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rstood that anybody might have it a bargain, but nobody came forward. I offered them L30 a year for the whole of the buildings, the waterpower, and the dwelling house hard by, also that other immense building yonder, which might prove handy for a store-house; and my offer was accepted. I took all at that rent for sixty years, with six months' free tenancy to start with, and I was also to have a free gift of all machinery and fittings in the place. Here we are going nicely, only in a small way, but we shall do. We make blankets, tweeds for men's suits and ladies' dresses. When the Athlone people saw us knocking about they were surprised they had never thought of it before. There are hundreds of derelict flour mills going to ruin all over the country, and the owners would gladly let anyone have them and grand water power for nothing for two or three years, just to get a chance of obtaining rent at some future day. We work from morning till night, and neither I nor my sons have ever tasted a spot of intoxicating liquor. Now there are many small mills going in the country, the proprietors of which go on the spree three days a week. If they can do, we can do. This is going to be a big thing. The only difficulty I have is to turn out the stuff. Irish tweeds have such a reputation that we simply cannot meet the demand. Mills and water power may be had for next to nothing, but the Irish have no enterprise, and the English are afraid to put any money in the country under present circumstances." The Lock Mills above mentioned are three or four stories high, with perhaps a hundred yards of front elevation, a grandly built series of stone buildings close to the Shannon, which is here about a hundred and twenty yards wide, and carries tolerably large steamers and lighters. Six months' occupancy for nothing, the old machinery a free gift, water power and buildings for sixty years at L30 a year. I have previously mentioned the twelve big mills abandoned on the Boyne. Twelve openings for small capitalists--but Irishmen put their money in stockings, under the flure, in the thatch. _They_ will not trust Irishmen, although they have no objection to John Bull's doing so. A bank manager of this district said:-- "Poor Connaught, as they call the province, is a great hoarder. And when Irishmen invest they invest outside Ireland. Seventy-eight thousand pounds in the Post Office savings bank in Mayo, the most poverty-stricken district--as t
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