Seanad Éireann díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 22 Apr 1942

Vol. 26 No. 12

Family Allowances for Agricultural Workers—Motion (Resumed).

Mr. O'Callaghan

I am in favour of this motion because I regard it as a back-to-the-land motion. It will create a balance between rural and urban life. People are flocking from the country to the town and there seems to be an accepted theory that, when people flock to the towns, they deteriorate. For that reason, it is desirable that we plant as many people on the soil as possible. This motion, if given effect, will tend to plant the people on the soil and create a contented and happy countryside.

Some suggestion was made that there was a taint of pauperisation about this proposal. Income-tax payers are given family allowances and no income-tax payer ever thought, or suggested, that that allowance was in the nature of pauperisation. Nor will the agricultural worker's wife regard a family allowance of this kind as tainted in any way. She will certainly not regard it as pauperisation. We have 400,000 farmers and 100,000 of these are no better off than agricultural workers. I should like to see this motion amended so as to bring in these people. I commend the motion generally to the House and to the Government and I hope it will come to fruition.

Mr. Honan

Any motion having for its purpose the amelioration of the needs of the poorer classes will have the entire sympathy of this House or any other House but, to my mind, this is only trifling with the state of affairs which now exists. The agricultural industry is recognised as the basic industry of this State. Why then should we be trifling with allowances and subsidies, which is only taking from Peter to pay Paul or taking from Paul to pay Peter? Why not suggest that the agricultural industry be overhauled so that it be converted into a self-supporting industry? It is the principal industry in the country and it should be reorganised in the right way by people who know more about it than I do. Production should be reorganised and the prices to be obtained should pay as well as those in any other industry.

Subsidisation of the agricultural industry may benefit a certain number of the agricultural community on the better lands and the better counties. The benefit goes to the people with the best farms and, in the poorer western counties, the people pay more than their share of the subsidies because their lands are not suitable for the production of such crops as benefit by these subsidies. We all agree that agriculture should be encouraged in every way but people are not sometimes agreed as to the best way of encouraging it. Everybody agrees that the prices which are at present guaranteed by the State for crops should give a reasonable return to the farmer. Still, it is only by the greatest pressure that some of the farmers are induced to do their simple duty by producing crops.

Whether or not they think that the work does not pay, I do not know, but it seems incredible that, with the present prices, more land is not tilled. During the depression, when cattle were at a poor price, if agriculturists were offered the same prices for cereals, root crops and other produce as they are guaranteed now, we should have half the land of Ireland tilled. The trouble is that money is not required to the extent it was then. Money is plentiful and it is difficult to get these people to till the soil. The theme of my argument is that, instead of these charities, the agricultural industry should be reorganised and put on a paying basis, one way or another, so that the owner of the soil and the labourer he employs will be able to get a reasonable living out of the industry.

The most successful farmer I know in my part of the country is the man who treats his workers best. He keeps only three or four workers, but he supplies them with meals with which he is not bound to supply them at all. He knows that they work hard and he insists on their having meals at his place which they are supposed to take at home. In return for that, he gets good work and they never look at the clock. He estimates that, at the end of the year, the money he invests in the extra food and allowances he gives his men is returned threefold. The farmers themselves could do a lot in respect of these family allowances. There is general plentifulness on a good farm, and a little generosity of that kind—it is not necessary to recommend this to the good farmers we have in this House—will always pay for itself.

A lot has been said about the flight from the land and the low marriage rate. Paradoxical as it may seem, in the West of Ireland the reason the marriage rate is so low is that sufficient cannot flee from the land. That is the difficulty in the western counties where there are big families. They usually melted away until there were only one boy and girl left in the house.

Formerly, the boy got married in the house and the girl got married outside. If you go to any house now in the western counties, my own county in particular, around Clare, you will have five or six adults in the home, with the father and mother, with the result that nobody can get married. They used to emigrate—not that I commend that. That is the condition of affairs. There is not a flight from the land. There are really too many adults in each small farm in the West of Ireland. I do not know how the position can be remedied, except that those who have big estates might till more of the land and thereby give more employment. The workers could also migrate to the Midlands and to other parts of the country. Of course, I am not in any way opposing any suggestion that may be made for helping those who work on the land when they need help, but they should not need it. The land is capable of producing goods that should command a price that would give everyone working on the land at least a reasonable living.

Mr. O'Dwyer

I would like to support this motion. It may be argued that there should be no differentiation between different classes of workers, but a very special case can be made for family allowances in the case of agricultural workers. In the first place, we know that in nearly all countries, at all times, the price of agricultural produce has been low in comparison with that of manufactured articles. As a result, those engaged in agriculture have, in general, been poorer than those engaged in manufacture or in any other walk of life, and the workers engaged in agriculture have had at all times to accept a lower standard of living than that enjoyed by workers in any other walk of life.

I am afraid that that condition of things, that has existed almost at all times, exists to a greater degree to-day. Though we all desire to see a change in that respect, we must admit it may take some time to bring it about. In the meantime, an urgent matter is the fast disappearance of the agricultural workers as a class from the land. Senator Baxter, speaking from the farmers' point of view, and Senator Honan, speaking from the urban people's point of view, both spoke of a reorganisation of agriculture. Senator Baxter, undoubtedly, was thinking of an increased price for agricultural produce. He suggested that if there were an increased price for agricultural produce, agriculture would be able to pay a greater wage to its workers. I agree, but I am afraid that it would be a very big undertaking to increase the price of agricultural produce. It cannot be done in a short time. What this motion proposes, that is, to give a family allowance to the agricultural worker, would be a comparatively small matter, which would cost very little, whereas an increase in the price of agricultural produce generally, would naturally cost a very large sum. While waiting to do the larger thing, we should not neglect the smaller and more immediately practicable object.

Senator Honan spoke of a reorganisation of agriculture so as to enable a better wage to be paid to the agricultural workers. I often wonder, when people speak of reorganisation of agriculture, if they know what it would mean. The trouble with agriculture and with the agricultural worker is this: Agriculture in Ireland is mainly conducted on small or medium-sized farms. We know that, on large farms, machinery can be employed which enables a man to do many times the work that it is possible for a man without machinery to do. On large farms, with scientific machinery and scientific methods, it is possible to manage with a small number of men and to pay them a large wage.

That occurs in New Zealand and other countries, to a large extent, also, in England. On medium sized farms it is not possible to employ machinery to the same extent, and a man's labour cannot be as valuable as it would be on larger farms. Therefore, when we speak of the reorganisation of agriculture, the only reorganisation which could provide a wage in comparison with that earned in the factories at the present time would be a reorganisation which would do away with the small farms and establish some sort of communal farms. That would be the only way of providing a factory type of wage for agricultural workers. The immediately practicable alternative to that would be to provide family allowances so as to supplement the wages of the agricultural workers.

There is another reason why this allowance should be given in the case of agricultural workers. While there are many badly paid workers in the cities and many industries where the rates of wages would, possibly, be lower than a living wage, we must remember that these are not essential industries. They could disappear to-morrow and perhaps no great injury to the nation would result. But the nation cannot afford to allow agricultural workers as a class to die out because it would mean a reduction of agricultural production, which would mean, in the long run, the destruction of the nation. The agricultural industry is absolutely essential, and the agricultural worker as a class is also absolutely essential. Therefore, I think there is a very clear case why the House should consider recommending a scheme of family allowances in the case of agricultural workers.

I am afraid that people in the city do not realise the conditions under which agricultural workers live. In County Limerick and County Tipperary there is probably a larger population of agricultural workers than in any other part of Ireland because, in former days, the dairying industry employed a large number and the public bodies built cottages for the workers to replace their old houses. There are more cottages in Limerick than in any other county in Ireland but, unfortunately, work on the land has declined in recent years.

It is not that the workers' wages are low but that there is no regular employment on the land. The agricultural workers get a few months' work on the land; then they get the dole; they get unemployment assistance; then they work for a few weeks on bogs, on roads or any other public work. Their employment is sporadic and their income very uncertain. In some cases they have been provided with houses and with acres of good land, but we find that 90 per cent. of those cottages are badly kept, falling into disrepair. Occasionally one may see one well-kept house, one carefully tilled plot and on inquiry we find that the owner of that house is not an agricultural labourer but a man who has some position distinct from work on the land.

The position of the majority of agricultural labourers is pitiable in the extreme. They generally marry young and rear large families. The agricultural labourer and his family, even on the rich land of County Limerick, rarely eat meat. The war has rendered their condition even worse. Even milk is a rare commodity in these families. I have seen young children —it is quite a common thing—reared on black tea and bread from their earliest infancy. At 15 or 16 years of age they are taken into service with the farmers. Up to that period they are reared on an insufficient diet. Their father may possibly have an income of 16/- a week on which to rear his family. They grow up under-fed, under-nourished and badly clad. In after life they are subject to disease. In the matter of education they also suffer. Badly fed and badly clad as they are, they are unable to attend regularly at school. The very moment they reach school-leaving age they are taken away and put into employment so that they may help to rear the remaining members of the family.

The result is that the agricultural labourer has regarded himself as a parasite, and as the lowest of classes of employees. His great ambition has been to get away from the land. No one can wonder at that, for there has been no hope for him of advancement in any walk of life. We might find the sons of other workers in the professions, in the Church, or in business, but not the sons of agricultural labourers. Owing to their meagre incomes, it has been impossible for labourers to educate their children. That, perhaps, obtains in other occupations also; but the point I wish to bring out is that, for very little expenditure, considerable help could be given to these children. Where men have been employed in the country, even at small wages, by the local authorities, such as gangers, etc., they are well provided for, and the wage goes further in the country than in the towns. Because of that I suggest that a small family allowance would make all the difference between hunger and plenty in the country, and a small expenditure by the State would repay itself a hundredfold. I think that not only married workers, but all agricultural workers should contribute their share. That that would be the fairest way to work the scheme, and the State should at least contribute as much as the others. The idea is immediately practicable and can be worked, and it would not cost much, while it would mean a great deal to agricultural workers and would keep the people on the land.

Professor Tierney

I started off to listen to this debate with a rather vague general sympathy with the idea of family allowances, but I must confess that with the exception of the last two speeches, most of the arguments I have heard have tended rather to convert that vague general sympathy into a vague antipathy. I feel that there is a great deal to be said in favour of these allowances in principle, and in dealing with the question, it is very important to get down to the general principle that governs it. A point that no one has referred to at all in the discussion is the idea that lies behind the movement for family allowances.

Surely that idea is to get away from the individualistic basis of our modern economy, the notion that the labourer represents nothing but the worth of his industry, that he is not a person at all, but a sort of chattel, to be paid on the strictest and most rigorous economic basis for the amount he produces. The idea is to get away from that, and to take the principle that the labourer is a person who has personal rights and a personal status in society. That principle applies, to my mind, not merely to the agricultural labourer, but to all kinds of labour no matter how little or how much it is paid, and it is a principle that if it could be applied all round, would probably go a long way towards curing the economic ills from which the world is suffering. At the same time, the subject is one of vast importance and one that needs very special study before any valuable action can be taken upon it. If the debate here to-day does nothing else but ventilate the subject, and give an opportunity for an exchange of views on one aspect of it, it will have done very good service.

A great deal of the argument that I heard here to-day sounded to me rather unconvincing. The suggestion, for instance, that you could produce any particular effect upon the flight from the land by means of family allowances to agricultural labour seems very doubtful. I thought that Senator Honan's contribution in that respect was particularly valuable, because he pointed out that the flight from the land has very little to do with the question of wages or even the question of earnings on the land at all. It depends more on the system of land-holding that we have. The ordinary small farm is not capable of giving continuous support to a large family. It can maintain the family up to a certain point, but everybody who has been on a small farm knows that, inevitably, every child on the farm, except one, must go, or else must stay behind and wither. As long as you have that system I do not think that measures like family allowances are going to have very much effect on it.

It is a terrible problem, and a most important and far-reaching one. It seems to me that that is the essence of it. The system of small holdings that we have been given, and have given ourselves, directly produces that tendency to shed off the family and drive them all away except one. That one then may get married and produce another family and the same problem arises again in the next generation. The suggestion that by increasing wealth and raising the standard of living you increase the population, seems to me to be begging a great many questions. Whether by raising the standard of living you do not lessen the population, is very doubtful indeed, as an historical fact. Whether it is not true that the higher the standard of living is universally the more population tends to decrease, and whether all these measures that we talk about so hopefully have not actually the opposite effect to what we think, is worthy of pondering over. It is not a matter that we can dogmatise on with success, but it is worth pondering on how far we can raise the population—assuming that our object of raising the population is a sound object— by raising the standard of living of the community.

Again the suggestion that part of the cost of this scheme should be borne by the State seems to me to be very questionable, and one that might lead to all sorts of bad effects. I quite agree with Senator Fitzgerald that there is a danger of pauperisation. That is an ugly word, and I know that Senator O'Donovan objects to it, but it is a fact. The whole movement of society for the last 40 or 50 years has been steadily towards State pauperisation— turning more and more citizens into dependents on the State in one way or another; and that process of making workers into dependents on the State is one of the factors that has produced the difficulty about agricultural labour. I have been told, for instance, that here in County Dublin, it is possible for an unemployed man with a wife and family to get more money for doing nothing than the agricultural labourer, who is his next door neighbour, gets.

Professor Johnston

That is an argument in favour of family allowances.

Professor Tierney

I was coming to that. He gets more than the agricultural labourer, his next-door neighbour, can get for a full week's work. That is, as Senator Johnston has stated, a strong argument for family allowances. It has arisen because of the fact that the provision for unemployment assistance, and other social services of that kind, has run away from the provision for those who are engaged in productive work. In other words, we have already gone too far on that march towards pauperisation, and we have got to correct it now by another type of pauperisation. At least, that is what we shall be doing if we provide for a State contribution in this matter. The most telling argument against a State contribution was put forward by Senator Honan. I was brought up in a county where there are no agricultural labourers, at least as a class; where the agricultural labourer is the son of a small farmer who is sometimes hired out to a neighbouring farmer. He lives exactly as a member of the family, gets the same food, and often gets more for his work than the members of the family themselves ever get. That is the condition we have pretty well all over Connaught, and if you make the State contribute towards schemes of this kind, the effect will be to make the small farmer and the agricultural labourer in Connaught contribute towards the solution of a problem which is a Munster or Leinster problem.

Mr. Counihan

Under my proposal the small farmer would contribute nothing.

Cathaoirleach

The Senator will have an opportunity of replying later.

Professor Tierney

I should like to point out that if there has to be a State contribution, everybody who has to pay taxes will have to contribute.

Mr. McGee

Why should they not?

Professor Tierney

I am trying to argue that small farmers in Connaught who are not very much, if at all, above the level of the agricultural labourer in Munster and Leinster, should not be asked out of their meagre, perhaps non-existent, profit, to contribute to a scheme which will be entirely for the benefit of people in distant parts of the country in whom, fundamentally, they have very little interest and for whose problems they are not responsible.

Incidentally, I should like to suggest to Senator O'Dwyer that if there are labourers' children, whose parents are employed by well-to-do farmers in a rich county like Limerick and who are compelled to live on black tea, it is an eternal disgrace to the people who employ them, and certainly the attention of the whole country should be drawn to that disgraceful condition of affairs. This is not a matter in which the State should interfere. It is a thing for the employers themselves to stand up to. If they are not able to employ men, except on starvation conditions, then they should not employ men at all. If a man purports, especially in a rich milk producing county like Limerick, to employ a labourer in the production of milk, and does not see to it that that labourer gets sufficient milk to prevent his children having to drink black tea, he should not be a producer at all. The solution for that is a proper conscience on the part of employers rather than State contributions. Even if the employers are not very well off, even if there are ups and downs in their economic conditions, even if their profits are not as high as they should be, that does not excuse them for ill-treating their labourers, and that is what the statement made by Senator O'Dwyer amounts to.

I should like to emphasise as strongly as I can the point in reference to the injustice of calling on the small farmer west of the Shannon to contribute as taxpayer to a scheme of this kind. The agricultural labour problem is not his problem; he has not created it; he is not particularly well off himself; he does not live very much above the level of the agricultural labourer in Munster. That is the great difficulty about State contribution. Not only does it tend to create State dependence at one end but it tends to put an unfair burden upon all sorts of people who should not be called upon to bear such a burden at the other end. I would suggest that if there are to be contributions, apart from what the labourer and the employer himself pay, they should be rather on a county basis, and if the county basis is found to be impracticable, they should be on a parish basis. That is one of the directions in which parish councils, about which we hear so much, might well give valuable service. The parish council might be called upon to organise schemes for family allowances within its own area, where the neighbours understand one another's problems and where they can help to overcome them in a spirit of Christian charity. You would get the thing done much more satisfactorily on that basis than by the process of exacting a State contribution, putting the liability on the general taxpayer, and adding still more to the problem of a universal dependency that has gone too far already. I believe myself, in any case, that nothing has done more harm in the West of Ireland than the extension of unemployment benefits to the sons of small farmers. A statement of that kind may seem very unpopular and very reactionary but the effect of giving these grants and doles to sons of small farmers, instead of helping to consolidate or strengthen the family, has been to drag these young men away from the family, to break up their cohesion with their parents, to break up the control of the heads of the family over its members, and to form them into independent units. The process of the flight from the land is exaggerated rather than obviated by that sort of machinery. I am fully in sympathy with the idea of regulating wages, not in accordance with individualist economics but with the principle of the rights of the human person, but I want to insist that when a problem like this is taken up, it is not good enough to approach it with facile generalities and a vague spirit of general optimism. You have to study it very carefully. The greatest danger in dealing with a problem of this kind is that the measures you adopt to cure the evil may ultimately intensify that evil.

Mr. Hawkins

I feel that there will be general agreement that the putting down of this motion and the debate this evening have served a very useful purpose. There are one or two points to which I should like to make reference. Senator Fitzgerald's cure for the difficulties of the married man was to work longer hours. He thinks that when a man undertakes the obligation of rearing a family he should be prepared to work longer hours. He objects to any State subsidy or grant towards the proposed family allowances but if he objects to a State subsidy in this case, he must also object to the allowance which is made by the State in the case of the income-tax payer. The income-tax payer is given a certain allowance in respect of his wife and family. If Senator Fitzgerald disagrees with the State subsidy in one case, I think he must disagree with it in the other. Whether it is a rebate or an allowance it is a loss of money to the State. As we know, we have already in existence, in the Defence Forces and in unemployment assistance, schemes of family allowances. Then we have the income-tax payer, who receives a rebate in relation to his family.

Senator Fitzgerald also said the farmer should be paid sufficient for his produce, in order to enable him to pay sufficient wages to his farm labourers, and he went on to state that, in that sense, the Government has done nothing for the farmer. He said, in regard to industries established and built up inside the tariff wall, that they got all the privileges; but he forgot that the Government guaranteed the home market to the farmer and that the people in the towns and cities were compelled to pay a higher price for farm produce —butter, eggs and so on. We were often told by certain leading men that we could import wheat far more cheaply than we could produce it, but it was the Government's duty to help the farmer in regard to butter, eggs and bacon. The home market was guaranteed, yet Senator Fitzgerald stated that the Government did nothing.

We have also heard a lot about the flight from the land. Someone has suggested that, if this motion were adopted, the flight from the land would cease, as every farm labourer would receive a family allowance. I agree with a good deal of what Senator Tierney said in that regard. Some of those who have referred to this flight from the land have forgotten to consider a very serious aspect of rural life—that the greatest curse in the country is the number of old bachelors who remain on the land. I know a country village where there are eight or ten people residing and in not one of those houses has there been a marriage for the last 40 or 50 years. In another 20 years the people who now own that land will have ceased to exist. It sometimes happens that three or four members of a family stay on and on, one watching the other, to see who will get married first and get the fortune. That is the serious aspect of it, and it is that that is causing people to go into the towns and cities for employment. It has been pointed out already that a small farmer who owns 20 or 30 acres of land finds that only one member of the family can reside on that farm, and when he gets married and rears a family their time will come. All this talk about the flight from the land is entirely wrong. It would be well if we could adopt some system of encouragement for those people who are inclined to remain too long in their homes, to come out and allow room to one member of the family, who will get married eventually if he gets a chance.

One way in which the Government can assist agricultural workers is by a speedy division of the land, by dividing up the large ranches and giving these people something to exist on. When we take up the newspapers, we find a man with three or four hundred acres has not tilled his quota, because he has not the way. He never did any of that kind of work and has not the way. If the Land Commission had, for the last 20 or 30 years, adopted a more vigorous attitude in land division, we would have no Compulsory Tillage Order to-day and no appeals to the farmers. The absence of that policy for many years past and the holdups there have been in the different Land Acts, are chiefly responsible for our lack of wheat and other foodstuffs to-day. In the division of land, these agricultural workers should get consideration. They are people who work on the land and whose fathers before them worked on the land, but when it comes to dividing the land they are not considered. That is because, first of all, the congests of the area must get consideration. However, there are some cases where those congests get consideration, and it does not always happen that the man who is a congest is the best man to work the land. A man should get consideration in land division on his ability to work the land, rather than on his living in or near an estate to be divided.

Senator Fitzgerald also said that the agricultural worker was differently situated from the town worker. He had to work longer hours. He suggested that, if he is a married man, he should work longer hours to support his family. As I am sure the farmers know, the Agricultural Wages Board has fixed the hours for agricultural workers, just as trade organisations have done for town workers. I am prepared to support this motion, although I think it should have gone still further, and I would be in favour of extending it to all workers under a certain income.

If we look at this from the town and city workers' point of view we must admit that, while the agricultural worker may not be sufficiently paid for the hardships under which he has to labour, the town worker is more in need of assistance to bring up his family, because, as some Senators rightly put forward, in very many cases the agricultural worker is not really dependent on the remuneration he receives. He usually has free milk and vegetables, while the town worker has to pay highly for everything. Therefore, I think this might have been extended to all workers under a certain income—up to £3 or £4 a week—and who have children over 14 years of age attending school.

In that way, it would keep these young people from rambling about the roads, doing mischief in our towns and cities. There should be some scheme whereby their parents would receive assistance, to keep them at a continuation school until they reach the age of 16. That would be something very beneficial from the national point of view, as it would keep them out of mischief and help them to better their education, and also it would relieve the employment market. We know why all those young lads are kept at home from school. Their parents are looking forward to the few shillings, five or six, or maybe ten, which they earn by running messages and doing odd jobs. There is no use in saying that when they leave the national schools at 14 they have the vocational schools to go to, because the young boys I refer to have an idea that those schools were not built for them, and they have no boots or clothes to attend them and neither have they the food they should have to eat.

There was an investigation carried out recently in Galway by the Bishop of Galway among the poorer families of the city and it was found that over 300 families had meat only on one day in the week. In such a situation, we cannot expect to have a healthy population. We may spend money on hospitals, and all the money we like on social services, but if we do not build up the young people when they are young, if we do not give them the food necessary to make men and women out of them, then the greatest portion of the money spent on social services is wasted. On that account, I would like to see this scheme of family allowances extended to town workers, or to all workers up to a certain wage, and, particularly, I believe there should be some scheme of catering for those people in our towns and cities who have attained the age of 14. We have in our country at the present moment a number of mansions or big houses with sufficient land attached to them, and if they were taken over by the State on a voluntary basis as a kind of continuation school, they would be a great help in the handling of this problem. So many hours a day could be allotted for education, for recreation, and for physical exercise, and I believe that by cultivating the land attached these places could become almost self-supporting, while the parents might get an allowance for their absence.

The cause of their being kept at home from school lies in the fact that their parents are looking forward to the few shillings a week they will bring into the house after they are 14 years of age. If we do not do that, we may have certain consequences. Anyone who lives in the cities knows the petty pilfering and the mischief that are carried on by young boys who have left school. They are not anxious to take part in the vocational schools or other facilities open to them, because they feel that they are not part of the country at all, that they are nobody's children, and they have got out of their parents' control because their parents have allowed them to get out, in order to coax them along to earn a few shillings.

I do not think that this motion goes far enough. Senator Tierney said that he objected to Connacht bearing the burden of the expense of this scheme. The amount of labour employed by farmers in Connacht may be very small, but it is a national question, and we should not look on it from the provincial point of view. It is not practicable to base it on cities and towns. If there is going to be a scheme at all, the farmer must pay his contribution, the worker his, and the State must make its contribution, and it eventually boils down to the fact that it does not matter whether you burden the farmer with the full responsibility or not, because he, in his turn, will have to get compensated from the produce of his land, and whether it is the State or the farmer does not seem to make any difference in the end.

We would get very much further on these motions if small committees of the House were set up, seeing that there are representatives of labour and farmers' interests here. If the House appointed a small committee, before the discussion of a motion, to draft suggestions for the consideration of the House, I think you would get along much better, instead of putting down a motion, having a few days' discussion on it, and then hearing nothing more about it. If this is a vocational body, and there are representatives of all interests concerned, I think that that suggestion, or something along similar lines, should be adopted. Useful work could be done by a small committee drafting suggestions as to what the House should recommend the Government to do.

Mr. McGee

I should like to congratulate Senators who submitted this motion for consideration. I believe that we have had a helpful discussion, and that some good is bound to come from it. I would be inclined, indeed, to give the proposal a good deal of my support. Any little doubts I might have as to supporting it would arise from the fact that I see on the agenda another motion seeking a subsidy to prevent the decline of the dairying industry, and I suppose that if we all examined our books, we would find different branches of farming that will also require a subsidy to keep them alive. For my part, I disagree with Senator Tierney and Senator Honan when they say that all poverty is in the west. But I am inclined to agree with Senator O'Dwyer, when he states that there are ill-fed children in the homes of our neighbours. It is common knowledge that there are ill-fed children, and sometimes in the homes of 100-acre farmers. That prompts me to return to a suggestion I mentioned the first year I was here. It is that we should go back to a system in each county, or in each parish, or in each province, which would be something on the lines of the old Land Commission court, where judicial rents would be fixed, and where the farmer was compelled to attend before three Land Commissioners to exhibit his income and his outgoings, and where the rent was fixed almost to 3d. in the £, having calculated the difficulties that confronted him in his transport, in his proximity to good markets, in his difficulties in regard to drainage and every thing else.

If you examine the homes of the labourers in most of the counties I know, and if you examine the farms in the same counties, you will find on all of them very glaring evidence of the necessity of taking less money out of of the land, and, indeed, of the necessity of putting more into it. I often wonder who it was made all our ditches, our drains and our rivers. Very few of them have been made in the past 50 years. If it was not for the necessity of fire, some people would allow their ditches to meet across eight or ten-acre fields, and if you ask them why they will tell you that they have not the means to pay anybody to deal with them. That is largely the case in many instances.

It is impossible for many farmers to pay wages which would maintain a labourer's family properly. Senator Tierney said that was a disgraceful situation and so it is. It is a disgrace to us that about 20 years after the introduction of native government, we should find a situation as bad even as the discussion here to-night exhibits it. Where some of us are in a position to employ a good deal of machinery we can, and do, pay a better wage and it pays us to do so. Where some of us can procure only essential manures or go down to Senator Honan's or Senator Hawkins' country for cattle with which to make manure, I am sure it will be agreed that Galway contributes a little to the welfare of Meath, Louth, Dublin, and the other counties around here.

Broadly speaking, it is, in my opinion, correct, as Senator O'Dwyer said, that the motion, such as it is, will give a little fillip and a little hope to the labourer. It will bring some measure of happiness to his door. A bigger measure of happiness would be brought him if some committee of either House, or both Houses, could evolve a scheme to convert compulsory tillage from being a compulsory loss into something that the owner of the land, would not lose money on and might, indeed, make his living out of. One way our poor wages might be remedied, our ill-cleaned drains be attended to and in which rural Ireland might benefit materially would be by derating. If all medical charities must come out of the rates and if millions must be collected from rural Ireland, to be spent in the hospitals chiefly in our towns, it is not too much to ask that the modest hope contained in this motion should be given the rural community, since the State has, so far, refused derating. In the absence of derating, this proposal gives some little relief. It may be a mendicant way of going about the business instead of making our rural life independent, such as other existences, many of which have been created by the State, commencing with all the branches of the Civil Service and not forgetting our fairly well paid university representatives.

I think that the old remedies which, 40 years ago, gave some little measure of relief to the farmers in the Land Courts are often better than some of the modern remedies. The first charge on the farm should be the farmer's own home and the home of his labourer, and he should not be compelled to pay his annuities or his rates if the maintenance of his own home and the maintenance of his labourer's home are not safe and secure. Every penny that goes from the farmer in rates, annuities and taxes is earned on his farm by himself and his labourers. The livelihood of these people should be the first charge. It is the duty of the State to find out how much is to spare over and above that. Then, let the farmers pay their rates and taxes, but not till then. I support the motion. It is a palliative just as the other motion about a subsidy for dairying. It is a small matter and I am not inclined to haggle about it because, in my opinion, it is a case of urgent necessity.

Dr. Rowlette

Interesting as this debate has been, I think it has suffered a great deal because of the fact that most of the speakers have not been clear as to what case they were arguing. Some of them were arguing that these allowances should be given to the families of agricultural labourers. That is what is proposed in the motion. However, many Senators argued in favour of family allowances in general. I think the two cases should be kept entirely separate if we are to have any clear ideas on them. I do not say that all the speakers erred in this respect. Some of them did not. Some of them have attempted to distinguish the two cases. It seems to me that the case for family allowances should be argued on its own claims.

I can quite conceive that there is a strong case for family allowances. Senator Cummins, in seconding the motion, mentioned that systems of family allowances have been adopted in many highly intelligent Continental countries and in New Zealand. Such a proposal would form a very useful subject of study for the members of this House. I am in the position in which I think many other Senators are—that I have not given the general question very deep or wide consideration.

It is a question that might very well be studied and discussed on some future occasion. We must not think that, by the various fleeting references to it to-day, we have discussed the subject, nor should we think that we have properly come to the conclusion to which Senator Cummins wished to direct us—that family allowances should apply to all classes under a certain income. Most of the discussion has centred around the proposal to confine the scheme to particular classes in the country. Having listened to the different arguments and having had my sympathy excited by many of the statements made by Senators, I am not satisfied in my own mind that the case has been proved. Senator O'Dwyer, who gave us a very interesting and clear speech, as he always does—if he will permit me to say so—was, I think, finally forced to the admission that the proposal to extend family allowances to one class of the community was contrary to general principles. He excused that on the ground that this was but a very small instance. Small instances are particularly dangerous in establishing new precedents.

Nobody in this House dreams for a moment that, if family allowances were granted to agricultural labourers, they could ever be withdrawn. The thing is impossible. It would create a riot, a very natural riot, throughout the country if we were to deprive these people of what they had come to regard as their natural right. You might as well talk of shutting down national health insurance to-morrow as to talk of such a thing, once it is established. It is a matter of principle that wants very serious consideration, and it is a principle, if once accepted in the case of agricultural workers, that would have to be extended to other classes. There may be a good case for the whole thing.

I am quite prepared to admit that, without going the whole hog. But, once admitted in the case of one class, there would be no withstanding it in the case of any class who would be able to put up a case or to demand the establishment of family allowances in respect of them also. Therefore, I think the House, before coming to a decision in favour of a resolution dealing with one class only, should satisfy its mind that the case for family allowances as a whole is a good case, and should be accepted. Whether it might be, as a practical measure, advisable to adopt it in the case of one class or another class in the first instance would be a second step. I cannot, as I say, see that the case for family allowances to this particular class has been established to what I consider a satisfactory degree.

Those who spoke in favour of the resolution have, naturally, focussed their attention and their arguments on the particular needs of the agricultural labourers but, with the exception, perhaps, of Senator Cummins, they have not paid much attention to the needs of other classes of workers. We have heard a great deal of truth—and a great deal of truth which was good for us to hear, very largely because much of it is unpleasant—with regard to the condition of agricultural labourers but nobody in the House has thought it proper to tell us much about the condition of the town labourers or town workers generally. If one were to take the trouble to develop a case for town workers in general, as Senator O'Dwyer developed a case for the labourers of his county, I think one could put up just as strong a case, with very little research or very little consideration.

It seems to me that this question of family allowances must be decided in principle in the first instance and then the question of the classes to whom the allowances should go can be considered. Whether it should be simply decided by an income limit or by other considerations of a particular employment, I would not be prepared to suggest at the moment.

There was a great deal of criticism of some remarks that Senator Baxter made earlier in the evening when he used the term "pauperisation" of the agricultural labourers. The term is crude, but I think it was a mistake to suggest that he was speaking disrespectfully of the agricultural labourers. On the other hand, he was showing his respect for them by objecting to any system being adopted which would place them in a lower position as men of independence in the world. But, dropping "pauperisation" as it may be irritating, it seems to me the effect of such a system of endowment of any class of workers, agricultural labourers or otherwise, would tend to prevent any future rise of wages. Senator Counihan pointed out that it would have no effect on wages in the sense of lowering them. I think that was the argument used. I would agree that it is unlikely that the establishment of such a system would cause any immediate lowering of the rate of agricultural wages; but we must expect that, with the changing times, wages would rise, and I have not any doubt that the establishment of a system of partial support, of endowment, from this on, would certainly tend to make it much more difficult for agricultural labourers to get an increase in their wages, even if such an increase was badly needed in the near future.

Professor Johnston

In other countries, it has not prevented wages from rising. It has not prevented that in New South Wales.

Dr. Rowlette

Thank you. That, of course, is interesting and informative. I am obliged to my colleague for drawing my attention to it, but I do not know that, with our knowledge of what has happened in this country, we can be sure that what happens in New South Wales will be a ruling here. I am rather surprised that, as far as I noticed—I may have missed it—none of the representatives of labour have adverted to that side of the question. It appears to me, at any rate, that you are likely to make wages rigid. That may be desirable, of course, but if it is desirable, it should be done candidly and knowingly, without being brought about more or less by accident. I am not suggesting that it is the design of Senator Counihan or his colleagues that that may take place.

To sum up in two sentences my view on the whole matter of the general question as to the propriety or otherwise of family allowances: There is a great deal to be said in favour of it. I am not declaring myself opposed to family allowances. I have not had an opportunity of studying the question. Few have. Some Senators have, no doubt. I think the general question should be decided first and, secondly, the question of what particular class or classes should be dealt with in that way. For my own part, I would be sorry to see any distinction of class other than simply the distinction that would necessarily be brought about by the establishment of an income limit for the application of family allowances.

Mr. Quirke

I wish to say that, like most of the other speakers, I support the motion and I accept the principle of family allowances. Having listened to the debate, I am inclined to think that some very extravagant statements were made. I am afraid that some people will be disappointed if they expect some of the results that were suggested here. I am by no means an optimist in this matter. I do not believe that such a scheme would solve all our agricultural problems. I believe that it would go a certain way towards the solution of those problems and that this motion, if put into force, would play a rather important part.

On the question of the flight from the land, I do not believe the so called flight from the land can be prevented by legislation such as is suggested in this motion. Rather am I inclined to think that this so called flight from the land is over stressed. I do not believe that in recent years there has been, strictly speaking, any abnormal flight from the land. As Senator Tierney and Senator Hawkins pointed out, over the centuries, members of the families of the small holders have had to leave the land. They have had to leave home and seek employment elsewhere, with a neighbouring farmer or in an industry in a neighbouring town. That has always gone on and, I believe, will always go on. I believe that, given a chance, the people would fly to the land. I hold that people have been flying not from the land, but from the bogs and mountains. They have been flying from the districts where they were unable to support themselves. As Senator Hawkins pointed out, anywhere that land was available, the people have flocked back to the land and availed themselves of any opportunity to reinstate themselves on what they considered economic holdings. Senator Tierney is usually pretty sound when he comes to discuss a motion of this kind, and I am sorry to say that I am afraid he departed from his usual form to-night.

Mr. Baxter

He cannot interrupt you from his present position.

Professor Johnston

The Leas-Chathaoirleach will have to hold the scales equally between Senator Tierney and Senator Quirke.

Mr. Quirke

Even if Senator Tierney was not where he is now, it is not his usual custom to interrupt. I am sorry the same cannot be said for other members of his Party. I do not agree with Senator Tierney in his theory that the people of Connacht should not be asked to contribute their share to any such scheme as this. According to Senator Tierney, there is no such thing as an agricultural worker there, strictly speaking; it is an area of small farmers and the agricultural worker there is the small farmer's son. He suggests that if the scheme were to be implemented, it should be done on a county basis. I think it is a reasonable suggestion that if you were to take the Counties of Limerick, Tipperary, or other counties referred to by Senator Tierney, you could also say that there is a certain portion of these counties in which there is no such problem as the problem of the agricultural labourer. Therefore, you would have to divide the counties, and if anybody was to give the thing serious thought at all, it must be done on a national basis and not on a county basis. I would like to refer to a statement made by Senator O'Dwyer. I do not think that Senator O'Dwyer ever intended that it should go out from this House that the farmers of the country would actually allow their workers to bring up the children on dry bread and black tea up to the age of 14. We are well aware that there are black sheep in every flock, and that there, possibly, are isolated cases where farmers will stand over that sort of policy; but to say that it is done on anything like general lines, I do not believe for a moment. I do not believe it is done in any county in Ireland and, I think, as a representative of the agricultural community, that I should voice my complete disagreement with Senator O'Dwyer on that statement. I believe that if such were the case, the man who would tolerate any such treatment of his workers should be denounced publicly. With regard to Senator McGee's contribution, and his suggestion that an alternative would be derating, that thing has been discussed high up and low down, and most people are convinced that any policy of flat derating would merely benefit 8 per cent. of the people at the expense of 92 per cent. of the people.

Mr. Kehoe

Like every other Senator who spoke I am in sympathy with the idea of the movers of this very beneficial proposal and I hope that it will accomplish something. The subject should be judged entirely on its merits, and no irrelevant issues should be brought in. On the merits it deserves the fullest cooperation of everyone in this House. When I say that it should be judged on the merits alone, I mean that irrelevant issues like the flight from the land should not be brought into it. That is a thing that will continue irrespective of and altogether apart from our economic ills. When we talk of the flight from the land, whether it be the flight of the labourer, farmer or industrial labourer, we must remember that there is in the heart of every Irishman a sort of lure for adventure—the idea of over the hills and far away. Big wages in other countries may have something to do with it, but even after that, the Irishman and the young man of every country will emigrate to other places, not necessarily for a better living, but in the spirit of adventure. I do not think, therefore, that any amount of family allowances, no matter on what scale they are given, will help to stem the flight from the land. It was always there, and it always will be there, and the sooner we recognise it the better it will be for us in our debates.

I was stirred by what Senator Hawkins said about the people remaining at home. It is an evil—if you may call it an evil—that there seems to be no means of combating. These things have their ebb and flow, and we must look on them as inevitable. That is not a gospel of pessimism, but we must look at it from the point of view of reality. I was told on unimpeachable authority of a case on which a drama might be made, of three brothers and two sisters living at home on a farm exceedingly well off, and living on perfect terms with each other. They were three old bachelors and two old aunts, and when the daughter of another brother became an orphan they brought this girl home and she was looked upon as the sole legatee, which indeed she turned out to be. They lived so long, however, that by the time she had them buried and waked she was completely broken out of house and home —a rather ironic situation, but one that could easily happen.

While this system of family allowances is eminently suitable, and should be adopted, the question is where are the funds to come from? I dislike the idea of State help, yet eventually it must be furnished by the State, and while we are talking generalities, when we get down to brass tacks it will take the best intellects of this or any other House to cope with this situation. Wages, while getting better, no doubt, are still unable to cope with the position of the agricultural labourer— certainly not where married labourers are concerned. The unmarried labourer is to a certain extent able to support himself but the married labourer is a problem to be reckoned with. Unquestionably, married labourers are entitled to family allowances and entitled to them on a higher concept than that of their means. As has been pointed out several times by distinguished educationists, if the principles of the late Pope Pius in his great encyclical, as adumbrated by him, were carried out to the full—that in other words we practised Christianity in the proper sense of the word—these problems would resolve themselves.

State subsidies may be necessary but they are terrible evils. All these grants of late years tend to pauperise our people, and the old spirit of independence is gone. The question now is, whether is there a grant going and how one can take advantage of it? You have the old example of a minor relief scheme. Take a lane on which seven or eight families lived 50 years ago when these families each contributed a cart load of stones in the year, and made the lane passable. Now a grant for a minor relief scheme is invoked, and most people do not seem to realise that it is a system of feeding a dog with his own tail. I think somewhere, someone, as Fintan Lalor said, will have to make a beginning. While the town worker must be considered as equally deserving of remuneration, the fact remains that he has compensations that his country brother has not got, such as unemployment money, the Saint Vincent de Paul Society, and other things.

I do not say that they are at all adequate to his needs, but they are a solatium to which the rural labourer has no recourse. On the other hand, the rural labourer has his cottage plot and formerly had many other perquisites. It is rather ironical to think that trade unionism, a very desirable thing and a thing that was bound to come, is partly responsible for the difficulties from which the agricultural labourer suffers at present. In the olden days when there were no unions —and I say again they had to come and they were a necessity—the labourer and his employer got on pretty well together. There may have been slave drivers here and there but, after all, they were the product of their times and in the old days the agricultural labourer enjoyed what were popularly known as perquisites. Wages were not high but the labourer was allowed a few drills of potatoes, he had free milk, sometimes the grass of a cow and the grass of an ass. One can visualise the state of things which existed when the trade unions began to operate. One can imagine the farmer saying to himself when the Agricultural Wages Act was passing—incidentally it ameliorated the labourer's lot although some Senators on the opposite benches might not think so—one can imagine the average farmer saying: "Well I shall give him the money to which he is entitled but I shall reduce his perquisites." Labourers themselves have complained to me rather ironically if sadly: "What good are the wages that I am enjoying now? I would rather have less money with my old conditions."

It is a moot point whether the Agricultural Wages Board did as much good as is sometimes suggested. I have heard farmers say that they would rather go back to the old state of barter which prevailed 20 years ago. I can understand their outlook.

Very often, married labourers especially, got a greater return from their labours in the old days but after all that is no reason why these amelioractive measures should not be brought forward. Incidentally, I want to object to the term "labourer" in connection with the land. I think that fine old phrase "Muintir na Tíre" should be applied to all people who live on the land. In Ireland there should be no such class distinction as farmers and farm labourers. These divisions have become more accentuated of late years. This question of standing for one's rights, as adumbrated in our laws and the introduction of trade unionism is responsible for it. What, after all, is an agricultural labourer but the son of a small farmer; some of them the sons of the 40/- freeholders who were dispossessed years ago. If there were some system by which the wages of married labourers could be supplemented, a system of marriage allowances, it would be very helpful, but it will take some thinking out before it can be put into operation. We are all in agreement as to the principle and I hope that something will come out of this discussion and that some scheme will be put into operation that will give effect to the theories which have been so ably propounded here to-day.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

It is now 9 o'clock, the normal hour for adjournment, but if no other Senator wishes to speak I take it that we might allow Senator Counihan to conclude the debate to-night.

Mr. Counihan

I would prefer if the debate were adjourned to the next meeting as possibly we might have the Minister present then.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

There is no other Senator offering to speak.

Mr. Counihan

I understand that Senator Hayes and a number of other Senators wish to speak.

Leas-Chathaoirleach

If that be so, it would not be possible to conclude the debate to-night. Are there any other speakers?

Mr. M. Hayes

I move the adjournment of the debate until next sitting day.

Debate adjourned accordingly.

The Seanad adjourned at 9.5 p.m. until 3 p.m., Wednesday, 6th May, 1942.