ECONOMIC HOLDINGS 301 



the estate, the rest of which was cut up into two or 

 three big grazings to be let on the eleven months system. 

 When an estate is bought out and resettled by the 

 Commissioners the landlord's demesne and grazings 

 become available for division ; the whole is parcelled 

 out afresh, a work requiring considerable patience and 

 diplomacy, until, as in the case before us, men who 

 formerly held from two to four acres each had been 

 placed on " economic " holdings of twenty to forty 

 acres, on which also decent houses had been built by 

 grants from the Commissioners. Instead of rent the 

 farmers have the usual sixty-eight years annuity to 

 pay, and one of the chief problems now before Ireland 

 is how to teach these colonies of small holders to live 

 at something above their old level of bare subsistence 

 and to make the land reasonably productive for the 

 community. There are no leaders left, the gentry are 

 gone, and there is no middle class except the priests, 

 the dispensary doctors, and tradesmen in the distant 

 towns. There is also no tradition of good farming, 

 and few examples of dealing with the land except by 

 grazing, yet grazing on thirty acres means little more 

 than idleness and destitution. Fortunately most of 

 the men on the estate we saw had been in the habit of 

 hiring themselves out in England, and were with great 

 toil tilling as much of these holdings, four or five 

 acres each, as was possible with their limited stock of 

 horses and implements. It is to these districts that Sir 

 Horace Plunkett's co-operative movement is most 

 particularly addressed : not only can it make the farm- 

 ing earn its due profits and save the men from being 

 sweated by the gombeen man even more oppressively 

 than they ever were by the landlord, but also the pro- 

 phets of co-operation see in the society an outlet for 

 men's social energies and a democratic form of leader- 



