Calves and Statesmen 99 



years, three cows had been milked, but they were 

 real cows, two of them in the dairy herd book, 

 and the third as good as either. Those in charge 

 could not be induced to see that it was possible to 

 raise five good calves on the milk of one cow in the 

 course of her normal milking period. Milking 

 the cows themselves, they knew that the quantity 

 per cow was at least twice as much as they had been 

 accustomed to see, but they would never admit 

 that calves could be fed in the same proportion. 

 In their view, I was to breed and feed cows on a 

 scale higher by a hundred per cent., while they 

 reckoned the product in their old style, at half 

 the rate of my improvement and expenditure. I 

 might advance the scale of production as much as 

 I could, but my scale of profit must remain still 

 at the barbaric margin. I had already raised 

 wages above the local scale, to assure labour a share 

 in the plus value of progress, but I must count on 

 no remuneration at all for the plus factor in skill 

 and capital. Such is the human equation in the 

 Irish industrial problem, and it is by no means 

 confined to the farm. The milk must have been 

 stolen, but by whom ? I do not know ? It 

 might have been stolen from the man in charge 

 by outsiders. 



I removed the man in charge and replaced him 

 by one considerably worse. Early in 1913, I saw 

 five of my calves dead in eight days, and when I 

 asked the man what he thought of it, he told me 

 my plans were impossible, which might readily be 

 proved, from his point of view, by our death-rate 



