This debate has been remarkable in one way, that we have had from Deputy Corry, sitting on the Government Benches, probably the most striking indictment of the Government's agricultural policy that has yet been delivered in the House in the course of this debate. The Deputy quoted from a wealth of statistics which he assured the House he had taken great care to prepare and still greater care to analyse. He told us that, notwithstanding the fact that we have a Prices Commission in operation, and notwithstanding the other virtues which I am sure he claims for the Government, the people who are engaged in the production of small seeds for agriculture were at present getting away with swag estimated at a profit of 250 per cent. on the prices which they are paying for the seeds to the producers. Deputy Corry quoted the prices of mangold, turnip, rape and other seeds. He gave us the prices which the producers are paid for these seeds, and told us the price which the farmers have to pay for the seeds to the retailers. He finally worked out the percentage profit on all these small seeds at about 250 per cent. He then asked the question: what is going to be done about it—piously hoping that the Government might do something about it. It seems to me that even if half of what Deputy Corry has said is correct, and I am prepared to discount his statement by 50 per cent., you get at a situation in which he admits, as a member of the Government Party, that the profits on the production of small seeds are about 125 per cent. His own figure was approximately 250 per cent.
Deputy Corry also told us of the way in which his heart bleeds for the farmers who produce barley. He told us that Messrs. Guinness and Co. are compelled to pay the British farmers 70/- a barrel for barley, but that the Fianna Fáil Minister for Agriculture has such a benevolent interest in Messrs. Guinness and Co., that he would only permit them to pay 35/- a barrel for barley to the Irish farmer. Messrs. Guinness and Co. are paying 35/- a barrel for Irish barley and are sending it to Britain in the form of stout, although in Britain they are compelled to pay 70/- a barrel for barley of the same quality which they are also converting into stout in Britain. I think Deputy Corry was quite right when he asked for an answer to the question: why the Irish farmer will not be allowed to make his own price with a millionaire firm like that of Messrs. Guinness? Why is our farmer being exploited in the interests of Messrs. Guinness; why is he being tied down to a maximum price of 35/- a barrel for barley when he sells it to Messrs. Guinness, while the latter is compelled to pay 70/- a barrel for barley in the Six Counties and in Britain? We ought to have an answer to these questions in the course of this debate, because it seems to me incomprehensible that farmers, endeavouring in present circumstances to grow barley on small holdings and with heavy domestic commitments, should be compelled to sell their barley to Messrs. Guinness when that firm is apparently quite willing to pay 70/- a barrel for barley bought in Britain for the production of stout to be sold there.
Apart from these statements made by Deputy Corry, and apart from his indictment of the Government's policy in not controlling prices and of the manner in which it allows the farmers to be fleeced by everybody who regards the farmer as a good chicken to pluck, there are aspects of this discussion on agriculture which are of outstanding importance to the nation as a whole.
The one aspect of agricultural policy upon which there is general agreement is that, notwithstanding that we have very fertile land which is the envy of many other countries in Europe, we are, nevertheless, in the position that the acreage under corn and root crops in normal times has continued to drop calamitously. There was a fall in the acreage under corn and root crops between 1921 and 1929, and even if you take the period 1936 to 1939 there was another fall in the acreage under corn and root crops. It cannot be said that the fall between 1921 and 1929 or between 1926 and 1939 was explained by the absence of fertilisers. There was an abundance of fertilisers available in those years, but yet the application of two agricultural policies, by two different Governments, did not succeed in arresting the decrease in the acreage under corn and root crops. Even to-day, in the midst of war and as a beleaguered nation in this the fourth year of the war, we find, notwithstanding compulsory tillage, a relatively stagnant position in regard to agricultural production. The best evidence of that is to be found in the fact that here in this country with 12,000,000 acres of arable land available for cultivation, we are experiencing, and have experienced, a shortage of sugar, a shortage of bacon, a shortage of eggs, and, in some areas, a shortage of milk, a shortage of flake meal, and recently a fairly extensive shortage of potatoes.
I would like to hear some member of the Government Party endeavour to explain to us why, with 12,000,000 acres of arable land available and with 80,000 acres of that land capable of giving us all the sugar we require, we should be short of sugar in a country possessed of such agricultural potentialities. Why are we short of flake meal in a country with 12,000,000 acres of arable land available, 9,000,000 acres of which are not under cultivation to-day? Last year we had the Government Press organ telling us that there was a shortage of sugar because approximately 54,000 acres only were under beet.
This year the acreage under beet has jumped to approximately 80,000. Why? Because, in the meantime, the farmer was encouraged by better prices to grow beet. If the farmers had been encouraged—it is the job of the Government to encourage the farmer and not to drive him—to grow more beet we need not have had any sugar shortage last year; we need not have a sugar shortage to-day, and a sugar shortage need never recur in this country. The fact that there is a shortage of all these primary products in a country abounding in fertility and in arable land is, it seems to me, the clearest indictment of the type of agricultural policy which has been pursued here over the past 21 years.
I think anybody who has given any thought to the matter will recognise that the land of this country is our greatest source of wealth. The use we make of that land determines the standard of living for every man, woman and child living here. Agriculture to-day represents our greatest source of employment. Out of every 100 persons gainfully employed in this country no less than 57 get their livelihood in agriculture. Every farm in this country is an agricultural factory, and we would be fools if we did not realise the great wealth that resides in the land, and still greater fools if we did not exploit that wealth in absorbing a greater number of our people into employment.
Deputy Maguire who has just sat down, put his finger on some important aspects of our agricultural policy and of our national activities which, I think, deserve attention. Like myself, he apparently agrees that agriculture is capable of absorbing more of our people into employment. In the world into which we shall be precipitated after the war, unless we develop our agricultural potentialities to a much greater extent, we shall be faced with a post-war situation which from the unemployment point of view will be without parallel so far as this country is concerned. Remember that approximately 350,000 of our people have gone to Britain in the past ten years and that there are large numbers of our people in the British armed forces to-day. One of these days the guns will cease to bark, peace will reign again, armies will be demobilised in a chaotic and disordered world, and nations will seek to give first preference to their own citizens. We may be in a situation then in which we shall not have to send to America for emigrants because we shall have hundreds of thousands of them dumped back on us from Britain.
Has anybody given any thought at all to the situation which would arise here if we were suddenly notified by the British Government that they were providing transport to send back a quarter of a million of our people? Remember that these people will not have come from cloisters. These people will have been in bombed and blitzed cities in Britain where they will have been earning high wages and living under conditions which taught them that courage, strength and physical endurance, and not cheque books, were the real things that mattered in life. They will have seen wealthy people fall under the rain of bombs; they will have seen, the biggest buildings and mansions tumble down in dust; and they will have seen the most gigantic ships and the most gigantic guns made powder under the instruments of death produced there. If these people come back they will not be quiet. They cannot be led around by the hand. If a quarter of a million of these people, having experienced a new life, having a new outlook on life, and having a new determination and a new objective in life, are suddenly thrown back here, will not a nice situation confront this country?
What do we propose to do in such a situation? So far as I can discover, this Government has no plan whatever for expanding agriculture, for expanding the production of goods which will probably be in greater demand when the war is over than at any time previously. The Government appear to have no plans whatever for expanding agriculture, either because the products of agriculture will be marketable the world over, or as a means of absorbing into that constructive, reproductive craft the large numbers of our people who will inevitably be thrown back on this country when the war concludes.
The Minister for Agriculture some time ago went to Cork to deliver a lecture on agriculture. I read that lecture twice. It was a recital of the De Profundis over post-war agriculture in this country. No bleaker or more miserable picture was painted for the farmers than was painted by that Minister in the course of his lecture in Cork last year. The big problem, of course, which confronts agriculture to-day, and which has always confronted agriculture in the circumstanees of this country, is that the farmers are financially impoverished. They have not sufficient liquid capital to enable them to stock or work their lands, and that want of capital has prevented the farmer from exploiting his land sufficiently to intensify the production of wealth or to enable him to employ additional labour. Any enlightened agricultural policy must break with the tradition which keeps the farmer financially impoverished. and withholds from him the necessary capital to enable him to exploit his land to the fullest.
One of the essentials, if we are to rehabilitate and re-vitalise agriculture, is to make available to the farmer loans free of interest in order to enable him to stock his land, to purchase implements to use on his land, to fence, drain and to fertilise his land, so that he may engage in the tillage of land instead of the quarrying of land which unfortunately is the position on many farms throughout the country to-day. But, even then, you would have done nothing more than to touch the fringe of the farmer's problem. One of the biggest difficulties confronting the farmer is the price he can get for his produce. The industrialist can fix a price and be sure of getting that price because his commodity is in demand. The worker, in so far as he is organised in a protective organisation, such as a trade union, can make some effort to fix the price at which he will sell his labour. The farmer, unfortunately, is not so well organised and the State does not take in him the interest it ought to take, with the result that, except in the stress of war, the farmer has been compelled to rely upon any price he can get in the market for his produce.
There has been a welcome departure from that policy in recent years, but it has been a departure not of a very satisfactory character for the farmer, because the prices which have been fixed for agricultural produce have not been prices which have given the farmer an adequate return for his labour. An enlightened agricultural policy must take note of the necessity for giving the farmer a decent price for his produce, just as every other person in the country is entitled to get a decent return for his labour. That can best be done by giving the farmer a guaranteed price which will take note of his costs and of the standard of living which the farming community is entitled to enjoy. If the farmer is given a decent price for his produce, it must go hand in hand with ensuring for the agricultural workers a wage which will raise them above the agricultural serfdom in which many of them are wallowing to-day.
The test of prosperity in agriculture is not the number of fat cattle a rancher can sell, and not the price or the income which the wheat rancher can get. The test of prosperity in agriculture is the standard of living in the homes of the agricultural workers of the country, and if one were to go through the homes of agricultural workers in the country, one would find there an appallingly low standard of living, a standard of living which does violence to those pious expressions of economic security and prosperity which are enshrined in the new Constitution. Fancy, in 1943, an agricultural worker being expected to keep himself, his wife and six children for seven days a week on 36/-. Fancy 36/- being our conception of the standard of living we ought to give to an agricultural worker, his wife and children. Fancy taking 36/- into a clothing shop in this city or in any provincial town to-day and trying to clothe a family of eight with that sum. Fancy trying to buy boots and shoes for children, to buy bread and butter at 2/- a lb. for a family of eight with that amount. We allow 5/- per day to keep that family of eight. The detention of some of our people as miscreants in jails throughout the country probably costs more than we are paying sturdy. honest, hard-working agricultural workers to keep themselves, their wives and families. That is a situation which is blandly allowed to continue. Nobody apparently feels that there is any Governmental obligation to remedy such a condition.
Probably the most striking contrast is at political meetings in the country. or after Mass in the country. There is no hesitation whatever in picking out the agricultural worker. He is badly clad, he has bad boots, he is obviously undernourished. His children bear the hallmark of their father being an agricultural worker. They are badly clad and, in the main, they are in their bare feet. Such clothes as they have are in tatters. In the home of the agricultural worker the same blighting poverty exists.
To me at all events it seems the plight of the agricultural worker is the most appalling reflection on our assertions here that we are steering this country on the road to prosperity. Unless we can rescue the agricultural worker and the small farmer from the stagnant condition in which they are to-day, from the poverty and misery which abound in their homes, we need never claim to have made any effective contribution towards agricultural prosperity.
I am sorry Deputy Dillon is not in the House at the moment. We had yesterday from that Deputy a characteristic free-trade speech. Deputy Dillon believes that the one solution of all our problems in this country is to buy in the cheapest market and, of course, sell in Deputy Dillon's spiritual home, Britain. I do not believe in a policy of buying in the cheapest market, because if you develop that policy you will often buy goods produced under coolie conditions of labour. In any case, as a nation, our problem is to provide a living and a livelihood for our people. If we accept the philosophy of buying in the cheapest market, we ought to close down every industry in this country to-day. We ought to give up tilling in peace times. We ought even to give up ranching in peace times because every commodity that is produced here, every article of clothing that we wear, every article of household furniture, can be produced more cheaply in some other part of the world than it is produced here. If you think of buying eggs, you can buy Chinese eggs. If you think of buying poultry, you can buy Polish or Chinese poultry. If you think of buying butter, you can buy butter in countries where it is sold cheaper than it is produced and sold here.
The suggestion of buying in the cheapest market is the crystallisation of a free trade outlook. While that policy may have suited Britain, it is a policy which never suited the economic destiny of this country. Deputy Dillon, of course, I know, believes that the British market is the best market. In my view, the best market for our people is the home market, because it is in the home market, and only in the home market, that you can control prices, that you can regulate the conditions of production and marketing, and it is because you have control over these vital factors that-the home market is the valuable market for our people.
The British market is a market exposed to every economic, fiscal and agricultural wind that blows. Production for sale in the British market exposes to competition with every country in the world which has agricultural or industrial products to sell. Some of these countries may have natural advantages in respect of agricultural production; or may have advantages in respect of high capitalisation of industries, scientific machinery for the production of goods and patents which enable them to produce goods under conditions under which we could not produce them here.
It seems to me our task here is to cultivate, as far as possible, the home market for our own people. I realise, of course, that we must sell our surplus commodities in order to import other commodities which are not produced here, but in the past what we have been selling abroad has not been our surplus products. We have been selling abroad products which were not surplus to our requirements but which could not be consumed here because of low wages; large scale unemployment, and endemic poverty in many parts of the country. I hope that, in the interests of our people, whatever the complexion of future Governments may be, each and every one of them will abandon the policy of free trade in agricultural and industrial production, because free trade, as we have seen it in operation under an alien Government and to some extent under a native Government, has given us a depopulated countryside, has given us a situation in which the bullocks have increased while our men and women, pride of every nation, have been driven to the emigrant ship, forced to seek elsewhere the livelihood that was denied them here.
Deputy Dillon, in the course of his remarks yesterday, appeared to me to regard industrial development as the one and only enemy of agriculture. Deputy Dillon appeared to imagine that if you produce in this country buckets, ploughs, spades, forks, agricultural boots or any of these commodities which the farmer requires for his domestic life or his agricultural work, immediately you become an enemy of the farmer. I do not believe that. I do not see any conflict between the development of our secondary industries and the protection of our agricultural industry. One has only to go to Sweden to see land used to the fullest possible advantage and gigantic works and factories manufacturing goods for industrial use. They are not merely manufacturing them for Swedish use. At the docks in Sweden you will find freights of machinery labelled for every country in the world. One of the things that strike one about Denmark is that, while it is largely an agricultural country, it has some excellent industries. There, again, one sees the products of Denmark being sent to almost every country in the world. The Danes do not put all their eggs in one basket. They do not depend solely upon agriculture as a means of livelihood and a way of life. They developed agriculture to the fullest, it is true, but, at the same time, they did not neglect the development of their secondary industries.
What Sweden and Denmark can do in permitting industry and agriculture to develop side by side, one complementary to the other, we ought to be able to do here. The example of these small countries ought to be an object lesson for us. We ought not to take as our pattern and our guide the agricultural and industrial methods in a country which is an empire, controlling probably 20 per cent. of the world's surface. It is noteworthy that Sweden and Denmark are the two countries in Europe where the workers and the mass of the people enjoy a standard of living not approached by our workers or by industrial workers in any other country in Europe to-day. In Denmark and Sweden one does not see the insulting wealth that is visible in other countries. One does not see the poor in the slums and the hovels that one sees here and in other countries.
Denmark and Sweden have been able to balance their agricultural production with industrial production. We ought to aim at a policy of that kind here. There are some people, particularly new industrialists, who imagine that once you start a factory and employ some people, nothing else matters but to develop the factory and maintain the industry. I take a different view. In a country such as this the great bulk of our population and the great bulk of our customers are in the rural areas. If you cannot make agriculture prosperous then you can get no prosperity in the towns and cities. If the farmer and the agricultural worker are impoverished by low wages, then there is no demand for the goods produced in the factories in the towns and cities. There is no employment in the shops, there is no employment in the offices. If you can bring prosperity to agriculture by giving the farmer guaranteed prices, on the one hand, and the workers a guaranteed wage on the other hand, then you will immediately set up in the rural areas a demand for the goods produced in the city and town factories, you will create a demand for the goods shops have to sell, you will create a demand for the services available in the towns and cities, and you will provide employment in the commercial offices, in consequence of that trading activity. If you can create that prosperity in agriculture on the one hand, then the demand for the goods which agriculture requires will in turn provide a substantial amount of employment for town and city workers. When you provide employment for town and city workers, you, on the other hand, set up a demand for the goods which farmers have produced in the rural areas and are willing to sell at a fair price. In that way you create an ever-widening circle of prosperity from the rural areas into the towns and cities, radiating back into the rural areas again. But that policy requires for its success the adoption of good prices for agricultural products, good wages for workers who are employed in towns and cities and on the land, regular work, the abandonment of emigration as a solution for unemployment, and the organisation of the nation on the basis of the eradication of the stagnation which, unfortunately, is such a feature of our agricultural and industrial life.
In all this situation money, of course, plays a vital part. In the old days it, was thought to be the business only of financiers to be interested in the part which money plays and the functions of money. There is a more enlightened opinion abroad to-day. Throughout the world a new school of thought, an intelligent progressive school of thought, has come into being, a school of thought which recognises that money is an instrument of production and exchange, that with money controlled by the State and made available by the State you can induce the creation of new wealth; and with that new wealth made available that you can issue money in the form of State credits or currency anchored to the new wealth which has been created and financed by the new wealth which has been created, and that that type of guarantee for the issue of State credits is of a much more enduring kind than the type of money which is being issued to-day without any gold backing whatever.
Britain has long ceased to have any gold backing for her money; Britain has ceased to have any backing at all for her money in the form of currency; Britain is issuing millions and millions and millions of pounds every day, the backing for which is not gold or agricultural production, but the gigantic armament programme to which the British Government is committed. Britain is not an exception in that respect. Germany, Italy, the United States and Russia have all long since abandoned gold as a backing for their money. They are backing their note issues by the expectation that they will win the war and that, having won the war, they will he able to settle down to the creation of wealth that will justify the continuance in circulation of the money which was issued without any gold backing during the war situation. If Britain can, with the benediction of her former orthodox financiers issue money backed not by constructive work, but by the manufacture of implements of death, is it not much easier for us, in our circumstances here, to issue State credits which will induce the production of wealth, so long as these State credits are anchored to sound constructive work the exploiting of our land, and the creation of new wealth with a new outlook for our people?
I do not want to delay the House further on this matter, because I understand there is a kind of tacit agreement to finish the Vote on Account to-night. I do, however, want to say that unless we recognise the fundamental need for a change in our agricultural methods, for an abandonment of that hopelessly stagnant conservative outlook with which we have been afflicted for the past 21 years, then this Dáil will go out of existence, and ten other Dála will come and go, and yet the position of agriculture will be just as bad and just as stagnant as it is. I would urge on the Government and on everybody interested in the creation of a prosperous agricultural industry that we should pool our best thoughts on the matter so as to endeavour to rescue agriculture from the morass into which it has been allowed to sink during the last 21 years under native Governments. I believe the policy of this Government is not calculated to rescue agriculture from its present unsatisfactory position. However long the Government may remain in office. I urge them during whatever time is available to them to recognise that their past methods have given most unsatisfactory results. After nearly four years of war, they have given us a shortage of primary products. There must be an abandonment of methods and policies which have given such unsatisfactory results, and a reliance on methods more calculated to stimulate agriculture and to give the agricultural community a better return for their excellent services in the production of food for the nation.
