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Updated: May 18, 2025
The old tumble-down farm-houses and out-offices began to be replaced by substantial, comfortable, and commodious buildings. Personal indebtedness became almost a thing of the past, and the gombeen man one of Ireland's national curses was fast fading out of sight.
Financial and social returns began to come in. At the end of the first year there was a clear profit of over $500. In three years the society was recognized as one of the most efficient in Ireland and presented by the Pembroke fund with a fine stucco hall. Jigs. Dances. Lectures. But the gombeen man wasn't "taking it lying down." He called on his political and religious friends to aid.
When Paddy lugged the meal into the cabin, he found his mother lying on the bed with her face averted from the bowl of milk that some less hungry neighbor had brought in. His father's gaunt frame was hunched over the peat blocks on the flat hearth. Paddy, full of desire to banish the brooding discouragement from the room, hastened to repeat the words of the gombeen man.
"Ireland offers opposition in the person of the 'gombeen man. He is the local trader and money lender. And co-operative buying and selling takes away his monopoly of business.
It is obvious how much power, political as well as social, is thus lodged in the hands of the dealers, and especially of the "Gombeen men." BARON'S COURT, Wednesday, Feb. 8. Since last night I have travelled from one extreme to the other of Irish life from the desolation of the Rosses of Donegal to the grandly wooded, picturesque, and beautiful demesne of Baron's Court.
The business of the gombeen man is going, and one may well hope to see arise before long that thrift and energy characteristic of the peasant proprietor, whether in France, Belgium, or Lombardy. It must not be forgotten, however, that land purchase to bring peace must be universal.
When Paddy married and settled down in Dungloe he found the reason for the unpayableness of the debt. One day he and his father shopped at the gombeen store together. They bought the same amount of meal. The father paid cash seventeen shillings. Forty-four days later, Paddy brought his money. But the gombeen man presented him with a bill for twenty-one shillings and three pence.
In fact, the peasant cultivator, having acquired under the Land Acts now in force a species of proprietory interest in the soil, has a sort of credit which, backed by a friendly and innocent depositor, can be made an engine for raising ready money in a small way. This help from the banks is so far good that it has relieved the decent peasant from his ancient bloodsucker, the gombeen man.
Oh, sure it was a bad day for the tenants when they went; and more betoken, they had laid up trouble for the man that was to succeed them. The people never gave Mr. Ramsay-Stewart a chance when he came. They disliked him, and he was an upstart and a gombeen man and a usurper, and such foolishness, in the mouths of every one of them.
The instalment was a very small one, but it was at once discounted by the gombeen man, whose rate of interest enabled him to run extraordinary risks. As the poor pay dearly for everything, so do they pay an extravagant interest for money.
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