JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND. 195 



Irish dairy farmers are beginning to see that 

 the more they use the plough the more cows 

 they can keep on their holdings, and the 

 greater will be their cash returns. 



Yet however successful the appeal to self- 

 help might be in the more prosperous farming 

 districts, in the wretchedly poor districts of 

 Connaught and Kerry it was like appealing to 

 the stones which littered their poor fields. 



To the rescue of these poorer districts 

 came Mr. Arthur Balfour in 1893 by the 

 formation of the Congested Districts Board, 

 which Mr. Michael Davitt described as a 

 Board " with large powers for the application 

 of State Socialism." Another person, of a less 

 reputable type, has been heard to describe the 

 officers of this Board as "a lot of spalpeens 

 who would never rest till every blessed cock in 

 the country had laid an egg before its breakfast 

 in the morning." This ironical utterance came 

 from the lips of a gombeen-man who began to 

 feel that his lucrative business of adding field 

 to field, so trenchantly denounced by Isaiah, 

 was tottering to its fall. 



But Sir Horace Plunkett was not one to be 

 content with the limiting of the gospel of Self- 

 help to certain districts. What was good 



