32 My Little Farm 



Two acres of it were " bottom," adjoining the 

 stream, and two acres at the other end were cut- 

 away bog, some of this a surface of bare sand, 

 some thickly coated with heather, and some so 

 deep in marsh that no cow could walk in it. 

 There is not a yard of it now without clover, and 

 ?5 to $ worth of young cattle get their only 

 grazing on it every year, which proves it to be more 

 productive than the whole farm was when I began. 

 The conversion from marsh and heather to clover 

 and crested dogstail has been accomplished 

 absolutely without tillage, and the soil seems to 

 be still improving, though five years have passed 

 since I expended the last cent on it. It is 

 admitted by those around me that in any average 

 year I get back more than the whole cost of the 

 reclamation, and yet those who have land of the 

 kind, all waste, look on with their hands in their 

 pockets. Some, however, are beginning to move, 

 now that they see the reclamation permanent and 

 the whole cost coming back once a year. Here 

 is an industrial investment at 100 per cent, per 

 annum, in a country which exports her working 

 power and has a surplus balance of many millions * 

 invested abroad, for much less than five per cent, 

 all round. 



* This is only the balance on which dividends are paid 

 at a single Irish Bank, and it consists chiefly in Govern- 

 ment securities. What of all other heads? It is clear that 

 what Ireland lacks is not capital, but the character to afford 

 it reproductive security. The men among us who control 

 "Education" to keep the Irish mind incapable of this are very 

 large investors of our idle capital in foreign countries. They 

 gather up the money out of our poverty, and they keep us afraid 

 to ask questions. 



