State Aid to Agricultnre in Ireland. 3'.> 



ordinary agricultural students, not in training for primary 

 school work. It may be added that various industrial and 

 reformatory schools included agricultural and dairy instruction 

 in their courses, and with success. Such was the condition of 

 state-aided agricultural education in the eighties and nineties. 



But the rural population at large was never less concerned 

 about its own education in agriculture, and never was the State 

 less concerned on its behalf in that matter. It was the time 

 of agrarian convulsion, followed by drastic agrarian legislation. 

 The immediate cause of that convulsion was the distress due to 

 a few bad harvests, but its continuance was the result of the 

 unceasing fall of prices owing to foreign competition. Ireland 

 had long enjoyed a clear market for her produce in Britain, but 

 of late formidable rivals had begun to appear. Denmark and 

 Normandy were sending in butter superior to that of Cork, and 

 the former was sending over bacon better than that of Limerick, 

 while the increasing inflow of American produce made the 

 Irish farmer's position still more critical. The only remedy 

 against tbis condition of things known to the uninstructed 

 Irish landholder was more, and ever more, agitation for reduc- 

 tions of rent. The agitations gained the reductions, but they 

 did not abate the force of foreign competition. The butter 

 trade had fallen greatly, and the once noted Cork butter had 

 come to hold only an inferior place in the British market. 

 The revival of the Munster Institute as a dairy school, though 

 not without fruit, did not produce anything like a general 

 effect even in Cork county, much less in Ireland at large. At 

 Dublin the late Canon Bagot tried a propaganda of his own in 

 favour of improved dairying, but he was as the voice of one 

 crying in the wilderness ; he was on the track of true ideas, 

 but the country was not sufficiently instructed in modern agri- 

 cultural principles to see the true significance of his teachings. 

 Events, however, were soon to unseal the Irish dairy 

 farmer's eyes to the truth of his position. The creamery 

 system wrought a revolution in the butter-making industry. 

 The Irish farmers did not adopt the new methods, but strangers 

 came amongst them who did. The English and Scottish 

 Co-operative Wholesale Societies began starting creameries of 

 their own in Ireland, and the local farmer either sank into the 

 position of a mere milk-seller to the creamery, or else into that 

 of being outclassed as a butter-maker by the newcomers. 

 When I returned from America in 1889, this was one of the 

 problems I found most pressing, and to which, with other 

 workers, I set about applying a remedy. But the general state 

 of agriculture was depressed, and we had to consider the 

 situation as a whole. We considered that the Irish farmer, 

 who is, as a rule, a small holder, with hardly any capital, could 



