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rvently. Now on large works with sub-contractors, gangers, artizans, and labourers, by piece and by day, it is no easy matter to keep matters going smoothly. It is needless to say that skilled artizans, such as engine-men and the like, are not picked up in county Clare; but no especial spite is felt against them. They are Englishmen, and that is sufficient; but if a gang of Clare men be dismissed and one of Limerick men taken on, there are signs of trouble in the air. Justice must be done to county Clare. Are the children of the soil to want bread while strangers eat it? For a Limerick man to the poor untravelled folk of Clare Castle, of Kilrush, and of Kilbaha is a stranger. Yet the small peasant cultivators on an islet near Islandavanna flatly refused to work at the "slob." Smoking a pipe and looking at a cow and calf grazing was a more congenial occupation, so they preferred staying at home. The slob work was too hard entirely. Now, this may appear incredible to those who have only seen the awakened Irishmen who do a vast quantity of the hardest and roughest kind of work in Great Britain and in the United States. In the latter country it is a matter of notoriety, supported in my own case by the evidence of my eyesight, that almost all the hard manual labour is performed by Irishmen and negroes. But downright steady hard work is just what the Western Irishman is not accustomed to at home. He will work nobly for a spurt, but when the spurt is over he loves to loiter and do as he likes. It is no easy matter to found such a centre of industry as the works on the Fergus, but it is to be sincerely hoped that many such attempts will be made despite of discouragement. Experience has shown that the neglected and, in many localities, degraded West is abundantly capable of improvement. Mr. Drinkwater determined to take the only way possible in these parts, that is, to feed and lodge his little army of workpeople, to establish a club for them, to give them a reading-room, to get porter for them at wholesale price--in short, to afford them every inducement to prefer the new settlements on the Fergus to the wretched huts and groggeries of Clare Castle and the surrounding villages. He insists, moreover, that every man shall have his half-pound of meat, either beef, mutton, or bacon, every day but Friday. There is no pretence of philanthropy in all this. It is done on the ground that it is foolish to pay a man liberal wages, if
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