Los Angeles herald., 1910-02-20


the situation of a patriarch responsible
for his clan. When the neighbors S
granary was fat with a surplus, why
should the family starve? 1t was a
rude and ready way of adjusting social
conditions. Today our morals are in
such an advanced condition of econom-
tits that starvation is not a crime, but
a circumstance; and society hears of
pinched and fainting school children,
scantily clad mothers and despairing
fathers, sometimes with faint wave
of passing pity, but never with the
urging tide of consciousness of injus-
tice that would prompt immediate
remedy.
! Honesty includes responsibility to
ones family as well as to ones fellow
men. Where is the fearless champion
who will speak for families that have
been dishonesty dealt with by society?
What about children who have been
robbed of their education and sent to
work? Such a condition was unheard
of and impossible under the clan sys-
TEN. Therefore the clan system was
more honest to the family than the
modern system. And the Celts are
still strongly for SOCIAL HONESTY.
System Demoralizing
They would be absolutely and respon-
sibly honest socially if removed from
the influences of a cut-throat competi
tive system which, in their cases at
any rate, is false, artificial and un-
necessary, and was thrust upon them
to their detriment. Their own prlml-
tive but sound provision for the great
est good of the greatest number was
BETTER. Perhaps that is why mod
ern Celts who devote much time and
attention to conditions are more in
tensely dissatisfied than other folk.
They belong to a race that has known
better, and THAT HAS BECOME
MODERNIZED TO ITS MORAL AND
PHYSICAL LOSS AND HURT.
Saxondom slowly found itself and
rose from the gutter" But in talking
about "our" economic and social ad-
vance the Saxon should not couple his
race with that of the Celt. The Celt
NEVER WAS IN THE GUTTER,
RACIALLY; and individually he has
never been there unless under COM
pulsion of artificial circumstances
Qandlordism, soil monopoly, private
ownership of the general means of
livelihood that for awhile puzzled him
as completely as If he had been set
adrift in a balloon
Civilization? Carelessness and dis
regard of ones social rights and fam
lily privileges and ties cold Indifference
to the condition of the neighbor and
his child-this thing civilization? Every
man LOT himself anu uGNI Tame SiS
hindmost = civilization? Yet Brooks
says:
"Overtopplng all problems there are
the supreme questions of national
character and national education-of
how to instil into the Irish people
those qualities of MORAL HARDI-
HOOD IN WHICH THEY ARE
LACKING"
Brooks Hardihood
Brooks is not lacking in hardihood;
and it is not moral
Let us turn from the didactic su-
periority of this Saxon critic to an il
Illuminating statement by the American
reporter, which not only refutes in
few sentences the entire labored series
of English articles in the North Amer
lean Review, but confutes convincingly
the deductions of Brooks, in spite of
their assumption of finality and pre-
tense of judicial decisiveness
1.-THE causes of fearful conditions in
Ireland run back to the time of Eliza
beth and forward to within the present
| generation. First were the successive
| plantations of court favorites and ad-
| venturers; then the Cromwellian cam
paigns and statutes, which banished
the people from the fertile plains of
eastern and central Ireland to the in
hospitable west; then the extinction of
y
possible duties and actual prohibition;
then the penal laws against Roman
Catholics; then the fall in the price of
field crops and the rise i'm the price of
cattle, which started a craze for graz
ing ranches and led to the eviction or
countless thousands FROM THE
FARMS THEY HAD MADE BY
THEIR OWN INDUSTRY; then the
frightful catastrophe of the famine of
1S47, which doomed thousands more;
then the bankruptcy of many of the
old landlords and the transfer of their
estates to cold -blooded spectators.
Thus the remorseless evolution went
on. every turn of the screws of fate
driving the helpless peasantry lower
and lower and staining the pages OF
Irish history with tales of suffering
and slaughter by starvation And the
final result was the problem or the
congested district, with its half mil
lion of human units STARING WITH
DREADFUL ACCUSATION IN THE
FACE OF CIVILIZATION. -.
The wonder is, the residence the people
have exhibited with the lifting of the
burden of injustice.
Unnatural treatment lneVlIaply
bred unnatural conditions. The nine
teenth century saw the population flee
ing from Ireland as if it were stricken
with plague: untold acres of fertile
land were given over to grazing cat
tie, while the people fought off star
walton upon rocky hillsides and desc
late swamps - despairlng reVolts
against the system crushed by form
of martial law. by coercion, intimida-
tion. Jury packing, eviction. But the
latter part of the nineteenth century
saw also the first application of the
remedy. and that remedy was as eX-
ceptional as the disease.
Successful Paternalism
"a MORE GIGANTIC SCHEME OF
STATE SOCIALISM, OR PATER-
NAIISM. HAS NEVER BEEN AT
TEMPTFD. The British government
recognixed at last that the monstrous
evils of former generations never
could he eradicated except by reVers-
mo the whole process Of those years.
If is the operation of this policy which
has wrought such marvellous changes
in ireland.
"The great scheme Of land purchase
the transfer of the land from the
landlords to the tenants-the govern. to
ment advancing the money and the
new owners repaying it in actual In
staIlnents with interest-first became
effective in 1881. Other acts, broad
eninr the scope of the plan, were
nassed i'm 1885, 1888, 1896 and 1908, and
there is now pending still another blll
WHICH WILL EXTlNGUlSH IHE
LAST VESTIGE OF LANDLOkDlSM
by MAKING THE SALE OF THEIR
| FSTA COMPULSORY.
@Proeress was very slow at first, and
never has kept pace with the demands
nf the nroblem, but in all, under the
yarious acts, NEARLY A QUARTER
On MILLION TENANTS HAVE
PECOMF OWNERS OF THE LANDS