There has been a considerable amount of hostility here in this country to agriculture. It is said that agriculturists have always a poor mouth, that they are always claiming something they are not entitled to. I heard a claim made a month ago by one of the best men of figures in the County Kilkenny. He said: "Look at all we have paid to help to purchase the agricultural holdings of the country for the farmers under the recent British Acts." I asked him at how much loss was he or the community. He said they paid a considerable amount of money. The facts were on the basis of the £63,000,000 that we owed England, the whole of the United Kingdom was asked to contribute £300,000 and that was for all the Acts and in the particular Acts a certain bonus had to be made up by the taxpayer. I will not go into that, because I will just assume in round numbers that they were paying a bonus on all the Acts, because it does not matter which. It was £300,000 on all the citizens of the United Kingdom. I will not go on the President's or the Prime Minister's contention that we are only a sixty-sixth part of the United Kingdom. I will go on the population basis and say we are about a thirty-third, to be more accurate and just. On that basis our contribution towards the £300,000 would be £9,090 and, reduced to pence, it would be a lot less than 1d. per head of our population.
Now, the profits and the turnover of industry 40 or 50 years ago and to-day are two different things. When the basis of income was fixed 50 years ago it was fixed on infinitely better terms than it is to-day. We had more prosperity and more security. Our overheads were less. Our wages bill was less and outgoings in every direction were less. Our profits and the prices we got for our produce were as good as and in some cases better than they are to-day. We were able to get as good a price for corn, barley and oats, and as good a price for every other article. We were able to get as much for our cattle.
Our wages bill was, practically speaking, nothing compared with what it is to-day; our rates were nothing compared with the rates to-day; the cost of machinery and overheads were not more than one-third what they are to-day; replacement costs would be only one-third what they are to-day. In every way our prosperity and security were infinitely better than to-day. Even when there was a doubt about our position, we got the benefit of it. They put in a clause in the Finance Act indicating that, if we could not show a profit, we paid no income-tax. What is the contrast from the business point of view? Take the case of the baker, the professional man or anybody else and you will find that a revolution has taken place in the last 40 or 50 years. As a matter of fact, the position is altogether reversed. There would be some justification years ago in saying that a landlord was receiving a good income out of his land and he did not earn it. To-day that condition of things has disappeared. The poor man of that day is the rich man of to-day. The poor man of that day is a man of wealth to-day, and the man who possessed wealth at that time is not to-day in a position to pay anything.
We are asking no charity, no compassion. We merely want justice and equity, and those things we are going to get. You may talk as you like about the mandate you got at the election, but remember, you will be asking for another mandate within the next four or five years. That day is going to come and we will get what we are entitled to get. No Government can exist defending a position like that. Our claim cannot be attacked on any just grounds. Although you may use the big stick and talk about the majority received under a series of heads, not alone under this particular head, and although you may refer to the claims and appeals to the electorate, you have no mandate in this case, and this country would be a slave country and a cowardly country, not deserving of the salt used in its baptism, if one section of the people lived as slaves to the other half.
I remember the time when the school teacher was paid by results, and the payment might amount to £55 or £75 a year. The position is very different to-day. I suppose the salary to-day runs to £400. I am speaking subject to correction, but I think, roughly, that it runs to £400. There are many officials in the same category. A revolution has taken place in that status, and you cannot ignore it. I am not asking that these people should be burdened or that anything should be done to victimise them. I am merely asking for justice for ourselves. We should not be saddled with an impost that has no foundation in justice and equity. What is this heritage you have got? It is a heritage transmitted by the old British régime, by the old privileged, landlord class. Some people might talk about the sacred position, but what is sacred about it?
I might add, too, that things have occurred in the farming industry. Circumstances are present now that were not present some years ago. We have epidemics passing through agriculture at the moment, serious epidemics that were not heard of 30 or 40 years ago. Herds of cattle can be turned on the scrap-heap with a visitation, and no one can help us to combat that. I say that the position is infinitely worse from every point of view. Any Executive that wants to be just to all citizens cannot afford to ignore the agricultural community, and they should not try to impose penalties on people unable to bear them. I am talking now about the need for treating the farmers justly. No one section of the people should be asked to slave for the other section. At the moment there is no equity, and I do not know how any Ministry could defend the position. Is there any Deputy here who could indicate any section of the people subject to the same imposts as members of the agricultural community are subject to?
I want you to compare the conditions of the citizens of the towns, the comforts and the social services they have, the hours they have to work, the pay they receive on holidays, with the conditions of the people who have to live on the hillsides, on the mountain-sides through the country, with their poor approaches, bad lanes and roadways. At one time the highways were available for us. We could go out and drive our cattle and other stock to markets and fairs and to the railways; we could drive our horses to the towns. We cannot do that now. If we attempt to drive cattle on the roads they are flopping at every turn and get their legs broken, and there is no compensation. We are, practically speaking, driven off the main roads, the highways of the country. Contrast the lives of the country people with the lives of the people who live in the towns. The country people have not the same social services and they receive nothing except what they provide with their own hands. Anybody who has gone through half a dozen or a dozen campaigns the same as I have, and who knows every home in his constituency, will realise the position of our boys and girls to-day.
There are people who wonder why boys and girls stay on the land at all. So-called statesmen get up here and elsewhere and ask why are the people fleeing the country, emphasising that we must keep them on the land. How can you keep them on the land? Why do you not give them fair play? Have you any idea of the lives they lead? Have you any sympathy with the people on the land? You have not any; you have not shown any in practice, anyhow. The people are leaving the country districts. There are no marriages because young men will not accept the responsibility that in ordinary circumstances people would be expected to accept. The men and women are growing old and none of them get married and you are coming to the time when that position will have serious reactions. If the reactions do not appear to you now, they will in ten years' time or less. Nobody wants to stay on the land. Boys and girls want to leave it, glad to escape into anything else.
In the country that I know so well you do not find much lipstick or much polishing of nails. You will find girls there chopping fir stumps to get a bit of fire in order to cook the meals. It is all very well for some Deputies to laugh at that, but the people who laugh do not know the country. The country is not going to stand it. Revolutions have been put on the way in other countries for less, and I would welcome a revolution here when it comes, and a revolution will come unless there is justice done to the people. You cannot compel them to live under the conditions that they have in the country while other people here and in the towns are having a much better time. Any Executive Council that is not prepared to give greater justice to those people in the country does not deserve to occupy the position of an Executive Council. I do not care by what means they have got to the position of being a Government, they will have to do justice to all the citizens of the State.