The San Francisco call., 1909-09-06

~LAREMORR1S, july zl.-1o thoSO
familiar with the long. dark record
Nof Ireland's history, the rapid
changes of the last few years must be
impressive During a tour of nearly
200 miles, through districts which bore
the deepest scars of injustice and pow
erty, 1 have seen on every hand eVi-
dences of the economic regeneration
And while the alteration in this cor
ner of the island is perhaps the most
noticeable, it is simply one feature OF
the great national advance.
As no other nation, in modern times,
has suffered under so elaborate and
crushing a system of spoliation, so no
other has been the subject of such vast
experiments in remedial legislation.
From the savage piundering OF the six
teenth and seventeenth centuries grew
up a government grotesque in its IN
justice and land system utterly ruth
less in its oppression.
Under the operation of these reel
procating evils every principle of right
seemed TO be extinguished and every
natural economic tendency perverted
The privileges of property though
founded upon robbery, wholesale con-
fscation and merciless penal laws.
were held superior to all else. even to
human life In the matter of land--a
matter of life and death to two-thirds
of the population-the law of supply
and demand was strangled and the law
of force substituted.
This unnatural treatment inevitably
bred unnatural conditions. Thus the
| last century saw the population fleeing
with plague; untold acres CT fertile
| land given over to grazing cattle, while
the people fought off starvation upon
rocky hillsides and desolate swamps;
despairing revolts against the system
crushed by a form of martial law. by
coercion. intimidation, jury packing.
| eviction.
But the latter part of the last GEN.
tury saw also the first application of
| the remedy, and that remedy was as
exceptional as the disease. more
gigantic scheme of state socialism, or
paternalism. has never been attempted
The British government recognized at
last that the monstrous evils OF former
generations could never be eradicated
except by reversing the whole process
of those years. 1t is the operation of
this policy which has wrought such
marvellous changes in Ireland A brief
survey will illustrate the magnitude of
the problem and of what has been ac-
compIished.
The great scheme of land purchase
the transfer of the land from the land
lords TO the tenants, the government
advancing the money. and the new
owners repaying it in annual install
ments, with interest-hrst became eff
fective in 1851. Other acts. broadening
the scope of the plan, were passed in
1885. 1883. 1896 and 1903, and there is
now pending still another bill which
will extinguish the last vestige Of
landlordism by making the sale of their
estates compulsory.
Progress was very slow at first, and
has never kept pace with the demands
of the problem, but in all, under the
various acts, not less than a quarter
of a million tenants have become
owners of the lands they titled.
The exceptionally acute conditions
have been treated, as these articles
have set forth, by the congested dis
tricts board. Empowered to purchase
estates, enlarge and rearrange hold
ings, migrate tenants from congested
to more open acres, encourage agri-
culture. industries and fishing, and
assist land holders 10 improve their
farms and better their conditions of
living, the board has worked a trans
formation over large district 1t has
expended nearly s17.0O0.0O0 in the Is
years of its existence and the result is
seen in colonies of comfortable. pros
porous farms where formerly there
nd ha1
erty.
A special work of the government
has been the restoration of evicted
tenants. Thousands of these families
sacrificed themselves for principle in
the land wars, particularly in the bit
were rebels. But the time came
when it was recognized that they were
wounded soldiers and that they
have peculiar claims upon the govern
ment which inherited the system of
injustice.
These evicted tenants are being re-
stored to the lands which were torn
from them by force; or to lands of
equivalent value. Houses are erected
for them, the farms are stocked, and
after years of suffering they once
more are on the road to self-support-
ing independence.
Paternalism of still more radical
character is being applied in the case
OF the agricultural laborers of the
country. Their condition was natu-
rally worse than that of the tenants
Depending upon their unskilled labor
and the product of the tiny patches of
land surrounding their homes, they
occupied wretched novels, not only
in discomfort, but in constant peril
from disease.
Several acts for the benefit of these