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