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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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