Small farmers in 1912

Qualitymark

From Padraic Colum's My Irish Year (you can download the book at archive.org). Very interesting about why co-ops didn't really take off in their classical sense (the huge political power of the gombeens, basically) and about farming methods and diet and relationships then. Sorry about the jammed-together words; this is copied from the PDF:

This is a country of small farms. There are many holdings of fifty acres and above it, and there are several grazing ranches of some hundreds of acres each, but the fifteen to twenty acres farm is representative, and the household existing upon it is the typical household.
In such a household there are, say, five children three sons and two daughters or three daughters and two sons. For the purpose of illustration I will take the case of a farmer with three sons and two daughters. Let us call them, Pat, Michael, John, Mary, and Bridget.
Pat is heir apparent to the farm, and his future is secure. Mary is the eldest girl and is entitled to a dowry of about £100. The father will provide this by saving part and by borrowing part on the security ofthefarm. Marywithherdowrygetsahusband. Pat and Mary are thus provided for.
Three children are left—Michael, John, and Bridget. IMichael's share of the farm when he comes to man's estate will be a £10 note, for Pat cannot afford any more. Pat will marry a girl with a dowry, but part of her dowry must go to paying off the debt on the farm and giving Michael his share. As he cannot have the farm nor money to buy a farm, Michael must trytogeta"position" inordertogeta"position"
;
he must have education, and the education is given him that he may become (1) A priest on the foreign mission; (2) a national school teacher; (3) a con- stabulary man; (4) a shop assistant in the town. One of these careers an Irish farmer always designs for his second son. He would not dream of making him a tradesman, mainly for the reason that a trades- man is not " genteel." So Michael gets his education and his £10 note and becomes a constabulary man, or a shop assistant, or drifts out of the country.
John and Bridget are left. Bridget has no dowry therefore cannot get a husband, and John cannot get a wife with a dowry, and therefore cannot get a farm. He could become an agricultural labourer, get a cottage, a wife, though a dowerless one, and live comfortably at home. But John will not become a labourer. He would at once feel de-classed. His family would be mortified if he became a labourer, andmarriedalabourer'sdaughter. Afarmer'sson becomeanagriculturallabourer—never. Hispeople are raising the price of a passage for him, and one fine day John will go off to America with a score of boys and girls from the district.

countryjimbo

Sounds fascinating, downloading the full book now, thanks for posting.

blue5000

Sounds like history is repeating itself. Only difference is more people are educated before they go.:(

A2LUE42

To make it a bit easier to download

http://ia600508.us.archive.org/0/items/cu31924028140543/cu31924028140543.pdf

Qualitymark

More from the same book:

Michael Cunliffe walked behind his cattle. On his left hand were some acres of tumbled bog and waste ground where rushes stood beside pools of water. The ground on his right hand showed the black soil of the bog. The potatoes were being dug, and on the ridge were spectral potato-stalks. Back of the house there was a tillage field, a pasture field and a meadow with after- grass. Forty years before CunHffe had come into the place from a neighbouring county. It was after the famine, land was cheap, and he got ab out thirty acres of land, good and bad, at a low rent. He had built the house himself ; he had dug the clay out of the pit, mixed it and raised his walls foot by foot. Friends had helped him to lay the long beams that held the roof. He had woven branches through the beams and had his roof thatched with the straw of his crop.

I love this description.