198 My Little Farm 



effect, so that we may take the Irish as a people 

 getting evicted from their own country by their 

 own cows. The Department of Agriculture has 

 found the bullocks capable of improvement, 

 which increases their profit and their hold on the 

 land ; but the Anglo-Roman conspiracy fails 

 to improve the people, and will permit no one 

 else to try, so that the peasants on one side of 

 the fence remain increasingly incapable to compete 

 against the bullocks on the other side. Hence 

 the need to " drive " the bullocks. 



In these typical circumstances, if the land 

 occupied by the peasants be at 2Os. an acre, the 

 land occupied by the bullocks must be at least 305. 

 This is the actual assessment of an expert employed 

 to value such land for the Estates Commissioners, 

 and from my own knowledge, it cannot be far 

 wrong. On official estimate, the bullock is thus 

 50 per cent, higher than the Irishman in economic 

 efficiency. 



Let us now take one of our peasants across the 

 fence, and see what must happen. He was paying 

 ^4 a year for rent, and now he has to pay ^45. 

 He Was working with a spade, and now he must 

 work with horses and implements. He was 

 unable to organise, unless for politics, and now he 

 must organise for industrial production, because he 

 must have implements, and cannot well have a 

 complete set on a farm so small, not to mention 

 the need to organise his buying and his selling, 

 now extended in a proportion at least as forty-five 

 is to four. With such increased opportunities, his 



