TO THE RESCUE.

Evening Post, Volume LX, Issue 120, 17 November 1900, Page 1 (Supplement)

TO THE RESCUE.

The "primitive man," says a Home correspondent, still exists in the Old Country in spite of the School Board and the ha'penny newspaper. This is proved by the queei story told from the Fylde District of Lancashire. In all the northern counties the haymaking and harvesting operations are dependent to a great extent on imported Irish labour. Lately the Irishmen engaged in the Fylde district, numbering over a thousand in all, suddenly disappeared, two hundred leaving Liverpool in one night for Dublin. The cause of this sudden exodus has, it appears, been traced to some cock-and-bull story conceived among the Irish peasantry, to the effect that the French were about to invade their land. The warships manoeuvring round the coasts assisted the credulous imagination of the stay-at-home men and women, and they speedily sent word to their harvesting relatives in Lancashire. These without consulting any one immediately spread the tale, and in fortyeight hours tihe Fylde farmers were minus their hired men. The prospect of immediate hostilities was too much for those sons of Erin ? and they cleared at once to protect their peSple, recking not of broken contracts , and forfeited wages.