DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Etc., FOR IRELAND. 289 



Belong-ing' also, rather more to the direct than to the indirect means, are 

 those scientific investig-ations, surveys, and experiments related to agriculture, 

 fisheries, and other industries, which can only be rightly carried out for a country 

 with the aid of the State. Several undertakings of this kind have been set on 

 foot during the past year by the Department, details of which will be given 

 further on. One of these investigations, which dealt with the terrible and, 

 hitherto, mysterious epidemic amongst the calves of the Munster dairy farms, 

 has already had a strikingly successful result. In this case the Department 

 acted in co-operation with the highest available scientific authority, and the 

 discovery in which the inquiry resulted will be of invaluable utility to stock- 

 breeders, not only in Ireland but in every country. Monsieur Nocard, the 

 French veterinary bacteriologist to whom the investigation was entrusted, has 

 discovered absolutely the cause of the malady, and has prescribed an effectual 

 and simple method for its prevention. When it is borne in mind that the 

 mortality amongst calves in the affected districts has in many years reached an 

 average of 80 per cent., it will be seen that this one investigation, undertaken 

 during the Department's first year of existence, will have been the means, if its 

 lesson be applied, of saving immense annual sums to the farmers of Munster, 

 as well as of making a valuable addition to the stock of veterinary knowledge. 



These various direct means of assisting the development of agriculture and 

 industry will be pursued by the Department with careful regard to the limits 

 which it is desirable to observe, even in Ireland, where exceptional action in 

 this respect is justified, in the relations of the State with the domain of private 

 enterprise. It is a chief aim of the Department to stimulate, rather than to 

 weaken, the spirit of industrial self-help, and its action will be governed by this 

 idea. Its endeavours will be mainly confined to removing the obstacles which 

 at present hinder in Ireland the due exercise of initiative in industrial matters, 

 and to creating a state of things in which private enterprise can act with 

 confidence and freedom. 



5. Educational Policy. 



To the educational part of its work the Department looks as the most 

 powerful and abiding means of promoting the end in view. In a country 

 which is so industrially depleted as Ireland, and in which the economic drain 

 is still continuing, the direct measures for improving industry above referred 

 to, however valuable, and however they may extend as the work progresses, 

 and as legislation creates new opportunities, cannot by themselves alone 

 produce very great or deep results, and large expectation based upon them 

 may lead to disappointment. But a proper system of education, which, while 

 paying due heed to the training of the character and the will, will train the 

 intelligence to deal with concrete things as well as with ideas, and which will 

 give to the generation receiving its skill and knowledge that which will bring 

 out and make them conscious of their own powers and resources in practical 

 affairs, cannot have disappointing results. Experience has amply proved that 

 it is to the individual and national resourcefulness and the confident character 

 thus developed by an educational system, more than to any other cause, 

 countries which have in recent times achieved marked industrial success owe 

 their progress. The Department, accordingly, feel that however imperfect 

 other forms of effort may be, or whatever the conditions which may prevail in 

 Ireland, if the people be placed in full possession of the benefits of such an 

 educational system, they will have the instrument of their own salvation in 

 their hands. Supplemented by such a system moreover, and directed by a 



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