56 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



certainty assume that there are from 150,000 to 

 200,000 such and similar farms in Ireland. 

 Ireland was originally covered with small farms ; 

 these are nowadays confined to from one-third to 

 one-half the total number of Irish holdings. The 

 occupants of these farms do not regard their 

 holding as an agricultural business ; they require 

 turf, dwelling, potatoes and milk, and are 

 willing to pay a rent for these, which cannot be 

 met by the sale of farm produce. As long as 

 this rent can be scraped together in some way by 

 means of any occupation, it is all one to them 

 where it comes from. Agriculture proper is 

 beyond their ken. Two or three days in the 

 spring are enough to get the fields into order ; a 

 little attention is necessary in the summer to 

 keep the hungry sheep off; a couple of days are 

 sufficient in the autumn to dig the potatoes and 

 to harvest the oats. Though the ideal of these 

 people is to increase their holdings they have 

 no intention of running the plough across their 

 fields. They hope rather to speculate in cattle 

 as comparatively large cattle breeders. 



It is scarcely possible to draw a definite line 

 between uneconomic and economic holdings. It 

 runs in general between 20 and 40 acres, hence 

 the creation of such farms and the enlargement 

 of small holdings to this area has become a 

 political battle cry. The deficit farms are, 

 economically, labourers' plots the owners of 

 which have no opportunity for work, or they are 

 in a technical sense grass farms whose owners 



