I move:—
That in view of the importance of increasing agricultural production and alleviating the condition of the unemployed, Seanad Eireann is of opinion that, suitable estates in the possession of the Land Commission, which it is not practicable to divide at present, should be offered to the Mount Street Club, on favourable conditions as to rent and equipment, for cultivation and management on the same lines as its Clondalkin farm.
I wish to bring before the House for sympathetic consideration some knowledge of the experiment in social organisation that has been made during the last five years by a body known as the Mount Street Club. I should say at the beginning that, personally, I have no direct connection with the Mount Street Club. I have only had the same intelligent and sympathetic interest in this problem that other citizens have, probably, taken. So far as the present motion is concerned, the circumstances which led me to bring it forward are as follows: It was suggested to me that those of us who sit on this side of the House, and who are usually found in opposition to Government policy, should not maintain a merely negative attitude to any proposals for dealing with the more acute economic problems that agitate the State, so I began to cast round to see if there was anything whatever that has to do with unemployment and unemployment relief, that I could wholeheartedly recommend, and that I could advise the Government to be prepared to spend State funds on, or to use State credit to support. It occurred to me that possibly the Mount Street Club organisation was something of that kind, as it had been doing something to alleviate the condition of the unemployed, and it was spoken of as being highly successful, and had recently gone further and extended its activities by taking over and running quite a large farm at Clondalkin. It is running this farm on the most modern and approved fashion, and producing food for the consumption of its own members, both on the farm and in the Mount Street Club workshops. I then proceeded to interview one of the directors of that institution.
I should explain that although the Mount Street Club came into existence as a result of the philanthropic exertions of a number of public-spirited citizens, it is essentially a self-governing organisation, so far as internal discipline is concerned. The function of the directors is to maintain contact between the Mount Street Club and the outside world. It was through the generosity of the outside world that it acquired the means which enabled it to start workshops in Mount Street, and later raised £3,600 of hard money which was paid for the farm that it is now running so successfully at Clondalkin. The directors then represent, so to speak, the element of philanthropy in relation to the club, but the club itself is organised on a democratic self-governing principle, both on the farm and in the workshops. That is to say, as far as internal organisation is concerned, every possible concession is made to democracy. So far as responsibility for the technical efficiency of the work done is concerned, the directors, of course, are in a position to ensure that the person responsible for organising work in Mount Street Club is a thoroughly competent and efficient person, and also that the farm steward and his wife, who are, so to speak, the central pivots of the organisation at Clondalkin, are thoroughly reliable and competent persons.
One of the difficulties that confront the State in attempting to deal with unemployment is that if the State finances and organises the work of the unemployed, in order to produce ordinary consumers' goods for sale in the open market, the State would be competing in a way that would be quite unfair to existing institutions that employ people in the ordinary way, and produce the same kind of goods. That would give rise to a sense of unfairness on the part of those affected and, I think, quite legitimately, so that in practice the State finds itself unable to create work artificially of the kind that produces consumers' goods and ordinary necessities of life for circulation through the ordinary channels of commerce. That drives the State back to the necessity of employing by way of relief work, labour on the production of so called capital goods, that is, works of construction like drainage schemes, housing, sewage schemes and things of that kind.
Capital goods, of course, have their use, but the objection from the economic point of view to devoting too much effort, especially in a time of international war, to the production of capital goods, is that money spent on employment (for those who are unemployed), and on public works of that kind, is going to increase the monetary demand for consumers' goods here and now. Capital goods in process of construction will make no appreciable contribution to the volume of consumable services for any period we have to concern ourselves about in a time of national emergency. While it is desirable, from the economic point of view, that the unemployed should be increasing the production of consumers' goods by the same measure as they are likely to increase their own consumption of consumers' goods, when you are concerned with public works of construction character, you have a situation in which the persons employed on such works are going to increase their consumption of consumers' goods, but what they are producing will make no appreciable contribution to the volume of consumable services available in the immediate future. That process, even if the money necessary for financing public works is acquired by way of public loan or from private investors, is likely to alter the pattern of consumption in the community as a whole in such a way as to raise prices, especially of the necessities of life.
We have in this country the phenomenon of unemployment, in the cities especially, and also in the country, and we have the other phenomenon of under employment in the agricultural community and the inadequate use of land, or land not being properly cultivated or adequately used to fill the stomachs of the unemployed in the towns.
That phenomenon is one about which people are liable to get very cross and I have had occasion to refer to it from other points of view in criticising other policies. But the fact remains that that is a paradox and a challenge to thought. I agree with the view that the commercial exchange between country and town, between the surplus produce of the countryman's labour and the surplus produce of the townsman's economic activity is the taproot of commerce and that it is in the best interests of public policy that fertile exchanges between country and town should increase and multiply. I believe that it has been the intention of Government policy in the last seven years that a desirable exchange between country and town should be fostered and developed in every way. But the sad fact remains that the intentions of the Government have not been carried out and the facts of the case are very different from what the Government contemplated or desired when it set out to develop, especially, commerce between town and country.
One aspect of this commerce is the value of agricultural produce which is consumed by the so-called non-agricultural community or if you like, by the townsman, and the other the value of the urban produce which is consumed by the agricultural producers. In 1929-1930 the value of Irish farm produce consumed by the non-agricultural community was £13,400,000. In 1936-1937 that value had only increased by a beggarly £1,000,000. In other words the effort to develop increased consumption of agricultural produce by townsmen had been a comparative failure.
On the other side again, to what extent has the farming community been able to increase its consumption of the produce of urban industry? According to my calculations in 1929, the farming community had £44,000,000 available for expenditure on industrial goods—either of Irish or foreign manufacture—at all events industrial goods. In 1933 it had available £21,000,000; in 1936 the amount available was £31,000,000, and in 1938 the figure was £33,000,000 So that the farmer on his side had less money to spend on industrial products of any kind in 1938 than he had ten years previously. We may assume that that desirable side of the exchange had not developed in the way that was contemplated and desired. The real cause as I think of this failure of the development of that desirable commerce is the fact that there is what one might call a disparity in terms of trade between the labour of the countrymen and the labour of the townsmen. That disparity will be seen if you bear in mind that we have 1,200,000 persons gainfully occupied in this State. Of these one-half are gainfully occupied in agriculture and the other half are gainfully occupied in other economic activities. It is true that the average income per head of the persons occupied in agriculture is only £70 in money or money's worth, and that the average income per head of the other 600,000 persons gainfully occupied in commerce, etc., averages £170 per head per annum. So we have a situation in which the countryman's two-and-a-half hours' work is exchanged for the produce of one hour's work of the townsman. That being so, the countryman has to accept the products of eight or ten hours' work for the proportionate amount of urban produce of three or four hours' work by the urban worker. Then we have the situation that the townsman is able to purchase with the produce of three or four hours' work the produce of the countryman's eight or ten hours' work. In fact, we have had a situation in which the urban section of the community has been steadily expanding production for the enjoyment of the urban section of the community only. But the consumption does not circulate downwards, because by reason of the lesser value of the countryman's produce he is not able to absorb an adequate share of the produce of the townsman's labour.
This is only an introduction but it does provide some explanation of what I might call the social and economic backgrounds of this problem with which the Mount Street Institution is an effort to deal. To my mind if the average income per head of the countrymen was somewhat higher and the average income per head of the townsmen was somewhat lower we probably would have a greater volume of exchange between country and town and we might have a smaller volume of urban unemployed. The principle on which the Mount Street Club is worked is to exchange the produce of one hour's work whether in the country, farm or in town work, for the produce of one hour's work. They have no trouble in finding a satisfactory outlet in the way of consumption for every article which their organisation has enabled them to produce. I come now to some brief account of the history and philosophy of the club as set out in the pamphlets explaining its aims, objects and plans. I would like to have an opportunity of having some of these plans on the records of the House. I am sure the House will have patience if I read a few extracts from these. Here is a special extract from the Irish Press of the 16th January, 1939. It begins:
"The Mount Street Club is one of those institutions which, born of the vision and initiative of one or two men, cast roots so deeply and so swiftly into the soil that, almost from the moment of birth, their permanence seems assured. Although it is no more than four years in existence, it has already begun to attract nation-wide attention. Statesmen and social reformers have given it their blessing; men of all classes and creeds are associated with it. Its main object is—we quote the club's own official description—"to supplement the assistance given by the State by providing opportunities for members to preserve their morals and their mental and physical fitness during periods of idleness, and to enable young men who have never had work to build themselves up into useful citizens."
The State has done and will continue to do its part. But the Mount Street Club is setting out to do things which even the State cannot do. It is not only helping to provide work for the workless but it is giving new hope, new strength, and a tougher moral fibre to those whom it enrols as members. The whole atmosphere of the club is one that is inimical to "lead-swinging and to the work-shy mentality".
A similar article in praise of the club and a description of its philosophy appeared in the Irish Times of the 18th January, 1939. It says:—
"The victim of unemployment—let him be plasterer, mechanic, barber, musician, tailor, electrician, plumber, gardener, cook, carpenter or just general labourer can become a member. He works with the club according to his ability, and partakes of its benefits according to the measure of his labour. No money passes from the club to its members or from members to the club. Instead every man receives payment for his labour in the form of tallies, and with these ‘tallies' he can purchase the products of other members' toil. The system in fact, is one of simple exchange."
The club was founded in November, 1934, at 81 Lower Mount Street, Dublin, is non-political, non-sectarian, and non-residential. As I have already explained, its internal control is by a democratically elected committee, and the so called directors represent the element of external guidance and philanthropy. One of the fundamental principles is that you will get nothing for nothing in the Mount Street Club. Everything obtainable in that organisation must be paid for; it can be paid for only with tallies, and tallies are obtainable only as a result of work done for the club. Another fundamental principle of the organisation is that none of the final products of the club's workshops and farm may be sold through the ordinary channels of commerce outside the club in any shape or form. Now, the object of that self-denying ordinance is to prevent jealousy and the sense of injustice that would arise from outside interests that might feel themselves injured if the labour of the club was being used to project commodities on to the open market in competition with trade union labour there, and so on. To avoid that real danger the club submits itself to the self-denying regulation by which none of its products may be sold outside. In other words, all that it produces is for sale to and for consumption by its members, and its members alone.
In my view, so long as that principle is maintained, the club must be, to some extent, a dependent organisation, dependent either on private charity or on some kind of support from outside— public help of some kind—because clearly there are certain things which the club must buy from outside: machinery and equipment of various kinds for its workshops and farm. If the club is debarred from selling in the outside world, it must acquire means of buying the things it needs by a process which involves some degree of charity somewhere. That, perhaps, may raise problems, but problems with which, at any rate, we are not concerned at the moment. At the moment the essential thing, from the point of view of the club's members, is that, whereas the State gives them unemployment money amounting to, I suppose, about 10/- per week in the case of a single unemployed man, with other allowances for dependents, they are able by their organisation and by their mutual co-operation to produce for consumption by one another at least three or four times the amount of real value represented by that unemployment money. Every 10/- that comes into the pocket of a club member by way of subsidy from the State is multiplied by at least three or four in terms of real advantage to the individual member and to his organisation. That is done in a way that can give rise to no legitimate offence on the part of any outside interests, because none of the ordinary currency that reaches the pockets of club members may be spent on products of the club's workshops. Every penny that they get in the way of legal tender money or its equivalent is spent in the ordinary way in shops outside, just like your money and mine. Consequently, there is no real ground for any jealousy on the part of outside interests.
The idea of associating a farm with their other activities came to the club late last year, because they had already had experience of the ability with which their members, in spite of their being men with a purely urban outlook and urban industrial training, had successfully tackled the problem of working allotment gardens. They had made a wilderness out at Merrion, which many of you have seen from the train as you go past—a wilderness which is also a marsh—blossom like the rose, so to speak, and produce quantities of fresh vegetables which those members sold for tallies through the club's workshop and which enriched the tables of their fellow-members. There was, therefore, already a fertile association between the products of the land and industry, and it seemed to them that it would be only following in the same direction in which they had already made a successful advance if they went further and acquired a real farm of their own. Therefore, early this year they bought Larkfield, Clondalkin, a farm of 130 acres, for which they paid, I think, £3,600; quite a substantial sum of money which they acquired by their success in whipping up subscriptions from persons interested in the welfare of the club.
At present, the club has some 300 members, but that membership is not what you might call a stagnant total. It is what the statistician calls a renewable total, just like the total membership of this Seanad which is occasionally varied in its individual composition by the chances and changes of human life. In other words, although the actual membership at the moment is only 300, far more than 300 ex-members have appreciated the benefits of the club, because many persons have passed through that club and, by improving their efficiency for work and their general industrial character, were able to get real permanent jobs elsewhere. The Mount Street Club proudly claims that their ex-members, when they get a job, keep that job. In other words, when you become employed in the ordinary way outside you cease to be qualified to be a member of the club. Therefore, at any given moment, the club consists only of unemployed men who are members. But there are also hundreds of ex-members of the club who are now in permanent employment and who have reason to rise up and call the club blessed. Its 300 members are, all of them, I suppose, townsmen—Dubliners. Many of them work, not necessarily 48 hours per week, but, at all events, a few hours every week, as often or as long as they can, at whatever work they find themselves able to do in connection with the club's workshops in Lower Mount Street.
But the farm has greatly expanded the outlet for their surplus energy. I visited the farm about five weeks ago and there were 37 workers in constant employment there, living and sleeping on the premises, and having the time of their life both in industrious exertions during the day and in the games and recreation which they enjoyed in the evening. I am told that it was most interesting to observe the reaction of these townsmen when they came out there to work. They had voracious appetites, God help them, and they certainly enjoyed themselves for the first day or two. But they soon settled down to the new routine; they proved most adaptable and were able to make a thorough success of their job as agricultural labourers. That alone, I think, is one of the greatest achievements of the club—to have disproved what was almost regarded as an axiom, that once an agricultural labourer became a townsman he was lost for ever and ever to rural occupation, and could never become a successful agricultural worker again. The Mount Street Club has proved that it is possible to reverse the trend to the urban cesspool and to bring back labour from the city to the country. That labour, in spite of, or because of, its urban tradition and outlook, is able to make good in the work of properly conducting a large-scale agricultural undertaking. I should mention that, to comply with the regulations regarding the drawing of unemployment money at urban rates, persons actively occupied in Larkfield have to return periodically to the bosom of their families, so to speak, in Dublin. They are treated as merely being on a temporary visit—in fact they are merely on a temporary visit—to Clondalkin. In other words, they come in relays to work on that farm. There are only 30 or 40 of them, but the personnel would be quite different if you went out there to-day and in three months' time. The fact that the organisation has been able, with that continual renewal of staff, to get satisfactory results is a great tribute to its efficiency, because they have had the trouble of training new people and, in many cases, people who were unacquainted with work in that environment.
The Clondalkin farm specialises in the production of vegetables—potatoes —and milk for home consumption. To a certain extent, they produce eggs and pigs. They are not yet in a position to produce as much butter as the members and their families would be able to consume or to undertake the production of beef or the rearing up and breeding of young heifers which would, eventually, become cows. They hope to have, eventually, 30 or 40 cows. At the moment, they have about 13. Although their activities are very creditable and have attained to considerable development in the short time in which they have been employed, there is considerable room for expansion at Clondalkin and for expansion in other directions in other parts of the country as well. They have a tractor with which they plough. I am told that, with that tractor, they could plough considerably more land than they have available for ploughing on that 130-acre farm. It would be a real economy for them if they could get hold of another large, undivided farm, not too far from Dublin, where they might use their tractor to do additional ploughing and where they might house other workers who might like to escape for a few weeks at a time from the somewhat dismal air of a Dublin slum.
When I visited the farm, one of the first persons I met was the dairy-man or dairy-boy who, six months ago, was a messenger in the city and became unemployed in that capacity. After joining the Mount Street Club, he became one of their specialists in looking after cows, having never had anything to do with cows before. As I have said, he is now by way of becoming an expert in dealing with the milk in the dairy, keeping the vessels clean and sterilised and doing other highly technical and responsible work. He is only one of several persons who have found specialised occupations which they are carrying out and carrying out successfully there. One of the recommendations of a large-scale farming organisation in contrast with a small farm is that in a large-scale farming organisation there are so many specialised occupations possible that you can find an outlet for almost any kind of talent. The kind of person who would be utterly useless on a small farm finds useful work to do because he can be fitted into the right niche for his peculiar talent in a large-scale organisation such as that at Clondalkin. One of the most useful members of the society out there is a former accountant whose health is now such that he is unable to do any physical work whatever. His skill in secretarial work makes him very useful in that organisation and he is regarded as one of the most valuable members of the community at Clondalkin. You can find occupation on the land in agricultural production by a large-scale organisation for almost any kind of specialised talent whereas, if you consider only the method of the small farm, you require an almost impossible combination of talents in the same man and in his wife if you are to have the human conditions of success.
The workers employed at Clondalkin in rotation obtain a tally for every hour they work. They work 48 hours a week, or more if agricultural necessities are such that they should over-exert themselves for the time being. About half the tallies they earn are paid back to the club in consideration of the housing and keep they receive in Larkfield. The other tallies can be disposed of by the members as they wish. They can use them personally for buying products of the club's workshop or, as many of them do, they can send these tallies to their dependent family-members living in Dublin. They, with these tallies, can buy milk or vegetables or other produce from the farm which is available for sale at the club workshop in Mount Street. Actually, the number of tallies earned every week is now about 5,000 and they anticipate about 300,000 in the year. Of these 5,000 earned every week, about 2,000 are earned on the farm and about 3,000 in the workshop. A tally is a ticket which a member gets in return for an hour's work. It is supposed to buy the produce of an hour's labour, as well as that can be estimated. An effort is made to equate, as far as possible, the purchasing power of a tally to the purchasing power of a shilling and, let us hope that, in time, as the organisation becomes more efficient the tally will increase in purchasing power and buy as much as a shilling will buy outside. At the moment, it is not claimed that it will buy more than about 8d. worth outside. However, with it they manage very well. Their economy by means of this tally system is, so to speak, insulated from the rest of the national economy and they produce and circulate for consumption for themselves alone additional consumers' goods which could not be produced and, certainly, could not be consumed if it were not for this organisation which they have built up. I think I may claim that the existence of this club has considerably expanded that desirable commerce between country and town which it has been the object of Government policy to promote and which, as I have shown, could not be promoted through the operation of the ordinary economic system during the past seven years.
If you take the tally as being worth 1/-, the total turnover of the Mount Street Club Organisation will amount to some 300,000 tallies, or about £15,000, and a substantial part of that turnover represents agricultural output and trade, so to speak, between country and town. They have shown a way in which we can expand desirable consumption and exchange between country and town, and I think it is a way that they should be encouraged to follow and even develop with the blessing and help of the nation.
A tally is issued in exchange for an hour's work, and when that tally is then exchanged for an article produced by the club, it is said to be "redeemed", and the tally itself is taken back and cancelled, and that is the end of that tally. Sometimes, however, tallies accumulate unspent. Tallies have to be given out for every kind of work which is done and, of course, most of the work done is directed especially towards creating consumable goods, things which satisfy the needs of members here and now, but a certain proportion of tallies must necessarily be devoted to the payment for such services as plumbing, for example, which do not produce directly measurable quantities of consumable goods which can be availed of here and now. So, in one way or another, it is liable to happen that at times there may be in circulation a rather uncomfortably large number of unredeemed tallies. They do not mind anything up to 5,000 or 6,000 tallies being out at any given moment, but if the number of tallies in circulation and unredeemed should rise to, say, 15,000 or 20,000, then the problem of maintaining the purchasing power of these tallies would begin to arise.
Now, if they are faced with the problem of maintaining or increasing the purchasing power of their members, they would never dream of issuing more tallies to add to the number already in circulation and unredeemed; they would at once see, as you will see, that it would be a fantastic idea to think that you could increase the purchasing power of their tallies by adding to the number of tallies in circulation. No; what they do in that case is that they send around a whip to their generous supporters and ex-members, and they get in an additional supply of old boots, old clothes, and this or that, or they get up a concert which people have to pay to attend, and in one way or another they create additional wealth on which these tallies may be spent. In that way, they teach us a lesson, which is the most fundamental lesson of the whole business of money, and that is, that the only way in which the purchasing power of money can be increased is by an increase in the things which money purchases.
Now, another reason why I should like to see a development of this farming experiment which the Mount Street Club have made is that large-scale farming, properly organised and properly equipped, is, in the nature of the case, more productive for the individual and for the nation than small-scale farming is or could be. The average income of our 600,000 agricultural producers is £70 per annum, but that average is an average of wide disparities. It is quite certain that on many small farms, especially in the poorer parts of the country, the average income per producer on that farm is far less than £70 per annum. I think it is quite certain also that the average income per producer on the 50,000 farms which employ 120,000 wage-paid labourers must be well above £70 per person per annum, for the minimum wage is £70 per person per annum, and if a farmer was making an output only equal to the minimum wage he must pay, that farmer, ex hypothesi, would be bankrupt. So I think we may assume that the output per man on a large farm is likely to be in the region of £100 per person per year and could be made greater by the application of modern methods of agricultural economy and technique. I think we should favour the intensive colonisation of large farms and run them as single economic units, in the way in which the Mount Street Club has shown how to do—at all events during the war emergency—rather than commit ourselves finally, and for all time, to the method of cutting up large estates for division into small holdings.
One of the advantages of the large organisation, as I have pointed out already, is that you find outlets and uses for a variety of talents in a large organisation which would be quite useless on the land in the case of a small farm. In Clondalkin, as I have pointed out, they have a specialised man for the dairying, and they also have a man who specialises in looking after the fowl, and I happen to know that looking after fowl properly is a job that requires a good deal of knowledge and experience and which requires all the intelligence and skill that anybody might find himself blessed with. There is also a man there whose special function is looking after the pigs.
As I have already stated, I think it is a matter for much satisfaction that these ex-urban workers have been able to make good so well in this experiment in Clondalkin, and I think they could only make good in the kind of organisation which the Clondalkin farm represents. You could not take the average urban worker, plant him down on the average small 20-acre farm, and expect that the results would be satisfactory in nine cases out of ten. In the case of the larger organisation, if you have the right pivotal man at the head of administration, and if you have the right woman at the head looking after the domestic amenities, then I think you have the means by which success may be expected.
Of course, if the club is offered the use of a large farm, now in possession of the Ministry of Lands, which for one reason or another it is not expected to be able to divide among claimants for land during the present emergency, we would have to take into account the legitimate interests and claims of the local landless men who may have looked forward to a division of such land at some time or another. In one way or another the interests of ex-urban labourers and local landless labourers would have to be coordinated and amalgamated. I think that you can have employed a greater number of men for every 100 acres on a large, properly equipped and properly organised farm like Clondalkin than you could have if that farm were cut up into five or ten small 20-acre farms. If that be so, there ought to be in the organisation, if it extends itself to farms now in possession of the Land Commission in other parts of the country, room for the ex-urban labourer and room also for the local landless men who are willing to join and form part of this local agricultural, co-operative, farming society. It would be desirable that the matter should be approached in a truly national spirit, in which no jealousy between rural and urban workers should be allowed to stand in the way of doing something which is possibly going to be very advantageous to the nation as a whole.
Already, the Mount Street Club has shown the possibility of fertile exchange between their agriculture adventure and their town workshops, but, as time goes on, and if this Clondalkin experiment is a success, and gives rise to other similar successful experiments, with the help of the Land Commission and the State, I can foresee a time when the urban industry, now carried on by the people working in the Mount Street workshops, might be transferred, bag and baggage, to the actual village or neighbourhood where the appropriate farm colony was established, and in that case you might have, around a 200-acre or a 300-acre farm, a cluster of cottages and, if you like, urban workshops working on their specialised urban pursuits and exchanging their products with the large scale farm carried on almost under their very eyes.
In that way, you would have all the essentials of trade between country and town, but taking place under the much healthier conditions of life which you would have in one of those lovely ex-Ascendancy-owned park farms out in County Meath, County Dublin or County Kildare. I think that in that way you would have the conditions in which there might grow up a new kind of Irish national civilisation which would be both new and old, because I suspect that our modern society is in some ways more isolated and less sociable than the old Irish society of, say, 1,000 years ago. The Irish of those days were very sociable and they did a lot of things together, work as well as amusements, and I think it is desirable that some of the isolation which is part and parcel of the small farmer mentality should, at all events, be qualified, and if we could have dotted here and there throughout the country farm colonies of this kind, we would bring a desirable element of variety, sociableness and understanding of both the urban and rural point of view into different parts of the country.
This farm at Clondalkin is carrying on agriculture in a modern way, using the most modern and up-to-date machinery they can possibly acquire by gift or purchase. They have, as I say, a tractor and they could get more good of that tractor, if they had more land to plough with it. They also have a silo tower, made to their own specification, on a plan which Major Waller, one of the directors of the club, has devised and which has proved to be a great success. This use of grass silage for winter feeding is one of the things which is going to make all the difference to the success of our agriculture, if it can be sufficiently extended, because it will help to solve the problem of maintaining a uniform output all the year round and help to diminish the burden of the purchase of foodstuffs from outside. In this matter of making more efficient use of grass for winter feeding, the Clondalkin farm is among the pioneers of Irish agriculture. That silo tower they made with their own labour, but they are also in a position to hire machinery, so to speak, for making similar towers in the country round about, and to a certain extent I believe they have acquired profit for themselves as a club by such use of their machinery for making that particular type of silo tower which is now coming into fashion.
If my vision of the future is ever realised, I can see, in every one of the eastern counties and in many of the midland counties, at least one or two large-scale 500-acre farms intensively cultivated by 20, 30, 40 or 50 agricultural workers of various types of talent and capacity and equipped with the most modern machinery of every kind. I can foresee a time when, associated with these local farm societies, will be local agricultural labour, working on that farm occasionally, but, at other times perhaps, working with flying squads of labourers temporarily hired out by the co-operative farm to other large private farmers in the neighbourhood who may require the services of properly equipped labour at a busy time. I think it would greatly simplify the problem of getting the right kind of labour at the right time, if individual farmers could count on being able to hire the services of a squad of labourers equipped with tractor and plough, with mowing machine and reaper and binder, and with this and that, at times of the year when, for one reason or another, they might require additional service. In that way, I think you would greatly improve the organisation of the available personnel, both those who are fellow-members of the functioning agricultural colonies and the other labourers who might maintain a kind of associationship relation with such colonies in their neighbourhood.
I understand that so far as the club themselves are concerned, they are perfectly willing to expand their experiments. They are satisfied that the Clondalkin farm has in it all the conditions of success, and they can lay their hands on the right people to fill the key positions in any new experiment that might be made on the lines of their Clondalkin farm. They will have no trouble whatever in getting hold of the right people in whom they can have confidence to fill those key positions, and the only thing that holds them back from rapid development is, simply and solely, the want of money. I suggest it would be well for the Government to consider whether they could not make a grant outright of some £10,000, absolutely free of conditions, except that it was to be used on the general lines of the policy of which the Clondalkin farm is an example, and that they should be prepared to consider further a guaranteed loan of as much as £100,000 to finance further developments of this Clondalkin experiment. The main thing required from the Land Commission, however, is that they should make available to the Mount Street Club, if and in so far as it wants them, or is able to make use of them, such undivided farms now in its occupation as that Mount Street Club feels itself to be in a position to make effective use of during the present period of European emergency.
I am not authorised to speak in detail about this matter. It may be that the Land Commission might offer the club a farm which the club, for one reason or another, would not be willing to take, but I think that the general idea of asking the Mount Street Club to consider doing with two or three or four other farms what it has already done with the Clondalkin farm is one which should receive the favourable consideration of the Government. The cost to the State need not amount to anything worth talking about. One of my reasons for advocating this scheme is that it seemed to promise a very definite return for a comparatively trifling expenditure, and I had heard so many rumours of wild-cat schemes of public expenditure being advocated that I thought I would like to get in first with this modest proposal of a small expenditure on relief of unemployment, in the hope of catching, so to speak, the public eye, and diminishing the popularity of those wild-cat schemes of which one suspects the existence.
If those agricultural colonies are a permanent success, ultimately the element of subsidy would have to disappear in one form or another, and I should hope that it would be possible eventually to dispense with subsidy of any kind, but for the moment the Land Commission has farms which it is by no means obvious are yielding their maximum output of wealth in their present condition of Mahomet's coffin, so to speak, suspended between a former regime and a new regime which has not yet been finally decided on. If those farms can be made to increase rapidly the output of food for the nation with the help of an organisation of the kind that the Mount Street Club represents, then I think the nation should consider very favourably the question of making those farms available on financial terms that the club could afford to accept.
