Seanad Éireann debate -
Thursday, 14 Dec 1939

Vol. 24 No. 4

Mount Street Club and Agricultural Production—Motion (Debate Resumed).

Mrs. Concannon

Most Senators were heartily in agreement with Senator Tierney and Senator O Buachalla when last night they welcomed the debate on this motion as being very valuable and stimulating and thanked Senator Johnston for having initiated it. To my mind, the debate was valuable on more than one point. The mover gave a very illuminating and stimulating account of the interesting social experiment carried on by the Mount Street Club. Senator O Buachalla said the idea behind it was not new. Unfortunately, owing to our lack of education in social matters, it was new to a great many of us, and it was very well worth the Seanad's time to listen to such a complete exposition of it. The experiment has excited a good deal of attention in other countries. The Catholic Worker a few months ago had an interesting account of it in which they expressed pleasure that Dublin had given other nations a lead on these lines.

The debate was also valuable because it flood-lighted our two important problems of increased production and unemployment—the solution of unemployment and the speeding up of food production will become more and more urgent in view of the war situation, as it develops. Any attention given to this matter, however it is initiated, is valuable and the debate gave a very good lead in the matter. It met to some extent a desire I expressed on a previous occasion for an examination of the unemployment problem. We have had commissions to inquire into many things but we have had no commission to inquire into one of the greatest problems we ever had. The Seanad in their collective wisdom could make a valuable contribution as I think everybody here knows something about unemployment and the extent of it, and there might be some valuable suggestions made for its solution. Senator Johnston certainly did contribute something as did nearly every other speaker. At the same time I do not think the Seanad can accept the resolution as it stands. It would hardly be right for one organisation, however useful its work— and we all have to pay a tribute to this organisation—to be singled out for special attention and for special favours especially if it might be at the expense of other sections of the community. We would like, of course, to see the experiment made by the Mount Street Club extended and followed by other organisations. For instance, the Old I.R.A. might do it. If it was only the Mount Street Club which was to get the favour the motion to postulate it might block the way for others. Therefore, the Seanad should not be in a hurry to adopt the resolution which might have that effect. Another reason is that as the debate developed there seemed to be implications in it which we could not very well accept. Large questions of policy and of social philosophy emerged on which there was some divergence of opinion. It seemed to me, perhaps, that behind Senator Johnston's proposal there was an ultimate ideal of large farms and co-operation in farming. These may be good, but we have to examine them fully before we can recommend them if it is implicit in the ideal that it would need more examination before we could wholeheartedly adopt it.

The policy of the Party to which I used to belong (there is no Party in the Seanad) has always been for the division of land and the establishment of as many people as possible permanently on the land, not on farms of four or five acres, as Senator Tierney smilingly mentioned, but on moderate sized farms which would enable a man to marry. In that connection I must remind you again that you must have the co-operation of women. There is not a bit of use settling people on the land if they have not proper wives. I never stand up in this House without stressing that point, which is a very important one, because for the development of farming and the development of food production the part played by a woman is absolutely essential and extremely important. For that reason again I do not think that the Seanad should accept the resolution as it stands or commit itself to what it entails because, as Senator Johnston's speech developed, it had a great many implications.

Senator Tierney blamed the Fianna Fáil Party for being wedded to the policy of small farms. He pointed out the English example of the large landowner who was a sort of focus of instruction and help to his smaller neighbours. I do not know that that has worked out so well in England. Most of my information is taken from the novels of Miss Sheila Kaye Smith. If what one gathers from these is a faithful representation of the conditions there I do not think that that is an example that we should follow, even if we could. Of course we cannot exactly follow it because, as Senator Tierney pointed out, the circumstances are quite different in Ireland.

Even in England they have their problem of "Back to the Land". Last night when I went home after listening to the debate here I read a copy of the Catholic Worker which is an extremely interesting and valuable publication and ought to be in the library here, because most of our earnest thinkers will get very useful suggestions from it. One article in it was entitled “Back to the Land” and was written by Maisie Ward (Mrs. Sheed).

She pointed out that the system of big farms had been very wasteful in England. Perhaps, I shall be permitted to read an extract from the Catholic Worker of November, 1939:—

"Most legislation for the last 100 years helped the big producer and hampered the small. Ever since the end of the 18th century, when 5,000,000 acres of the common land of England were enclosed, the trend has been in the same direction. Farms grew bigger and bigger, farmers fewer and fewer. Instead of the majority of the English people growing their own food, commercial farming professed to supply them more cheaply—especially commercial foreign farming. Intensive poultry and pig farming in Denmark, meat from the Argentine, wheat from the immense prairies of Canada and U.S.A. Anything small was held in slight esteem and said not to pay. You notice that I use the past tense. For a change has set in and is, spreading rapidly. First has come the attack on the wildly wasteful methods of big farming; soil erosion making whole tracts impossible of cultivation in some districts, while in others live stock, whose manure would have supplied the humus the earth needed, have been slaughtered for lack of food. Large commercialised farming is failing. Small farming as a way of life is coming back. Most readers of this paper have heard something of the communal farm schemes—and successes—of the fishermen of Nova Scotia and of the Catholic Worker of America. From Chicago comes the news of another success of the same kind. A builder with imagination started selling wooden houses cheap, each with one acre of land. City workers bought them on the instalment plan and, in the evenings and when out-of-work, they cultivate their own land. They grow potatoes, vegetables, fruit; keep poultry, pigs and goats. They have milk and cheese from the goats and they exchange with one another cheese for eggs or goats' milk for cabbages. They run up frames and force vegetables before the season, thus making a little money. Some sell flowers. Back has come in this group the old social life of the old-time village. One man roasted a goat in a special fashion, learned from his Hungarian parents, and he had all the families to a party to eat it. The children grew healthy and happy with the outdoor life; capable, too, and fond of garden work and the care of animals. To-day in England we are facing a possibility that supplies of cheap foreign food may decrease; for too long many of us have not had the money to buy enough of it anyhow.”

She goes on to make a suggestion which I should like to mention:—

"Could not men urge their trade unions and co-operative societies to buy land for this purpose (allotments)? The Allotment Holders' Association does so. Trade union funds could not be better spent than in securing land for the members in perpetuity."

That is an idea which might be considered. At all events, one thing emerges—that we have a big and serious problem, the problem of unemployment. Men and women are going to waste because they have no work to do. Work, as well as food, is a vital human need. On the other hand, we have tracts of waste land and I think something should be done to bring these two needs together. So far as the debate has shown some leaning in that direction, it has been valuable.

Mr. Honan

We all listened with considerable interest to the revelations regarding Mount Street Club, as detailed by Senator Johnston. Those things are very nice as a hobby. They are very useful, too, especially when there are gentlemen of leisure and inclination to superintend and supervise such work. So far as the ordinary peasant is concerned, which is the main consideration, I do not think that the argument holds good. Much has been said about Mount Street Club, and everybody appreciates what they have been doing. Much has been said and written also about community farming. An experiment in that direction was carried out at one time in a place called Ralahine, in County Clare. In reality, there was very little in the whole thing. That community farm was started as a hobby by one gentleman. As soon as he got tired of the hobby, the whole thing came to the ground like a pack of cards, and that was all about it.

These things are of interest only for a short time. They are never progressive and they never lead to anything. They are just a hobby for the moment and, when the idea which leads to their establishment fades out, as it usually does in a short time, they fade out with it. I do not think these experiments could be taken as a reasonable argument why lands now available and about to be distributed to landless people, who have been waiting for them for years, should be dealt with in some other way. This argument should not cut across the prospects of these people. If anybody, or a number of people, wish to engage in the cultivation of land for the sake of greater production at the present time, there is plenty of land other than that intended for these landless people on which they can utilise their energy. It would be well, of course, that these lands should be cultivated, but it would be very wrong to jeopardise the chances of those who are really marked out for portion of these lands. They should get them in reasonable time. We all know that it is comparatively easy to get into land or into a house. But the machinery of the law, if one wishes to put a person out of a half-crown house, is so slow and tedious that the expense and time involved make the situation very difficult. What I suggest is that nobody should be entitled to claim lands ear-marked for certain landless people who have been expecting them for a long time.

It was mentioned here last evening— this was referred to by Senator Mrs. Concannon—that, as a result of Government policy, people were getting miserable divisions of four or five acres of land. That is quite incorrect, and the Senator who made the statement should have known as well as anybody else that it was incorrect. The ordinary holding or division of land consists of 25 or 30 acres. That is the minimum, and it refers to fairly good land. There are cases in which four or five acres are given by way of supplement to an already uneconomic holding. A man with a small farm might not have land suitable for meadowing or tillage. A farm might be acquired close at hand and, instead of dividing it between new tenants, portions would be given to uneconomic holders around, so that they would have four or five acres suitable for meadowing or tillage. That would cover their requirements for the moment. There is no such thing, however, as a single holding of four or five acres of land for a single individual; that is purely nonsensical.

With regard to the co-operative or communal system of farming, I do not think it ever works out in practice. I know that, in my own county, co-operative dairying was tried and was a failure. In about three-fourths of the county we had dairying under the Dairy Disposals Board, and it was a very pronounced success, but in one part of the county, the east and south, there were co-operative dairies and co-operative stores established. In the three-fourths of the county where the dairying was governed by the Dairy Disposals Board, there was wonderful success, but there was an entire failure in the part of the county which was worked and managed on the co-operative system. The members who joined that co-operative movement lost heavily, with the result that, to save them from extinction altogether, the Dairy Disposals Board had to take over that part of the county, so far as dairying is concerned, last year; otherwise, they would have been extinguished altogether.

Co-operative stores or co-operative shopkeeping was also attempted in various parts of the county with the most disastrous results. I knew farmers who joined co-operative stores, who had been well off originally and who, as a result of the losses occasioned by untrained and inexperienced management of those stores, lost everything they had, and became bankrupt. The banks came down on these men and the bailiffs came to their doors—men who never saw a bailiff on their farms before. We must be careful, therefore, about this co-operative business. I knew of one case in my own county of a fairly big farm, where the farmer and his three sons agreed to work the farm co-operatively —each of them to have the same number of cattle and the same amount of everything on the land, without dividing up the farm. They went on fairly well for a while, but eventually they did not agree, one thinking the other got more than he had, and so on, and the result was that the three brothers disagreed and most of the land was absolutely wasted in building big sod walls between them. I have had a fairly long experience, and so far as I have been able to see, co-operative or communal work has been an entire failure.

Mention was also made by Senator Johnston of the greater economy that exists on large farms compared with small farms. I do not think that works out in practice. In the county to which I belong, practically all the farms are small farms the average valuation of which, I should say, would be about £15, and in half the county you have families living on 20-acre farms of land, and not very good land at that. Yet, in their own small way, these people are all fairly well off, and are able to pay their rates and annuities and pay their way generally, whereas I know that in the case of some of the bigger farms, with the bigger demands on them, the farmers went smash almost, and were not able to pay their rates or their annuities. I admit that that was when times were bad, and that they may be getting back on their feet now, when times are getting better, but in a general sense the small farm, worked by the family themselves, is far and away the safer farm in this country. Accordingly, I do not think anything would be gained by the point contained in the motion before the House. I think it would be dangerous, and what I principally fear is the cutting across, in the form of a red herring, the possibility of depriving of land those who have been waiting for this land for a very long time. Nobody knows how long this war may last; it may last for five years or even for ten years, and I think it would be very unfair to those people who are already earmarked for divisions of the land that they should be put aside at the last minute, when the land is practically within their grasp, by a motion of this kind.

Mr. M. Hayes

I have not very much to say on this motion except that, in its terms, it appears not to cross land division, as Senator Honan seems to think. The terms of the motion are 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 the Clondalkin farm. I am sure the Minister for Lands will have a certain number of practical difficulties, no matter how much goodwill he may have towards the proposal, in acceding to Senator Johnston's motion, either in whole or in part, but there is this much to be said: that the unemployment situation for urban workers is a very desperate one and that nobody should neglect any opportunity which appears to bring us towards a solution of that problem and towards the provision of work and maintenance and the preservation of self-respect for people who seem to have no hope of work otherwise. We hear of people committing grave crimes and getting into penal servitude, but the man who gets into penal servitude gets out of it after a while, whereas the position in Dublin for a long time has been that the worker who does anything and loses his job—let us assume even that it is his own fault—will not get a job again for a very long period, and so anything that might give these people work and restore their self-respect should be availed of.

The advantage of the experiment being made by the Mount Street Club is that it is not a charity, and the further advantage of what has happened on their farm at Clondalkin is that they claim—I cannot check the claim myself—that city workers have proved suitable, under proper direction, to do farm work. If that is true, and if any expenditure of Government money, or any giving of land in the possession of the Land Commission, could help us towards getting into the position where city workers could do farm work, it would be a very good thing indeed. My fear with regard to the matter is that, while an organisation like the Mount Street Club depends not so much upon its rules as upon the spirit which actuates its founders and directors, it is not easy to extend that particular spirit over a larger area, and that, while the experiment is worth trying, the difficulty is that one group of people may have a particular spirit in a particular place whereas that spirit is not transferable, so to speak, and if the matter were to be taken up on a large scale you might have all sorts of people asking to have themselves recognised, with the result that there might be considerable loss of Government money, which is bad enough in itself, but a second loss would be the loss of confidence in any experiments of this nature.

Senator Honan spoke of the case of the small subsistence farmer as compared with the big farmer, and said that the small subsistence farmer was able to pay his way whereas the big farmer was not able to pay his way. I think the Senator's point is true only in a crisis. It is true that in a crisis, financial or otherwise, the small subsistence farmer, with his family working on the land, can stand over his calls better than the bigger farmer, but it is not by any means possible for us to live in this country by dividing the land in such a way that it can be worked by a family merely for subsistence purposes. We must do more than that, and we certainly must endeavour to feed our city populations with farm produce, and also export. From the point of view of what the Minister can do on the matter, I know that there would be considerable technical difficulties.

If, for example, money has to be administered under the Civil Service, with the Comptroller and Auditor General in the background, the position would be different from what is happening in Clondalkin at the moment. My suggestion is that, instead of taking on a large experiment, the Minister might give one particular farm for the moment—get legislation for it if necessary— in an endeavour to see whether the activities of the Mount Street Club in that direction could be extended. If he were going to do it at all, I believe that he should do it courageously, and that he should overcome the official objection—an objection which I quite appreciate—to allowing Government funds to pass into the hands of other people not to be accounted for. What generally happens in these things is that certain people say that certain things should be done, and they get together, have a meeting and pass a resolution calling on the Government to do something about the matter. In the case of the Mount Street Club, however, both the directors and the members can claim the distinction that they did something themselves first, and did a considerable amount of work first, before any suggestion was made that they should get Government assistance. If Government assistance meant Government control, then I am afraid the situation would be radically altered and I think not improved. The suggestion I would make, although I do not know whether or not Senator Johnston would agree with it, is that one particular farm, perhaps in the vicinity of Dublin, if it could be got—I am quite ignorant of those things—should be experimented with, and that the experiment should be carried out in a courageous way, that is to say not necessarily under the direction of State servants. If that could be done, it would then be seen whether we could go a step further. With regard to its general extension, that seems to me to be a matter of very great difficulty, but the situation is a desperate one, and where a definite piece of work has been done I think the Minister should give the most sympathetic consideration he possibly can to an extension of the experiment, even with certain Government expenditure or with the use of Government land.

Donnchadha O hEaluighthe

Ní rabhas annseo indé, agus níor chualas an méid a dubhradh ar thaoibh an rúin seo, mar bhíos ag cruinniú eile. I was not here yesterday to hear what was said in favour of this motion, and, therefore, I am to a certain extent in the dark as regards the situation. Presumably an account has been given of the working of the farm near Clondalkin. When a business is held up to us here as a model, it must have some recommending features, but I am in the position of not having heard the very good arguments which I presume have been put forward in favour of this motion. I know County Dublin fairly well, and in my opinion if there is any section of the people who should be held up as models and as suitable for receiving land it is the small men around the village of Rush. Those men, with their small patches of land, who would till it very carefully, seem to me to be the type of men who ought to be looked upon as models, and if land were being distributed I think the sons of those very small farmers should certainly get some consideration. In the old days I used to know Fingal very well; the late Frank Lawless and myself were bosom pals. There was a Government farm in Rush—I do not know what use is being made of it now; possibly it is let in conacre—and when I saw this motion and heard the speakers here it flashed to my mind that it would be most suitable and most reasonable if that farm were distributed between the sons of those very small farmers around there.

I should be very glad to hear that the Club is making a great success of this farm at Clondalkin, and I should be more than delighted to hear that the urban workers in Dublin are suitable and good farm workers. I know something about farm work, and in my opinion a very large amount of skill is required for the working of a farm. Those who have been reared on farms know all about the slavish work which has to be done there, and the different subjects with which the worker on the land has to be conversant. I have my doubts when I hear men like Senator Hayes saying that urban workers become good farm hands. He will excuse me if I have a certain amount of doubt as to whether they can be such a great success in farming. However, I hope that the trend will be outwards from the city instead of inwards. As I have said here already, if land is to be distributed it would seem that the most suitable men to get it are those young fellows who were reared on small congested farms and have been trained to the work. In my opinion, they are the men who should get consideration. They are the men who would make a success of their farms, and raise good healthy families. As I said, I am more or less in the dark with regard to this motion as I was not able to be here yesterday and did not hear the arguments which, presumably, were ably put forward by Senator Johnston. If those people have been the success we are told they have been, it may be an indication to us and to the Government as to how they may develop the co-operative working of those farms in future.

Peadar Mac Fhionnlaoich

Tá cuid den rún seo a bhfuil mé ina fhabhar agus cuid eile de a bhfuil mé ina aghaidh. Tá cuid den rún ag iarraidh ar an Aire dul ar aghaidh le roinnt na talmhan ague é a roinnt níos gasta. Tá mé ina fhabhar sin. Tá cuid de atá ag baint le có-oibriú nó có-oibreachas. Bhí mé i gcomhnaí ina fhabhar sin ach is doiligh é a chur i gcrích. Tá mé ina fhabhar, fosta, na daoine a chur ina gcomhnaí ar fheirmeacha beaga.

Tá mé ag glacadh go bhfuil an Cumann so Sráid an Mhóta ag déanamh a ndícheall ins an dóigh ceart acht ní dóigh liom gur mhaith an rud iad a phiocadh amach mar rud fá leith agus cuidiú a thabhairt dóibh ón Riaghaltas. Tá dreamanna eile ann a bheadh ag feitheamh leis an gcuidiú céadna. Cuir i gcás: tá coisdí áitiúla ann a d'fhéadfadh úsáid a bhaint as a leithéid agus táthar ag trácht ar choisdí paróisde a chur ar siubhal ar fud na hÉireann agus b'fhéidir go bhféadfadh siad san an rud céanna a dhéanamh, nó rud cosúil leis. Mar sin, ní fhéadfainn vóta a thabhairt ar son an rúin má sheasann sé—cuidiú fá leith agus aitheantas fá leith a thabhairt don Chumann so amháin, gidh nach bhfuil aon rud agam in aghaidh an Chumainn sin. Mar sin, má cuirtear an rún mar atá sé, caithfidh mé vóta a thabhairt ina aghaidh.

Mr. Goulding

I suppose I am going to say practically what everybody else has said. I think the matter has been pretty well debated, but I would like to stress the fact that co-operation in farm work is a rather difficult thing to organise. Co-operation for the sale of goods or for the manufacture of butter is a matter of simple organisation, because the work of the co-operative store or of the co-operative factory is done by a certain small number of paid employees, but when it comes to co-operation in farm work, where you take a large area of land and put a considerable number of men working on it in shares, you are inevitably heading for trouble. Human nature being what it is, you will find one good energetic worker, and you will find another a lazy, inefficient worker. Inevitably, you arrive at the point where the efficient worker will begin to say: "Why should I work so energetically and efficiently when my neighbour, who is working with far less energy and far less efficiency, is getting the same share as I am?" Eventually, it will lead to quarrels and rows. It would be almost impossible to work it properly. The work done by the Mount Street Club is, undoubtedly, of value. I do not know exactly how it is operated, but, apparently, the men are working individual plots on the land. Am I right—are they working individual plots?

Professor Johnston

No, they are working a large farm all together. For technical reasons, in order to qualify for certain grants from the Department, they have to treat it as made up of a number of plots, but practically, for convenience of cultivation, they cultivate the thing as one large field.

Mr. Goulding

Each worker is cultivating his own particular plot?

Professor Johnston

No, he is not. It is worked as an organisation.

Mr. Goulding

That may succeed. All over the country, during the past year, the system of working land in plots worked fairly well, but if one were to visit the average plot outside any town in Ireland, it would be rather interesting to watch the difference in the manner in which they are being tilled. You would find men here and there taking great care, but you would find two or three others who had more weeds than anything else in their plots. That is the difficulty when there is not proper supervision which, I take it, they have in the Mount Street organisation.

Professor Johnston

May I interrupt in order to ask the Senator whether he is suggesting that there are weeds in the Mount Street Club plots, at Merrion, for example?

Mr. Goulding

No, I am not; I am just pointing out that in that organisation there is strict supervision.

Professor Johnston

I think you will find no weeds in these plots.

Mr. Goulding

I am very glad. As far as I can understand, for a great number of years in this country the policy favoured by the people has been that alluded to by some of the other speakers, the small farm. There is one danger we have to avoid. We have a considerable number of men in this country. In fact, I believe we have more men fitted and able to work the land than we have land for them, and I think it would be better social organisation to endeavour to put these people on the land as individual families. Any man who has a small farm to look after, mainly with the help of his own family, will take a personal interest in that work. I believe that these small farmers produce more food than the larger farmers. I believe that if they were encouraged they would be a greater asset to the country in the production of food than any large farming organisation could be, and I believe there would be more contented people.

One of the greatest safeguards for any country is the multiplication of property holders, even small property holders. If we could get as many people as we possibly can on the fair-size farms in this country, I believe it would be better for the country. There is one thing I dislike about this motion: if this were to be agreed to we would have similar organisations springing up all over the country, and there would be grave danger of conflict between the landless men and the small farmers' sons in the mountain areas who really need land, who are able to work the land, and the men in the towns who would organise into groups to acquire land and work it co-operatively. I am not against co-operation at all if it could be made a success and if it were possible to organise the unemployed in this country in such a way that we could put them to work on land it would be a very desirable thing indeed. But we have to take into account the vast number of landless men all over the country who have been looking forward for years to obtaining a small portion of land for themselves. We have to be very careful that we do not discourage these men and get the idea into their heads that there is no hope for them in the future, that the land will be taken up by associations in the towns.

I think Senator Johnston made reference to the fact that the Mount Street undertaking is not a paying proposition, that it has to depend on subscriptions and contributions. I take it that his hope is that the State would come to the aid of such an organisation by way of grant or loan, in order to help it on its way. I think we should endeavour to make any organisation that we set going, self-supporting. If we have to be calling on the State all the time in order partly to support organisations of this sort by subsidies or grants, I do not think that would be desirable. We should endeavour, if we establish some such organisations, to see that they will be at least self-supporting. The State could not possibly hope to finance, or even partly finance, a number of these organisations if they happened to be set up throughout the country. Inevitably, if we were to agree to the suggestion contained in this motion, we would have similar organisations seeking State aid.

I am not against the idea at all, but I think we should be very careful to see that the interests of the landless men in various parts of the country, men who are well able to work land, and who are urgently in need of it, are first attended to. Someone suggested that we should first attend to the needs of the uneconomic holders, the people who require an additional three or four acres. We will have to take those people into account, I think, before we consider proposals such as are now made. Apart from the position of uneconomic holders, there was some objection raised to land being given in lots of four or five acres. The only occasion where that was done was in the case of cottiers, to whom a small portion of land was given in addition to the acre or half-acre they held originally. In some cases this scheme was not successful. A man who has to work daily for his living has not much time to devote to the land, and, in spite of every effort to make a success of his allotment, it is not always successful. In the case of a labourer who has a large family, the family are able to look after the land, but in the majority of cases this may not apply. I do not want to discourage Senator Johnston, but before we make any decision on this matter we should look at it from every angle.

Mr. O'Donovan

Senator Johnston bases his assumption on the fact that there are lands which it is not practicable for the Land Commission to divide at the present time. Nobody put forward an argument to prove that there are any lands which it is not practicable for the Land Commission to divide. I do not know that there are any such. However, that does not take away from the motion. To my mind, if there are lands which could be purchased along the same lines as the farm at Clondalkin, then farms could be obtained in that way for similar purposes, and we could leave the Land Commission out altogether and not interfere with the function for which the Land Commission was established. The main object of the Land Commission is to re-establish the people on the land and divide large holdings into smaller holdings on which families can live in reasonable comfort.

There was one thing that impressed me about Senator Johnston's motion. So far as the technical and the academic aspects of it are concerned, they were very instructive. As usual, however, the Senator brought in some subtle arguments. He brought in his own point of view, and did so in a very subtle manner. It is that, I think, which has caused the greatest division of opinion amongst Senators, a division which was apparent in the speeches they made. We have had discussions relating to the policy of the Land Commission and the system of dividing the land into small holdings, and we have had opinions of the size which holdings should reach. It is unfortunate that that type of thing was introduced. I think if the lecture—I use the word "lecture" again—which Senator Johnston gave us was confined to the working of a club such as the Mount Street Club, then we could discuss its capabilities and the possibility of development along certain lines. If the Senator had left out what I call the subtle arguments about the policy of the Land Commission, and the desirability of a large farm against a small farm, we would have had a far more instructive debate. I want to find out if those people who work in the Mount Street Club draw the unemployment allowance.

Professor Johnston

They do, as a matter of fact.

Mr. O'Donovan

If so, that means that you have 30 or 40 or 50 unemployed people who would otherwise be living on the unemployment allowance. There is a minimum allowance of 9/- and I think it was Senator Hayes who referred to a round figure of 10/-. That would be if they were unmarried and without dependents. The idea came to my mind that if every small farmer were allowed to employ an extra man and the 9/- or 10/- that he would be drawing on the dole were given towards his wages, you would encourage much greater employment through the small farms. I think that is a line which might be profitably examined, instead of trying to have hundreds of men existing on 9/- or 10/- a week. The farmer who would employ them under such circumstances would be relieved to that extent and would be in a position to employ an extra man. If a farmer employs one man at the present time and was encouraged to employ an extra man and was relieved to the extent I have indicated in the payment of that man's wages; it would create a very considerable amount of employment, much more employment than would be given, even in such well-run organisations as the Mount Street Club.

So far as a club like this is concerned, it is what I might call an internal organisation. As far as serving anybody in the community goes, save the individuals concerned and their dependents, it does not serve any purpose. The system of coinage or tallies or chits has been referred to. We used these in the camps. When we had not actual cash we used the chits. This organisation is worked along somewhat similar lines. They can buy goods through their own organisation, and it is an entirely internal organisation to that extent. I presume the idea is that those men shall support themselves and their families and not give rise to any economic difficulties. Of course the labour people might object if those people were putting goods on the market at a cheap rate—there is that complication in it. I understand, however, that the organisation is meant entirely for the sustenance of the families whose representatives are taken into the Mount Street Club.

Professor Johnston

That is right.

Mr. O'Donovan

Then it is what I might call a restricted organisation, but that is all to the good so far as the individuals and their families are concerned. The system seems all right. You have practically all the goods that the family requires produced by that organisation, but there must be several commodities that they cannot interchange—in other words, there is the tradesman's side. Therefore, I presume that the 9/- or 10/- unemployment assistance would buy goods such as sugar and tea, commodities that they cannot produce within the organisation. I would far prefer to hear a discussion as to the possibility of developing organisations similar to this rather than the type of debate that we have had. The question of land tenure involves such questions as the people leaving the country districts and going into the towns.

I am glad that Senator Johnston cleared the air when he said that the men still get the State sustenance. In the course of Senator Counihan's remarks I understood him to say that they get further State grants in relation to what they cultivate in their plots. I do not object to that. So far as the technique and the organisation of the club are concerned, Senator Johnston went to great trouble to explain them to us, but apparently there are other details that one would require in order fully to understand the organisation and to make it applicable to the country at large. There were references to co-operation, and one Senator used the words "communal organisation." That is more or less a synonym for Communism. I would not like to think of the members of an organisation of that sort as a body of Communists.

The word "communal," of course, applies to any co-operative system of working. I want to express my opinion that no matter what co-operation or what communal farming you may have, it will not succeed unless the family organisation is recognised. I think it was Senator Tierney who referred to the fact that the second and third sons of farmers had no means of existence or no calling which they could adopt amongst the farming community, and that they drift to the towns or find employment otherwise. Most of us have seen the picture "Boys' Town," and we saw how the boys could live and work together, but they were drawn from a section of the community which was not comparable to that from which the sons of farmers are drawn. A system like that will work as far as education is concerned but, when it comes to a man settling down in life, my opinion is that there is no alternative to the system by which a man lives and works on his own farm. Let that farm be as big as possible to maintain a family in comfort, and to enable the owner to educate his sons to go for other callings, if necessary. The Ralahine colony in Clare, to which reference has been made, did not fail because of the remissness of any man in particular. It lived for a while, until certain difficulties arose amongst the workers. That is what you will be faced with in any system of communal or co-operative working of the type of organisation indicated by some of the speakers here.

Senator Johnston mentioned that there was not the same social co-operation between small farmers that that there would be in a big organisation working along these lines. I disagree with him on that. In the part of the country in which I was born— other Senators will know of this, too— there was what was known as the "mehul" system, under which farmers helped one another at threshing, digging potatoes and other farm work. A man lent his labourer or his sons to his neighbours on a particular day, and they responded by helping him to do the same work on another day. I am afraid that that system has disappeared, due probably to the growth of trade unionism. You have not the same co-operation between farmers and labourers that you had formerly.

Mr. Counihan

Politics have probably something to do with it.

Mr. O'Donovan

Politics had nothing to do with it. It is largely due to the spirit of commercialisation, which has been brought about by trade unionism. There is not quite the same co-operation between farmers as there formerly was, but I think there is still considerably more co-operation amongst the small farming community than amongst any other section in the country. There is a further point that occurred to me. Let us assume that a colony is established in a district where the land has been divided by the Land Commission, that the small farmers live as a community in a village, and work two or three farms together.

I thought at one time that that would be a good idea, that it would encourage greater sociability, more social intercourse, between the farmers. On the one occasion on which I did some Continental travelling I saw a system of that kind in practical operation in France. I saw villages where the farmhouses were clustered together and I came away with a very bad impression of that system. I should not like to see it in operation in Ireland. It is much better I think to have each man living on his own holding than to have the small farmers living and working together as a community. These are a few features that were not touched upon by other speakers.

Senator Johnston has indicated that the men are still getting State aid and that they are looking for more State aid. The Mount Street Club, therefore, is not as self-supporting an organisation as one would at first think but the work of the club is all to the good because it enables 30 or 40 families to maintain themselves satisfactorily. I do not know whether the families of members of the club are provided with more necessaries than if members were working at their ordinary trades. I fancy they would not leave it at all if they were able to get more by exchanging their tallies for goods than they would be able to get from ordinary work. They would be satisfied to remain as they were so long as they could get unemployment benefit from the Government and probably other grants also.

Mr. Cummins

Whilst we have every admiration for the work that has been done by the Mount Street Club, I think the suggestion embodied in the motion is entirely impracticable. The club was founded, I understand, by a group of charitable people and the funds raised through the call of charity were aided by the unemployment benefits of the workers. I cannot conceive that such a system can continue. Am I to understand that clubs are to be run throughout the country under such conditions or is it the idea of the club to place the men who are now unemployed permanently on a farm and give them homes there? Then, of course, their unemployment assistance will cease. It seems only possible to continue the work of the club whilst the unemployment assistance lasts. I cannot visualise any permanency for any system based on these two schemes—charity and unemployment assistance. I think if a remedy is to be found for unemployment it will have to be found in some other way. I am entirely in favour of co-operation, such a scheme of co-operation, for instance, as was tried in this country before by the Irish Agricultural Organisation Society which I think was capable of doing good work, if modified, and if the proper spirit of co-operation were inculcated into our people. While I appreciate very much the valuable work that has been done, and while I hope that the Clondalkin effort will be a success, I see no prospect for the extension of this scheme. If co-operation is to be a success, it will have to be carried on in some other way.

The Government have done something in the way of giving allotments to the unemployed. I do not know if that is the best way of dealing with their problem. I know many people living in cottages in my own county who have not the wherewithal to procure seeds for planting the half-acres given to them. The local bodies have been instructed that they have no authority to supply them with seeds. I do not think the scheme should stop there. If these people are to make use of the plots they should be provided with seeds. I know about 80 families who are now in possession of plots. They never had a plot before and know very little about land cultivation because they come from a class of people who never did much in the farming line. In my opinion money could be profitably spent in giving them proper equipment. I do not say that equipment should be given indiscriminately. It should be given to those who would be likely to make use of it.

I understood from Senator Johnston that there were about 37 people employed on this farm at Clondalkin. That is a very good start. We must confess, however, that it makes but a small impression on this problem of relieving the unemployed. In my opinion if that problem is ever to be solved it must be by a "back to the land" movement. Everyone knows that Dublin is being replenished by people coming from the land. I imagine there are very few families in Dublin who could trace their ancestors in this city back over a period of, say, 150 years. In view of the fact that the city, as I have said, is being replenished by people coming into it from the land, it should not be a difficult problem to get them back to the country again. The areas in the city which are being cleared of slum dwellings should be turned into parks and adequate transport facilities provided for those at present living in those dwellings to enable them to keep whatever employment they have in the city. A scheme of that kind has been operated successfully in the United States of America. City dwellers have been taken out into the country where they are enabled to enjoy the pleasant amenities of rural life.

With regard to the motion, the problem it deals with is a very big one and should be introduced at a later stage, I think, in a modified form. It ought to be dealt with as an economic proposition and should not have anything in the way of a charity or the dole about it. The question, if again brought forward in the form I suggest, will I feel have the support of Senators in all parts of the House because I am sure it is the desire of all of us to see the people placed on the land.

Mr. James Johnston

I listened very attentively to the discussion yesterday and to-day on this motion. If the few words I have to say are not found to be of much assistance, I hope at least they will do no harm. The motion refers to estates in the possession of the Land Commission "which it is not practicable to divide at present". I join issue with Senator Professor Johnston on that, because this question of the estates in the hands of the Land Commission at the present time is a burning one throughout the country. I think that if a referendum of the people were to be taken, it would be found that what I have said is true because the question is one which concerns the unemployed, the old soldiers of the Republic and uneconomic small holders. It is one which has been agitating the people of the country for a very long time. I suppose I am one of the oldest members of the House, and I well remember how, in my early days, this question of putting the people back on the land agitated the country. The question still remains unsettled. I hope that the present Minister will take his courage in his hands and set himself determinedly to settle it once and for all. Two-thirds of the farmers in the county that I come from are living on uneconomic holdings with a £10 valuation or less.

In my opinion, any land which the Land Commission have in their possession, and find it impossible to distribute at the present time, should be allotted temporarily to uneconomic holders convenient to it. I am a small farmer myself, living in the County Monaghan. During the Great War of 1914-1918 a number of small farmers like myself found that we were unable to make a living out of our holdings. The result was that we had to go out and buy conacre in competition with farmers holding 30, 40 and some 100 acres. The result was that we had to pay such a price for the conacre that it was practically of no use to us. It is for that reason I suggest that estates, which the Land Commission, for one reason or another, are unable to divide permanently at the present time, should be distributed temporarily amongst uneconomic small-holders living convenient to them. Senator Professor Johnston has suggested that these estates should be given over to the Mount Street Club and worked on some sort of a communal system. I submit that better results to the nation would result if my suggestion were given effect to.

The lands should be allotted on favourable terms to these uneconomic small holders in regard to rent and rates, with perhaps some allowance for equipment. I think that would be a wiser and a better policy for the Land Commission to adopt than to put into effect the scheme outlined in the motion. I submit that, when land is in the hands of the Land Commission, there should be no hesitation or delay in its division. Once they have acquired land, I do not see why there should be years of delay in dividing it, especially when people are waiting anxiously for it.

If this motion is passed and the Land Commission or the Government is asked to implement it, would it mean that all the land which the Mount Street Club requires will be given to them and that nobody else will get any? I am sure the Mount Street Club could not extend its activities outside the County of Dublin and possibly those counties adjoining. What about other parts of the country? Would there not be other organisations arising like mushrooms and applying for the same favourable conditions? What would be the position of the Land Commission then? I do not think it would be an enviable one, in any case. Certain sections of the people would be joining organisations and societies for the purpose of getting some sort of communal system? What about the farmers' sons to whom Senator Tierney referred yesterday—the second, third and fourth sons of the farmer without any prospects before them but of coming into the cities or emigrating; would they have any chance? Would old I.R.A. men, who have been on farms all their lifetime and who are seeking farms at the present time, sit quietly and say nothing and do nothing about it? It seems to me that this would mean creating one of the biggest problems which ever arose in this country.

Someone has mentioned co-operative farming and co-operative organisations, and their failure. A few co-operative organisations were started quite convenient to where I live in County Monaghan. One was started as a store by the Agricultural Society a few years ago and it was a failure. Some 20 or 25 years ago a number of farmers and others in the County Monaghan, principally flax growers, joined together for the purpose of erecting a co-operative mill. They spent some thousands of pounds on it, but later it went into liquidation and some of those people who were guarantors or otherwise connected with it are not free of the debt even at the present time. Even worse than that happened. At least one of the members who had put all his money into this and who had guaranteed it also, and who had no other prospect before him but of being sold out, actually committed suicide as a result of it. That is one instance of the result of co-operation. Senator Donovan seems—if I may use the familiar saying—to have hit the nail on the head when he stated that the best method of working the land in this country is that of the individual farmer, not the communist system, not the communal or the co-operative or any other system.

Each individual farmer should be set up with an economic farm on which he is capable of making a living, so far as it is possible to provide it. There will then be a happy and contented people living at least in moderate comfort. There is land available, and the sooner the Minister applies himself to its division the better. I suppose there are fewer ranches in my county than in other counties, yet I have a list of farms, which was given to me in the last few weeks, some of which are up to 1,000 acres. They are uneconomic holdings, and landless men are looking for them. I hope the Seanad will not pass this motion, proposed by Senator Johnston, however good it may seem, or however strongly he may have advocated it. It may deal successfully with a number of those who would otherwise drift into the towns, but as general policy it will not be best, and if any attempt is made to implement it, I foresee very grave difficulties.

Mr. Derrig

The discussion on this motion of Senator Johnston has covered a very wide field. I was under the impression that the object of the motion was to call attention to the necessity for making provision whereby unemployed heads of families might be enabled at least to provide sufficient vegetables or other food for themselves by growing it during the war emergency period. That is a most essential and important work, and it is very necessary to call attention to it just now. With the exception of Senator Cummins, I do not know that any other Senator during the discussion has referred to the allotment scheme introduced so far back as 1933 in an endeavour to alleviate, to some extent, at any rate, the position of the unemployed. The House will recollect that local authorities have power to acquire land compulsorily—even outside their own boundaries—if it is necessary for the purpose of letting in allotments; and, with the consent of the Minister for Local Government and Public Health, they also have power to let lands which they may hold and intend to use for other purposes.

In addition to that, there are associations of allotment holders, which very often supply the seeds, manures, implements and spraying material. The local authority can let land to such an association, and the Minister for Agriculture can give certain financial aid: he makes grants to particular associations which themselves provide land for allotment to unemployed persons —including the Mount Street Club. There seems to be a very great field of potential activity there for other unemployed persons or others who wish to become allotment holders. They have only to apply to the local authority. There are persons in another sphere of life, who are interested in the general question of getting some kind of active work for unemployed people, partly to provide food for themselves and partly to give them certain training, and to assist them, as has been pointed out by Senators, by making them feel that they are not dependent on any form of charity, but that anything they succeed in producing from their plots is by their own labour, and will go to the sustenance of their own families.

A considerable amount of success has attended the allotments scheme. During the present year 68 out of 88 local authorities have provided allotment schemes, and the total number of allotments came to 4,485. In addition, eight associations provided land for allottees, the number of allotments provided being 359. Of course, during the coming year a special effort will be necessary on account of increasing prices and possible scarcity. Whether there will be an actual scarcity in this country or not, it is difficult to say, but there will be certain scarcity from the point of view of increasing prices, and by reason of the fact that, whatever amount is provided by the State for the relief of the unemployed, it will scarcely be able to cope with the increased cost which unemployed people and persons in distress will be called upon to bear, even to provide the bare necessities of life. They will have very little margin left over and, as far as I am concerned, I should like to take the opportunity to urge all those who may have influence to see that the allotments schemes are taken up and pushed and worked.

It is expected during the coming year that the number of allotments will be, at least, doubled. In Dublin City and County the total number of allotments is 1,400, of which 1,200 are in the county borough. It is expected that next year that number will be increased at least to 2,700 in the borough and to 400 in the county. Every advantage should be taken of these schemes, and public men and local authorities should do everything possible to provide food for unemployed persons and others through the medium of such schemes.

As I pointed out, the Mount Street Club is receiving some assistance from the Minister for Agriculture, through the provision whereby associations can have special grants made to them for materials. Of course, there is nothing to stop other associations being formed for equally worthy purposes and receiving the same financial assistance. I should say that the allotments are not more than one-eight of an acre, but it is thought that, even on that rather small area, sufficient vegetable food could be provided to maintain the average family for the greater part of the year. The rents of the allotments are considered to be advantageous to allottees and are fixed on that basis. We want to have allotments taken up to the greatest extent possible, particularly during the coming year. For unemployed persons, the rents are merely nominal, and the Minister for Agriculture provides seeds, manures, implements, and spraying material.

I have a great deal of admiration for the excellent work the Mount Street Club has been doing, and for the ideal the members have set before them which, as well as being of a very high type, is very practical. It is the type of ideal with which you can do a great deal of practical work, and there is the satisfaction of knowing that you are working towards that ideal. A great many of us have ideals but we do not take the necessary trouble or do not apply ourselves to the working out of them in practice. It can be said of the Mount Street Club that they are certainly doing their utmost to put their ideals into practice, and those worthy citizens who made a very large sum of money available in order to support the club financially in purchasing the farm at Clondalkin deserve the greatest credit.

So far as an experiment for the letting of land through the Land Commission is concerned, it is a matter of some difficulty. The Land Commission is a statutory body, with certain statutory powers to take over land for the purpose of resale to certain approved types of allottees, for example, uneconomic holders, migrants, workers who have lost their employment, and so on. The Land Commission during our time, and before it, has been working on that basis, and I see no hope of changing that policy in the future. It is a policy that two successive native Governments have considered it proper to implement and to concentrate a great deal of attention upon. It happens sometimes that land is in the hands of the Land Commission, for the reason that houses, which it is intended should be built upon them for allottees, are not available, or that there is some delay, and during the period that the Land Commission has the land on hands in such cases it may make special arrangements to let it for short periods, generally to local people who are in the habit of taking grazing. Very often these would be people who would expect to get allotments when a scheme for the division of the land was being prepared.

In view of the compulsory tillage scheme during the coming year, we have made arrangements through the inspectors for the letting in conacre, and the necessary preparations, at least for as much as is possible of land which the Land Commission hold, and which it will not be possible to divide before the coming spring, are well in train. I think the Land Commission inspectors have made preparations accordingly. Such lands can only be let for short periods. On making inquiries I find that we have not, in fact, adjacent to the City of Dublin land which, even if it were so decided, could be made available for seasonal letting to the Mount Street Club. There is really only one estate near Dublin, and in that case it is not too late to take up the matter. The Commissioners, if they consider an application they receive the most suitable and the most worthy in every other way, may make a letting of conacre for the coming spring.

Professor Johnston

Does the Minister imply that there is a certain estate which he would be willing to consider letting in conacre to the Mount Street Club?

Mr. Derrig

I am not saying that; I am only saying that if the club make their application to the Commissioners it will be considered. I am not giving any promise.

Professor Johnston

If I might interrupt for a moment, I understand that the club did apply for the use of the farm now in the possession of the Land Commission. This farm is quite adjacent to their present property at Larkfield, Clondalkin. It would suit them very well to have this farm because of its proximity to their present farm it could be more easily worked.

Mr. Derrig

I do not know if it is the same place. That matter could have been elicited if the club had written to the Land Commission.

Professor Johnston

They have made application.

Mr. Derrig

If that is so I am not aware of it. The most the Commissioners will be inclined to do will be to consider a letting to the club for the coming spring. The reasons which should make it possible for the Commissioners to consider making the letting would be the very substantial relief of unemployment that would be given if a letting were made to the Mount Street Club, provided there are not other local applicants who are worthy, from the point of view of the general policy of the Land Commission on these matters. I think the Senator will realise from the speeches of some of his colleagues in the House this evening that it is possible to have a great deal of local agitation and local dispute and trouble about this land question. If it were made to appear that there was a change being made in the land division policy, that local persons who are entitled to land which would be divided in the usual course, would be excluded, and that, in fact, we had entered into a new policy to give preference to a certain type of association, there would, no doubt, be a great deal of trouble. It would be almost impossible to frame a formula by which we can place the association, or an association having similar objects in view to that of the Mount Street Club, into one of the categories of applicants that are normally considered by the Land Commission as suitable. I should say by the way in connection with that matter that I am very glad that Senator Healy called attention to the fact that in the Rush and Lusk areas we have a most intensive agricultural district which is responsible for supplying the City of Dublin with a great deal, if not all, of its vegetables and foodstuffs. There is a great desire in that district to get land and to have large farms divided up. I understand that at present, land is let there for conacre at fabulous prices, the reason being that a very intensive and a very fine system of market gardening is carried on there and persons looking for land can afford to pay high prices. There is a great demand for land in that district. I can see no reason why that demand should not be satisfied so long as it is reasonably possible within legislation. In these areas, of course, the prices go up. When potential allottees see that small fortunes are being made out of land, their zeal may out-run their discretion. My trouble may be to try to control that zeal and to explain to them that land division is a legal process which must take a certain amount of time to follow through and where we have to follow a well-established procedure.

I need scarcely deal with the statement that we should, perhaps, try some communal system in this country. As Senators O'Donovan and James Johnston very properly pointed out, the system of peasant proprietorship, as carried out here for a very long time, has proved very successful. If its defects are being stressed, I do not think its advantages, its virtues and its tremendous achievements from the social point of view are fully realised by those who criticise that system. It has produced a splendid type of man. It has been the backbone of all our national movements; so far as efficiency is concerned, we have a situation in areas like those from which the Senator comes and in my own county. That situation is that you have small farmers with about a £10 valuation bringing up their families, feeding, clothing and giving them education out of these small holdings. Very often they are in a position which is a great credit to them. They give some of their families professions because of the education they are able to give them. They send some of their children on for the professions, and sometimes for the priesthood or some other vocation greatly superior to what that class might aspire to in other countries. It is a great satisfaction that our peasant proprietors in that respect are the backbone of the country economically and socially; they also produce some of the best brains of the country. They produce men who are the greatest help in public life. In other respects, the best men in the country come from that stock. For that reason we cannot really over-estimate its advantages in the economy of the country.

We have an organisation in this country of which I am at the present moment the head. The business of that organisation is to deal with this question of land division. I am only carrying out the policy that has been going on for half a century. That organisation has improved the position of those—in the western counties, for example—who were well below the margin so far as the usual standard of an economic holding is concerned. One would imagine from some of the statements made here in the Seanad during this discussion that some speakers who claim to have a good knowledge of the country were completely removed from the realities of the situation. The very fact that you have had two successive native Governments over a long period of time carrying out this policy, should have indicated to them that there must be some very good reason for it, some very sound economic reasons, too. We had a statement made that the policy leads to infinitesimal sub-division of land. Of course, the word "infinitesimal,' or fractional has no meaning in this direction, because the whole object of this policy is to create economic holdings, giving the ordinary family who are prepared to work a holding properly, a decent livelihood. Sub-division of these holdings is forbidden by the Land Commission. Sub-division is not granted. Permission to subdivide has to be sought, and is not granted unless in very exceptional circumstances. The Land Commission has set its face against the sub-division of these holdings, and that has been its policy over a long period of time.

One would imagine that a Senator who claims to be a very wide authority himself on these matters, and particularly on peasant proprietorship, would not take a leaf out of the Bolshevik's book, but would, at least, acquaint himself with the position of land division before he would make these foolish statements. He went on to say that Fianna Fáil speakers visualised an Ireland where nobody had more than ten or 20 acres of land. If Fianna Fáil speakers did visualise that in certain areas of the country, I would say, "Small blame to them."

The position in Mayo is that 40 acres of a holding there is regarded as a ranch. There would be more local agitation and more interest in connection with the division of that ranch than in connection with 200 acres in County Kildare. Why? Because 76 per cent. of the agricultural holdings in Mayo are under £10 valuation. In Donegal, you have almost the same position—74 per cent. are under £10 valuation. In both these cases we may exclude board of health allotments. If we added them, it would make the percentage somewhat higher. The State has been trying for half a century to improve the position of those people. We are trying to do it at present and we intend to concentrate even more in future on improving the conditions in these areas. When we are doing that, I think we are at least entitled to put that work into the scale and to point to the very valuable work that the Congested Districts Board did and that the Land Commission under native Governments has been doing in those areas.

When we are told that we are in fact dividing up the land into too small portions, it is not to-day or yesterday that that statement has been made. It was made by an authoritative Commission. It was made here by Senator Johnston, and I wish now to challenge that statement and to point out that in those areas, far from creating a worse position, we have immeasurably improved the position. It may be that the number of holdings in other parts of the country has been somewhat reduced. But, in the important areas, in the province of Connaught, the size of a holding has increased enormously since land legislation was introduced.

A book has been published—I think it is in the library—by an American lady on the question of land tenure in this country which contains the following table:—

TABLE 17.
AGRICULTURAL HOLDINGS IN CONNAUGHT ACCORDING TO SIZE GROUPS:
NUMBER, 1881 AND 1930; AREA, 1881 AND 1931.
Size Groups	Number	Total Area	Average Size
1881	1930	1881	1931	1881	1931
Total	115,804	105,918	3,520,263	3,257,400	304	30.8
Not over 10	43,730	22,497	266,532	126,900	6.1	5.6
Over 10 and not over 30	52,060	53,538	935,688	1,054,100	18.0	19.7
Over 30 and not over 100	15,297	26,782	760,804	1,264,600	49.8	47.2
Over 100	4,717	3,101	1,557,239	811,800	330.1	261.8

In that she points out that, so far as the agricultural holdings in Connaught are concerned, in 1881 there were 43,730 which had less than ten acres. In 1930 there were only 22,497. That was a very substantial improvement. In the same period, the number of holdings between ten and 30 acres increased from 52,060 to 53,538. Similarly, in the case of holdings over 30 and not over 100 acres, the number increased from 15,297 to 26,782. That is a medium-size farm which, I think, will compare very favourably with a larger unit from the point of view of production, from the point of view of actual wealth-giving capacity, actual employment, actual food, or any other criterion that you like to adopt.

I think that particular type of holding will compare very favourably with a much larger one. The number of these holdings between 30 and 100 acres has increased very substantially during that period by about 75 per cent. The number over 100 has decreased from 4,717 to 3,101. Therefore, so far as the Province of Connaught is concerned, where you have the kernel of this problem of congestion, the effect of land legislation has been to wipe out a huge number of holdings—20,000— under ten acres, and to increase the number of holdings in the categories between ten and 30 acres and 30 and 100 acres.

We have to remember that in spite of that work the condition in some of these congested districts is still very bad. The position in certain areas in Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry and Cork, I am sure, is certainly at least as grave as the position in the city of Dublin is from the point of view of the number of persons who are in receipt of unemployment assistance. In fact, I think I am fairly safe in saying that in a great many of these areas along the West coast the position is very much worse than in Dublin so far as the numbers of unemployed in proportion to population, the valuation, and the general resources of these counties are concerned. It is for that reason that I claim that the work the Land Commission are doing, the money that they are spending in re-arranging holdings, building houses, and providing land where possible for the people in those areas is worthy of the support of every person who is sincerely interested in bettering the condition of those areas.

We had the statement made also that one thing the small farmer cannot do for his second, third, or fourth son, without at least enormous capital equipment, is to make him a small farmer. I referred to what is possible in the small farmer's home. It is admitted that small farmers have succeeded in sending their children on for the professions, where some of them have been very successful. If some of the sons cannot become small farmers, certainly it cannot be claimed that it is due to any slackness in the work of the Land Commission. Since 1923, almost 50,000 allottees have been placed on divided lands. Will it be contended by the Senator or anybody else that, although a very large proportion no doubt of that 50,000 were men who had already got some land, a certain proportion, particularly in recent years, representing a substantial number of holdings, has gone to farmers' sons, not themselves holders of land?

We have been providing during the past three years about 2,000 accommodation plots. While, as Senator Goulding pointed out, some fault may be found with the way in which some of these have been worked, or with the fact that they have been sub-let, I am sure the great majority of them have fulfilled a very useful purpose, and that during the emergency period they will be of the greatest possible advantage to those who have got them in providing milk and food for their families and themselves. In addition to the accommodation plots, the normal work of the Land Commission is to provide holdings. For the past four or five years they have been providing on an average 1,700 or 1,800 holdings per year. When you regard these figures, the tremendous amount of work that has had to be done in order to take over those lands, to prepare them, to build houses, to make roads, drains, fences and ditches, and the tremendous amount of legal work alone, taking it apart from anything else, that has had to be done to get all those holdings set up, to see that the proper title was settled, that the new allottees came in with a proper title, with everything in order for them, and, so far as the State could see to it, that they were placed in the best position economically to go forward and work their holdings and make a success of them, I say that the work that has been done during those years has been truly colossal and that it compares more than favourably with work of a similar kind in any other country.

I do not think that in any other country such work has been done, and the efforts at colonisation and resettlement elsewhere will not compare, having regard to the size and resources of our country, with the figures of achievement I have now given to the Seanad. I do not believe that the thesis put forward by Senator Johnston—that large-scale farming is superior to the system of proprietorship we are consolidating, increasing and extending—holds good. That it could be shown to be superior in some mechanical age, when no attention is paid to anything but the mere mechanics of securing the largest possible production from the soil, I have no doubt. A case could be made, as was made in Russia, to show that greater production would result from forcible expropriation of the peasantry. We all know what happened there. There was virtually a famine over a period of years, and he would be a bold man, indeed, who would claim that, at some time, the Russian people will not go back to the system which has been temporarily destroyed. We have something very valuable in this country; a substantial number of our people are still living on the soil and making a success of the land they occupy. The figures I have given from this American book indicate that in the poorer and more congested areas there has been an enormous improvement. Anybody who goes through these areas on holiday will realise that when he sees the large number of houses which have been built and the prosperous and comfortable look of the countryside as compared with the miserable position of the inhabitants 30 or 40 years ago.

Professor Johnston

My general impression in listening to the debate is that, on the whole, the motion received criticism and, at the same time, sympathy from both sides of the House. I should like, if it is not too big a trial on your patience, to refer briefly to some of the more important points made by the various speakers in the course of the debate. I was glad that the Minister himself was able to come down to this adjourned debate, and I was sorry he was not able to be here at the earlier part of the debate, when he might have heard my more lengthy exposition of the general philosophy of the Mount Street Club. I take it that he has familiarised himself with the main facts, as stated by me on that occasion, and that there is no necessity now to repeat the remarks made then.

In his reply, the Minister took, on the whole, a very correct departmental attitude to this question, whereas I was hoping he would look at it with some degree of imaginative statesmanship, because we are now in a situation of both world emergency and national emergency. We are in a situation in which revolutionary sentiment is showing evidences of its existence amongst certain sections of the community. My primary object in bringing this motion before the Seanad was to show the House and the public one way in which revolutionary impulses could be directed into constructive and beneficent channels. I regret, from that point of view, that the tone of the Minister's reply has been so strictly departmental and so little imaginative. He did rightly refer to the possibilities that existed under the various Allotment Acts for the acquisition of land for the use of the unemployed. An individual unemployed person can, through the local authority, acquire one-fourth or one-eight of an acre of land at a nominal rent for the cultivation of vegetables and the like for his own consumption. The Act, as I understand it, also gives permission for associations of unemployed persons to acquire with the co-operation of the local authority, allotments of land which they are perfectly free in law to work either co-operatively or individually, as may seem good to them to do.

It seems good to the Mount Street Club organisation that they should co-operatively and collectively or, if you like, communally exploit the land of which they have acquired legal posession. In my view, they would be quite within their existing legal rights in applying, through the local authority, for the use pro tem, in addition to the farm which they legally own, of a 90-acre farm which is in the hands of the Land Commission and which is just across the road from their present farm. If they can make that application, I hope and believe the Minister will receive it with the utmost sympathy and do all in his power to make it possible for them to work these 90 acres of additional land in conjunction with the 130 acres they already work and own. In fact, the beneficent activities of the club in helping the unemployed in Dublin have now reached the limit of the capacity of that club, and I am informed that there is a waiting list of candidates for membership —men who cannot avail themselves of the services of the club because the extension of the club cannot take place at a sufficiently rapid rate. If the Minister would forget for the moment his departmental point of view and remember only the human needs of the unemployed and the fact that the land is physically available almost within reach of the unemployed, he would go out of his way to facilitate the acquisition of that land on any terms consistent with the welfare of all concerned and he would not be too particular about the statutory obligations of his Department in that connection. After all, what was the Emergency Powers Act for if not to enable legal knots that might otherwise complicate the actions of Government, in endeavouring to do the best for its people in a time of great emergency, to be cut?

I should hate to follow some of the speakers into a debate on the general wisdom of land division or on the question of the small holder versus the large holder. In the Ireland that now is, you have small holdings, middle-sized holdings and large holdings and, in the Ireland that will exist when all of us are dead, you will continue to have small holdings, middle-sized holdings and large holdings. In other words, there is room for every kind of holding and, in the nature of the case, the number of small holdings—the number of 20-acre and 30-acre farms— must be by far the greatest of any given size. Nothing I am recommending in connection with this scheme of co-operative farming will make the least difference to that fundamental fact—that small holdings will continue to be the rule rather than the exception. This is an effort, however, to recommend the further diversification of our agricultural economy and, in my opinion, our agricultural economy requires, for its health, that there should be farms of all sorts of sizes, and the national interest requires that the land of the country should be made the best possible use of by whatever type of farm is suited to making the best possible use of that land. It would be, I think, an interesting experiment to see the successful achievements of the Mount Street Club, in working their Clondalkin farm, duplicated or triplicated in other parts of the country, and it would contribute, not only to the welfare of the persons concerned but also to the growth of the economic prosperity of the country as a whole and to the growth in the quality and variety of our civilisation in the country as a whole. However, perhaps I had better not develop that point any more.

It has been suggested to me by Senator Hogan that the motion in its present form is too specific, that it concerns only a single organisation, and that the State must be prepared to act on general principles which it can stand over and should not be giving privileges to individual associations that are not equally open to other similar bodies. So far as I am concerned, the principle is a perfectly general one. Any voluntary association of the unemployed which has organised workshops in which these unemployed can produce for the consumption of the members, and which has raised a capital of more than £10,000 with which it has bought land, which land it has been successfully exploiting as a co-operative farm—any such organisation is, from my point of view, entitled to substantial financial help from the State in the development of its beneficent activities. So far as I know, there may be dozens of such organisations up and down the country. They may exist, but hitherto they have modestly concealed their existence and hidden their light under a bushel. At any rate, the only one of which I happen to be aware is the Mount Street Club, and I wish that the Mount Street Club was not the only organisation of the kind in the country. I wish its example and spirit were copied by dozens of organisations, up and down the country, attempting to solve the social problems of the time in such a highly desirable and public-spirited way. This privilege, which I recommend to be extended to the Mount Street Club, should be equally extended, of course, to any organisation which can fulfil the conditions which that club has so successfully fulfilled and which has already tried the experiment at its own expense and shown evidences of the success of that experiment.

I regret to observe that the Minister has left the House and that I am only speaking to the Seanad, but I hope that if I am boring the Seanad, in the course of my subsequent remarks, Senators, will indicate that fact in such a way that I may be tempted to bring my remarks to a conclusion sooner than I otherwise would.

Cathaoirleach

There is no such indication, Senator.

Professor Johnston

Above all things I hate to be a bore and to keep people waiting who want to get away for other reasons. There is one aspect of this question of small holdings, operated by individuals, versus a co-operative farm organisation like the Mount Street Club, which is important to the public and to the taxpayer. The cost of capitalising the agricultural activities of the Mount Street Club, so far as the cost of the land itself is concerned, is a matter of £100 per worker. They employ upwards of 40 workers at Clondalkin on a farm which cost them nearly £4,000 to buy. In other words, the capital cost of the land is £100 per worker. In the case of the small holding principle, which has been the recognised policy of the Land Commission hitherto, it is on record that the cost of establishing a small holder, or of giving a landless man a division of land of 20 acres or whatever it may be, averages or works out at some £600 per smallholder.

Now, from the point of view of the taxpayer, there is what they would call in Northern Ireland a "queer" difference between £600 and £100, and if the credit of the State is to be used in furthering the acquisition of land for giving employment on that land to the maximum number of workers, then I think that the fact that the cost of capitalising that procedure is only one-sixth of the amount if you use the Mount Street method, is a fact that ought to be taken into very careful consideration. I did not want to suggest, and I do not suggest, that the Mount Street Club method should be used to the exclusion of every other type of land holding or land cultivation, but I do suggest that there is room in the agricultural economy as a whole for a number of experiments similar to the Mount Street Club experiment, and that, with a country having 12,000,000 acres of land, it ought to be possible to allow 10,000 or 20,000 acres of that land to be experimentally cultivated by organisations like the Mount Street Club, without committing yourself to the belief that the Mount Street Club method is the only way in which land could or should be worked. I am not claiming any monopoly for the Mount Street Club method, but I do claim that it should be given an opportunity, under State auspices, of showing what it can do in a larger field of operations.

Mr. O'Donovan

On a point of explanation, Sir. Senator Johnston has stated that there are 40 workers employed or given sustenance on the Mount Street Club farm at Clondalkin.

Professor Johnston

Yes.

Mr. O'Donovan

At £4,000 expenditure. That is simply the cost of the farm?

Professor Johnston

Yes, the farm only.

Mr. O'Donovan

I should like the Senator to elaborate that a little further, even at the expense of time, and tell us how you can compare the means of those men who are employed there with the case of the division of land in the country on which a family and each individual holder is put. I do not see any comparison whatsoever, because in the case of an unemployed man being put there, he is getting his relief at the same time.

Professor Johnston

I do not want to go into that, but even making allowances for what the Senator says, there still remains a "queer" difference between £100 for a worker and £600 per allotment receiver, even if he is the potential father of a large family.

Mr. O'Donovan

Very well.

Professor Johnston

Senator Counihan raised the point that the Mount Street Club consists largely of ex-soldiers, being completely misinformed on that point. The number of ex-soldiers, either ex-British soldiers or ex-National soldiers, who are members of the club is a very small minority indeed—not more, perhaps, than 10 per cent. or, at the outside, 20 per cent.— and in fact so far as the great bulk of the members of the club are concerned the only army to which they belong is the great army of the unemployed. Senator Counihan also mentioned that the activities of the club in producing vegetables were injurious to the interests of the vegetable growers in the Rush and Lusk district. That cannot be because, apart from the activities of the club, the unemployed persons who are members of it have so little money to spend that they would have no money at all to spend on vegetables. All the money they get by way of unemployment relief would go on other more necessary objects of expenditure, and vegetables would account for none of it, so that any vegetables of their own production which they consume are something they can only consume because of the organisation, and the production of which in no way interferes with, or competes with, the activities of the Rush and Lusk vegetable growers.

It will not do to say, as some Senators have said, that co-operative farming will not work, expressing in that way a kind of general platitude. I am quite aware that there are numerous instances in which co-operative farming has been tried and failed. The experiment at Ralahine, in County Clare, made 100 years ago, has been referred to, and I think that the verdict of history with reference to that experiment is that it was showing every evidence of success, and continued success, and that its failure was entirely the result of the fact that at that time there was no tenant right, and the landlord who had made the land available had not the gift of prophecy where the speed of horses was concerned and, having lost all his wealth in horse-racing, his land, including the assets created by this Ralahine society, was confiscated by his creditors and the colony was wiped out through no fault of the colony itself. It will not do to say that co-operative farming will not work. I have shown in my earlier remarks that, in actual fact, this Clondalkin farm is a co-operative farm, and is working most successfully, and with every promise of continued success. We are concerned with actual facts and not with broad platitudes which may have no relation to the facts of the present situation.

Another aspect of this co-operative agricultural business is that by means of this method, you can have a much greater density of agricultural employment with every 100 acres than you are likely to have by any other system of land tenure that is in existence in this country. Forty workers continuously and intensively employed in Clondalkin on 130 acres is the equivalent of four workers to 13 acres, or one worker to a little more than three acres. Show me anywhere in any part of Ireland, a small holdings area in which the average of agricultural producers making a decent living for themselves out of their work is anything like one to every three acres of land. The method of co-operative association for the exploitation of land, especially in the neighbourhood of Dublin, does make it possible to employ here more workers per 100 acres of land than any other system that has yet been suggested or tried. The national interest requires that both the output per man and the output per acre should increase, and increase very substantially, in all our agricultural activities. Some Senators have spoken as if the only thing that mattered was the output per acre, and that the ideal would be to have the maximum number of people for every 100 acres of land producing the maximum output per acre, but producing it by crude and primeval methods, and, therefore, getting a very small output per man; but if you have a policy of encouraging a low output per man employed on agriculture, it means that you are deliberately encouraging the maintenance of a low standard of life for agricultural workers because the income, or the wage, which the agricultural worker can receive, in the long run, must depend on the output per man employed in agriculture and if that output is low, and is kept low, you are simply condemning your agricultural workers, whatever the system of land tenure, to a state of mediæval serfdom.

The object of public policy should be to raise both output per acre and output per worker. As things are at present, it must be admitted, I think, that the output per worker is much greater on large farms which are worked by modern labour-aiding methods, and I believe that the output per acre is also larger on large farms which are properly worked. That, of course, will probably be denied by some, but it depends on the efficiency with which a large farm is worked, and I want to see every farm, both large and small, worked with reference to the maximum output per acre as well as the maximum output per worker, consistently, of course, with the financial interest of the persons owning or managing that land, whether they be individuals or co-operative societies. But there is no real conflict of interests there, and I think that the public interest requires that we should encourage an increase of both output per acre and output per man, and that that can be achieved as well on the large farm, co-operatively organised, as it can on the small farm.

I think it was Senator O'Donovan who drew attention to the fact that the workers in the Mount Street farm colony have the advantage of the unemployment money to subsidise their wages. I am quite aware that, in advocating this Mount Street scheme, I am advocating the specific application of a general policy, and that general policy would be that, under present emergency conditions, the State should be prepared to subsidise agricultural wages. I showed in my remarks yesterday reasons for believing that, as far as possible State policy for the relief of unemployment should aim at increasing the output of consumers' goods rather than capital goods, and anything which tended to increase agricultural output, whatever the system of land tenure, would be an increase of the right kind of output from that point of view. There are 120,000 wage-earning workers employed in agriculture, and they are employed by some 50,000 employers. In my view, the national wealth would increase more quickly if, in one way or another, these 50,000 employers of agricultural labour could be induced to increase their employment of such labour by an average of one person per farm than by any other method that could be suggested.

One effect of introducing the minimum wages Act for agriculture was to make it economically advantageous for certain farmers to disemploy some of their agricultural workers. If a farmer, especially a large farmer, is free to pay any wage that competition fixes, then it might conceivably be that he would employ a couple of men, say, at 30/- a week, another man at 25/-, another at 20/-, and perhaps one or two more at 18/-, but if the law comes along and says: "You must pay not less than 25/- a week to all your agricultural workers," then that farmer has an economic incentive to lay off all those workers who from his point of view are not worth the minimum wage. As a matter of actual fact, I know that certain farmers have reduced their volume of employment in consequence of having to pay that minimum wage. In that way, then, you can fix minimum wages, but you cannot compel employers to employ more people at that minimum than they find it to their interest to do. One effect of that minimum wage Act, therefore, may have been to diminish the volume of agricultural employment. Public policy requires that the volume of agricultural employment should be expanded, and rapidly expanded, while at the same time public policy requires that the minimum wage now received by agricultural workers should not be cut into or in any way reduced, in view of the general economic conditions of agricultural workers in comparison with other classes of the community.

That being so, I think there is a case on emergency grounds for subsidising the employment of additional labour by farmers. Any farmer employing, shall we say, one person at such a date, who gives permanent employment to another worker from such a date, should receive say 5/- a week towards the bringing of that worker's wage up to the minimum level. I mention 5/- at random, just by way of introducing a calculation. Five shillings a week amounts to £13 a year, and if that subsidy to agricultural wages had the effect of increasing agricultural employment by 10,000 workers the cost to the Exchequer of that subsidy for one year would be only £130,000, which would be a comparatively small sum expended in the relief of unemployment, and would be offset by the addition to the national income that would result from the employment of 10,000 additional agricultural workers.

The practical question for the Minister for Lands would seem to be this: Is he or is he not going to make that land available for the Mount Street Club organisation, especially the farm which is almost opposite their existing place at Clondalkin, or is he going to act the part of the dog in the manager? Although he cannot divide that farm under present emergency conditions, is he going merely to let it on the 11 months' system for grazing, or will he make it available to be exploited scientifically by this organisation, which has shown its ability to make effective use of the land? I would hope and wish that the State would lend a helping hand to the valuable work being done by this Mount Street Club organisation, but, if the hand of the State is to be a dead hand, and if public help is to involve a close degree of public control without any real sympathy for the objects of the organisation, then I, for one, would advise the Mount Street Club to reject any help which would be proffered by the State on those terms, because the essence of the organisation is the fact that it is a voluntary organisation, an example of the best kind of private enterprise in the interests of the public welfare, and they must preserve their freedom of spirit and their integrity of soul if they would wish to continue the valuable work which they are already doing. But the State would honour itself and benefit its citizens if it would allow itself to be associated with this valuable work, while leaving it its essentially private character.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.

The Seanad adjourned at 7.55 p.m.,sine die.