The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-02-17
LAND REFORMS OF IRELAND PROPOSED
 CAUSE EXCITEMENT.
Nationalists and Unionists Opposed to Cutting Up of Grass Ranches to En-
 courage Tillage

Dublin February All Ireland is dis cussing exeitedly the new scheme pro- pounded by the board of agriculture for the increase of food production. and one can almost tell a mans politics by the attitude he adopts towards it. If he is nationalist he blesses it, and if he is a unionist he curses it. There are a few cross-currents of opinion. If a man is big landowner, unionist or nationalist, he curses it. while if he is a small culivator he is likely to look on it kindly. .,s.
 The secret of the advocacy and the opposition is that. it is the thin end of the wedge for breaking up the grass ranges where bullocks have taken the place of men. This has been the policy of the nationalists for generations, and has been opposed by the unionists. Now that the necessity for producing more food has come, it is evident that the grass must be ploughed up, and the question of how it is to be done arisees.
 The board of agriculture has issued an order that in 1917 all holders of 10 acres and over, must till one-tenth more of their land than they did in 1916. If the occupier is unable for lack of labor or any other cause to till it himself, he may let it to others, or failing that the department may enter on it and arrange to have it titled in |any way that seems most convenient The way selected has been letting 'in conacre' and it Is over this that the whole trouble has arisen
 Under the present Irish land laws an ordinary letting of land to a tenant be- comes letting in perpetuity subject only to the payment of rent. It is in practice the extension of the old Ulster "tennant right" to the whole of Ireland, and really amounts to dual ownership. There is another form of letting in Irish law which gets over this practice and it is called letting ''in |conacre." This means letting the land for the growth of a specific c-op for Ii months only. If the letting in conacre were to be the end of the departments S policy no one would object. The large landowners would be glad enough to let to their smaller neighbors and re- ceive their rents without the trouble of personal tillage and superintendence, but they fear that the present head of the department, T. w. Russell, who is Ia nationalist, will introduce men who will refuse to leave at the end of their II months tenancy. Of course they will not have leg to stand on in law, but they will have public opinion behind them and public opinion makes law quicker in Ireland under present con- ditions, than in any other part of the world. The men, moreover, really have a moral claim to the land, for it is agreed that the system of great grass ranges supporting few families while the population is struggling to cultivate the less fertile soil is uneconomic and bad for the country generally. It is bad even for the landlords, but they prefer. it because it clears their land of possible trouble makers and relieves them of the invidious necessity of rent collecting and the enforcement of pay ment
 Now they see this freedom from trou- ble threatened by the departments policy of settling small cultivators on the land, who the landlord declare and rightly enough, too, will never leave once they have set foot on it.
 It is estimated that the schemes will about double the area of tillage in Ireland, so that one can see how lit tie of the land was devoted to the rais- ing of direct food crops. Instead of 2,30o,- 900 acres S,500,000 will comme under the plough or spade this year. One crit icism that is quite just is the absence of any plan for the provision of agri- cultural tools and machinery. The owners of the big grass farms are equipped only for cattle raising and they naturally object to being com pelled to buy tools and machinery for one year only. Even the little men have not the equipment to deal with the situation properly. It is true that Ireland is now being flooded with advertise ments of American motor ploughs and other implements, but unless some scheme of organizing their purchase and use on a cooperative basis is worked out, they will do little good, for the great bulk of Irish tillage farms are too small for profitable mann chine cultivation.