The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-01-19
HOW THE LANDLORD TORTURES THE POOR Long Visits Evicted Tenants of
 Savage Feer THE MISERY OF WOODFORD Refugees Are Driven From Good Priests Shelter Into the Bleak
 Roadside. Relics of
 Great Fight.
THE MISERY OF WOODFORD
BY ROBERT cRozIER FORD.

landlordism still keeps desert Ireland's best land 1t is suffering defeat after de- feat, The last great victory of the forces of progress, the Evicted Tenants Act passed by the present liberal Parliament puts back on their farms the men who were driven out during the Fair Rent campaign of 20 years ago.
 Most of the landlords had indeed al ready surrendered. But a few refused and still refuse to take back the old peo- pie at any price. The most notorious of these is The Most Noble the Marquis of Clanricarde, whose name transmitted pop ularly to "Clanrackrent,' Is a symbol of everything hateful to the struggling Irish peasant.
 A Sample of Absenteeism.
 The owner of the famous Clanrcarde estates, which stretch from Woodforl over 5000 acres of the broad Shannon side, is a little, antique, grabbed. simu- lacrum of humanity, who spent 12 hours in Ireland 34 years ago, and has never been there since.
 He lives obscurely in London bachelor rooms spends s5000 of his s150,O00 rent roll, and invests the other s145 1000 in good securities.
 According to the tradition of landlord ism he could not be blamed for driving hard bargains with tenants. But Clanri- carde, in his dealings with his people, was avowedly actuated less by wise self interest than by spite and hatred toward men whom he regards as rebels against his feudal rights. And he refuses today to take his evicted tenants back, though his own pocket is losing by his obdu- racy.
 The evicted tenants bill provided that the governmental estates commissioners should buy compulsorily every unoccupied farm from which the tenant had been evicted and resettle on 1t the former cupants, or their heirs.
 But if the farm was already being tiled by a new tenant the act did not apply.
 Determined that his victims should never get back to their homes, Clanri- cade made provision in advance. He had destroyed his old tenants homes. He now built new ones and put into each plan ter" generally some poor wretch quite ignorant of farming. whom hunger had driven to side with landlordism. The Victims of CIanricarde. The farms occupied" according to the law, the evicted tenants could not get back. So the whole countryside brought moral pressure to bear on the planters, and much to Clanricardes disgust, they agreed to surrender the land for liberal compen ton.
  denies that the farms are "occupied'' in the meaning of the act of Parliament and he Is preparing to fight the point in every | court in Ireland and England rather than l let his rebel tenants back to their homes. | Fifty-one families of victims of this l fight for land reform are living on the roadside near Woodford, and most of l them have been there for over 20 years I reached Woodford this morning after a " I usual object lesson in landlordism. | Wherever the land was good there were no people, wherever it was bad there was crowded rural slum.
 | During the first nine miles drive through excellent green country, I saw not one | village, and, indeed, only two human | beings. One of them was a policeman. I But the barren, heath-clad plateau above l Woodford town was strewn with closely l huddled miserable farms. Here, as every | where else In Ireland, the bullock has the | land, and the peasant the rocks. l Three miles beyond Woodford is "Evict- l ed Village" cluster of huts by the road | side, with a background of the eternal | Cannaugh bog A whole generation of l Clanricades victims has been reared in | these huts. The huts are mserably small, l built chiefly of wood. some have stone {! side walls, and mostly without even a l cabbage patch But the moment you en- l ter these you can tell that the inmates have not always lived by the roadside.
 Rough Without; Clear Within. | Miserable outside, inside each cabin is as clean as Dutch farmhouse. And l their sad-faced occupants by manner, speech and look show that, living as they | are, In cold and hunger, they have re- tained the fine traditions of the best type | of Irish farmer.
 | ic al, 1 Woodford. Most of the evlcted live by cutting turf in the bog behind them and l selling it at 70 cents donkey load. They 1 get monetary help from the Irish parla- mentary party, and several have relatives | in America. l II talked to Stanislaus Burke, who had l lived Il years in Cincinnati, and he told me a story characteristic of Clanricarde- ism. When he returned to Woodford pre- 1 pared to become an excellent tenant, with l American money and American ideas, he 1 applied for his old farm. But hearing that he had evicted him 20 years before, Clan ricardo refused to take him. He preferred to leave the farm idle, and idle it re- l mained until Burke got it through fam fly arrangement made without Clanri- l cardes consent.
 John Roche, M. P, who plays the part of earthly Providence to these evicted families, told me story even worse. When the Clanricarde tenants were thrown out on the roadside, the parish priest allowed Roche to build them some 20 huts on church land The knowledge that his victims had found such human charity enraged Clanricarde. The church land was on his estate, and he fought John Roche through three law Instances won the case and drove the people from the priests enclosure on to the road.
 Relics of the Great Fight.
 Woodford has interesting relics of the first days of the struggle against land- lordism. It created the plan of cam- paign.
 I ate my dinner in the room of OReil- ly's hotel, at the window of which Will liam OBrien publicly burnt the Lord Lieutenant's proclamation putting Wood ford district under the infamous coer- cion act.
 | I visited Saunders's farm, which was held by its tenants for eight days agains, 600 soldiers and police, and saw the holes in the roof through which the Saunderses had fought their assailants.
 And here, as everywhere around, I saw traces of landlord devastation, roofiess cabins and untitled fields. and worst oi all, tired listless people, pale shadows of the brave Irish farm folk, to whom the light of hope is only now returning.