CHAPTER XXII.

THE NUNS AND TECHNICAL TRAINING.

I Now propose to make a summary review of some of the industrial and technical work which nuns have been doing in Ireland.

Foxford is a village in the northern part of Co. Mayo, not far from the shore of Lough Conn. Economists and statesmen have occupied themselves from time to time with the problem of relieving the poverty of the village and the district. The cure for economic congestion is to relieve the congested district of its surplus population. Foxford was labelled by economists a congested dis trict." Then apply the prescription, and the cure is complete. Hence the emigration schemes of Mr. Tuke, Goldwin Smith, besides others who, if they had not more sense, should at least have more sympathy with a people who were the victims not of nature but of man. That economic cure was as simple as misunderstanding the true meaning of congestion and shirking a plain public duty. Mr. Balfour later on went to see the place for himself, saw the need of some remedy, and established temporary relief work in the meantime. But temporary relief is but temporary patchwork. No remedy will effect a permanent cure for a social or economic evil unless one which has in itself what I may call the potential energy of permanent productiveness. But the blood-letting therapeutics of the economic surgeons and the temporary relief given by Mr. Balfour's more humane method had left the condition of Foxford as it was. There was the disease, as patent, painful, and destructive as ever.

Now, to adopt Sir Horace's economic distinction, there remained two sections of the people the "productive class" who produce, and the "unproductive class" who consume, but who neither sow nor spin. The former would include, I suppose, the wealthy landlords of the country, capitalists, economists, and statesmen; the latter would include those who retire to convents from the battle of life, the actual position of whose institutions can hardly be "reconciled with the known conditions of the country." Here then was a spacious field of labour for the economic insight and the philanthropy of all-convents and convent critics. And the work appealed to the latter more than to the former, since, as we are told, they alone know how to do it thoroughly, and they claim the exclusive right to do such work whenever it promises to be productive of salaries.

There was the River Moy washing the village with its rapid waters as it flowed idly into Killala Bay. Foxford and the whole district of Kinnemany was a picture of poverty, helplessness, and hopelessness. The Hon. Emily Lawless, in one of her novels, paints a disheartening picture of the "indifference to squalor-rather the admission of it-in peasant Ireland" generally. She made her notes, made her book, went her way and sold it; but Burren, whence she got her model, remained where it was, and as it was for all she and similar critics cared. "When all is said, however," she writes, "we must leave the ill to work its own cure. National idiosyncracies are hard things to mend, and exceedingly awkward things to meddle with." When she had said that she had said all

she wanted to say or meant to do. Many others have told us the same story in interviews, magazines, and books, as if we had never known of it till the theoretic philanthropists came "to see for themselves," and then went to tell the public what they saw.

In 1891 the Sisters of Charity were brought to Foxford

by the Bishop of Achonry, and, according to a writer in The Daily Chronicle, this is what they found there:"The country is dreary, the earth dark, sodden with rain as if it never had time to dry between one shower and another, and covered with boulders that offer an almost insurmountable obstacle to cultivation. The resident gentry are few, and apparently indifferent for the most part to the condition of the people so long as rents are paid. To pay these rents the men usually migrate to England for the summer and autumn, and find work with farmers, leaving their wives and children to garner as best they may their miserable harvest. With the month of November sets in a period of winter idleness, no labour to do, and no market for it if done." The Sisters turned a large barn into a schoolhouse, spent their ingenuity in getting in the children, for though the district is very populous they came very irregularly owing to poverty and distance. In a short time the daily attendance had increased so much that school room had to be extended. There are now nearly 250 girls in average attendance. As the education of the children went on, Mrs. Morrogh Bernard, the superioress, looked forward into the future, and asked herself this practical question, which, by the way, the economists of the Department do not seem to have seriously considered whilst they have been dispersing itinerant technical teachers over the country-what is to become of these children when they grow up and have learned all we will have taught them? Are time and money to be spent in training them for the benefit of the foreign countries whither they are sure to go for want of a way of living here? And the answer she made to herself was not to "leave the ill to work out its own cure," nor did she inconsiderately set down its cause to "national idiosyncracies," and take no pains to consider a cure. Miss Bremner, an English non-Catholic

• Feb., 1897.

*

visitor, thus describes her answer in the Educational Times :-"Walking in the Community garden, the foaming Moy (Mary's river) always sounded in her ears, "Try me, try me,' it said quite plainly. What could it do, all this water power running to waste? It could turn a saw-mill, but there was little timber. It could supply motor power for a mill of some kind. Since the neighbourhood is agricultural, supporting a large number of sheep, why not buy their wool from the farmers, start a woollen factory, and sell woven goods? The Rev. Mother mentioned the idea to a few people, and they douched it well with cold water. A very likely thing that nuns-women who are, and always have been, mere babes in knowledge of the world-could buy wool, manage a mill, when labour is so difficult to control nowadays, sell in the right markets. The good Mother and her senses must have parted company to think of it for a moment. Clouds, opposition, difficulties, arose on every side, but still Mother Bernard's faith made her calmly say 'It is God's work; He must help His people.' The general opinion was that the nuns were fools, and the feeling of being opposed did not make the task of these There is no need to lengthen

gentle women more easy.

the story. The Divine Providence Factory has been a great success. It has been extended again and again till it bids fair to swallow up the Convent Garden; it is still far from an imposing building. It is £17,000 in debt, but then it has brought work and wages to more than a hundred people, and has caused comparative wealth to flow into Foxford. There are numbers of workers who earn 15s. or 20s. a week, and that means wealth. Last year £2,600 was spent in the purchase of wool in the neighbourhood. They make blankets, travelling rugs, flannels, shawls, serges, tweeds, friezes, and other woollen stuffs. Their goods cannot be called low-priced, but * April, 1899.

those who like a good article for their money will not consider them dear. The nuns have an annual turn-over of between £8,000 and £9,000." The nuns began the factory in the autumn of 1894, and what I have just quoted from Miss Bremner is only part of the change effected in less than five years. In 1894 there was not a butcher's shop in Foxford; in 1897 there were three. There are more than 1,000 families in the district making a radius of five miles around Foxford, nearly all occupiers of plots of land, or rather rocks, of a few acres in extent. In 1894 there was a manure heap before every door, and their live stock were installed in the kitchen; to-day hardly a manure heap is to be seen before a cabin door in all Kinnemany; flower beds have supplanted them; the chattels no longer lodge with their masters, but occupy houses of their own; several of the cottiers have planted orchards, and nearly all the district is dotted over with chestnuts, sycamores, firs, and poplars. I again call Miss Bremner to witness:-"In the Sisters' garden you will also find another branch of technical work-a cooperative creamery. People come and sell their milk to the creamery, obtaining ready cash in exchange. At first they were distrustful, and eyed the thing askance; the Sisters lost on the venture, because in their desire to do good they gave too big a price. But now it is an acknowledged success. There is a constant coming and going of small children with milk cans. The milk is made into excellent butter, and since the best and most recent machinery is used, the creamery affords an objectlesson in dairy work. One skilled dairy woman, with three or four learners, is constantly engaged in the dairy work. A third branch of the nuns' organisation of Foxford labour is a large workroom where various employments are taught and carried on. A number of girls are busy shirt-making, several sewing-machines being in use. There are a dozen knitting-machines which turn out large