With reference to the fact that I am speaking from this bench, may I say, in the first instance, that I do so with a certain diffidence because I like not the foremost place in the synagogue. But it was suggested to me that such service as I can render in this House can be rendered more effectively from this bench than from any other, and, there fore, I accepted the invitation to sit here as an obligation as well as an honour. I do so only on the understanding that those who sit on this bench are not bound by any Party Whips, and that we remain the captains of our souls. I welcome the statement made by Senator Quirke from the other side that there is a similar freedom from Party discipline with regard to the group associated in sympathy with him.
May I say, with reference to the very eloquent speech to which we have just listened and which few of us understood, that, every member of this House has a perfect right under the Constitution to express himself in the Irish language, but there is also an obligation on all of us to try and make ourselves intelligible to the other members of the House. That presents a practical problem which, up to the moment, has not been solved in this House. This summer I had an opportunity of attending a conference of agricultural economists in Montreal. It was attended by the representatives of at least a dozen or a score of nations. The languages used were at least three —English, French and German. Everyone had the right to express himself in one or other of those languages. Everyone listening was able to follow the speeches made, in whatever language used, almost as soon as they were delivered, because opposite each person was a set of earphones. All that a person had to do, if he could not understand the language which the speaker was using, was to put the earphone over his head, and then he heard, word for word, a perfect translation, in his own language, of what was being said. I would suggest, in all seriousness, that if we are not to make the use of Irish in this House a farce we should adopt some such arrangement, so that all of us may understand what each of us is saying.
With regard to the resolution which Senator Counihan has moved, I would like to say a few words, first of all, about the immediate economic background which has given rise to the resolution, and, secondly, with reference to the immediate financial problem affecting the price of cattle, which also has given rise to the resolution. There has been, in the last ten years, a considerable tendency in all important countries in the world to feed one dog with a portion of the other dog's tail. In the case of Great Britain it has been perfectly feasible to feed to the agricultural dog a portion of the industrial dog's tail because the agricultural dog is relatively a very small animal, and the industrial dog is relatively a very large animal. But in our case the agricultural dog is a very big animal, something in the nature of a mastiff or an Irish wolfhound, whereas our industrial development is such that it might appear more readily as a Pekingese dog or, perhaps, in certain aspects of it, it might be regarded as a pup which was being sold very industriously to us by the Minister for Industry and Commerce and his predecessors during the last 18 years, because there has been a definite tendency to encourage industrialisation. Nevertheless, it is not sufficiently important to enable industry as a whole to subsidise agriculture as a whole. In consequence, then, what we have been experiencing for some time now has been a policy not of feeding the agricultural dog as a whole with the industrialist dog's tail, but with a policy of feeding the small-farmer dog, who happens to be a numerous animal, with the whole body of the large-farmer dog. In fact, the result of that has been that the large-farmer dog is now in such a cruelly bad condition that he needs a plaster to restore him to something like healthy well-being. In essential respects certain of Senator Counihan's proposals represent an effort to provide such a plaster. I feel a certain sympathy with the position of the large farmer, and that this remedy proposed is a treatment of symptoms rather than of fundamental causes. What we really need in this country is a sound and sane national agricultural policy: a policy which will view the position of every size of farm, with a complete absence of sentiment and humbug and of historical complexes, and that will do its best to put every aspect of our farming—large scale, middle size and small—on its own economic feet.
The immediate causes outlined in Senator Counihan's resolution make a certain plausible appeal to many of us. They arise, not so much from the economic war, as from the British subsidy on fat cattle as Senator Counihan so ably pointed out. I do not know how long that subsidy has been going on. I believe it amounts to sums varying from 2/6 to 7/6 per live cwt. on every beast sold for fat in that country and that has spent three months in that country. The effect of that subsidy is to enable feeders in Northern Ireland and in Great Britain to pay a price for our exported store cattle which our feeders and finishers simply cannot afford to pay. It puts our farmers, who would like to finish cattle, completely out of business as cattle finishers, whether they are large farmers or small farmers. Everyone who has studied the matter is aware that the farmer who normally specialises in fattening stock cannot possibly rear as many cattle as he is in a position to finish. Therefore, he must buy a considerable number of young cattle —yearlings, 18 months old and so on— if he is to work up to a decent turnover on any sort of large farm. Consequently, his profits depend on the margin between the price at which he must buy stores and the price he must pay for bought feeding stuffs, in so far as he must buy feeding stuffs to supplement what he grows on his own farm. If he is a farmer who goes in for stall feeding, his margin of profit depends primarily on the price that he pays for young cattle and the price he gets for finished cattle, and the effect of the British subsidy has been to inflate the price currently paid for our young cattle, thus contracting the margin which our finishers may hope to obtain. In fact, it makes it impossible for them to obtain any profitable margin at all.
Now, that is a serious and injurious matter for our agriculture, because as every person knows, who knows anything, the fertility and productivity of our soil depend on the extent to which we feed cattle, whether we feed them with grass in the summer or in the stalls in winter. It is also well known, of course, that the value of the manure returned to the land by cattle in the finishing stages of their ration is of much greater importance than the value of the manure returned to the land by cattle in the earlier stages of their growth. The effect of the British subsidy then has been to contract that margin, and our problem is to restore a normal margin to enable the cattle finisher to get back his business in a normal way. Though, in general, I dislike artificial interference with the course of trade, it is sometimes necessary to meet one artificial interference by another artificial interference, which may have the effect of negativing it and restoring what may amount to a normal situation. To my mind, a more or less normal relation would be restored between the price of young cattle and the price of finished cattle if we proceeded to put a tax of 5/- a head on all young cattle exported, and used the proceeds of that tax to pay a bounty on all finished fat cattle exported. At present our exporters of young cattle are, in fact, able to divert into their own pockets part of the subsidy which the British have been paying to their own cattle finishers, because the effect of that subsidy is to inflate the price which British importers pay for our young cattle above what they otherwise would pay. Therefore, if you put a tax of 5/- per head upon young cattle exported, we are merely putting our exports of young cattle in the same position and making them fetch the same price as they would get if the British had no subsidy system at all. We put them, so to speak, in a normal position, and at the same time, by widening the margin between the price of young cattle and the price of finished cattle, we are enabling the cattle finisher to get back into business on a normal, healthy basis. Last and most important of all, if we do it in that way, we are going to impose no financial burden on the Exchequer at all, because the suggestion is that we use only, for the purpose of bounty, money acquired by putting a small tax on the export of young cattle.
If I am in order, I should like to say a word or two about what I regard as the importance of large-scale agriculture from the point of view of national economy as a whole. In my view, first of all, there is the important fact that there are only 50,000 agricultural employers. In other words, in a total of about 400,000 farmers there are only about 50,000 who employ any wage-paid labour. The number of wage-paid labour, mostly male, is in the region of 120,000. The total number of employers of every kind, industrial, commercial and agricultural, in the country as a whole is given in the 1926 Census Report as 80,000. I think it would not be unfair to say that public policy has been more concerned to encourage the economic activities of the 30,000 non-agricultural employers than those of the 50,000 agricultural employers. What I say is, that on the fair, sound and equitable treatment of these 50,000 employers of agricultural labour depends, in the next generation, whether this country is going rapidly to increase its national wealth or whether we are going to continue just "dithering" along, as we have been for the last 20, 30 or 40 years.
Everybody who studies the matter is aware that the output per person is higher on large farms employing wage-paid labour than it is, or can be, on small farms where labour is rather redundant. The net output per person employed in British agriculture in 1926 was £150 per year. The net output per person employed in Saorstát agriculture, in 1926, was £101 per person. Land here is just as fertile, if not more, than land in Great Britain. Our farmers are just as intelligent as the farmers over there, but the average farm in Britain is 60 acres while the average farm in Éire is 30 acres. In my view, the difference in output is accounted for mainly by the fact that there you have large-scale farming, and the output per person, equipped with every kind of modern labour-saving device, is naturally and necessarily much higher than it can be here.
An increase in the output per person employed in agriculture is of the greatest importance, not only from the national agricultural point of view, but also from the point of view of our general commercial and industrial policy, for only in so far as the agricultural producer produces food over and above the requirements of himself and his family, is it possible to have any development of the commercial and industrial structure. Obviously people employed in commerce and industry live on food produced by farmers and unless these farmers are producing more than they themselves require, producing a surplus for the sustenance of those engaged in commerce and industry, you cannot have any industrial or commercial development. I doubt very much if our small-scale farmers are producing more than they require for their own consumption. If that be so, then the policy of reducing all our agricultural holdings to a dead level of 20 or 30 acres per head, will simply undermine the whole foundation of the commercial and industrial structure that we are so actively trying to build up.
Now that we have got back freedom to export I think national policy should aim at encouraging our farmers to employ additional labour, and that we should consider very carefully, in the light of the report of the Banking Commission, the whole policy hitherto followed with regard to the division of the so-called ranches, and the creation of numerous smallholders. In my view, given security of tenure, there is no reason why thousands of our large farmers, who at the moment may have specialised mainly in grass cultivation, should not expand and develop their agricultural activities and undertake poultry and pig production as well as a certain amount of home-dairying and cheese-making. If we were given a situation in which it would be a sound enterprise from the farmer's point of view to invest capital in that kind of development you would do more for the expansion of agricultural production and for the development of well-paid agricultural labour, than you could possibly do say, by any of the other methods which have been so much in vogue.
I have been very much impressed by my experience of a particular farm of 200 acres in County Louth, which employs at good wages, 20 people in a thoroughly scientific and very varied form of agricultural activity. It has 30 milch cows, 2,000 poultry, and prac-tises cheese-making and a certain amount of tillage. That farm, I am told, would employ practically the same number of people even if the farmer did not go in for tillage at all, because what really creates agricultural employment is the intensive feeding of live stock, whether they be stall-fed cattle, home-fed pigs, poultry or what not. In my view, it would be simply disastrous if that 200 acre farm were to be broken up into say, six 30 or 40-acre holdings. It could not possibly give so large a volume of well-paid employment as it now provides. In my view, we should aim at creating a situation in which our 50,000 employers of agricultural labour will be induced to add at least one each to the number of agricultural workers they employ at decent wages. If we could expand the wage-paid agricultural employment by 50,000, from 120,000 to 170,000, even taking the value of the output per person as low as £100 per annum, we would add £5,000,000 to the national income. I can conceive no other direction in which we could so rapidly expand the production of national wealth. The other policy which seems to be so popular is threatening the State with bankruptcy. According to the Banking Commission's Report, paragraph 511, each person allotted land, in the process of land division, on the average costs the taxpayer £600 in dead-weight debt. Any attempt to solve the problem of agricultural employment by that method will prove very costly. To settle 14,000 new occupiers of land has already added £8,500,000 to the National Debt. If we should be so foolish as to try to settle 100,000 landless men on farms on those terms, the net effect would be to increase the National Debt to £60,000,000, which is a figure I shudder to contemplate.
Perhaps, a Chathaoirligh, I have been trespassing a little beyond what is strictly relevant to the motion. Before I sit down I should like to say that I regard this problem, which the motion is an effort to solve, with great sympathy. I consider the motion which has been proposed as a remedy which might relieve the more distressing symptoms. I should like to refer for a moment to paragraph 509 of the report of the Banking Commission, which states:
"Great importance attaches to the question of security of tenure. This, as is well known, was one of the primary objects of the early land legislation, and it must always remain a fundamental factor in a healthy agricultural system. It is in particular the best type of farmer who thinks of adding to his capital investment in agriculture that is most affected by this consideration."
May I illustrate this by pointing out that the farm which I have in view, cultivated on an extensive scale, with all the goodwill and valuable employment of labour now associated with it, if it were, for any reason, to be disposed of, and if it were offered for sale in a normal community, with the goodwill representing a real asset, would probably command a figure of £5,000 or £6,000 at least. But as things go, with the Sword of Damocles of the 1933 Confiscation Act hanging over it, its value is considerably diminished. The owner knows that if he abandons it, some local Jacobin organisation may start an agitation to have it taken over by the Land Commission, and the net effect would be that no one would bid for it. The value associated with it would simply evaporate, and he would have to give it away for something like £1,500. So long as that situation exists, and so long as that element of insecurity is allowed to continue, there can be little hope of securing that increased agricultural production by which only we can increase our national wealth.
