The Birmingham age-herald., 1914-04-26
BILL REGENERATED
 IRISH PEASANTRY
Large Estates Cut Up by Land Law and HOvels Become
 Homes

difference it makes to a land whether it's soil is titled by tenants or by owners until, as member of the American commission which recently spent sev- eral months Investigating the rural conditions of Europe, I was brought in closest possible touch with the rural conditions of Ireland. That country is today an object lesson from which America may richly profit. says Harris Welnstack in Hearsts Magazine.
 Many generations of Irish land tap ancy and absentees landlordism had succeeded In so degrading and impoy- erlshlng the Irish peasantry that they had about attained the last degree of economic wretehedness. The Irish far mer had lost all ambition and hone He had found that the more thrifty and industrious he was the more he Increased his own burden. Every time that he would better his rented land by careful husbandry he would simnIv be raising the rent on himself. since the rental value was determined by the productive power of the soil. This de- stroyed within him the ambition and desire to make progress The only hone or regeneration lay in making of the Irish tenant a land owner and in fll- ing him with the knowledge that he was working for himself and that he himself and those near and dear would profit by every stroke of work put into lanW which hereafter was to be his and his familys for all time to come. For many years the Irish members of Parliament had been earnestly fighting Tor the passage of the Irish land bill rms bill provided for the creation of royal commission with power to ap- praise the value of the big Irish landed estates. condemn tban, owners the appraised value. plus l2 per cent bonus. The commission was to have further power to cut up those great estates into small parcels and sell them on the amortization plan. that is, making the payments due in annual installments spreading over d period of from 30 to 60 years.
 The land bill met with the bitterest opposition in Parliament: all the vested interests Were unalterably opposed to 1t. In fact, it was not pass until the Irish members succeeded in so completely blocking the work of Par liament that Parliament in its own de- fense reluctantly had to pass the meas ure.
 The results flowing from the enact ment of this measure have exceeded the most sanguine expectations of it's most enthusiastic supporters They have completely regenerated Ireland anu ltS ptdSdHtTN. Onuef the law s provisions more than 300,000 farm ten ants have been converted into landed proprietors. all within period of about a decade
 l Today Ireland scarcely recognizes it. self. The change has stimulated every man and every woman in the land. Hope
 fills the air and the outlook for this 1 hitherto unfortunate land was never l so bright as now.
 History does not offer such a parallel;
 the parallel of taking a people filled
 with despair, with nearly all hope gone,
 with nearly all ambition destroyed. liv- ing in filth in wretchedness and mis- cry, and in so brief a period converting them into an ambitious. prosperous | wide-awake energetic and progress sive people
 Aided by the establishment of al
 agricultural department in Ireland which has sent out able instructors tc give agricultural advice and aid to the peasantry. much pasture land has beer Iconverted into tillage
 Modern cottages built with the aic of state loans have taken the place ol the former wretched and unsanitarA novels occupied by the rural worker These cottages, in place of being sur
 rounded, as were the novels. by dir and filth, are surrounded by lawns
 with plants and flowers. Their win
 dows are neatly curtained and the,
 present an attractive and inviting an Ipearance--in great contrast to the for
 mer hopeless and forlorn aspect of th'
 home of the Irish peasant.
 Aside from the moral and intellectua
 regeneration going on in Ireland 1t i.
 country that from being one of thu
 poorest under the system of tenantry is destined to become, under small lans
 ownership, one of the richest per capit'
 in the world. Not only this, but Ire
 land is destined to set the world pac'
 in the matter of crimelessness. unde the new conditions 1t is likely in tim'
 to rank the lowest in its percentage