152 THE IRISH AGRARIAN PROBLEM. 



has substituted the bank as a source of capital for 

 the usurer. Credit in Ireland has formerly been 

 very dear — 20 to 40 per cent, being not unusual/ 



The Congested Districts Board, the Board of 

 Public Works, and above all, in recent times, the 

 Raiffeisen banks, have made personal credit 

 cheaper. The new Act creates a broader basis 

 for real credit, though not indeed an unlimited 

 one, the farm being allowed to be mortgaged only 

 to ten times the amount of the annual payment. 



But the Irish farmer has no desire to borrow 

 capital. He does not wish to increase his obliga- 

 tions. He will put more work into his farm, and 

 will keep his standard of living as low as it was 

 before. He is quite right to avoid new obliga- 

 tions, for they would narrow for him the margin 

 between solvenc}'' and bankruptcy. The borrow- 

 ing of working capital would endanger his 

 existence, yet without it his success is impos- 

 sible. There is nothing left for him then but to 

 let his lands for grazing to wealthier neighbours. 

 That has already happened under the Ashbourne 

 Act, and it will happen in greater measure under 

 the Wyndham Act.^ The very Act which was 

 intended to divide up the grazing farms will 

 create, in many cases, a class of peasantry whose 

 existence can only be prolonged for a time by 

 continuance of these grazing farms. 



There is no possibility of excluding these 



^ Bailey's Report, pp. 11, 24-26. 

 ^ Ib.^ pp. I, 18, 19, 25. 



