CHAPTER V. 

 ON THE FENCE 



THEIR own employers, paying no wages, the 

 peasants ignore the money value of working time 

 lost by bad fences. One might think they would 

 imagine some value in the work they could do for 

 the time lost at herding, but they debit that in 

 the leisure account rather than as waste of produc- 

 tive power. The dominant motive in work is the 

 length of leisure procurable by the product, on a 

 standard of life fixed low, rather than the higher 

 standard attainable by a full working year, as in 

 other countries. Apart from some local excep- 

 tions, as in Wexford and on a few farms tilled by 

 wage labour here and there, we have no full year's 

 work at farming anywhere in Ireland outside 

 Ulster. As I write this, the winter is nearly half 

 gone, and except in tending live stock, which is not 

 enough occupation for one person per household, 

 I have not seen one day's work done within any 

 distance of me for the past six weeks. With this 

 small exception, the productive process is abso- 

 lutely suspended, while the consumptive side of 

 the account expands increasingly at this time of 

 the year. Meantime, the fences are down, and 

 the school time of children is to be lost by herding 

 next year, helping to assure agricultural incapacity 



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