Morning journal and courier., 1889-03-23


 ARRAN ISLANDS, March II. To the Editor of the JOURNAL COURIER:
 If all those good people in the world who have no better occupation than to whine about their own imagined ill fortunes would make pilgrimage to the Arran Islands, for comparison of their own intangible suffer- ings with the hopeless condition of these human beings who exist here, the sociolo~ gists would have little or nothing to do for some time to come. The ignorance Of the islanders is matchless. Their want and des- titution are endless. Their suferings are boundless. Their woe is changeless. What insufferable fools then to remain where they are? No. That is only judgment in igno-
 rance of their real conditions. Their wretch ed fate has remained the same for hundreds
 of years, scarcely three hundred miles from
 the seat of their own Christian govern
 ment," which takes less heed of their pitia-
 ble helplessness than of the fish in Great
 Britain's rivers, the animals in Great Bri-
 tain's forests, or of the fowl in Great Bri-
 tain's parks and preserves.
 The three little islands have an area of
 twelve thousand acres. The exact popula-
 tlOu lS tuTCo GuOUSduu duu LWouiJ. Ib Eds
 not varied fifty souls from three thousand in
 8 century. One is drowned from this cur
 ragh or that fishing smack. Another in
 some inconceivable manner escapes to Amer
 ica. Others starve in this cabin by the shore
 or in that hovel where the blasts howl on the
 heights. Enough wailing wretches are born
 into this hideous condition to perpetuate the
 misery. And so the curse goes on. I be-
 lieve it is not an exaggerated statement that not one soul in these three thousand ever
 had enongh of the coarsest food in all their
 lives to satisfy the fercest bangs of endless
 hunger. believe that this has been true of
 the thousands upon thousands born to stalve
 and die here within the past two three centuries. This is all notoriously true, and notoriously known where the most active, alert and able governmental forces of the greatest power on earth are almost solely employed in reducing an entire nation to
 previsely the universal dumb and awful
 helplessness and squalor that sicken the
 sight and soul in these islands. And I say
 with every atom of power God has given me
 that the human being who can contemplate
 these indescribsble miseries and such gov
 ernment without praying and working for
 the termination of such miseries in the ter-
 imitation of such 8 government is himself as
 infamously inhuman as such government,
 and is utterly undeserving the blessings of
 citizenship and freedom of any land It is
 time that that Christian governments of the
 world compelled the cessation of immeasur-
 able barbarities under the pretense of Chris
 tian government, whether those barbaritles
 are perpetrated by Christian" Spain in
 Cuba, or by Christian" England in Ireland
 The cumulated moral forces of the world
 destroyed American African slavery. The
 cumulative Christian forces of the world
 must destroy an incompsrably more hideous
 and revolting slavery in Ireland.
 How to fttingly tell about these people of
 the Arrsn Islands is, I confess, an almost
 impossible task. I was never before among
 men whose condition seemed to so appeal to
 an universal humanity and knowledge. Are
 they strangea Yes; but one's very heart
 ache here makes him shrink from limning
 them. Quaintl Yes; but there is an inde-
 scribable pathos in that very quaintness.
 Picturesques Yes; but who has the hsrdi-
 hood to attempt the portrayal of that pie
 turesqueness which hutters like wind
 whipped rags over helplessness, starvation
 and death9 Why are they as they ares Sim
 ply through centuries of British landlord ism. How can that compel and retain such wretchednesss Because these three islands are ''worth ten thousand pounds" to their landlord owners. That sum must be forth coming in due portion, or out the skinDy- framed toilers go from their bare novels upon the bare rocks. This is about sixteen dollars per capita, to be earned and saved each year in starvation, beyond starvation. If one in every five, which is an over-gene- rous possibility, is, from age and sex, physl- f,p ner (for these landlords), six hundred of these wretches must each annually earn and save a little more than eighty dollars. Earn ing and saving that amount here each year, simply means the most awful labor, priva- tion and suffering possible for the mind of civilized man to conceive.
 These people eke out their miserable ex- istence from three bitterly scant sources fishing, preparing kelp and the most shad owy trifie of agriculture Their awful pov erty renders labor at either of these less and less remunerative, if possible, each year. They never have had the money with which to purchase vessels and tackle for successful fishing in these cruel seas. Their boats are ancient, clumsy, rotten, and their gear the oldest and rudest known to fishermen in any part of the world Yet braver, more pa- l tient class of toilers never existed. Their sacrifice and hardships are incAlculable. | The fury of the Atlantic here is greater than on any other known coast, save at the north- west of Ireland among the terrific maelstroms where the opposing Atlantic and Arctic cur rents meet. Yet in these unsafe dories, fragile curraghs and unwieldy and rotten smacks, they brave the fercest seas, and, half-naked, the most awful weathers, fear lessly seeking the ''gIassing" twenty miles from land the turbot from twenty five to thirty miles distant; while the cod and ling are taken from forty to fifty miles away in the open Atlantic. This would not be re- markable feat among our own sleek, we'll paid, well-fed Gloucester fishermen, who ply their vocation on Georges, Browns, Western and Grand banks in their two masted schooners ranging from seventy five to one hundred tons burthen; the swiftest, most buoyant and seaworthy, and still the most beautiful and graceful vessels aaoat. But the risks and heroism of these half starved island men are matohless. Year af- ter year they go out to certain death by rags and belongings of those who are drowned, and settle down into starving wid- owhood in dumb and sodden acceptance of "God's will" Even if the men return alive it is often empty-handed. If the sea-har. vest has been good one little or nothing but food has been got. For if there is little to cell that is enough reason for the buyer at Killoney or Galway to get it for few pence. If there is much, that is made reason why pounds in value shrink to shillings in re- ward.
 Kelp gathering and making are destructive of health, dangerous and here wholly unre. muneratiVe. Kelp, az is we'll knowu thongh the word is often applied to seaweed itself, Is the product from Ihs burning of seaweed, from which the alkali soda used in the man- ufacture of soap and glass was once chiefly l secured; and from which iodine is still ob.