Calves and Statesmen 



against cold and scarcity this winter. While the 

 industrial psychology remains so primitive, it is 

 hard to improve it by State expenditure, and I 

 believe that my own method is more educative, 

 showing my neighbours how I can make money out 

 of their incapacity. They know as well as I do 

 that the profit of rearing calves may in any year 

 be much increased, and may in some years be 

 more than doubled, by making the start in winter ; 

 but it conflicts with our charming custom of 

 making holiday for a whole quarter of the agricul- 

 tural year. I know of no other peasantry in the 

 world who could do it and keep roofs over them, 

 but then, no other peasantry in the world have 

 their industrial inefficiency so generously endowed 

 by Government expenditure from the pockets of 

 hard working people who pay taxes out of other 

 industries in other regions of the realm. The 

 rest of the community is taxed for the 

 luxury and privilege of the Connaught peasant 

 who sleeps until nine, takes a walk until five, and 

 then goes visiting until the next bed time. I 

 cannot say exactly how far this style of spoon-fed 

 agriculture extends in our island, but it is certain 

 that more than half the peasant population spend 

 the winter as I describe in every part of the West 

 within my knowledge and there is not much of 

 the West that I do not know. 



The contrast between my four starved calves in 

 1912 and my sixteen fine ones in 1914, on the same 

 supply of milk, illustrates the human factor in our 

 agricultural problem very well, but it is not yet 



