It is not a matter for rejoicing on any side of the House that the total expenditure has increased from £21,000,000 to the figures at which it stands to-day. Perhaps it is true that many of us are not as conservative-minded now as in the days when we thought that £21,000,000 or £22,000,000 were ample to run this State. I confess that I think we are not getting adequate value for the £28,000,000 expenditure required to-day. If there is one comment I would like to make on the speech of Senator MacLoughlin, which was wide in its scope, it is as to how very careful we have to be when we make election speeches. Undoubtedly it was the view of the present Government Party when in opposition, and without the experience of office, that there was extravagance and that much work could be done by a Government at a lower figure. Performance as well as experience in office perhaps are something that will be beneficial to the country as a whole. I have no doubt that if we had a change of Government those going up as opponents of the present one will not be as diffuse in their promises as to how they could cut down expenditure, or as to what they could do if they got into power. It is undoubtedly true that there might be an explanation for increased governmental expenditure that might be justifled as being beneficial to the country. I believe there is inflation that is helping certain districts owing to Government policy. While that policy has favoured a certain group of citizens, or has been beneficial to them, as against that there are other areas and large groups who are harassed and sorely pressed by the taxation which is represented in £28,000,000. Taking the people as a whole, I believe the expenditure is not justified and is not bearing fruit.
Very little has been said about agriculture, as the speakers who have been dealing with the Bill are mostly engaged in other walks of life. I want to draw the attention of the House to the fact that the number of officials, and the corresponding cost, have increased in the Department of Agriculture by 50 per cent. In my view it is really an appalling situation for people in rural Ireland to have inspectors, either in offices or in Government buildings up and down the country, dictating to them what steps they are to take in carrying on their business. I do not mind whether it is under the aegis of the present Government or of a succeeding administration. I believe that policy is all wrong. I realise that the Minister for Lands is not prepared to deal with some of the questions that I want to raise, but as there are Senators in the Government Party who have the agricultural point of view, it should be stated. Perhaps the present conditions will pass. Conditions are never static. If we are looking to the future we have to consider Government policy and its effects on the future. One of the latest edicts of the Department is something that came from the initiative of Senator Counihan in regard to the appointment of warble fly inspectors. I am only taking that as an instance to show how impossible the Government has become. We are creating positions for hundreds of inspectors who will have to go to farmsteads and see what farmers are doing with their cattle. That destroys initiative on the part of the farmers, by attempting to order their lives, so that there will be inspectors to instruct and to regulate their every action. That is all wrong. The outlook that determines that policy is wrong. I think farmers will agree that it is unsound. Senator Linehan and Senator MacEllin understand what a nuisance it would be if farmers were to get orders either directly from the Department of Agriculture, or passed on through local authorities, telling them to do so and so. At that stage farmers would have very little liberty left to them, and an attitude of mind would be created when they were not free to think for themselves. Is it worth that? Should there not be another line by trying to educate and to instil into the minds of our people methods that farmers would understand would be good for themselves and for the country? Instead of ordering and prosecuting farmers for things that they have not done, it would be better to try to inculcate into them a spirit of citizenship, to make them realise that it was their duty to do what was good for themselves and for the country.
In other districts there are other classes of inspectors to be found. I never like to be critical of public officials. It is, perhaps, very unfair, and a hazardous undertaking to criticise people who are acting under directions from others, and who are not free agents. I confess that I believe a number of these officials are ineffective and, in fact, are of no value to farmers, and are generally a nuisance. That is bad for agriculture, particularly in the conditions that prevail to-day, when farmers are subjected to great difficulties in the matter of marketing. It is bad when farmers in that position realise that a number of these inspectors are floating about, all well-fed and comfortable looking, while farmers themselves are facing up to responsibilities that are greater now than they have ever been. As to the general policy that is being pursued by the Government, Senator Jameson discussed at some length the wheat policy. I have always expressed the view that the wheat policy is not acceptable to the country as a whole, and never can be. I have examined the matter, and as we are supposed in this democratic State to consider numbers, I am satisfied that the number of farmers who cannot grow wheat and who never will grow it outnumber those who grow it by nearly two to one. It is not their fault that they cannot grow it. That is due to other circumstances. Pressing and, in fact, forcing that policy on people to whom it is not acceptable and who cannot put it into operation is, in my view the height of folly. The consequences of such unwisdom will be reaped later. I believe that if conditions were normal and that if we were not up against it with the British we would be a laughing stock by pursuing this policy of growing wheat.
I have never been able to figure out exactly what encouragement in the way of cash would have to be offered to farmers to get them to pursue wheat growing. In other days I heard rather an interesting story of the examination that went on when a number of people went before the Economic Committee that was set up to inquire into the possibility of growing wheat here. A classic answer was given by one person who was questioned as to the means that would have to be applied to get farmers to grow wheat. I think the question was asked by President de Valera, as to what would have to be done to get farmers to grow 300,000 acres of wheat and the answer was "get the guns at them." There was no economic war then, yet that was considered to be the impossibility of such a policy in the light of the circumstances that existed at that time. Beet is in a somewhat different category. If we were told the policy with regard to wheat growing that it was something that it would be good to carry on if it did not cost too much, and that farmers ought to adapt themselves to the times, having regard to the difficulties of the times then the position would be understandable. If it was put that way farmers would face up to it in a different frame of mind. But that is not the position, and the result is that smaller farmers are subsidising people with better land, and have to pay 15/- or 16/- per cwt. for flour which can be purchased across the border for 10/- or 11/-. Why demand such a sacrifice from these people or expect them to continue such a policy in view of the circumstances that exist?
I believe that position should be fairly and frankly faced up to by the Government. I submit that the position of people in Mayo and the condition of people in Cavan is different from the position of those in districts in which Senator Quirke lives in Tipperary, Senator Dillon in Kilkenny, or Senator Miss Browne in Wexford, and that eventually we will come to this position, that we will range on one side the people who can grow wheat or beet and in another camp the small farmers who cannot do so. If people living under depressed conditions have to make a contribution to those who are living on the better land, you are creating a dangerous attitude amongst the class that live on ten acre farms in Kerry, Clare, Leitrim and elsewhere. That is the problem to be faced up to in the future.
It is a problem that I believe ought to be faced up to as a serious problem for the future. The Government have been so extreme, in their policy of wheat growing that they have carried it far beyond the point of wisdom in my opinion. This is a matter in which it cannot be said that I am unduly narrow or prejudiced. I have been growing a certain acreage of wheat at home for many years. My people have been growing it before I was born, but I am talking of the conditions as I see them around me, the conditions of the people with whom I come in contact, and with whom I knocked round as a boy, people who are suffering to-day as a result of Government policy. The growing of beet is in a somewhat similar category. I agree of course, and I have said it already in this House, that if economic developments in this country, agriculturally and industrially, had reached a certain stage, if the problem were faced up to and if there could be such wise spending that an examination of the whole position would justify the cultivation of beet and wheat, we would be glad to encourage it. That, however, would be only justified if the people who are asked to make this contribution towards the growing of these crops were in a position in which they could get the ordinary essentials of life at a reasonable price, and have something left from which to make their contribution towards the higher cost of flour and sugar produced in other parts of Ireland.
There is no plan, as far as I see it, for these people. There is, and there will always be, a plan for the people on the larger farms, the people convenient to the capital who have got able representatives, many of them having opportunities of education that are not available to the poor man's children away back in the West, the North, or the extreme South. It is easy for the people of South Kildare, and the grain-growers in some parts of Tipperary and a few areas in the Midlands, to come together and declare that such-and-such a policy is a good policy for the country, to come along with such force and persuasiveness as to convince responsible people that it is the right thing to do. The poor people back in the West, who perhaps will be told by their leaders that it is a national policy and that it must be supported, in their loyalty to what they believe is a national policy, will sacrifice their own interests in order to see this policy carried to fruition, but that is just the point. It will not be carried to fruition if its economics are not sound. The poor people back in the West will be forced eventually to rise up and say it is not a good national policy and that they refuse to support it further. Then you will have discovered after a number of years that it was unsound from the beginning and that it was better to have taken stock before you adopted this policy.
That is the position in which I find myself to-day. I am always open to conviction on it, but I have yet to be convinced that it is a good national policy. For several years back I have been meeting farmers from other parts of Ireland at meetings of farmers' organisations. As far back as 1919, 1920 and 1921, I met men from Kildare, from Carlow, from Wexford and other places who were strong supporters of a grain-growing policy. Senator Linehan remembers meeting them too, when they came along at these farmers' organisations, making all sorts of demands from the grain-growers. In those days, we who were engaged in other types of farming were able to meet those men, to dominate them, and to say: "We have not yet reached the stage when we can give a guaranteed price to the grain-grower. The farmer engaged in other types of production has not the capacity to contribute towards that guaranteed price." Well, these men floated along with the times. Any port in a storm. They have been more successful in convincing the present Government than they were in convincing us in 1920 and 1921.
I shall diverge for a moment to address myself to certain aspects of the work of the Land Commission. As we have the Minister for Lands present, I want to put certain points before him, and I shall be interested to hear his views on them. These will take me back again to the point on which I want to conclude. I am a native of a county in which, as long as I remember, there has never been much of a problem for the Land Commission. I do not know whether there was ever any land to be divided in it. Certainly there has not been since I was born. There are, as I have often pointed out, about 19,000 holdings in the county, and of these 13,000 are of £10 valuation and under. I do not think there are more than 100 holdings with a valuation of £100 or over. I used to know practically every townland in that county, and within it there is no land for distribution. The only way the people of the county were ever able to get increased holdings was by saving enough on a 10-acre holding to go and buy a 20, a 30 or a 40-acre holding in Meath. They used to do that some years ago, but I think they have not been so enthusiastic in recent years in going to County Meath, because land has scarcely any greater value in Meath to-day than it has in Cavan.
With regard to the distribution of land by the Land Commission, I was at one time rather revolutionary in my ideas, but now I have come to the point of view that it is a policy that can be pursued much too far, very easily. I agree, of course, that if you go into some counties like Roscommon, or even into spots in Mayo and Galway, and see people living sometimes in the bogs beside large tracts of good land, and if you know the land hunger there is in their hearts, you feel that it is terribly unjust that such a condition of things should have existed, or that it should not be permitted to continue. Such a situation as that should be examined, and the right and the wise thing done, but this whole question of redistribution of land is something that can very easily be carried too far. You reach a point by breaking up all large farms at which you are going completely to alter the economy of the country as a whole. Not only are you going to alter the economy of the counties where the land is being distributed, but you must necessarily alter the agricultural economy of counties in which the small farmers live, and pursue a certain type of farming. Take a county like Cavan, in which there is a very dense population of live stock, or any other of the nine or ten counties where conditions are somewhat similar. When the problem is examined, it will be found that these counties cannot continue their present system of agricultural production once you come to the point that you are going to break up all the large farms.
Whether in Cavan, Leitrim or along the western seaboard from Donegal to Kerry, we pursued a type of farming under which we kept a certain number of cows. We reared our calves until they were yearlings, and then you reached a point when you had an overflow of that stock and you had to get rid of them. The only places to which they could go, and to which they were quite welcome in the past, were the large farms, which did not engage in that same type of production. That is, farmers in these areas did not engage in dairying such as the farmers in Cavan and other counties did, but they took the product of our dairy farms and finished them off on their farms. That system paid the farmer in Cavan with 15 to 20 acres and ensured him a reasonably decent standard of living. His cow would be worth £10 a year at the creamery, and the calf, when a year old, would be worth another £10. One can easily calculate the annual income of a farmer with four or five cows from that source. Let us suppose now that we are going to continue the policy of breaking up the land Meath, Westmeath, and elsewhere. When you bring a man from Connacht, or from other congested areas, in on these farms, the only way he can make a living is by following the same type of agricultural production as made it possible for small farmers to eke out a livelihood in the other counties. The result will be that the number of our dairy cows will be multiplied several times.
All this multiplication of dairy cows means that you are increasing the cattle population, and even if we are going indefinitely to continue the policy of killing the calves, the standard of living for these new farmers on the distributed lands, and the standard of living for the people on the ten-acre farms in Cavan, Leitrim and elsewhere must be very considerably reduced. We are going to have over-productivity in a type of agricultural commodity, the production of which up to the present has just been equal to the demand. This policy is pursued, I presume, because it is considered that the population is too dense in certain areas, and that there should be a redistribution of land and of population. Very good, but when you redistribute the land, you are going to raise new generations on these lands. The density of population will be there again after some years, and what are you going to do when there is no more land to be distributed?
My view is that the situation should be faced now. A redistribution of the land is not the solution to the problem at all. As far as the poorer land of this country is concerned, nothing has been done for the small farmer. His position has been considerably worsened. I am not going into a discussion of the economic war, but everybody accepts the fact that the position of the small farmer has been considerably worsened as the result of the economic dispute. Apart altogether from that, the small farmer has been given no help at all. You have the big man getting his ready cash from beet and wheat, but you find producers, like the people with whom I am acquainted, put into the position to-day that they have to accept depressed prices for their finished product in the world market, owing to the economic war. And the price of the raw materials of their production, such as meal and the things we have to buy, is out of all proportion to what the small farmer ought to have to pay. The policy of the Minister for Agriculture, with regard to the admixture of home grown cereals with imported grain, has been brought to the point where I have to pay 15/6 for 2 cwts. of that admixture whereas the same quantity of meal can be bought across the Border for 10/6 or 11/-. Then I cannot get as much for the finished product reared on that admixture, as the man across the Border can get. That policy is being pursued apparently in the belief that farmers like Senator Miss Browne and Senator Quirke will get a better price for their barley and oats than they have been getting heretofore.
The truth is that, as far as the figures I have been able to get would indicate, the price of barley and oats to-day — of oats certainly — is no better to the grain grower than it was in 1931 before this admixture scheme was put into operation at all. If that be so, the scheme is not justifying itself as far as the grain grower is concerned. I have never had very much sympathy with these grain growers and I have argued for years and given evidence before commissions to the effect that if the people of my county could grow grain as well as they can grow grain in other parts of the country, we would have everyone of our farms growing it and we would not have to be sending up to Kilkenny and other parts of the country to have it consumed. I believe that the people who countenance or encourage any other policy are doing something that is wrong for the country. It is no improvement for the grain growers and it is a terrible injustice to the small farmers all over the country who are the backbone of the country. Small farming in the Free State is going through a very depressing period. I believe myself that it has not been given a fair chance. In this connection, I think that the big fellow has had the best end of the stick up to the present. Some, of course, will argue that, with regard to the price of cattle, the big man has suffered. Of course, he has suffered to some extent. He suffered in the first year or so, of course, but since then he has been able to come back and he has been able to buy at the right price and has been able to make as much profit, and more, for the last two years on the cattle he bought than he ever did. Senator MacEllin knows that what I am saying is true.