New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1879-08-02
SLGNLELCANT FACTS.

Here are a few facts drawn from Our for
eign and home exchanges during the month
of July, which our readers can collate at their
leisure. They will not need our help to per-
ceive their significance.
In Ireland, the cold heavy rains have been
unabated this wet Summer, following several
bleak ones, has completely ruined the crops !;
the tenant farmers, whose only income is
the pittance wrung out of these crops, scanty
at the best, have no money to pay their rent
In Galway, COnnemara, CarnacOn, Midtown
and other places. monster meetings have been
held during the last month, in which these
half-starved peasants appealed, but vainly, for
a reduction of rent. In many cases the rack
rent claimed bv the owner was double the
Government valuation of the farms 500 fam
lies have been evicted in County Mayo alone.
Ii Is the old Irish story of warfare between
rack-renting landlords and an ill-fed,
preiudiced, Fenian tenantry. The land
lords, so far, have not yielded an
inch. The Catholic clergy vehementy de-
claim against the "order of death by
starvation and death by eviction and
determination" The protests OF the tenants
were submitted to Parliament; but Par
lament, being itself body of landlords,
pooh-poohed the whole matter aside. "The
CONDITION of Ireland was always unsatistac-
"tory,r etc, etc. The condition Of affairs in
England, rs our readers know, Is almost pre-
cisey similar. The island, like Ireland, is
owned by a few great landh0lders, the pres
ervation of whose game requires that much
of it shall he idle, and the preservation of
whose incomes requires that the remainder
snail rent for 4 higher sum than the tenants
are able to pay, now that American cOmpe-
tition has brought down the value of their
crops and live stock.
Precisely the same causes, too, in our own
country are leading to a like result. The
large landholders of the South, like those of
England and ireland, divide the tiable
ground into unwieldY estates, Improbable I'M
less rented or worked at sums which COM
mel the tenant and labOrer to starye.
The negro tenant in THE Black Beltn of
Alabama, or the negro laborer In Mississippi,
Is In the identical position of the Irish tenant
peasant in Castelar, or COnnemara, or the
English tenant farmer in Sussex, who is cursing
Yankee beef and corn as the cause of his
trouble. 1t is an old fight as old rs the days
of Jacob and Laban; as old as the time of
the Jews and their Egyptian taskmasters, this
quarrel between the great landowner and the
small farmer. and it has always ended in the
same way. The country, whether 1t be Egypt.
Russia, Spain. France or England, whose soil
is monopolized by few wealthy men.
made selfish by their position, inevitably grows
inert, sluggish, moves at slower pace behind
that where the ground nurtures a mass OF men
each having an ownership in the soil they
till on the same principle that mill run by
a cooperative company, where every puddlcr is
part owner. will succeed in Il dull season, while
another, where there is but one capitalist, fails.
Jacob left Laban, the Jews fled to Palestine,
and it is not hard to prophesy where the CO.
operative company, made up out of these de-
teated tenants from England, Ireland and the
South, will be established.
It was instinct probably, rather than rea-
sou or blind luck, which drove the negroes
up To the West, the Promised Land now of
ali the world for the small farmer. Lord