10
number that will allow to each person a proper standard of living, that will give to everyone who can work good food, clothing, and housing, and a reasonable amount of leisure and enjoyment of existence. Measured in this way, there may have been an excessive population in Ireland in 1844, while at the present day it may be much less than the country is capable of supporting in comfort.
SECTION IV.
The Tendency of Irish Agriculture.
The change in the size of Irish farms within the last sixty years has been very remarkable. In 1841, holdings between one and fifteen acres comprised over 81 per cent, of all the farms above one acre in the country. Ten years later (1851) holdings of this size were only 49 per cent, of the total, while in 1911 they were further reduced to 42 per cent. Farms between 15 acres and 30 acres were 11·5 per cent, of the total of agricultural holdings above one acre in 1841; they were 25 per cent, in 1851; and 26 per cent, in 1911. Farms of over 30 acres were only 7 per cent, of the total in 1841. They rose to 26 per cent, in 1851, and to 32 per cent, in 1911. The increase in the size of the holdings is, of course, coincident with the change from tillage to pasture. And we may assume that it would have been still greater, but that much of the land—in Ulster especially—could be made most productive by being kept in cultivation. In France, where tillage is very largely practised, the average size of the farms is about 22 acres, while upwards of 85 per cent, of the farms in the country are under 25 acres. Belgium, the area of which is about one-third that of Ireland—11,373 square miles to 32,531—and with a population of over six and a-half millions, in 1896 possessed 829,625 farms of an average size of about eight acres.[1]
The economic revolution that took place in Ireland after the Famine is shown by the relative movements in the number of the people and of the live stock. Between 1851 and 1911 the number of persons on each 1,000 acres of land diminished by[2]
- ↑ See the Statistical Survey of Irish Agriculture in the admirable work on—"Ireland: Industrial and Agricultural," published by the Department of Agriculture and Technical Instruction for Ireland, and edited by Mr. W. P. Coyne. It must be remembered that Belgium and a great part of France are devoted to small farming, carried on under the pressure of a strong competition and land hunger, and with, as a rule, a low standard of comfort. The competition for farms is very great. A professor in Louvain University related to me an instance in his own experience where the occupier of a holding happened to got a cold, and immediately over 30 of his neighbours took the first train to the town in which the landowner lived to put in applications for the farm.
- ↑ Agricultural Statistics of Ireland, 1911.
