The Irish standard. [volume] (Minneapolis, Minn. ;) 1886-1920, 1908-06-27

addition in ten annual installments for
the perpetual water rights. After ten
years, when the installments are al!
paid and a patent is issued by the gov
ernment to the purchasers, they be-
come the owners of the irrigation sys-
tenn and organize a company among
themselves to manage it's affairs. The
government, having been reimbursed
for its investment, releases the settlers
from all obligations and uses the
money received from them to build
another irrigation plant and redeem
another section of desert.
But the operations of our irrigation
bureau are simple and insignificant
compared with the extensive and COM
plicated operations of the Wyndham
land act in Ireland. We have no poll
tics mixed up in it, as they have here,
where everything that everybody does
is unfortunately involved in political
complications or produces some politi-
cal effect.
Some of the landlords are willing to
sell their estates; others are glad to
get rid of them because the average
tenantry in Ireland are very deter
mined class, and are always making
trouble. Very few landlords have been
able to get along peaceably with the
men who till their soil. There have
been almost continuous disturbances
over the land questions of one form or
another in Ireland since the beginning
of time. The rents here are very low
compared with the American stand
ard, and have been difficult to collect,
and when there is failure of crops
they cannot be collected at all. The
that have been enacted of late years
are entirely in the interest of the ten
ants; that the landlord has no show at
all. And perhaps that is true, because
public sympathy is invariably with the
tenants, and they cast many votes,
while the landlord has only one, even
if he tries to vote at all.
Therefore it is perfectly natural that
Ffland nsdro~aers---and. ESPECIALLY those who
have had a good deal of trouble with
their tenants-are anxious to dispose
of their estates for cash, which they
can invest to much better advantage.
The Duke of Leinster, for example,
who is minor, has realized more
than GS00,OOO in cash, which his trus-
tees have invested in brewery stocks.
railway bonds and other securities
which pay regular dividends and give
him no anxiety.
In some cases the government has
been compelled to exercise consider
able pressure to induce landlords to
sell estates which have been the scenes
Of a good deal of political disturbance.
but as a rule the noblemen who have
held large tracts of troublesome land
have been eager to get rid of them on
any terms. They have. heen enjoying
quite as much and perhaps more bene-
fit from the Wyndham act than their
tenants. Taking it as whole 1t has
been described as "a gigantic measure
Of pacifcation." Both landlords and
tenants have shown themselves moro
than willing to avail themselves Of it.
The land question is on it's way to
settlement, and the greatest source of
internal strife in Ireland is being
damned at the fountain head.
Mr.. Bailey, one of the commission
ers, tells me that the good estates
have been disposed Of without diff
Guilty. The disposition of the poor land
has been more difficult because the
tenants are not as eager to get it, the
owner is not always satisfied with the
price and the commission is not will
ing to make advances upon small bits
of land among the bogs and rocks and
other tracts Of unfertile soil that would
not be considered good security by
anybody. The commissioners, he tells
me, have treated these transactions
very much as they would have done IL
they were mortgage bankers. They
have refused to make advances on land
that banker would not have consid-
cred good security. They have not
been willing to make advances on
farms which cannot be made to pay.
There have been complications in GER
tain cases that have perplexed them,
but as rule, Mr.. Bailey says, the law
has been working out in most salts
factory and gratifying manner.
The chief object Of the commission
and the purpose Of the law has beey
to break up the great estates Of Ire.
land so far as possible in farms of not
more than 100 acres and sell them to
the occupants so as to create a nation
of peasant nronrietors and fhat ho