Galway In Days Gone By

1919

Postal delays

Sir – Since early in November the postal authorities have inaugurated “Daylight working of posts,” with the result that we do not get our mails delivered until the morning following their reception at Oughterard Post Office.

Mails reach that office at about 12.40 mid-day, and the post-men (with one exception, the village deliverer) are not despatched until 8 a.m. the following day. This is a great hardship to rural residents, and, personally, I have missed five important meetings through not having received my letters in time.

I live four miles from the local post office, and as I cannot always send in for my mails, I – as well as my neighbours – have to wait for them.

Why are we paying a staff of postmen here if we have to call for and carry our mails? I trust the authorities will remedy affairs at once, and before Christmas, otherwise we shall have “to get questions asked in Parliament.”

I may add that the local post-master is at all times most obliging. These instructions proceed from headquarters.

“A rural resident.”

Oughterard, December 6, 1919.

Farmers’ organisation

The pages of the “Tribune” from week to week afford ample testimony to the progress that is being made throughout the west of Ireland by farmers’ organisations. At the last meeting in Loughrea a suggestion was put forward that, if generally adopted in Ireland, will give these organisations new power and significance.

The proposal that they should be registered under the Trades’ Disputes’ Act was referred to the Farmers’ Union. One gratifying feature about these gatherings is that they afford a common platform whereon all classes of Irishmen can meet and discuss business of mutual concern.

Sir H. Grattan Bellew, who has contributed so much to the industrial life of the district in which he lives, played a very valuable part at the Loughrea meeting. We hope to see men like him playing a greater part in the life of our common country in the future.

Pay and conditions

“In one place in Galway a lot of boys are employed who work sixty-seven hours a week,” said Mr. Seamus O’Brien, organiser, at a meeting of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in the Town Hall, Galway, on Monday night.

Telling of his visit to this factory, Mr. O’Brien said that the manager admitted to him he had girls working for 10s. a week. Mr. O’Brien asked him would he want his own daughter to work for 10s. a week and support herself. “That was a different question,” Mr. O’Brien commented, “but he gave and evasive answer.”

“This fellow happened to sack a lad belonging to the union. He gave several reasons for it. It was not because he belonged to the union or anything like that. It was because the boy was too hard of a worker, I suppose.” There was laughter at Mr. O’Brien’s sarcasm.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.

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