470 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



therefore of value, and at Ralahine we had such a test. 

 Mr. Craig was a very close observer, but he gives no hint 

 that any of the members shirked their work, while he 

 declares that all were industrious, and that without any 

 supervision men would work hard and well for the benefit 

 of the community and of themselves. There was no doubt 

 some considerable inequality in the work done by 

 individuals, because men's capacity for work differs ; but 

 there is no indication whatever that systematic idleness 

 formed a difficulty at Ralahine. Yet under the old system 

 of work under a steward for daily wages only, the Irish 

 peasants were always alleged to be incorrigibly idle ; and 

 the same thing is said of the cotters who worked their 

 own land, when every increase of productiveness and every 

 appearance of improvement in the house, or the food or 

 clothing of the family, was the sure precursor of an 

 increase of rent. Mr. Finch, however, who made a per- 

 sonal study of Ralahine, and who gave evidence before 

 a Committee of the House of Commons in 1834, deals 

 especially with this subject in his letters to the Livcqjocl 

 Chronicle in 1(S88 ; he savs, as quoted in Mr. Fare's book 

 (p. 61):- 



" There were at first two or three fellows inclined to be idle, and 

 they were cured in the way wild elephants are tamed. The com- 

 mittee who fixed the labour knew their characters, and appointed one 

 of these idlers to work between two others who were industrious — 

 at digging, for instance ; he was obliged to keep up with them, or 

 he became the subject of laughter and ridicule to the Avliole society. 

 This is what no man could stand. By these means tliey were soon 

 cured : and when I was there, there was not an idle man, woman, or 

 child in the whole society. Indeed, public opinion was found 

 sufficient for the cure of every vice and folly." 



And Mr. Craig tells us the result in the following 

 passage : — 



"At harvest-time the whole Society used voluntarily to work 

 longer than the time s])ecified, and I have seen the whole body 

 occasionally, at these seasons, act with such energy, and accomplish 

 such great results l)y their united exertions, that each and all 

 seemed as if fired by a wild enthusiastic determination to achieve 

 some glorious enterprise — and that too without any additional 

 stimulus in the shape of extra pecuniary reward." 



