Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 4 Aug 1948

Vol. 35 No. 9

Agricultural Workers' Holidays—Motion.

Mr. R.M. Burke

I move:—

That this House requests the Government to introduce proposals for legislation for the purpose of guaranteeing to agricultural workers—

(a) at least one week's annual holiday with pay, and

(b) leave of absence with pay on all Church holydays.

Some people have asked me why I mentioned "Church holydays" instead of bank holidays in this motion and I propose to explain this in a few moments. At the outset, however, I think it is well to state that I believe that the proposals contained in this motion are extremely reasonable. In fact, some Senators may wonder that I have not proposed more for the benefit of agricultural labourers. In this connection, I would like to say that I am very hopeful that, in due course, and as quickly as possible, many other improvements for these workers will also be brought about. I believe that agricultural workers, road workers and farmers with small holdings of land are amongst the lowest paid sections of the community and that anything, therefore, that we can do to benefit them would be most desirable and would deserve the careful consideration of all those in favour of social justice. With regard to holidays, I think Senators will know that the majority of wage-earners in this country already receive holidays with pay. In fact, almost every section of the community, except agricultural labourers, receive holidays. In addition, it will be well to remember that a certain number of agricultural workers already receive holidays owing to arrangements made individually between these workers and the farmers who employ them, or as a result of trade union action.

The object of this motion is that every agricultural worker shall receive holidays in future. Now, some Senators who live in the cities have asked why we, in this motion, suggest Church holydays instead of bank holidays. The reason is that, in rural areas, as I think all Senators from rural areas know, it is the practice already to observe Church holydays in agricultural employment, and not bank holidays. I think it is very desirable that I should make it clear that we are not suggesting both. We are suggesting Church holydays and we believe that the vast majority of agricultural workers would prefer Church holydays. I cannot see any good reason why these workers should not have one week's holiday with pay, and Church holydays, but I am well aware that many arguments have been made against that proposal in the past, and I propose, therefore, briefly to refer to some of those arguments.

One thing, however, that is very encouraging is that our present Minister for Agriculture has on several recent occasions expressed his desire to do what he could to improve the condition of agricultural workers. On the 13th May, 1948, the Minister for Agriculture made this statement in the Dáil—I mention it in case some Senators may not have seen it:—

"It is a source of humiliation to me that the agricultural worker in this country who, in my judgment, is the most highly skilled worker we have, should have the figure of 55/- a week associated with his name as a minimum wage. I hope to change that."

I think that is a very welcome pronouncement. Again, he did not say it merely on one occasion. The Minister said something similar on July 15th:—

"The agricultural worker has a minimum wage throughout the greater part of this country of 55/-per week. Frankly, I am ashamed to name it. He is the lowest paid worker in the English-speaking world, and that is something of which I am bitterly ashamed."

I think we all should be ashamed of that state of affairs, and that we should all do everything in our power to improve his position as quickly as possible. What we have been up against is the mentality of a certain number of people in this country, who seem to accept this present position as natural and right. The Minister made another interesting statement on the 15th July:—

"There has been for long enough in this country a proposition that if you are an industrialist, or a racketeer or an exploiter, you are entitled to wear a silk hat, and drive a Chrysler car, and occupy a house standing in its own grounds in the suburbs of Dublin, and draw your living out of the hard-working men who live upon the land."

That was the Minister's statement. This distinction operates in regard to holidays, as well as in regard to remuneration. Many of the people with a big income, to whom the Minister referred, can also afford to take very long holidays. Some of them have a month, or perhaps more, holidays in the year, while the agricultural worker is not legally entitled to any holidays. It is sometimes argued by those who are opposed to giving holidays to agricultural workers that, as they work in the open air, they should be content to work for 52 weeks of the year without a break. I freely admit that working in the open air in fine weather is pleasanter than working in an enclosed factory, but it is not quite so pleasant working in the open air in very bad weather. There are many farming jobs which involve getting up early in the morning, and working late at night, in surroundings that are not by any means ideal. In that connectior also I would like to quote very briefly another statement by the Minister, because I feel that his words will carry great weight. This is what he said:—

"A lot of people have said that you cannot get fellows and girls to milk cows. I think that is true and I do not blame them. Why should they take work sitting under a cow and getting slapped in the face with the cow's tail, if they can get a good job in the town? If we want people to do agricultural work we have to make that agricultural work as agreeable as rival forms of occupation."

I think that statement by the Minister is very true, and the people who have to get slapped in the face with the cow's tail deserve some compensation, in the form of some holidays on pay.

I base the whole of this proposal on fair play and social justice, but there is also another consideration, and that is, that if we do not improve the condition of agricultural workers they will, as the Minister has said, go to the towns or emigrate to England: In fact, large numbers of them have already done so, and that tendency will continue unless their conditions are improved.

It has been rightly stated that the farmer with a small holding should receive as much consideration as the agricultural worker who is paid a wage. Personally, I do not wish to make any distinction between them. The man with the small holding undoubtedly deserves consideration also. I would like to see his position improved, as well as that of the agricultural labourer, for there is no doubt that many men with small holdings have a very low standard of living. I find that in the West of Ireland, where I come from, many of them are as badly off as the agricultural labourer. In order that they should have more leisure, and be able to take a little holiday from their normal work, one very necessary thing for them is suitable machinery. In that connection, I was very glad to read in the newspaper recently that the Minister for Agriculture stated that plans were being made to give the small farmers the use of up-to-date machinery through co-operative societies. The sooner that is done the better, provided they get machinery on reasonable terms. That should help to increase production, and also to lighten their labour and enable them to have more leisure.

With regard to leisure, one of the arguments that has been made in the past against giving holidays to agricultural workers is that we are short of food, that we need increased production. I entirely agree but, no matter how much we need increased production, I do not think it would be justifiable to ask anybody to work 52 weeks of the year without a break. In civilised countries it is an accepted fact that everybody should have a reasonable amount of leisure. If people have a little leisure they usually work all the better for the remainder of the year. I agree entirely that increased production is very necessary, not only in this country but all over the world, if we are to secure a much better standard of living for the lower-paid sections of the community. I consider, however, that everybody should get a fair share of leisure. Agricultural labourers work longer hours than the majority of other workers, and yet the vast majority of other workers get longer holidays than they get. There are many people in this country who get a fortnight's holidays. There is a certain number who get a month's holidays, and even more. Why should the agricultural worker get no paid holidays at all? Another argument used against giving holidays to the agricultural worker is that it would make it difficult for a farmer to carry on the work of the farm. I am a farmer, and I fully realise that you cannot close down a farm for a week, as you could close down a factory. The holidays would have to be "staggered". All the workers could not get their holidays the same week. I do not think there would be any objection to "staggering" the holidays. I believe a friendly arrangement could be reached between the agricultural workers and the farmers with whom they worked so that the necessary work of the farm would be carried on, and that each man would get a week's holiday during the year.

In the same way, with regard to Church holydays, on a farm we recognise that on Sundays, holydays and on every other day we have to milk cows and do every other necessary work. My idea is that it should not be always the same men who are on the job. On the farm on which I work, we take the work in turn, and every man gets a certain amount of leisure.

Another argument used in the past was that the country could not afford to give these conditions. I believe that, although the country is not wealthy, and although our national income is not very great, we are not quite so poor as all that. We could afford to give the agricultural workers one week's holidays in the year, and Church holydays. According to the present rate of wages that would work out at approximately £8 per man per year, which is not a very large amount. If you calculate at the rate of £2 15s. Od. a week which covers most of the country, it would come to £8 a year approximately per man.

Enormous sums of money are being spent in this country by some of the wealthier sections of the community on luxuries and amusements, and, I think, some of the money which they spend in that way should be used to benefit the poorer sections. It has also been said that some individual farmers cannot afford to give these conditions. If there are still some such farmers, I think they should be put into the position in which they can pay the small amount which we are asking. I admit that, in the past, many farmers got such low prices for their produce, and were up against so many other difficulties, that it was, in fact, impossible for them to give really decent wages to the agricultural workers.

Another Senator mentioned here recently that some farmers are already giving their workers a little more than the Agricultural Wages Board rate of wages. Some farmers already give their workers some holidays with pay, and some of them give their workers a little bonus, if they have a good year or if they get a good price for their stock or produce. I believe that every farmer should be put in a position in which he could afford to pay a decent wage to the agricultural workers. I realise that to put all farmers in a position to pay a really good wage may take a little time. It cannot be done immediately, but I do not think it will take very long to enable every farmer to be able to pay the additional £8 per year per worker which we now suggest. The Minister has said on many occasions recently that he is doing everything in his power to improve the economic condition of the farmers so as to enable them to pay a better wage.

I think that this small concession that we are asking is long overdue. I hope, as I said at the outset, that much greater benefits will be conferred on agricultural workers as soon as possible. I do not think I need take up the time of the House any longer in putting forward any other arguments in favour of this proposal. If any points are raised, I will, at the end of the debate, be able to reply to them. I consider that the proposal is a very reasonable one. What we are asking is long overdue. The granting of it would benefit one of the most hard-wording and underpaid sections of the community.

Mr. M. Smyth

I second the motion. During the past seven or eight years, before and during the emergency, the farm workers were praised by all Parties for their splendid work in the campaign for food production. But now, in the year 1948, we still find them working under the worst conditions. During the past 30 years their conditions have not been improved, but during that very same period the conditions of industrial workers have been vastly improved. Their hours of work have been reduced to 50 a week, to 48, to 44 and in some cases are now down to 40 hours. We find that in many factories industrial workers are only working a five-day week, or 40 hours. We find farm workers, in some rural areas, working in the vicinity of factories where these hours prevail. In addition, they get a half-day on Saturday, they get one week's annual holidays with pay, and now, in most cases, they are getting two weeks' holidays with pay. They are paid for bank holidays, while farm workers get no holidays whatever. If a farmer employs a servant girl he must give her at least one week's annual holiday with pay, but the farm worker, who is the hardest worker on the land, is not entitled to any holiday whatever.

I agree that many farmers do pay their workers for Church holydays, but in the majority of cases they are not paid. I think that great credit is due to farmers and farm workers because they are the only people who keep Church holydays. Church holydays occur eight or nine times during the year, so that the majority of farm workers are at a loss of one day's pay in the week in which there is a Church holyday. Senator Burke has pointed out that farm workers are the worst paid of any workers. When a Catholic holyday occurs they lose about 9/-because they do not work on that day.

Minister for Agriculture (Mr. Dillon)

Would the Senator be good enough to give me any instances where he knows that that is happening in the country?

Mr. Smyth

I know that it happens in the County Kildare where I come from, and that in many cases they are not paid for Church holydays. In the week in which a Church holyday occurs a farm worker loses about 9/4. His pay packet for his wife, family, and himself is the smaller by that amount that week. About two years ago in the County Dublin, as Senator Counihan knows, an agreement was come to between the farmers and the farm workers to give a weekly half-holiday and a week's holidays with pay. In North Kildare at that time—it adjoins the County Dublin—we had an unfortunate strike. The farm workers in North Kildare saw the farm workers in the County Dublin getting a weekly half-holiday on Saturday and a week's annual holiday. They were working at one side of the road and had not the same conditions as those working on the other side of the road in County Dublin. As well as that the men in County Dublin were getting better pay, therefore we had the unfortunate strike during the harvest season. It failed and left a bad feeling between the farmers and their workers. That was very unfortunate. At the present time the North Kildare workers are not getting the weekly half-holiday or the week's annual holiday with pay.

This time 12 months we had a similar strike in South Kildare. It occurred in the best tillage area in the country. The demand of the men was for a weekly half-holiday and for an annual holiday with pay. It also failed. This has also been the cause of great dissatisfaction among the farm workers. Senator Burke has pointed out that we are all anxious to see increased agricultural production. If we are to get that, then we must have in agriculture, as in every other industry, satisfied workers, but the present position is that farm workers are working for the lowest wages paid to any class of worker and under the worst conditions of any worker.

After the North Kildare strike this matter was referred to the Agricultural Wages Board, which found that they had no authority to deal with it. The terms laid down for the Agricultural Wages Board specify a 54-hour week and the board found that they could not change those conditions. Recently, at a meeting of the No. 3 area of the Agricultural Wages Board, a resolution was passed agreeing to give annual holidays with pay. The Minister recently sent a communication to all the agricultural committees. When that communication came before the Kildare County Committee of Agriculture it was very fully discussed, and some very practical farmers on the committee dealt with it in a commonsense way. Many of those farmers state that, unless they get better conditions, there will be no farm workers, especially young people, as they are going to the towns and looking for other work. The Kildare Agricultural Committee passed this resolution, which, I am sure, the Minister has received.

Mr. Dillon

Oddly enough, I have not received it.

Mr. Smyth

It reads:—

"That, in the opinion of this committee, the conditions of employment for agricultural workers, the most important in the country, should not be less favourable than workers employed in other industries."

Farmers say it cannot be done. In County Dublin and in some other places it has been done, and what can be done in one district can be done in another. Of course, the farmers say that farm workers never got holidays and should not want them now. The question of the weekly half-day is difficult, and it is not in our motion. If it were said 50 years ago that in 1948 industrial workers would have a five-day, 40-hour week, the statement would have caused great surprise. If the farm workers now get holidays and improved conditions, they will work better and will not be dissatisfied. They have a 48-hour week in Britain under the Agricultural Wages Board, with a weekly half-holiday, holidays with pay and other concessions. Senator Burke has made a very good case for the weekly half-holiday and payment for Church holydays. In every country district there are factories, and farm workers see the factory workers getting a half-day on Saturday, while they have to work on Saturday nights. The Minister has said that he hopes, at the end of his period of office, to see the agricultural workers in the same, if not a better, position, as the industrial workers; so I hope that the carrying of this resolution to-day will help him to carry that out.

Mr. Baxter

One cannot find fault with the way this motion has been presented, but both the proposer and seconder have an aim which, however worthy, will defeat itself, if they seek to carry it out by the methods they propose here. No one will deny that the conditions of the farm workers are not comparable with those of other workers. It is the Minister's object to improve those conditions and that should also be the object of every Christian man, but I do not think this is the right approach.

In the motion we have the words "agricultural workers". These men are not so classified in my county and this term "agricultural worker" is a concept of the British bureaucrat, where we had "labourers" Acts and many such styles and titles that were not of our creation. Farmers do not talk of their "workers", but of their "men". I have had many meals with the men along the fences and in hay fields and in the bogs and I know that is so. I have been in Senator McGee's farm, where he has ten or 15 men, and he always spoke of them, not as his labourers, but as his men. This term in itself has a significance from which we should be slow to depart. Farmers classify these men along with themselves, working in the fields with themselves and their sons, and eating with them. The problem of the farmer is the problem of his workers. Anyone who tries to draw a comparison between the conditions of agricultural workers and those of industrial workers is talking about two things which cannot be discussed in the same breath.

That relationship is one which the Oireachtas should be slow to disturb. If we attempt to compel men by law to establish a new relationship, we will be doing something foreign to nature itself, giving a new concept to Irish rural life, separating the farmer from his workers and classifying them in a way never done before, in a way which will not be for the welfare of agriculture, of the agricultural worker, of the farmers or of the nation. We look upon our men as real men, whole men, able to do a full and an honest day's work and who understand the significance of it.

Of course, we live in a peculiar age. There is a great deal of talk about holidays, about tourism, and about ease and comfort, and, in the same breath, we have talk about the high cost of living, about the inflationary spiral that nobody seems to be able to deal with, forgetting that all this inflation and shortage is due to the fact that people are expected to produce things when they are not working as they used to work. In this country we are short of commodities that the land produces. Eggs are dear, butter and bacon are dear and other things are not available at all. While that is a fact we are urging a policy that means less work, and fewer people at work. Naturally, that means a lower standard of production. I do not think the mover or the seconder of the motion attempted to measure the significance of such a proposal. I do not think they troubled to look at what it involves. Such figures as I have deal with workers not belonging to families on the land, relate to 1944, when they numbered 84,000 permanent whole-time people, and, in addition, there were 50,000 part-workers not fully employed on the land.

The motion means that men would be away on Church holydays. If you give one week's holidays to men working on the land that means a standstill order for 500,000 men. When they are drawn away from agriculture for one day that means a definite cut in the amount of work done. If 500,000 men were at a standstill when corn was ready to be reaped who could say that there would not be a rain or a hailstorm that night? If that happened they could not work at it the next day. That is of vital significance in the world we are living in, where supplies are so short and where there is so much talk about shortage of food. At the same time we are told that it is essential that there should be a higher standard of life for human society and that fewer hours should be working hours. That must be taken into consideration.

Senator Burke pointed to these difficulties. It is possible to draw men away from the face of a coal mine for a fortnight or for a week as the coal face is there when they return. Rain or storm will not affect that. It is possible to hold up the equipment in a textile mill or in a factory and no damage is done. Of course there is a lower output. You cannot handle agriculture like that. Crops must be handled when they are ready for cutting. If we feel that our agricultural workers—as Senator Burke classified them—need a higher standard of living, I would prefer if a motion was put down aiming at raising their living standard, by giving them better wages, and let us discuss how that could be done rather than claiming that they would have a higher standard by getting a week's holidays. I do not think many of the idlers that we see around are happier than those who work hard. Those who work hard are the happiest people. The Minister for Agriculture knows that vast problems confront this country. The difficulty of raising agricultural production is an immense one.

Senator Burke and Senator Smyth believe that if there is to be increased production the standard under which our people work must be improved. I agree. But I think it would be much better if we applied our minds to methods we want adopted in order to improve conditions so as to see if this is the best way. I do not think it is. If this motion were adopted, and if the State took the responsibility of legislating, I think we would disturb the human relations that have existed between farmers and their men for generations. I believe that that would be very undesirable at this stage in our history.

There are other things that require attention. In my view, and the Minister in some of his speeches addressed himself to the problem, we want rural Ireland to be much better organised. I believe we want something on the lines of what is being done on the Continent. The rural community here is the worst organised in Western Europe. I speak with some knowledge of the organisation of the farming community on the Continent. What we have to do is to try to get the rural community to come together, farmers and workers. It is a problem which cannot be solved from the point of view of increased production or better use of equipment when we get it. It cannot be solved by the methods with which we are attempting to solve it. Our problems can be solved if our people can be got together in their districts to discuss them.

Holland is one of the most progressive agricultural countries in the world. There farmers and their men are organised. Rural organisation in Holland is drawn partly from farmers and partly from their employees. That is what we ought to have, and it is something at which we should aim. I believe that if the Minister for Agriculture took the responsibility of organising our farmers, according to the plans proposed in the Report of the Vocational Commission, so that in every parish farmers and their men would be drawn together, we would get an entirely new approach to our agricultural problem. Those of us who own land, whether the acres are broad or are few, and the men who work for us should be able to determine what is best for agriculture. Those of us who own farms ought to make a Christian approach to the problem. I do not like to be driven to do anything by State determination. I would not like to be driven to do things against my better judgment.

I believe it would be an error on our part to pass this motion. I agree absolutely with the proposal that there is a real problem and that we have to face it. We know how difficult it is to keep people on the land to-day. I do not know whether Senator Burke put the case fully when he stated that on his farm the work of men changes, that one man takes over the duties of another man on Church holydays. Senator Smyth pointed out that in Kildare farmers do not pay their men for Church holydays. Probably Senator O'Dwyer could explain that there is another type of employment in County Limerick, where men are engaged for a certain number of months. That would indicate that men do not work on Church holydays except to milk.

There are different conditions in different areas. It is difficult to legislate for the country as a whole. Conditions in North Kildare and South Kildare are different from conditions in West Kerry, West Donegal or West Cavan. A motion of this kind, if passed, would apply to the country as a whole. It is all right to speak of how easy it would be to change about where a number of men were working on a farm. Take the position of a small farmer in Cavan who employs one or two men. Many farmers there employ only one man, and if that man is away for a week, and if there are nine or ten cows to be milked twice daily and calves to be attended to, difficulties would arise. Take care that in a case like that the farmer would decide to keep only five cows the following year.

While I agree with what the proposer and the seconder said, the difficulty with regard to work in rural Ireland poses a problem for all of us. I suggest that to pass the motion in its present form would be no solution of the problem.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

While my heart is with Senator Burke and Senator Smyth in regard to this motion, my head would not allow me to follow them into the division lobby, if the motion were put to a division. I intended to make the point which Senator Baxter made as to what is meant by agricultural workers. I take it that every farmer and every farmer's wife, son and daughter is an agricultural worker. I know a great many of them. They have to work very long hours on very many days of the year and for very little pay. We should have no hesitation in talking about agricultural labourers, if we mean agricultural labourers. It has been a recent fashion to look on the word "labour" as something derogatory, as something to be despised, but one can go back very far for justification for the use of the word "labourer"—back as far as the labourers in the vineyard, who were not the vineyard workers. I never had any objection to being called a labourer when I was a labourer. It is an inferiority complex which is growing up amongst us. There is nothing dishonourable in the work and nothing dishonourable in the title. If we use the more comprehensive title, such as that used in this motion, we must give it its literal meaning and must say that the motion is that at least one week's annual holidays with pay and leave of absence with pay on all Church holydays should be given to all farmers, their wives, their children and their paid employees. That is one objection I have to the drafting of the motion.

Another is that it is an attempt to make a different set of laws for the rural community and the urban community. If you want the agricultural labourers — the agricultural wage-earners, to give them another title— to have as many holidays as workers in urban districts, why not put down a motion asking for a fortnight's holidays with pay and be done with it? If you think they should get Church holydays and are not getting them, should the city worker not also get Church holydays? Who among you will be so daring as to suggest that every employer in the cities and in the towns shall let off all his men on Church holydays? None will do it, because you know it would be most unpopular and that employers in cities and towns, in factories, who could quite easily shut their shops and not be at any great loss, will not do it.

The motion asks that the farmers be compelled by law to give their employees a holiday on Church holydays, when, so far as I know, 99 per cent of them already do so without any legal compulsion. Why compel them to do what they do voluntarily? If you compel them to do it, you give them a grievance. I have worked in the country and I have lived in many counties. I never lived in any county where the men did not get a holiday on Church holydays. They got them without any insistence on getting them and as a right.

Senator Baxter raised the point that if you make it compulsory that a man must get a Church holyday, it may be a day on which the safety of a crop and of a considerable part of the people's food supplies depend on harvest operations. If it is a legal compulsory holiday, no man will go, but a Church holyday is a voluntary holiday and even the Church itself relaxes its laws in that respect. I have heard it announced from the altar that harvesting work can be done on 15th August and can be done on Sunday, if the weather is fine, because the year has been bad. The Church will always meet the case, but, if you make rigid State laws, you will tie yourself up in them.

The Church holydays number ten, and the men, as I say, get these holydays already. In the cities, the bank holidays number six and workers get six holidays, so, even if we took the motion as it is and made it compulsory, we are compelling the rural employer to give ten days' holidays over and above the annual holidays, whereas the city man is compelled to give six holidays over and above the annual holidays.

Mr. J.T. O'Farrell

Would the Senator define the ten Church holydays? I am not aware that there are ten.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

There are. I am sorry I did not bring the Catechism with me—I could have lent it to the Senator.

Mr. Dillon

I have no calendar, but I believe there are ten.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

Senator J.T. O'Farrell gibed me recently for being too much of a lay preacher. Perhaps he thought he could catch me out now.

Mr. J.T. O'Farrell

I should like to hear the Senator call them out.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

There are other things I will call out at some time which will not please the Senator so well.

Mr. J.T. O'Farrell

I will deal with you then.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

If the Senator does not know them it is his own lookout. There are six bank holidays and ten Church holydays and if it were a matter of bank holidays with pay, I could understand the motion. It would be quite consistent, because it would be more in harmony with what operates in the cities and towns, but to single out the Church holydays and to make them apply only to the rural community seems to me to be something which we ought not to do. We are not so free, remember, even about the Church holydays in the city. No employer in the city is compelled to give a Church holyday to his employees, although 90 or 99 per cent. of the men and women he employs may be Catholics and under an obligation to go to Mass on that day. Unless they are civil servants and slip out the side door, they are expected to go to Mass in their own time, as a general rule. But if we are to agree with Senator Burke and to insist that Church holydays be public holidays, will it apply to milkmen, bus drivers, bakers, and breadvan drivers, and, if not, why should it not? If the food producer can be spared for ten days, surely the food distributor is not so essential that he cannot be. Let us be consistent. I am arguing now only from the point of view of consistency to show that this is not a motion to which one can say yes or no. We are all in sympathy with its object, but I for one am not in sympathy with the method by which it is attempted to be brought about.

Senator Burke was very fortunate in being able to make his speech mainly by repeating bits of the Minister's speeches. He quoted the Minister as saying that racketeers and others go round with silk hats. I have seen silk hats in the country, too, but they were not on the farmers or farm labourers. Any time I saw them, when not at a hunt, they were on scare-crows. He talked about the argument put up that farm workers do not need so many holidays because they live in the open air. There are a great many people who do open-air work in the city, but who still get holidays. I think we will have secured the object which Senator Burke and Senator Smyth have in mind in putting forward this motion if we express our belief that the agricultural workers, farmers and labourers, are not paid a wage or given treatment commensurate with their importance to the nation. If we express that opinion and are determined to improve the condition of the agricultural labourer, we shall have to begin higher up and make the condition of both the farmer and the agricultural labourer the object of our improvement. If we can make farming so profitable, so well conducted and so modernised that it would pay the farmer, then and not till then will it pay the labourer a wage which will induce him to remain in rural Ireland rather than to migrate or emigrate.

Mr. Counihan

I oppose this motion and I should like to say that it is not quite as innocent as it looks. I believe it is an insidious effort to get in the thin end of the wedge in the matter of organising agricultural workers for the political ends of the Labour Party. I think it would be much better for the Government and for the Labour organisers if they left the farmers and the agricultural employees to fix their own business and arrange their own terms on holidays and work between themselves without any outside interference. The Labour organisers were never able to make any headway amongst the agricultural workers and they now want the Government to come to their assistance and enact a law, the main object of which is propaganda for the Labour Party. If they succeed in getting such a law enacted they will be able to say to these agricultural workers: "Look at what you have got by organising." I think it is a very insidious scheme by the Labour Party, which would break up the friendly relations which exist, and have always existed, between the farmers and their agricultural workers. Of course something could be said for a week's holiday with pay for the agricultural worker, but nothing could be said in favour of stopping all work on the farm on Catholic holydays. Cows will have to be milked and cattle will have to be fed and looked after on Catholic holydays as well as on every other day of the week. I do not believe Senator Smyth, when he said that they are not paid for. As far as I know Catholic holydays are paid for whether the men work or not.

Mr. Dillon

Hear, hear; I quite agree.

Mr. Counihan

With regard to the objections to giving a week's holiday with pay, as Senator Baxter pointed out, there is a very big percentage of farmers who employ only one man. Those farmers cannot spare these men. If a farmer who employs one man lets him off for a week, the whole work of the farm falls on himself because he cannot get a substitute very easily. I think there are about 90,000 small farmers in this country who each employ only one man. We must consider the hardship that would be imposed on these farmers if they had to let their men off for a week. I think there are somewhere about 130,000 agricultural workers in the country, of whom about 40,000 or 45,000 are boarded and fed by the farmer. These people are regarded as members of the farmer's family. They eat the same food as the farmer and in 95 per cent. of cases eat at the same table. They play the same games as the farmer and his sons and join in the family Rosary at night.

I think it would be a terrible disaster if, for the sake of political action by the Labour Party, these good relations were upset. This motion is going to upset these good relations, and, as Father Hayes said at Copsewood, we should all do everything in our power to counteract the evil teaching which would create class warfare between the farmer and his agricultural worker. Senator Baxter again pointed out that there was no connection whatever between the conditions of employment on the farm and in the factory. The worker in the factory is paid for the hours he works, while the farmer's man is paid for every day he presents himself. There are a good many occasions on which these men cannot work owing to wet weather, but nevertheless, when the week is finished the agricultural worker gets his week's wages without any deduction.

If the number of hours for which a farmer paid his men for doing no work were counted up for a year it would not be one week's pay without work but 15 or 16 weeks' pay without work that the agricultural workers would be receiving. This motion is probably the thin end of the wedge. It is going to cut down production. We in County Dublin, through the action of the Labour Party, are observing a 50-hour week. Our men only work for 50 hours per week and they have to have a week's holidays and a half-holiday on Saturdays. Any practical man who knows anything about farming will appreciate that Saturday afternoon is the busiest time for a farmer, particularly in the winter months when he is stall-feeding cattle. In a number of cases this weekly half-holiday has resulted in cutting down stall-feeding in County Dublin. I could say a good deal more, but I do not want to say anything that might affect the good relations existing between myself and the Labour Senators in this House, but I hope the Minister will turn down this proposal.

Colonel Ryan

This motion is one that I cannot possibly support, although I have the greatest sympathy with the whole labouring community. I feel that the motion has not been well thought out: I feel that the agricultural community as a whole has not been considered from the point of view of the small farmer who employs no labour or from the point of view of the farmer who employs one, two or three men, right up to the men who employ from 15 to 20 men. Since legislation was enacted controlling the life and the work of the labourer and the farmer there has been a rift which we have failed to mend. The present motion, I feel, if adopted, will cause a greater rift. It is bad enough as it is. Twelve years ago, before there was a fixed minimum wage or fixed hours, the farmers who employed from two to four men, which is the majority of the farmers, worked with their labourers harmoniously. The men went to their religious duties. They did not take a half-day or a few hours off. They went to the local race meeting, the point-to-point. There was never any bickering on a Sunday morning or on a Sunday evening as to who would milk the cows. The farmer's wife had not to go out and milk them, as has happened during the past nine years since we legislated as to how many hours the labourer would work and as to the minimum wage. The effect of the minimum wage is that the slacker gets as much as the very best man, and eventually the best man gives up because, he says, "Why should I work hard when that other man is getting as much as I get?"

I do not wish to dwell on this matter at great length. You could spend hours talking about the relations between the farmer and the labourer. As I have said, twelve years ago the relations were harmonious, and it was only a very exceptional case that a man was cut in his wages because he took a day off to go to a race meeting. I never heard of it. When the labourer's wife or some member of his family was sick he went home. He got the horse to plough his plot. In a good many cases they got a week's holiday. There was not this hard and fast rule. In the circumstances that existed, the farmer was as badly off as the labourer but the conditions were better than they have been since we began to legislate to make the labourer better off.

I do not agree with Senator Counihan that the motion was put down for propaganda purposes or for the purpose of organising labour, but I do believe that it was not thought out well enough. I believe that the less interference there is between the farmer and the labourer the better. If this matter is to be dealt with, it should be done through trade unionism, not by legislation. We cannot legislate as to how the farm should be run, as to when the farmer can give his labourer a day off and when he can take a day off himself. If we were to legislate for all these matters, we should arrange that the small farmer's wife should not have to get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and work until late at night.

I do not know the position in Kildare and Dublin, but I do know the position in the South of Ireland and I know that harmonious relations always existed between the farmers and the labourers there until we started to legislate. We caused the rift and we continue the rift and we will make it bigger by further legislation, so much so that the labouring man feels that he will work only five hours if he can, that he will do as little as he can, and will get paid as much as the man who produces more.

As to the appeal to the Minister to make the farmer better off, he cannot make the farmer better off if in rural Ireland they cannot work harmoniously together and produce a little more than we are producing at the moment. Again I appeal to Senators Smyth and Burke to consider the matter and to withdraw the motion.

Mr. Bennett

I confess that it is with a little diffidence that I approach this motion. For some 20 years, in the Parliament of this country, I have tried as best I could to advocate the cause of the agricultural worker. I never thought there was any slur on me or the men who worked for me in describing ourselves as agricultural workers. I have been 60 years an agricultural worker or an agricultural labourer and never thought it a slight to be so described. For 20 years I have endeavoured, as far as in me lay, to advocate the cause of the agricultural worker, to direct attention to the inadequacy of his pay and to his conditions generally and to ask for an improvement. Happily, in the last year or two, his conditions have been a little improved in the matter of pay, but they have not yet been brought up to the level of his fellow-workers in industrial occupations. I hope eventually they will be.

I have been at one with the Minister in resenting the term unskilled workers being applied to agricultural labourers. I believe we are the most intelligent workers in the State or in any other State, that we are the most skilled of all workers. As proof of that, our agricultural workers who emigrate to Britain and even to the City of Dublin very quickly obtain positions of trust. The ordinary agricultural worker is quicker than the city worker in picking up a new job.

I have a certain diffidence in approaching the motion, because I have always advocated the cause of the agricultural worker, vis-á-vis, the industrial worker and if I now take objection to this motion, it is not because I am not interested in the agricultural worker, it is because I believe the motion will be injurious to the employer and the worker. There has been in agriculture a condition not generally obtaining in industrial pursuits, a condition of laissez faire, on the part of the men as well as on the part of the farmers. I never bother and neither does any other employer, once my cows are milked in the morning, if the man spends an extra half-hour at his breakfast. Nobody bothers. If he goes into a neighbour's house during a shower of rain and waits half-an-hour after the shower is over, I do not resent it. Senator O'Farrell knows that as well as I do.

I have always been an agricultural worker. I have worked in this country and in other countries as a very hard-working agricultural labourer, as distinct from a farmer. Recently a Canadian friend came to visit me. Originally he was a gentleman farmer, a man who did not want to soil his hands too much, and he got broke because he was rather too decent to his men. He emigrated to Canada and came back three years ago. He went to his own home to find out were there any of the men who had worked for him still there. There were a few and they sat around him for an hour and a half discussing various things, the conditions of the agricultural worker here and the conditions of the agricultural worker in Canada, the big wage he got in Canada and the small wage he got here. Finally, he said to the men, "After all, this is the best country in the world.""How do you say that, sir." one of them asked, "considering the dollars they get in Canada?""Ah, yes," he said, "but this is the only country that I know of where some poor fool of a farmer would pay you for talking to me for one and a-half hours." I move the adjournment of the debate.

Sitting suspended at 6 p.m. and resumed at 7 p.m.

Mr. Bennett

When the House adjourned I was endeavouring to point out to the movers of the motion that the conditions as between agriculturists and industrialists are altogether different. The conditions in agricultural life provide for a greater amount of freedom and, if you like, laxity in general conditions vis-á-vis conditions in industry. Most of our people provide the Church holydays for their fellow-workers with pay. There are a hundred and one things that I could mention which the agricultural workers have that industrial workers have not. If an agricultural worker wants a day off to go to a coursing match, to a race meeting or to a point-to-point meeting, he asks the farmer if he may have the day, and generally the farmer says that he can when the essential work that has to be done on a farm in the morning has been attended to. In addition, if he wants a day off to attend to his agricultural plot he gets it. That happens in 99 cases out of a 100. You may have an odd black sheep in the farming community, as you have in every association, but, as I say, in 99 cases out of 100 the farmer tells him that he can have the day off and also that he can take the horses with him.

As I have said, there are a hundred and one things—one can call them perquisites if one likes—which the agricultural worker has that the industrial worker has not. There is no hard and fast rule in agriculture so far as the workers are concerned. There is a spirit of give and take. I would remind Senators that the give is not all on the one side either. The farmer, if he is a decent man, and he generally is, gives his labourer all the time he wants when the essential work is done. He is not particular as to whether in certain circumstances a full day is worked or not.

I want to give the agricultural worker the credit that is due to him. He plays the same game. If the farmer is cutting corn and if the prospects for the next day are not too rosy, I can say this that my men have come to me and said themselves that they would finish the job that night. I have never asked a man to work extra hours if he did not want to, but what I have described has happened, and I emphasise again that that is the spirit in which work is done on a farm. It is the good spirit of give and take as between the owner and his fellow-worker on the land. I do not want to see that spirit extinguished.

I want to give the movers of this motion every credit. I believe they were sincere in bringing it forward, and I am quite satisfied that they had no political object in doing so. I am sure they are just as desirous of helping the agricultural worker to achieve better conditions as I am, and I have been anxious to do that for the last 20 years. I believe the movers of this motion are as anxious as I am to achieve better conditions for their workers, but if we make hard and fast legislative rules, both sides will come eventually to take it that they must be adhered to, there will be no give and take and we will do away with a lot of things that make life so happy in agricultural districts.

I hope the mover will not press the motion to a division. We all want to better the conditions for the agricultural worker and I hope we will succeed. The Minister—good luck to him —is as interested in that as any man in Ireland, and probably more so than most, and if we leave it to him a lot will be done. In the meantime, whether we are owners of land or paid workers, we can do a lot to better the conditions. We hope to see in the near future, a set of conditions whereby the agricultural worker will get the full wage the industrial worker gets, and more if possible, so that we may build up agriculture. All of us, the farmer and the labourer in combination, must take such an interest in life in the country that we will combine in increasing production. Let us not raise any issue that might endanger the happy relations that exist at present.

Mr. McGee

I am in favour of the motion. This matter has been before the Louth County Committee of Agriculture and it was practically all farmers who were at the meeting. The motion was rather wide and they walked cautiously and carefully, but said they were in favour of it. Senator Baxter has paid me the tribute of saying I referred to the workers as "my men". I have been trying to live in such a way and not to recognise class in any way. As a public representative, it would be my duty to see that the benefits the Land Acts gave to the farmers, and which created them independent in their own homes, may make every labouring boy enjoy the self-same measure of independence, both of his employer and of everyone else, as the farmer now has of the landlord. In other words, they might meet on level terms socially and otherwise, on the basis of a fair return for the money given.

I am perfectly pleased to hear that labourers get all the days they ask. I am not satisfied that this State should permit the system to obtain where a worker must go hat in hand to ask his master for a holiday. The law should be so implemented that he will have that as a right.

Before the last war the Minister for Industry and Commerce put through a Bill for industrial holidays, giving one more kick to agriculture and creating the inferiority complex which remained all through the Fianna Fáil régime, and which never should have been permitted by the people. We are the main industrialists and owners of the land of Ireland. Arthur Griffith has bowed down and stated: "The farmers have done their work so well, they should be left alone in enjoyment of the independence they have." That independence was taken from us when we were not permitted to pay the same wages and give some relief to the agricultural community. There are no playgrounds for them, no theatres, they have not the same assets or amenities as the industrial employees. We are placed in an inferior position, more like slaves than white men.

Recently, through the good offices of the Minister, we have undone a system under which, by order of Local Government some two or three years ago, no cottages were to be erected more than a mile and a-half from a church. At that time, I lived more than a mile and a-half from a church and was anxious to give houses to some men, and they were quite pleased to take them. This Minister wrote to us recently, that he would resume the right to do that, irrespective of the distance, as long as the site was correct. Amongst five to whom I offered them, one said he was not fully satisfied about coming permanently. He was a young fellow about to be married, ideal in every sense of the word, but he was afraid that the life in front of him as an agricultural labourer would make him want to live as close as possible to a town, to get the work the town might provide. Thousands have left the land in the last ten years in that way. We should make the land workers as independent in their cottage homes as industrialists can make their workers, and it is the duty of the Government to do so. We must not permit a class, from which the chief part of us have sprung down the years, to have to go and ask some one for a holiday. We must give them an independence of soul in order to build the independent Ireland that Griffith desired.

I see one difficulty where there is only one man employed on a farm, but difficulties were created to be overcome. Because there are farms with only one or two men employed, one cannot say the entire agricultural community should be denied the same rights as the industrialist. Properly worked—as it was about to be after the Wyndham Act of 1903 and as Griffith was trying to lead it to, when he saw other things in the air—the country can employ everyone born on it in the last 20 years. The spirit of the Government should be to do for agriculture here what has been done for it in Northern Ireland for a number of years. Who will go to work for a farmer for 55/- a week when £4 10s. Od. is to be had in the nearby town?

The terms of the motion may not be ideal, but they are worthy of the most serious consideration of the Government. The importance of this debate is second to none, except finance. Every section of the community has been helped. Is the living of the agricultural labourer to be for ever darkened, and is he to be the one individual in the State whose claims will not be dealt with? The labourer has few amenities. In Louth recently organisations have sprung up whose aims I look upon with admiration. I think they are doing good work. I refer to young farmers' clubs and the Federation of Rural Workers. There is room for the two of them. They should rule Ireland. If they do not they will ruin themselves and ruin Ireland.

Senator Baxter spoke admirably of what is really lacking in rural Ireland. I have spoken on the same lines as this motion on other occasions and I commend it to the support of the Minister and the House. As regards fears of what might happen, I have none. I want to meet my men as they meet me, independent. Their homes are a credit to them and in nine cases out of ten there is nothing in them but happiness.

Mr. Dillon

I must ask the indulgence of the Seanad if I intervene at this stage, but I find myself constrained by other work calling me to leave before the conclusion of the debate. There is other work waiting which I cannot afford to drop until to-morrow. Otherwise, I would like to remain until this question was finally disposed of by the Seanad. Let me say at once that I do not think it is expedient to deal with the proposal by legislation now, because if I were going to legislate at all, or going to ask Oireachtas Éireann to legislate, this is not what I would ask. If I were going to ask Oireachtas Éireann to legislate, I would ask it to give a weekly half-holiday and seven days' annual leave. I think they ought to get it. But, you see, this is a democratic country and the majority of our fellow-countrymen may not agree with Senator Smyth there. He has no right to seize the community by the throat to make them do that for those on the land.

I am doing one man's part to convince my neighbour that it is just and practicable if we go the right way about it, to make available for the agricultural worker the same amenities as are available to the industrialist and the industrial worker, who are living on the efforts of agriculturists. I know cases where there are two sons working, one of whom is an agricultural worker, a very highly skilled man who is getting 55/- weekly. He works a 54-hour week and gets no half-holiday and no annual leave. His brother works within a mile of him for 46½ hours, with a half-day each week, seven days' annual leave and £4 a week. His entire occupation consists of rolling bags of flour to and fro across the floor. Does any rational man or woman in this country believe that we can long maintain a situation in which a highly skilled worker gets 55/- a week for a 54-hour week, without a holiday or half-day, while his brother, doing common labouring work, gets £4 a week, annual holidays and a half-day?

Somebody said to me recently that I was not giving due weight to the joys of rural life. I replied that perhaps I was not, but that if I were asked to work a 54-hour week for 55/- I would fly from the land like a scalded cat. I want to say quite deliberately that, unless we can change that, my advice to the agricultural worker would be to get off the land; that they are damn fools to stay there, when they could earn more money with the gifts or ability they have here or elsewhere. There may be some romantics amongst them who like the pure country air. This is a free country, thanks be to God, and just as I do not propose compulsion against farmers, so long as I am Minister for Agriculture, I propose to allow nobody to invoke compulsion against agricultural workers, except in so far as all are required to work for a living within the four corners of the criminal law.

I want to say deliberately that, passionate as my interest in the agricultural industry is, and in the aim to make every farmer who gets a living on the land a comfortable man, I do not aim to make him rich. I do not believe any man living on the land and getting a living out of it will ever be rich in Ireland, but he may be a comfortable man. The realisation of that objective would not be worth two straws to me if it were purchased at the price of leaving the agricultural worker in the lowest category of wages where he at present is.

I want to say this, that it would be a great mistake, from my point of view, if those who claim to speak for the agricultural worker should attempt to hurry the pace faster than the machinery at present will permit it to go, because the only result of doing that will be to upset the applecart and make it impossible to achieve our objectives in the reasonably proximate future.

When I was listening to the discussion to-day I sometimes felt that we were not really discussing this matter in an atmosphere of realism. I have a great respect for what Senator Counihan says on any agricultural matter, but when he spoke to-day it seemed to me as if he envisaged riot and red revolution and the tearing up of laws. It even seemed to me that he felt that here was a dark conspiracy to prohibit the recitation of the family Rosary. I cannot read into any proposal made here by Senator Smyth or Senator Burke any desperate assault upon the institutions of civilisation or upon the foundations of the Catholic Church. All I can find is a somewhat inadequate request for the increase of the non-existent amenities enjoyed by the agricultural labourer. My fault with the Senators is that, if anything, they did not ask for enough. It is an amazement to me to hear that there are employers on the land in Ireland who have refused to their workmen pay for a Church holiday in rural Ireland. I want to say quite deliberately that I have never met any such. I have never known one.

The point may be raised that some of the workers are non-Catholics and why should they be paid for not working on a Catholic Church holiday? The answer is perfectly simple—because, whether we like it or not, this is a Catholic country and, on Catholic holidays, we do not work, and, on bank holidays, we do. As 95 per cent. of us are Catholics and will not work, whether they want us to or not, and think we are right not to, and to get paid for it, as I think we ought to be paid for it, living in the kind of society in which we live, ordinary convenience and the ordinary orderly relations that exist between us suggest that our non-Catholic fellow employers would, without legislation, without hullabaloo, without coercion or dragooning, fall in with their neighbours.

Mr. Douglas

They do.

Mr. Dillon

That is my experience in any case. I never heard a complaint of that kind before, so that, so far as the first half of the Senator's proposal is concerned, which so distressed Senator Counihan and Senator Baxter, I think we are all knocking at a non-existent door, a door which was taken off its hinges about 75 years ago.

With regard to the second half, the week's annual leave, I have lived most of my life in the County Mayo, God help us. Very few of us run to employing anybody at all. Most of my neighbours spend their time walking around looking for somebody to employ them, but an occasional one amongst them rises to employing one man, so that I speak with some authority, on the views of the man who has only one agricultural worker. We have seen the deplorable picture painted here, of the position if that one labouring man were given a week's holiday and I think Senator Baxter said he could conceive of a man with 20 cows resolving that he would keep no more than five after one week's agony. What does that fellow do if the labouring man gets measles? If he gets a whitlow on his thumb what does he do? Does he lie down on the kitchen floor and kick and scream, and say that life has become so intolerable that he will alter the whole basis of his economy, so long as farm labourers are subject to these inconvenient human ills? He does what every other sane man does—goes down the road and hires his brother or cousin to come in for a week until the whitlow leaves the fellow's finger. Is it so extraordinary that, one week in 52, a farmer should ask his man to send in his brother or his cousin? He has 51 weeks to prepare for it, and surely the man who employs one labouring man, unless he is universally hated in the barony, in the electoral division, will find somebody in the whole width of a countryside who will come in to do one week's work for him while he lets his agricultural worker off on seven days' leave. He is quite entitled to employ his own agricultural worker, always provided he pays him time and a quarter for working overtime, so that really all the hubbub and desolation arises from the appalling proposal that a farmer if he employs one man, would be made liable for the expenditure of 13/6 per annum for rehiring his own hired man during his week's holiday, and paying him time and a quarter.

Mr. Duffy

That is not a desirable remedy.

Mr. Dillon

Oh, gracious, no, but remember that I am resisting a situation in which it is suggested to me that ruin and desolation are going to come down on the House, that the farmer is going to slaughter his cows, to empty his stables and abandon hope on account of this week's holiday. The picture drawn for me by Senator Baxter was that the creamery industry stood in instant and desperate jeopardy. As Deputy Madden said in the Dáil, "bawns" of cows would be disposed of overnight. My mind went back with irresistible attraction to the debates which one may read with fascination in the British House of Lords when there was a proposal before that solemn body 150 years ago that the employment of children under 12 should be prohibited for periods longer than six hours at a time. There were venerable peers thundering that the sunset of British industry was at last on the horizon and nothing awaited the mighty empire but ruin and desolation, if the labour that was necessary for the safe prosecution of this fundamental industrial activity of Great Britain was snatched from the benevolent employer's protecting hand. They actually went so far as to prohibit women working naked in the British coal mines and British industry still survived, though nobody dreamed it could.

When I am told that the whole creamery industry is going to collapse if we give agricultural workers one week's holidays per year, that the whole agricultural industry will be put in peril by any such proposition, I cannot feel that we are approaching this question in an atmosphere of realism. Somebody else said that friendships would be snapped like nuts on November Eve, if workers in rural Ireland were given a statutory right to a week's holiday. Thenceforth, farmers and agricultural labourers would scowl at one another on the road. I never found that it ruptured any friendship between myself and the men who worked for me that they should have their rights defined by statute as against me. On the contrary, I find it extremely convenient.

I am not so much married to this business of give and take, because my own experience is that, when you proceed to work out give and take for 52 weeks in the year, you find that it is astonishing how little the workman takes. I suppose it is natural. He does not want to acquire the reputation of being a continual "asker", whereas the industrious and zealous employer, who likes to get the place cleaned up at night and to have everything in apple-pie order before the day is over, is not behindhand in suggesting it and no industrious worker will cavil over 20 minutes or half-an-hour to get the place cleaned up at night. But let the worker come along at 20 minutes past five and say that everything is done and I think, as a general rule, he will find some buckets to clean or a plough-share to be shod or a barn to be swept. Personally I have a profound reluctance to see fellows trailing off 20 minutes before time.

Mr. Duffy

They never do.

Mr. Dillon

They rarely do, but very often they work 20 minutes' overtime and therefore I would sooner have some system whereby our respective rights are defined. I do not give in to the popular occupation of proclaiming that I am an agricultural labourer. I am not. I have been employing agricultural workers for 20 years and it is perfectly manifest and obvious that if I were asked to go out and do a day's work that the agricultural worker is expected to do and does, it would kill me. But similarly if an agricultural worker came into my office and tried to do a day's work there he would be up in Grangegorman before very long. I employ agricultural workers and they, as a body, employ me if it gives anybody satisfaction to say so. I would prefer to have our rights defined so that if a man wants to work a half an hour extra it can be chalked up and I will pay him. There is no threat there or humiliation. He is not humiliated and I am not humiliated. If a shopkeeper is selling three yards of calico and there is a remnant of three and three-quarter yards I am not humiliated if I say to the woman will you take the extra three-quarters of a yard. I am very glad to get rid of the remnant. Now on the other hand, if I break my leg in the yard just as the men are ready to go home I do not expect them to step over me and leave me where I am lying. Common humanity would demand that they should stop, pick me up and carry me in just as I would carry them in. I would not expect that they should carry me in and ask me for overtime. That would not occur to either of us. I do not think there is any embarrassment. Where I ask for extra work I should pay for it. If I do not want to pay for it then I do not want the result of the work and if the result of the work is not worth the pay to which the men are entitled then it is not worth doing at all and it should not be done. I am not at all satisfied that a great evil here exists. If we were all here prepared to sit down and resolve that this was the best of all possible worlds and that there is nothing whatever that we wish to change in it then I would think the hour had come to rouse up this Senate considerably. I do not think there is any Senator who feels that all is well. I am not a Senator and certainly I do not. I think it is dreadful, but I am bustling about the best I can and I think, between hopping and trotting, that within the last six months we have laid the necessary and essential foundations.

I was rather amused to hear two or three non-Labour Senators say that this motion has no political flavour. One of their Labour colleagues interjected and asked why should they not use it for political purposes. Of course they should. They think I am going to do this in any event and they want to be in the position to say that they made me do it. They do not think I came down with the last shower. If they did not think that I am going to do it they would be as quiet as mice. They are sitting in the same Cabinet with me and it is because they are perfectly certain that I am going to do this that they put down the motion. I congratulate the Senators because they will get all the credit for having made me do it. I will be busy and they will go around saying: "We have him now and we will squeeze it out of him", and then when it is done they can say: "I told you we would put behaviour on that fellow". I deprecate the reluctance of committees of agriculture to say yea or nay to this proposal and the resources employed by them in order to avoid saying yea or nay, travelling all the way from marking my letter "Read" to drafting resolutions a mile long to which there is neither head nor tail and which said "yes" and "no" to every proposition contained in it. The only committee that answered me is Louth. They said "yes". They were in agreement with the principle of holidays for farm workers but thought it should be left to employer and employee to arrange the period of holidays. Wicklow decided to mark my letter "Read" and then decided not to submit any views but to leave the question in the hands of the Minister. Waterford thought it better to leave the matter to be settled between the individual farmer and his worker. Tipperary North Riding thought it undesirable to introduce a rigid system of statutory holidays with pay and thought the whole question should be left to the parties concerned.

Offaly approved in principle of the grant of six days' annual holidays to be arranged between employer and employee but thought that the proposal re half-holiday would seriously dislocate work on the farm, adversely effect output and would not be capable of being worked satisfactorily. Mayo thought it undesirable to introduce legislation and suggested that the matter should be settled between employer and employee. Longford approved of the suggestion of six days' annual holidays with pay to workers in regular employment. Mark those words, "Regular employment". They considered that the cost of such a scheme should be recouped to the farmers by way of an increase in the agricultural grant. They thought that the period or the time of year of annual holidays should be left to the employer and employee and they thought that the grant of a weekly half-holiday was impracticable. Kilkenny marked the letter "read" and expressed no views at all. Cork considered there is no necessity for any interference between farmer and worker with regard to holidays and suggested that the parties concerned should amicably make their own arrangements. I wonder how many farmers in Cork give their workers any holidays at all and what are the arrangements to which they refer. County Clare thought the matter should be left as between the farmers and the workers themselves, and the rest of the county committees have not answered at all. The county committees complained that they wanted to have their views heard before policy is determined. I have challenged them. I have asked a categorical question and I am still waiting for a categorical reply. I have sent it by letter, then I sent a reminder and now by word of mouth, I wish to renew the invitation to give us the benefit of their views.

I do not think that the time of the year at which he gets the annual week's holidays presents any insuperable difficulty. There is no use presenting a picture of the corn ripening in the field and the whole population of agricultural workers dashing of to Strand-hill or Sandymount just because the corn is ripening in the field. I have met bank clerks going on their summer holidays in the month of January. That is an extreme arrangement but a middle course can be employed. Late September, a time of year when I always take my own holidays, after the ricks are thatched, would permit of some of them going. There would be a period, I imagine, in June, while the crops are growing, when it would be possible to arrange for their holidays.

Before I sit down, I want to outline to the Seanad and to the movers of this resolution the essential prerequisites to securing for the agricultural labourer in this country a standard of living worthy of the work he does. So long as the agricultural worker works with the equipment and implements that his grandfather's grandfather was using, there is no use talking about getting an equitable wage for him. I remember as a child that an agricultural worker got 12/- a week. There has been a change in the value of money, admittedly, but remember that the man who is working behind two horses and a plough is using precisely the same agricultural implements as were being used 150 years ago. I ask any industrial Senator, if his workers were using the same machines, the same equipment, that their grandfather's grandfather was using, what dividends could he pay and what wages could he pay? —Not one-fourth of what are at present being paid.

The first essential to get for the agricultural workers of this country a reasonable wage is to equip him with the implements which will enable him to do that measure of work which it takes four or five men to do at the present time. One man ploughing with a pair of horses and a plough is a good man to do a statute acre in a day. One man ploughing with a tractor and a two-furrow plough, not to speak of a three-furrow plough, can do four acres in a day. One man milking cows, if he is a good milker, will he milk more than six cows morning and evening and look after them?

A Senator

Eight or nine.

Mr. Dillon

The same man equipped with a good milking machine and a conveyor to the dairy can milk two to three times as many, if his work is organised. We all know the difference between the man who harrows with a horse and the man who harrows with a tractor. Senator Orpen and I inspected the difference between sowing seed broadcast and manure broadcast upon it and the same seed sown by a combined drill sowing seed and manure at the same time. Four or five times the area was covered and the job was done three or four times as well. What farmer in this country would dare to offer the man who finished four or five acres ploughing in a day the same wage as he would give to the man who, by his best exertions completed one?

There are some dafties in this country who think that there is a kind of virtue if you work upon the land in being filthy dirty. If you do not smell like a goat, they turn up their noses in scorn at you and say you never worked on the land. If you are not prepared, in order to please their idea of what a farmer or farm worker should be, to have the dust of ages in your hair, they sneer at your pretensions to be an agricultural worker. If your clothes are not greasy and disreputable, then you are a gentleman farmer. Why should people who work on the land require for respectability's sake to appear in public in rags and tatters and with the dirt of ages on their persons? I know it to be possible to do the work of Irish agriculture more efficiently than it has ever been done before and still to live as dignified and decent a life in that occupation as it is for any worker in any trade in Ireland. My aim is to make available, not only to the agricultural workers of this country, but to their wives as well, that standard of living and decency which every craftsman of their standing is entitled to demand of the community in which they live and, if we fail in that, then, so far as agriculture goes, we fail in everything.

How many Senators have adverted to this fact? There are 645,000 persons engaged in agriculture in Ireland. Of them 140,000 work for wages. That is the body of persons who, taking a week's holiday, will throw the whole economy of Ireland into chaos and confusion. There is a problem that nobody has referred to to-day. Forty per cent. of those agricultural workers have no permanent employment. They are temporarily employed by one farmer after another. The provision of a week's holiday and a weekly half-holiday envisages the status of a man permanently employed. One of our grievous problems in regard to the agricultural worker is that so great a number of our agricultural workers have not got that sine qua non of a decent life, permanent and assured employment. Some of them are temporarily employed by their own choice. They are men who go to work for the farmer for so many months and who elect to work at home for the balance of the year but too many of them are men who are temporarily employed because they cannot find jobs where permanent employment is available. I want therefore first to place within the reach of the farmers of this country the equipment which will enable them to afford their employed labourers an opportunity of making the maximum use of the gifts God gave them and I intend to do it. I have uttered this challenge to any branch of Muintir na Tíre that will accept it: that if they will constitute themselves a social unit and a co-operative society that I will put within their reach the credit to purchase any machinery their heart desires for the better working of the land of the parish which they represent; I will undertake to place at their disposal the entire resources of the Department of Agriculture, to reconstitute every acre of land in that parish under the schemes operated by the Department, to rebuild every farm building in the parish; the Department contributing substantially to that cost, the land improvement scheme to reconstitute the land, the poultry scheme to provide them with the wherewithal to increase the numbers of their poultry, to build pig sties and to help them to get pigs if they have not got them, and to place in permanent occupation in that parish an agricultural supervisor whose sole duty it will be to see that everybody living in that parish has made known to him the resources of which the Department is capable, and to provide, whenever they are wanted, the educational facilities by way of cinematographic films, lectures, demonstrations or otherwise which the people living in that parish require.

I see no way out to raise the standard of living of our people on the land other than by putting within their reach the means of raising it for themselves. I stake my existence in public life on the proposition that, given the opportunity, they will raise their own standard better and quicker than any Government or than any compulsion or direction from above will be able to raise it for them. I propose in one parish in any case—and the challenge goes for every parish in Ireland as far as I am concerned—to ask them to cooperate with my Department to afford me the opportunity of demonstrating what my Department can do.

The amount of knowledge, the accumulated wisdom, experience and skill that is available in the Department of Agriculture is a never-ending source of admiration and amazement to me. Hitherto, it has stayed, as far as I can find out, in the Department, and no machinery seems to have been put to work to get it out to the people. I am going to have a very good shot in getting it out. It is doing no good where it has accumulated in the archives in Upper Merrion Street. Out it is going to go to reconstitute the face of the country. I am going to have it brought to the people's homes, to be used by them on their holdings so that, out of the increasing surplus thus created, I have no doubt the farmers in this country will gladly pass on an equitable share to the workers who work for them.

I want to say this that, much as I sympathise with the charm of the pastoral scene described by Senator Bennett, his Canadian friend was right. There is not anybody in Ireland who can afford nowadays to pay a workman for one-and-a-half hours' conversation with a neighbour. I think that requires to be said. If we are to look at agriculture as a way of life, consistent with a dignified and reasonable standard of living, then we have got to act like responsible people and, without surrendering our souls to materialism, at least to go about our business with a modicum of efficiency. I think that the farmers are entitled to say "all this is desirable but quite impossible unless we have the certain knowledge that what we labour to produce can be disposed of profitably." They have it now. For four years hence there is nothing that any competent farmer can produce off the land of Ireland that cannot be sold at a profit. It is the first time, I think, that any Minister could say that in this Seanad, but it is true. There is nothing that a competent farmer can produce off the land of Ireland for the next four years for which he has not got a certain and a profitable market, and if any farmer should fail to avail of it he has no one to blame but himself. I shall esteem it a favour if some of our friends on my right hand will quote me to that effect when next they are speaking at the cross-roads.

I think that one of the greatest curses that ever fell on this country was the Act entitling people to enter into purchase agreements for labourers' cottages in rural Ireland. It was done by a man who did not understand the country. My people were in no small measure responsible for the erection of these cottages, and they stipulated that they should never be sold because they knew what they were meant for. They were meant to provide decent living accommodation for agricultural workers, working in the area where the cottages were built. They are now becoming the country villas of engine drivers, retired teachers and a whole cross section of deserving citizens in the enjoyment of modest incomes, the vast majority of whom have incomes far in excess of the small farmers who are required to subsidise the houses which those people are buying on the instalment plan. I know bakers in receipt of £4 a week who are purchasing their cottages with an acre of land annexed thereto for 1/2 a week. When they have got the cottages if they put them up for sale for £700 they will be killed in the rush. They are at present buying them from the ratepayers in the County Roscommon at 1/2 a week, while agricultural workers are, in the majority, tenants in one room of these cottages for which they pay from 5/- to 7/- a week. That is a fact. It was a crime the day on which that Act was passed. It makes dreadfully difficult the restoration of decent living conditions for agricultural workers because if cottages are to be provided under the same conditions as those that obtained under the old scheme then in another ten or 20 years you will have the same scandalous transactions again. The cottages will be sold to butchers, bakers, and candle-stick-makers who will thereupon become landlords. What is happening is that the real agricultural workers are tenement tenants in these cottages and are obliged to pay three times the total rent which the occupiers themselves are paying for the houses.

The last thing that I want to say is this. I believe that intangibles can be of great consequence in life. An atmosphere has grown up in this country of looking on farmers as "yobs", and on agricultural workers as being, by nature, hewers of wood and drawers of water to be left at the kitchen door and in no circumstances to go with their dirty boots about the house. I think that we have begun to change that. I think that we have begun to realise in this country that the farmers, and the men who work with them, carry the community on their backs. I think that we have begun to realise in this country that while we bear no grudge against industrialists or professional people we expect them to remember that we support them all, and that in our presence they should at least uncover. Gratitude is, of course, a rare virtue that we do not expect, but a due recognition of what is due we must exact. It is very necessary that our people should come back to a realisation that every section of the community is entitled to its inalienable rights and that these will be protected, but that the means to that end are provided by those who live on the land; and that the day is gone when slippery-tongued frauds can sell the agricultural community the dummy that there is something patriotic in living on the land and allowing the racketeers to grind the blood out of their bodies to the strains of "A Nation Once Again".

I went to Pallaskenry last Sunday and there saw a splendid agricultural college, to which farmers' sons went to learn their craft; but I thought it strangely typical of the detestable and fraudulent attitude to agriculture which has grown up in this country, that the scientific teachers in that school are not recognised as teachers at all. If they were secondary teachers in any diocesan college, they would have pensions, capitation grants, rights and privileges, all set out, immutable as the laws of the Medes and Persians. But if you should be such a fool, instead of taking a pass B.A., as to take a Baccalaureate of Agricultural Science, think yourself lucky if you are spoken of as a teacher at all. You have no pension, no status, no recognition of your existence—"Instructor", if you want to be polite: "man about the place", if you want to speak the truth —that is the attitude. I look forward with satisfaction to putting an end to that.

I look forward to the day when we can prevail upon the agricultural community to want, and to get, the same standard of education as any other section of the community. I want to see the agricultural worker having the same standard in the community as the apprenticed craftsman who is recognised by the masters of his trade to be a master craftsman. I want farmers to have the appropriate qualifications to the responsibilities they undertake on the land. I do not want every ten-acre farmer to be a Bachelor of Agricultural Science—it would be daft to hope he would, and inappropriate to ask him to be so—but he can have a secondary education in agriculture which will stand him in just as good stead as the secondary education will stand his brother in good stead when he goes to serve his apprenticeship in the local shop.

Any man who wants to take responsibility for wide acres is a fool if he does not equip himself with the scientific knowledge to extract from the land the best it is capable of yielding and at the same time preserve the land and hand it on a little better than he got it, to whoever may be there. That is the test of good agriculture, not the man who enriches himself by mining his land, but the man who gets from his land a good living for himself and his family and, when his time comes to pass on his trust, leaves the subject thereof a little better than he got it.

I do not think you can leave the agricultural worker dissociated from the whole problem of agriculture. It is fantastic to conceive that agriculture as a whole can improve without the worker marching with it. Yes, that is my purpose, to secure for the agricultural worker the same status and conditions as are enjoyed by the industrial worker who is protected by tariffs which the agricultural worker has to pay. The time has gone when the Government, representing the people as a whole, have a right to bleed one section of the community in order to fatten the other. If both sides share the benefits, then I am for as many benefits as our Government can get for our people; but there will be no more fatlings living on lean farmers. If it means that all have got to come down to a medium rotundity, that is fair enough; but if one section of the community wants to be fat, we will be fat altogether or not at all.

Do not let us end on a note that would suggest a grudging or a greedy spirit. I believe there is nothing more remote from the agricultural community than that. It is not that we grudge our successful neighbour his prosperity. Anyone living in rural Ireland and watching the returned Yank, shining from the top of his head to the sole of his foot, and showing his diamonds— or what he calls diamonds—will dream that his prosperity is grudged by the average countryman to his more fortunate brother. But it is only when a farmer's life-blood is squeezed out of him, in order to provide villas and motor cars and luxury, for exploiters who come from the far corners of the earth to suck that man's subsistence and then flit away when there is nothing more to suck, that you have resentment, cold and bitter, amongst our people for the rule of law that could permit it.

It will never happen again. In that assurance, I look forward with confidence to an equitable division of the reward we hope agriculture is going to have, not in the dim and distant future but within the next four years. For every step that agriculture rises, there is a solemn obligation, in justice, on the farmers who share in it, to pass on their full share to the men who work for them. I do not doubt they will, and I will pass no laws to make them do it, because if they fail me in that, then I am a fool who was never fit for the position that I occupy. But if they do not, then I suggest that I am vindicated in the belief that co-operation with the farmers is better than the compulsion that was born of the slave mind that first employed it.

Mrs. Concannon

Senators have followed this debate with great interest. As has been stated from both sides of the House the question is a difficult one. For that reason, I think it should not be settled in an offhand way, seeing that there are issues involved which bear on social questions, economic questions, and the relationship between employers and employees. If the motion was passed in its present form which is admittedly rather loose, the question might not receive the attention it requires. For that reason I hope it will not be pressed. The Minister has stressed some of the difficulties that confront us. Quite clearly the Minister is not inclined to accept the motion, and before we commit ourselves to it the Government, as well as the Minister, should have the opportunity of considering the different aspects more fully. The Seanad has only touched the surface of the question.

Mr. Finan

I am inclined to share the views of those who think that this motion deserves more consideration. I have a feeling that if the House were to press it, it would be awkward even for the proposer as well as some of his colleagues. This proposal seems to me to be utterly impracticable. If it could not be arranged that there would be a substitute for a labourer who went on holidays, people in towns and cities would be considerably inconvenienced. I am sure that Senator Burke's colleague would find it annoying if left without milk for breakfast on Sundays. That is just one of the hardships that might occur.

Another question that occurs to me is this: would the proposal include smallholders and small farmers? Who would pay them while on annual leave? If a smallholder was given annual leave with pay, or a half-holiday, who will pay him? I have no doubt that everybody is in sympathy with the claims of the agricultural worker, but I am not inclined to accept the view that he is in the condition represented here to-day. In comparison with other rural workers he is better off than the average worker. The Minister may be aware of people working in yards or stores for £4 weekly, but there are people in rural Ireland who are not earning even 55/- a week. There are employers with two labourers who themselves are not getting 55/- weekly.

Mr. Baxter

That is true.

Mr. Finan

That is not the fault of the employer, but the fault of the system which operates here. Every section, from the top down, is being kept by the agricultural community. When he has all overheads paid the agricultural employer has nothing left for himself. There is one other reason why I oppose this motion. For years the agricultural community has been hampered and hindered as regards output and production by Government interference. I had hopes that that was at an end. If there is a suggestion now that, as a substitute for compulsory tillage, we are going to have compulsory holidays, I do not think that will be an improvement.

It is admitted that the prosperity of the country depends on a prosperous agriculture. That applies to-day in highly industrialised countries like America and Britain. How much more would it apply here? Last week there was talk in this House about increased production. Is this the way to bring about increased production? Have the sponsors of the motion considered the time that will be lost to production if the motion were adopted? There is one way to improve the lot of the agricultural worker and it is clear that it can be improved, that is, by giving a better income and better standard to his employer. The market is there now, we are told, but the market is not enough. There must be greater output per man-hour and that is the only way to get it.

I come from the same county as the Minister—his neighbours are my neighbours. It is not by any means a serious question in our part of the country, but I honestly believe, from the agricultural labourers I know, that there is no real demand for it. I have never heard one of them talk about it or ask for it, and I doubt if they would be very grateful for getting it because the position is this, that if the farmer is compelled to give them a week's holiday in the year, he will give it, but, as I think any agricultural labourer will agree, he has more than a week's holiday with pay now. I doubt very much, although I do not question the intentions or sincerity of the sponsors of this motion, if they are doing a service to the agricultural labourer by putting forward this suggestion.

Whatever the Minister may have in mind with regard to the improvement of the position of these people—he appears to take a considerable interest in them, and, judging by the statements quoted by Senator Burke, he has taken them very much to his heart—it might be just as well to wait and see. If the Minister has sense, he will not jeer, nor will anybody else, at the harmonious relations existing between the farmer and his worker. They are things which should not be sold cheaply and with which nobody in this country should interfere, because the day you drive a wedge between the farmer and his workers, you are doing a serious injustice to this nation. Allow the good relations which have always existed to continue and you are doing a good day's work for the farmers, for their workers and for the nation.

Mr. Hawkins

I regret that I was unable to be present for the whole of this debate, but the motion before the House asks for at least one week's annual holiday with pay and leave of absence with pay on all Church holydays, through legislation. I think that, if the House were to pass this motion, it would be doing one of the greatest disservices ever done with regard to Irish agriculture and the interest of the farmer and his workers. Those of us who know Irish life know that harmonious relations exist between the farmer and his worker and that there is always co-operation between them as to when they will take their holidays.

It has been brought to my notice to-day that if there is a very wet season and if a particular Church holyday were a day favourable for making hay, on the basis of this proposal, not alone will the farmer be under an obligation to his employees, but it will be an offence for both the employer and the employee to engage in making that hay or saving the harvest on that day. It is one of the many things in respect of which we should not propose legislation. There is always co-operation between the employer of labour and his employees, and particularly agricultural employees, and they arrange between themselves, in that old-fashioned Irish way, when they will take their holidays, and, if needs be, to work after hours in the national interest. I did not intend to contribute to this debate on the relations between workers and employers because the position is quite clear to every person who comes from rural Ireland that, if we are to recommend to the Government the passing of legislation to make it compulsory on the farmer to give his worker a holiday on a particular day, so that it will be unlawful to do on that day any of the necessary things—milking the cows, delivering the milk or any of the other things which must be done —we are going too far, to say the very least of it.

I am sorry that the Minister did not continue to grace the House with his presence so that he might hear some of the replies to his address. There is no man who has entered the political life, and particularly the agricultural life, of this country in recent years who has done more to drive a wedge between the farmer and the agricultural worker than the Minister. We have had statements from him in recent weeks deploring the remuneration which agricultural workers receive and telling our farmers that they are not adopting the correct method of farming, that they must become more mechanised.

What does that mean? If we are to go in for the mechanisation of farming, it means one thing—the more machinery you employ, the less labour you employ, and the less labour you employ, the less urgent becomes this question of holidays for agricultural workers. When I was quite a young boy, more years ago now than I should care to admit, a period of a day and a half was allocated in my particular trade to the making of a panelled door. Three quarters of an hour is now allocated to that job in the most up-to-date workshops in this or any other city. It means that fewer craftsmen are employed and if we are to have this mechanisation, this slaughter of horses which the Minister proposes to carry out, it means that there must be fewer agricultural workers employed to give the same production. Otherwise the Minister's advice is nullified.

He also protests about our cottage purchase scheme and he told us here that bakers, plumbers, carpenters, and other tradesmen, as a result of this scheme being put into operation, were in a position to purchase cottages erected for the agricultural workers. I am surprised at the Minister making a statement of that kind because the least I would expect from a man occupying his most important position is that he should know what the definition of an agricultural worker is. The definition of an agricultural worker is any person who is engaged at any trade or handicraft, provided he does not employ anybody other than members of his own family.

Mr. Duffy

And provided he lives in an agricultural district.

Mr. Hawkins

No. I will dispute that with the Senator. There is no qualification.

Mr. Duffy

Then a Dublin carpenter can get a labourer's cottage?

Mr. Hawkins

He can.

Mr. Baxter

That is so.

Mr. Hawkins

I am glad to know that Senator Baxter—I will not say for the first time—agrees with me. The agricultural worker is any man occupied at a trade or livelihood who does not employ labour whether or not he resides in an urban or rural area.

Mr. Duffy

May I say one word to Senator Hawkins? I want to urge the Senator not to proceed on these lines. First of all, because there is dispute about it and, secondly, because the matter is obviously out of order. The Minister was out of order and I ask Senator Hawkins not to follow the bad example.

Mr. Hawkins

The last thing I would wish to do in my whole life would be to follow the bad example of the Minister for Agriculture and I am glad that Senator Duffy has drawn my attention to it.

Mr. Duffy

The motion deals with the half-holiday.

Mr. Hearne

There is not one word in the motion about a half-holiday.

Mr. Hawkins

Will Senator Duffy read the motion?

Mr. Duffy

Later on.

Mr. Hawkins

The Minister in his speech made reference to the cottage purchase scheme and criticised it because it incorporated persons who are essential to the agricultural life of the country.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

May I point out, Senator, that if the Minister was out of order, it would not be wise to follow on the same lines?

Mr. Hawkins

Not being wise to follow in this direction, I will give way, but I would like to follow the Minister up another alley. The Minister in his usual bombastic references referred to tariffs.

Mr. Duffy

Another bóithrín.

Mr. Hawkins

I would remind the Senator that bóithríns are very often surrounded by very nice mulberry bushes.

Mr. Duffy

I am glad you noticed that.

Mr. Hawkins

The Minister went up this "bóithrín" of tariffs and displayed his opposition to the policy and writings of Arthur Griffith on which Sinn Féin was founded. I have sympathy with the proposal here in this resolution but the Minister was so opposed to this policy in the past that we could not expect much less from him than that he should oppose this policy to-day. Our Irish industrialists who accepted the gospel of Arthur Griffith and established Irish industries——

Mr. Duffy

What about the farm labourers?

Mr. Hawkins

The Minister referred to the agricultural workers and the tariffs that were imposed to help the industries of the country. I would like to ask the Minister about the subsidies that the rural and agricultural workers are paying in order to ensure that the farmer is getting the prices that he is now getting for his produce. If we are going to discuss tariffs——

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

You are not.

Mr. Hawkins

If we are going to discuss tariffs, I suggest that we should have a discussion on their counterpart, namely, subsidies. If we balance one against the other, both arms, the industrial and the agricultural, we must discuss both. We were told by Arthur Griffith, whose writings brought us all into the Sinn Féin movement, that we must build up our agriculture and also build up secondary industries. That is the gospel for which we on this side of the House stand but, of course, it would be too much to expect that Mr. Dillon would accept that policy. The Minister for Agriculture has told us what he proposes to do about agriculture and what he has done. What achievements can the Department of Agriculture show since the 18th February last?

Mr. Baxter

On a point of order, I would like to say this: I do not want to interrupt Senator Hawkins who is always so fair but he probably thinks that he is entitled to make the speech he is making because of the speech made by the Minister, but I suggest to him that it would be far more profitable for the House to discuss this motion.

Mr. Hawkins

Before we come to the question of deciding whether the agricultural community——

Mr. Baxter

I raised a point of order, a Leas-Chathaoirleach, and I ask you to rule on it.

An Leas-Chathaoirleach

I was about to deal with it. I take it that Senator Hawkins is getting back to the question of annual holidays, because the position of the agricultural industry has of course a direct bearing on it. I take it that Senator Hawkins is now coming to the question immediately before the House.

Mr. Hawkins

I would like to suggest to the House that before we come to a serious decision on a very important matter of this kind that we should first consider whether the agricultural community of this country can afford to give their employees one week's annual holidays and leave of absence on Church holydays. I do not know why there is a difference of wording there. We must examine the whole agricultural output. We must see whether agricultural output is such as will enable the employers of labour to give holidays and give the other demands set forth on this motion. I have tried to put before the House my view that, regardless of the fact whether we examine this matter, we are not competent to do so. We would have to go into Committee and examine the output of each agricultural farm, particularly in the creamery districts. We have very mixed farming in the country. Various proposals were put forward in this House from time to time by people representing various aspects of farming and we know from these that we cannot have a hard and fast rule in a matter of this kind. If we are going to pass this resolution here this evening what is going to be the position of the people supplying our creameries in Kerry and Limerick and what is going to happen the supplies of butter for our towns and cities?

What is going to be the position if every farmer engaged in production in this country is compelled by legislation to give, at a particular time of the year, holidays to his employees and also to give each Church holyday to every person employed by him. Remember this, whether it is a Church holyday, Good Friday or Christmas Day, the cows have got to be milked and the milk has got to be delivered to the creamery. If by legislation you compel the farmers to continue production and at the same time put them in the position that they have to substitute men for the employees who are on holidays, where are you going to get to?

I know rural Ireland as well as most members of this House. I know the good relations that exist between the farmers and their employees. In my part of the country, it is quite usual for the farmer to take a week off in Salthill or Lisdoonvarna and when he comes back he always allows his worker off to do the same thing. There is co-operation and that interest in their employment—it is not his—it is looked upon as theirs. We are going to drive a wedge into the harmony that exists. I would support this resolution wholeheartedly if it were held out as a suggestion to farmers that they should give holidays to each of their employees, but that is not the suggestion. It is much more serious than that. Two years ago we had a very bad harvest and the people of our towns and cities were organised to save the harvest. How would it look if, in that particular period, as a result of legislation, the employees of the farmer were debarred from taking part in that national work, as they would be if this motion were passed? I know there is sympathy, understanding and co-operation in rural Ireland to-day between the farmers and their labourers and it would be a very bad thing if we were to pass legislation or encourage the passing of legislation that would drive a wedge between the farmer and his labourers.

I hope in the next week or two to have an opportunity to refer to one other matter that the Minister mentioned. I have been told that I should not travel up the same bóithrín, even though it may be surrounded with roses. He indicated to the Seanad that because of some recent events the farmers of this country are now placed in a position that they were never in before, that they are going to have for the next four years a guaranteed market. Who ever suggested that that market was taken from them or should be taken from them? I do not know whether I should continue on this line or not. I would like to hold it over for another occasion when I hope we will have an opportunity of elaborating it but I would say that there is no farmer that I have met or no man in Ireland to-day who believes that statement of the Minister, who believes that the recent agreement has secured for the Irish farmer or the Irish industrialist something that was not there and could not be got without any negotiations or without any Cabinet meeting in London.

Mr. Hearne

That is quite true.

Mr. Baxter

Why was it not got then?

Captain Orpen

I welcome any move which places the rural community in the same position and gives them the same advantages as are enjoyed by people living in urban areas. I welcome the motion but I would like to put in a reservation. While I welcome the motion and the idea of a week's annual holiday with pay, I am inclined to agree with Senator Hawkins that I do not like it being brought about by legislation. I would prefer that we would go along in the old way and pay our workers on Church holydays and, when the position improves, that we would be able to arrange for an annual holiday with pay.

There are two things involved in an annual holiday with pay. Some farmers may be in the fortunate position that they can adjust their farm programme so as to allow one man off for a week and another man off in a subsequent week. With the small farmer, of course, it is very much more difficult. I do think that we want to consider very carefully the impact that this annual holiday with pay will have on the rest of the community. In the long run, the consumer will have to pay for it except in so far as economy in other directions can allow the cost of the final product to remain as it is. Probably, at first the farmer will have to stand the added cost but ultimately he will have to pass it on to the consumer. That brings about a dangerous situation. You can adjust the prices of foodstuffs that are consumed at home but the price levels of exports is to a large extent determined by others. Our exports must remain profitable. Otherwise we will be in a difficult position as regards imports. I utter that word of warning because we are going to face a time, probably, of falling prices. That is why I want a reservation on the subject of the introduction of a holiday with pay. I feel that it is something that we should aim to achieve in the years to come but I am not altogether convinced that we should bring it in just now. I do not believe that it is right to bring it in suddenly in a time of scarcity here and world scarcity and I do not believe it is wise to bring it in, in a period of falling prices.

I want the idea of holidays with pay to be a success. I do not want it jeopardised by other conditions that have no relation to the question of whether one can give holidays or one cannot. I want the thing tried out and I want it to succeed. I suggest that it is, possibly, unwise to do it immediately, and I certainly do not like it to be done by legislation. I think that in the case of a new thing or, rather a much-wanted improvement, to apply it to the whole country would be very difficult. It would be better for each production area to evolve its own method rather than have a uniform scheme for the whole country.

In the part of the country that I come from, I think that holidays with pay would not be impossible. Some of us do it already. I can see that that would be very much more difficult in the dairying districts as they are set up to-day. Possibly, alterations might make the proposal more feasible there. I would suggest, if it would meet with the approval of the proposer and the seconder of the motion, that, in the interim and to show at any rate that we farmers were anxious to put our workers on a basis similar to that which those in industry enjoy, we might add a phrase to the motion saying that if the worker was not particularly anxious for holidays he might prefer to have an extra week's pay instead or, alternatively, that if some farmers are so circumstanced that they could not give the holiday, they would add a week's pay until such time as they could give the holiday.

What I have suggested is not the same thing as the motion before us, but it might get us out of a difficulty. I feel that there are farms on which it would be exceedingly difficult to arrange matters so that every worker could be let off for one week in the year. There are many areas where there is no additional labour available. I suggest that, possibly my alternative might be a way out of the difficulty.

I was surprised to hear it said that there are regions in the country where the Church holydays are not given to the men, and that the men are not paid for Church holydays. I have never found that. In every county that I have been in it seems to me that they observe the Church holydays. Somebody, of course, has to work on those days just as they have to work on Sundays. There is a sort of give and take about it, but the work is, naturally, cut down to a minimum. As a farmer, I may say that all the Church holydays, except one, fit in with the farm programme. There is one which is sometimes a little awkward in a bad year, as has been pointed out, and that is the 15th August. I have often seen men come in to work on that day.

Lastly, I would urge that consideration should be given to this motion. Everything that we can do to put our agricultural operatives on a basis comparable to that of other workers should be done as soon as possible. I feel that this problem may have to be regionalised. In certain areas certain courses of action may be possible. In certain areas the problem may prove more difficult than in others, and, therefore, the problem must be studied according to the agricultural economy of the area. Let it be made quite clear that we should try, as far as possible, to devise means of carrying out the two things suggested in this motion.

Miss Butler

I hesitate to rise at this late hour to intervene in the debate. I was so carried away by the Minister's remarks that I had almost decided not to rise at all, but on further consideration of some of the things that were said here to-day and of the Minister's remarks I feel that it may not be a waste of time perhaps if I refer to some of the inconsistencies in the debate, as well as to some of the remarks made by the Minister himself. I approve of this motion to give a week's holidays with pay to agricultural workers. As a town dweller, I feel incompetent to express any opinion as to what the results of such a scheme would be on the community as a whole. Having listened to the remarks made here to-day, there seems to be complete agreement that it is desirable to keep the personal relations between the farmer and his employee as strong as they always have been. There seems to be complete agreement that there are a number of good employers who give their workers the Church holydays off with pay, and who also allow their workers to have a week's holidays in the year with pay.

Like the Minister, I was struck by the air of unreality—having listened to a series of debates in this House on our economic position. We have all been led to believe, and I think we agree, that agriculture is our basic industry. We have all been led to believe, and do believe, that on increased production from our basic industry depends our future prosperity. On the other hand, we know well that we are faced to-day with the serious problem of emigration, and that the whole decline in our population over the last 60 years with the acute decline in the last ten years, has been borne entirely by the rural areas. The towns of Ireland, and in particular the City of Dublin, have grown out of all proportion to the size of the country so that we have an unbalanced community, a top heavy community, with more than one quarter of our population living in one city alone, and far more than half the population living, under urban conditions, on the backs of the rural community.

Emigration to England and other countries is largely due to the unattractive conditions in rural areas and there can be no increase in production until that trend is stopped. It is illogical to try to prevent any legislation which might entice the rural community to stay in rural Ireland. The real attraction in England and in the cities is not the city lights and amusements, but the often mistaken belief that there is employment there with some guarantee of continuity, with certain known and fixed hours, and rates of wages which include a week or a fortnight's holiday with pay, when the worker can return to his own part of the country. Were those conditions not included, a great number of people would hesitate to leave the rural areas —if they knew they could not come home again at their employer's expense. That is an influencing factor in weighing up whether one will go abroad to seek employment or not.

I have roughly calculated what one week's pay, £2 15s. Od., would mean over a year. Would that extra 1/- a week which it represents mean a real difference in the cost of agricultural produce to the consumer in the city? If not, where is the argument which says that we must weigh up the effect of such holidays on the cost of agricultural produce? Again, there is no suggestion that the holidays should be taken at a specified time, or that a man would be precluded from taking part in the harvest because of legislation which would compel him to have a holiday at a certain time. Any suggestion of the kind is misleading the House.

I would have preferred to see Senators come here prepared to say they believed the agricultural workers were entitled to their week's holiday. If we are not afraid to admit the facts, what is the difficulty about making it law? The Minister's statement has left us in confusion. The essence of his remarks was the building up of a sense of dignity and responsibility amongst the agricultural community and, as part of that building up process, he stressed the importance of a sense of security. He said it does not in the slightest impair his relations with his employee, in other occupations, that he knows his rights by law, and that it did not embitter those good relationships that have always existed between employer and employee. Yet he refuses to accept the same principle, to achieve the sense of dignity and security he speaks of. Again, at the end of his speech, he left us with an appeal to the farmers to share with their workers the prosperity which he promised them over the next few years. He left it to them not to fail in this, in other words, to provide the week's holiday with pay; and he as much as told us he would not accept this motion. In opening, he told us he knew the Labour Party had pushed this motion because they knew he would accept it and they wanted to get all the kudos for the victory. I am so confused by both points of view that I feel it is difficult to put the resolution at all.

There is a sociological value in a week's holiday. All sociologists who have surveyed the institutions which have built up England—one of the few Parliamentary democracies left in Europe to-day—have come to the conclusion that the real strengh of its free institutions is the freedom enjoyed by the average man, the family life and the family tradition. Many of them have stressed, in their surveys, the tradition of the family holiday, a week in the year taken together, or a few days when a man can spend his time with his family. I doubt if the agricultural wage of £2 15s. would allow the Irish agricultural worker to go to the equivalent of Margate or Brighton, but it would at least allow him to spend a few days with his family, on such excursions as he might desire, and he would look forward to that in the course of the year. I would be delighted to see the industrialist who would have the courage to say here that the workers are not entitled to a week's holidays. Many farmers have agreed with the principle, but no one has the courage to say so. If they are so entitled, I cannot understand why it should be such a bogey that the extra 1/- a week prevents it being made law.

Mr. O'Dwyer

The House has dealt very fairly with this Resolution in a proper spirit. We are all agreed that there is a good case for it and also for a weekly half-holiday, if it would really change the lot of the agricultural workers. While there is an unanswerable argument for putting them in the same position as their brothers in the town, we must face the realities. There is a great difference between urban and rural conditions of employment. The city workers generally work for big firms or wealthy shopkeepers, people who have plenty of capital and who can pass the cost on to others. The farmer generally cannot pass on the extra cost to the customer.

On large farms, where machinery is employed, it is an easy matter to pay a man a very good wage comparable with industry and give him all the amenities of holidays and so on, but on a small farm the employed worker is working for a man scarcely better off than himself, a man who has to keep his own children working on the land without any wages. That is the great difficulty and I agree with the Minister that it would not be well to hurry this matter. While agreeing that holidays will come in the course of time, this is not the time to hurry them. The danger is that, if you impose by law a weekly half-holiday and the other holidays proposed in the motion, you will create great additional unemployment, because those small farmers who are almost as poor as the workers themselves will be inclined to do with less labour.

Our part of the country, Limerick and part of Tipperary, the dairying districts, have been the greatest employers of labour, more so than the tillage districts, and I know that for years back the tendency has been to let go dairy cows and to turn the land into grazing. The tillage policy for the past five or six years has changed that, but, with the disappearance of the tillage regulations in a year or two, the same danger will arise. If we impose additional conditions on the employment of labour, the danger, as I say, is —and it is well that we should face it —that we will create wholesale unemployment. It will be remembered that, when some years ago, the former Minister for Industry and Commerce brought in the Bill to give holidays with pay in the towns, he explained that he could not extend it to agriculture because of the overwhelming number of small holdings. That difficulty is there to-day.

I was very interested in the Minister's hopes of improving conditions through the use of machinery to such an extent that these holidays and other advantages may accrue to the agricultural worker in a short time, but there is a limit to the employment of machinery. On large farms, without doubt, machinery can be used to an almost unlimited extent, but, on the smaller farms, there is a limit. In our particular district, the co-operative society purchased machinery during the emergency and it certainly did a great deal of work in the matter of production. It would have been impossible to produce one quarter of the crops in that locality without the employment of this machinery. But that machinery will probably be dispensed with next year.

There is no means that I can see by which that machinery can be used on the ordinary farm of 40 or 50 acres. Machinery must be employed for milking cows on all the farms of that size, but here again is a problem because the employment of machinery on these farms will automatically cut out much more than half the workers at present employed. We have to face that difficulty. It is a very difficult problem. We are all agreed that it would be a very good thing that anything which could be done for the agricultural worker should be done if only to keep him on the land but we must be aware lest we take any rash step, and instead, drive them from the land, by reducing their employment.

I might point out that there are many other ways of improving the condition of agricultural workers. The trouble with these workers is that they have only sporadic employment. They have to depend on work on the roads and public schemes for a living more than on the land and I think it would be a good policy if industries were started all over the country, because, in these circumstances, some members of a family might be employed in the local factory, while others worked on the land. I notice that, wherever there is a local industry, it makes for an improvement in the living conditions of the workers for miles around. In addition, there are many industries which could be encouraged for the benefit of these workers, cottage industries such as fowl raising and pig rearing. The rural worker generally has a cottage and an acre of land, and, with that acre of land properly employed and with these cottage industries, his condition could be vastly improved and he would be enabled to secure an income independent altogether of his outside labour. There is no reason why every agricultural worker should not have a cow and the same facilities for purchasing a cow as exist in the case of farmers.

The Minister referred to the cottage purchase scheme and to the great harm which the previous Government did by introducing that scheme. I was very interested in cottage purchase at the time, and, in justice to the late Government, I should like to say that the reason they brought in that Bill——

Mr. Duffy

What are we discussing now, Sir?

Mr. O'Dwyer

I know I am out of order, but previous speakers referred to it. Senator Duffy did not interrupt the Minister.

Mr. Duffy

Why did you not interrupt him?

Mr. O'Dwyer

The reason that cottage purchase Bill was brought in was that the Government of the time felt that it was right that the agricultural worker should have some claim to his home and acre of ground and the same feeling of possession as the farmer under the Land Purchase Acts. That was the reason for bringing in that Act which we find is being abused to-day. I agree with the Minister that it is well not to rush this matter because there is a danger that to do so might do more harm than good, but it is quite possible that the matter may be settled between bodies representing both workers and farmers. If that were possible, it would be much better, but, in the present situation, until such time as there is an improvement in agricultural conditions generally and until such time as we can see our way more clearly, it would be well not to press the matter unduly. I suggest to the mover of the motion that, having got the opinion of the House—and I assure him that we are all very sympathetic indeed with the idea behind the motion —it would be well if he withdrew the motion for the present.

Mr. Colgan

As a townsman, I do not intend to say much on this motion. I do not know anything about agriculture, but I should like to comment on the inconsistency of the Minister's statements and the hypocrisy of much that has been said here this evening. The Minister opened by saying that this was a free country and that there should be freedom to negotiate conditions of work as between employee and employer; but the fact is, as many of us in industry appreciate, that, prior to the introduction of the 1936 Holidays Act, the number of industrial workers getting any kind of holidays with pay was comparatively small and that until that legislation was brought in, nothing was done about it. The unions were not in a position to force the pace and get these holidays. The Minister says now that it is better to rectify the position between the employer and employee. We have had nothing here to-night from the Minister and the people who spoke against the motion but sympathy for the farm worker. The worker generally gets plenty of sympathy but does not get much assistance, except what assistance he secures for himself and I feel that the problem of giving holidays with pay in agriculture is just the same problem as existed before industry generally got holidays with pay and it is no argument to say that the matter will be settled in the near future. This matter, I believe, will not be settled, unless legislation is brought in to compel farmers to give these holidays with pay.

I want to expose the hypocrisy in many of the statements here to-night about our being all in sympathy with the farm labourer—the most degraded worker in the country. It has come to be accepted that he must, of necessity, be the lowest paid worker and that has been the mentality in this country for a long number of years—that the farm labourer, the hardest worked man, and, as the Minister said, one of the most skilled men, must of necessity be a slave, the lowest paid and the hardest worked of all workers. That is what we are up against.

There is no use in talking about the farmer who employs one man. The same position obtains in industry. There are plenty of employers employing only one man. They have to give him his holidays, and, if they have work to do, they employ somebody else. Much of agricultural employment is casual and there is always available surplus labour, if a man has to get holidays. This is the first time I heard the Minister talk and I was very disappointed in him because he showed a certain inconsistency—I will not put it any more strongly. He gave us a glowing picture of what a splendid fellow the farmer was, but he is not prepared to do anything about it.

Mr. Duffy

I want to intervene only very briefly, because we are all anxious to see this motion concluded to-night. As there is less than one-third of the House present it seems to me that we would serve no useful purpose by prolonging the discussion. May I, however, put to the House one consideration? Sooner or later this country must make up its mind to do something for the farm worker and put him on the same basis as every other worker or there will be no farm workers left very soon. I remember in a part of the country with which I am very familiar when there were 16 agricultural workers employed on farms there. That was 40 years ago. Not one farm labourer exists there to-day. People there have gone out of pig production and people have got out of milch cows. They have got away from what was the traditional agricultural practice of the district for the reason that there is nobody to do the work. I think the Minister made the case very clear that there is no hope of maintaining the traditional agricultural policy of this country if the farm labourer is expected to work seven days a week of 54 hours for a wage of 55/- while his brother in a garage round the corner can get £4 for a 44-hour week.

The people are not going to remain in rural Ireland under those conditions and we have got to make up our minds sooner or later that what is proposed in this motion will be accepted as part of our national policy. If we do not agriculture is threatened with extinction, that is, the agricultural tradition with which we are familiar. A number of people raised the objection that if you introduce legislation you are going to destroy the harmony that exists between farmer and worker, but this cry has been raised over a period of 100 years whenever anybody proposed to do anything for the submerged classes. Many of us remember the introduction of the Health Act in 1911 when fashionable ladies in Dublin refused to be stamp-lickers for Lloyd George. Their real objection, of course was that they did not want to pay insurance for their domestic servants. Now they are prepared to pay domestic servants £4 per week and they cannot get them. This thing brings its own punishment and if we are wise we will get away from all this humbugging about the calamities that the legislative proposal outlined here will bring on rural life. This legislation has got to come and I have no doubt that it will come very rapidly. I do not intend to deal with the many problems that have been posed here by those who are expressing sympathy with the agricultural worker whilst strenuously opposing any attempt to improve his conditions.

The subject is too wide. Things like the cottage purchase scheme were mentioned here, but they have no bearing whatever on the motion, and I do not wish to discuss them. What I do intend to do is to make an appeal to Senator Burke not to press this motion to a division. He has got a good discussion on the matter. He has got a sympathetic hearing and this is not the last day, I hope, on which the House will be sitting. There will be other opportunities for discussing this problem, probably on a wider basis, and I am making this appeal to him, particularly in view of the fact that the Minister has sent a circular to the committees of agriculture asking for guidance as to whether or not they are in favour of legislation dealing with these topics. I gather from him that he has had replies from only five or six, or probably ten committees of agriculture and that he has sent a reminder to the committees that have not replied. I assume, therefore, that sooner or later the Minister will have replies to his circular regarding these proposals and that when those replies are available he will enunciate Government policy in relation to these problems.

Senator Burke will still have an opportunity of raising the matter again. If he withdraws the motion now it will not prejudice him under any rules or orders from raising the matter again if he wishes to do so. I would like to pass one further comment. While I do not think it will be described as objectionable for Senator Burke and the Labour Party to use this motion as a vehicle of propaganda, I think it is only fair to say that that is far from what is in Senator Burke's mind. I know what is in Senator Burke's mind regarding this subject, for a number of years. It should be remembered that he is a farmer and that he is making his appeal as a farmer and an employer.

Mr. Colgan

A model employer.

Mr. Duffy

I am not here to advertise Senator Burke.

Mr. Colgan

It comes from this side of the House and you should be satisfied.

Mr. Duffy

I am not satisfied. When people criticise Senator Burke for doing propaganda on behalf of an organisation of agricultural workers, they mistake the whole position. I know that he has endeavoured and is endeavouring to get better conditions for farm workers over a long period of years and I think that, having heard the debate, the best service he could do the agricultural workers would be not to press this motion.

Mr. Douglas

I think I can say what I have to say in not more than two minutes. I do not want this debate to end without giving a personal view. I have been convinced, and I think my father and grandfather before me were convinced, that both from the humane, practical and economic point of view it is a good thing to provide a reasonable length of holiday for employees. I believe that the farming community will discover that as a matter of practical politics, apart altogether from the question of the relations between workers and farmers. I believe that with a week's holiday generally adopted after a short time there would be no loss of production and there might even be increased production. I do not think that this is one of the things which you can unduly force by immediate legislation, but it is a thing which you can seal, after you have got a certain distance, by legislation in order to make it work. If, 20 years ago, you had introduced into industry such as there was here, a forced holiday, it is doubtful if it would have worked. We had reached a stage in which we had at least a very considerable number of persons, commonly called employers, in favour of the principle, who wanted to work it and who were glad to see legislation, but who were in difficulties unless it could be made law. I believe that before very long, with debates of this kind, with debates in the country, the matter being discussed, we will reach a stage in which a sufficient number of the members of the farming community will have accepted the principle to make it practicable to introduce legislation. It will have to be quite different legislation from that which dealt with industry. It will have to take into consideration special periods. It may have to provide that the holidays may not be taken at certain times, but all these are details.

I think the wise way would be for the Senator to withdraw the motion. I agree with Senator Duffy that the debate may have done good. There may have to be other debates but, before very long, we will definitely have the view accepted that this is something which must come and we should endeavour to get a general feeling of consent and then it will not be something pushed from above but something people will do because they believe, first, that it is right and, secondly, that it has an economic value and will spring out of the whole community and farming generally.

Mr. R.M. Burke

In view of the remarks made by Senator Duffy and other Senators, I do not propose to press this motion to a division. I think that, under all the circumstances, it is better to withdraw it. At the same time, I think the debate has been very useful and helpful, and that it has done good. I believe the time will soon come when we will be able to get these better conditions for agricultural workers which have been advocated in this resolution.

I would like, however, to reply very briefly to a few of the points raised by some Senators, because I think they misunderstood our intentions in this resolution to some extent. Several Senators mentioned that they thought our proposals would bring about a great reduction in production. I agree with Senator Douglas and other Senators that it would not, in reality, reduce production, and that eventually production would be increased, because many workers would be more enthusiastic about increasing production if they felt they were getting a fair deal. At the moment, quite a number of agricultural workers get a week off, but without pay, to cut turf for themselves, so that, by giving them a week on pay, it would not mean any less work done, but would mean that they were getting £2 15s. Od. more. Surely no person would seriously suggest that it would injure the agricultural industry if each man were to get £2 15s. Od. a year more, or 1/- a week.

With regard to Church holydays, I would like to make it clear that I am well aware that a good many farmers give their workers Church holydays with pay. My point is that every worker should have it. If it is the case that 80 or 90 per cent. of farm workers get Church holydays with pay, I am glad to hear it, and I hope it will not be very long until 100 per cent. of them get it. I have not heard complaints in my county, but I am told that in some other counties they do not get it. The workers on the farm on which I work all get, and have got for a number of years, Church holydays with pay, but that does not mean that the cows are left unmilked as some Senators have suggested. We take the work in turn. Obviously, somebody has to do the absolutely essential work on Church holydays, as on Sundays. Our system is that a man who does not work at all on a Church holyday gets his day's pay, and the man who works for 2 hours gets paid for a day and a half. In other words, he gets overtime rate for the work he does. With regard to the six days' annual holiday, on our farm every worker gets that, and some of them spend it on cutting turf for their own use. There is no friction about it. They do not all want the days off at the one time. Several Senators have suggested that our proposal would bring about inharmonious relations. I think it would have the opposite effect. If it were fully understood what were the respective rights on each side, it would bring about better relations. I would like every worker to be independent, and not to have to beg for a few days' holidays. On our farm there is no friction about it. We discuss the matter to decide which days would suit each worker, and as far as possible we facilitate each other. All the workers, moreover, are anxious to facilitate production on the farm, and no worker has ever asked to take a holiday at harvest time. Some take it in June, some prefer to take three days at one time and three days at another time. Everything works perfectly harmoniously.

I would like, very briefly, to refer to one other matter with regard to which there was a little misunderstanding. Senator Séamus O'Farrell asked why do we not ask for exactly the same number of holidays as industrial workers get by way of annual holiday, and why do we ask for Church holydays instead of bank holidays. There are ten Church holydays, which with six days' annual leave would make 16 days. Many industrial workers, I take it, get 12 days' annual leave and six bank holidays, that is, 18 days.

Mr. Duffy

No. Six days and six bank holidays. They only get 12 days, by law.

Mr. R.M. Burke

I agree with that. They are only legally entitled to 12 days, but some of them do get two weeks' annual leave. If we get ten Church holydays and six ordinary days, that would be a total of only two days less than 18. The ideal to aim at is that every worker should ultimately get at least 18 days' holidays a year, including either Church holydays or bank holidays. I do not think that would be very unreasonable.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

On a point of explanation. My point was, why apply Church holydays in rural areas to agricultural workers only? If you want them in one place, why not all over the country?

Mr. Duffy

It is also applied in commerce and industry at the option of the employer.

Mr. R.M. Burke

This resolution was not dealing with urban conditions or industrial employees. We did not mention them at all. We are only dealing with rural Ireland, where at least 90 per cent. of the people prefer to observe Church holydays, including county councils.

Mr. S. O'Farrell

You are attempting to enforce by law what they already have.

Mr. Duffy

Why object to it then?

Mr. S. O'Farrell

I am not objecting to it, but there is no need for it.

Mr. R.M. Burke

What we are advocating is that those who do not already get this benefit should have it in future. If 80 or 90 per cent. get it, there are only 10 or 20 per cent. more who need it. We would like all to have it.

The question was also asked: "Who was to pay for holidays for the farmer with the small holding?" The obvious answer is that he should get a sufficient income from his land to enable him to take a week's holiday.

I think that most of the other points were answered by other speakers, and that there is no need for me to delay the House any longer, except to say once again, for the sake of emphasis, that I believe the motion has been well worth while, because the principal object of it was to try to persuade the majority of the people to give to agricultural workers as good conditions as urban workers get. For generations they have been worse off. I think the time has come now when everybody who wants a just and Christian social order should try to improve the conditions of agricultural workers. As the Minister has said, however, this is a democratic country, and, therefore, we cannot bring about these reforms until the majority agree to them. Therefore, those who believe in these reforms should keep on advocating them, and thus try to persuade the people who are still in opposition, so that the majority will eventually agree to them, and then they will become law.

Motion, by leave, withdrawn.