Part 23

An investigation made by the estates commissioners showed that 3,245 of these persons had holdings of five acres, 987 had holdings of between five and ten acres, 912 between ten and fifteen acres, 458 between fifteen and twenty acres, 471 between twenty and twenty-five acres, 93 between twenty-five and thirty acres, 102 between thirty and forty acres, and 75 had farms of more than forty acres. Most of them left their little farms to be cultivated by their wives and sons and daughters during their absence. Among the migrants were 9,308 sons of farmers, who work on their father's farms when they are in Ireland, but go to England and Scotland because they are able to make more money than by staying at home.

The average wages of these migrants was 26 shillings a week, and they varied from 20 to 30 shillings, according to intelligence, with food, lodging, and in many cases their traveling expenses one way. It is customary for the Scotch and English farmers to pay the railway fare over and leave the migrant to buy his ticket home in the fall. Most of the migrants save the larger part of their wages. It is estimated that the average net savings was £12, or $60 per person, and that the total amount taken back to Ireland at the end of the season was about £275,000, or $1,375,000 in American money. These savings are sufficient to keep their families through the rest of the year with the aid of their small farms, fishing, weaving, lacemaking, and other home industries.

According to the reports of the estates commission, the number of farm hands employed in 1871, in addition to the owners of the land and their families, was 446,782, or more than twice as many as are employed at present. In 1881 the number was 300,091. The number of occasional laborers or extra harvest hands employed in 1871 was 189,829, as against 76,870 employed in 1907, which indicates in a striking manner the decay of agriculture in Ireland.

At the same time wages have increased 30 per cent and the cost of boarding farm hands has increased 40 per cent. The hands now demand better accommodations and better food, and everything they require is much more expensive than it was thirty years ago. The average wages for steady farm hands in Ireland with board, according to the official statistics, is $12 a month, while ten years ago labor was plenty at $9 a month. Wages of household servants are about the same and have advanced as rapidly.

The census statistics of Ireland are quite interesting and show that for the last ten years the population has remained fairly stationary, the excess of births over deaths making up the loss by emigration. The latest vital statistics available are for the year 1905, which show a population of 4,391,565, an excess of births over deaths of 27,671; an emigration of 30,676, and a net decrease in population of 2,915. The following table shows the number of births, deaths, and emigrants for ten years:

Years Births Deaths Emigrants

1895 106,113 84,395 48,703 1896 107,641 75,700 39,995 1897 106,664 83,839 32,535 1898 105,457 82,404 32,241 1899 103,900 79,699 41,232 1900 101,459 87,606 45,288 1901 100,976 79,119 39,613 1902 101,863 77,676 40,190 1903 101,831 77,358 39,789 1904 103,811 79,513 36,902 1905 102,832 75,071 30,676 ------- ------ ------ Average 103,811 80,731 39,549

Through the efforts of Mr. Boland, M.P., the foreign commerce of Ireland is now given independently in the statistical reports of the United Kingdom, and the following table shows the imports and exports for recent years:

Imports Exports

1904 £53,185,523 £49,398,536 1905 54,793,183 51,174,318 1906 56,365,299 55,598,597 1907 60,521,245 61,617,225

It will be noticed that there was a considerable increase every year in both columns, but the increase in exports was considerably greater than in imports. This increase was particularly noticeable in live stock shipments to England. In 1905 there were 1,852,423 head of horses, mules, cattle, sheep, and swine shipped from Ireland to England, and in 1907 the shipments had increased to 2,025,292 head.

The exports of butter also increased, and Ireland now has the lead among the nations that contribute to the British poultry market. In 1907 the value of the poultry exported from Ireland to Great Britain was £725,441.

Ireland ought to furnish all the bacon that the British people eat. Irish bacon is the best in the world, and brings the highest prices, but, notwithstanding that fact, more bacon was imported into England from the United States, from Denmark, and from Canada than from Ireland.

The exports of manufactured goods--linens, woolens, and other textiles--from Ireland during the fiscal year 1907, exceeded £20,000,000. The imports of similar articles amounted to £27,000,000. The Irish import a vast amount of bacon from the United States when they ought to supply their own market.

The following table will show the commerce between the United States and Ireland during the last three years:

Imports from Exports to Ireland Ireland

1906 $11,456,739 $10,824,350 1907 12,023,469 9,593,658 1908 8,899,799 10,101,065

The falling off of the exports from Ireland in 1908 was due entirely to the panic of that year in the United States, which caused an almost total stagnation of trade for several months.

There is no limit to the demand for Irish agricultural produce at good prices, but the cultivated area of the island continues to diminish annually, and the area given up to pasturage and the breeding of cattle and sheep increases. The Irish farmer has an unlimited market for bacon, hams, butter, eggs, poultry, potatoes, and other vegetables in London, Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, and other great manufacturing cities which are now very largely fed by Holland and Denmark. More eggs and poultry, more butter and bacon, are imported into England from Denmark than from Ireland, notwithstanding the difference in distance and cost of transportation. The provision dealers of the great manufacturing cities of England always have agents in Ireland, and the Department of Agriculture and the Irish Agricultural Organization Society are both active and efficient in securing and cultivating markets for Irish products. They are advancing large sums of money to establish co-operative dairies and to improve the dairy cattle, the swine, and poultry of Ireland, but many of the farmers are indifferent to their opportunities and with the happy-go-lucky characteristic of the Irish race are happy and satisfied so long as they have enough to feed their own mouths.

Sir Horace Plunkett, who has been especially active in trying to improve the condition of the farmers of Ireland, says: "The settlement of the land question and the new system of governmental aid to agriculture are proceeding rapidly and doing great good, but along neither of those two lines of national advancement, nor along both combined, is agricultural prosperity to be attained. The result depends entirely upon voluntary individual effort and co-operation. The British market will take all the produce we can send, and the more we send of uniform quality--and this can be done by co-operation--the more it will pay for our produce. It follows that every dairy farmer in Ireland is not only interested in seeing that every farmer in his district forwards the best butter he can produce, but he is also concerned to see that farmers in other districts do the same. The ownership of the land by the occupier, which has been brought about by legislation, will not of itself give the Irish farmer the prosperity he hopes for. It is not only the farms, but the habits of the people upon the land which need improvement. Capable under certain influences of surprising industry, they lack the qualities which secure the fruits of industry, because their education and economic circumstances have not developed the industrial habit. They are surely clever in their resourcefulness and shrewd in their bargainings, but as a rule in the management of their farms and commercial dealings they display a total lack of the most elementary principles of either technical or business knowledge. In spite of a passionate devotion to their country, they emigrate to America whenever they can obtain the money to pay their passage, and seem to have no fixed purpose or ambition to develop the resources that lie around them."

The factories of Ireland are confined almost entirely to the northern province of Ulster, although a few mills and other textile manufactories are scattered in other parts of the island. The textile and other manufacturing industries have enjoyed unprecedented and extraordinary prosperity for eight or ten years.

Household industries, particularly the manufacture of handwoven tweeds and various kinds of lace, received a gratifying impetus from the advertising obtained at the Irish village at the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, under the patronage of Lady Aberdeen, who for twenty years had interested herself in the practical and successful development of lacemaking and hand weaving of woolen fabrics. Her energetic efforts have been supplemented by the Royal Irish Industries Association and the Royal Dublin Society, both of which hold annual exhibitions, offer prizes for excellence of design and workmanship, and provide agencies for the sale of homemade and convent-made products in London and other cities.

The Congested Districts Board has given much practical aid and encouragement by loaning money to people who cannot afford to buy looms, by sending teachers in industries throughout the island into the households, by establishing fixed schools at central points, and by furnishing thread and other materials to lacemakers and weavers, for which it collects payments after the product is sold. All through the poor districts of Ireland, where for centuries there has been a desperate struggle for existence, thousands of looms and spinning-wheels may now be found in the cottages of the poor peasants, where both the parents and the children have been instructed in spinning and in weaving by government teachers. And in almost every village on the west coast there is a lace school attended by from twelve to fifty young women under the instruction of a patient and tactful teacher working with thread advanced to them without payment by the Congested Districts Board. The lace produced is sold for them at the agencies of the board, and they are thus enabled to contribute several pounds a month to the incomes of their families.

It is a familiar joke that our principal imports from Ireland are priests, politicians, policemen, and baseball pitchers, but they are not all by any means. I do not know what other country has furnished so many famous Americans--generals, admirals, statesmen, politicians, financiers, merchant princes, actors, writers, lawyers, and other professional men too numerous to mention. If you will look through the list of the generals during our Civil War, if some one will make up a catalogue of millionaires and mining kings and empire-builders and captains of industry they will realize that all the Irishmen who have come to the United States have not gone into politics or pugilism or baseball teams. I must say, however, that the Irish have almost the monopoly of the prize ring and the baseball diamond.

Cardinal Logue made a speech upon his return from America in 1908, in which he discussed this subject at length and related what he had himself seen of Irish millionaires and other successful business men in the United States. He spoke particularly of New York City, and alluded with gratification to the fact that the subway of New York City and the new tunnel under the Hudson River were both built by Irishmen.

"I was proud to know," he said, "of the vast number of our countrymen who were honored citizens of the United States. They have asserted themselves, especially in New York, and occupy the leading positions there. You find Irishmen prominent in every walk of life, you find them among the most distinguished of the judges on the bench, you find them among the most successful barristers, you find them among the most eminent in medicine and in the other learned professions, and then I found that the largest contracts in New York [and he might have said in the entire country] had been allotted to Irishmen, because of their ability to organize and carry out great works. I visited the tunnel under the Hudson and was proud to think that that great work had been carried out by an Irishman who had carved out his own advancement and had made his own way in life by his native talent and genius. Then, again, when they were undertaking the stupendous work of building subways under the city of New York they gave that contract to an Irishman, who succeeded in completing it to the satisfaction of everybody, and it was one of the greatest works ever undertaken by man.

"And they succeed in other branches of life also, equally well," continued the cardinal. "As I was sailing up the Hudson River one day we passed a city called Hoboken, and I was told that it was inhabited exclusively by Germans with the exception of two solitary Irishmen, and one of them, Lord, is mayor of the city and the other is prefect of police. That is an indication of how our people are going ahead in America. And even in the humbler walks of life I found them hard working, well educated, and giving every sign of having retained their own faith and that love for Ireland which is the characteristic of our race in every part of the world. Some of them of the third and fourth generations were as warm and as strong in their love for Ireland as those born in this dear old land of ours."

Cardinal Logue forgets that the ancestors of the men he speaks of in America were once kings of Ireland, and they have the right to success; but I often wonder what would have happened if all the great Irishmen we read about--the Duke of Wellington, Lord Roberts, Lord Kitchener, General Sheridan, A.T. Stewart, John W. Mackey, John McDonald, Thomas F. Ryan, and the thousands of other famous Irishmen--had remained here instead of going out into a wider field of fame and usefulness. The result would be incomprehensible.

And there is a good deal of truth in the joke about the kings of Ireland. At the time of St. Patrick and up to the Norman invasion in the twelfth century Ireland was divided into many little kingdoms in addition to the four grand divisions which correspond to the provinces to-day. The O'Connors were kings of Connaught, the O'Brians of Munster, the O'Neills of Ulster, the McMurroughs of Leinster, the Kavanaughs of Wexford, the O'Carrolls of Tipperary, the MacCarthys of Cork, the O'Sullivans and the O'Donaghues ruled in the southwest, the O'Flahertys in Galway--and so on through a long list. What is a county now was a kingdom then, and the descendants of the rulers still bear their names.

XIX

IRISH CHARACTERISTICS AND CUSTOMS

If any one should write a book on Irish characteristics, I think he should rank good humor as the most prominent, and that makes up for a great many defects. We were on the island for nearly three months and visited more than half the counties, seeing a good deal of both city and country life, and coming in contact with all classes of people, and it is safe to say that no one uttered a cross or an unkind word to us, but everywhere and under all circumstances and from everybody we received a most cordial welcome and the most courteous treatment. And when we asked questions which many times must have seemed silly and unnecessary to the people to whom they were addressed, the replies have always been polite and considerate.

Irish retorts are proverbial. For "reppartay" the race is famous, and we have had numerous illustrations. Wit is spontaneous. It doesn't take an Irishman long to frame an answer, and it is generally to the point. "Blarney" is abundant. Every old woman calls you her "darlin'," and every man calls you "me lud" or "yer honor." The insidious flattery that is used on all occasions does no harm to the giver or the receiver. It makes the world brighter and happier, though it may be flippant and insincere.

The man who "always said the meanest things in such a charming way" must have been an Irishman, although I do not remember to have heard a mean thing said of anybody over there. The Irish race are not diplomatic in their actions; history demonstrates that, but no race is so much so in conversation, and the tact and taffy shown in the treatment of strangers are admirable. Nor does the Irish peasant wear his heart upon his sleeve. He may be frank and sincere in his expressions, but it is quite as probable that he is otherwise. He has the faculty of concealing the bitterest malice under the gentlest smiles and flattering compliments.

It is always difficult to get a serious answer from a native in Ireland. The peasant is always suspicious, and, while he will make himself agreeable and amuse a stranger with his wit and humor, it is difficult to get deeper into his confidence and seldom safe to place any reliance upon what he says. This, I am told, is the result of centuries of persecution, treachery, and danger, so that the Irish race from necessity learned to wear the mask, until it is now a habit.

Notwithstanding their ready replies and their apparent frankness, you are never satisfied with the information they give you when you question them upon serious topics. You are convinced that they are not expressing their real opinions. I make it a rule to discuss the land laws and political policies with car drivers and other people I meet of the working class, but have never been able to get an opinion from them. I have never yet heard an Irish peasant express an unkind opinion of anybody. After talking with them about politicians, landlords, and others, I feel like the child in the cemetery who asked where bad people were buried.

But what you most admire is the witty and ingenious way in which they turn a mistake. A young Irishman stepped up to a gentleman the other day, and with a musical brogue inquired:

"I'm thinkin', sir, that you are Mr. Blake."

"You're thinkin' wrong," was the surly reply.

"I beg yer honor's pardon; I sez to mysilf, when I seen you, sez I, that must be Mr. John Blake for whom I have a missage; but if it's not, sez I to mysilf, it's a moighty fine upsthanding young gintleman, whoiver he may be."

Sometimes there is a tinge of sarcasm, as when an old hag asked: "Won't yer lordship buy an old woman's prayers for a penny; that's chape."

"The hivins be your bed, me darlin'," was the way an old beggar woman expressed her thanks.

Sir Walter Scott says: "I gave a fellow a shilling on one occasion when a sixpence was the proper fee.

"'Remember you owe me a sixpence, Pat,' I said.

"'May yer honor live till I pay ye!'"

When he was leaving the ruins of the Seven Churches at Glendalough, Lord Plunkett, his escort, whispered to the custodian:

"That's Sir Walter Scott; he's a great poet."

"Divil a bit," was the reply, "he's an honorable gintleman, an' he gave me half a crown"--when the fee was a shilling.

Very often we hear poetic expressions from the most unexpected sources. As we were driving down to Ballyhack from Waterford, the jaunting car driver pointed at a mile stone with his whip and remarked:

"The most lonesome thing in Ireland; without another of its kind within a mile of it."

The common use of the name of the Creator is often shocking to strangers and seems blasphemous, but it is an unconscious habit. The word is constantly on the tongue of the poor and not always in a profane sense. You hear, "God bless you," "God prosper you," "Praise God," and similar expressions continually. One neighbor seldom greets another good morning or good night, without an appeal to the Almighty or the Redeemer or the Holy Virgin. "Howly Mother" is the commonest of ejaculations, but Irish profanity is always associated with blessings and not with curses. You never hear the anathemas that are so common in the United States. Nobody ever damns you; if the name of the Almighty is appealed to it is always for his blessing and not for condemnation.

Everybody in Ireland does not speak with a brogue. It has often been said that the purest English is spoken in Dublin and Aberdeen, but that is true to a very limited extent among the highly educated and the cultured classes with whom strangers do not often come in contact. In some places the brogue is so dense that a stranger requires an interpreter. It is difficult to understand an ordinary remark. And you hear the brogue in the pulpit as well as in the slums. There is no form of speech richer or more musical than the brogue of an eloquent Irishman, and his natural gifts of oratory enable him to convey the meaning of his words to the fullest degree by his accent. I never heard the service of the Episcopal church read in a more eloquent and impressive manner than by a young curate with a brogue "that you could cut with a knife," as the saying is. There is nothing to compare with it except the "sweet, soft, southern accent in the United States." When you inquire where the Irish got their brogue, the answer will be, "At the same shop that the Yankee got his twang."

We know that one of the most conspicuous and charming traits of the Irish race is to have a pleasant word for everybody, no matter what is in their hearts, on the theory attributed to St. Augustine that a drop of honey will attract more flies than a barrel of vinegar. The Irish call it "deludering" and "soothering," both very expressive words.

The pleasant way in which questions are answered is very gratifying, especially to a stranger. You never hear a gruff word in Ireland. An Englishman is brutally abrupt, but the Irish are always agreeable. The other day when I asked the guard of a railway train how soon it would start he replied promptly:

"Not till yer honor is aboard, sir."

When I complained to the hotel porter that it was raining all the time in Ireland he replied apologetically:

"But it's such a gintle rain, sir."

Some of the retorts you hear from the common people are highly poetic. When I bought a bunch of flowers from an old woman in the street the other day she replied:

"God bless your kind heart, sir; your mother must have been a saint."

"Good luck to your ladyship's happy face this morning," was the greeting of an old hag to my daughter.

"Oh, let me poor eyes look at ye, me lady, and your voice is as swate as your face."

In a little book I picked up one day, I found a dialogue between a farmer and fox, as follows:

"Good morrow, Fox."

"Good morrow, Farmer."

"And what are ye ating, my dear little fox?" said the farmer insinuatingly. "Is it a goose you stole from me?"

"No, my dear farmer, it is the leg of a salmon."

One day I was speaking to the jarvey who was driving us about in the jaunting car, of a neighbor I had met, who had spent some years in America. He had returned to his native place with a "tidy purseful" of money, and was looking around for some business in which to invest his little capital.

"He seems to think very well of himself," I suggested.

"He acts as if he came over with Cromwell a thousand years ago, and he looks down on thim of us who was kings of all the counthry, even before the mountains was made."