Which Irish Politican do you Admire the Most?

AT THE END OF 1925 THE IRA. WITHDREW ITS SUPPORT FROM DE
Valera ... 
But the Republican leader had made up his mind. In April he
launched a new organization, to which he gave the name Fianna
Fail.

It was to be a forward movement on strictly constitutional lines,
designed, as its founder said, "to get the nation out of the paralyz-
ing Treaty dilemma." Its primary objects were threefold:

(1) to
unite the nation in a policy of cutting the bonds of British control
one by one until the full internal sovereignty of the twenty-six
counties was established;

(2) to rebuild the nation's structure on
the basis of Irish culture and good economics;

(3) with a free and
united twenty-six counties in existence to undertake the task of
reuniting the people of the partitioned area with the rest of Ire-
land. The vigorous economic policy that was foreshadowed included a revival of native industries under the shelter of protec-
tive tariffs and a revolution in agricultural methods under which
the old ranching system would be replaced by tillage.

When he founded Fianna Fail de Valera was forty-four, and
there were many, even among those sympathetic towards his
aims, who believed that he would be an old man before he gained
any of his chief objectives.

The Treaty position had, so far as sur-
face appearances went, been firmly consolidated. All executive
authority in the Free State was vested in the British Crown. The
King's representative sat in the viceregal lodge like an English
viceroy of old. This representative had the right to veto legislation
and to appoint ministers and judges. The courts were subject to
the decisions of the British Privy Council. Irish ports were in the
hands of British naval forces and the Free State was bound to give
Britain any facilities asked for in time of war. Every member of
the Dail was required to take an oath of allegiance to the British
king.

That was the position, humiliating to all who believed in Ire-
land's nationhood and perilous in the light of the international
situation, which Fianna Fail set out to abolish.

De Valera did not
underestimate the difficulties which confronted him. He could
expect no support from Free State ministers. Tied by the provi-
sions of the Treaty, they would strenuously oppose the fulfilment
of ideals which once were theirs as well as his. From the extreme
Left, the believers in physical force, he would receive no assist-
ance. Banking interests and firms that had trade connections with
Britain were hostile also.

Even among the plain people there were
many who, fearful lest the challenge of Fianna Fail should pro-
voke fresh trouble with Britain, were slow to follow the new
banner. Since the Black-and-Tan War, they had become only too
painfully aware of what trouble with Britain might mean.

Yet from the moment of its inception, Fianna Fail began to
make rapid headway. The "small men" of the country the small
working farmers, the small shopkeepers, the rural laborers, the
artisans and clerks of the towns and cities, the university students,
the younger section of the intelligentsia had never been greatly
in love with the bourgeois government of which Mr. Cosgrave
was the head and of which Mr. Kevin O'Higgins was the "strong
man."

It was not merely that this government had donned the
imperialist robe and was governing by methods of repression;
that is appeared to be delimiting the national ideal to a share in
an equality of nations within the British Empire; that it drew its
party funds in the main from big business and from men of
wealth who had always been enemies of the national cause; that
its civil service was largely controlled by officials who scarcely
appeared to be aware that they were no longer bound to report to
Whitehall; or that the Senate was filled with relics of the decayed
Anglo-Irish ascendancy class, whose spiritual home was London,
not Dublin.

as Fianna Fail's social and economic program was
concerned, it was full steam ahead. The four years that elapsed
between the general election of 1933 and that of 1937 were extra-
ordinarily productive. The country settled down to an era of peace
and steady progress. De Valera's position had become almost
impregnable, and he was making full use of it to redeem the
pledges which he had given the country before he came into office.
The visionary was proving himself the practical man. The path-
finder was becoming the road builder.

What he set out to do was to translate the old Sinn Fein doc-
trine of self-sufficiency into solid achievement; to uproot the
heresy that the test of a nation's prosperity is the volume of its
external trade; to enable the country to feed and clothe itself and
establish its own industries; and to put an end once and for all to
Ireland's economic dependence on England.

Land division was speeded up, 

Gradually, the whole face of the countryside
was changed. The ruined cabins of the Land War were swept
away, and with the aid of government grants, new compact
dwellings were erected. Wheat, beet, oats, and barley took the
place of grass. The area under wheat alone increased in five years
from 20,000 acres to 220,000 acres. Three additional sugar factories
were erected one at Mallow, one at Thurles, one at Tuam and
the farmers were given a guaranteed market and a guaranteed
price for their beet crop. Within two years the acreage under
sugar beet increased from 15,000 to 57,000, almost sufficient to
supply three-fourths of the needs of the whole population.

The change-over from pasture to crops was not effected without
considerable opposition. The old legend, repeated in all the school-
books in the days when Irish education was controlled from Eng-
land, which pictured Ireland as "the fruitful mother of flocks and
herds," did not die easily. The tradition of wheat growing had
been lost, and many farmers still believed the old story that both
soil and climate were unsuitable. One man from the opposition
declared that "he would not insult his land by attempting to grow
wheat or beet."

There were other difficulties as well. There was a general slump
in world prices for agricultural products which was felt in Ire-
land as much as elsewhere. The opposition did not fail to make
capital out of the fact, and the farmers were told that the depres-
sion was mainly due to the ruinous economic war. Actually, the
downward movement in prices had been in progress for some
years before the Cosgrave government fell, and little had been
done to lighten the blow to the country's agricultural economy.
Tillage had remained at a standstill, and not only the bulk of the
nation's wheat supply, but millions of pounds' worth of agricul-
tural produce was being imported into a country which had at its
disposal all the means of producing its own food.

What Fianna Fail aimed at was nothing less than a complete
agricultural revolution, and de Valera's government were deter-
mined that neither the world depression nor the economic war
would stand in the way. Both of these, in fact, had created circum-
stances in which the only salvation for the working farmers lay
in a policy of self-sufficiency and exploitation of the home market.
The farmer was "the man in the gap/ 5 and it was essential that
he should be given help in the difficult period of transition. In
addition to halving the annuities, the agricultural grant was
doubled, bacon and butter imports were stopped, dairy prices
were stabilized, a system of bounties and subsidies was introduced,
and legislation was passed providing that every miller must buy
home-grown wheat up to a fixed amount.

De Valera told the
people that they would have to tighten their belts and go without
certain things, but he promised them that the sacrifices they were
to make would not go unrewarded. There were many who de-
clared that he was making life too difficult, but those in the fore-
front of the fight the working farmers gave him loyal support.
Tightening their belts a little was nothing new for a class who
had never known luxury and whose powers of resistance had been
strengthened throughout the years by the rigors of famine, rack-
renting, and evictions.

The industrial revival kept pace with the change-over in agri-
culture. Thirty years before, Arthur Griffith had pointed out that
the economic life of the country could never be balanced without
developing native industries. The swing-over from grazing to
tillage was not enough. Ireland, to be economically independent,
must not only feed herself, but supply herself with all the neces-
sities of life that could be produced at home; with such things as
clothes and boots and machinery and building materials, and
furniture and soap and cutlery. The Cosgrave government had
made tentative efforts to put Griffith's policy into operation by
introducing a limited number of protective tariffs, but the pres-
sure of British business interests had proved too much for them,
and the resultant advance in the direction of industrial self-suffi-
ciency was ludicrously small.

The policy of de Valera, on the other hand, was intensive and
far reaching. Making full use of the fiscal powers which it pos-
sessed, the government established one industry after another,
taking care not to make it a localized affair, but to spread the new
factories as widely as possible throughout the country.

This was not merely to avoid the evils that had followed in other countries
from the over-centralization of industry. It was part of a plan by
which de Valera sought to provide work for farmers sons and
daughters near their own homes, to make industry conform to the
general well-being of a country predominantly agricultural.

Thus
in the establishment of the new industries the location was re-
garded as of primary importance, and so it came about that Cork,
Sligo, Limerick, Drogheda, Carlow, Waterford, Arklow, Bally-
shannon, Portarlington, Tralee, Wexford, Nenagh, Galway, and
Thurles shared in the industrial revival by having planted in their
midst a factory or several factories which offered work to those
who otherwise would have gone straight from the farm to the
emigrant ship.

In 1934 a Turf Development Board was set up and
a commission was sent to Russia and Germany to investigate the
most up-to-date systems of turf-cutting and drying. A large area
of bogland was taken over at Clonsast in Leix, and an immense
scheme for draining and cutting was begun. Other areas were
taken over later, factories for the making of turf briquettes were
erected* and the beginnings of a plan to make the country largely
independent of imported coal were firmly laid.

The net value of industrial products increased from 18,218,000
in 1931 to 28,223,000 in 1940. The salaries and wages paid during
the same period to workers engaged in the production of those
goods increased from 8,009,000 to 13,701,000.

Eighty thousand
additional workers were put into employment. To illustrate the
tremendous change that took place the figures relating to a single
industry may be quoted. The year before de Valera came into
office, 5,158,000 pairs of boots and shoes had been imported; seven
years later, as a result of home production, the figure had fallen to
266,000.

In addition to the tillage and industrial drives, there was a
rapid expansion of the social services. Between 1932 and 1938 some
120,000 houses were built or reconstructed, representing 90,000
more than in the previous decade.

The amount paid in old age
pensions was increased by approximately 1,000,000; a scheme of
pensions for widows and orphans was put into operation; a Con-
ditions of Employment Act was passed establishing a 48-hour
week for adults and a 40-hour week for workers under 18, with an
annual holiday with pay of at least six days, exclusive of statutory
holidays. The same Act placed restrictions on the employment of
women and children, and laid down special regulations with
regard to night work and overtime.

An Unemployment Assistance Act brought benefits to workers in non-insurable jobs such
as rural laborers who had hitherto been excluded. Over eleven
and a half million pounds have been spent on relief-of-unemploy-
ment schemes by successive Fianna Fail governments as compared
with one million and a half under the Cosgrave regime. Grants
for free milk for needy children were initiated, and the yearly
expenditure on school meals was doubled.

Today the total amount
expended on social services is something like twelve and a half
millions annually, one of the highest, in proportion to revenue, in
the world.