This motion has been on the Order Paper for some considerable time. It has been attacked on the ground that it is rather lengthy and of an omnibus character. It is difficult, in dealing with a subject such as this, to be more brief than we have been. The motion deals with many aspects of agriculture, and in our opinion, while it will not provide a remedy or cure all the ills at which it aims, still at the same time it will concentrate, we hope, a good deal of thought on the present position of agriculture here.
I do not think I need waste the time of the House in pointing to the great necessity for something to be done along the lines indicated in the motion. This evening two reputable members of the House, intimately conversant I am sure with agriculture, gave us their views in regard to the condition of the farmers in general. I am quite sure, in view of the intimate knowledge which they possess, they will agree that, so far as agriculture is concerned, the remedies for it propounded in our motion are highly necessary and that something must be done immediately. One of the Senators I refer to is Senator Counihan. He is inclined to belabour the hide of the Labour Party in regard to some of the ills which, he says, that Party was responsible for bringing on the country. Still, I think we may say, from the context of his remarks, that he is in favour of the remedies propounded in the motion. The Senator spoke about two Labour unions fighting one another. I presume he was referring to an incident that took place about 16 years ago. That was a long time to go back—to attribute to incidents of that time the depression which hangs over the agricultural industry to-day. He said that it was the worst that occurred since the time of Cromwell. He might with equal accuracy have gone back to the battle of Benburb. Senator Madden, who also has an intimate knowledge of the conditions in the agricultural industry, said that it is necessary that something should be done.
From my own observations I agree that something must be done, and done soon. That is why I believe that the Commission which the Government has agreed to set up will, as all commissions are inclined to do, be rather slow in delivering its recommendations. I am of the opinion that the Government could proceed to deal with this question without the aid of any commission. Every aspect of the question must be known to them, and that being so, I agree with Senator Madden that there was no necessity for a commission. The Government without such a commission could, in my opinion, propound the remedies essential to relieve the depression in agriculture, especially amongst the smallholders who, I think, are deserving of first consideration.
I believe that the ills which our agriculture is suffering from are not peculiar to this country. If we examine the conditions in other countries we will find that agricultural conditions in them are much the same as they are here. While naturally we are concerned with the boot which is pinching our own foot, still we should not speak of the problem before us as peculiar to this country. Senator Johnston, speaking on a motion that was moved some months ago by Senator Counihan, dealing with particular aspects of the agricultural industry, was, I think, rather unduly scathing in his references to the industrial policy which the Governments in this country have been endeavouring to develop during the last 16 years. Taking agriculture, he compared the position in England with the position here. He said that over there a large industrial animal—I think he referred to it as a mastiff—was feeding the small dog of agriculture, but that the reverse, he said, was true here. Now that may be so. Still I hope before I sit down to show that agriculture in England is probably passing through a greater crisis at this moment than agriculture is here, difficult and all as the agricultural position is here.
The Senator, speaking in regard to industrialisation, urged that we here should concentrate exclusively on a sound and sane policy with the complete absence of sentiment and humbug and historical complexes. Now I do not know what these high-sounding and rhetorical words mean. They seem to me to be rather meaningless. He would also lead us to believe that we should liquidate our industrial development and concentrate exclusively on agriculture: that if we did that, we would possibly escape the difficulties confronting agriculture. I suggest that even to please our best customer—the Senator was referring to England—or the economic theories of Trinity College, we will not be able to reverse the policy which has now been embarked upon in this country. Therefore, the Senator seems to me to have been barking up the wrong gum tree when he talked about a reversal of the industrial engines set in motion here some years ago. According to the Official Report, he said:
"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."
But if one reads through the whole of Senator Johnston's speech, I venture to say he will find that the Senator propounds no policy to place agriculture on what he calls its economic feet, except he means that we should entirely cease our industrial activities and concentrate exclusively on agriculture. Agriculture in other countries should be taken into consideration when we talk about agriculture here. If we do that, I think we will probably get a cooler and a more reasonable appreciation of our problem than if we simply think that we are the sole pebble on the beach.
Bernard Shaw at one time said that there were a lot of people in Ireland who thought that the world was made up of Ireland and a few minor continents. I am inclined to think that that could be accurately applied when we come to discuss agriculture from our particular angle. Lord Addison who was Minister of Agriculture in the British Labour Government in 1930 has, in my opinion, written a very excellent work on agriculture in England, and from a study of that work, we find that there are great difficulties confronting agriculture there. There, as here, a large quantity of land was bought some years ago, and a type of agriculturist in England, very analogous to landholders here, increased their holdings from over 3,000,000 acres to 9,000,000 acres. The economic slump of 1923, which continued up to 1930, and even to the present time has apparently caught out that section of agricultural holders in England. From my knowledge of agriculture, and of the farming community here, it seems that they have been caught as well as the people in England in the depression of these years. Speaking of that section of agricultural occupiers in England, Lord Addison's book, which was written last April, states:
"To expect these men to improve or repair their buildings, to provide water supplies, to drain their land, or to keep their fences in good order is to expect the impossible. Everywhere you find their buildings in a deplorable state, roofs defective, doors broken down and the walls often affording but little shelter. The farm roads are neglected and the farm yards in wet weather are deep in slush and liquid manure; the gates are broken down, or patched up anyhow, and the fields often enough, with their vistas of weeds and rubbish, cry aloud for land drainage. They have no money wherewith to put the place in order."
That is the description by a Minister of a very large section of occupiers controlling 9,000,000 acres of land in England. It seems to me that it is a dreadful picture and could hardly find a comparison in this country. Again, there was an outcry in England recently, which was given voice to on January 10th at Ipswich by 5,000 farmers, who were extremely vociferous in regard to agricultural conditions over there. There was another outcry at Oxford in the previous month at which one speaker stated:—
"I think it should not be beyond the capacity of our financial people to devise some means by which a very considerable sum could be available during the spring and summer of each year for our farmers, which would be more or less automatically repayable after the harvest and the hop crop and the winter markets have taken place. A very large section of our agricultural community has not only exhausted its own working capital but has exhausted its access to credit under the present system. If things do not improve very rapidly, insolvency is bound to follow in a very large proportion of cases."
On December 10th a meeting of 3,000 farmers was held in Lincoln, at which the present Minister for Agriculture in Great Britain could hardly get a hearing, because, it was stated, he was unable or unwilling to look after the needs of the farmers there who asked for fixed prices for farm produce. The Irish Times in a leading article with the caption: “Price Insurance” had something which is rather akin to the motion before the House. Some people may think that the motion was put down for the purposes of propaganda for our Party. I want to say, as far as we are concerned, that that is not so. The article stated:—
"Representatives from Northern Ireland are attending a joint conference of the English, Scottish and Ulster Farmers' Union in London. The Northern farmers' interests run parallel, for most of the way to those of their cross-Channel colleagues, and any solution which Mr. Chamberlain's Government may devise for the relief of British agriculture will extend automatically to the Six Counties. At present the demand is for a system of ‘price insurance'. The farmers ask that a price shall be fixed for every variety of domestic farm produce, including live stock— and that this price shall prevail for a ‘long term'—conceivably five years. It does not follow that the price shall be the same in every locality of the United Kingdom."
That is on the lines of the first paragraph of this motion, so that the House will see we are in full alignment with farmers in other portions of what was the United Kingdom, in the demand which we are making regarding agriculture. We are dealing particularly with the small class of farm holders. It is with that class we are primarily concerned. Somebody said that we were asking for Utopia. We do not think it so very Utopian that the Government should guarantee farmers minimum prices for agricultural produce. We are demanding nothing more than farmers in Great Britain and Northern Ireland find they are compelled to seek. If we are compelled by the exigencies of economic circumstances to do so in Ireland, then, similar exigencies compel people to do the same elsewhere. In regard to the breaking-up of ranch lands, which Senator Counihan said we were advocating, I suggest to the Senator that long before the motion was put on the Order Paper this Government—and also the British Government—had embarked on the policy of breaking up ranch lands. That may be a good, or it may be a bad policy. I have a certain amount of sympathy with those who say that land should not be broken up into very small units, but once that policy has been embarked upon, we must accept it, just as we must accept every other fact of life. I see no possibility now of reverting to larger holdings. We must accept the policy of breaking up the land, and proceed to deal with that policy. Apart from giving land to landless men, something else is necessary, if they are to be enabled to work their holdings. It becomes then very largely a question of credit facilities.
Senator Baxter, who has a considerable knowledge of agriculture, I notice dealt with this aspect of agriculture when giving evidence before the Banking Commission. At page 528 of volume 1, paragraph 12, you will find the opinions of Senator Baxter in regard to providing financial facilities for these uneconomic holders and landless men. Dealing with that he said:
"There is a farmer who is just below the border line of being credit-worthy. In fairly good times loans to such men would not be a very great risk. To-day the risk is too great for any commercial institution to take on. Provision would have to be made for such ample reserves as would make it possible for the Credit Corporation to help these lame dogs in those cases where the borrowers were men of character who, if given a chance, would make good."
We have in existence an Agricultural Credit Corporation, and, therefore, in that agency, as indicated by Senator Baxter, lies the mode and the means by which moneys could and should be made available for those who have land and who are in such a financially depressed condition as to require such assistance. The Banking Commission in their Report have adverted to that, but if the State—and I know of no other organisation capable of coming to the assistance of the small and uneconomic holder and the landless man —if the State, as such, is not going to come to their rescue, then their position, parlous and difficult as it is to-day, it seems to me will get progressively worse.
How, we might ask, as we do in the motion, are stock, implements, seeds, manures, etc., to be provided by these people who have land just merely handed to them? I am informed that very often such people are not able to use the land, that they have to set it for grazing, and, in fact, there was in the Press a short time before Christmas a very lengthy article referring to that aspect of the breaking up of land; that many of these landless men who had secured land were unable to handle the land and that the Land Commission were thinking of taking it back from them. That is not a remedy. If these people are to use that land, which was the original purpose and intention of the settlement, then the only way that we can see of having that done is for the State to come to their aid. Senator Baxter, apparently, could think of no other way, as we cannot either, than that the State should come to their aid through the Agricultural Credit Corporation. These facilities have also been asked for by the farmers in England. They, too, find that they are unable to deal with their problem except they are facilitated in this manner.
In regard to transport, I do not propose to discuss railway transport in reference to this matter. A tribunal is also inquiring into that aspect of economic life and I presume that it will deal, perhaps in a subsidiary way, with agriculture from the point of view of transport. But it seems to me that we will have to develop something entirely new in regard to our agriculture if we are to sustain it, not alone sustain it over periods of crisis from which it suffers, especially after great wars, but something that will come to the aid of agriculture in a permanent, stable, and organic way. Lord Addison, in dealing with this aspect of the question, also says, in regard to agriculture in England, that something on the lines suggested is necessary, although he, like Senator Johnston, does not propound in detail the scheme which he considers necessary to sustain the agriculturists in England, especially the smallholders. It seems to me that no method which is not an all-embracing method, going to the foundations of the problem, will ever be successful.
We have had piecemeal attempts, like the one we had here last year when Senator Counihan put down a motion for the subsidisation of fat cattle. That was a piecemeal endeavour to sustain a small portion of the agriculturists, and, in my opinion, while it might be good for that particular portion, it was nothing in the nature of an effective, fundamental, or permanent remedy. We will have to think of agriculture from the standpoint of the paragraph set forth here. In the first, we ask for guaranteed prices. As I said, our colleagues in
Great Britain are similarly asking for guaranteed prices. Agriculture has been brought to a great state of success in New Zealand, and there guaranteed prices have been given for agricultural produce. It is only natural that a farmer should be assured of his income, as other sections of the community are assured of their incomes. If he knew in advance what he was to be paid for his produce, it would produce that stability which is lacking. That is one item which would help very greatly towards this end—the guaranteeing of prices for farm produce.
The question of transport is one which is somewhat difficult to deal with. When I was saying that agriculture should be dealt with by something fundamental, I was thinking rather of something in the nature of an economic scheme which might be worked under a special commission, which would take from the farmer his produce and return to him those goods which he has to use domestically and otherwise. I see no reason why, if we have post offices and police barracks in every city, town and village, we should not also have an economic store, a co-operative organisation, run under the ægis of the State and the farming community, which would provide transport, take the goods from the farmer and return to him those things which he requires. With the prices guaranteed, I should also go so far as to suggest that production should be nominated in advance, and that each farmer should be informed of the type of goods, and the quantity, etc., which he should produce. Through an economic scheme of that character, with credit facilities provided by the State, you would do something fundamental to lift agriculture out of the depression in which it is at the moment. I do not think that there is anything novel in the suggestions I am putting forward. While many people may look upon this scheme as extremely extravagant at the present time, a day will come when some system of the character I have adumbrated will have to be introduced.
We have heard from Senator Madden and others here to-night that the poverty, privation and destitution in the country is bound inevitably to get worse. Farmers isolated on their holdings are not in a position, by virtue of their occupation, to organise in the sense that urban communities have organised and will organise for the purpose of protecting their interests. Consequently, they are at the mercy of factors and others who can take their produce off their hands and give them whatever they like. The middlemen can organise in rings to fix prices and it has been known in this country and other countries that these rings have secured from farmers their produce at the smallest possible price and an hour or so afterwards sold that produce at 500 per cent. or 600 per cent. of an increase. If challenged, I can give evidence of that. We are told that we did not give evidence before the commission of inquiry into these matters. There is time to do that yet. What we are saying here will be on public record and any member of the commission who desires to ascertain our views will only have to look up the records. We do suggest that, unless prices are guaranteed and farmers are told where they stand, unless something is done co-operatively to market the goods they produce and rid them of rings, the position will be infinitely worse than it is.
With regard to paragraph (f) of the motion, it has often been suggested that main roads might be taken from the control of county councils. I myself was a member of Cork County Council for many years and listened frequently to discussions of this character relating to main roads and mental hospitals. It was often suggested that these two services might be handed over to a central authority. Senator Madden suggested that the local control should be destroyed altogether. I should not go so far as that.
