Half-year decline in railway company’s receipts due to big drop in cattle trade (1905)
The 119th half-yearly general meeting of the Midland Great Western Railway of Ireland Company was held during this week in 1905 at the Broadstone Terminus, Dublin.
The Honourable Richard A Nugent (chairman) in moving the adoption of the report referred with regret to the resignation of Sir R Cusack from the chairmanship of the board, rejoiced, however, that they would not lose his “ripe experience”, as Sir Ralph was still a valuable member of the board.
The most prominent feature, “and the least welcome”, in the accounts for the past half-year was the large reduction of £10,381 in the receipts.
He said that the “experience of the company was that when the livestock was depressed the whole of the business off railway was adversely affected”.
He added: “Considering the great depression which has continued in industry during 1904, and the serious diminution in the livestock forwarded by the various cross-Channel routes to Great Britain it was not, surprising that the whole of the traffic receipts in all branches had severely suffered.”
Mr Nugent noted that the Department of Agriculture returns for 1904 showed how the animals exported from Ireland to Great Britain had decreased compared with 1903.
The figures were – Cattle, 125,339 or 13.96 per cent decrease; sheep, 86,987, or 10.46 per cent decrease; pigs, 64,673, or 11,34 per cent decrease.
He said: “There has not so far been much, if any, improvement in the present half year, but its believed that we will soon see considerably more activity in this branch of our business.”
Mr Nugent noted that “importation of foreign and colonial meat” had been increasing over the previous two years.
He explained: “While the diminished demand in England for Irish meat has been going on, the importation of foreign and colonial meat has, unfortunately, been increasing.
“For instance, at the ports of Liverpool and Birkenhead alone, the numbers of colonial and foreign live fat stock for slaughter in the Mersey lairage has shown increases of 36,866 cattle and 85,787 sheep in 1904 over 1903, while there was increase of 57,556 quarters of beef landed in Liverpool during the same period.
“The competition in foreign meat is now coming home to ourselves ad during the last half-year supplies have been regularly forwarded in considerable quantities from Dublin to Mullingar, Ballinasloe, Gahvay, Loughrea, Longford, Sligo, Castlerea, Ballina, and other towns, where shops have been opened, as much as 30 tons being sent in a fortnight to these places.”
He added that he hoped that these restrictions on the export of pigs to England would not seriously affect the pig trade “which was the mainstay of the poorer classes of our countrymen”.
Importation of Canadian stores will be “ruinous”: Meanwhile at the seventh meeting of the Council of Agriculture was held during this week in 1905 at the Royal University Buildings, Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin, Colonel Sharman-Crawford, in moving a resolution on the importation of Canadian stores said: “If the importation of stores is permitted it will be a calamity, not only for this country, but for England as well”.
He said that he came from the North of Ireland, and he assured the council that “if the importation of Canadian stores were to take place it would be absolutely ruinous to the small farmers in that province”.
He said that he considered the question before them as “of the greatest importance to all parts of Ireland”.
He therefore proposed the following resolution: “That this council most strongly urges on the department to take every measure in their power to prevent any alteration in the existing law regarding the importation of live cattle in to the United Kingdom.”
Mr James Byrne seconded the resolution, and Colonel John Philip Nolan, MP for Galway North, spoke in favour of the resolution.
Mr P J O’Neill said that it appeared to him that the policy of those who advocated the importation of Canadian store cattle was “an extremely short-sighted one”.
He said: “The greatest good of the greatest number is the principle which should actuate every government.”
Mr Jeremiah Howard, JP (Cork), and Mr O'Driscoll (Kerry) having supported the resolution, the motion was put and passed unanimously.