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Page 36
The woollen industry flourishes in one district and fails in another, to
all appearance as favourably situated; it seems capable of great
expansion and yet it does not expand greatly. What then are the
conditions of success? Here is a typical case that calls for scientific
analysis. One can pick at random a dozen such instances. Ireland,
admirably adapted to the production of meat, does not produce meat, but
only the raw material of it, store cattle. Is this state of things
immutable? Or is a remedy for it to be found, say, in a redistribution
of the incidence of local taxation so as to favour well-used land as
against ill-used land? Is the decline in the area under flax to be
applauded or deplored? Can Irish-grown wool be improved up to the
fineness of the Australian article? And so on, and so on. It is to be
noted that of the statistics which we do possess many of the most
important are, to say the least, involved in doubt. The Export and
Import figures are little better than volunteer estimates; there is no
compulsion to accuracy. As to the yield of crops, all that can be said
is that our present information is not as bad as it used to be. But
above all we have no comprehensive notion of the condition of the
people. Whenever there has been an inquiry into wages, cost of living,
or any other fundamental fact, Ireland has come in as a mere tail-piece
to a British volume. All this we must change. The first business of an
Irish Parliament will be to take stock; and this will be effected by the
establishment of a Commission of a new kind, representative of science,
industry, agriculture, and finance, acceptable and authoritative in the
eyes of the whole nation, and charged with the duty of ascertaining the
actual state of things in Ireland and the wisest line of economic
development. Such an undertaking will amount to a unification of Irish
life altogether without precedent. It will draw the great personalities
of industry for the first time into the central current of public
affairs. It will furnish them with a platform upon which they will have
to talk in terms of the plough, the loom, and the ledger, and not in
terms of the wolf-dog and the orange-lily, and will render fruitful for
the service of the country innumerable talents, now unknown or estranged
by political superstitions. It will do all that State action can do to
generate a boom in Irish enterprises, and to tempt Irish capital into
them in a more abundant stream. And the proceedings and conclusions of
such a body, circulated broadcast somewhat after the Washington plan,
will provide for all classes in the community a liberal education in
Economics. Will "Ulster" fight against such an attempt to increase its
prosperity? Will the shipbuilders, the spinners, and the weavers close
down their works in order to patronise Sir Edward Carson's performance
on a pop-gun? It is not probable.
Work is the best remedy against such vapours, and an Ireland, occupied
in this fashion-with wealth-producing labour, will have no time for
civil war or "religious" riots.
As for concrete projects, the Irish Parliament will not be able to
begin on a very ambitious scale. But there are two or three matters
which it must at once put in hand. There is, for instance, the drainage
of the Barrow and the Bann. These two rivers are in a remarkable degree
non-political and non-sectarian. Just as the rain falls on the just and
the unjust, so do their rain-swollen floods spoil with serene
impartiality Nationalist hay and Orange hay, Catholic oats and
Presbyterian oats. Will "Ulster" fight against an effort to check the
mischief? Then there is re-afforestation. As the result mainly of the
waste of war, Ireland, which ought to be a richly wooded country, is
very poor in that regard. In consequence of this, a climate, moister
than need be, distributes colds and consumption among the population,
without any religious test, and unchecked winds lodge the corn of all
denominations. Re-afforestation, as offering a profit certain but a
little remote, and promising a climatic advantage diffused over the
whole area of the country, is eminently a matter for public enterprise.
Are we to be denied the hope that fir, and spruce, and Austrian pine may
conceivably be lifted out of the plane of Party politics? Further, to
take instances at haphazard, the State, whatever else its economic
functions may be, will be one of the largest purchasers of commodities
in the country. It is thinkable that the Irish State may give its civil
servants Irish-made paper to write on in their offices. It may even so
arrange things that when Captain Craig comes to the House of Commons at
College Green he shall sit on an Irish-made bench, dine off a cloth of
Belfast linen, and be ruthlessly compelled to eat Meath beef, Dublin
potatoes, and Tipperary butter. In such horrible manifestations of Home
Rule I do not discern the material for a revolution. Again, it may be
proposed that in order to develop manufactures, municipalities and
county councils may be given power to remit local rates on newly
established factories for an initial period of, say, ten years. It may
occur to evil-minded people to increase the provision for technical
instruction in certain centres for the same end. The Irish State may
think it well to maintain agents in London, New York, and some of the
continental capitals with a view to widening the external market for
Irish products. I do not say that a Home Rule Parliament will do all
these things, but they are the sort of thing that it will do. And the
mere naked enumeration of them is sufficient to show that such an
Assembly will have ample matter of economic development upon which to
keep its teeth polished without devouring either priests or
Protestants.
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