Correspondence
A Letter from Dublin
[To the Editor of the Seems:roe.]
Snt,--The time has come when news from the Irish Free State may be good news. Last year we touched bottom in economic and spiritual depression ; now we are recovering. The revolu- tion, bringing in its train the departure of a moneyed elasiand the virtual break-up of the old social order, resulted in an immense drain of population, until there remained in the countryside only those who could support themselves on what remained of property. That, in plain termi, is what happened, and now those who remain have before them the task of creating a new economy that will expand and support the natural increase of population. The fignres published this week in the Daily Mail, intended to shoe, that unemployment has decreased in the Free State while it has increased in England, are misleading : the decrease represents wholesale emigration, not increase of employment.
Two good harvests have lifted the farmers from distress, and the relief on the farms is reflected in the towns; where a distinct, though small, improvement of business is observed. The Ministry of Agriculture is probably the most successful of the Free State Government's departments. Its measures have put the egg, butter and pig trades on the high road of improvement. High hope is built on the establishment of the dressed meat industry on a large scale. at Drogheda, where a new company, in which Smithfield's experience is represented, is about to begin operations. The Irish cattle-raiser whose produce goes to England as dead meat will be relieved from the trying vicissitudes that have reduced the cattle trade so sorely of late. Foot-and-mouth disease no longer will close his market, as recently': with calamitous suddenness. During November the first Irish sugar-beet factory will receive its first consignments of beet. In Ireland the beet crop has done well this year, and the operations at the sugar factory will be watched with the liveliest interest. It is reported that the mills throughout the Free State this season have doubled their purchases of oats for grinding. A tariff on imported oatmeal is thanked by some for the revival of Irish milling, although others attribute the change to a popular reversion to oatmeal as a staple foodstuff.
The strike in the British mines has affected the greater part of Southern Ireland comparatively little : firstly, because there is so small an industrial consumption of coal ; and secondly, because peat is available as a substitute. During the last week, however, an acute fuel shortage developed in Dublin, on account of the failure of certain expected importa- tions of coal. Gross profiteering sprang up, and it was common to see the poor waiting in queues for sods of turf sold at twopence- a-piece. Supplies of turf available for the city are limited by the fact that cutting in the early months of the year took no account of abnormal demand. In County Kildare turf is dug, crushed and cut by -machingry, although only on a small scale. Were this system worked on the Cana- dian scale, Ireland would have a plentiful supply of cheap fuel at all times.
During the years since the War the consumption of elec- tricity has increased in Dublin by 70 per cent., and demands are multiplying so fast that the City Commissioners have undertaken the enlargement of the power station to some- thing like double its present size, in order to cope with the demands expected next year. Estimates also have been passed for the linking of Dublin to the Shannon electrical supply in the year 1929, when the waters will be let into the great race. Already Messrs. Sieinens, Schuckert are Under- taking to supply electricity to Limerick city and neighbour- hood—from their' coal-fired power-station, of course. The work of the German engineers now has reached an impressive itage; At Ardnacrusha the enormous transformation of the country suggests an earthquake. A German engineer told me that the Irish labour has " been infected by the German microbe of work " ; and certainly the spectac:e of Irish workers going about their tasks with briskness, energy and discipline amid works of the highese engineering science is inspiritisifs.
If native enterprise as well as native labour learns from the Germans something of modern efficiency, the Shannon scheme will yield benefits beyond cheap electricity. The great danger is that it will fail to be followed by enterprise, or else will lead to big foreign exploitation. The Free State's progress towards up-to-date standards in material things is marked further by the increase of long- distance motor omnibus services. Northern Ireland already is honeycombed with motor services, and now a daily service between Dublin and Clones, on the Northern border, has come into being as well as several daily services to places in the counties of Leinster.
Perhaps the chief losses in Ireland occasioned by the coal strike were those that befel the tourist traffic. Americans who were diverted from England to the Continent naturally cut Ireland out of their itineraries, and there were fewer holiday- makers from England itself. The most interesting feature of the tourist season was the growth of the motoring holiday. Everywhere the hotels did the larger part of their business in serving motorists who called for a meal or merely to stay the night. Ireland, with its richly varied scenery and its now quite good roads is specially attractive to the motorist ; but there is a disagreeable side to the story : everywhere hotel people tell me that the visitors they like best have disap- peared—the people who come to fish and shoot. It would be a sorry thing to see all the racy old anglers' hostelries turned wholly into motorists' places of call. Confidence in the future of Ireland as a holiday resort is betokened by the expansion of the Dublin hotels. The famous old Gresham has risen from the ashes of Sackville Street in glorified form, and another large hotel has been built in Abbey Street. Both are fine pieces of architecture contrasting sharply with most of the reconstructed buildings in the zone of destruction. The City Architect, Mr. Horace O'Rourke, himself the artist of some admirable pieces of work with a classical flavour, has suc- ceeded in compelling conformity to a dignified scheme in rebuilding the area around the old Pdh Office.
Political activity by the Government party is in some measure in abeyance pending the outcome of the Imperial Conference, but the four or five parties opposed to the Govern- ment continue their campaigns with week-end meetings, in preparation for the General Election that is expected early in the New Year. The election is likely to turn upon the tariff problem. On this question there are divisions within the Government party itself, some members following the high protectionist doctrine of Mr. Griffith—which also is held by most of the opposition groups—while others contend that modern mass production has forbidden the industrialization of Ireland, and that no burden should be laid on the develop- ment of our prime industry, agriculture, to the Danish stage of prosperity.—I am, Sir, &c., Yovn Imo CoannsPoNnENT.
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