St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1914-03-18


Inniskeen, County Louth, Ireland
In America we are trying in a more or
less conscious effort to make the
schoolhouse the educational and social
center and the school master a COM
munity leader In Ireland without any
set purpose this result is already Sc
cured. At Inniskeen, in county Louth,
for example, John Quinn, the school
master, is the big man. BY virtue of
his natural qualities and by reason of
his secretarial position in the co-opera-
tive association he is the farmers
banker, their business manager and
adviser, their agricultural expert, and
a temperance reformer. In fact he is
the community leader. His school
house is a social center for to it the
people go for cooperative association
meetings, for temperance lectures, and
for public gatherings of all sorts.
We have been to County Donegal
and have seen what the cooperative
enterprises conferred at Dunglow have
done for a region which is naturally
unproductive. Under the leadership
of Paddy Gallagher, a native business
genius, cooperation has brought COM
fort, relative prosperity and hopeful
ness to a community which was previ-
ously a desolate combination OF peet
bog and rocky hillside.
We have stopped here to see the re-
suits of cooperation when planted in
a more fertile productive soil, for this
portion of County Louth would COM
pare favorably with the richest
stretches of our own middle western
states.
The Average Irish Farmer.
Anxious to find the average small
farmer who is a member Of the coop
erative society and willing to talk
about it's affairs, we were directed to
Edward Meeghan, who operated a
farm out two Irish miles from the viii
lage. AS we walked out to Meeghan's
place the consciousness was forced
upon us that In this section Ireland Is
far from being starving Ireland" The
fields are carefully cultivated-culti-
waited as they seldom are in the states.
The hedges and walls are well kept.
The heavy crops indicate a high de-
gree of fertility. Each cottage gives
evidence of prosperity and self-respect-
ing pride. Upon the faces of those
whom we meet we see nothing to indi-
cate that the local Irish are poverty
stricken or despairing. We find Meeg-
han on a 40-acre farm of which he Is
evidently and justly proud. The fer
tile fields, the stacks Of rich grain, the
high grade live stock, all demonstrate
that it is possible to make money
hereabouts and that there is a promis-
ing future in the local agricultural sit
uation-
Buying Farms for Less Than Rent.
Meeghan himself, a vigorous fellow,
full of enthusiasm and hopefulness, ex-
plains that his father prior to his
death had bought the land under the
imperial land tenure act providing for
an arbitrated value as between land
lord and tenant. The value once fixed
the government pays for the land, and
then permits the tenant who becomes
a purchaser to repay the purchase price
in sixty odd years, each year keeping
up the interest at two and three
fourths per cent. and paying in addi-
ton a small installment upon the
principal. He tells how his father paid,
as rent alone, Is pounds per year,
while he himself in buying the farm is
now paying, including both interest
and annual installments on principal
only IA pounds per year. Quite nat
urally he has a keen appreciation Of
the land tenure laws which enabled
him gradually to obtain the farm by
the payment of less money each year
than originally went for rent alone.
This is not to him the important
thing, however. His father had pre-
viously been a tenant A new thatch
on the barn, a new slate on the roof,
or a new shed for the COW, could not
be obtained in any way from the land
lord. 1t must be contributed by the
Prevented improvements.
tenant, who knew that within thirty
days thereafter he might be put of the
place. The natural result was to pre-
vent all repairs and all permanent Inn
provements. In this entire region we
have not been able to discover a sin
gle fruit tree that had been planted
prior to the acquisition OF the land by
the tenant purchasers In fact there
are no mature fruit trees here. Where