short, grand
display of energy, rather than by regular effort at
a supportable rate ; but the racehorse is the most
useless of all horses unless kept in " form," and the
human temper in Ireland does not like this keeping
in " form." See, for instance, our love for soldier-
ing and, in soldiering, our preference for the
deadliest of the work. This is the temperament
which keeps the Irishman gambling with life, and
I may as well own that it took me some time, and
cost me some pain, to conquer it after my escape
from Ireland as a little boy ; for I had been brought
up quite in the Irish way, without a sense of duty,
unless as derived from the unpleasant consequences
of having none. The natural superiority of my
parentage and descent seems to be inferred from
the fact that I did not distinguish myself as a thief.

After my return to Ireland, this national

46 My Little Farm

tendency to fits and starts came back upon me,
and it might have resulted awkwardly but for the
heather plot, so potential in money. To-day, I
got a bill, which must be paid next month ;
to-night I caught an unsuspecting editor in the
heath, and he delivered up the required cash,
leaving my cows and calves to flourish undisturbed
until the right time to sell them, at their best. I
was not, like my neighbours, in a position to
repudiate rent and to play at the expense of my
landlord, since I had no landlord ; but I had a
heather plot, and I sometimes wonder whether the
certainty of the income from it had not the same
effect on me as agitation on other people, minis-
tering to my indolence. That, however, would
lead to a subtlety of self analysis outside the present
purpose. Productive and profitable as the farm
is, I know that I have made more than twice as
much every year from my half rood of heather,
which, indeed, has done very much to capitalise
the rest of the land.

A certain class of agrarian pessimist will object
that the experiment is valueless, because the
ordinary farmer cannot get capital out of a heather
plot by writing about it. The ordinary farmer
has no such need. He is better situated than I
was. He suffers from no such disability. He has
the advantage of me, in that he has his capital
alreldy, which I had not. It does not matter
how or where the capital is derived ; what matters
is the result of its application. The ordinary
fanner has more capital than he knows how to use,

The Heather Plot 47

and the more he knows how to use it, the moie
of it awaits him. The whole civilised world is at
this moment searching for men to take its ample
capital and make use of it on the land, and the
search grows keener as the cost of food goes higher.
The tendency in this direction is no more than
well begun, and Ireland's opportunity is very
great — had it not been that the agrarian energy is
held in foreign fetters. You cannot enslave mind
and have muscle free.

The peasant is afraid to think ; therefore, unfit
to work, and unfit to be capitalised. He has not
the use of his wits. He has muscle, but not mind,
and capital insists on both co-operating. The
peasant is bred and trained to regard the free use
of mind as a vice and a vital danger ; therefore,
fear of thought is among the first of his virtues,
and the man afraid to think is no fit man to be
entrusted with other men's capital. This is how
the Irish peasant is now missing, and bound to
miss, the increasing reward for the food producer,
already greater than it has been for sixty years, and
bound to become much greater still, while agrarian
Ireland looks on, industrially disabled, because
morally demented. It is not possible to deny
mental freedom in the most important interests
of life without disabling industrial capacity.
You may as well deprive a man of his legs and
expect him to run. I owe all that is wrorth having
in my own life to my freedom in the use of my
mind ; and I owre this to my escape from Irish
" education," Can any man suppose that if I had

48 My Little Farm

not escaped from Ireland and learned, to think, I
could sit down in Mayo and make more by writing
about my half rood of heather than our ordinary
farmer can make from sixty acres of our best land ?
After long study and obviously intimate experience
my advice to any ambitious young Irishman is :
Get away from Ireland at once, before you are old
enough to get fixed useless for life, and unless you
can recover the use of your faculties abroad, stay
away ; but if you have really learned to think, and
got character enough to support your thinking,
come back, and you will find Ireland the most
fascinating country in the world, where a com-
fortable income can be made by preserving half a
rood of heather from the encroachments of
reclamation.

JVIy heather plot has made men think, in a
country where thought is " danger." It is
exactly like a miracle, achieved without apparent
effort, and I keep every side of it as rich and green
as possible to accentuate the contrast. If I told
them it was done miraculously, I have no doubt
that large numbers could believe in it, but I am
reduced to mere reason. When they ask me to
explain the transformation, I am forced to talk
chemistry, but chemistry implies thought and
mental freedom ; therefore, my explanation is
" dangerous," and so is my plot — a standing
example of miraculous effects from merely natural
causes. I have no desire whatever to usurp the
miraculous function, and it is really not my fault
if the natural has here contracted the limits of the

The Heather Plot 49

supernatural ; but the suspicion of my plot
remains. I might have said to them : " I came
out here one silent midnight under the Summer
Moon, looked over my many acres of heather, and
prayed that it might all turn green and fatten good
cows, all except one half rood, to be preserved as a
memorial of my supplication. I came again next
morning and found sweet tufts of clover beginning
to peep up through the heather, and these
flourished and spread until all but the half rood
was clover and fat cows." See how a man may
miss his way to popularity from want of a little
foresight. It is too late for me now to set up the
miraculous explanation, and it appears that even
Mr. T. W. Russell will not accept any other,
though he showed no special talent for miracles
before he became Vice-President of the Agricul-
ture Department. How can we expect science to
prevail with the peasant ?

Perhaps it is as well. I am not sure that the
mantle would fit me even if it fell on me, and it is
something to know that if I cannot teach men to
lie, I can at least force them to think. Even the
Department's experts came my way — thinking.
The phenomenon had to be explained, they were
paid to explain such phenomena, and they delivered
lectures in the district ; but their explanation was
frightfully like my own. One of these lectures is
worth permanent record.

An admirable lecture on scientific manuring,
to a full audience of empty farmers, but their
natural intelligence was almost as high as the

D

50 My Little Farm

barriers that hold it useless. Having told them
about the three agents of fertility, the expert
showed them how much the whole was greater
than its parts, when properly blent for purposes
of production ; how potash, phosphates and
nitrogen, mixed in right proportions, must yield
more than the same money's worth of either by
itself. Best of all, he had a way to defeat cheating
in the purchase. Given the analysis, the money
value could be calculated on the units, and this
plan of calculation was called " The Formula."

A most excellent lecture, especially in its
assurance against fraud, and they passed a powerful
resolution of eternal gratitude to the Department,
after which they went home, and so did he ; but
they went home in the belief that the Department
had brought out a new manure, that there was
nothing in the world like it, that no trader could
cheat them in it, and that the name of it was
" Formula." That was the agricultural result of
our admirably scientific lecture on manuring,
admirably delivered, to men who regard them-
selves as admirable farmers.

In the course of the week, they dropped into
the towns, and asked the manure merchants the
price per ton for " Formula." " We haven't it in
stock at present," said the merchants, " but we
can get it for you in a few days." The scientific
farmers went from shop to shop, but not one
merchant could quote per ton for " Formula," and
they confided their suspicions to one another.
Why had the merchants left them in complete

The Heather Plot 51

ignorance of the one article in which they could
not be cheated ? The merchants denounced the
Department for its new fangled notions, but they
determined to stock the new manure. They
wrote to the manufacturers for it, and the manu-
facturers replied that they had never heard of any
manure made or sold under any such name.

Not one bag of " Formula " could be bought in
our region, and then the scientific farmers came
to me, as they generally do for what they cannot
get to know anywhere else. I explained
" Formula " to them as best I could, but I do not
believe that they were as happy in the knowledge
as they had been in the suspicion. That was the
end of the most soundly scientific lecture I ever
heard from any of the Department's experts, and
it left me wondering how vast must be the waste
of money in this " instruction." However, it is
not the expert's fault. He is condemned to teach
men who are permanently deprived of the power
to learn : science must not enter the School.

The rule laid down for the expert is to take
half a rood on the farm and to transform it ; mine
is to transform the farm, all but the half rood.
The peasant suspects that an expert working at
the public expense is concerned only to make a
show and to advertise the Department, without
regard to cost in relation to the product. It is not
for me to say how far this suspicion may be well
founded, but it is certain that the expert does not
ascertain the net result of his expenditure on the
plot. He may get an approximate calculation on

52 My Little Farm

a tillage crop, such as oats or turnips. How can
he know the final value of reclamation by top-
dressing, which may take five years to reach its
maximum result and fifty to exhaust itself ?

When the farm as a whole is transformed, and
half a rood kept as before, the peasant has the sense
to see that this cannot be merely for show. He
knows that no sane man would willingly extend
the experiment to the whole area without econo-
mic results. In short, the large scale implies an
investment, not a mere experiment, and the
uninstructed peasant can perceive the difference,
if he cannot explain it scientifically. The trans-
formation of half a rood is only a matter of a few
shillings, and it might be worth attempting, even
at a loss, especially when the official expert is
expected to have so many " demonstrations " at
the end of the year. The expenditure on the
whole, omitting a plot, is another matter, simply
foolish if not reproductive.

It is obvious, then, how much more valuable
and instructive my scheme is than the Depart-
ment's, and it explains why the more intelligent
of the peasants pass by the Department's
" demonstrations " and travel long distances to
see my plot. I do not invite them to see a trans-
formation from heather to clover without regard
to cost. I invite them to see the difference
between the product and the cost of production.
Instead of costing a penny to anybody, my
" demonstration " makes money. It pays for
itself and leaves much over. The practically

The Heather Plot 53

unproductive land is there in the plot to show
how the bulk was when I began ; and the bulk is
there to show what it produces now. The cattle
on it can be counted and valued, and not one
intelligent man has ever seen it without admitting
that the capital expenditure must come back once
a year. What, then, can the executive head of the
Department have in view in discrediting these
results ? If they are better than his own, that is
not my fault. ,1 cannot imagine that he has any
desire to do me a personal injury. I have never
had anything to do with him personally.

The controlling fact which Mr. Russell and I
and the rest of us have to face is that the peasant
is not scientifically approachable, and that it is
waste of good money trying to approach him in
that way so long as his primary education is under
the present control. Where science is " sin,"
who would be scientific ? Talk science to the
peasant if you must — the man paid for attempting
it must only do his best, and hold his tongue as
to the waste of money. When he has done his best,
the peasant proceeds empirically, if at all. If
science is to reach him, it must be in the concrete
result, not in the abstract causes. His pocket
may lead him from the concrete to the abstract ;
his head cannot lead him from the abstract to the
concrete. From something which he can touch
with his hand, he may proceed to the forces
governing its production ; he cannot proceed from
these to any touchable thing producible from
them, but not yet produced. It is time I knew

54 My Little Farm

the peasant mind, and these two facts I can
affirm of it :i — (i) It makes waste of the Depart-
ment's expenditure ; and (2) it cannot but do so
while primary education is directed and financed
against mental freedom.

I knew these facts (and much else like them)
from the start. That was the reason I had no
faith in abstract teaching among peasants, and
decided to put my own " demonstration " in
concrete form, so that it could be seen as plainly
and calculated as easily as the results of a chemical
experiment. I thought then that I was right ;
now I know it. Every day of my life makes it
plainer to me that the peasant must be mentally
liberated before he can be industrially redeemed ;
that his mind must be restored to the service of his
body before his energies can react reproductively
in a higher standard of either work or life. The
best men in the Department know this as well as
I do, but they are paid for the silence of their
failure rather than for the success of their service.
Speaking the truth, they would be dismissed.
They have to do their work and take their pay in
the conditions imposed on them, and it is the
nation's business, not theirs, to find out what it is
that keeps them useless. In spite of the agrarian
mind, they have done something to improve
agrarian conditions, or at least to create the oppor-
tunity ; but their results remain necessarily small
in proportion to the cost, and impossible where
most required.

CHAPTER V.
ON THE FENCE

THEIR own employers, paying no wages, the
peasants ignore the money value of working time
lost by bad fences. One might think they would
imagine some value in the work they could do for
the time lost at herding, but they debit that in
the leisure account rather than as waste of produc-
tive power. The dominant motive in work is the
length of leisure procurable by the product, on a
standard of life fixed low, rather than the higher
standard attainable by a full working year, as in
other countries. Apart from some local excep-
tions, as in Wexford and on a few farms tilled by
wage labour here and there, we have no full year's
work at farming anywhere in Ireland outside
Ulster. As I write this, the winter is nearly half
gone, and except in tending live stock, which is not
enough occupation for one person per household,
I have not seen one day's work done within any
distance of me for the past six weeks. With this
small exception, the productive process is abso-
lutely suspended, while the consumptive side of
the account expands increasingly at this time of
the year. Meantime, the fences are down, and
the school time of children is to be lost by herding
next year, helping to assure agricultural incapacity

55

56 My Little Farm

in the coming generation — that is, if we
assume the " education " to have any industrial
value.

They are earth fences in our region, and after
all the centuries of practice, I find few men who
know how to make an earth fence. They have it
four times the necessary width on top. In
reaching the grass that grows there, the hungry
cow tears out the face of the foundation with her
hoofs. Narrow the top to twelve inches, and she
will not do so, with the hungry cow on the other
side co-operating to exhaust the joint attraction.
The want of space would help to prevent the cow
getting up, but as it is, she gets up, and the fence
gets down. Then Michael or Dominick or
Bridget, or all three, must stay at home to " mind
the cow," after daddy has wasted the morning to
watch her. One man is supposed to account for
£10,000 worth of cows in herding, but here I can
see the one man occupied with one cow, worth £10.

I beg pardon. I ought to have written " Delia,"
which is our Roman disguise for Bridget now in
general use. Bringing up our children for
export only, why should we not give them names
to disguise their nationality, as so many of them
find it reasonably wise to do when they go abroad ?
I think I am myself the only Irishman left now
who is quite content to call himself " Pat," and
there are great patriots who would give much
to see " Pat " dropped, if only in the grave ;
but I am inclined rather to make the good old
name live even longer thaD myself, and, assuming

On the Fence 57

no offence, to live as Ion? as I can, if not as com-
fortably as I could. Half a century of unrewarded
hardship awaits the men who must restore the
Irish peasant to the use of his wits for the indus-
trial development of his character. Meantime,
we must teach him how to make an earth fence
and let the children go to play if not to school.
Now they mind the cow, and look forward to play
like their big brotheis when they grow up, instead
of looking forward to work as the children do in
the countries that prosper.

I had fences everywhere, but no fence anywhere
that could stop a pig, and every patch had its
double border of waste headlands in addition.
More than half the fences are now gone, with so
much working power economised to keep the other
half good, and I never make or repair an earth
fence without setting some sort of a hedge to
grow in it. Years ago, I found thorn seedlings
absurdly cheap, and bought some thousands of
them for five shillings. They were not big enough
to plant out, but a few square yards were enough
to nurse them until needed. Ever since, I have
had thorn quicks at hand whenever I wanted them.
It is one of those small matters which, put
together, mean big results in the economy of the
farm, and a better race of men when we are gone .
Nine-tenths of all we have has been provided for
us by predecessors, and unless we hand it on
increased, there is no progress. Under our double
dose of crime-made law and professional
patriotism, we have rather diminished the

58 My Little Farm

hereditary total, deliberately destroying the farm
for evidence to reduce the judicial rent in the land
court, though the gain of a penny in this is impos-
sible unless by the loss of sixpence to secure it.
We are the only people who plunder posterity
and call it patriotism.

I cut the upper angles off my earth fence, and
turned the stuff in on top, raising the height and
sloping the sides. Then a single wire, with furze
seed under it, and in three years I have a hedge as
well as a fence, good for at least two generations,
or perhaps indefinitely, assuming the necessary
attention to hedges. The whole work was only
like a last touch to the heavy lifting done in vain
before me, and it often sets me reflecting whether
the Irish people will ever come to see their
opportunities, or die out blind and let their beauti-
ful bit of the earth pass into stranger hands, when
organised crime, dying of its own diseases, can no
longer depend on legislative fraud to disguise
industrial inefficiency. We were told, and the
fiction is still abroad, that proprietorship would
improve on all that ; but the final test is the total
of life supported by the soil, and this goes down as
proprietorship goes up, the man disappearing all
the more where the master has become landlord.
The gain of the new annuity, as against the old
rent, goes to ease the existing standard of life
rather than to raise it, so that the purchasing
tenant who had four labourers retains one, leti
three go to America, and can live as well as before.
Without a tradition to maintain, he is the happy

On the Fence 59

medium through which the British Treasury
finances the death of the Irish nation. National
destruction can be prevented by only one thing,
work, and the value of work depends on industrial
character, which in turn, depends on education ;
but the Irish peasant would not for his life dare
express any of his deep objections to the dominant
dementia so lavishly endowed for the destruction
of his children. Until he dares to become articu-
late in this, good-bye to industrial character and
the last hope of nationhood in agrarian Ireland.
It must be plain, even to the politicians, how the
factor of nationality has steadily died out of the
agrarian character in our own time, but not one
of them dares to ask why.

The reflective foreigner travelling through
Connaught, and not meeting one man, could infer
the character of the people from the fences. The
earth fence without a hedge is an open denial of
civilisation. The wasted earth is there to grow it,
the plants for practically nothing and the time
wasted. Nine-tenths of the work for the fence has
been done already, and many times repeated, but
there is no effective fence. The work must be
repeated again next year, but before autumn is
out, the cow will again be through, and the child
must turn to herding, in its age of play, to be
compensated by adult idleness later on. The
finishing touch which would give their value to
all other units of the work is missing ; that last
factor of mind which gives muscle its normal
reward, and without which it must either decay
at home or be rescued by emigration.

60 My Little Farm

It is not a question of expense. I can sow a
mile of fence with three shillings' worth of furze
seed ; and thorn, the most durable hedge of all,
is for nothing. Trimming a neglected hedge of
thorn some years ago, I cut out and planted a
bundle of the best stems, without roots, of course.
Everyone of them grew. Next year I had rooted
plants for a hundred yards of new hedging ; much
better plants, too, than the quicks of nursery
commerce from the haw, because many times as
strong, and bushing out much more closely from
the bottom. I have not space for such minute
detail as the intelligent farmer may readily master
for himself, but since every Irish farmer I know
thinks that my rooting of the thorn stems is
impossible, let me show how easy and simple it
all is. I cut each stem just below a joint, because,
under the soil, a root springs where a branch
would start if above. Roots are only another
kind of branches, with a somewhat different
function. For like reasons, I made the top cut
just above another joint. The lengths were 12
to 1 8 inches, according to the distance between
the joints. Early in February, they were sown in
rows, so close that they were nearly touching ;
slightly slanted, the top ends level with the surface,
and the soil pressed closely down to them.
Nothing more, but keep the soil clean while the
plants are nursed, and we have as much as we
please of thorn hedging. I assume that the pig
is not allowed to root out the plot while the plants
are fixing themselves to grow. My scheme has

On the Fence 61

one serious defect : our agricultural holiday of
three or four months in the year does not end
until it is too late in the season to cut and plant
the thorn, but that is not my fault.

Of all the hedges, give me gorse, the best for
shelter, while as good as any in most other ways,
and incomparably the most beautiful. I do my
writing in a garden cot, a hedge of gorse quite
close in view, between me and the east wind.
Its quiet green is always there, above the brown
heath on one side and the brown soil prepared for
springtime on the other. It is nearing Christmas
now. Before a month, the green above the brown
begins to be shot with its screen of golden yellow.
The arresting contrast will continue to enrich its
joy until relieved by rhododendrons next summer,
when the yellowhammer, gaily hooded like the
gorse, comes to sing his love song by my window
and the mother bird administers the home among
the perfume of the gleaming bush. I have had
memorable evenings alone with these two friends,
listening to the song of two soft notes, watching
the shadows lengthen on the lea, and wondering if
my countrymen could ever rise to claim the proper
place of Man in Nature. Brave little bird, he
takes his dangers for his joys ; my countryman his
fetters for their peace, and finds it but a war of
pain that kills the coward even before his birth.
So can we conquer winter's weary colours in the
Connaught waste of sloth and death, keep endless
summer in the eye and twelve square yards of think-
ing freedom Bounded round in " dangerous " books.

62 My Little Farm

One dark, wild night about a year ago I went
along by this fine hedge on the safe side of a gale,
struck a match, and found that I could hold it
alight in the shelter, which extended far into the
field, because the wind, striking an immovable
square edge like that, takes a long leap upward in
the line of least resistance. What is the money
value of it in plant and beast ? We cannot
measure it in money, but it must be great, and
yet it is only a bye-product of the fencing. I
remember sowing the seed of this hedge with my
own hands in less than two hours. That was
twelve years ago, and I do not think the whole
fence has cost me more than the equivalent of
half a day's work since then. Who would not
give so much for the flowers and the perfume
during so many months in a single year, through a
season, too, when daylight bloom is impossible,
unless from the bulbous tribe and their expensive
artificialism ? We pay for beauty by the yard,
and trample on higher qualities of it by the mile,
merely because we have them for nothing. I am
certain that if the common gorse were quite
unknown to us, and some enterprising nurseryman
came out with a sample bush in bloom, he could
make a fortune in a year by propagating it. The
gorse is a legume. As such, it gives a hardier and
more durable growth in the metallic soils, not in
too deeply nitrogenous fertility. I give the young
hedge a good dose of potash and phosphates when
the plants are strong enough to stand it, about the
tecond year. This appears to make a permanent

On the Fence 63

difference. On a soil insufficiently metallic, failing
the things mentioned, try lime. The cost is
trifling, and it may be the cheapest way to a
perfect fence, not to mention the shelter and the
beauty. There is no permanent way to keep up
earth fences but by getting permanent things to
grow in them, and the common gorse is my
favourite, unless where the water level is too high.
Like other legumes, the gorse cannot stand water
for any length of time.

Let the hedge grow as it will for four or five
years. Then cut at eighteen inches, every cut
just over a joint. In the following years, the
stumps will thicken stout and strong against the
storm, instead of wattling helplessly in the air,
working in the wind as levers to loosen the earth
in the fence, making round holes by the roots,
admitting the air, falling down, splitting the
crowns, killing the plants and turning the whole
scheme into wasted energy. Much of the work
on a farm is such that an hour at the right time
may save days later. Gorse is the best thing I
know to grow in a desired direction by laying it
down with a sod on its neck, and I have closed up
a gap of twelve feet in two years by " layering "
in this way. I prefer our native common seed
to the hybrid import, because it grips the fence,
bushes out, covers its ground, and keeps down out
of the air so much better. Its seeds, unlike those
of the hybrid, may scatter and root in the fields,
but not in mine, because the soil is too rich and
the grass too big to let the seedlings live. Yet the

64 My Little Farm

spread of superfluous gorse on good land advances
rapidly in many districts. Why not pass a brief
Act of Parliament empowering the State, at a
year's notice, to levy a tax of ten times the rent or
purchase annuity on any area so wasted ? Should
ten times be not enough, extend the tax until the
gorse disappears before it, and let the resulting
revenue go to subsidise a class in agricultural
education as near as possible to the man who pays.
The only other plant worth discussion for farm
hedging is the thorn, but our farmers know more
already about it than they put in practice.

I have planted trees, and this is the place for a
word about them. A common and blindly
selfish objection to planting is that the trees are
" only for those that come after us." Twelve to
thirteen years ago I put down five pieces of
plantation, in different directions, making nearly
half a mile, for shelter and ornament, on land
hitherto mainly waste. The trees are already
old friends, some rising to eighteen feet, all doing
well, presenting a new horizon of foliage to the
eye and a revolution in landscape which makes the
whole place almost unrecognisable. Notwith-
standing the success, my site was about as difficult
as could be chosen. The main border runs across
the farm from side to side, with a break for space
near the house. I wanted it so, because the
prevalent winds and all the storms came that way ;
but the belt passed through six different kinds and
conditions of soil, requiring as many kinds of trees,
with as many variations in the attention and treat-

On the Fence 65

ment. Those who have read the chapters on
reclamation can see the nature of the ground
without repeating the description. I have oak,
ash, sycamore, beech, alder, Lombardi poplar,
chestnut, Scotch fir, Austrian pine, American
cedar, and two of the spruce family. We may
infer the situation from the fact that every one of
these was required to meet some varying necessity
in the scheme. Without one failure, I cannot but
feel that I know something about trees. Yet this
is my first and only experience in studying and
planting them. I think the secret is in my
sympathy with the trees, which have eloquent
ways of their own to tell what they want. I can
never see even another man's tree unhappy
without a wish to go and help it, which may often
be vitally done in a few minutes. We all know
what it is to have a sick cow or a sick horse. Why
not a sick tree ? It is a live thing, and has its
ailments, organic, parisitic, climatic and accidental.
It is obviously grateful for relief, and for anything
I know, a proper subject of conscious pathology.
Then I love the trees because they make the world
beautiful, and I study them because, in a situation
like ours, they afford a test of man's fitness for the
privilege of a place on the face of the earth. It
is a sound test, and judged by it, the great bulk
of the Irish people ought to move at once to some
easier sphere, less conditioned by intelligent
activity. The first great mistake of the Irish race
was their eviction from the Garden of Eden, and
they suffer the more from it because of their

E

66 My Little Farm

exclusive interest in getting back, if only as care-
takers, instead of trying where they are, as lords
and masters, to transplant the good points of Eden,
including the trees. Operating under endless
uncertainty from a base at such deadly distance,
and declining to revise the strategy for the
changing needs of the campaign, they must spend
their power to make progress on merely guarding
the line of communication, necessarily missing the
best that could be at either end. Forward motion
is not easy astride of two worlds of which one is
despised and the other unknown.

The trees planted by the peasants seldom
survive, and in so far as I have seen, nine-tenths
of the loss is from one simple cause : in need and
treatment, they see no difference between trees
and cabbages. When the young trees begin to
look sick from sinking the stem too deep in the
soil, they heap up more soil to that suffering stem,
which depends for its life on contact with the air
down to the crown. Next year, the tree is dead.
In the third or fourth year of their life with me,
I go among the trees, examine the young stems,
and remove any earth I can find fixing itself above
the level of the lowest bark. The conifers are
specially vulnerable. I can go now and pick out
among them trees that suffered in this way before
I relieved them. They responded at once to the
attention, and they are growing vigorously now,
but still smaller than their neighbours, which
needed no relief, showing how neglect for a year
or two can retard the progress for many years to

On The Fence 67

follow. This is in plantations properly put in
under my own eye and to some extent with my
own hands. Then, what chance can we have for
trees planted in the drumhead manner, with the
bark below the surface and more earth heaped
upon them when they begin to die from excess of
earth ? The same treatment will not do for milk
cows and he asses. Why not see a difference
between the cabbage and the conifer ? All
organisms, vegetable as well as animal, have their
laws of life and death, varied by the necessities of
their ever-varying nature. Yet here in the west
of Ireland is a community of land workers who,
though greatly satisfied with themselves, have not
yet come to see any difference in organic necessity
between the Austrian pine of the igneous Alps and
the drumhead cabbage of muggy Holland. We
cannot persist in ignoring the world in which we
have to live and hope to make much out of it.

The shelter and the beauty are but a small part
of my gain from the trees. They have taught me
more than I could have thought possible. Among
themselves, they make an autonomous society,
with a system of government at once wonderfully
co-operative and quite as intolerant of incapacity.
So much wiser than my countrymen in this
essential matter, they do not permit the rabble to
join and destroy the best members of the family
by weight of numbers, leaving only the inferior
seed for the next generation. In a score of ways,
the strong fellows protect their weaker neighbours,
but they are equally ready to put them to death,

68 My Little Farm

and do, unless they show themselves capable of
responding to the advantage. Two of my Scotch
firs are specially instructive. One of them,
injured in early life, began, with my assistance,
reasserting his right to a place in the sun, sheltered
from the storms by the other, a rather powerfully
self-willed individual, with a touch of moral
anarchy in him. In addition to the shelter he
gives the little fellow, he invites all the birds to
his own branches, and when they tear down a
leading shoot, his superior strength enables him to
throw up another, a necessity under which the
little fellow would go under for ever. My rapidly
reviving invalid makes the most of his opportunity,
reaching resolutely up to that place in the sun,
and wasting not one tissue in any other direction.
In his own inherent wisdom, he knows that he has
either to grow or die, but he does not attempt an
agitation among his fellow weaklings to kill the
big neighbour who protects while threatening him.
On a windy day two years ago, I found the big
fellow beating him about the head with his arms,
and finding these, as I thought, unnecessarily long,
I shortened some of them — an administrative
amendment in the native code of laws which has so
far worked well, though the permanent relations
between these two neighbours are not yet finally
fixed. It is really important to observe that the
guiding principle in government is not the
survival of the fittest, but rather the security of
all that are fit against the supremacy of organised
unfitness.

PART II.
TO ECONOMISE CONSUMPTION

CHAPTER VI.
COWS AND MEN

A MAN of towns, a way from the soil since childhood,
in a pursuit as far from farming as it could be, I
became also a farmer, against my will and solely
for the sake of others, with a passion for country
life as the sole sustaining motive, a keen sense of
my ignorance as the last ground for success, and
no interest in farm animals that had any relation
to their profit. That was fourteen years ago.

I had, however, been occupied with the study
of economic tendency, and I thought I could see
that, in the course of things as they worked,
civilisation in general must some day confront a
food problem, to the advantage of the farmer and
at the expense of everybody else. During several
generations the urban growth throughout the
world had been increasingly large out of propor-
tion to the agrarian economy in productive power,
multiplying so many more appetites than hands
to feed them, not to mention the increasing
proportion of non-productive people who always
arise, to consume the more, in an advanced state
of industrial development. I could hear grave

69

70 My Little Farm

statesmen grinding out their futile programmes
to restore the normal balance, by tariff statutes ;
and politicians preaching " Back to the Land,"
for its value in votes ; but I knew that the ultimate
way back to the land was through increased
remuneration for productive power in food, to
come about by the advancing disproportion
between food and appetite. What I could not
foresee was the tragic rapidity with which the
crisis must be hastened by the greatest and most
destructive war in the history of the world. I
do not believe that the Irish peasant has yet
entered upon the possession of himself sufficiently
to secure his proper share in the possession of the
gains in view ; but the farmer's day has come, and
it may be long, for though the war end before this
chapter, and though it leave the farmer's profit
doubled, it cannot wholly stop the townward
movement of modern life, which must find its
ultimate limit in terms of food and prices. The
war must in some measure reduce the rate of
townward displacement, but modern life remains
to correct its urban psychology by the painful
evidence of the stomach. The economic revolu-
tion in modern industrial method has not yet
ceased to work towards the town and away from
the soil.

I could see fundamental forces surely active in
my favour as a farmer, but the equation of time
remained uncertain. The dominant tendency
was certainly on my side, but it belonged to that
class of sociological tendencies whose reaction is

Cows and Men 71

never reached but by self-exhaustion. My day
might come, but I might be dead. Meantime, I
must consider what my farming was to be, whether
in plants, in animals, in both, or, most critical
decision of all, in what kind of either. To a man
of towns, agriculture was an oppressively vague
term. I might fatten cockrils or breed elephants
and call it farming. About that time, and before
I had yet decided, the Spectator published a
special article on " a new industry " in Ireland —
the breeding of lions at the Dublin Zoo for export ;
but while ^300 looked tempting for a lion puppy,
I had already more than enough beasts of prey
around me in Mayo. I knew enough of economic
history to have small confidence in industrial
short-cuts, the royal roads of the incompetent ; but
on the other hand, I could learn little from my
neighbours, unless to avoid their ways. I could
not exist on their standard of living, and, unless
I could realise a higher one, the whole undertaking
was not worth an hour of my time. As compared
with me, the neighbours had the advantage of
practical experience. My own advantage was the
honest ignorance which has nothing to unlearn.
He needs more than twice teaching who has been
taught wrong.

Reviewing that instructive retrospect from the
present standpoint, it looks like an act of Provi-
dence that set me to work mainly in cows. No
other kind of production could have suited so well,
and the reasons may apply most where they are
least admitted. First of all, we have practically

72 My Little Farm

ceased to steal cows from each other. The
practice has become almost unpopular. The
social feeling sets in so strongly against it that we
may hope to see cattle stealing some day denounced
on moral grounds as well, because the moral
standard follows the social when convenient.
This is often the case wherever human nature
stands higher than its code of morals. Men find
out for themselves that crime is but folly in the
long run, and the professional moralist rises to the
level of the discovery. Meantime, there is no
social or moral prejudice against stealing the cow's
food, which, cleverly done, may even advance the
popularity of the thief. Let a man steal the cow,
and we will not be seen in his company ; but let
him starve the cow to steal the food, doubling the
crime, and we will go arm in arm to Mass with
him. I am not competent to quote theological
authority for the subtle distinction, but I can keep
the cow in the field and the food locked up. It is
so much simpler than striving to trace the deriva-
tion of a morality which makes it wrong to steal
one thing and right to steal another. Before I
returned to Ireland, I had always assumed that it
was wrong to steal anything.

The next great reason for the cow is that she
is the best tenant we can keep on the soil to make
human beings unnecessary. For half the year in
some cases, and for the whole year in many cases,
she takes care of herself, requiring the minimum
of labour and enabling us to ship our fellow
countrymen out of Ireland, which is the ideal and

Cows and Men 73

the necessity of most men who have capital in Irish
agriculture. They can trust the cow, but they
cannot trust the man ; therefore, the man emi-
grates, and the cow prospers, increasing her
numbers and extending her relative occupation
of the soil year by year. Being honest, she makes
a satisfactory return for money expended on her,
and thus becomes a great instrument of capital to
advance depopulation. In other countries, the
use of capital has the opposite effect, advancing
the lives of men, but only where they can be
trusted. The Irish are now the only race in
civilisation so unfit to live that they can be cleared
out of their own country by their own cows.

In addition, the Irish cow, unlike the Irish
people, is quite remarkably improvable in her own
country, and, of course, the more she is improved,
the more she can remove the people. The
Imperial Parliament has accordingly endowed a
Department of State to improve the cow, adding
revenue and taxation to the forces of private
capital for the removal of the human stock, who
remain still quite incapable to see that the costly
plans which they accept for their salvation, assist
in their steady destruction. It is now about
twenty years since the Government began to
improve the cow, and with every improvement in
her, the tillage area has receded, reducing the
numbers of the human occupants on the land, and
reducing their fitness to live even more than their
numbers. We have it now officially from the
Department that the human efficiency falls while

74 M Little Farm

the efficiency of the cow increases, and we all
know that the end of inefficiency is extinction.

It would be unfair and untrue to infer that the
Imperial Parliament has made no expenditure on
the improvement of the people. It has made a
very great expenditure, even more ample than on
the cow, and continued now for generations
longer, with the opposite of improvement as the
admitted result ; but note this deadly difference
in method, that whereas the Imperial Parliament
keeps the expenditure on the cow under its own
control, it entrusts the expenditure on the people
to an alien and irresponsible secret society,
dependent for its privilege on the people's incapa-
city. The expenditure on cows and men alike is
voted on the estimates every year, but not one
man in either House of Parliament dares to raise
this essential question : " How is it that while the
expenditure on the cows results in great and
progressive improvement, • the money voted to
improve the people might as well be thrown into
the Thames ? " A Parliament that dares not
discuss this, whether on the Thames or on the
LifTey, is obviously quite incapable of good
government in a country like Ireland, and while
the criminal waste of ample means remains
unmentionable, the human decay must continue
in vital interests generally, but probably most of
all in agriculture, which accounts for three-
fourths of the population. In the whole world,
and in the whole of history, I can find no such
example as we have in Ireland to-day of ample

Cows and Men 75

waste in the means to progress, misappropriated
wholesale against the inner verities which alone can
make real men. You cannot pervert the means of
man's emancipation to his enslavement and expect
him to hold a progressive place in the economy of
human values ; and you cannot prevent the per-
version while his education remains an alien and
irresponsible monopoly.

To people very ignorant of Ireland, including
most of the Irish themselves, all this elaborate
inversion of the normal must seem strange, if not
incredible ; but I am only trying to put in plain
words, dictated by the most intimate experience,
what is thought and felt by practically every
agricultural capitalist in at least three provinces
of our island, especially those on the larger and
better farms. They may fear to express it, and
for like reasons, they may even deny it ; but they
invariably act on it, everywhere doing their best
to be rid of their fellow-countrymen, and to prefer
the beast, even for company. One of the
chief causes is the cultivation of theft for a
virtue, openly supported and encouraged by
" religion."

The removal of the man by the improvement
of his cow has not yet operated most on the
peasant plot. As yet the peasant can defend his
inefficiency by lawlessness ; but let property in the
soil get really settled,* with the prices of the
product rising even higher, and a day comes when

* The politicians assume that they can "abolish landlordism "
by transferring fee simple from one class to another I

76 My Little Farm

capital can make a profit by buying out the
peasant to replace him by the efficient cow. It is
only by organising crime against capital that the
human clearance is delayed, but it has already
begun, even on the peasant plot. Every little
town has already its extending ring of grass,
secured chiefly by the capital of the rich shop-
keeper removing the incapable peasant ; and every
prospect of agrarian peace widens the area of the
depopulation. Ask the wealthy shopkeeper why
he never tills his ring of grass, and he will tell you
(in confidence) that it is because he cannot trust
his fellow countrymen. Pasture cannot well be
stolen, the cow can be trusted, and the price of
beef goes up, while the peasant remains unimprov-
able, with his very mind and conscience appro-
priated as his enemy's assets. Who would risk
his money on the unimprovable ? So long as the
money provided to educate the Irish peasant is
administered to degrade him, as it certainly is
now, other expenditure on him must be waste ;
and that is why the Department finds the human
efficiency falling while the expenditure on the
brute economy remains reproductive. The cattle
driving is simply because the cow can make more
per acre out of the soil than the man, who, in his
removal from the soil, fights a rear guard action
by way of organised outrage ; and, no matter how
expensively governments may scheme, there is not
the least hope for the man against the cow until
he is permitted to claim personal property in mind
and conscience, an elementary liberty against

Cows and Men 77

which his education is at present particularly
directed. It would be cruel to reveal his character
as we find it without revealing along with it the
cowardly conspiracy which for a hundred years
has been directed against him by the Imperial
Parliament and its alien ally in control of Irish
education. In view of his double dose of social
and intellectual poison, the wonder is that he is
not worse.

It will be easy to infer my good fortune in
deciding for a minimum of man and a maximum
of cow. I knew, as I know still, that there were
other products which could be more profitable ;
but, with a far higher wage factor in their cost of
production, they depended so much more on men,
multiplying the points of leakage in the process.
The wage factor in the cow is comparatively small,
and I can go to the fair with her myself, making
leakage practically impossible — unless when she
happens to be sucked by a man, which requires an
ingenuity too rare for common practice, even with
us, though indicating the unsafety of products
more easily annexed.* Around me here in Mayo,
I find vegetable products imported which afford
a net profit of ^50 to £80 per acre, with the
local soil and climate quite suitable to them ;
but the ordinary peasant has neither the
knowledge nor the means, while the man who has
both is deterred by thieving.

Thus the cow is to me something more than a

* A " man " was found sucking one of my cows when he found
thieving in any other form impracticable.

78 My Little Farm

mere asset of the farm. She is my friend, quietly
defying a crowd of enemies ; my bank, assuring a
high rate on deposits and demanding none on
overdrafts ; my steward, locking up my property
in her own reproductive chambers ; my detective,
indicating losses by her condition and by the very
look of her eye. In return, she enjoys all the
kindness and care that I can afford, and with these
advantages, she goes forward in her career, realising
higher and higher growth in her capacity and
character from generation to generation ; while my
fellow man, deprived by " religion " of the cow's
liberty in self development, either nurses his
atrophy at home or seeks relief from it in emigra-
tion, escaping from the richest and the loveliest
land in the world. The Irish prosper abroad
because they are forced to act up to the honesty
of those with whom they live and work.

It is clear that I could, with equal ease and more
delight, do as much for men as I can for cows, but
that would require the men to begin, like the
cows, in possession of their faculties, as free to
think as the cows are to feed, and not organised
in a damnation of dementia directed at their own
expense against the eternal economy of their
better bein?.

CHAPTER VII.
THE REGIONAL PROBLEM

I HAVE invented a cow. The invention must be
real, because she reproduces her peculiar charac-
teristics with unerring certainty. The necessity
arose more than fourteen years ago, when I took
charge of the little farm in Mayo, and wanted a
cow to suit it ; no easy matter, with half the land
then under heather, some under water, and the
remainder degraded by bad tillage.

My ideal cow would be as productive as the best,
but she must be easier to feed, and have it in her
to improve with the improvement I meant to
make in the land. Besides, I must have an idea.
Without ideas, farming in Mayo looked like a form
of penal servitude, but lacking its assurance in
continuity, and I have not changed my mind on
this.

I went to the fairs, but could not find my cow.
Probably it was as well. At the fair, I might
know nothing of her descent, and though right in
herself, she might throw calves after a grand-
parent that ought to have been shot. I might
have started the Aberdeen Angus, but I wanted
a cow that could produce milk. The native stock
could milk, but that was all, and I could not see
my way to give a calf worth .£4 los. what would

79

8o My Little Farm

feed a calf worth £10. With the Department's
pedigree shorthorn sires in reach, I wanted the
cow which, in the conditions described, could
produce the most economic results from these,
but what cow was that, and where could I find
her?

The end of breeding solely from native stock
and pure shorthorn sires would be a most un-
desirable variety of shorthorns, in a region by no
means fit for them, and I noticed that the calves
from such breeding came generally either too good
(after the sire) or too bad (after the dam) with a
small minority of happy accidents and no sign of
raising a type to suit the conditions. That was
the problem, and it applies still to large regions in
Ireland. I claim to have solved the regional
problem, having produced a cow that can thrive
on land worth less than 55. an acre, and can justify
herself on land worth £$. Having seen her on
both, I need not depend on mere opinion.

I came to the conclusion that my best cow to
begin with would be a composite, judiciously
blent. The indigenous hardiness of the native
would make a useful element in the mixture, but
between the native and the pure shorthorn a gulf
remained to be bridged. Add size and stomach
to the native, without diminishing milk, and the
missing link is in view, an animal fit to mate with
the pure shorthorn in the necessities of the
situation. At this stage a lucky thing happened.
I found an in-calf heifer that embodied several
generations towards my purpose, bred exactly as

The Regional Problem 81

I should have bred her. This seems to take the
beginning back to about twenty years ago.

This heifer's dam was an Irish " common " cow,
but a very good one, and the sire was a pure red
poll. Why the black polls, any of them, should
be crossed with the shorthorn in a country like
Ireland, while the red can be found, is more than
I can ever make out. The black can add neither
beef nor hardiness unless at the expense of milk,
but the red can. In size, conformity, colour,
milk and other important matters the red is less
extremely removed from the shorthorn type and
you can count with fair certainty on the result.
In crossing the Aberdeen, you can count on
nothing but an increase in beef, a fall in milk and
an undesirable number of violent reversions from
the meeting of too far distant extremes. Is this
good policy for a dairying people, poor in means
and rich in children ? There are places where the
creameries, assisted by the Aberdeen Angus, have
left the children crying for milk.

My heifer, in calf to a pure shorthorn, was a
beauty, with a large sirloin, large quarters, great
depth, a right bag and a big eye ; a heavy animal,
yet light of movement, with every limb so
accurately set that you could see a clear space
between them when she walked.

Her calf came, happily a heifer, but hornless,
with only one hornless individual on the male side
of the known pedigree, and none on the female
side, except as his result. The calf set me
thinking of Mendel, and other calves in the line

82 My Little Farm

since then have set me thinking of him still more,
but we will come to that. Having assured my-
self of that calf's progeny, male and female, and
of their fertility, I sold her for twenty pounds, at
a time when a cow of her kind was worth three
to four pounds less than at present. That was
" Polly I."

Her first calf, by a pure shorthorn, was all red,
and a beauty, but again without horns. I sold
him at a handsome price for breeding to Mr. Byrne,
of Bakan, who had Togo, and his people have been
wanting another of them ever since. They say
that the produce of the " little red bull " was the
best they ever had. They called him " little "
because he had short legs, and was not built for
racing before cur dogs like the cur bulls that are
ruining the cattle of Connaught while the Depart-
ment tries to improve them. Why can the
Department not adopt a simple bylaw, that every
bull kept in the whole country, with or without
a premium, shall pass an inspection ? Without
costing a penny but for inspection, it might do
more for the cattle than all the other schemes
together, and that is much. The bulls could be
bought subject to the inspection, and if some
were prevented from keeping bulls, that alone
would be an advantage. I know five of these cur
bulls within a mile, all leggy things, bought at .£8 to
j£io each without any knowledge as to how they
are bred. Judging from their calves, their breed
must be even worse than their appearance. The
people generally prefer them to the pure short-

The Regional Problem 83

horns, though it would pay them to subscribe
their market price and have them put to death,
given a guarantee that nothing like them should
ever appear in the place again. Every one of them
is an embodied fraud. The premium sires apart,
everybody I know in Mayo buying a bull goes to
Roscommon for him,and probably the Roscommon
is the last type in Ireland that ought to be brought
into Mayo. Besides, only the weeds go west from
Roscommon.

Following the " little red bull," and just like
him, came his half sister, but well horned, and now
she is in the dairy herd book (Polly II., No.
739), with her tests about forty per cent, above
the requirement in butter fat, and her milking
record, produced in the main without hand feeding
on pasture of which the purchase annuity is 33. /d.
an acre. Is not this a cow worth multiplying ?
The gentleman of the Department who superin-
tended the milking tests will remember the facts
and conditions. The heather was still abundant,
and by way of permanent proof, a plot of it has
been carefully preserved, now the most precious
plot on the whole farm, because my facts would
look quite impossible without it. The official
explanation of it, given in another chapter,
is that I planted the heather on good soil for an
economic illusion to impose on the Estates
Commissioners and bring down the purchase
annuity.

Polly II. is a red cow, near the ground, with
the good points of her predecessors on both sides ;

84 My Little Farm

a better milker than the shorthorn when the butter
is reckoned, a better beefer, and very much easier
to feed. She eats the big bunches and lies down to
make milk of them, while the ordinary shorthorns
are seeking the sweeter grass on the bare spaces
between. Except in the three months of her
heaviest milking, she looks always fit to go to the
butcher. She wants no bag stuff to milk, even in
winter, given good hay and plenty of roots, but I
always try to keep some piece of pasture not eaten
too bare when the winter sets in. In summer a
succession of vetch plots is ready before the flies,
when the cows are in all day and out at night, the
opposite of the arrangements around me, where
the flies hunt in the milkers and the dog hunts
them out again all day. Between the dogs and
the flies and the cur bulls, there are not many
cows that could qualify for the dairy herd
book.

Polly II. is a happy blend of these two fine
types, with the exterior of the shorthorn and the
constitution of the red poll, which seems to run
in the female foundation, even after the fourth
generation from pure shorthorn sires. There is a
theory, and I think it is more than a theory, that
the dam has the more to do with the constitution.
I had that also in view when incorporating the red
poll factor. In so far as my experience goes, the
theory is a very plain fact, and I am dealing with
an average of eighteen animals in the year — on a
scrap of land in a congested district which was
regarded as permanent waste in my grandfather's

The Regional Problem 85

time, and of which the annual valuation now is
only six pounds.

Polly II. 's calves are the third generation from
pure shorthorn sires and their female progeny, but
the red poll constitution is still strong in them,
and looks like fixing itself permanently. They
are all horned, and in every other outward
appearance they are a type of plump shorthorns,
built for economy in nutrition. A young bull of
them, " Patrician I.," is now at service with Mr.
McCormac, of Westport. The youngsters always
look well fed by the side of ordinary calves. They
eat what the others leave, and they are not sick in
their early days. At the same age, and on the
same treatment, they are always my best calves,
apart from additional values in special breeding,
and any heifer of them will produce a calf before
she is two years old if permitted.

" The Mermaid," a fine cow, calved by a hand-
some half sister of Polly II., is a generation more
shorthorn, but she has no horns. Her calf,
though two generations more shorthorn than
Polly II., is hornless. He is the fourth generation
from pure shorthorn sires and the female progeny
of pure shorthorn sires. This brings him within a
generation of being pure shorthorn, but he has no
horns, short or long. He is a deep red, and looks
shorthorn in everything but his polled head, his
broader forehead, his bigger eye, his stronger con-
stitution and his plumper appearance, on a pound
and a half of meals in the day and his three and
seven penny pasture. He was born when his dam

86 My Little Farm

was two years old. She has grown much since then,
and she has fed more than two calves in addition to
her own, so that she counts as four, and is not yet
three years old. Is there any three year old
bullock worth as much money on land worth .£5
an acre ? This cow is now bought to breed by
Mr. Webb, of Carlyle, and her calf has made a
record as a bull, with Mr. Jordan, Raith,
Aghamore.

Here are two branches of the one family,
Polly II. and the Mermaid, bred exactly alike, one
of them invariably horned at the third generation,
or sooner, the other invariably hornless up to and
including the fourth generation. Recognising the
scientific importance of the contrast, I have taken
care to verify every service. There are standing
orders that no cow of mine shall ever go to any
but a pure shorthorn bull, but, in addition to that,
I have seen to it personally. The " Mermaid "
leaves me a heifer calf, the first horned in this
line.

Science apart, the industrial and economic
question is — Have I solved the regional problem ?
If so, a nation is my debtor. Around me, and
more or less in something like half of Ireland, the
economic cow does not yet exist, and it is not
likely to exist so long as individual incapactiy is
permitted to cancel the value of official policy and
of its necessary expenditure. In these regions the
shorthorn is too often like a skeleton after the
winter, and the coarser animals that might stand
the treatment are bad milkers, even on the best

The Regional Problem 87

treatment. Meantime, on these poor areas chil-
dren have to be brought up, probably three or
four times as many as on equal areas of Ireland's
best land, where the economic process has silently
removed more families than all the landlords
together ; where the bullock, on unbroken grass,
has been able to produce more per acre than could
be got from people as the occupants, and where
this human disadvantage, as compared with the
cow, can never- be cancelled until we raise the
human efficiency to assure the bovine subserviency.
Meantime, I think I can safely claim that I have
produced the cow that can profitably accommo-
date herself to the largest area and to the widest
variety of conditions in Ireland. The Depart-
ment's dairy herd idea is a similar intention, but I
was at work on it years in advance, with the
additional advantage of a very specific plan
instead of depending for the female foundation
alone on the wretchedly nondescript native stock,
whose unapproachable extremes from the pure
shorthorn, and the consequent liability to bad
reversions are too often more likely to produce a
violent vagary than a normal embodiment of
permanently progressive factors. It seems to me
in the nature of a national loss that my invented
cow cannot be at once multiplied by a million.

What of Mendel ? My respect for " Law "
made me watch the progression with the greater
interest, but it seems that Mendel must retire as
my experiment advances. Mendel is interpreted
to this effect : " Horns and no-horns will produce

88 My Little Farm

half horns and half no-horns ; " but here is a horn-
less calf, a young bull still at home, after all these
pure horned generations on the male side, and after
as many hornless dams on the other side, each dam
the product of a horned sire, not to mention that
the breeding was horned on both sides before the
intervention of the red poll. So far, only one calf
in this line has had horns. If Mendel be right, or
half right, how could that one hornless sire of so
long ago have imposed his unscientific prepotence
through all these generations and against all these
odds ? The thing may apply to sweet peas. It
does not apply to cattle, at least not as interpreted.
In my cattle, the exceptions are more than twice
as numerous as the indications of the " Law."

It is but fair to add that whatever the value of
the scheme, it would have been impracticable to
me without the facilities afforded by the Depart-
ment ; and its value is not confined to the results
described above, for, along with these, on the same
little farm, and as carefully worked out, there is
another experiment, with native stock and pure
shorthorn sires alone. The results here are
described in a later part of this chapter. I have
now started yet a third experiment, crossing the
two best representatives of the respective families,
just to see what results ; but I do not mean to
merge the two families in one, because it seems to
me of great interest to keep the different develop-
ments side by side for comparison. The compara-
tive results have proved very instructive already,
showing the need for an element neither native

The Regional Problem 89

nor shorthorn to come between the two for the
production of the type required. Most of the
land now unfit for the shorthorns could be made
fit for them at a profit, as in my own case, but since
we do not make the land fit the cow, let us make the
cow fit the land. The ill condition of the land is
a question of human efficiency, and it is not easy
for people to do better who have not seen better ;
but the cow responds at once to any intelligent
attempt at her improvement. For the regions I
have in view, it seems to me quite impossible to
produce the required cow by pure shorthorn sires
on a female foundation of native stock alone ; and
even if we grant the possibility, it is still a long
way round as compared with the other course.
We want more substance in the native stock before
they can reproduce from pure shorthorn sires a
type to suit these regions.

The second experiment, starting much lower,
from native blood alone, and with so much more
room for improvement, shows a still greater rate of
advance ; but it does not follow that the greatest
rate of improvement implies the best result. The
starting point and the nature of the material
have to do with this. The two lines run
side by side, on the same treatment, with
the male parentage pure shorthorn in both
alike, but with the female foundation in the
one line solely native stock, in the other a
mixture in equal parts of native stock and
red poll ; and both lines are kept unrelated
through the sires, so that I can cross them at

90 My Little Farm

any time without risk of in-breeding. The
comparative results are striking.

So far, there is not much to choose in milk.
The native line have it in quantity, but the excess
does not balance the richer quality in the red poll
line, and these are substantially ahead in every-
thing else that matters. Their milk is produced at
less cost per unit, and, on the same fare, they are in
better condition. They are very much more
successful to fatten, and can be fattened at any age,
even while they grow. They mature much
earlier, sometimes nearly a year. They produce
their calves in a shorter time from the last calving.
They are always in a more presentable condition
for sale, and can always be put into that condition
at less cost. In short, they are very much better
cows.

At the fair, the contrast is not less instructive
than at home. I have not yet been able to
shorten the native legs enough, and to most of the
local buyers, an inch of leg is worth a foot of cow.
Their fixed meaning for " big " is mere height
from the ground, which would make the giraffe
much " bigger " than the elephant. Their
measure of money value follows, so that the
inferiority means a gain in price, and not a loss,
since the buyer is as much astray as the seller ; but
the loss in economic productiveness is plain, even
in the market price of the progeny when they come
finally to face the intelligent feeders and breeders
who take them out of Connaught. While the
buying and selling are local, the legs have it, but

The Regional Problem 91

the cows have it when the intelligent stranger
comes along.

There are two fairs, within ten miles. English-
men and other strangers come to one, never to the
other. When I have cows to sell, I take them to
meet the strangers, and get a bigger price ; when I
have legs to sell, I take them to the other fair, and
get also a bigger price, profiting by the judgment
in the one case and by the want of it in the other.
A group of my short legs, in the proper place will
always beat the " bigger " animals with the long
legs ; but the short-legged groups are too few and
too seldom in the fair to affect local judgment,
which goes on selecting for longer and longer legs
from generation to generation, while the Depart-
ment expends taxes to shorten the legs for the
superiority accompanying the shortness. We pay
taxes to improve the cattle, and we pay bull fees
to destroy them, preferring the inferior sire for
sixpence in half-a-crown, and losing at least a
pound in the calf in order to gain the sixpence.
The investment of that sixpence for forty times
itself in one year, equal to 4,000 per cent., is the
most reproductive investment that I know in any
industrial application within these islands, and the
Department enables us to secure it every time,
while we deliberately choose to throw it away.

The difference in price is not confined to the
ordinary conditions of the fair. Every male of the
better line, without exception, makes a good bull,
and sells for such, often privately, at prices well
over those of the fair. Sometimes it happens with

92 My Little Farm

the native line also, but less often and less success-
fully. They come out much more variously in
size, colour, shape, constitution and general
appearance, their qualities not being yet suffi-
ciently fixed, owing to their more nondescript
origin, while the red poll factor, on the other hand,
enables me to know with practical certainty what
I can expect at any time.

Why does the Connaughtman so consistently
pay the higher price for the inferior animal ?
That he does so is certain, and the importance of
the question is plain. In doing so he increases his
cost of production by many times the length of his
legs. A cow is a kind of machine, consuming to
produce, and the best machine obviously is that
which produces most at least cost. Yet the
machine requiring the higher consumption for a
given standard of production is preferred every
day, and a higher price is paid for its inferiority.
There is hardly anything more certain of cows than
that length of leg, beyond a symmetrical propor-
tion to physique, is a sign of small production for
the cost in consumption, and I know no surer sign.

A clever jobber might make money by buying
the best cows in Connaught to sell elsewhere, and
the worst elsewhere to sell in Connaught. By
" best " and " worst " in this real sense, I mean
something of more importance than price. One
of the worst cows I have seen for some time
was sold for ^23, a coarse brute that ought never
to have lived ; but she went to England, where
they know better than to allow her to reproduce

The Regional Problem 93

herself. She was great in legs. I would back her
for a steeplechase against all other cows, even in
Connaught, but the racing quality is not the most
economic in a cow.

When Togo, one of the best sires that ever came
west of the Shannon, was on sale by the Depart-
ment for premium purposes at the Athenry
Station, he was refused by seventeen bull keepers
in succession, the elect of Connaught farmers, and
he might have been thrown on the Department'!
hands, for his better qualities, had it not been for
the good sense of the official who advised Mr.
Byrne that he was the best sire at the station for
the year. His subsequent record in the shows and
his purchase at a large price as a superannuated
sire by a foreign government, make a complete
criticism on the Connaught judgment.

" Betty," the chief representative of the
second or native line, also in the dairy herd book
(No. 740), is, though a daughter of Togo's, a
rather angular creature, but a great cow, a great
milker, and as sound as a dog. I have seen her
jumping at play with the calves in her seventh
year, and I have seen her, week after week,
milking half a hundredweight every day, on
nothing but her three and seven penny pasture.
Feed her how I will, only milk increases, and I
have never yet seen Betty to clothe her frame in
flesh as I should like to see it. On the highest fare,
she must be a thousand gallon cow, but I will
not have the highest fare for any animal I intend
to breed from. She is a light roan, of gentle

94 My Little Farm

temper, with a big, innocent eye, at peace with
all things. She will not quarrel even with
Mammy-Long-Legs, who jumps a wire fence to
trespass on my sweeter grass ; but receives her
with a well-bred curiosity, as if in doubt as to
whether the visitor is really a cow or a specimen
of some remotely kindred genus.

Betty's daughter is a big improvement on
Mamma, a generation more shorthorn, and
apparently several generations more to my pur-

Eose, especially in shape and flesh — twice as much
ke Togo as his own daughter. They are at least
twenty pounders, and let us now see the sort of
stock from which they started fourteen years
ago.

The best of them was sold at her best as a
springer for .£8 IDS. She was the last of a tribe my
father had for forty years, good little cows of their
kind, good milkers for their weight, sound and
hardy, but always wasteful in their cost of pro-
duction. Both in price and in production, one of
mine is worth nearly three of them, and does not
approach two of them in her cost of production.
They were the native stock, with possibly a thin
survival of shorthorn blood in them. The colour
was red and white, the legs too long, the maturity
a year too late, and the shape an excess of middle
for the frame — as if the result of an evolutionary
effort to enlarge the digestive department out of

aortion for the accommodation of inferior
In forty years my father could not advance
on £8 IDS. In about a fourth of the time I

The Regional Problem 95

advance on ^20, even allowing for the increase in
money values ; and this is due mainly to the
facilities afforded by the Department of Agricul-
ture. The cow, as a cow, apart from monetary
variations, is more than twice as valuable. It
results solely from the pedigree sires, the better
treatment and the improvement I have made in
the land to accommodate the better breeding.

As it appears to me, the most valuable fact in
the dual development is the marked superiority
of the line which has the red poll blood in it, as
compared with the direct blend of native stock and
pure shorthorn, which is necessarily the basis of
the Department's scheme. The opportunities in
both lines have been exactly the same, but no judge
could hesitate for a moment about preferring the
red poll family on pure form, not to mention their
still greater superiority from the economic point
of view. How long, under the shorthorn sires, can
the plumpness and the stronger constitution of the
red poll persist ? These qualities are apparently
undiminished in the fourth generation, and it is
fair to expect that they must persist in many more
generations, if not permanently ; but in addition to
this there is the great advantage that, by starting
from the red poll blend, as compared with the
native stock alone, the time of generations is saved
in the production of a first class cow.

I might have described these experiments years
ago, but for the fact that my smaller scope re-
inqred a longer time to justify generalisation.
Instead of operating on fifty dams together, I had

96 My Little Farm

to put years behind me in making my observations
and ascertaining the results generation by genera-
tion ; but the experimental value of these genera-
tions is obviously more instructive than that of
any number of animals in one or two generations.
Little or nothing can be shown until the calf by
the pedigree shorthorn is produced out of the cow
bred from native stock and the pure red poll. I
could not indulge dogmatism from an experiment
confined to an average of fifteen to twenty
animals and only two generations. We have more
reliable data when we go back six generations,
even with only a single cow at the start ; but
what I rely on most of all is the accuracy with
which the combined characteristics are reproduced
every time in everything but horns. A neighbour
had a calf by one of my bulls, and I did not know of
it until I saw the animal among his herd, when I
was able to pick it out at once. Only one in any
number can be the best, and, for breeding pur-
poses, twenty right animals on thirty-five acres,
even of bad land, may readily produce better
results than five hundred wrong animals on a
thousand acres of the best land anywhere. Other
things being equal, the chances are in favour of
the five hundred, but other things are not equal
when the five hundred are taken unknown, and
every one of the twenty against them has an
ascertained history. In view of the facilities
afforded by the Department I see no reason why,
with time and skill, a man may not become a first
class cattle breeder on less than a ten pound

The Regional Problem 97

valuation ; and in any case the attempt is ex-
tremely instructive, costs nothing, and is quite
certain to make some money by the improvement
in the stock, even assuming that not one of them is
ever sold at a special price for breeding. Every-
thing I have done is well within the means of the
average peasant, and the wonder to me is that a
people naturally so clever should not make more of
the opportunities provided for them free of charge
by the Department of Agriculture. In addition
to the improvement in their pockets, it would call
brain activity into their business, and lift their
labour to a mental plane, redeeming energy from
slavishness and character from apathy.

A really educated community is utterly
impossible unless they can find something to
do for mind in the work by which they live.

CHAPTER VIII.
CALVES AND STATESMEN

IN November 1912, in London, called upon to
defend civil war for constitutional policy, I found
the task too much for me, and left for Mayo, giving
up the company of statesmen for the company of
calves ; and after some observant reflection, what
struck me most was the intellectual gain of the
change. I began by spending half an hour among
the calves every morning, and the innocent
expression of their big, ingenuous eyes made me
a better man for the rest of the day. Besides, they
invariably responded in gratitude and in profit to
every expenditure in material and attention,
which seemed to raise them so high morally above
my experience of statesmen. The man who
starves a calf to steal the food ought to get penal
servitude. He is almost as bad as a party
politician.

There was another reason for returning to Mayo
just then. I knew that I had been steadily robbed
at home during my two years in London. I had
left directions to feed a calf for every four quarts
of milk per day in the milking season, and at that
rate, I ought to have fifteen to twenty good calvei
for the year, instead of which I found four bad
ones, starved, dirty and verminous. During those

98

Calves and Statesmen 99

years, three cows had been milked, but they were
real cows, two of them in the dairy herd book,
and the third as good as either. Those in charge
could not be induced to see that it was possible to
raise five good calves on the milk of one cow in the
course of her normal milking period. Milking
the cows themselves, they knew that the quantity
per cow was at least twice as much as they had been
accustomed to see, but they would never admit
that calves could be fed in the same proportion.
In their view, I was to breed and feed cows on a
scale higher by a hundred per cent., while they
reckoned the product in their old style, at half
the rate of my improvement and expenditure. I
might advance the scale of production as much as
I could, but my scale of profit must remain still
at the barbaric margin. I had already raised
wages above the local scale, to assure labour a share
in the plus value of progress, but I must count on
no remuneration at all for the plus factor in skill
and capital. Such is the human equation in the
Irish industrial problem, and it is by no means
confined to the farm. The milk must have been
stolen, but by whom ? I do not know ? It
might have been stolen from the man in charge
by outsiders.

I removed the man in charge and replaced him
by one considerably worse. Early in 1913, I saw
five of my calves dead in eight days, and when I
asked the man what he thought of it, he told me
my plans were impossible, which might readily be
proved, from his point of view, by our death-rate

ioo My Little Farm

in calves. Then I saw to the milking and the
feeding personally, after which the calves began
to flourish immediately, so that I could not help
wondering what must have happened to the food
before I began to feed them. The new man
joined the Army, and I am glad to hear that he is
in the firing line. I should be sorry to say he
was a thief, and he lost even more by the thieving
than I did.

I got another new man, making the third in
four months, but by this time I had ceased to
trust anybody, and from the day of that
decision my calf scheme prospered. Notwith-
standing the loss of time and milk, I raised eleven
in 1913, and some of these were sold for twelve
guineas each at the age of twelve to thirteen
months, having cost me, from birth, only 175.
each, apart from the products of the farm. But
I was not satisfied. It was the result for only
part of a season, and I made up my mind, at
whatever cost in my interests outside agriculture,
to continue the work personally through the whole
of 1914, at the end of which I am writing this.
No man in my employment can tell me now that
what I have done is impossible. If I cannot get
servants to do what I have done myself, it is
because they are unfit for their work, which con-
firms the Department's declaration of their fall-
ing efficiency, in spite of all the State expenditure
to advance them. The secret is chiefly in the pri-
mary education and the foreign forces tradingjn it,
but nobody in the Department dares mention that.

Calves and Statesmen 101

This year, I have raised sixteen calves on the
milk of three cows, not a larger quantity than that
on which four calves were starved behind my back
previously. During the whole year, I have
attended personally to every detail. During most
of the year, I have milked the cows, fed the calves,
washed their buckets, prepared their mixtures, and
made their bed with my own hands. I suppose
I will be hundreds of pounds out of pocket
in literary work left undone, a loss which the ample
profit on the calves cannot compensate ; but have
I not realised a practical demonstration of more
value to the Irish nation than anything I could
have done as a Member of Parliament or a pro-
fessor in an impossible language ? The little
farm is very largely the Irish nation, and the first
of her problems is to find out how human energy
can advance human life.

In the sixteen calves, I had only one death, a
death too many, and an unnecessary one. While
writing an article for London, I entrusted the
" man " with part of the work, and found when
I had finished that he had given the animal an
effective poison for castor oil three times in four
days. It was the only instance of my putting any
essential part of the work out of my own hands in
the whole year, and that was the result. The
death occurred when the calf had been fed out of
milk, so that my calculation of the milk per calf
is not affected by it. Among the fifteen calves
that remain, there is not a bad one, and one of
them, by no means the most valuable, is sold for

102 My Little Farm

£12 12s. at the age of seven months. Another,
registered, is with Mr. Walsh of Dunmore. In
addition to those calved for myself, I have
to buy some, and the average price paid for
these in 1914 is 315. 6d., which is not more
than half what I should have had to pay
if I had arranged the milk flow for summer
instead of getting my calves dropped in winter
and early spring, when my neighbours are hurrying
to sell their calves and running down their prices.
They will not take the trouble of winter feeding.
A few months later, you will find the same
neighbours rushing to buy and running up the
prices against one another. I buy no calves then.
In one period of six weeks this year the price of
calves was iully doubled, apart from the value of
any improvement in the animals themselves. It
is hardly possible at any time to pay over £3 for
an ordinary suckling calf and feed him at a profit,
but my neighbours are never in such a hurry to
buy as when the price is highest, and never in such
a hurry to sell as when it is lowest, which exactly
suits me both ways, buying from them at the
lowest price and selling to them at the highest.
It is largely a matter of making proper provision
in food and care for milk cows during winter, but
a farmer cannot see to this and spend half his
working time smoking and talking politics at his
neighbour's house. By immemorial precedent,
the agricultural process is in the main suspended
for three months of the year, depending on the
sunshine of next summer to make up for the neglect

Calves and Statesmen

against cold and scarcity this winter. While the
industrial psychology remains so primitive, it is
hard to improve it by State expenditure, and I
believe that my own method is more educative,
showing my neighbours how I can make money out
of their incapacity. They know as well as I do
that the profit of rearing calves may in any year
be much increased, and may in some years be
more than doubled, by making the start in winter ;
but it conflicts with our charming custom of
making holiday for a whole quarter of the agricul-
tural year. I know of no other peasantry in the
world who could do it and keep roofs over them,
but then, no other peasantry in the world have
their industrial inefficiency so generously endowed
by Government expenditure from the pockets of
hard working people who pay taxes out of other
industries in other regions of the realm. The
rest of the community is taxed for the
luxury and privilege of the Connaught peasant
who sleeps until nine, takes a walk until five, and
then goes visiting until the next bed time. I
cannot say exactly how far this style of spoon-fed
agriculture extends in our island, but it is certain
that more than half the peasant population spend
the winter as I describe in every part of the West
within my knowledge — and there is not much of
the West that I do not know.

The contrast between my four starved calves in
1912 and my sixteen fine ones in 1914, on the same
supply of milk, illustrates the human factor in our
agricultural problem very well, but it is not yet

104 M Little Farm

complete. Six of the sixteen have been suckled
on the cows, several of them wholly, the others for
a time, and any practical farmer can infer how far
I might have increased the number by milking all
and feeding from the bucket only. My own esti-
mate is that I could raise seven good calves per cow
— as against starving four on the same milk.

The remarkable efficiency of the expert whom I
had in charge of the four, in 1912, has been the
subject of an expensive slander action in the
.King's Bench, tried at the Four Courts on the
4th and 5th of November this year. The action
was no affair of mine, except as an unwilling
witness, and my expert left the court with his
character as free from stain as when he entered it.
I have to add to his credit that he is a man much
above the average in natural intelligence, and that
I never dismissed him on account of any charges
against him. I was plundered, but I had no proof
that it was by him.

In Ireland, I have never been able to work
smoothly with a servant a great deal more clever
than myself, and I dismissed him for his excess
of ability, which I could never get to run on the
simple lines of the work for which I employed
him. You may depend on a Connaught man
speaking the truth sometimes, provided he is not
on oath, and the cross swearing at the Four Courts
was a discovery on a grand scale of our native
talent for perjury. On the other hand, I do not
remember having seen at work in any country a
finer judicial sense than that shown by Judge
Molony, though a recent rescue from party

Calves and Statesmen 105

politics. It seems to infer good stuff still surviving
in the Irish nature, and ready to assert itself
whenever relieved from the organised insanities of
self enslavement.

In industry, in politics and in morals alike,
the Irish character is always a reflex of forces
external to its true economy, and that is one
reason why the Irishman is so much a better
man anywhere out of Ireland. Abroad, the good
in him is free to grow; at home he cannot be trusted
for any sense of duty. It is striking to note
how, after returning to Ireland, he steadily
descends from the level at which he has lived and
worked in other countries. These facts apply to
Irish interests in general, but more to industry, and
most to agriculture, which, more than any other
occupation, helps to turn the minds of a thousand
men into the instruments of one.

The agricultural incapacity around me advances
my gain on calves in another way. At the fairs
the calves left unsold are usually the best, and
because they are unsold, their prices drop as the
day advances. Early in the morning, you see the
buyers rushing nervously and outbidding one
another for the calf with the longest legs, which
has usually the shallowest body and the weakest
constitution, while the better calves, with the
short legs and the deep bodies, are left waiting for
me, at prices far below those of the inferior ones.
I never buy now before mid-day, when they come
begging me to take the best at less than the prices
of the worst. The underlying fallacy, so expensive
to my neighbours and so profitable to me, is in

io6 My Little Farm

mistaking mere altitude for size, weight and real
value. You cannot get them to see this difference
in the young calf, and yet they have invariably to
admit it later, when they are trying to sell legs
and I am selling bullocks. They buy daylight at
the price of beef, and then wonder why my calvet
thrive better than theirs on less milk and at less cost.
After long experience, I am convinced that a
shilling made in the straight way gives a Con-
naughtman less delight than a penny secured
by Connaught methods, and yet the excessive
cleverness assailing my simplicity often works out
to my advantage in the end, even without the
least effort on my part. One day last spring I went
to a fair for calves. It was noon, and the best
remained unsold. I said I wanted males as I
went through, bidding for everyone that suited
me. The heifers were about ten shillings a head
dearer, and the difference could not disappear
before the age of twelve months. Of course, I
should prefer the females, at the same price. I
met an excessively clever man, selling an unusually
good calf — a female, but I did not know this.
" Cum here, sor," he said ; " I have the noicest
little bull calf in the fair." At 25 per cent, less
than it was worth as a male, and about 40 per cent,
cent, less than its value as a female, I bought the
calf, and the excessively clever man was evidently
pleased, but in a great hurry to get paid. I paid
him quickly, and as quickly he vanished, no doubt
to tell his friends of the " flat " he had caught and
the clever thing he had done. Only next day, at
home, I found out in full how he had imposed on

Calves and Statesmen 107

my simplicity at a loss of more than zos. to himself
and an excess gain of the same amount to me, in
one little calf a few days old. I intend that calf
for the breeding list, and who knows whether her
farther history may not be worth writing some
day ? As to the excessively clever man, I can
meet him everywhere every day under every name ;
and from my own dealings with him at least, I
cannot but see that honesty would be worth more
to him than all his cleverness in the long run.
Yet the popular estimate in human and moral
values continues to regard the honest man as a
fool, and it will take some time to improve on a
standard so firmly established.

I am often asked a question like this : " If the
people in general were to adopt your methods,
would not your peculiar advantages be largely
cancelled ? " Of course, they would, but in that
case, I should expect compensating advantages to
arise. For instance, should I not be able to spend
less of my time and energy in the detective depart-
ment of my work as a farmer ? Besides, I see no
immediately disturbing prospect of my methods
being adopted on a dangerously large scale. The
excessive cleverness of the people in general
assures my peculiar advantages against any such
hypothetical alarm. I am prepared to sacrifice
much profit for the luxury of living among a
community of straight men in my own country,
but the creation of that community is not to be
achieved by lying to them for their applause.
Only the worthless care for the applause of
the worthless.

CHAPTER IX.
THE NURSERY

SIXTEEN good calves, on three cows' milk, and now
let me tell how it is done. To make a success of
calves, we must always begin with the cows. As
I have said, two are in the dairy herd book, the
third as good as either, and none can get in on less
than 600 gallons. All these are well over that,
and one of them* has milk so rich that about one-
third of water can be added without bringing the
percentage of butter fat below the average.
The total yield is approximately 2,600 gallons,
which gives each of 21 calves (7 per cow), an
average of 5 quarts a day for 100 days — quite ample
for first class results, assuming efficient attention
and proper feeding in addition to the milk. Of
course, no calf gets 5 quarts uniformly from start
to finish, but we will come to that. Here I have
to show how the most can be made of the cows.
Get a cow calving late in winter or in early
spring, and the period of natural decline in the
milk will coincide exactly with the increasing
warmth and its new grass. Going to pasture
about the middle of May, she makes a new start
in milk, with the whole summer before her, and

* Polly II, No. 739. Her last calf Patrician II, age one
year on March 9, 1915, now for sale as a registered sire.

1 08

The Nursery 109

it is like having two milk seasons instead of one.
About the middle of August the nutrition in the
pasture begins to diminish, and then, to maintain
the albumenoid ratio, I have vetches ready. As
winter approaches, the yield of milk falls faster
still, and then I have rape, grown where I cut the
earliest plot of vetches, in May to June. This
year, I have had a statute acre of vetches, in four
succeeding plots, with catch crops following in the
two earlier plots, and I consider that the total
product of the acre is worth more to me than the
best ten acres of my pasture. Yet they pay for
the out-grazing of one wretched heifer, on
wretched grass, what would raise first-class food
for four good cows during the whole season from
a single statute acre.

Now, reverse the plan, getting the calves
dropped at mid-summer, and compare what
happens. The period of natural decline in milk
coincides with the check in the food value of the
pasture during August, doubling the loss ; and at
the first snap of winter, the decline in milk is
sharper still, some cows drying up altogether, at
a stage in their milk season, which corresponds
with the renewed yield in summer from the
winter-calving cow. Add to this the popular
incapacity for feeding, and it is easy to infer the
ruinous difference between a cow calving in
February and one calving in June or July. Yet
nine out of ten prefer the mid-summer calf, when
you find them rushing to buy calves and raising
the prices to an unprofitable figure. While other

no My Little Farm

people's money is spent in vain by the Department
teaching them how to develop skill and industry,
these fairweather farmers prefer to depend on
sunshine for half the year (and on moonshine for
the rest) keeping productive power at the barbaric
margin, which cannot but help to keep character
at the same level. I have no complaint to urge
on grounds of personal profit. The thing suits my
pocket well, enabling me to buy calves at less than
they are worth when I want them and to sell them
at more than they are worth when I have them
ready ; but I should prefer the joy of living among
a community of capable men in the land of my
fathers, and no man shall be more pkased than I
the day my special gains are cancelled, if ever, by
the advancing scale of work and character around
me. Meantime, I shall go on making unduly large
profits from the laziness and folly of my fellow
countrymen, frankly telling them in the fullest
detail how it is done. They can see already that
my place pays more in wages every year than the
value of the total production on the average place
of the same area ; and they can see that I have
more left than they have after the wages are paid.
Should Ireland ever wake up to her normal
destiny, these people must be called upon either
to quit the soil or make proper use of it in the
interests of the nation. What right has a man
to live idly on the margin by which he has con-
fiscated the former landlord, and to starve the
labourer for the accommodation of his own
idleness ? The farmer has no more right to the

The Nursery in

land than any other man, unless in so far as he
makes it more productive.

I start the new-born calf on two pints a day, in
three feeds, and he is fed three times a day until
he chews the cud, at 10 to 20 days ; but by this
time the milk has been gradually raised to four
quarts, and now the first solids are added — never
before the cudding, because that, and not sooner,
is the stage at which the young constitution is
sufficiently developed to assimilate solids. I have
seen an obstinate manufacturer persistently adver-
tising his solids for use from birth, and I have
followed up his result, among a trail of dead calves.
There may be a food other than milk for the age
before cudding, but if so, I do not know it, and
should I hear of it, I shall take care to see it tried
on some other man's calves first. Let us bear in
mind that, before the cudding stage, a calf is
but potentially a ruminant, not actually ; that a
ruminant, when said to be eating solids, is not
really eating at all, but gathering up its food into
a sort of stomatic ante-chamber, to be really eaten
when it lies down later to cud ; and that stuff
requiring to be ruminated cannot but do harm
when fed to the potential ruminant before it can
ruminate, while the ante-chamber is not yet
normally prepared for it.

If we reflect that the process of nutrition in a
calf before birth is practically continuous, and
supplied at the natural temperature of its own
body, it may help us to see the importance of
feeding often, in small quantities, and as nearly

ii2 My Little Farm

as possible at the same temperature, for some time
after birth, until the young creature has grown to
store larger quantities against longer periods, and
to develop the required heat from them on his own
account. It follows that the same necessity must
be observed in housing and bedding. I have a
large vessel to hold all the milk, with a little fire
under it to keep blood heat ; a measure stick
figured by the inch to tell the total yield at every
milking, and a lactometer to drop in for the detec-
tion of fraud by watering. I once had people who
gathered as many as they could of their relatives
and friends into the cow-house at milking time,
and the calves looked starved, but they began to
thrive again at once when I scattered the camp.
Calves will not cud at the same age, but from
the time they are old enough to do so, something
suitable, such as old meadow hay of good quality,
ought to be kept within their reach. They may
be trusted to find what suits them among it, and
unless they can find that, they will probably
attack something very unsuitable, maybe, their
bed or worse. Fed three times a day up to cud-
ding, with the right quantities and conditions of
milk only, I have never known a calf to develop
that diseased taste for rubbish which kills so many ;
but it is as certain that, if starved, or if fed only
twice a day in quantities too large and at tem-
peratures far below their own, they will often
show a deranged state of stomach, either taking
months to recover from it or ending in death.
Knowing the results, but ignoring the causes,

The Nursery 113

many people muzzle them with an old stocking
or a perforated saucepan, which deprives them of
what they need as well as what would hurt them.
Bring the young constitution in a normal state to
the cudding stage, which can be done as I direct,
and there is no need whatever for such laborious
tinkering with muzzles, not to mention the
advantage of having a healthy calf instead of one
more or less injured either by disease or by the
cure. The quantities of milk above mentioned
are averages, and some calves ought to get more
than others at the same age. We have now
covered the first fifteen to twenty days in the
calf's life — up to cudding.

Take a like period, or a little longer, after
cudding. By far the greatest consumption of
milk ought to be now, when the capacity to
assimilate solids is rapidly advancing, but not yet
sufficiently advanced to diminish the milk, which
makes the best possible foundation for its substi-
tutes in the future. Stinting now might mean a
waste of milk, requiring an otherwise unnecessary
consumption of it later on, and producing a worse
calf in the end. During this critical period, I give
six quarts, but never more, and any additional
food is in supplemental solids ; but the need to
differentiate is greater than ever, because not two
of a dozen calves at the same age may have the
same stomach for solids, and while some reject
what they do not require of them, others will
swallow an excess. Irregularity in the milk is less
dangerous. As in dealing with the milk, the total

H

ii4 My Little Farm

ration of solids is averaged, but the individual
rations are varied, according to the size, weight,
appetite, progress and appearance of the calf.
This may seem too minutely tedious for practice,
but it is all the result of practice, and I have found
it far more interesting than party politics, though
my interest in real politics grows keener than ever
in the company of the calves ; so much so that I
cannot help dropping a hint here and there among
the milk, as if in the hope that some fortunate
agrarian may find it at the bottom of a bucket,
since all more suitable media are systematically
denied to him in Ireland. We all fancy that we
are shrewd politicians, and yet we remain as blind
among politics as among our calves. It is but
natural, since organised atrophy at the source must
produce its effect and find its expression in every
aspect of life. You cannot deprive people of the
free use of their brains and expect them to progress
in industry.

During this second period, of two to three
weeks, the calf must be watched to ascertain how
soon his milk can be diminished ; that is, in pro-
portion as he can assimilate the necessary substi-
tutes. Stop any portion of the milk he requires
before that, and he is permanently injured ; con-
tinue the full supply much after that, and milk is
unnecessarily wasted. If you watch, the calf
himself will show you these things, by the signs
mentioned in the last paragraph. At this stage
especially, every individual calf ought to have a
distinctive place in the mind of the man in charge,

The Nursery 115

and the calf's behaviour at every meal ought to be
remembered against the next. Of twelve calves
born on the same day, not two may be fit for
solids on the same date, not two will require
exactly the same quantity at any date, and not two
will exactly coincide in their fitness to begin
diminishing the milk supply. I have found, how-
ever, that the calf chewing the cud at the earliest
age is generally the earliest at the subsequent
stages, and the best in the end ; not necessarily the
biggest or the heaviest, but generally the most
successful in his return for the expenditure on
him, which is the final test of all animal farming.
There is a third period. Some time in the
sixth week the average calf can maintain his
progress on less milk and more solids, but the
change may be made as successfully with one in
the fifth week as with another in the seventh,
due to the hereditary factor. In either case, and
in every case, the change must start gradually. I
diminish the milk per calf twice a week, by a pint
each time, for the next four weeks, so that in the
tenth week he has only two quarts a day, which
continues for the next three weeks without farther
fall. During the fourteenth week the two quarts
are gradually diminished to nothing, and we get
out of the nursery ; but by this time we have a
younger family making their way up from the
other end through the various stages, on the milk
set free in increasing quantities from those on the
way to weaning. This second lot usually take
more time and attention, because started from

n6 My Little Farm

time to time as the milk is ready for them, and
thereby varying so much more in their ages.
More than once I have with advantage put back
some of the first lot to finish out over again among
the second, and I have sometimes been able to
promote the strongest of the younger to the
company and treatment of their elders ; such is
the variation in the thriving power of calves which
must be watched and studied to make the most
of them. Looking back, I see one omission : the
new born calf, starting on two pints the first day,
ought to have three pints the second day, gradually
increased farther to three quarts on the seventh
day, and again to four quarts at cudding, which is
quite enough until the ruminant stage is well
established. Questions of health will be discussed
in the next chapter, but there will not be much
need of it for the man who attends to this, and
an ounce of active brain is better than a ton of
physic.

So much for milk, and now we had better turn
back briefly on the solids :

i Ib. per calf per day at cudding.
•j „ ,, „ a week later.

* „ ,, » » „

That is simple, an increase of £ per week from
cudding for the next four weeks, when the calf
ought to be out of his sixth week. Of course, the
increases ought to be made gradually from any

The Nursery 117

stage to the next. The above quantities are well
mixed with the milk at feeding. There is no need
for any increase over I Ib. a day until weaning, but
here comes another matter of great importance.
From the fourth week, I keep a meal mixture, dry,
in the trough ; at first, the same stuff as in the
milk, gradually changed to a cheaper one about the
eighth week. Begin with only a little dusting
that they may learn to lick. Then let them have
as much as they can clean up. Some preferring
their solids quite dry, and having got enough of
them from the trough, will begin to refuse them
in the milk, and suck it from among them. So
much the better. They are the best feeders that
prefer their solids dry ; but take care not to
mistake their good sense for bad digestion and
inflict them with medicine which they do not need.
Their behaviour and appearance ought to settle
that, not to mention the necessary observation of
their attention to the trough. I give them,
through the milk, less than they would have,
rather than more, because I want them to go to
the trough and to know their business at it long
before they are weaned. I have never given a calf
what they call a " mash," at any age, and I never
will, though it is the general rule, an extremely
bad rule, because generally overloading the unfor-
tunate calf with water beyond his needs and
depriving him of his solids on any other terms.
Give the calf his solids dry, and never a liquid but
his milk. He knows better than you what
quantity of water to add. The only calf of mine

n8 My Little Farm

that I ever heard of going wrong after leaving me
was killed by abundant " mashing," the more
injurious after my dry bill of fare ; and when I
examined into the particulars, I found that every
day for five months, they had forced him to
swallow at least three times the quantity of water
he required.

As I do the work, it is obviously lessened to a
very large extent. In addition to the saving in
calf-health, food-stuff and money, I can feed a
dozen calves in the time the neighbours take to
feed three, and this part of my preaching at least
ought to be popular, in a country where effort is
so objectionable. If they do not increase the
result by the same effort, as I do, they can take the
more probable course of maintaining the result
and lessening the effort. If I cannot make their
work more productive, I can at least make their
laziness easier. In any alternative, they stand
indebted to my economy in working power, and
they have the farther choice to acknowledge the
benefit either in gratitude or outrage, according to
direction. Could an indispensable teacher be
more accommodating at his own expense ?

In my scheme, there is yet another factor. The
calf does not live by milk and meals alone. No
matter what the treatment in milk and meals, no
calf of mine ever depends for the rest on pasture
only, however ample. At every stage in the
nursery, and at every time of the year, I provide
something more ; from May to September,
vetches ; from September to January, rape and

The Nursery 119

cabbage ; from January to May, mangolds ; all
given as fully as eaten, and from the moment the
young thing feels inclined to eat them. These
stuffs, grown at home, come at the lowest cost,
and they can often take the place of bag stuff
quite successfully, saving much expense. For
instance, during summer, the high albumenoid
proportion in the vetches makes cake of all kinds
quite unnecessary, and an addition of India meal
alone completes a well balanced food, at least for
the older calves. It seems, too, that through the
green vetch, the albumenoids must be conveyed
in an ideal form. At least, the calves inform me
to that effect every year. In so far as I can see,
any animal of the cow kind can be made as fat as
possible on green vetches and India meal properly
proportioned ; and seeing that I can produce a
statute acre of good vetches for .£3 ios., I submit
it to my masters whether any more economic
method of meat production has yet been found in
our little islands. Calves, not beef, are my main
work, and it is not good to have your eggs in too
many baskets ; but I believe that my £3 ios. in
vetches, plus about an equal cost in India meal
and a little linseed cake in the last month, will
finish the fattening of the two biggest bullocks in
Ireland, assuming fair condition at the start ; and
this is a result which ought to give a profit of
50 per cent, on the cost of production. Yet our
land lies comparatively idle, our ample capital is
exported at 5 per cent, or less, our labour
emigrates, the war rages, and the price of beef goes

i2o My Little Farm

up. Have such a useless race of men been ever
before permitted to occupy such a fertile area of
the earth for such a length of time ? Our peasant
proprietor, now pampered to atrophy, must some
day try to answer this and nastier questions of the
kind, and he will never find the answer until he
enters on private property in himself, instead of
remaining a mental and moral instrument under
alien direction.

When the great war broke out in the autumn
of 1914 and the cost of foods suddenly ran so high,
I stopped all bag stuff for every animal in the place
but a few of the younger calves. The following
weeks were an anxious time. At the prices of food
and of calves, the calves could not possibly pay
for the food. On the other hand, without bag
stuff, they might decline, perhaps die, and the loss
would be greater still. I had plenty of vetches,
with some cabbage, and the calves went on growing.
I never had them better grown, stronger or looking
more healthy, and the only difference I could see
was a little less meat on them, which was promptly
recovered later in the season, when the food prices
fell. The provincial vetch and the Imperial Navy
had enabled me to do it, and I doubled my pro-
duction of vetches for the following year. I have
never seen finer crops of vetches than I can grow,
on land at a purchase annuity of 35. yd. an acre,
and the soil is left nearly half manured by the
aerial nitrogen fixed through the leguminous
roots for a following crop of rape or mangolds.
Who would spend his life quarrelling about the

The Nursery 121

38. yd. to lose £20 ? Only the Irishman, and he
has done it systematically for several generations,
as an approved policy imposed in the name of
economic wisdom.

Our Department of Agriculture has done more
than take one man's money to teach another how
to farm at a loss. There is a little world of
commerce in calf meals, and I have never been
able to get one as good as that recommended by
the Department :

1 part ground flax seed,

2 parts oatmeal, and
2 parts India meal ;

all ground fine and boiled together, in a minimum
of water, twelve hours before feeding. When the
calf is five weeks old, it is quite enough to pour
boiling water on the meal, stir it to water every
particle, renew the boiling for a few minutes, and
leave it to simmer by the fireside as long as
convenient. Knowing my countrymen, I can
never lose an opportunity of showing them how to
shorten work and lengthen leisure. One little boy,
under my direction, can, and does, produce more
from a given area of land than a whole big family
of them, working harder than he does.

During March and April, 1915, our local prices
for some farm produce ran high above the
prices in Dublin, Liverpool and Birmingham. I
sold mangolds for £i IDS. per ton, and hay for
.£5 ios., which is fully twice the feeding value in
both cases, One twenty- fourth part of my

122 My Little Farm

mangolds paid for the manuring of the whole
plot. From less than a statute rood of hay and
mangolds, I sold twice enough to pay the pur-
chase annuity on the whole 32 acres for one year.
Yet the political cult of incompetence keeps
these people occupied with the purchase annuity
of the rood, which is under eleven pence, and
ignoring the possible production, which is more
than £11. If I sold the whole of my mangold
crop in the spring of 1915, it would make more
than .£60 per statute acre. My cattle are much
more profitable than any others in the region,
but they have by no means paid the local market
prices for the roots and hay consumed during
the winter of 1914-15, and this time I mean to
vary the programme, wintering no beast but my
own breed, and selling the stuff when the prices
rise to double the feeding value, which is likely
to be the fact in spring, so long as the prices of
imports remain so high. I notice that the cost
of artificial manures has not risen to anything
like the increase in the market price of their
produce, and I am always ready to sell when my
neighbours are anxious to pay me twice the real
value of the commodity. I know how to main-
tain the fertility of the soil at a fraction of the
profit.

CHAPTER X.
PREVENTIVE PATHOLOGY

ABOUT ten years ago I began a big building, with
sections, subsections and interior walls, and the
people wondered, for the like had not been seen
among them ; and the secret spread, that I was
building a convent, to be worked in a way of my
own, under modern administration. That was the
theory of a local expert who, having seen something
of ascetic architecture, could not otherwise account
for the numerous " cells " in my ground plan.

At that time, I had not yet outgrown the Irish
longing for popularity, and I was rather pleased
with the flattering interpretation of my project.
So lately returned to my own country, after such
long and varied experience in a wicked world, I
was still a comparatively simple and innocent man,
by no means aware of the fact that only unpopular
men could be of much use to Ireland.

The fame of my foundation spread so far that I
had some tentative applications on behalf of
possible postulants — but I noticed that each
applicant seemed to imply that I could not
entertain more than one, a restriction ill according
with the final necessities of such a scheme. With
only one postulant and Father Superior, I could
not hope to make much of a convent.

123

124 My Little Farm

In the circumstances, at the time, the popular
estimate of my spiritual perspective was reasonable
enough, the people knowing my instinctive
reverence for religion. The older among them
could remember how I had been brought up as a
pagan, and the more intelligent could explain to
the others how my early escape from Irish educa-
tion must have preserved the mind quite free to
value the Christian virtues. They could see no
unfitness of things in a holy place put up by me,
and I could see nothing abnormal in their view
of the intention. Since my time, the moral
freedom afforded by Paganism has been dimin-
ished, making Christianity practically impossible.

The building rose and the roof went on, but the
postulants proved to be neither numerous enough
nor rich enough to start me respectably in that
line, and my convent became an admirable
Cow-house, the cells for Stalls, the calefactorium
for Nursery, the oratory as a centre of distribution
for Provender, and every detail fitting as if
specially designed for Cows and Calves,

This building has meant much to me, and it has
been " lucky " (as one should expect), but I
reinforce the luck with three or four whitewashings
every year ; for though I am the last man to deny
anything rationally supernatural, I believe also in
newly burnt lime, which has an effect on microbes,
and is much cheaper in our district than prayers.
After ten years' practice, I can hardly see how I
could improve on the system of government for
my community of calves,

Preventive Pathology 125

The Nursery is in two divisions, known as the
House of Commons and the House of Lords.
At the right stage in their career the occupants are
translated from the Lower House to the Upper.
To complete the constitution, with the Lords and
Commons, I am King, but with prerogatives
somewhat improved. For instance, not one
member in either House can take his place without
passing my examination of his fitness, with the
result that, in all its estates, my realm is always
free from the most dangerous kinds of nuisance.
It is but fair to confess that I learned to see the
room for some of these improvements through my
work in connection with two other Chambers
under the same names, where there is practically
no safeguard against the dominion of the unfittest.

The House of Commons has a shallow trough
along one wall, high enough from the ground to
prevent the members dropping anything of
their own into it, and low enough for them to eat
their dry meals, roots and cabbage out of it.
Above the trough is a rack for fodder. It is the
same in the House of Lords, but on a larger scale,
and with the trough removable, up or down,
according to the size of the members. The upper
part of the rack is sheeted off with thin boards to
prevent anything getting into their eyes ; and to
make sure against draughts, every opening for
ventilation in every wall is above the back of the
biggest member.

I have no doubt that the plan of bedding does
much for the success. It is the same in both

126 My Little Farm

Houses, but renewed more often in the Lower.
The bed is 18 inches to 2 feet deep, of " turf," that
is, dried peat, in pieces about the size of bricks ;
over these, a thinner layer of the same stuff,
broken fine. The " white " turf is best, and it is
nearest the top of the bog. The liquids go down,
as into a dry sponge, and a bed like this will absorb
them all from a dozen of the Lords for six months.
The solids, remaining on the surface, are removed
daily. There is no waste, and never a smell.
Towards the end, the bed is dug over, bringing
the driest again to the top. The House is emptied
twice a year (once during the long vacation). The
stuff seems good to grow anything. The
saving in labour is great, and the House is always
clean. Everybody admires the arrangement, but
nobody adopts it. The peat is abundant, and
costs next to nothing, but it has to be dried and
housed at that time of the year when it is most
pleasant to lie down and bask in the sun. How
did this Oriental indifference to needs and seasons
reach Ireland, in the blood of the race or in the
making of the mind ? Some say it is the climate,
but the whole Empire has no more strenuously
efficient life than we find in one part of our island.
From May to September, every member of
either House over a fortnight old is out all night
and in, on vetches, during the heat of the day,
away from the flies, so that we escape warbles in
the first year, when the young skin is most attrac-
tive to them. From September to May, all are
out in the day and in at night. The only excep-

Preventive Pathology 127

tion is unusually severe weather or a case of indis-
position. Serious illness we never have — unless
when I make the mistake of assuming a conscience in
a man and trusting him to earn his wages honestly.
I do not believe that uniformly rich pasture is
the best pasture for calves. They often prefer a
bite of something which seems better adapted to
the discipline of the stomach, as if for the reason
that we take cheese to finish a good dinner. Their
normal taste in differential botany cannot be
without significance in the physiological scheme,
and I am prepared to learn even from sucklings.
One thing suggested to me by their sagacity of
palate is that the growing stomach, unlike the
matured one, has a dual function ; first, to digest
food and to assimilate nutrition ; second, to
develop the sound strength of the stomach itself,
which may be the sounder and the stronger for
acting on a percentage of herbal substances poorer
in food and harder to digest. There are times in
the twenty-four hours when calves, in the pink of
health, will prefer a bunch of heather to the best
clovers and grasses in the country. One must
guard against generalising from the individual
vagaries of a diseased appetite, but one cannot
ignore the uniform evidence of a hundred healthy
stomachs. Should the expert deny my inference,
I can quote to him the selective talent of the calf,
informed by an intimacy of experience to which
neither the expert nor I can pretend. The feeding
needs of the young calf must be very different from
those of the fattening adult.

128 My Little Farm

In any case, I think enough of my inference to
prefer for paddock the five acres plot of which four
acres were cut away bog, almost wholly covered
in bent and heather a few years ago. There are
still outer corners and faces of fences where my
leguminous transformation has not reached ; and
there, at certain times in the day, the calves will
go to feed, apparently with increased relish. For
the present at least, I must continue to believe
that in this behaviour they are but acting in
obedience to some necessity of their nature, and
the necessities of their nature have taught me
more about them than I have been able to learn
from expert knowledge. Besides, short of the
laboratory, what means of closer study can the
expert have than this intimate opportunity of
my own ?

In earliest spring, when the calves are young and
small, the grass grows ahead of them, but while
the area is fixed, the collective appetite is steadily
enlarged, so that the paddock is eaten bare in the
back end, as I want it to be, because " hoose "
comes out of long grass in the autumn dews.
To make doubly sure, I house the calves at night
from the second week in September. Since I
arranged things in this way, I have not had one
case of " hoose." Before that, I had some experi-
ence of it, with several of the stock heifers plagued
all through the winter by that wearing cough in the
throat. It left them six months late in maturing,
which meant six months' food lost, and I mean to
have no more of that. The dry feeding is a farther

Preventive Pathology 129

antidote to this pest, but no young animal of mine
is ever at any age without a large proportion of its
food dry. Excess of liquids is ruin to calves.

A permanent stream runs by the end of the
paddock, outside the fence ; and inside it, I have
sunk a well, deeper than the bed of the stream and
guarded against dirt. A gullet runs across under
the fence, so that as the animals drink, the water
runs in from the stream to them. In any weather,
they know exactly where to go when thirsty, and
they have given up their attacks on the fence to
get at the clean water outside it. The whole
thing was done by one man in half a day, at a cost
of is. 6d., and yet it had remained undone through
all the generations before I came. Irish farming
is so full of such big effects producible by small
means that one cannot but marvel at the strong
men who look on in their idleness during three or
four months every year. I know family homes
where the dung pit is kept from generation to
generation on the sunny side of the house, within
a few feet of the door, while a suitable place at a
proper distance on the other side could be prepared
at the cost of a single day's work by the family.

For purposes of health, the two most critical
stages in the early life of a calf are, first, during the
three days after birth, when the alimentary
process is put in motion in its new condition,
subject to the necessity for voiding waste products ;
and second, the week after cudding, when, for the
first time, the constitution adapts itself to solid
food, At the first of these stages, I have never

J

130 My Little Farm

had a moment's trouble with any calf suckled, for
which reason I think it is well worth while to
suckle all calves until the fourth day, even at the
risk of some disturbance to the dam on separation.
These four days make a big difference in favour of
the calf for weeks to come, and possibly for his
whole life. If you cannot let him suck, keep him
as near as you can to the conditions, by feeding
him often, in small quantities, and at the normal
temperature of his own body. Given that, he will
seldom need medical assistance, and then only a
mild aperient, such as castor oil — one to two
teaspoonfulls in the warm milk according to the
case and the age of the calf. The neglect of these
simple precautions may lead to the milk " curd-
ing " in the stomach, which is always injurious and
often deadly. Against this, nothing better has
been found than a pinch of common bread soda in
each meal, about as much as can fit on a sixpenny
piece ; but after a bad case of " curding," I
question whether it is not more profitable to see
the patient dead than alive. From careful experi-
ence, I can say with general certainty that I have
least to expect in profit from the calf that costs me
most in expenditure. Indeed, the difference in
favour of the one that costs me least is very large,
and those from which I have most to expect in the
present season have cost me practically nothing
beyond home products.

Attention through the first stage will save time
and money at the second and afterwards, but
Otherwise, the trouble increases its complexity,

Preventive Pathology 131

because all the ills of the first stage may be con-
tinued through the second, with new ones arising
in the enlargement of function. The start in
feeding solids with the milk in a bucket is quite a
delicate business. At meal time, a healthy calf is
hungry ; yet offer him the solids alone, and he will
not touch them, which shows that, in taking them
with the milk, he does so, not because he desires
them or feels fit for them, but because he cannot
have his milk without them. I need hardly insist
on the foolish cruelty of thus cheating him into
indigestion against his own sound taste by an
excess of solids, but that is exactly what many
people do. This morning, the stuff for twelve
calves is in a pot, prepared from last night, to be
shared out at the rate of y1? to the average calf.
Give twice as much to a small one as to a big one,
and you are only making more trouble for your-
self— in the Infirmary. When I do the work
myself, I never have a single case of serious
ailment at any of these stages. For two or three
days after starting the solids, watch the calf closely,
and he will let you know whether you are giving
him too much. Far better too little at this stage,
with the dry mixture in the trough to supplement
it. My average is f Ib. per day now, but some
get less and some get more, according to
size and constitution. Many people like to
see their porridge a bulky mess, which means
an excess of water and an injury to the calf.
The best possible measure of water is the
minimum required uniformly to boil or scald

132 My Little Farm

the meals, and I should make it even less if
I could.

I mix the dry meals for a month at once, and to
every pound I put half a teaspoonful of fine salt,
well blended.

Ill health consequent with the introduction of
solids is nearly always from the stomach, and
initial symptoms become evident through the eye,
which, in health, is clear, lively, wide open, and
with the white of it well in view ; but when the
aspect droops, the look growing dull and the eye-
lids narrowing over the white, then — look out.
Neglect it now for a day, and the diminished blood
supply, due to digestive derangement and its
deficient nutrition, begins to recede from the
peripheries, the mouth and feet growing colder
as the circulation declines. A little more neglect,
and you may as well dig a new grave in the orchard,
though the sufferer might easily have been saved
without injury two days ago, at the cost of ten
minutes and a penny. For the ten minutes and
the penny, a little thoughtful observation might
give you £4, which is not a bad return on the
investment.

I had been trying to think out a digestive tonic
for cases of the kind, something on the principle
which induces men and women gladly to give .£10
for half a crown's worth in Harley Street. The
mixture, I thought, ought to include an alkali
against acidity ; a dual stimulant, cardiac and
stomatic ; and an ingredient aimed at the nervous
system to rouse it into prompt co-operation with

Preventive Pathology 133

the rest. Preceded by an aperient, such a dose
as this might be good, in the conditions described.
One day at the Swinford fair, I mentioned my
idea to Mr. Hamilton, the chemist, and he took
to it at once. A fortnight later, I had my tonic —
and I have never since been without it. The
prescription is as follows : —

ft Pulvis Rad Gent . . $iii

Sodii Bicarbonas . . 3iii

Nucis Vomicae . . Sip

Pulvis Rad Zingeberis . $ip

Ammonii Carbonas . lip

Fiat Pulv. . m

Tales vi

One to be given night and morning on gruel.

I bought a group of calves the same day, among
them an invalid, but " on the virth (virtue) of his
solemn oath," the seller assured me that it was
merely " short of grub." " Is id sell a sick calf to
me he'd do ? " " Never ! " and I believed him !
There is a sort of pleasure in trying to believe a
liar, because it scores one for human nature should
he happen to tell the truth. The invalid came
home, about three weeks old, and next morn-
ing in the paddock I told the man to take
53. for him if he could get it. The hair stood
straight over the spine. The skeleton was
clearly traceable everywhere. The lower joints
of the four legs were badly crippled forward,
and the calf could not stand up many minutes

134 My Little Farm

at a time. His belly was big enough for twice
the age, and there was an internal rattle when
he moved. There was acute indigestion, as long
standing as it could be, and complicated by an
advanced stage of gravel, with a taste for rubbish
and a distaste for proper food. In the house, he
resumed the hunt for rubbish. Having secured a
mouthful, he laid down, and would not rise for
any other purpose. On the hunt, he would not
leave a nook or corner without nosing into it, and
for his inquisitive talent, we named him Dominick.
I decided to experiment on Dominick with the
Hamilton mixture, but first gave him a big dose
of castor oil, followed by strong whiskey, which set
him blind drunk. He stretched his legs, stuck out
his tongue, rolled his eyes, breathed more fully,
and began to sweat. In due course, he discharged
a small cargo of foreign produce, and without
allowing time for reaction, I started him on the
tonic, at the same time dieting him as from birth,
on milk only, a pint three times a day, increasing
daily, and, after a few days, resuming the solids,
also at the baby rate. For two days after his
drunkenness, Dominick was unable to put a leg
under him, but, for all that, I could see by his
eye that I had " got " him. On his feet again, he
touched rubbish no more, but throve rapidly. It
was as if I had found in him a new stomach to
replace or supplement the old one — and I question
whether the discovery is not more a fact than a
figure, for a large region at least of Dominick's
interior must have been out of action when he

Preventive Pathology 135

came to me. He made a great bullock, and the
seller was disappointed, because he had not
expected Dominick to live three days after selling
him. The fact that I could not get 53. for him
showed what was thought of him. He had his
tonic at least once a day for a month, except when
I dropped it experimentally for a day at the end
of the first week and saw a distinct set-back as the
result. I suppose the value of the time I spent on
Dominick would buy six like him, but then, there
are many poor men in Ireland who would like to
know how the life of a sick calf can be saved.

I never have a case of white scour, because no
calf is dropped for me without having its navel
cord bathed in an antiseptic solution and tied
up with a string steeped in the same stuff.

Since the intention of this book is to raise
healthy calves on sound treatment rather than
sickly ones on physic, I shall proceed no farther in
pathology ; but in our Western conditions, one
must be to some extent a quack, since we cannot
profitably pay the veterinary surgeon for a single
visit more than the market price of the patient, in
health, which has happened to me more than once,
even with the vet. receiving a handsome salary
from the public funds, and holding his appoint-
ment on the condition that he must attend for a
few shillings. He makes quackery inevitable,
damaging the public interest from the start, and
ultimately his own profession. The very last bill
I paid a veterinary surgeon shows that, with us,
the medical treatment of your cow costs more

136 My Little Farm

than twice as much as the medical treatment of
your wife.

I will never again venture on a calf that has not
had several meals of its mother's " beastings." I
have succeeded in rearing such calves, but never
without trouble, and always for a poorer result in
the end. Without the mother's milk for a day or
two, the calf seems to remain at a big disadvantage
for the whole of his life, as if the constitution
were hurt in some way beyond complete recovery.

Whatever the number of calves, I use only two
buckets, which makes it a small business to give
them a dash of boiling water before hanging them
up ; and I can feed any two calves together in a
pen of a dozen without interference from the other
ten, simply by slapping the intruders on the ears.
They hate it, and it cannot injure them. After
an attempt or two, they will stand looking on and
waiting for their turn ; and in a few days, they will
come up like trained soldiers, two by two, and the
same two together every time. While two are fed,
the others will pair off in twos, each seeking out
and standing side by side with his chum at the last
meal, and often this companionship is kept up until
the animals are a year old.

While writing these chapters, I take a rest and
a walk among the calves in the paddock, when they
come galloping up to me, and then there is a
scramble to get nearest. While one is gently
butting at me from behind, another has thrust his
head between my legs, and two others are pulling
at the corners of my jacket. Those that cannot

Preventive Pathology 137

get into the circle set out in pairs for a sham fight,
which is continued in the finest instinct for acting,
clearly for my entertainment ; and when the fight
is over, they all start a wild gallop in a wider
circle, of which I am the centre, ending up again
in a cluster around me. I have but to stand at the
gate and call them at any hour of the day or night,
and in less than ten minutes they are all in their
respective houses — but I have never brought them
in without giving them something on arrival.

I have never known a beast of any kind, however
vicious, that could not be made more friendly by
one simple trick — scratch him where he cannot
scratch himself.

Perhaps the most interesting fact I have been
able to verify from all this practice with calves is
that in feeding from the bucket, as compared with
suckling, a full third of the milk is lost. In other
words, two gallons sucked, have more feeding
value than three gallons from the bucket. In
order to make sure about this I have suckled as
many as four calves on the same cow at the same
time, and though the attempt was for information
rather than for profit, I found it as profitable as
it was instructive. The suckling took less time
than the milking and the feeding, and the calves
were better, on a total of a gallon per day less than
the bucket minimum. The difference does not
end there, for the suckled calves took the whole of
their solid food dry from the trough, saving the
time to prepare and feed it. In short, we can
raise three calves at the cost of two, and have

138 My Little Farm

them better calves ; and though the cow has
something to say to it, I have not known her to
fail once so long as her own calf was one of the
number. When, at the end of three months,
she has finished with four, she will accept a fresh
lot of three, provided her own is continued with
these for a few days before finally dropping out.
Whether these things can be done in the field I
do not know. I have done them in the house,
with the cow tied up, and I think this is much
better for the cow than to have them out with her
all day or all night. In the wild state a cow feeds
her own calf quite well, and I question whether
she has a fifth of the milk yielded by one of mine.
Considered from this standpoint of Nature, the
achievement ceases to be strange, and there is
money in it.

PART III.
VISIBLE PROOFS

CHAPTER XI.
MY VISITORS

OF all my distinguished visitors, the one who
interested me most, and whom I appear to have
delighted least, was Mr. T. W. Russell ; the only
one who took pains to arrive in my absence,
coming the way, inquiring and going past on
previous occasions, when he knew he could find
me on the place. In fairness to him, I think his
fear to meet me was not merely personal. We
had met before, not unpleasantly, on neutral
ground, and I could remember him as a man who,
with his back to the fire in a club and a look of
Knoxious self satisfaction in his face, could talk
down any number of the most eloquent men on
any subject, with the sole exception of Professor
Oldham. A distinction like that makes one
remember a man.

It was soon after Mr. Russell had secured his
post as head and front of our offending agriculture,
at a time when, entirely to his credit, he had set
out to get some knowledge of farming, unlike the
unconscionable class of men who are prepared to
take State pay without taking any trouble to

'39

140 My Little Farm

themselves for their appointments after
they get them. Elementary classes in agriculture
were conducted by the Department at the expense
of the State, but Mr. Russell was in a position to
know that he could learn more, at less expense, by
coming to me, where all the books were fields and
all the lessons work, in a school dependent on its
proficiency for its profit and on its profit for its
proficiency. Anybody could teach any industry at
a loss, assuming the paymaster sufficiently rich and
the pupils sufficiently stupid.

People have wondered at Mr. Russell's way of
coming, when I was out, but I do not believe that
he would be discourteous by preference. Con-
sider the need he had to come, and the risks he ran
in coming. His new post was worth keeping, at least
to himself, and that meant need for knowledge.
On the other hand, it might not be discreet to
resume any sort of relations with a man like me,
made already " dangerous " by the deadly quest
of fact, in a country where success depended on
popularity and popularity on falsehood. I had
written books. I might write more. Nobody
could tell what I might put in them. Yet no other
man in the world could teach Mr. Russell what he
had to learn from me. Afraid to approach and
unfit to abstain, he came, and let us observe
the delicate difficulties of his peculiar position
before denouncing his behaviour as a vulgar
intrusion into my personal affairs behind my back.
Yet he might have dropped me a line in confidence
and asked me to go away for a few days, so that he

My Visitors 141

could come here in safety and learn something
about his business. That would not be more than
was due to me, and I should have readily consented,
feeling, as I did, that we ought, if we could, to
advance the usefulness of an expensive official
apparently inclined to get some little acquaintance
with the duties of his position. During his
presence on the place nothing was stolen.

I have been visited also by many official experts,
including one placed very high in the Department,
high enough to personify its influence and
to commit its authority. Curious to know the
effect of his first lesson in my school, but un-
willing to compromise him by calling on him, I
went down to the smoke-room of the House of
Commons, met some of the Members in his
confidence, and set them talking of agriculture.
I cannot pretend to reproduce with verbalt accuracy
here everything which this expert had told them,
though they said he had told them much ; but I
can safely give the following description as their
own, though they could never have achieved it
without assistance from the Department.

" Pat's little farm is the dirtiest I have ever
seen, even in Ireland. . . . Yes, the plot of
heather is there, right enough, but for all that, I
do not believe a word that ' Pat ' writes about it.
He has the best bit of land in Connaught (though
so ' dirty '), but the clever scoundrel has gone and
planted a plot of heath in the middle of it to make

feople believe that the area around was reclaimed,
n buying the fee-simple under the Land Act, as

142 My Little Farm

he has done, he could make the heather plot of
great value to himself. The Sub-Commissioners
sent down to report on values might believe
' Pat's ' story of reclamation, and if they did, they
would be bound to assess both the purchase value
and security on the heather basis rather than on
the rich fields around it. That could bring
' Pat's ' purchase annuity down to 35. yd. an acre
instead of being over £1, as it ought to be."

I must not say that these were the expert's
exact words to his friends. They were his
friends' words to me, " on his information,"
and they had received no farther information ;
not a word about the value in stock compared with
the acreage and valuation, nor about the rate of
crops per acre, nor about the genus and quality of
herbage in the meadows and pasture as compared
with the sedge and heather across the fences in
other people's land. In the minds of the
expert's immediate confidants in Parliament, I had
planted a sample half-rood of heather in highly
fertile soil (where it could never grow), and by
means of the trick, perpetrated a desperately clever
fraud on the vendor and the Treasury, pocketing
a considerable sum of tangible wealth in capitalised
values at their expense ; and not only was I a
consummate knave, but the successful consum-
mation of my knavery must imply also that the
Treasury, the Estates Commissioners, the Sub-
Commissioners, the judges of the Land Court and
the vendor himself were all consummate fools.
The expert's legislating confidants, though so

My Visitors 143

elaborately " informed," were not even aware that
a highly fertile soil was necessarily rich in the
particular agents which would kill an acid
organism like heather from the day it was planted
among them ; but the stuff was good enough for
the " information " of Radical M.P.s. A strange
fact that, in spite of their intimate association with
the expert, they were completely ignorant of the
truth about the agricultural things to be seen on
my little farm, and this is how the politicians
make the Department so useless to the farmers.

At the time of his visit, we were building, and
doing little or nothing else. Old buildings had
been pulled down. The debris lay about in heaps.
Foundations for new buildings were getting carted
out, and there were large piles of stones collected
for masonry. Add rainy weather, and the place
could indeed be " dirty." In this part of the
description, the expert would be telling no more
than the honest truth, and then, what if he should
have honestly mistaken the architectural for
agricultural operations ? One of the workmen
might have told him that the stones were turnips,
that the mortar was farm-yard dung, that the sow
in the yard was a new kind of horse specially bred
to cart building material ; and in my absence, he
would be bound, as an official expert and as a
gentleman, to take the word of the intelligent
workman for any information he might ask.
Having come to learn, he must ask questions,
while the workmen were free to tell him anything
they liked, and the more likely to temper instruc-

144 M Little Farm

tion with entertainment if he asked questions of a
very elementary kind.

When Sir Horace Plunkett came, he was
frankly glad to see the work I had done, and
generous enough to acknowledge it as a contribu-
tion of value to the solution of the agricultural
problem. The questions he put to me while we
sat inside the heather plot showed that he knew
something about farming, but it is only fair to
others to add that Sir Horace was not at the
disadvantage of being an Irish Member of Parlia-
ment, which is always more than enough to unfit
any man for the post of our Agricultural Vice-
President, a post which, probably more than any
other in the State, requires a man to be beyond
the reach of popular applause and perverse censure.
In a choice of the two, I would have the Vice-
Presidentship even hereditary rather than elective
and Parliamentary, at least until such time as it is
possible for the Irish elector to say what he thinks.
Democratic sham can be much worse than
absolute monarchy, and the Department must
remain useless in proportion to the increasing
ecclesiastical control over it. Its finance and its
patronage are already quite at the will of a
majority made up of ecclesiastics and their
nominees.

Mr. Russell has the honour to be a Scotchman,
and I have never been able to see the full depths of
meanness with which his countrymen are
commonly credited, but I have found in them an
incomparable capacity to get themselves estimated

My Visitors 145

above their value, where an Irishman in every
way superior has not the smallest chance, especially
in the Irishman's own country. I have found
them in many instances astonishingly ignorant of
their work, but able to manage their managers so
skilfully that they enjoyed a high reputation in it
and a practically mdefinite fixity of tenure. The
whole world has found in them a genius for
informal but effective combination among them-
selves to " help each other on," at the neighbour's
expense, while the Irish temper, on the other hand,
keeps us quarreling among ourselves, and advertis-
ing our vices to the world ; so that a foreigner
knowing worse than nothing about Ireland
might come among our factions, play one of them
off against another, and get himself made the
official head of our only great industry, in a countrj
over endowed in university education, and where
something like three-fourths of the population
depends on the products of the soil.

This Irish Department has at least one aspect
of strength : it can sometimes get things done in
spite of those at its head, and it employs many men
as good as could be found anywhere, though I
regret to confess that the best of these have come
to us from other countries, and that we were in-
capable of producing the like of them at home
I have no sympathy with the " Irish idea " of a
prohibitive tariff against imported character, a
notion the more silly so long as the Irish will not
allow each other leave to think, and can raise native
talent for export only. Like all native races de-

K

146 My Little Farm

prived of the use of their wits by superstition, we
must continue to import and to pay for free wit
until we learn to tolerate the growth and freedom
of our own.

We had a Royal Commission on Congestion,
and a delightfully Irish contrivance it was, charged
to tell us why the Congested Districts Board could
not cure congestion, and with members of that
Board sitting on the Commission as their own
judges ! Attracted by the curiously Irish consti-
tution of the tribunal, and noting the hospitable
breadth of its general invitation, I naturally
determined to give evidence. The Commissioners
naturally determined that I should not. A
pretty play followed, I full of interesting informa-
tion to be disclosed, the Commissioners as fully
afraid to hear the most valuable evidence they
could possibly get. In Paraguay on Shannon, Mr.
O'Donnell tells the rest of the story, and how I
gave my evidence in spite of the Commissioners,
giving them five minutes to decide in the end
whether they would have me in their Court to-day
or by wire in the London Press to-morrow.

Some of them I found to be very offensive
persons, but their position was provoking. One
called me constructively a liar, though he had
better opportunities than myself to know that I
was speaking the truth. The general effect was a
row of distinguished gentlemen arching up their
backs in an attitude of official dissent from facts
they knew as well as I did, which amused me much,
but my amusement did not increase their courtesy.

My Visitors 147

Some of them were normally civil. The whole
of my evidence has been in official print now for
years, and nobody has ever ventured to question
a word of it. The Commission naturally
succeeded in suppressing or discrediting the most
valuable information which they were chartered
to establish, and the Congested Districts Board
fell deeper into the mud from which Parliament
had attempted to clean it. The Anglo-alien
conspiracy has ever since been persecuting those
who moved for the commission and occasioned
the exposure.

Part of my purpose was to show that a living
could be made by land, and how. A fairly
obvious quest, one might think, among a people
who had no other means to live ; but another
Land Act was then in preparation, and, to accom-
modate its intentions, the Commission was
expected to prove that the people could not
possibly live by the land, in which case, rent was
impossible, and the landlord a monster fat on
misery, to be deprived of his estate for as nearly
nothing as could be. In short, we had Royal
Charter for a scheme to confiscate one class for the
accommodation of industrial incapacity in another.
My own idea implied that if a living could be
made rent could be paid, and that the selling
landlord was entitled to his capitalised value. As
an Irishman, I have always been at the serious
disadvantage of disliking robbery in any form,
even by Royal Charter ; but the question of
landlord and tenant was no direct affair of mine,

148 My Little Farm

and what interested me was the central fact that
the life on the land could be made immensely
better, without loss to anybody. The tenants
appeared always delighted to lose .£1 in the land
so long as they could make the landlord lose 53.
in the rent. By my way, both classes could be
raised ; by the Royal Charter way, both must go
down, destroying one another, and the Legislature
accommodating the scheme by statute at the tax-
payers' expense. Such was part of the conflict
between the Royal Commissioners and myself.
The rest had to do with the ecclesiastical control
of the Congested Districts Board — then effective
and now triumphant.

They flatly challenged my visible facts on the
little farm. I challenged them to come and see.
They came, including a bishop, who was a subject
of a foreign State, a member of the Congested
Districts Board and a member of the Royal
Commission inquiring into its evil ways ! Then
a brace of baronets, and so on, with a small
battalion of camp followers, and a special agent
of the United Irish League, whom I should
certainly have ordered off the place had I been
aware of his presence. Some of the Commissioners
having seen, took me aside in turn, saying : "I
want you to know it is my opinion that you have
proofs here for everything in your evidence about
land, but, please, do not tell the other Commis-
sioners that I have said so " — a Royal Commission
conducted as a conspiracy.

So unlike a Scotchman, I had so far remained

My Visitors 149

quite in the dark as to my own importance, with
first rate Statesmen in terror of me, the greatest
of all Parliaments in danger of believing me, seeing
the truth and adapting its behaviour to my bit of
bog. The Royal Commissioners were out
admittedly to provide Parliament with the pre-
amble for a statutory fraud. What if they should
believe what they had seen, and assert officially
what some of them had admitted to me privately ?
The Westminster fat would be in the Mayo fire,
and " the Holy cause of Ireland " must cease to
depend on confiscating any class of Irishmen for
the incapacity of another. My little farm must
be " explained," and the " explanation " makes
history.

How had I made my bit of Ireland so produc-
tive ? How could a man of ink and paper, fresh
from the Strand, be so much a better farmer than
those who had spent their lives at farming ? If
they could be set doing the same, what need was
there for the Congested Districts Board ? If, in
cattle alone, apart from other products, I could
produce more than seventeen times the amount
of my purchase annuity, who could honestly eay
that rent was impossible ? Terrible questions all,
but they were — " explained." The Royal Com-
missioners were relieved from the dreadful
embarrassment by the agents of the United Irish
League : " ' Pat ' had borrowed the cattle he had
on show from his neighbours for the day. He had
borrowed the gates from the railway company.
Everything on the place had been arranged as a

150 My Little Farm

landlord's dodge to keep up rent and to destroy
the Land Bill " (1909). That was the " explana-
tion," as produced to me directly by a member of
the Commission when I next met him in London,
and I found plenty of independent corroboration,
including that of an editor for whom I wrote.
Observe how closely the explanation of the gates
and the cows coincides with that given of the
heather plot by the Department's expert in the
House of Commons. When the Commissioner,
with a twinkle in his other eye, asked me why I had
" imposed on them " with cows borrowed from
the neighbours and gates from the railway, I
asked him from whom I had borrowed the hay-
stack, measured and estimated by Sir Francis
Mowatt at seventeen tons. He saw through the
fraud, of course — and yet consented to it as a basis
for Imperial legislation. The Land Bill went
through, and " the Holy cause of Ireland "
triumphed once more on the stock policy of
" fooling the British " — for which the British
themselves are as much to blame as anybody. In
the natural and necessary course of things, it is
certain that the British, sooner or later, must
either give up governing the Irish or take the
trouble to know something about them. And from
like necessity, on like grounds, they must have to
give up a great deal more along with Ireland,
unless they can alter some of their present ways.
England at present, is just like a business that has
grown too big for the mind of its owner, who
cannot see that the only hope of further safe

My Visitors 151

growth is in social differentiation and delegated
subdivision. The results already reveal them-
selves everywhere, but probably most of all in
Ireland, where the business is most complex and
least in view. The real danger to England to-day
is not the " German menace " but rather the
internal atrophy of overgrowth, which may at any
time kill a State that has flourished on the
adversities.

Without the facts, who could imagine the
motive power and the central machinery of a great
empire racking the wheels and straining the gear in
Imperial alarm at the sight of practicable prosperity
on a bit of cut-away bog among the outer areas of
spoonfed inefficiency ? With the facts, who could
imagine the same empire and the same machinery
co-operating in official falsehood to discredit the
bit of cut-away bog for a policy of palpable fraud,
imposed by the will of organised incompetence ?
I confess that I could not have imagined either as
anything but absurd until I had by patient
attempting brought both within the focus of
undeniable fact. It is far more than an Irish
matter. In a simple but essential way, it involves
the problem of Imperial vitality, and it would be
well for England to know that there are many more
Irishmen prepared to share in the spoil than to
confess their wish for it. The policy of " fooling
the British " goes far beyond the boundaries of
party strategy, but I can neither share the wish
nor accept the method, the good of both peoples
being more to my mind, and more easily accom-

152 My Little Farm

plished, than any good which could come to either
from the evil of the other.

The two kinds of visitor in whom alone I can
see hope are the man from a foreign country,
frankly in search of fact, and the local peasant,
suspiciously escaping from falsehood to get at
the terrible truth about the better dinner awaiting
him in the soil. Very often, the less " educated "
the better. - The man who thinks he knows is the
most hopeless of all, and his fields bear witness
to it in every townland. They come to me
impelled by motives pathetically mixed, chiefly
terror of the truth and greed for its results. They
are all quite prepared to take the truth from me
in farming. What they fear is that they might
hear the truth from me in anything esle, and there
are other things, even of more profound import-
ance than farming, in which I am still more
competent to tell them the truth. It is
desparately suspected, perhaps with reason, that
my attack on the soil is merely to reveal the
higher things through it, in a community held
unfit to see anything at the top unless through the
lowest medium of vision. Men at once sagacious
and friendly have often begged me to restrict my
mental interests absolutely to the soil, suggesting
that I might become " a great man " by strictly
ignoring everyhting higher than the ground. I
have not done so, but the lesson is not lost. See
how eloquently it reveals the inwardness of Irish

" greatness."

Just outside the face of our limestone escarp-

My Visitors 153

ment, on an irregular plane, inclining gently west,
my little farm is originally a bit of mixed drift
flung accurately across the middle of a river valley ;
and on such a site, it is easy to infer a prehistoric
abundance of rank and acid vegetation, before the
impounded waters had cut their way through in
the stream now watering my calves. The brown-
gray cavity above me is an emptied lake ; below me,
a double slope once kept bare by denudation, still
dependent for economic production on a thin and
uncertain stratum of organic surface. Here, on
the north of the stream, the slope looking south
was a waste gathering-ground and social centre
for derelict asses. Now it is profitably tilled,
admittedly through me. How can any man
help Ireland while he cares a rap what the Irish
think of him ? " The national impulse," they
say, will change all that. If so, the nation must
first be created. I can find little to indicate
the existence of a nation but a corrupt commerce
in diseased sentiment paraded by professional
patriotism, and a collective character lacking all
the vital inspirations of nationality. Nations are
not made out of moral cowardice. I believe that
some of the peasants who gain so much by my
work would cut my throat to please the profes-
sional moralist who makes the altar of God an
instrument of murder.

CHAPTER XII.
TENDENCY AND ACCIDENT

As I have said, my main working asset is the cow,
and for reasons peculiar to Ireland, she is likely to
remain a large asset in our farming by wage labour,
even in preference to forms of production more
profitable in themselves. An animal that can
convert grass into human food and into better
animals of her own kind remains practically
indispensable in a situation where theft prohibits
more intensive production and robs labour of its
increased share in wages. I have fattened the cow
profitably at 325. per cwt. live weight, and she
is not less reproductive now, with beef running
up to 6os. Yet the comparative form of the
circulating capital on a farm is a most important
matter, full of counter calculations.

Other things being equal, the man who works
in cows only can make more of them per cow than
he could by dividing his means and attention
between cows and many other products. His
arrangements for his cows are likely to be more
suitable and more complete, while their place in
his mind also is likely to be better accommodated.
On the other hand, he has " all his eggs in one
basket," and we have seen Irish cows practically
unmarketable quite lately, while other forms of

154

Tendency and Accident 155

farm production stood increasingly profitable.
The selection of his alternatives is a matter which
each farmer must decide for himself, and the only
safe rule I can suggest is this : We can foresee
tendencies, but not accidents. For instance, foot
and mouth disease is in the nature of the case an
accident (however intentional in fact), but the
relative increase in the consumption of the pro-
ducts of the cow by the expanding cities of
America implies a tendency, and can readily be
anticipated for increased prices at home by the
cow man of Connaught. We cannot tell on which
dark night an Irish rancher may go out and
inoculate cattle with this disease, to cheapen
stores for his increased profit, but we know that
the American city and the German factory
consume increasing quantities of what might
otherwise be exportable to us, and that every unit
less imported of farm produce goes to advance the
price of the home producer. Because of the
tendency and in spite of the accidents, the cow
remains still one of our most steadily profitable and
most regularly marketable products, more easily
raised ' than crops and less easily stolen. In
addition to studying the tendencies and the acci-
dents, the Irish farmer must adapt the media of
his production to the ethics of his neighbourhood,
and the cow has an additional claim where it is no
longer the correct thing to steal cows.

The pig, a much more intensive form of pro-
duction than the cow, and not more subject to
the effect of tendencies, is yet much more

156 My Little Farm

subject to fluctuation in both price and profit.
I have seen the price of the young pig at ten
weeks vary from 133. to 453. in my neighbourhood
within twelve years ; and the price of the pig
matured and fat may vary now by 25 per cent,
between two monthly fairs in the same town,
while a still farther factor of variation operates
as between Ulster and the rest of Ireland. The
Ulsterman sells pork, killed and cleaned, so that he
knows exactly what he is doing. The other man,
exactly as I should expect, sells live pigs, subject
in the sale to additional elements of speculation,
which are obviously preferred and maintained
because they result in favour of the buyer and at
the expense of the farmer. Why do our bacon
curers not start establishments in Ulster ? It is
not for lack of good pigs there. It is for no reason
that anybody can see but because their gambling
method of purchase gives them cheaper stuff at
home, which means smaller profit for the producer
of the pig. I have no doubt whatever that the
pig would be as free from fluctuation as the cow
if it were equally free from Irishmen blocking his
way to the British consumer ; and I should expect
to see the Irish cow equally crooked in her current
values if her fatally clever countrymen could
command her freedom of access to the final
market. Here again, on the national scale, we find
the same destructive spectacle, of mind at cross
purposes with muscle, as described in the individual
case on my own little farm ; the same irresistible
delight of Irishmen to cheat and play upon each

Tendency and Accident 157

other, to their common loss all round in the end ;
the same shallow greed of unconscionable acuteness
to strip the strong back naked, making it the less
able to provide the means and subject of the sharp
practice another day ; the same unnaturally
ruinous conflict between the ethics of distribution
and the economy of production which prevents
capital from venturing to employ Irish energy and
talent in the land of their birth and nurture. We
finance " education " to make ourselves unemploy-
able, and wonder why rich people will not " start
factories " for us. Meantime, the Department
sends round Commissioners to " take evidence "
which nobody dares give on these things ; to-day
about the want of milk for the creameries, to-
morrow about the want of pigs for the factories ;
but the official foolish enough to put a line of the
plain truth in the report could not hope to hold
his post for a month. So useless can great and
costly institutions be made by those for whose
good they are chartered and endowed. " Holy
Ireland ! " What a sight !

I will stick to the red cow for the present.
Should more intensive products, involving more
wages, become equally safe from theft in my time,
I may try some of these. Ireland is prepared for
prosperity at a bound the day Irishmen permit it.

While the man who keeps " all his eggs in one
basket " must take the risks, the man is probably
in still worse case who runs his farming into a too
great variety of products. For instance, cattle,
pigs and poultry make a strong combination, one

158 My Little Farm

or other of them picking up the trifles otherwise
lost in the feeding of the rest. Cattle, sheep and
horses, on the other hand, may damage each other
badly and bring down the total result. I know
many farms of rough and smooth, such as mine
was before reclaiming, where the sheep and the
horses are enough to prevent the cows getting a
fair mouthful of anything but the inferior pasture
from one end of the year to the other. The sheep,
though a weed killer, will touch none of your
" rough bottoms " while a pick remains on the
uplands, and she can make out a fair living on grass
so short that the cow cannot catch it at all. Yet
we have too many farmers who keep this state of
things going year after year, and wonder why their
cows cannot do so well as other people's, where
sheep, if kept at all, are limited to numbers that
will permit the cow standard of pasturing.

The same, or worse, holds good of young horses
kept as store animals and not for work. I question
whether the great bulk of these in Connaught can
pay even for their food after they reach the age of
two, but they can keep the best of the pasture
without a bite for animals much more profitable.
The really sound horses in my part of the country
are estimated at not more than 10 per cent, of
the whole, and only that small fraction of them, at
most, can have it in them to pay for prolonged
maintenance without work, as store animals. I
avoid the horse, unless for work. Like the pig,
he is too speculative for me, though for that very
reason, the more attractive to many farmer*.

Tendency and Accident 159

We had in our neighbourhood a horse that
deserved to be famous. He was a working horse,
a " very nice " horse, apparently perfect in every-
thing, except that he could not work. It was not
that he wouldn't ; he couldn't. Subject to that
slight defect in a working horse, he was bought, for
something over three pounds, by a very clever man,
who knew all about him and how to manage him.
I took much interest in the transaction, as I do
in all actual facts that I cannot understand. I
wanted to make out from experience under
observation what was the correct management for
a working horse that could never work. The
clever man brought him home, took great care of
him, took him again to the fair, and sold him at a
great profit, this time to a buyer who did not
know the most money making peculiarity of the
horse. The new owner brought him home, but it
soon became plain that he did not understand how
to " manage " him. Lacking the intelligence to
see how a working horse incapable of work could,
by his incapacity, be made the more profitable,
he regretted his bargain and demanded the money
back. Now, do not imagine for a moment that
there was anything either legally or commercially
wrong in the sale of the horse. He was sold "as
he stood," not as he worked. There was no surety
or guarantee of anything. It was what the horsey
men would call " perfectly straight," and a man
cannot be accused of going wrong while he acts
up to the legal and moral standards of his time,
place and associations. It ended in returning the

160 My Little Farm

horse, without returning the price, and the clever
man was free to sell him again, which he did in due
course, at a farther great profit, again on the same
honest terms as before, without warranty " as he
stood," and not as he worked. I cannot now
remember exactly how many times in two years
he sold him in this way, got him back, and kept the
money, as he was entitled to do by the law of the
land and the approved morality of horse dealing ;
but I can remember meeting him one day, and
saying to him : " Dominick, how's the horse ? In
so far as I can see, you have the best paying horse
with any farmer within three thousand square
miles of us." A great, silent smile widened over
his face, and from that day forward he looked on
me as a man of sense. In serious fact, Dominick's
" management " of the horse was the most frank
and honest that I have seen in the sale of defective
horses in Connaught, and as I have said, about
90 per cent, of them are seriously defective. I
have known many such horses since then
" managed " in a like manner, but not one with
more intelligence and honesty than in Dominick's
case. Yet this method of management, like all
others, has its own limits, and Dominick's horse
had his interesting career cut short in the end, by
having made himself too well known to buyers,
after which, he was kindly shot, and a bottle of
bad whiskey was merrily drunk to celebrate his
burial.

CHAPTER XIII.
WASTE

I HAVE referred to waste and failure. Let me
submit two typical and common instances out of
many. On finding out that the Department had
money to spend, a " religious " institution
promptly " qualified " itself for a technical school,
on a " qualification " made easy by not permitting
anybody else to qualify, like the Chinese Viceroy
who entered his horse for a race and came in first
because everybody else was afraid to run against
him. There is no need to name a particular
institution, and it would not be fair to attack
one among so many to which this applies.
The young peasants came into the institu-
tion, but not in overwhelming numbers. They
were carefully selected, and this made each feel
so much better than the neighbours, which is
always precious in Ireland. The whole cost of
keeping and " educating them " came out of public
money, with a substantial contribution from the
parents also, though the public money was enough,
and estimated on the principle that the parents
should have to make no sacrifice beyond giving
up the help of their young folk at home.
Officially, the scheme undertook to prepare them
in "a year or two, for yet higher privileges, in a

161 L

My Little Farm

still greater institution of the same sort, where
they would be " finished " off, then to become
Government officials and be happy ever after,
teaching everybody how to do everything, -at the
expense of everybody else. The scheme has now
been at work more than twelve years, but not one
pupil has yet been put through to the alleged
purpose. They all came out " qualified," but the
bulk are now in America, while the rest are here
and there, at anything but the purpose for which
the public money has been spent. The institution
continues to flourish. The subsidy is increased.
The young folk continue to go in hopeful and to
come out useless. The parents continue to con-
tribute, and they still provide the human
machinery to " qualify " for capturing the public
purse. The pupils are still carefully selected, and
the number is always exactly the number required
permanently to provide the ecclesiastics with a full
staff of domestic servants and farm labourers, fed,
housed and remunerated at the expense of the
taxpayer. The remuneration is in the training
which is not given and in the Government posts
which are never secured. The parents appear
to be quite satisfied, industrial public opinion
quite dumb, and not one man of the " fighting
race " dares say a word, though I think the bulk of
them will be glad of one to say it for them and
to take the risks which they so bravely dread. I
am not going to blame the religious institutions,
but rather to congratulate them on their financial
genius. It is most curious how those good people,

Waste 163

having " left the world," can always re-appear
when money is going. This kind of " Agricultural
and Technical Instruction " has made great
strides since the convenient removal of Sir
Horace Plunkett.

.The other instance is provided by the Con-
gested Districts Board, in which the law of the
King is now openly set aside and the law of the
ecclesiastic substituted. Under the civil law, the
administrative unit is the District Council, but,
under the ecclesiastical law, it is the parish, and
thus we get the " Parish Committee." The head
of it is an ecclesiastic, and he nominates the rest of
the members, who " represent the people."
" The people " are supposed to elect the Com-
mittee, but should a man oppose the ecclesiastic's
wish, he can put an end to the scheme altogether,
and then set the mob at the undesirable man for
" keeping the money out of the parish." The
Congested Districts Board hands over the tax-
payers' money to this little secret society, and
the alleged purpose is to stimulate " improve-
ments." A peasant proposes to build a piggery,
and the ecclesiastic is delighted to hear that he
means to " put out the pigs," which have up to
now shared the family sitting-room with their
owner. A " supervisor " goes round to examine
the plans, and assuming the work is executed to
his approval, the Committee make a free grant
towards the cost of the edifice. The supervisor
is controlled by the Committee (that is, by the
ecclesiastic), but he is paid by the taxpayer One

164 My Little Farm

man is not supposed to get a grant twice while
another has got none, and those most in need are
supposed to come first ; but, after years, we find a
comparatively rich man who has got the grant
several times while his poor neighbour has not
been able to get a penny. Inquire into this and
you will find that the rich man has handed back
part of his grant in the form of increased sub-
scriptions to ecclesiastical funds. He is in a posi-
tion to do so, and he gets the grant, but his poorer
neighbour is not in a position to do so, and he gets
no grant. The lay members of the Committee
are also the parish tools, and, of course, they vote
the money to one another and to one another's
relatives before any outsider can be heard ; but
before everybody comes the ecclesiastic's own list.
I knew a man who ventured to differ from the
ecclesiastic in politics, and no relative of his
nearer than a third cousin could get the Board's
grant after that. Members of the Committee told
them so quite openly, and then the numerous
relatives were expected to persecute their kinsman
for having " deprived them of the money."
Most of the slaves are under the impression that
the ecclesiastic is the real money finder. Being
very much afraid of him themselves, they assume
that the Government also is afraid of him, and
that the Treasury must hand over any sum he
desires. In substance, they are quite right. He
may not fix the sum, but he can coerce Govern-
ment in handing it over, and God help the poor
grantless man who dares to put him any questions

Waste 165

about the disbursement. The taxpayer has to
find all the money, and the ecclesiastic must have
all the credit. There is no need to mention a
particular parish since the facts apply broadly
to most of the parishes in which the Parish
Committee Scheme works.

The prettiest curiosity of all is that we have
grave Statesmen pretending to oppose Home Rule
after they have shaped, fixed and financed these
immoral methods in the " Government " of
Ireland, which are continued to-day, on an
increasing scale, more immoral and more expensive
than ever. How can sane men have respect for
law while they see its makers thus corrupting its
administration ? Of course, the Irish themselves
are to blame, but why must the British always
prefer and finance the methods which most
degrade Ireland ? As a form of official strategy,
it is pertinent, if despicable ; in the name of
civilised Government, it is an outrage, and the
British are to blame for the outrage.

CHAPTER XIV.
EMERGENCIES

A WORKING farm is full of little puzzles, each with
its own solution, and often original. We had to
boil a quantity of potatoes — the only food we ever
cook for cattle. There was a boiler in the yard to
hold 8 cwt., but it was too big to set up for the
amount of work we had just then in view, and our
only other vessel was a three-legged pot, for which
there was no accommodation in the kitchen fire-
place. What were we to do ? The mouth of the
pot was narrower than the belly. I laid it mouth
under on the grass, cut the earth round close to it,
and dug out the round hole 18 inches deep,
widening to the bottom. It was two feet from
the face of a little bank, and I cut a narrow way
between for air to the fire in the hole. The pot
sat tight, an exact fit, in the mouth of the hole,
with another little opening in the grass behind it,
on the side opposite to the first airway, so that the
combustion could be oxidised by a through
current. Once my novel furnace had been well
fired up, with its earth surfaces an ash non-
conductor, I found that the potatoes could be
boiled in a much shorter time and at much less
cost in fuel than on the kitchen fire, not to mention
the disturbance avoided there. With the pot

166

Emergencies 167

fitting the hole so accurately, the whole of the
flame played on its bottom, and the waste of heat
was very much less than in an open fireplace.
Might not this little plan bear development for the
greater ease in work, the greater economy in fire
and the greater convenience in the kitchen ?
Finding that it took more fire to boil the first
pot than any two after it, we kept the pot going
for half a day at a time, and got our supply of
boiled potatoes twice a week.

One day we had two big men trying to put a
heavy roller across an earth fence into another
field. The fence was rather a bank, and pretty
high on the outer side, with a young hedge of
thorn in the face, which I did not wish to disturb.
After much engineering, the two men announced
that the only way was to " dig a gap," and then
they went to dinner. On returning, they found
the roller in the field, without a gap. I had done
it alone, and quite easily. First, I pushed the
roller on to the top of the fence, but anybody
could do that. Then I drove a stake in the field
behind it, and fastened a rope between this and the
frame of the roller. Two planks inclined on the
steep side beyond, and the roller moved down on
them quite nicely, with the rope " paid " out from
the stake to control the descent. The two big
men thought I was very clever. I thought I had
merely escaped being very stupid. Still, it does
show the waste of working power from want of
light in the upper storey. It was the kind of work
at which they had spent their lives, and my life

168 My Little Farm

had been spent at work as far from that as it
could be.

Here is a kind of problem which occurs every-
where. " It is time to wean that calf, Tommy."
" Yis, sir," and Tommy puts him into the top
field among the older calves. The cow starts
calling him, and he replies. The breadth of a
whole field is between, with two good fences, and
yet that calf will find his way to that cow. I have
known a calf go out into another farm, from that
into a third, then across a river, and then back into
another part of my own pasture, where he found
the cow, among a family celebration of the reunion.
That was in daylight, but see what a calf of three
weeks can do at night. Last year, one came nearly
a mile through hedge and dike, fences and crops,
bogs and swamps and marshes. I know the way.
It was more like a feat for a dog, but he found his
mother in the dark. The best plan that I have
found to stop mothering is as follows : — Having
taken him from mama and put him among the
other calves, I watch him for a time. His efforts
to get out increase every hour. When he begins
to be desperate, I open the gate and let him come,
but into the house, where good food awaits him.
When he is tired of that, back again into the field,
and out of that, only to come indoors. Presently,
he finds that he can leave the field only for the
house, which he likes less, and the work begins to
be easy when you find him gladder to go out than
to come in. Meantime, his palate has been
adapting itself to the new menu, and the craving

Emergencies 169

for milk is over in a few days ; but let him once
escape to his mother, and it may take weeks to
control him.

A neighbour of mine lent his horse to harrow
oats, and sent oats for the horse's dinner, to make
quite sure that he would not be worked hungry.
Having sown his own seed, our " farmer " sowed
the horse's dinner also, and set the horse to work
on an empty stomach. After a time, the horse
stopped in the field, and then the family gathered
round to beat him with sticks. In this way the
rest of the day was spent, and the ground covered
somehow. Next day, the horse stood up in the
owner's field. He brought him home, put him up
until dinner time and then gave him plenty of
corn, but the horse refused to move after dinner.
He took him out and whipped him steadily for
twenty minutes, after which that horse never
refused to go again. My solution for this puzzle
would be to whip the man who had sown the
horse's dinner and leave the rest to the magistrates.

The most original bit of agriculture I ever saw
was quite near me. A man here has only one
horse, and two of them joined for ploughing. The
usual thing, but it was not the usual result. One
of the horses persisted in kicking the other, and
our two farmers put their heads together to solve
the problem. They could not we]l dissolve
partnership. All the neighbours had already
paired off, and apart from that, the man with the
kicking horse could not expect to find a fresh
partner. In addition, they were old friends.

170 My Little Farm

They put what they called a " sidelang " on the
kicking horse, a rope tying two of his legs, the
fore leg to the hind leg, on the side next the other
horse. The animal had been accustomed to that
sort of discipline before, as a means of reconciling
him to pasture on which he could find nothing to
eat, but this was his first experience of the " side-
lang " at work, and though it made his kicking
harmless, it did not improve his temper. Plough-
ing two horses was work for only one man, but a
team so interesting as this required at least two,
and, together smoking, up and down our two
farmers travelled all day and day after day, one
horse limping in his hobbles, the other pulling and
stopping to accommodate his mate's manner of
progress. Interested in the new style of ploughing,
I visited my two friends at work, and what do you
think was their conversation ? Criticising the
defects of their neighbours and indicating their
own thankfulness that they were not as other
people. They regarded themselves as superior
farmers, and both their farms were certainly above
the average. A puzzle like this of the " sidelang "
brings its own solution sooner or later : one of
these two farmers is now in another country and
one in another world. Let us wish them the happi-
ness of their respective spheres, and congratulate
the land they have left behind them. I have an
idea that Ireland may begin to be a prosperous and
pleasant place some time after the last of the
present population lies dead, and a nation that
spends life learning only how to die cannot reason-

Emergencies 171

ably quarrel with me for wishing her rapid success
towards the goal of her dominant ambition. Yet
one cannot but be sorry for the children, born in
" sidelangs " and bred to the choice of death or
export.

I remember an unusually clever man we had in
our part of the country, now, I hope, in a sweeter
place. Ned knew everybody's business better
than anybody knew his own, and though it was
by no means conscious altruism, he always certainly
gave twice as much attention to other people's
affairs, always with a sneer at the other people.
During the summer, when the weather was warm
enough for comfortable conversation, he occupied
himself so much with the interests of his neigh-
bours that he could find no time to make hay, and
we could generally find him mowing about
November, when one big shower might create an
emergency to last all winter, if not permanently.
Sometimes the " hay " remained in the swaths,
sometimes half " saved," sometimes collected in
lumps on a meadow near the house, where he could
" let it out " again in spring, before the new grass
had grown inconveniently long. Cycling past on
a sunny day towards the end of April, when we had
nearly eaten up last year's hay crop, I found my
old friend haymaking, and said to him : " Why,
Ned, you are earlier than I am with the hay this
year. I will have none fit to cut for six weeks
yet." I forgot his reply, but after that, he and I
could never quite agree. Perhaps I had taken
advantage of him in an emergency, but then, Ned

172 My Little Farm

was such a clever man, and so ready to take
advantage of others. He had a farm that might
afford a living for a gentleman, and he let his
horses die of hunger in the fields, but he had his
farm for 2s. 6d. an acre. While an excessively
clever man can have an excess of good land for
2s. 6d. an acre, what need for character, work or
any other of the industrial virtues ? I can hardly
imagine anything that could do more for our
agriculture and its agrarian character than a
graduated land tax, in inverse ratio to the
efficiency of the farmer, so that the biggest sloven
would have to pay the biggest sum, and be the
first to relieve us of his presence on the soil. If
the resulting revenue made an average of £i for
every tenant farmer in Ireland, that would be more
than enough to finance the Department, and set
a large sum of money free every year for other
purposes.

I could enlarge my emergencies indefinitely, but
we need only a few typical cases to show how the
head and the hand, mind and muscle, are at cross
purposes in our chief industry ; the head trying
to live without work, the hand trying to work
without the head, the whole dragging along in a
blind survival, protected from sheer chaos by
organised violence and its fruit in fixed charges at
a small fraction of the economic value. What
must happen to this cult of incompetence and its
helpless millions should they find themselves forced
by the necessities of taxation to hand back under
their own laws all that they have forced from the

Emergencies 173

former landowners under the immoral statutes of
Westminster ? Then we have another land
problem, harder of solution than the last, if not
bloodier, and made the more distressing through
the funds now " administered " by the Congested
Districts Board in fixing congestion instead of
relieving it. Under a long elaboration of statutory
fraud, dictated by political fallacy and designed to
penalise the efficient, we are yearly creating for our
children inflictions worse than our own, and at the
same time making them still more unfit to bear
them. The day of the competent may come,
before chaos, and that would solve all our problems,
but it can never come while the school remains an
instrument to set mind against muscle and man
against his normal destiny. There is hardly an
Irish problem that has not its secret in the school,
and the school has its secret far from Ireland, and
entrenched in a garrison which could not be
successfully assaulted by anything less than a
combination of King Henry VIII. and Mr. John
Dillon.

CHAPTER XV.
THE WAGES OF SIN

ETERNAL gratitude is expected of us for half a
century's barbarism, imposed by professional
politicians, accommodated by Imperial legislation
and financed by the British taxpayer, while it is
assumed that we must remain blind to the real
sources of improvement in our position, which
are not only different, but also quite opposite.
I ask what I must do to be saved, and find that the
first article in the new Faith is salvation by crime,
not by good farming. To keep up the creed of
crime, good farming must be put down, and dis-
credited where it occurs in spite of the master
criminals. Let us examine this at close quarters.
Take my own area, which is, I think, quite close
to the average. Under ordinary letting, without
either land agitation or reductions, the rent would

now remain at .£9 18 o

Deduct Purchase Annuity ... 5 13 10

Balance from Barbarism ... .£442

I cannot calculate the precise amount of murder
in securing it, but, for this bloody little balance,
the price of a small pig, or the increased market
value in a cow, I am to ignore the big advance in
market values and to give up the eighty pounds

174

The Wages of Sin 175

a year or more by which I have increased my
honest production ; and I am to throw away the
honest eighty pounds for the four guineas in
blood money merely in order that the peasants
may continue to believe in the professional
politician as their sole saviour. Because I dare to
refuse, the professional politician gets control of
the Agriculture Department, and makes it the
instrument of his revenge against me, again
assisted by the British. Has history another
such illustration of crime as folly ? The
vicious fallacy is still abroad and still dominant
in districts, though slowly yielding to sanity.
Let me drive this little pen for more light through
a few additional holes in it.

In addition to the loss of increased production,
we have half destroyed the farm labourers, whose
numbers are now less than half what they were
when we started the Land League in 1879, with
the Department officially confessing the increased
inefficiency of the survivors ; and we have much
more than half destroyed the educated class,
whose position in the country was the mainstay
of the wage earner, and afforded the sole prospect
of any farther investment for industrial pro-
duction generally. For my share in the shame
and ruin and blood, I get £4 45. 2d., but on the
condition that I throw away .£80 of my own
honest money to save the face of the professional
politician. Has the world anything so despicable
imposed for "national policy" on a civilised people?

Put aside the value of special improvements in

176 My Little Farm

production, as realised in my own case, which is
not typical, and let us try to balance for the
ordinary peasant his wages of sin against his
gain from increased market prices, which are
settled for him abroad, quite beyond the range
of his politicians. For the United Kingdom
as a whole, we have statistics of price by which
we could compare 1879 with I9I3? but t^ie7 are
based on the British level, ignoring the sub-
stantial difference between this and the Irish.
I have thought it better to interview a large
number of men old enough to remember 1879, to
average their estimates, and to check the average
by comparison with commercial documents of
the time. Worked out in this way, the rise in
prices reveals an increase well over 20 per cent.
in the Irish farmer's income, while organised
crime can no longer offer him 20 per cent, on his
rent, which cannot be more than a third of his
income. In other words, the man who had
.£100 a year from farming has it now increased
to more than £120 by the advance in prices
alone,* and apart from any improvements in his
productive economy.

Take the same man in regard to rent and his
gain from reductions in it. What would be the
rent of a farm on which the family can live at
the rate of £100 a year ? This is a matter in
which the farmers themselves will be able to
check my calculation. I know that, in the average
case, the rent cannot be quite so much as a third

* Not including the war inflations.

The Wages of Sin 177

of the income. It is probably much less, but I
will not depend on probability. To be on the
safe side, let us take it at ^30 a year. A reduction
of seven shillings in the pound on this is only
£10 ios., while the gain from increased prices
on the same farm is over twice that amount.
With the growth of American towns and German
factories consuming the agricultural produce
otherwise exportable to us, the supply in our
market is relatively diminished, and the Irish
farmer has his prices increased for him while he
sleeps, increasing his income from this alone by
a total more than twice his utmost gains from
agitation, but the agitator does not want
him to know this. The tendency in prices
continues to work still farther in his favour, and
there is not the smallest sign of it stopping. The
advance in the market value of his produce is
calculated at the rate of I per cent, per annum
for the last fifteen years, and the causes of it in
the international economy of agricultural supply
are still increasing their activity, even in normal
conditions, and apart from any inflations follow-
ing war. In so far as our farmers awake to their
real opportunity, the professional politician must
take a back seat, and I must infer his hostility for
a compliment. He would have no such need to
attack me if I had no effect in helping to open
the farmers' eyes. There is a difference between
restoring a man to sight and preserving his blind-
ness to make a profession of leading him blind.

CHAPTER XVI.
BULLS

THERE are three kinds of bulls : (i) ill bred and ill
fed ; (2) middling, both ways ; and (3) well bred
and well fed. Out of the total, only a minority
can " arrive " satisfactorily. No. I ought to be
put to death, at the expense of the owner, for he
(the bull) is worse than foot and mouth disease, if
not as bad as those who cultivate it for a ranching
profit. No. 2 is, like life itself, a compromise
between good and evil ; therefore, to be
" tolerated," but kept under observation, his
result being as uncertain as his origin. No. 3 can
make sure, other things being equal, and nothing
else can. Then, why not make sure ? I would
exclude the factor of uncertainty, even at the
expense of liquidating what the insurance men
call " risks " — that is, I would pay to be rid of the
" risks " — and a better investment the farmer can
hardjy make. I have sent cows long distances, and
cannot remember my money better spent. One
shilling in the bull is at least twenty in the calf
a year old, and I am prepared to invest at 2,000
per cent. Yet there is no need to pay for the
" risks." It is done for us with " Saxon gold "
through the Department. The official who first
thought to save Ireland by bulls must have been a

178

Bulls 179

man of genius, and this is corroborated by his
absence in the front rank of officials, who get there
by the German gift to appropriate other men's
ideas rather than discover any of their own. Like
other public institutions, the bull is potential in
the future of Ireland, good or bad, but most of us
persist in preferring the nondescript, even at the
same cost.

There are three kinds of farmers : (i) those who
cannot see, and may have their eyes mercifully
opened for them some day ; (2) those who think
they can see, and must remain permanently blind ;
and (3) those who can see and know it. I know
men who have kept bulls for twenty years, have
never known the breeding of one of them, and have
never bred a good cow of their own, even by
accident. In the case of these, the factor of risk
is eliminated in the other way, for uniform badness.

Breeding implies a very wonderful power for
improvement vested in us free of charge. The
means are in our hands for a transformation,
complete and profitable. By taking advantage of
the opportunity, I can, and I do, have about .£5
in each cow, as compared with the careless, apart
from pedigree values, and assuming the same scale
of cost in consumption. The neglect, however,
is but part of the larger problem : the Irish have
not yet come to see the vital value of acting on
environment for its reaction on themselves. They
are taught rather to assume that, in the nature of
things, environment is a matter permanently out
of their power, dependent on something for ever

i8o My Little Farm

beyond them. Yet the expenditure of the Depart-
ment provides them with pure sires at the same fee
charged for the cur bull. In a country three-
fourths agrarian, and becoming rapidly pastoral
at that, the bull is no small part of the environ-
ment within our power. I need not touch here
on the vexed question of locality and species, which
is fully discussed in the chapter on regional
necessity.

Considerable numbers of our bulls, including
many well bred, are wholly or comparatively
unproductive, and the rate of failure, advancing
rapidly in recent years, is made still worse by the
addition of communicable diseases. The latter is
a case for treatment, but I am convinced that the
initial unproductiveness is in the main the unneces-
sary fault of those who breed and rear young bulls.
A common practice is to let the calf take " pot
luck " until he begins to know himself a bull, and
then to change suddenly from underfeeding to
overfeeding, which forces forward the process of
maturity at an unnatural rate, on a constitution
the more unfit for it because of the previous
neglect. In my own case, this scheme of treat-
ment is reversed from the start and at every point.
I get the constitution as highly developed as I can
before the stage of conscious maturity, and at that
stage the bill of fare becomes both simpler and
cheaper ; as much as the calf can eat of sound
home grown stuff, with concentrates gradually
reduced to a minimum. The condition may go
off a little. Let it. What I want is a sound bull,

Bulls 181

not a lump of diseased beef. The young bull gets
time to enter on his new world with his eyes open
and to assume its responsibilities in a normal
manner, instead of driving him to his destiny half
mad. The high reproductive power of Irish seed
is attributed to the slow gentleness of the climate
in maturing the grain, and the animal organism is
not more likely to escape the ills of violent haste in
the process of maturing. One of the best young
bulls I ever had, but badly overfed at this critical
period, behaved in such an extraordinary manner
that one might expect to get a pedigree calf out
of every bush in the neighbourhood next season,
and he continued this until he looked a complete
wreck ; but once relieved of his capacity to make
himself incapable, he began to thrive at once, and
made one of the handsomest bullocks I ever saw,
though somewhat undersized for his breeding.

That is largely how the young bulls are
destroyed, and even the seller has not a penny by
it, while the buyer is badly injured. The seller
has paid his money out of his pocket to destroy
his bull, and the buyer stands to lose more, while
the loss to the public is much the greatest of all.
During the three months of transition from
infant to adult life, my bulls look somewhat
below par, but so far, I have never sold a bull
that has not turned out surprisingly satisfactory.
There can be no doubt that the bulk of the
destruction is due to the greed of underfeeding the
calves when they ought to be well fed, and then
trying to make them marketable by the over-

182 My Little Farm

feeding short cut at the very time in their lives
when gradual and natural treatment is essential to
their success.

I will finish with one more of our blindly
destructive characteristics. In farming especially,
we stand to gain rather than lose by our neigh-
bour's prosperity. Poor, he is no use to us ; rich,
he could be a better neighbour. Our power to
help each other is very great, and we lose all this
because we prefer to hurt each other. Many
among us would willingly lose to hurt his neighbour
rather than gain by helping him ; how many I
cannot say, but certainly a large majority of all
within my acquaintance. Their neighbour's ill
gives them more pleasure than even their own
good, which ends in ill all round. We wish to pull
each other down, even at the cost of sinking our-
selves a little lower.

In a business like shopkeeping, the savage
scramble for contending shares in a fixed and
limited total is reasonable enough ; in farming,
there is no need for it at all. I cannot lose by
showing my neighbour how to get fifty tons of
mangolds out of that plot instead of fifteen. I
gain by it. Have I not done him a service ? That
alone is a pleasure to me, and such a pleasure is a
very great gain to me ; for it is in the mind,
neither in the field nor in the pocket, that all the
really great gains and losses take place. The life
of the man who can get no pleasure from his
neighbour's good is very pitiful, and the bulk of
Connaught is very pitiful, because the bulk of the

Bulls 183

people prefer the neighbour's ill to their own good,
which is an essentially savage preference.

My plot produces not one mangold less because
the produce of my neighbour's plot is more than
tripled, and my pleasure is wholly to the good.
He and I alike suffer from under-production,
neither of us from the over production of the
other. Let either of us increase his production
tenfold this year, and the other gets not a penny
less for his own, because the wide world, and not
merely the local market, is competing for our
produce in its final form. I shall put no material
value for myself on the service I have done my
neighbour, because I have not done it for any such
gain to myself ; also because I know that my
neighbour, in at least nine cases out of ten, will
prefer to deny the obligation, lest his admission of
my service to him should react to my credit or to
my advantage in any way. I am concerned with
my neighbour only in my wish to see him a better
neighbour, knowing, as I do, that we can have a
better country only in better men.

There were two neighbours, one of them
keeping very bad bulls, the other breeding very
good ones, and year after year, the man who bred
the very good ones offered them to his neighbour
at smaller prices than his neighbour paid for the
very bad ones, which were bought time after time
without any knowledge whatever as to the
rubbish in their parentage. This went on for
nearly a generation, and in that time, the man
who kept the very bad bulls had never once

184 My Little Farm

succeeded in breeding a good cow for himself,
while the other man could not breed a bad cow.
The man who kept the bad bulls knew very well
all the time that, across the fence, he could have
better value, for himself and for his neighbours, at
less cost ; but he paid the higher price for the
inferior value rather than help his neighbour to
extend the better value to the advantage of all
the neighbours and his own. When, in the end,
the contrast had become too plain for the neigh-
bours to tolerate it, the man who kept the very
bad bulls sent some of his bad cows across the
fence, so that he could say he had raised the
better breed himself, and still deny the credit of
it to his neighbour.

Merely because one man, who keeps bulls, hates
the prosperity of another man, who breeds bulls,
the bull-keeper actually pays money for nothing
but to prevent the prosperity of his neighbour ;
and in doing so, he pays also to inflict a serious
injury on his other neighbours, forcing them to
rear bad calves when they could be rearing good
ones at the same cost. Now, this is the Connaught
character, as nearly as I can describe it after long
and intimate study of it. How can a country
prosper on it ?

CHAPTER XVII.
AT THE SHOW

I WENT to one of those provincial bull shows
which are subsidised by the Department and
approved for the selection of premium bulls. It
was an instructive day.

Most of the bulls were yearlings, and nearly
all these were fat beasts. I saw only three or four
in a natural condition, and these were passed in
contempt. So young, they could not be so fat
without being permanently injured as sires, and
this is how so many of the Department bulls come
to be distributors of disease among the cattle, not
to mention the infertility due to over-feeding.

It appears the judges have no standard to judge
a beast in a natural condition, and in any other
condition the bull is unfit for breeding.

Most of the people looked hungry, but this
appears to be less injurious than fattening them.
Why must an underfed people have their beasts
so overfed ? Man and beast alike are injured,
but this derangement in the distributive process
is evident in every aspect of Irish life. Take for
instance the Dublin horse show. Any intelligent
stranger would take it to represent a solvent and
sane community.

Our bull show had been advertised as a " Show

i86 My Little Farm

and Sale," but I saw fourteen go through without
one sold. The sales were few, and the premiums
very few. Exhibitors from all the four provinces
looked at each other saying : " Catch me coming
again to a Department bull show." Yet the
fiction runs from year to year, and I suppose as
many will be duped next time.

In " a dairying country," one naturally looked
to that section, but I saw no dairy premium
awarded. I heard of " one or two," but the
report in the Farmers' Gazette came out without
one at all.

The Department had two experts there to
judge the bulls and award the premiums, and one
of these gentlemen gave me this amazing informa-
tion : " In awarding the dairy premiums, we do
not take into account either the milk yield or the
butter fat of the dam, " ; this in reference to the
bulls specially bred under the Department's own
rules, from cows selected, tested and registered by
the Department itself — in a dairying country.
It is plain, even in bulls, that the underlying
fallacy of the Department, the Agricultural
Organisation Society, and all such is the assump-
tion that industry may grow and that public
money ought to be expended for it without regard
to any development in industrial character or to
the mediaeval scheme of primary education which
works behind it and controls it.

One of the unfortunate exhibitors at the bull
show was known to have severely criticised the
Department, and his bulls were beaten with
sticks and pelted with stones in the show ground

At the Show 187

by the corner boys. I saw this. The beating and
the stone-throwing continued from one side of the
ground to the other, while the owner and his
two men tried to hold the beaten animals by the
halters. The attack did not stop even when one
of the animals was knocked down, entangled in
the rope. It was done openly in view of the
police, the show officials, and the Department's
experts, but not one interfered. No other of the
exhibitors was known to have criticised the
Department, and no other was attacked.

At the close, an exhibitor from Galway dis-
cussed the day with one of the Department's
experts, and wound up the argument in these
words : " You know as much about a bull as my
dog knows about playing the piano." That may
be overstating it, but it remains still to be ex-
plained why dairy premiums are awarded to the
other breeds, while dairy premiums are denied
to Irish animals specially bred for dairy purposes
under schemes and rules elaborated by the Depart-
ment. Quite a considerable number of Irish
farmers, and generally the most capable in the
country, have co-operated with the Department
in this attempt to found an Irish dairy herd-book.
Can they be expected to continue the trouble
they take while their results are ignored and the
premiums given to breeds that are admittedly
inferior for dairy purposes? To qualify their calves,
the registered cows must breed from sires specified
by the Department, and in my own case at least,
the result of these sires is to diminish the milk in
proportion to the cost of producing it.

CHAPTER XVIII.
PAGANISM IN AGRICULTURE

WHEN their hens die of a contagious disease, they
carry them at night into the neighbour's flock,
and leave them there, in order to get rid of the
disease by passing it on to the neighbour. Before
taking them they pluck them for the feathers,
making sure to keep the disease at home while dis-
tributing it. Not long ago I saw five dead hens
newly plucked and put down among a fine, young
flock, of which three out of four were dead in the
next six weeks. It may take several years to stamp
out the plague thus propagated in that flock, and
the same thing has often happened before on the
same farm. The idea is that the disease is
supernaturally derived, and that, to secure its
departure from one place, a suitable reception
must be secured for it at another. Meantime
we pay our poultry experts out of public money,
and the Department controlling them dares not
say a word against the industrial character which
makes it a virtue to spread the disease. The
Department can only spend the money on the
experts, hold its official tongue as to industrial
character, " recognise " the microbe, and ignore its
supernatural derivation, since any infringement on
the supernatural would be contrary to "Irish ideas"

Paganism in Agriculture 189

When a cow gets indigestion, probably from
the weeds in the " hay," they go to a witch to
cure her. The witch fills a bottle with natural
water, knots a piece of twine over it, pulls the
knots out, and repeats the process, mumbling an
incantation. According as the knots come loose
or tighten, the case of the cow is simple or com-
plicated, and the measures to defeat or to conciliate
the hostile spirits at work must be taken accord-
ingly. Sometimes the struggle is so desperate that
the owner of the cow, having defeated the spirits,
may lose a child or even his wife as compensation
to the nether world for the loss of milk. The
incantation over, our farmer comes home with his
bottle of water, pours a little of it down the cow's
throat, and flings the remainder on her back, in
three dashes, " in the name of the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost." I have seen this solemn
ceremony performed by a "farmer." The
pathology by prayer is often varied by " performing
a station " for the cow, saying specified prayers
before twelve pictures representing twelve scenes in
the life and death of Jesus. In a case of indigestion,
I have no objection to prayer, provided it is pre-
ceded by physic, but by depending on the prayer
and deferring the physic, the cow is often killed.
We pay veterinary surgeons for public service
under the Department's control, but the Depart-
ment dares not say a word against the pagan
pathology which has precedence of the veterinary
work. " Irish ideas " must be respected.

When the electrical state of the air or the dirty

190 My Little Farm

state of the dairy turns the milk and cream into
" clabber," the " knowledgable woman " is again
consulted, and she undertakes to restore the
butter, which " comes back " when the weather
changes ; and since the weather in Ireland is never
long without changing, the witch is generally
prompt in justifying her wisdom. A thunder-
storm is her best opportunity. It seldom lasts
more than a day, and the clear calm of the next
is accompanied by the triumph of supernaturalism
over agricultural efficiency. We have our dairy
experts in every county, paid from the public
purse and controlled by the Department ; but
neither they nor their controllers dare offend
" Irish ideas " by opposing paganism in agri-
culture. The Department has not as yet
appointed an official witch on its paid staff of
experts.

I give only three from the scores of popular
examples with which I am personally acquainted.
A nation cannot prosper by consigning its soil to
pagan superstition, and when the nation is three
fourths agricultural, the case is worse.

CHAPTER XIX.
FARMING AS A PROFESSION

AGRICULTURE is an industrial pursuit in which a
man of honour may still engage with self-respect —
perhaps there are others. Like science and poetry,
it deals in no trade secrets ; at least, there is no
need. It does not require the gain of one by the
loss of another, as happens so commonly in com-
merce. Its gains are primarily a matter between
the man and the soil, and though some " rob the
soil," it is better than robbing the neighbour.
Besides, the robbed soil always avenges the crime,
which cannot be said of the Stock Exchange. It
keeps a man in touch with Nature, which helps
to keep him morally clean ; and in so far as it
implies a conflict, the conflict is between man and
his enemies in Nature rather than between man
and man. Its essential motive always is to
increase production, not to grasp the largest
possible amount of what is produced ; and though
the maximum may not often transform clogs and a
cottage into silks and a mansion in seven years, the
sane minimum is safer than in any other pursuit,

192 My Little Farm

precluding that sordid elaboration of material
chance which so largely corrupts the world and
often keeps a man essentially miserable on millions.
Should a man love Nature, and have intelligence
to study her without being a fool in business
affairs, then agriculture is almost ideal and certain
to be remunerative. Its competition is across
oceans rather than across fences or streets, preserv-
ing the mind from the effects of direct greed and
necessarily enlarging vision in anyone who comes
to see the world-process in which he has his part.
For instance, the clearing of Russian forests, re-
ducing the rainfall, is said to have diminished the
production of grain, which would affect the
position of the barley-grower in Scotland ; and
such a far-reaching influence, even when operating
to disadvantage, tends to raise the mind that
studies it beyond the meanness of narrower issues.
Farmers on either side of a hedge need no such
envy of one another as shopkeepers on either side
of a street, their prices being fixed by forces farther
removed or at least less personal and less directly
apparent at any given time. Accordingly we find
peasant communities who spend the winter nights
in each other's houses, while their shopkeepers,
though derived from the peasantry, and meeting
every day in the same street, remain really un-
acquainted, and never meet in the social sense.
There are towns in Connaught where the shop-
keepers never call on each other unless for a
weak or a funeral, and then the spoons are
locked up.

Farming as a Profession 193

So much for those who can combine culture
with cabbage, but what of him with six children
on ten shillings a week, whose existence is valued,
like that of the horse, by the length of his working
days — and then the workhouse ? He has done
his work, justified his existence ; therefore the
shame of the workhouse is really not on him but
on the economic and social system that ends him
so. A vital defect remains in every society that
leaves a good old man or a good old woman to die
in disgrace when too old to work. Yet the life,
apart from the manner of its end, is probably much
undervalued. The real question is not the amount
of a man's income in money, but rather how he
can live on it ; and probably the healthy man on
the soil with ten shillings a week gets more out of
life than the city clerk on two pounds a week and
permanent indigestion. Army figures have shown
us the difference of chest measurement between
town recruits and those from the dales of West-
morland ; and it is to the soil that the armies
ever return to renew their strength. It is not
easy to assume that life must be less where we go
for our strongest men.

Probably those above Hodge have not con-
sidered how much a little might be to him, and
to themselves indirectly ; and it is certain that
they have not applied themselves to make the
most of him with any such efficiency as we find
in the employers of other industries. The return
to skill and capital is probably not less on the
whole in agriculture, but the industry is less

N

194 My Little Farm

adaptable to that centralisation on the grand scale
which tempts a master mind to increase wages by
economising energy. In his own lifetime the late
Lord Armstrong got about ten thousand workers
organised on a bank of the Tyne, with the total
supervision within two miles, and vast possibilities
of invention and economy from so many minds
operating so closely ; but the supervision for as
many agricultural workers would spread over
100,000 acres, with the lives less associated for the
developments that arise from close play on one
another. Perhaps there is not much use appealing
to the farmer in this connection, but there are
many landlords who might profitably apply more
of their educated faculty to the labour problem
on their estates, by direct employment if they
cannot raise their tenants to the higher efficiency
which would enable them to pay better wages ;
and I believe a day is coming when the owner of
land must either make it useful or lose it. Badly
boycotted, on a bad tract of Galway, Lord
Ashtown makes a much better return on his
capital invested in this way than he could get
from stocks and shares ; and because he employs
his tenants and their sons, they have decided by
resolution not to purchase the land from him,
seeing that they have more from it in wages,
because the owner applies knowledge and capital
beyond their means. This example at Woodlawn
ought to be studied everywhere, and it is long
past the stage of experiment, having now been at
work for more than ten years, with the results

Farming as a Profession 195

more encouraging every year. The problem
created for the Galway landlord by the agrarian
agitator to-day may be created for the Yorkshire
landlord by the socialist agitator to-morrow, and
Lord Ashtown has already demonstrated the only
apparent solution. Spencer argues the matter to
this effect : " If the individual have a valid right
to the earth, it follows that nobody else has any
right to it, and a single owner may with equity
evict the whole human race from it." Of course,
the law of ownership does not interpret " valid
right " in any such sense, but the responsibility
remains for the owner to see that his land supports
his fellow-man or to lose it.

While this responsibility grows more exacting,
educated faculty deserts the soil more and more.
The literature of agriculture is extensive, and yet
I know of only one agricultural writer in Europe
with a literary style. It cannot be that the subject
precludes style, for Huxley made himself delight-
fully readable on the mud of mid-ocean bottoms,
even with his conclusions all wrong ; and Grant
Allen told the tragic life of the garden spider
with impressions that can never leave my mind.

With all the generous possibilities of agricul-
tural life, we find its current expression often
painfully mean, and the agricultural press actually
denying the proved productiveness of the soil, as
if it were the business of the editors to discourage
production and to multiply poverty. Take an
example regarding a recent article of my own in
the Saturday Review. Every fact in it is denied

196 My Little Farm

by the North British Agriculturist, on the faith of
" an Irish correspondent," and yet we know how
Irish correspondents are organised to discourage
production in order to destroy the landlord. The
Scotch paper has published many columns of
" criticism " on this article in several issues, and
an editorial attack is based mainly on a misprint,
not from the Saturday Review, but from the report
of my evidence before the Royal Commission on
Congestion. " Tritro-culture " is printed for
" nitro-culture," and the Scotch editor revels in
the slip, as if he were a Mayo moonlighter. Such
is the literature of agriculture, and it could not
be without having removed culture from the soil ;
but the absence of education is an invitation to
the educated, who may find still in the fields a
fair remuneration for talent, more free from the
corrupting influences of modern life than any
other pursuit called business.

CHAPTER XX.
A STUDY IN CONGESTION

GIVEN a fence with congested peasants on one side,
prairie bullocks on the other side, and the same
natural quality of land on both sides, to replace the
bullocks by the peasants — and do no injustice.
Here are no sentimental difficulties about migra-
tion, and as both sides of the fence are in the same
parish, there is no danger to the ecclesiastical
income by relieving congestion. The problem
could scarcely be in simpler case, and if it can be
solved at all, this is the place.

The land occupied by the peasants is good
enough, but the area is not large enough, and we
must find them farms, say thirty acres each, on
the other side of the fence. Though the natural
quality of the soil is the same, the actual qualities
differ vastly, the people having exhausted the
fertility, whereas the bullocks, not being
politicians, have comparatively increased it.
Besides, the bullocks are pleasanter neighbours and
better tenants for anyone to keep on his land,
which tends to increase its value. By removing
the Irishman to make room for the beast, about
50 per cent, is added to the value of the land.

Such is the contrast, and given freedom, it
tends to perpetuate its extremes with widening

197

198 My Little Farm

effect, so that we may take the Irish as a people
getting evicted from their own country by their
own cows. The Department of Agriculture has
found the bullocks capable of improvement,
which increases their profit and their hold on the
land ; but the Anglo-Roman conspiracy fails
to improve the people, and will permit no one
else to try, so that the peasants on one side of
the fence remain increasingly incapable to compete
against the bullocks on the other side. Hence
the need to " drive " the bullocks.

In these typical circumstances, if the land
occupied by the peasants be at 2Os. an acre, the
land occupied by the bullocks must be at least 305.
This is the actual assessment of an expert employed
to value such land for the Estates Commissioners,
and from my own knowledge, it cannot be far
wrong. On official estimate, the bullock is thus
50 per cent, higher than the Irishman in economic
efficiency.

Let us now take one of our peasants across the
fence, and see what must happen. He was paying
^4 a year for rent, and now he has to pay ^45.
He Was working with a spade, and now he must
work with horses and implements. He was
unable to organise, unless for politics, and now he
must organise for industrial production, because he
must have implements, and cannot well have a
complete set on a farm so small, not to mention
the need to organise his buying and his selling,
now extended in a proportion at least as forty-five
is to four. With such increased opportunities, his

A Study in Congestion 199

productive proportion ought to increase more
than that, but let us make generous allowances
for one who has been so unfortunate. The
peasant has no capital. If he had he might have
acquired land for himself. He has worse than no
knowledge, because he must unlearn before there
can be the least hope for his success ; and no
capitalist in the world, unless a Chancellor of the
Exchequer, will undertake to finance a man who
has neither capital of his own nor efficiency to use
the capital of others. However, the Chancellor
of the Exchequer has already set the precedent,
and we must take it at that or start a controversy on
Socialism, complicating the problem which we
have undertaken to simplify. Every Chancellor
of the Exchequer is a Socialist in Ireland, but
without the virtues of Socialism.

As we have seen, the productive or earning
power of bullock land is 50 per cent, more than
that of peasant land, and the purchase value must
follow ; but here comes an additional com-
plication. Peasant land is under " dual owner-
ship," the landlord's interest and the tenant's
interest ; but the bullock land has in it the same
dual value vested in one owner. For instance,
the Duke of Abercorn has sold the tenant's
interest in his untenanted land, creating new
tenancies, and getting handsome prices for these,
and having established the new tenants, he has
sold to them the landlord's interest also, under
the Land Purchase Act. A Land Commissioner
tells me that by proceeding in this way the Duke

My Little Farm

has got a dual total of forty years' purchase in all ;
and as we have it announced in Parliament that
the present average for the landlord's interest is
twenty-two years' purchase, it follows that about
eighteen years' purchase has been got for the
tenant's interest in the hitherto untenanted
Abercorn estate. In this instance, however, crime
does not appear to have been organised with the
usual care to " facilitate " the operation of the
law ; but on the other hand we have undertaken
to cure congestion " without injustice," and so we
are bound to take something like eighteen years'
purchase as to the honest value of tenant's interest
in untenanted land in addition to the landlord's
interest. With these facts before us, let us now
return to our " emancipated " peasant across the
fence.

His purchase-money in respect of landlord's
interest at twenty-two years' purchase is ^990,
and in respect of tenant's interest at eighteen
years' purchase it is £810 more. The building of
a moderate house will be £300, and £200 will be
wanted for working capital. This makes a total
of .£2,300 to be provided by the Chanceller of the
Exchequer, who in Ireland has already conceded
the central principle of Socialism, namely, State
capital. For interest and sinking fund, at 33- per
cent., the peasant's annuity is now over £jo a year,
and local taxation brings his total annual liability
up to about £80, which will be £2 135. per acre,
as against .£1 33. in congestion, on land naturally
the same, with the fertility of the new farm sure

A Study in Congestion 201

to fall, unless the efficiency of the farmer can be
raised to the level of the beast, which is out of
the question, since all Governments avoid the
education question as a matter too dangerous
for Government. If Government touched educa-
tion to raise efficiency, the peasant might soon
find a way to do things for himself ; but in that
case, the Anglo-Roman conspiracy might attack
the Government, which would impede the policy
laid down for all future Governments by the late
Lord Randolph Churchill. For the peasants,
there is no self-dependence without efficiency,
and there is no efficiency without education ; but
education is controlled by those who keep " the
moral centre of gravity fixed in a future existence "
where no notice is taken of our fence or the kind
of land on either side of it. To get our peasant
over that fence will require a regiment of soldiers.
' So far we have "cured" congestion honestly,^but
without success, and now it remains to find some
other way. The United Irish League may have
been guilty of unusual oversight in permitting
land to reach near its honest price on the Abercorn
estate, but such negligence may not occur again,
especially under a Home Rule Government, and
in a problem of such difficulty, let us grasp at
any hope we can. With a sufficiently close under-
standing between the Chief Secretary and the
organisers of agrarian crime, there is no reason
why the price of tenant's interest in grass land
should not be brought down from eighteen
years' purchase to five years' purchase, which is

202 My Little Farm

near the current figure wherever we have enough
crime for the required assistance to the Govern-
ment and its Purchase Programme ; but even at
that, our peasant's annuity, with local taxes, brings
his annual liability to about .£60, and his land to
£2 an acre, which will require the regiment of
soldiers permanently on the fence to prevent the
peasant coming back into congestion, while no
one has considered the necessary addition to the
Army Estimates.

We have seen the peasant before " relieved " on
far easier terms than can be secured now, and he is
often cursing the day he left the four acres for a
farm requiring agricultural intelligence. No
Government authority can ever hope to be more
successful than the Congested Districts Board in
getting land below its value as a necessary
consequence of crime ; but the experts now
in charge of the Board's work assure us
that the migrants grow increasingly tired
of being " improved," as it continually requires
in them a standard of efficiency which cannot
possibly be achieved on an education designed
solely for " a future existence." The man now
paying £4 a year rent can earn it in England
as a migratory labourer, but he could not hope to
save £80 a year that way, and he does not see how
to find £2 135. per acre on land which can be no
better than his own after a few years of his ignorant
treatment. A man accustomed to finance an
annual budget of £25, with his family income at
or £20, is frightened by a budget of £350 a

A Study in Congestion 203

year, because he does not know how to raise the
family income to such a scale. His peace of mind
has been founded on the smallness of his total
liability, and a higher liability has more terror
for him than an occasional famine. He dreads
losing what he has for what he cannot keep, and in
his circumstances there is more wisdom in his
fear than in the statesmanship which attempts
to finance his inefficiency.

The peasants are really labourers, on a low
standard of efficiency at that, and the statesmen
assume them to be men of business. A farm
bearing a total liability of .£80 a year means an
annual turnover of ^350, assuming proportionate
production ; but ^350 frightens a man who has
never had more than £25 passing through his
hands in one year. His mind is not large enough
for the prospect, and no Government dares to
enlarge his mind. Where " relieved " already,
he regards it as a grievance that he cannot
keep the pig in the drawingroom, and sometimes
he has done so despite all regulations to " im-
prove " him — because the essential part of him,
the mind, is left unimproved. Set the man free,
with his faculties at his own command, as when
he succeeds in America, and then give him land.
In the meantime, the statesman who proceeds
hurriedly in this congestion business is likely to
regret it, or at least to leave a legacy of regret.
On the statutory basis at work, the choice is
between present confiscation and future bank-
ruptcy. Deal honestly with the landlord, and the

204 My Little Farm

position of the " relieved " peasant is impossible ;
make his position possible, and the landlord must
be plundered by statute. Crafts of Parliament
may modify shocks and compromise conflicts from
time to time, but the essential problem remains
until the Irish agrarian learns how to make land
productive, which can never be without educa-
tional reform and possibilities of free mind inside
Ireland. This is the fundamental difficulty with
all Irish problems, the essential reason why the
processes of progress, elsewhere effective through-
out the world, remain impracticable to most
of the agrarians in Ireland.

After all the State expenditure, congestion
remains. The statistics of acreage show no
substantial enlargement. Yet the plea for pity
is dropped. We hear no more of the " and not
fit to rear snipe." Now that the special pleaders
control the Imperial purse, the less said about
the victims of congestion the better.

CHAPTER XXI.
FOOD PROBLEM INDIVIDUALISED

THE beginning of the war found me on my little
farm in Mayo, and our prices ran suddenly high,
often far above those in England, especially for
imports. In our part of Ireland flour is displacing
potatoes as the staple. The normal profit on the
bag of seven stones is gd., but the shop keepers
sold it for 1 8s. to 2os. at a time when they could
buy it for us., and the multiplication of profits
at the rate of 1,000 per cent, was not confined to
flour. The " law " of demand and supply had
to be suspended, and our local sergeant of police
took the place of Adam Smith, but with power to
punish extortion. I had consulted no authority
beyond the stomach, the palate, and the purse,
but the war has made me a food reformer. It is
quite certain that an enormous amount of our
expenditure on food is to injure us.

My mutton had been supplied on a standing
bargain at 8d. Now it rose to is. 3d., at which
consumers could not be found. The butcher had
to shut up shop and take to tilling the soil. Our
alternative was to pay even more than is. 3d. for
any rubbish a distant stranger might choose to
put on the railway, and beef was unprocurable,
the cow being too big a quantity for the economy

205

206 My Little Farm

of our market. Pig remained more reasonable,
but a little pig goes a long way with me in hot
weather. In short, I could not get meat, and I
did not think then that I could live without it.

During the winter we had met the case mainly,
with chicken, the local product at the initial
price ; but chicken disappeared early in spring,
and we must either adapt ourselves to a " lower r
standard of living or live beyond our means. The
question of actual hunger could hardly arise on a
farm intelligently conducted, for there was always
something to eat, if only roast potatoes. We
decided to attempt a bill of fare as far as possible
out of our own products, at least for an experi-
ment, and the result is that, in search of a lower
standard of living, we have found a higher, at less
than half the cost.

We had plenty of milk and cream, convertible
into butter, plenty of rhubarb, strawberries and
other garden stuff. I began breakfasting on
stewed rhubarb, followed with a new laid egg, a
cup of tea and a hot cake made with milk instead of
water — which seems to be an ideal way of making
milk- a food. The mid-day meal starts on straw-
berries and cream, then a glass of milk, another
egg and another hot cake. Dinner was the great
terror. It was at seven. One evening at that
hour I found a smoking dish of oatmeal porridge
and looked it over. The housekeeper smiled, and
I did my best to follow her example. " You'll
like it better than you think," she said, and I set to
work, supported more by courage than conviction.

Food Problem Individualised 207

The porridge was boiled in new milk instead of
water, and after a little training I found the thing
delicious. This dinner, costing less than three-
pence, is better (for me at least) than the dinners
for which I have so often paid five or six shillings
in the West End ; but I have to confess that its
proper appreciation implies an amount of moral
discipline which, at any time of life, is rather
trying in the initial experience. It is like turning
an Irishman into a Scotchman after forty.

Such is the main dietary, but still varied by an
occasional chicken — we do not eat on principle,
and I must admit that the dreadful virtues of the
new scheme have been forced on us by necessity.
It costs me less than a shilling a day, and I could
never get my modest meals in London at less than
ten shillings a day. After three months of it, the
taste for meat has diminished ; so has the need for
tobacco and tea, as if an improved state of nerve
were steadily raising me to independence of
stimulants and sedatives alike. For the first time
in twenty years I can sit down and write a
chapter without the pipe. My health is con-
sciously better, I am more than a stone heavier,
and the housekeeper expands at a rate more rapid
still. The " improvement " in us, coincident
with the war, is a subject of local comment.

I can do more work. I am much less tired
after it. I can get out of bed an hour earlier.
The world appears to me a better place. To the
working man in the English town, dependent on
the foreign producer, and menaced by the German

208 My Little Farm

Submarine, my facts may excite envy rather
than afford a practical example ; but there is
plenty of idle soil in the United Kingdom, and if it
lies unproductive, this is mainly the fault of the
townsman himself. He has not yet come in sight
of the three acres and a cow, because he has
dictated policy for a hand-to-mouth existence in
the town alone, forgetting that the soil was the
last resource between him and starvation. He
has insisted on " cheap " food from abroad until
his scheme threatens his access to food from
anywhere. My own plot of the United Kingdom
is not more than thirty-five acres, and its annual
value is only £6 ; but most of the home products
which have enabled me to solve the food problem
come out of one rood, and the other 139 roods,
producing at the same rate, would make more
than ^500 a year. If the townsman has not the
life for porridge, and cannot produce his own milk,
that is his own affair. There is no lack of land,
and I have for more than twenty years been a
townsman, in the intensest sense of the term. A
healthy life gives a man an appetite for healthy
food, and it costs much less on the whole. The
real question is not the money income, but the
kind of man you can maintain on it.

Our feeding for the cattle and the horse was
a still more serious item, commercially considered.
Nobody about us could keep cattle without con-
centrated foods, chiefly imported, and the prices
of these had advanced at least 50 per cent. In
the market value of the cow and of her products,

Food Problem Individualised 209

there was also an advance, but the " aisy goin "
farmer dependent largely on foreign food for his
cattle, stood to lose on the whole by the change
in values, even with the price of cattle increased
by 30 to 40 per cent. Bullocks and " dry "
heifers might live, if not improve, on the usual
products of the farm, but it was not so with milk
cows and their calves. Even on the best of soil, a
calf must have something more than ordinary
fodder and pasture until he is at least a year old,
and unless we raise calves to-day we can have no
cows to-morrow.

I decided to produce at home also my con-
centrated foods for cattle. The war began just
early enough to sow winter crops, and I have been
cutting out these from May to October, buy-
ing next to nothing for stock food, while my
animals are in much better condition than those
of the neighbours, who are now buying at prices
increased by 40 to 50 per cent. They will
probably pocket not one cent in advanced prices
of cattle that has not already been more than
cancelled by the advance in imported cattle food.

This method of dispensing with imports for
farm animals is probably worth description in
some detail, since the prices of meat, milk, and
butter are largely affected by it. The prices of
imports at any time are practically beyond our
control, and more so now than ever, subject, as
they are, to a hundred influences and chances
which no man living can foresee ; but not so our
idle soil, which is at our will, ready to give us at

210 My Little Farm

any time the equivalent of our imports, and
certainly at less cost for the present. We must
have a large body of urban labour now displaced.
Is there no way to organise it for food production ?
Agriculture is the one craft in which productive
energy from other crafts can most easily be
adapted on a large scale : a tailor can be taught
to pull weeds more easily than a farm labourer
can be taught to make trousers.

Importation for feeding is mainly to attain
what experts call the " albuminoid ratio," but
this can be obtained from our own fields, at least
in the main. For six months of the year it can
be done by a plant now in cultivation with us —
the common Vetch. Its advantages do not end
there. It holds the land only for about three
months of the year, and another crop, such as
rape, can be produced from the same area in the
same season. It leaves the soil richer instead of
poorer by its production, and if it cannot all be
consumed in the green state, the remainder makes
excellent hay. In August of last year, just after
the war started, I sowed rape and vetches. The
result is the abolition of the food bill since
February, and my cattle have never been in better
condition. The cultivation for these " catch "
crops is nearly all horse work, and so I make the
horse feed the cows instead of buying imports
at prices so high above their feeding value. Mean-
time, rape and vetches cost no more to produce
than they did before the war, and when the
vetches precede the rape, our manuring will do

Food Problem Individualised 211

for the two crops. There are other leguminous
things, but in the soil and climate of Connaught
I have found the vetch more suitable than any of
them. Its cultivation is simple, and the pro-
duction of rape is simpler still. Given plenty of
these, we can produce meat and milk in abundance,
even on " bad " land, at least from May to
November, and the rape stands good for winter
also. To be ready for winter feeding, it can be
sown in July, in land from which the vetch crop
has been taken. The fuller detail of the process
will be found in another chapter.

To the educated agriculturist my facts are
elementary, but how many of our agriculturists
are educated ? In England, they sometimes do
the right thing, but without knowing why. In
Ireland, they nearly always do the wrong thing,
with a reasoned defence for it. The man who
wants meat, milk and butter in the towns may
wonder why, with such a simple solution of the
food problem before us, we have to pay prices so
unnecessarily excessive to the rich and practically
prohibitive to the poor. The British working man
is no longer in a position to eat British beef, and
the tendency is to deprive him of meat in any
form, while we have a Departmental Commission
to discover, among other things, why the children
cannot get milk even in the agrarian villages of
Ireland. The Irish Department of Agriculture
had recently a commission to discover why the
lack of pigs, and now they start their third com-
mission of the kind, to find out how Ireland may

212 My Little Farm

advance in food production. They will not find
it out, and if they did, they would not dare to
mention it. These commissions discover nothing
to us but the old fact of Irish industrial incapacity,
and this must continue as long as primary educa-
tion is permitted to pervert the collective mind
into mediae valism. The Irish are people pretending
to go forward with their faces turned backward,
and I have already shown that their Department
could not touch this problem without an upheaval
like that which dismissed Sir Horace Plunkett.
In proportion as Englishmen run short of food,
it is possible that they may take an interest in
Ireland as one of their essential providers. Were
it not for Ireland we should have additional
millions of Englishmen at this moment deprived
of first class meat at any price ; but this Irish
provision arises from the kindness of Nature
rather than from the competence of man. There
can hardly be another country in the world where
a little advance in industrial character could give
us such results in increased food production. As
it is, Irish cattle have to be taken from some
of .the richest soil in the world to finish their
fattening on the comparatively barren hill sides
of Scotland. Meantime, the Scotchman looks
forward to the London meat market, while the
Irishman looks back to Brian Boru.

11 BETTER BUSINESS." A Quarterly Journal
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Price 1 /- net. Inland Postage 3d. Annual
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MESSRS. MAUNSEL have pleasure in announcing the publi-
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ECONOMICS FOR IRISHMEN. By " PAT."

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A remarkable essay by a well-known French critic, the
late Emile Montegut, which describes the romantic career
of John Mitchel and studies the contrast between the
English and the Irish temperaments in the light of Anglo-
French politics. It is to be compared as an analysis of
Irish discontent only with the preface to Mr. Shaw's
" John Bull's Other Island." The Irish critic, Mr. John
Eglinton, has said that every Irishman who wishes to
" see himself as others see him " should read this essay.

M. Montegut was the translator of Shakespeare and a
constant contributor to the " Revue des Deux Mondes,"
chiefly on English subjects, from 1855 to his death at the
end of last century.

THE GERMAN DOCTRINE OF CON-
QUEST : A FRENCH VIEW.

By E. SEILLI£RE. Translated, with an Introduction
by J. M. HONE. Cloth, 2/- net. Paper,
I/- net,

" Among the many works that the war has produced,
this study of the German philosophy of Imperialism or
Valour stands out, and is indeed indispensable to all those
not versed in the German literature of the last fifty years.
It goes to .the fount of the inspiration — racial selection —
and shows whence the Chamberlain school of political
thought is derived. For the first time the name of the
Frenchman, Gobineau, appears, who was Chamberlain's
master. . . . Every Liberal should read this book.
He will learn a good deal that at present baffles him.
Above all, he will see that German militarism is not the
work of a junker party, but the fruit of a racial philosophy.''
— English Review.

5

WHY IS IRELAND AT WAR?

By HUGH LAW, M.P. Wrapper, 6d. net.

FROM THE PREFACE.

" If I venture to add yet one more to the many books
and pamphlets which the war has evoked, it is not because
I can offer either new facts or new theories. I do not
write even as having a singular point of view. My know-
ledge is that of every one ; my point of view that of the
common or Nationalist Irishman. Yet, since nearly all
the books which have so far appeared have been written
by Englishmen for English readers, it may not be wholly
useless to review the causes and issues of the war as they
present themselves to one of the Irish People. ... I
want to suggest that this is indeed Ireland's war quite as
much as England's. It is hers by every consideration of
honour and policy. On the material side, indeed, Ireland
may not stand to gain much ; but the cause for which the
Allies are fighting is that of which Ireland has long
been, in Western Europe, the protagonist, the cause of
Nationalism, the right, that is, of each nation, big or
email, to live its own life."

" A tract full of eloquent pleading and cogent reason-
ing."— Irish Independent,

SONGS OF THE IRISH BRIGADE.

Collected and edited by STEPHEN GwYNN and
T. M. KETTLE. Paper cover, 6d. net.

" An interesting memorial of Ireland's part in the world-
wide war. . . . Mr. Gwynn has himself made some con-
tributions, full of genuine emotion and vigour. He is a
writer with a true sense of poetry, and even in the battle
song he can find the craft and leisure to be delicate." —
Saturday Review.

11 There is a stirring ring about the songs that suits the
times and should thrill the pulse of patriotic readers." —
Glasgow News.

" This stirring little batch of poems." — Times Literary
Supplement.

" Mr. Stephen Gwynn and Professor Kettle are both
poets, soldiers, and Irish politicians, and their song book
is splendid, full of fire and courage and colour. . . - This
little book — it costs only sixpence — should be sent to
every one of our men at the front — to the English, the
Scotch, and the Welsh, as well as to the Irish, and to the
men from overseas." — Daily Express (London).

IRISH HEROES IN RED WAR,

Verses by Alice M. P. CoOKE, 6d. net.
" Should meet a wide welcome for their music, their
homeliness, their insight."— Irish Life.

6

ALICE AND A FAMILY.

A story of South London, by ST. JOHN G. ERVINE.

Cr. 8vo, 6/-.

" The book is full of character and of a kindly laughter.
. . . very good fun." — Times Literary Supplement.

" One of our wisest and most brilliant young novelists."
— Daily News and Leader.

" Mr. St. John G. Ervine is a man who commands
attention . ' ' — British Weekly.

" This is first-rate comedy. And it is first-rate not
simply because it is, from start to end, extremely enter-
taining, but because the material out of which this gay
entertainment, light and bright as a bubble, is fashioned
is so very much more than jokes and crochets. It is
material which has a distinctive and decisive reality." —
The Manchester Guardian.

"The dialogue of Alice and her friends is excellent.
There is no patronising detachment and no idealising." —
Evening Standard and St. James's Gazette.

" There is a beautiful humour in this story from first
to last, which alone ought to command a wide public for
it."— Pall Mall Gazette.

" Our delight in ' Alice and a Family.' . . . ' Alice
and a Family ' is an understanding book of the Walworth
Koad, the dialect of which the author knows so perfectly
that his characters do not merely speak it, but think in it
as well." — Morning Post.

" It is a tale of mean streets, but the element of mean-
ness is not emphasised. Rather is Mr. Ervine concerned
to illustrate . . . the extraordinary charity of which
families on the border-line of the submerged classes are
capable towards one another." — The Spectator.

" The experimentalising spirit of Mr. St. John Ervine
makes him a writer to whom we look with an interest that
never lessens. His plays won an appreciation keen enough ;
his criticism is always stimulating. His first novel, ' Mrs.
Martin's Man,' was an entirely admirable thing. Now
comes a second novel — and it diverges widely from the
lines of the first . . . amusing, kindly, with a keen
thrust hi it here and there ... its assurance and lack
of cumbrous effect make it delightful to read." — The
Observer.

" With all its troubles 'Erbie's home is alive with the
laughter and joy of life. . . . Herein, apart from its ex-
cellent quality of humour, lies the merit of Mr. Ervine's
work.' It enables us to see the poor as individuals and not
as a labelled group. . . . Mr. Ervine makes the reader
feel that he is really learning how some of the myriad
unknown Londoners live, how their precarious and
seemingly grey existence is illumined by gaiety and
courage." — Daily Telegraph.

7

21- SERIES OF FICTION.

A new series, well printed in large type on antique paper and
equal in appearance to most 6/- novels. Each Vol. 2/- net.

MRS. MARTIN'S MAN.

By ST. JOHN G. ERVINE. Author of "Mixed
Marriage," &c. Cr. 8vo, Cloth, 2/- net.

MR. H. G. WELLS, in a letter to St. John G. Ervine, says :

" Your ' Mrs. Martin's Man ' is most amazingly good.
I can't resist the impulse to tell you so. It's real and
alive and feeling all through. You had bad luck to publish
it in the midst of this war confusion, but even that won't
drown so fine a thing as yours."

" Places him at once in the first flight of modern
novelists." — Outlook.

" All through it shines the spirit of Mrs. Martin herself,
unalterably strong, sweet and sensible." — Times Literary
Supplement.

" Mr. Ervine's delineation of this extraordinarily noble
woman is perfect." — Pall Mall Gazette.

"One could not imagine a more pathetic and yet
withal noble figure than Martha Martin." — Globe.

" Mr. St. John G. Ervine proves himself quite definitely
a novelist who counts, whose books are ' right.' " —
REBECCA WEST in Daily News and Leader.

" A book which dares to be outspoken to an alarming
extent, yet there is in it from beginning to end not one
word which is not of absolute unquestioned purity."
— The Spectator.

" Ireland is to be congratulated on her new recruit —
to the ranks of novelists who are also artiste. . . . Mrs.
Martin is a real creation, an absolutely living, singularly
original and satisfying woman." — Morning Post.

" Mrs. Martin's forgiveness is one of the most beauti-
ful things in modern fiction." — Everyman.

" To have drawn a woman at once so colourless and so
powerful, so beautiful in spirit, and yet so ilium inatingly
true to life, is a very considerable achievement." — New
Statesman.

8

2j- Series — continued.
THE BLIND SIDE OF THE HEART.

By F. E. CRICHTON. Author of " The Soundless
Tide " ; " Tinker's Hollow," &c.

" Full of humour and yet touched with fairy light. Mr.
Brady and James Hanlon as horse-dealers are a perpetual
joy. . . . We are truly thankful to Mrs. Crichton for
her subtle blending of humour and magic." — Pall Mall
Gazette.

"It is in her peasants and commonalty that Mrs.
Crichton excels. . . . The landlady, the farmers, the
horse-dealers, these live and move and have their being
in a way that proves that out of them Mrs. Crichton could
build as Barrie built in Thrums." — Northern Whig.

" Very fine Irish story. . . . The writer can reproduce
Irish humour and the native dialect, that give it such a
charm, with unfailing accuracy." — Dublin Daily Express.

" The charm of the book lies in the author's sympathetic
and instinctive understanding of the Irish character and
in the ability with which the thought and speech of the
Irish country people are reproduced. . . ." — Manchester
Courier.

" This is a story of Irish ' life ' . . and one of the most
fragrant and charming modern romances that has come
even out of Ireland. Its sketches of Irish life are full of
vivacity and humour. . . . It is a very human story ;
its many and varied characters are delightfully natural
men and women, and it is their very naturalness and the
naturalness of what they say and do that is at least half
the secret of the story's interest." — Bookman.

11 What is chiefly attractive in the book is not so much
the simple story as the delightful quiet humour with
which the book is pervaded. . . . The whole thing
is told with a simplicity and naturalness equal to that
of the people themselves." — Glasgow News.

9

2j- Series — continued.
COUNTRYMEN ALL.

By KATHERINE TYNAN. Cr. 8vo. Cloth, 2/- net.

11 Katherine Tynan is seen at her best in some of these
short sketches, where her delightful humour and pathos
and her imagination so compact of beauty a,nd tender-
ness find often such delicate expression. . . . Humour,
pathos, poetry all are in these short stories, and they
make a volume of rare beauty " — Pall Mall Gazette.

" May be welcomed ffor its optimism, its persistent
good humour, and its embracing charity." — Daily News.

" ' Countrymen All ' is a collection of gems written by
a master hand. Katherine Tynan has never done more
delicate work. The short stories of Irish people . . .
hold us enthralled because they ring absolutely true, and
deal with real men and women." — Evening Standard
and St. James's Gazette.

" The whole book is delightfully fresh and, may we
add ? delightfully Irish." — Morning Post.

" Full of the wistful charm that we are accustomed to in
this author's work." — The Outlook.

SOURIS.

By FAY MYDDLETON. Cr. 8vo. Cloth, 2/- net.

A new novel by a new author. This book tells, in a very
attractive and. human manner, the love stories of two
women of widely different temperaments who were none
the less the closest of friends. The author believes in, and
portray* with a faithful hand, the realities of a friendship
which can exist between women. Her two studies in
feminity, the one tempestuous and beautiful, the other
charming and serene, are cleverly and sincerely presented,
and their respective qualities balance and complete the one,
the other, in the most remarkable manner. How life
brought peace and happiness to the one, through a sea of
sorrow, and how a tragic fate pursued the other, although
the brightest prospects heralded in the opening of her
career, are the subjects of this book, wherein love and
passion play their accustomed part.

10

21— Series — continued.
THE ONE OUTSIDE.

By MARY FITZPATRICK (MRS. W. C. SULLIVAN).

" Mrs. Sullivan achieves a marked degree of distinction.
The chief features of her work are sincerity and simplicity,
and to these fine qualities revealed in a quiet cultivated
style, most of the stories owe their racy flavour and sure
appeal." — Glasgow Herald.

11 Mary Fitzpatrick has written that very rare thing,
a volume of uncommonly good short stories. . . . Bead
it. It is well ' worth while.' "—The Tatter.

" It is simple and fine, and shows a reserve of strength."
— Pall Mall Gazette.

" A collection of charming and sympathetic short
stories . . . most of them are informed by the realisa-
tion of that underlying tragedy of all life, which finds its
most representative expression in the Celtic tempera-
ment.."— Westminster Gazette.

A TWENTIETH=CENTURY HERO.

By The Hon. GEORGINA O'BRIEN,

" Miss O'Brien writes charmingly of country scenes
and love, and the volume may be recommended to those
who like a simple old-fashioned novel." — Pendennis in The
Pall Mall Gazette.

" The strength of Miss O'Brien's tale lies in the sym-
pathy with which she has d,rawn Hetty's character, so
that we are enforced to believe in the purity and innocence
of the girl who lived through so many sordid experi-
ences, and to feel real horror at her terrible fate." — The
Westminster Gazette.

YEARS OF DISCRETION.

By FREDERIC and FANNY HATTON.

" A particularly good story."' — The Aberdeen Free Press.

" A bright and very readable story." — Pall Mall
Gazette.

" A most sprightly story. . . . The denouement
is so good that it would be unfair to disclose it here, but
readers may be assured of interest, even excitement, to
the very end of this rippling little romantic comedy." —
Liverpool Daily Post and Mercury.

II

Books Illustrated by Beatrice Elvery.

HEROES OF THE DAWN.

By VIOLET RUSSELL, with Illustrations by
BEATRICE ELVERY. Large Crown 8vo, gilt,
5/- net. Cheap Edition, 2/6 net.

" Violet Russell re-tells in her own fashion stories of
the ancient gods and saints and barbaric heroes of Irish
legendary history, and the romance, the wonder and
fancy and quaint extravagances of these tales of the world's
youth loose nothing of their freshness, fantasy, pathos,
or their ancient fascination in the loving skill with which
she relates them. Miss Beatrice Elvery 's illustrations in
colour and in black and white have a boldness of decora-
tive effect, a glow and forcefulness that are in closest
sympathy with the style and tone of the stories them-
selves."— The Bookman.

" The value of the book is greatly enhanced by the
twenty illustrations contributed by Miss Beatrice Elvery.
These have an imaginative strength and a power of design
which give them a high place among the book illustrations
of the year. The picture of the discovery of the infant
Fionn lying on his bed of skins is a particularly charming
and tender composition, and Miss Elvery 's command of
the grotesque is well exemplified in other scenes, such as
that of the enchantment at the cave of Keshcorran." —
Times Literary Supplement.

CANDLE AND CRIB.

By K. F. PURDON. Author of " The Folk of
Furry Farm." Illustrated in Colour by BEATRICE
ELVERY. I/- net.

" Written in the sweet, plaintive, blarneying English
as it is 'spoken in Southern Ireland. There is the smell
of the peat-reek about it. Mother-love, and piety, and
the humours of peasant life are the stuff of it. ...
A small thing, but just about perfect of its kind." — Irish
Times.

" Full of those touches which reach the heart and make
all the world kin. The coloured illustrations by Beatrice
Elvery are marked by simplicity and truth, and are very
effective." — Westminster Gazette.

" It is a true successor of ' The Christmas Carol ' . . .
perhaps a little shorter than its prototypes, but it lacks
no merit but that of length." — The Outlook.

12

THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF
JOHN M. SYNGE.

In one volume. With Portrait. Cloth, Gilt, 6s. net.

This is the first issue in one volume of the complete
dramatic works of this great Irish playwright whose work
has been translated into so many languages and is
known all over the world.

His universal appeal so rapidly made is now assured*
and this issue of his Plays in one volume at a popular
price brings his principal work within the reach of all.

" It is difficult to see any name among those of our
youngest contemporaries more likely to endure than
that of Synge." — EDMUND GOSSE in the Morning Post.

" As definite a place in literature, as enviable a place in
memory, as any man of his age and day."— Westminster
Gazettte.

" His work will live, for he has accomplished in play-
writing something which had not been accomplished for
centuries." — Times Literary Supplement.

" Indisputably among the artists of this century."

— Pall Mall Gazette.

" The greatest dramatist that Modern Ireland has
produced." — B. A. SCOTT-JAMES in the Daily News.

" The work of a genius." — A. P. in the Evening Standard
and St. James's Gazette.

" His work had qualities which made it universal.

... A new influence, strongly individual, wonderfully
expressive, in its rich and glowing idiom, full of vitality
and passion." — Spectator.

" Synge is greater than any living dramatist, and he will
survive when most of our popular mediocrities have
perished." — JAMES DOUGLAS in the Star.

" One of the greatest men of our time." — Manchester
Guardian.

" The biggest contribution to literature made by any
Irishman in our time." — New York Sun.

" That truly original poet and dramatist." — LORD
DUNSANY in the Saturday Review.

13

THE WORKS OF JOHN M. SYNGE.

Library Edition. Large Crown 8vo. 5 vols.
25/6 net.

Pocket Edition. Foolscap 8vo, quarter parch-
ment, gilt top. Complete set of 8 Vols. in
box, 20/- net. Also separately, 2/6 net each.

Vol. I.— The Playboy of the Western World.

Vol. II. — Deirdre of the Sorrows.

Vol. III.— The Well of the Saints.

Vol. IV.— The Tinker's Wedding, Eiders to the

Sea, and In the Shadow of the Glen.
Vol. V. — Poems and Translations.
Vols. VI. and VII.— The Aran Islands.
Vol. VIII.— In Wicklow and West Kerry.

THE ARAN ISLANDS. With Drawings by
JACK B. YEATS. Large Crown 8vo. Cloth,
gilt, 6/- net.

LIFE IN THE WEST OF IRELAND.

Drawn and Painted by JACK B. YEATS. Large
8vo. Cloth, gilt, 5/- net. Boards, 2/6 net.

Special Edition with an original Sketch on fly leaf, limited
to 150 signed copies, 21 /- net.

" Mr. Jack B. Yeats is one of the happiest interpreters
of contemporary Ireland. He is at once imaginative and
fanciful, humorous and realistic. Like Synge, he loves
wildness. and he loves actuality. . . . His colour . . .
seems to us to communicate the wonder and joy of the
Ireland of our own times with a richness denied to any
other artist. . . . We have here a very treasury of
humorous and grotesque aspects of the life — not the
domestic life, but the open air and holiday life — of the
people of the West of Ireland." — Daily News and Leader.

" One of the most Irish of Irish books we have come
across for years ... all the familiar sights in rural
Ireland drawn by an artist who has an eye for humour
and character not surpassed, if it is indeed equalled, by
any other artist living in these islands. — The Irish
Homestead.

H

O'NEILL AND ORMOND, A Chapter in
Irish History. By DIARMID COFFEY.
Demy 8vo. Cloth, 6/- net.

" Has this singular distinction, that it deals with the
most confused and controverted period of the turbid and
turbulent history of Ireland at once lucidly and judicially.
It is besides a most opportune book dealing as it does
with the plantations and confiscations ... a history
of the time as unbiassed as it is interesting." — Truth.

" The chapter in Irish history which Mr. Coffey has
selected for special examination is one of the greatest
interest. . . . Mr. Coffey writes without heat or partisan-
ship, and congestion is inevitable where there are so many
different points of interest. But one gets the whole affair
in clear and bold outline." — Pall Mall Gazette.

" Will be valued for its careful study of the manuscript
and other sources of information. It is a careful piece of
historical investigation done with an aim after impartiality
although the author's sympathies are obviously with
Owen Roe O'Neill and his followers." — Scotsman.

" It sets forth in clear detail, marked by an absence of
a strong prejudice, the events of one of the most stirring
periods in the history of Ireland. The time covered lies
between the years 1641-1653, and the mere rehearsal of
the incidents during these twelve years makes interesting
reading." — Glasgow News.

THE BEGINNINGS OF MODERN
IRELAND.

By PHILIP WILSON. Demy 8vo. 5/- net.

The Contents are : — The Lordship of Ireland, The
Geraldine Revolt, The Irish Church, The Geraldine
League, The Kingdom of Ireland, The Reformation,
The Plantation of Leix and Offaly. The book is very
fully indexed.

' ' In welcoming this book we welcome its author, who is
virtually a new historian. . . . The history of Ireland in
the author's view ' affords an interest not altogether dis-
similar from that which the physician derives from the
most painful and complex cases of bodily disease.' This
sentence strikes the note of treatment. Mr. Wilson writes
with the calm and patience of the inquirer into causes and
effects, and at the same time with a sympathy for the
sufferers equally consistent with the character assigned to
himself in the comparison.' " — Daily News.

A DICTIONARY OF IRISH ARTISTS.

Deceased Painters, Sculptors, and Engravers, and of those of
Irish birth who have worked in England and Elsewhere,
with Lists of their Works and an Account of the Art
Institutions in Ireland by WALTER G. STRICKLAND,
Registrar National Gallery of Ireland. One Hundred
and Fifty Portraits. Super Royal 8vo, Buckram, 2 Vols.
30s. net.

" Of Mr. Strickland himself we can at any rate say that
his work is a signal illustration of the new spirit in Ireland —
the spirit which, haying got rid of the obsession of politics,
sees outside it a wide and almost virgin field calling for
devoted labour. Mr. Strickland's labours indeed must
have been prodigious to have produced singlehanded a
work of this character from such material as was avail-
able. . . . Mr. Strickland has a keen eye for the interest-
ing and significant traits in both the lives and the works
of artists with whom he deals ; and thus his two great
volumes, with their hundreds of names, are astonishingly
readable. . . . The wealth of sheer information given in
these volumes is very great." — Times Literary Supplement.

*• Let me here express something of the gratitude
which all art-lovers must feel towards the author for
having undertaken such a stupendous task as the compila-
tion of this work, and for carrying it through in su<'h an
efficient, thorough and painstaking manner . . . the
bulk of his two substantial volumes is occupied with
accounts of men whose careers are not touched, upon in
any other work of reference. The labour attendant upon
accumulating the materials for the book may be gauged
by the list of sources from which they are derived. . . .
Mr. Strick'and has been fortunate in having access to
such an immense amount of material, and the art-loving
public are doubly to be congratulated that such a wealth
of material was at the disposal of one who could make so
painstaking and judicious a use of it. ... Mr.
Strickland's monumental work." — Connoisseur.

MAUNSEL & CO,, LTD.

96 MIDDLE ABBEY ST., DUBLIN
40 MUSEUM STREET, LONDON

16

THE DREAMERS

A play in Three Acts by LENNOX ROBINSON.
Cr. 8vo. Boards, Linen Back, 2s. net.

A new Abbey Theatre Play by the Author of " The
Clancy Name," " Harvest," " Patriots," &c. This play
deals with the Irish leader, Robert Emmet and his in-
surrection, and a strong contrast is brought out between
Emmet and some of his followers. The period is treated
from a somewhat similar point of view as in " Patriots."

'* The play. . . . has all the merits we expect from
t' e Abbey Theatre School — admirable characterisation
achieved by an economy of means, pithy dialogues,
sympathy, detachment, restraint, and an entire absence of
sentimentality." — Morning Post,

FIVE PLAYS. By George Fitzmaurice.
Cr. 8vo, 3s. 6d. net.

Contains : — The Country Dressmaker, The Moonlighter,
The Magic Glasses, The Piedish, The Dandy Dolls.

" . . . In all these five plays he is carried and often
carries his reader with him on a torrent of charming
cadences. . . . For the reader there is hardly a page
in this book that does not contain some pleasure." —
Manchester Guardian.

FOUR IRISH PLAYS. By St. John G.
Ervine. With Portrait. Grown 8vo,
2s. 6d. net.

Contains : — Mixed Marriage, The Magnanimous Lover,
The Critics, The Orangeman.

" Mrs. Rainey in ' Mixed Marriage ' is as fine a character
as the modern theatre has produced . . . her natural
wit, pure humour and tact, raise her to the level of true
creative art." — Glasgow Herald.

THE BRIBE. A Play in three acts. By
Seumas O'Kelly. Paper Is. net. Boards
Is. 6d. net.

" A live play, intimately bound up with everyday
existence, yet strongly dramatic." — Evening Standard and
St. James's Gazette.

" A powerful and poiomant play." — Freeman's Journal.

From The Bookman.

" Messrs. Maunsel have done the one thing which those
acquainted with social conditions in the Irish capital
would have said could not be done. They are Irish
publishers who count with the greater world of London,
and they have given a chance to the Irish or the Anglo-
Irish literature. . . . It is to be placed to the credit of
this young Irish fimi of publishers that it has published
nothing unworthy, nothing without its real value and
significance, while it has achieved some remarkable
triumphs."

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