One of the most striking things in the speeches which we heard upon this motion from the Government Benches was the unwillingness of Fianna Fáil speakers to discuss the motion at all—to come down and deal with the substantive proposition embodied in it. We had a very long, a very wearisome, speech from the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and, during the whole course of that speech, he only once dealt with the motion. He never once expressed a view as to whether, in the present circumstances, it was necessary or advisable to give financial assistance to farmers who are now unable to make ends meet, to purchase the necessary manures to fertilise their crops. The speech was a very typical speech coming from the Parliamentary Secretary. It was full of all those personalities, all that abuse, that is so very typical of the ordinary speech which we get from him, and it was, indeed, more typical of his mind than the ordinary speech that comes from him because that speech, from beginning to end, showed a complete ignorance of the very elements of the matter with which he was professing to deal.
I think that if the Executive Council have any spare money they might invest a little, or make up a whip amongst themselves, for the purpose of purchasing a primer on political economy for the use of the Parliamentary Secretary. He wants such a book very badly. I do not suggest that they should buy any of these little booklets about deportment in good society, or how to behave, or relating to good manners. I do not think a book of that nature could possibly improve him. I do not think he is susceptible to improvement in that respect. I think, however, if they purchased a little book on political economy he might master some of the elements of that subject.
The Parliamentary Secretary was very strong upon the worthlessness of the English market and he seems to think that the English market is a market that can be controlled completely against the people of this country. He talks about our people having only one purchaser for their produce. It seems the Parliamentary Secretary has got an idea that there is a sort of collective trading between State and State, that Ireland as a whole deals with England as a whole and that there is a collective selling and a collective buying. There is nothing of the kind. When we talk about the English market we mean not one particular market but a number of markets scattered all over Great Britain, and we talk not of one individual purchaser but a very large number of purchasers.
When we talk about selling cattle in the English market we do not talk about selling our cattle collectively. It is a case of each individual Irishman selling his own stuff. So far as we are concerned, until this economic war broke out there was no difference between the Dublin and the English market. They were located in different places, but there was no greater difference between the market in Dublin or the market in Cork than between the market in Dublin and the markets in Birkenhead and Glasgow. There is no such thing involved as collective buying or collective selling. Dealings between countries, when they are unregulated by Governments, consist of dealings between individual citizens of each country. If the Parliamentary Secretary could get that very elementary proposition into his head he would be saved from falling into the pitfall into which he is rapidly falling.
I am not going to take up the time of the House by following the Parliamentary Secretary through his long speech. I will just say this much, that when he talks about frozen or chilled meat as being superior and more attractive to the housekeeper than home-produced beef, and when he says you can get from your butcher chilled meat which is ready to be cooked, but if you go to the butcher and buy home-produced beef you can never get it fit to be cooked and you have to keep it for some days and that is an enormous disadvantage to the housekeeper, he is not speaking quite in accordance with the facts. I do not know who is the butcher who supplies the Parliamentary Secretary's household with meat, but I think if the speech were made outside that the butcher cannot supply tender meat to his customers, that butcher would have an action for slander against the Parliamentary Secretary.
Of course, the market for chilled and the market for fresh meat are completely different markets. Fresh meat and chilled meat are different articles. They are as different almost as butter is from margarine. If people are hard up and there is not much purchasing power they will not buy the very best stuff. They will not buy home-produced beef. They will fall back on the inferior article. In just the same way, if they are too poor to buy butter they will fall back on margarine. When you get a country which is well established in its trade and doing well financially, the market for home-produced fresh beef or mutton increases and the market for chilled meat declines. In times of depression the reverse operation takes place. At the present moment there is a very big trade depression in England. Indeed, there is a trade depression the world over and many persons have been driven off the fresh meat standard on to the chilled meat standard. But let there be a revival and they will go back from the chilled meat standard to the fresh meat standard.
I will pass over an equally long speech by Deputy Corry, because when that speech was over I asked the Deputy whether he was in favour of or against the motion and he did not know what was his attitude. I will come down to the speech of the Minister for Agriculture, who dealt with general propositions and not with the particular motion before the House. I will follow him to some extent. I think the Minister has not consciously deceived the House, but before he got up to address the House he might have done Deputies the courtesy of doing a little thinking and a little reading. I think if he had consulted even the most obvious sources of information he would not have made the extraordinary speech which he did make here. He started off in an endeavour to show that the economic war has not hurt the Irish agricultural industry. He starts off by what he calls a little bit of arithmetic. He wants to get the average prices for cattle in 1931 and 1932 and he says that the enormous drop in the value of exports is due very considerably to the fact that 120,000 fewer head of cattle were exported in 1932. He then proceeds to do a bit of division and he says the loss or the difference in price is only £2 a head.
If, as I say, the Minister for Agriculture had done a little bit of thinking—if the Minister for Agriculture had ever visited a fair—I do not know if he did since he became Minister—or if he consulted anybody who knew anything about the cattle trade, he would know that when cattle are down in value, there is no demand for them. It is only the very best cattle that are bought. The cattle that are rough, unfinished, lean or not very well-shaped young stores, are the ones that go home from the market unsold. When one is comparing the prices of cattle in 1931 and 1932 and when one takes 120,000 less exported in 1932 one must bear in mind that it is those cattle that remained unsold that are not exported. When you are making such a comparison you are comparing as it were the prices of cream with the prices of milk. That is what the Minister is doing when he is comparing the exports of 1931 with the exports of 1932. In 1931 all the cattle that we wished to export were exported and sold. To use a metaphor I used a moment ago, the cattle exported in 1931 may be regarded as the milk, but as to the cattle exported in 1932 when we were forced to export 120,000 less cattle, an enormous proportion of them would be the cream of our cattle.
If the Minister for Agriculture had given any thought to the matter he would have seen that in that little calculation he was making he was comparing the prices of cream with the prices of milk, a most fallacious thing to do. Then he goes on again and we get the most extraordinary statement from him. He says: "Again if we look at the export of sheep and lambs there was a reduction of 124,000 and in pigs 173,000. There was a very big percentage reduction in the amount of eggs exported amounting to 800,000 eggs or 25 per cent."
What is the conclusion one can draw from that? That we have lost our live-stock market and cannot export. That is the conclusion that any reasonable person would draw. The Minister for Agriculture however invents an extraordinary individual whom he calls a fair-minded person. I am afraid his "fair-minded" person must be a very strange person because apparently he has got no mind at all. The Minister says:
"Any fair-minded person, looking at this would come to the only conclusion he could come to, namely, that the number of cattle, sheep, pigs and poultry at the beginning of 1932 was considerably down compared with the number in 1931. But if the Government is to be held responsible for the economic conditions that prevailed, as Deputy Fitzgerald-Kenney has tried to establish, we can retort and say that the Cumann na nGaedheal Governmen for ten years brought this country to such a state of bankruptcy that the export of cattle, sheep, pigs and hens was killed and that we had neither cattle, sheep and pigs to export nor hens to lay because of their action."
That is the conclusion which he says any fair-minded person would draw. I presume that that is the conclusion which the Minister honestly drew himself. What are the facts? The Minister for Agriculture can turn to such a very ordinary book as the Statistical Abstracts for 1932 and he can compare the number of live stock in this country in 1931 which was just six months before the last Government went out of office. He can compare the figures of the amount of live stock in this country in 1931 with those in the preceding years. I will take for instance the year 1925 as the beginning of a six-year period. In 1925 the total number of horses in this country was 433,971; in 1931, there were 449,697 or an increase of nearly 16,000 horses in six years. If we take the cattle we find that the number of cattle in the year 1925 was 3,947,000. The number of cattle in 1931 was 4,029,000, again showing an increase. If we take the number of sheep in 1925 we find that the number was 2,800,000. In 1931 the number of sheep in the country was 3,500,000; that is to say the number of sheep had increased by nearly three-quarters of a million between 1925 and 1931. But he says there were no hens left to lay. The number of laying hens in the country in 1926, the first year for which the figures are available was 6,900,000. In 1931 the number of laying hens in the country was 7,700,000; that is an increase of 800,000 in six years.
Now there you have a very ordinary book, a book carrying the figures down to 1931, a book which the Minister could have consulted if he wished. But instead of consulting it, instead of looking at the actual figures, he makes this extraordinary statement about the number of live stock having been reduced during the time of the Cumann na nGaedheal Government. I have no doubt that if the Minister went to the Department of Industry and Commerce he could have got the figures for 1932. But instead of taking that course, instead of doing the obvious thing, instead of raising this "fair-minded" person he comes along here and states that there were no cattle left in the country, and that there were no sheep left in the country because of the action of the last Administration. I wonder if he thinks he is treating the House fairly? I wonder if that is the way a grave and serious problem of agriculture should be tackled by the Minister for Agriculture?
Surely the Minister should do the House the courtesy of thinking a little and verifying his figures before he comes into this House and makes a speech on agricultural matters. He goes on then to deal with other matters connected with agriculture, and he says that it is a very excellent thing that the price of seed oats is up. I mentioned that I got £8 a ton for seed oats. That he says is a very great benefit which is due to the action of the Government. Let us agree that it is. But what advantage is it to the Irish farmer that seed oats is dear? Who buys the oats from the Irish farmer except a neighbouring farmer? How does that enrich the farming community as a whole? In fact it is only a question of transferring money from one pocket to another. That is not enriching the farmer. He goes along then and says that if seed oats are up the farmers are getting rich. The truth is that in a year like this it would be more helpful to the Irish farmer if seed oats were cheaper.
Then the Minister talks about dairying. There is no question but that the dairying industry did require assistance. He said that we voted against the Bill he introduced. We did but when we were voting against that Bill the Minister was plainly told by the previous Minister for Agriculture, Deputy Hogan, that he considered it was necessary to help the dairying industry; that he considered and brought before the then Executive Council this Australian scheme which was ready cut and dried to hand to the Minister for Agriculture. He took that scheme and considered that it was not the best and most effective way in which to help the dairying industry. Deputy Hogan said that he considered there were other methods by which the industry could be better helped than by that particular method which was devised not by the Government but by a body of producers in Australia for their own protection.
The Minister goes on again and shows how little he knows about Irish farming conditions. He says that if there were no dairying there would be no cattle production; there would be no calves and the live-stock industry would cease if there were no dairying. I tell the Minister that there are large areas in the country in which there is no dairying carried on at all. I would ask him if he ever heard of Hereford cattle, Polled Angus cattle and Galloway cattle in the rougher parts of the mountains? Does he think that anyone ever kept Hereford and Polled Angus cows for the purpose of dairying? Is he aware that there are those breeds in the country; that the beef breeds exceed in value very much the dairy breeds; and that the export of live stock, even at peak point, is four times as important at least as our dairy produce ever was?
There are huge areas of the country in which there is no dairying carried on at all. In my constituency, the part of the country in which I am most interested, there is one dairy, and that dairy last year spent in the purchase of milk a sum of £3,000. To do one of those sums in simple arithmetic that the Minister is so fond of, that would work out at something like 8d. per head of the population in that constituency. The dairying industry is a tremendously important one to Irish agriculture. It is an industry that did require assistance and had to be assisted, but as to whether it was assisted in the right way is another matter with which I am not dealing. To say that the dairying industry is the beginning and the end of Irish agriculture is completely wrong.
The Minister dealt with other matters in this effort to show that the economic war is not ruining the country when everybody knows that it is. He spoke, for instance, about bacon being kept out of the country, and he put as an asset to the farmer the fact that less bacon was imported last year than the year before. How did that help the farmer? The one thing that interests the farmer is what price he gets for his pigs. Of course there was less bacon. If people have to kill their sheep and lambs and sell them at 3d. per lb., as was done all over the country, of course there will be no bacon imported. Who is going to buy bacon when he can get mutton and lamb at 3d. per lb., and very often less than that? One of the serious things that the Minister will find is that sheep farming was being carried on last year at such a terrific loss that the number of sheep in the country will be terribly depleted and it will be very difficult in a great number of areas to get an adequate supply of breeding ewes when times improve and this wretched economic war is brought to a conclusion. When I was listening to all these arguments put forward by the Minister, not a single one of which would hold water, a phrase came into my mind of Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. He said: "The mind of a bigot is like the pupil of the eye, the more light you pour into it the more it contracts." That seems to be the position of mind into which the Minister has brought himself. The more clear, the more obvious, and the more apparent it is from the facts of everyday life that agriculture is being ruined by this economic war, the more the Minister contracts his mind and refuses to deal with the patent and obvious facts. Of course this country is being ruined. The Minister, in one portion of his speech, gave the better part of his mind a little fair play when he stated: "We are told that all this thing is due to the economic war. There may be something to be said for that, that paying duty on our exports to Great Britain must necessarily take something off the value of the exports." One would not mind if it was stated as an ordinary fact that it was due to the economic war, but the implication is always there, and something more than the implication, the definite assertion is there, that it is due to us that the economic war came about.
He admits in that statement, or certainly goes very near admitting, that the present condition of agriculture is due to the economic war, as everybody knows it is. He says they are not to blame for that war. Why did they fire the first shot? I am using the President's own phrase. He stated in the House that they fired the first shot in the economic war, and if they fired the first shot in the economic war surely they are responsible for the war. And they fired the first shot without having made any preparation or thought out the matter at all or foreseen what the effects would be. There is where the present Administration is doubly culpable.
The live-stock industry is in a most terrible condition at present and I wish the Minister would recognise that. In March, 1914, before the outbreak of the war, the average price of fat cattle in the Dublin market was 33/- per cwt. I do not know what the price was yesterday, but on yesterday week the price was 27/6. In other words, fat cattle are now selling 5/6 per cwt. cheaper in the Dublin market than the pre-war price. Take the fall from last year. Cattle were 27/6 per cwt. this year in that market; last year they were 41/- — a tremendous drop. They were 6d. per cwt. dearer in 1932 than in 1931. When the Minister goes through the figures of exports he ought to bear in mind that in the spring of 1932 fat cattle were going well. As I have said, in 1932 they were slightly dearer than in 1931. Anybody who deals in stores knows that in the first months of 1932 store cattle were going very much better than in 1931. They are dropping now every day. We know that cattle bought while this 40 per cent. duty was in force are not now paying anything for their winter feeding. That is the common experience. The profit made on the winter feeding of cattle bought after the economic war had been declared ought to be the same as in any other winter, but it was not. The reason is that the market is completely glutted. There were these 120,000 cattle that were not exported, could not be sold, and cattle were not slaughtered indiscriminately as sheep were. Really the Government have established a sort of blockade around this State and we are suffering now as a result.
Now I come to the affirmative part of my motion, and I wish the whole discussion had been kept upon that part. The Minister says it was vindictively put because it states that in the opinion of the Dáil the economic policy of the Executive Council has in its results impoverished a majority of the farmers. The Minister says that is vindictive. If the fair-minded people that the Minister alludes to, if the Fianna Fáil Party would honestly face the facts, it would be and ought to be common case in this House, that this economic policy is ruining the farmers. Everybody knows that, and it ought to be frankly admitted. I could understand the Government saying: "The agricultural community is suffering very heavily at present but there are advantages to be got elsewhere from our policy." I could understand that case being made, though I do not agree with it, but I cannot understand people saying that this policy is not injuring the country. There ought to be common case, and it should be recognised that it is not merely injuring but breaking the State. "Why," I am asked, "did you put that in?" I put those words in for this reason, that because your policy is putting a burden upon the agricultural community you have greater responsibility to them than you would otherwise have. You said they gave you a majority, and because they gave you a majority—because you have 77 Deputies in this House—you think all your responsibilities are gone. You take up this attitude, as far as I can gather: "Those farmers put us in here. They knew our policy. That policy is working and destroying them. It is their own fault and we will not go out of our way to alleviate their condition. We will simply come along and say: ‘You are not suffering at all'." We know it got them in at the last election. We know there were 77 Fianna Fáil Deputies elected, or, as it was very happily put by a Fianna Fáil Deputy some time ago, 77 living tomb-stones, —Fianna Fáil Deputies.
