In the question I put to the Minister for Agriculture to-day I asked if he had received a copy of a resolution adopted unanimously by the South Tipperary County Council relating to increases in the prices of wheat, beet and milk. That was a resolution with which the three political Parties together with the Independents agreed and in that respect it was unique. I suppose we are about to reach the millennium—that there will be no opposition. It might be a grand omen for the future. The resolution reads:—
"That this meeting of the South Tipperary County Council appeal to the responsible Minister to increase the price of milk by at least 3d. per gallon as milk at present prices would not cover the cost of production."
The present price is about 10½d.
"We also call upon the Minister to increase the price of wheat and beet so that the farmers would have some little return for their labours—wheat by 10/- per barrel and beet by 10/-per ton. We are also of opinion that 17.5 is too high an average for the sugar content of beet as scarcely any beet has so high an average. We consider we are fully entitled to those prices as the cost of production, manure, etc., is excessive at the present moment when compared with the price of agricultural produce."
The Minister's reply to-day was a gem, a classic. He said:—
"I have seen a copy of the resolution mentioned by the Deputy. The prices for wheat of the 1946 crop were fixed by the Emergency Powers (Cereals) Order, 1946, made on 12th June 1946. No alteration in these prices is contemplated.
As regards milk prices, it is not proposed to depart from the terms of the White Paper recently issued on the subject. I do not fix the price of beet."
In Heaven's name, to whom are we to appeal, if not to the Minister for Agriculture? That resolution was sent to each T.D. for the county—I am the only T.D. who is a member of the South Tipperary County Council—to each county council—many of the replies from whom were favourable and I expect that every reply will be favourable—the Department of Agriculture and the Department of Industry and Commerce. The reply of the Minister was the weakest I have ever heard in this House.
With regard to milk, the cow is described as the foster-mother of humanity and the bedrock of agriculture—a perfect description. On the small Munster farms they sell the calves at ten to 12 months' old. The calves go to the small farmers in Connacht who keep them for four or five months and make money on them. The small farmers in Munster cannot keep them beyond that age, although the larger farmers can keep them a little longer. I should like to remind our Leinster friends that their economy depends on the bullocks from Munster which are so despised. They have to keep tilling their land—it will not grow grass. After a year or two, having taken a couple of crops of hay, they must break it up and their economy will fall when our bullocks cannot come on.
Our cow population is being steadily diminished. I milked 32, but now I am down to 16, and that is typical of what is happening all over Munster. The Leinster fattening districts, from Wexford up, the district around Athy and so on, which eat the rye-grass, hay, oats, turnips and mangolds depend on our bullocks, and, last but not least, the bullock is the manure maker on the farm. There is no other animal able to make manure in bulk but the bullock. The cow does it for us on the Munster farm. The whole economic structure of this country will fall when the cow goes down, and yet nothing can be done to increase the price of milk. The bacon industry and even the poultry industry depend on it. Separated milk and skimmed milk are better than meat and bone meal for the production of eggs. It is pretty hard to keep a herd of cattle going, in view of the incidence of disease and so on.
With regard to beet, there must be a sugar content of 17.5 per cent. before the full price can be secured, and, when carriage is taken off, we in the remote areas get about £3 6s. od. About three months ago, the Minister for Finance took 1d. off the pound of sugar. It read well and there were headlines in all the papers about it. To the average family of five, it represents 3¾d. or 4d. What could you buy for that? Would you get any sugar for it? We people in the country can get a little porridge or a bit of bacon and egg, but what about the unfortunate people who have none of these and who cannot get jam? Yet if the Minister had put one-sixth on to the price of the farmers' beet, there would be some chance of these people getting it. It would represent about the 10/- a ton we asked for. We have also the position with regard to the meagre butter ration as a result of the depleting of our cow population. Think of all the jam which could be made from crab apples, blackberries, fallen apples and so on which are all going to waste instead of being converted into jam.
They tell us: "We made you grow wheat." They woke up and told us we could grow wheat. Our forefathers knew that we could grow wheat. But for how long can we grow it? We grew it in '53 for three years during the Russian War and for three or four years of the American Civil War and when that war was over, in the late 60's, the land grew nothing but scutch grass, and there was a bigger emigration from this country in the next decade than there was in any 20 or 25 years. We are told by the politicians: "We made you grow wheat." What is the legacy of the wheat? The land is growing nothing but the scutch grass which follows the wheat. There is no antidote to Providence and scutch grass is the legacy that has followed wheat, when you grow it too long. Pay the man who likes to grow it, but there is definitely more work where the cow is and more men are employed.
A certain member of this House made a test and found that, comparing County Wexford with the rural part of County Limerick, there are more men employed in Limerick. The cow is the great employer of labour. Too much continuous wheat growing is drawing an overdraft on the bank of nature and when the bill is presented for payment there are no reserves to meet it. Let the man who thinks his land is good enough to grow wheat grow it and pay him for it, but he will find out very soon that he cannot continue to grow it. Of course, wheat must be grown: you cannot let people starve, while the emergency is on. It was grown in the last war under the aegis of the British Government, it was grown in the Crimean War and in the American Civil War and will be grown in any future war. No political Party need to tell us what to do. The two generations of tradition before us have told us and these are the things they talk about at the fireside. We know what the farms are able to do and do not want much lecturing.
I would like the Minister to indicate in his reply what will be done about these three things. You could put a man working in every third house in the country, but the men are not to be got, owing to the flight from the land. They are good judges and they know the work is white slavery. I was down on a Saturday evening at 3.30 and drove around three miles of the country, and between 8 and 9 o'clock I dropped into two different farmers, and winding up at 9.15 p.m. I found a poor devil coming in with a pair of horses after having cut hay. The farmers are working night and day. There is no parallel for the slavery of the Irish farm. I have lived over 20 years in this city and I am not talking through my hat. I know the two sides of the question as I am now over 20 years at home in my native Tipperary. Within the pages of Uncle Tom's Cabin—and nowhere else—will you find a parallel for the slavery of Irish farm life. It led up to the American Civil War, yet we are told nobody is responsible in this House. Here is your document, in which all Parties are agreed that something must be done for farm production, to end slavery.
I am not sent here as a supplicant, a cadger or a beggar, nor would I come here for that purpose, nor would those who sent me here send me for that purpose. The horse wants a rest. The Almighty made the seventh day holy and a day of rest. The men who have been working up to 9 o'clock on Saturday have to get up at 6 o'clock on Sunday to milk the cows. They may cycle back eight or ten miles after a hurling or a football match, to milk the cows again on Sunday evening. It is the whitest of white slavery. The men on the land must be paid properly or the flight will continue. We have 65 per cent. of the population working eight hours a day—I myself worked a long time at eight hours a day—and 35 per cent. working in what I call not the Irish Free State but the "Slave State," as the tail is wagging the dog. We want equality of effort, equality of reward and equality of sacrifice. We want a fair price for our stuff.
