When the Minister hears, as he ought to hear, that trains which are normally joined together at particular junctions in this country are not joined together but have to run separately into the city because of the fact that they are carrying emigrants to Great Britain, he will be better able to understand the reliability or otherwise of the correspondents who deal with this matter. Up to the year ended mid-1935, from an inward movement of population to an outward movement of population the change had been from 3,089 inwards to 23,711 outwards. Do not let the Minister begin to argue that emigration to Great Britain for the year ended June, 1936, or for the year ended December, 1936, was less than it was in 1935. Leave that to somebody like the Minister for Industry and Commerce, although in certain matters I find it very hard to discriminate between the powers of the Minister for Finance and those of the Minister for Industry and Commerce in dealing with matters, as the Minister for Industry and Commerce said yesterday, by any and every means. I should like to ask anybody whether a Government in whose period of office emigration was reduced completely and stopped, was a greater failure, judged on the question of emigration, than a Government which has restarted it, and restarted it in ever increasing numbers?
On the question of population, the Minister took over office when the population of this country was rising. For the year ended mid-1931, the year before he took over office, the population of this country had risen by 6,000. The fall in population, which had continued for such a long period, had ceased, and the population had begun to rise. It went up by 6,000 in the year ended June, 1931. It went up by an additional 16,000 in the following year, and by an additional 13,000 in the year after. In that year, and in the subsequent years, the population in this country was affected by the economic conditions brought about in this country; whereas the population rose by 16,000 in the year ended June, 1932, the rise was reduced to 13,000 in the year ended June, 1933, was further reduced by 9,000 in the year ended 1934, and then stopped. The population of this country began to decline again at the end of 1934, and it had gone down 5,146 by the middle of 1936. Judged on the question of population, the Government which the Fianna Fáil Party replaced in 1932 was a Government in whose time the continuous drop in the population of this country had ceased and the rise was started. Coming into that particular position, coming in with the foundations laid for protective trade for our farmers in the biggest market that they had—because the British market was bigger than the market here to the extent of about two to one—nevertheless that Party reduced this country, by the end of their third year of office, to a country in which the population was falling. We judge them then by their own standard—population—and we have to judge them a greater failure than what they call the greatest failure.
They pointed out the number of people who were on home assistance in this country. Only in September last year did the local authorities of this country reach the point at which they paid out less money in home assistance than they did in the corresponding month of 1931. From the coming of the Fianna Fáil Party into power up to September, 1936, in spite of all the moneys that the Minister was pouring out on relief, according to himself, in spite of the coming of unemployment assistance in the beginning of 1934, the condition of affairs in this country was such that the home assistance authorities throughout the country had to pay out every month more than was paid out in the corresponding month of the year 1931, the year before the Minister came into office. One of the signs given us by the Minister to show that the Government which preceded him was the greatest failure in Irish history was that the total number of persons in receipt of home assistance had risen to 70,325 at the time that he was publishing his propaganda. The latest figure we have for people in receipt of home assistance is 82,987, one-sixth higher, in spite of the fact that huge sums of money are being paid out in respect of unemployment assistance, and that 40,000 persons, unable to find work otherwise, are said to be engaged on public works. Judged by home assistance, we have that situation. Emigration was assuming the proportions of 27,000 a year, judged by the 1935 standard, and going higher, judged by the 1936 standard.
One of the points made against the previous Government was "that poverty and destitution were widespread, with a consequent heavy drain on public funds for the relief of distress." One of the schedules issued by the Minister for Finance in connection with his Budget statement is a schedule indicating the "enlightened social policy" that has been started. When moneys were provided for the relief of distress before the Fianna Fáil Party came into office it was a sign of the failure of the people who were in government. Now, just as emigration is "an outward movement of population," the heavy drain that is put on public funds for the relief of distress is to be described as "an enlightened social policy." The people are said to be able to bear the burden that is being put on them, a burden which amounts, in fact, to £7,649,000, exclusive of the borrowing raised per year in revenue, more than was raised per year in the five years before, £5,600,000 being a direct additional raising of taxation, and taking non-tax revenue, together with an additional imposition of £2,000,000 that was formerly imposed for other purposes and that is now being imposed for different purposes by the Minister.
Let us see the condition of the people from whom this is being raised. The Minister committed himself to the statement that.
"The condition of the people has been improving steadily, so that to-day they are much better off than during the five years which preceded the advent of the present Government."
Now, let us take agriculture first. Our people, we are told, are better off than they were in the five years which preceded the advent of the present Government. One of the charges against the Government that, according to the Minister's colleague, was "the greatest failure in Irish history," was that the number of persons engaged in farm work from 1927 to 1931 had fallen by 35,000. We have had a certain amount of argument between the Minister for Industry and Commerce and other members of the House about the figures relating to agricultural employment. Take the total number of males employed in agricultural. I am giving the figures from statistics issued by the Department of Industry and Commerce. I have expressly stated that during the Fianna Fáil period of office, 2,202 persons, males, have lost their employment in agriculture. The Minister for Industry and Commerce says that we cannot add up. He would like to shift and talk about paid male labour. Very good.
When the Fianna Fáil people said that there were 35,000 persons less employed in farm work in 1931 as against 1927, they ignored this completely: that something like 45,000 or 17,000 persons had been deliberately taken off for statistical purposes, that is the number of members of farmers' families recorded as being engaged in agriculture. For the purpose of showing the solidity of our economic foundations, let us compare the Government's achievements in the last five years with the previous five years as regards paid male labour in agriculture. Again I quote from the Minister's own statistics. Between June, 1927, and June, 1931, the number of paid males in agriculture had increased by 18,428. Between June, 1931, and June, 1936, the number of paid males engaged in agriculture had fallen by 532. It has been stated that the way to provide against emigration, to provide against "the outward movement of population," is to provide employment in this country, and in so far as employment means employment for wages, and in so far as agriculture is concerned, five years of Fianna Fáil administration have reduced the number of men paid wages in the June of the year by 532 persons, and the greatest failures in Irish history, in the same period of five years before the Fianna Fáil Party came into office, in the period which bore the brunt of the agricultural depression that is only now beginning to be realised by some members of Fianna Fáil, added 18,428 persons, male paid labour engaged in the agricultural industry.
One of the statements that is made as indicating how the agricultural industry must be well off is that in the matter of sugar there is £1,400,000 that, under other circumstances, would find its way into the Treasury, and that now, with the exception of £95,000, "goes to the benefit of the beet growers and those engaged in the factories and ancillary industries." We are told that £1,305,000 goes to the beet growers.
The Minister for Agriculture, at any rate, will admit that if beet growing is to reflect itself in improved economic conditions for the workers in agriculture, that ought to be so in places like Carlow, Kildare, Leix, Louth and Wexford. Yet we find that during the period when the number of paid male labour in agriculture was reduced, the wages in these counties were substantially reduced also. Again the official figures show that in spite of £1,305,000 of a subsidy for beet alone, paid by the purchasers of sugar, across the counter for their sugar, and going, as the Minister for Finance said, to the benefit of the beet growers and those engaged in the factories, the wages of agricultural labourers in Carlow are down by 3/- a week; in Kildare they are down by 6/- a week; in Leix, Louth and Wexford they are down by 3/6 a week.
That is the state of affairs in which we are told that the condition of our people has improved steadily. From a period during which over 18,000 additional agricultural male labourers were, as it were, put to work, and which was described by Fianna Fáil members as a period of the greatest failure in Irish history, we now turn to a period of five years when a greater strain was put on the popution of the country than ever before, to try and build up and support our agriculturists, to find that the number of persons employed for payment in agriculture has gone down and the wages have been substantially decreased.
We heard Deputy Keating last night doing what the Wexford County Committee of Agriculture also did—throwing aside completely the official figures of wages for agricultural workers and saying that agricultural labourers in Wexford are only paid 8/-, 9/- and 10/- per week. We had Deputy Hales in a very simple and plain speech yesterday showing what his position was. He said he was growing 21 acres of wheat, but left to himself he would only grow four. If he had to continue to grow 21 acres of wheat, his farm would deteriorate. In fact, he said that the foundation upon which the well-being of our people must rest was deteriorating very definitely as a result of the policy he was pursuing—pursuing because he was forced to pursue it; and pursuing in circumstances in which employment in agriculture and the amount of wages available in agriculture, instead of increasing, were decreasing.
Then we come to the industrial side. The Minister for Industry and Commerce indicated that 75,000 persons were put into employment during the period of office of the Fianna Fáil Government. It ought to be a very simple thing to say in what direction these people were put into employment. I submit that if the 75,000 persons come from the propaganda sheets of the year 1932, they have at least found a promise that they are prepared to say was implemented. But when Deputy Corish asked for information as to where these additional persons had been put into employment, he could not get that information. There are other aspects from which we can examine the industrial ground upon which this country must stand, if it is to carry on the work of keeping its people, carry on the work of government, and, particularly, if it is to be able to stand the terrible drain of taxation imposed at present on the country.
The preliminary figures of the Census of Production issued some time ago indicate that the increase in the gross production of the 23 industries dealt with in these returns, in the year 1935 over 1931, was £11,600,000. Deputy McGilligan has already had some argument with the Minister for Industry and Commerce on the subject of what is paid across the counter for that £11,600,000 worth of increased production. I am prepared to be even more modest than Deputy McGilligan was for the purpose of trying to reach some conclusion on the matter. I suggest that when wholesalers' profits, cost of transit and retailers' profits have been added to that £11,600,000, they amount to an additional £5,000,000. So that the increased production amounting to £11,600,000 means, when the goods are disposed of, a passage across the counter of about £16,600,000.
In these circumstances we naturally ask what is the addition to the wage pool of the people as the result of the industrial production which demands that amount of payment across the counter. We find that the increase in wages for the same period was £1,427,000. So that out of the £16,000,000 odd paid across the counter for increased industrial production, wage earners were only provided with an additional £1,427,000 in wages to purchase these materials. In other words, for every pound that crossed the counter, to take off the retailer's or wholesaler's hands the increase in industrial production between 1931 and 1935, 1/8½ was the amount that went into the wage earner's pockets. That wage earner is the man who has been struggling along all the time. He is the man who was told in 1932, when £4,000,000 additional taxation was being then put on to the people for the emergency Budget, that all that money was going to come off the rich. Ministers and Deputies went around the country explaining that very fully. He is the man on to whose back the greater part of that taxation has gradually slipped back. So much so, that we had the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance putting his back to the wall here last year and saying: "Why should not the workingman pay?"
The workingman is the person who is paying. So far as the increased industrial production is supposed to be solidly laying the foundation upon which our people can live and these burdens be raised, his position is shown by the fact that he gets 1/8½ as his share of the money that has to buy this increased industrial production out of every additional pound for, say, the retailer. To the ordinary person looking on, there is not very much soundness or solidity in that particular side.
Not only has the worker to bear the taxation, and to bear the high cost of bread, flour, bacon and sugar, but it is interesting to see how the tariff system, which has been set up to bring about increased industrial production, is reacting on the worker. The Minister for Industry and Commerce, addressing a meeting of drapers, recently said:
"Very often, if you go to a retailer he will give you a lot more information, a lot more reliable information, and a clearer picture of things, than you could get from any of the official statistics that are knocking around."
We heard a lot about the cost of living figure. That is another of the things that show that everything is in a very good economic position, and that the workers are better paid than ever. But the number of things that enter into the cost of living figure is very limited. I took a tip from the Minister for Industry and Commerce, and went to a retail trader on the one hand and to a wholesaler on the other hand. I took a certain line of goods, cups and saucers, mugs, tea-sets, dinner-sets, milk-jugs, enamelled basins, buckets, scrubbing brushes, teaspoons, enamelled kettles, zinc buckets, table knives and forks, and got the 1931-32 and 1936 prices. The wholesaler gave me the retail prices as he expected retail prices would run from his point of view. The retailer, over a somewhat increased list, gave me retail prices. It is well worth while enshrining them on the records of the House. I will take the retailer's list: Cups and saucers were 3½d., they are now 6½d., 7½d., and 9½d.; cups were 1½d., now 3d.; delph mugs were 2½d., now 6½d.; tea-sets were 3/11, now 9/11; dinner plates were 3d., now 4½d. and 6½d.; tea plates were 1½d., now 2½d. and 3½d.; milk jugs were 5½d., now 8d. for the ½ pint jug; flasks were 6½d., now 1/6 for 1/2 pint and pint flasks; enamelled milk jugs were 10d., now 1/3; enamelled baths were 1/6, now 1/11 for the small size; enamelled basins were 1/-, now 1/6 medium size; buckets were 1/-, now 1/11; teapots were 1/1, now 1/9; nest of five saucepans was 3/8½, now 5/11; scrubbing brushes that ranged from 2d., 3d. and 4½d., are now 3d., 4½d. and 6½d.; sweeping brushes that were 4½d. and 6½d. are now 11½d. and 1/3; teaspoons that were 1d., now 2d.; enamelled kettles that were 1/2, now 1/9; zinc buckets were 6½d., now 10½d.; zinc baths were 11½d., now 1/3; go-cars were 7/11 and 9/11, now 12/6 and 14/-; table knives were 7½d., now 1/3; table forks were 2d., now 3½d.; tea knives were 6½d., now 1/-. In short, if we take the statement of affairs given by that retailer, items that would have cost 28/3½ in 1931 would now cost 51/2, an increase of something over 80 per cent. The wholesaler's figures, that I have not read out, are in substantial agreement with the retailer's. In a list taken from the wholesaler of retail prices, items that in 1931 cost 19/6½ would now cost 37/-, an increase of 17/5½, or nearly 90 per cent. That is a list of items that go into the ordinary worker's house and quite a number of these items have a weekly or fortnightly breakage. The relief of 7d. that the Minister for Finance says is given in the Budget is completely swallowed up in the crockery line alone.
There is another side to the taxation of the workers on the one hand and industrial development on the other hand. Year after year the Minister has almost deliberately underestimated the amount of money he expected to get from customs duties. In spite of the nerve he has shown in presenting the bill to the people, he would like to reduce that item as much as he could, and therefore for a number of years we have had a system by which an estimate is made of what the Minister expects from customs duties and, at the end of the year, he has to announce, as he announced this year, that he received more than £600,000 out of the people's pockets than he pretended he was going to get. Another aspect of the people's income that has to be taken into consideration is this, that while there is an increase in the number of persons employed in the 23 industries covered by the Census of Production there is a decrease in their wages. The average wages paid workers in the 23 industries covered by the Census of Production for 1931 and 1935 show a reduction of £16 a year. If coachbuilding, which has certain complications, is excluded the average reduction is £10 a year—actually £9 18s. 0d. In some of the industries the fall in wages is markedly substantial. In the malting industry the average decrease in wages was £25 18s. 0d. a year; in aerated waters it was £4 3s. 0d.; in the tobacco industry, £5 6s. 0d.; in brickmaking £29 12s. 0d.; in the furniture industry, £5 8s. 0d.; in metals and engineering, £4 13s. 0d.; in engineering and implements, £20 12s. 0d.; in boots and shoes, £24 4s. 0d.; in soap and candles £14 15s. 0d.; in fertilisers, £14 1s. 0d.
According to figures furnished Deputy Everett recently as to the average number of contributions under the insurance Acts paid for men, women, boys and girls, in so far as there is increased security in industry for any classes of men, boys, women or girls, the increased security for women is about half as against men. The increased security for boys is twice that of men, and the increased security for girls is three times that of men.
The Minister for Industry and Commerce again returned to the question of the consumption of certain necessaries of life as a criterion of the people's purchasing capacity. We cannot get away from that as one of the principal criteria of the people's purchasing capacity. Again, he indicated that people were spending more on clothing and were better clad. At the end of last year or the beginning of this year, the Minister for Industry and Commerce published the Trade and Shipping Statistics for 1935. He warned the House yesterday that you cannot compare one single year with another as if those of us who had been arguing on this question had been comparing a single year with another. We have brought the broad facts for the years 1933, 1934 and 1935—one year running with another—before the Minister for Industry and Commerce. These facts were not easily ascertainable but they could be ascertained with a certain amount of trouble. In respect of boots, clothing and a number of other articles, there were very definite indications that the purchasing power of the people had been reduced. In order to be impressed with that fact, it was not necessary for us to have that evidence because we had evidence that if every scrap of wheat, beet and agricultural produce kept out of this country by the general policy of the Government during the past five years had been made up by increased production on the part of the Irish farmer, the Irish farmer, nevertheless, had lost during the past five years £38,600,000 on his own production. We did not want any detailed statistics to show that if the farmers lost £39,000,000 —an amount that was probably increased to the farmer by the confusion his industry was thrown into —the purchasing power of our people in the towns and the purchasing power of the rural labourer were definitely cut down. The figures issued by the Minister for Industry and Commerce give the contradiction direct to the things that he has been not only saying for the last two or three years but which he has the nerve to say to-day. He deliberately told this House that the people were using more boots than ever. In his own publication—Trade and Shipping Statistics, 1935, XXIII —it is shown that, in the year 1932, our consumption of boots was 47,000 dozen pairs below the level of the year 1931; that the figure for 1931 was 16,000 dozen pairs over the level of the year 1933, 19,000 dozen pairs over the level of the year 1934 and 14,000 dozen pairs over that of 1935. The statistics also show that the average cost of boots and shoes in the year 1935 was greater than it was for any year up to and including 1932. The Minister gave some explanation of that. He said that rubber boots and shoes of a cheap kind were coming in and were being largely used and that he put a quota or embargo on this footwear to drive people back to leather. That emphasises what I have been endeavouring to show before—that our consumption of boots and shoes is down by this substantial amount in spite of the fact that in 1934 and 1935 120,000 dozen pairs of boots and shoes of the kind the Minister mentioned yesterday were imported into this country at a cost of 17/7 per dozen. The Minister ought to realise that no blustering statements of his here will hide from the people who have to buy boots and shoes for their own families the facts disclosed by his official information and brought out by us in the figures we have furnished to him. These facts show that the people are not using the same number of boots and shoes now that they were able to use before. The reason they are not doing that is that they have not the money.
The Minister turned to clothing. He said we were using more clothing. I should like to know in what circles the Minister moves when he tells the House that the cost of clothing is not rising. I should also like the Minister for Finance, when he comes to deal with the increased taxes on clothing, to discuss the extent to which these increased taxes are going to raise the cost of clothing. Due again to the falling purchasing power of the people, due to the taking of £39,000,000 out of the pockets of the farmers and the effect of that on the towns and on industry generally, the people, in the year 1932, consumed £923,000 worth less clothing and £700,000 of that was exclusive of hosiery. The position was worse in the following year. The consumption of clothing fell by £1,154,000, £916,000 of which was exclusive of hosiery. In the year 1934, the consumption was down by £887,000, £741,000 of which was exclusive of hosiery. In 1935, the consumption was down by £594,000, £568,000 of which was exclusive of hosiery. Where do these figures come from? They come from page xxi and xxiii of the Trade and Shipping Statistics, 1936, issued by the Minister for Industry and Commerce. We drew the attention of the Minister to that in the year 1934 and in the year 1935 on our own responsibility and we would have done so in respect of last year if we had not his figures on which to go. The Minister for Industry and Commerce or his Department, which is more logically-minded and more responsibly-minded——
