Cañon City record., 1910-04-07
OBSERVATIONS IN EUROPE
BY WILLIAM ALLAN WHITE

pie has not adopted English ways.
They still ride in the Irish jaunting
car; the donkey still pulls the two
wheeled cart with the pig and the calf
Irish customs prevail in their in
tercourse of the people. They remain
as polite and punctilious as an un-
vanquished people. They have pre-
served their pure English undefiled
by cockney. They have kept their
race integrity and have a pure blood
after all the coming and going of their
conquerers.
But the days of the cruel con-
quest of Ireland are over. Not only
has the world passed the point in
civilization where one people can
seriously oppress their equals but
England is finding out the enormous
financial and economic folly of the
old tactics with Ireland. Hence.
some of the best and fairest legis-
lation of recent years from the Brit
ish parliament has related to ireland.
The evil of landlordism is being
eradicated. Tenants are buying their
land. The parliament made II pos
sible by passing laws which provided
for appraisement and purchase of the
land by the tenant from the landlord
in fifty years payments. the money
for the purchase being advanced by
the general government for the ten
ant; so that the tenants creditor is
not the landlord. but the government.
and the landlord is paid in cash by
the government for his land. A new
datory on the landlord to sell at the
appraised price. Under this law there
are now. according to a newspaper
statement, 100000 landholders In Ire
land That Is something like one
landlord in ten men. women and chill
dren, or about two pieces of land
for every three families-a high aver
age And so Ireland is blooming.
The prosperity of the country Is amaz-
ing to those whose notions of the
land are formed BY reading accounts
of conditions twenty years ago. We
saw more up-to-date farm machinery
in ireland than in any European
country. New houses are build
ing everywhere Where two families
lived in one house. now each has a
house and the children don't have
to crowd into the cities as they do
in England now or as they did un-
der old conditions in Ireland We
spent a day-Grandma and Daddy did
in a rural town - Longford. look
ing for cousins. and spent half
day in the country roads on jaunt-
ing car. and we saw the real people
of ireland They were going to
and coming from Saturday market.
and the women were as well dressed
and well mlllinered as the women
one meets on the country roads In
Lyon county Kansas. on SATURDAYS.
There are. of course, no two-horse
wagons. There are no top buggies.
There are no automobiles. But
these things are distinctive OF the
American farmer They are not
found anywhere in Europe. And ex-
ceptlng the Swiss. no farmers seemed
10 prosperous TO us this year as the
Irish farmers. And they were i'm
mensely happy. Perhaps that was
temperamentaI Perhaps they are
happy in any circumstances. Anna
Kelly. wife OF Thomas Holton. moth
er OF Grandma. and grandmother OF
Daddy. and great-grandmother OF
Billy and Mary-Anna Kelly. born in
Dublin and married in the Catholic
church at Longford, October 2. 1929.
with Patrick Leavy and Catherine
Corrigan as witness-Anna Kelly had
the Irish temperament and In times
of gerat calamity and adversely, she
would dry her eyes, Jump TO her feet
and dance a fix in the middle OF the
room to cheer herself up and prove 20
herself that she still had her cour-
age. II is in the Irish blood. and the
happy faces OF I1ongford farmers. and
of the farmers we saw all over Ire
land. did not prove the prosperity OF
the country so much as the new
houses and new farm machinery and
the well-kept stock that we saw in the
fields.