University of Wisconsin Superior - Gitche Gumee Yearbook (Superior, WI)

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GI TONE CUM EE V 8 IRELAND AND HOME RULE The stage on which the tragedy of Irish life is being acted is a country ‘‘piteously eloquent of its hapless history. It is an island about two-thirds the size of Wisconsin, one great farm of romantic hills and picturesque fields which sorely need the touch of the husbandman. The pathetic record of its political mismanagement is written in the dilapidated cottages which clot its plains and valleys, and in the drooping shoulders of its men grown old in servitude. “Always and everywhere one feels the brooding presence of the lives that have been lived, of the history made, and of the problems remorselessly bequeathed.” Into this island, one beautiful May morning in the twelfth century, came Henry II. of England on a conquest for land. He plundered the farmhouses where contented peasants lived in simple happiness, and left the island a desert marked by ditches containing the bodies of thousands of martyrs. From this visitation dates the beginning of Ireland's most difficult problem—the problenv of the land; for, during the next six centuries, practically all of the tillable land of the island was taken from the people by force, and conferred upon the titled and adventurous favorites of the crown of England. And to-day this condition is no better. The tillers of the soil, comprising eight-tenths of the people, own but one-tenth of the land, and that the poorest soil of the island. Within an hour’s ride of these impoverished districts where starving humanity suffers, slaves, and slowly dies on stony hillsides, are thousands of acres of beautiful rolling fields of green upon which graze bur a few scattered herds of cattle. The land laws permitting the existence of such conditions arc the most unjust that ever disgraced any statute book in a civilized country. Nor is this the only evil condition in the little island. Equally pernicious is the system of administration and taxation. With a population about the same as Scotland, Ireland is forced to maintain a police system twice as large, and to pay five million dollars more for its maintenance. Her judicial system costs her one million a year more. The cost of her total civil government amounts to nearly twice as much, and she enjoys the privilege of supporting five times as many officials. That Ireland, in proportion to her ability, is paying fourteen million dollars too much annually, is the verdict of a commission appointed a few years ago to investigate her condition. England overtaxes Ireland, she inflicts her with vast unnecessary burdens, she squeezes out of her about twice as much, in proportion to her means, as she exacts from her own countrymen, and the net result of the whole is an increasing loss. The indignation of Ireland’s sympathizers is further aroused by the chaotic condition of her school system. Poorly equipped schools costing less than the amount paid for her police system, underfed and undertrained teachers administering a curriculum wholly divorced from the economic needs and realities of the country; and to crown all, a National Hoard of educational amateurs insensible to Irish ideas:— such are the prominent features of the Irish system of education. In our country, the first lesson that the young American learns is to love ar.d cherish the stars and stripes. He is told of the Father of his Country ar.d of the great Emancipator.

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CARI. H. DALLY

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Page 9 GITCsHE GUM EE The educational system of Ireland, however, provides for no such training. The young Irishman is not taught to love and cherish the harp and shamrock; he is not told of Daniel O’Connell and Robert Emmet. Instead he is taught about England and her great men. It would seem that the Irish schools are maintained to destroy every trace of an Irish civilization. Irish education will never he satisfactory until Irish people have taken it into their own hands. If anything were wanting to complete this picture of oppression and injustice, it is more than supplied in the great factor of colonization. Seven centuries ago, England planted Ireland with Scotch and English colonists. Their descendants now occupy the county known as' Ulster, a hotbed of political unrest. Every nation has its source of social discord. In America it is monopoly; in Germany, taxation; in Persia, finance; and in Ireland it is Ulster. Why is the legislation, administration, and taxation of Ireland the most unjust and most poorly managed in the world? Because of the Ulster influence. The citizens of Ulster hold every important government position in Ireland. Is it just that the county of Ulster, containing less than one-tenth of the population of all Ireland, should control the whole country? No. Is this a representative government that gives the people liberty and justice? Emphatically, no. Such is the fruit of seven hundred years of English rule in Ireland—a rule which Sidney Brooks describes by the following words: “I scarcely know what fault it lacks or what merit it possesses.” It has reduced the population of the island from nine million in 1847 to four million to-day. Every year sees from thirty to forty thousand men and women leaving the country. The young, the vigorous, and the fit are fleeing as from a plague; the unfit arc staying. Ireland is degenerating into a country of aged and infirm. It is the only white man’s country where the number of souls is decreasing instead of increasing from year to year. The nation is gradually dying. If this constant decrease keeps up, “Irishmen will be as scarce on the banks of the Shannon as Indians on the shores of Manhattan. Alongside of this decrease in population has gone a diminishing of the country’s wealth. Ireland is the poorest country in the world. Hundreds of thousands of her inhabitants exist only through contributions from other lands. In thousands upon thousands of families the men and boys must spend six months of the year in England in order to earn enough money to carry their families through the winter. In a word, the Irish in Ireland are kept alive by the Irish who have gone to other lands. The average earning capacity per capita is only seventy-five dollars annually. And this deplorable condition has grown up under the administration of England, the greatest country in the world. What have the Irish done to deserve such treatment? For a very apt illustration let us turn our attention to the great army of Britain. There is not a battlefield of any importance in modern English warfare that has not been stained by the Irishman’s blood. He was with Edward IV. in the War of the Roses. He was with Marlborough at the bloody battle of Malplaquet. He let! the army that defeated Napoleon at the ghastly battle of Waterloo. He was with that invincible line of red as it swept across the plains of burning African sand. With that line he climbed hand over hand up the slopes of mountains. Boer cannon crumbled the rocks in his face. Boer riflemen poured a storm of bullets about him. His blood has reddened the sod, moistened the grass, and flowed in the streams all over the