In late June 1919, citizens of Cork welcomed the announcement that Mr Edward Grace, Managing Director with a party of engineers from Messrs Ford’s Tractor Works had arrived in Cork to expedite the completion of the Marina factory. There were visible signs of big developments at the works. The glass roof on the newly erected iron work was making rapid progress as well as the installation of the large amounts of glass work in the main buildings. The First World War was deemed responsible for the building delay. Many cargoes of materials such as steel fell victim to submarines attacks off the Irish coast.
By 3 July 1919, the first Ford tractor left the assembly line. An obligatory commemorative picture was taken at the time. In addition, the Cork Examiner carried a notice that from 30 June 1919 hours and pay were posted up at the office of the tractor works. The work hours were Monday to Friday inclusive, 8am to 4.30pm with a half hour lunch break from 12.30 to 1pm. Saturday’s hours were 8am to 12pm. The total working hours were therefore 44 per week. The minimum rate per hour paid at the works for men over 18 were 2s 5d with a share of profits per hour set at 3d. The total rate per hour was 1s 8d. For boys under 18, wages were 6d per hour with share of profits set at nil. Profit sharing was based on good conduct and was paid at the discretion of the company. It was also subject to employment for at least six months. Male office staff over 18 were paid 1s 5d per hour and a share of the profits at 6d per hour. Female office staff over 18 were paid 1s per hour with 3d share of the profits. Girls under 18 in the office were paid per hour with no share of the profit.
By the end of 1919, 303 Fordson tractors had been built at the Cork factory. During 1920, which was the first full year of production, 3,626 tractors were produced. The sum of £327,000 was also spent on a machine shop, foundry expansion, new wharves and equipment. The sale of the Fordsons was primarily in Ireland and Britain. Large numbers were shipped to Bordeaux, Cadiz, Copenhagen, Romania and the Near East.
In April 1920, the acquisition of Henry Ford & Son, the company, from the Ford family by directors of the Detroit Ford Company, meant disorganisation in sales strategies. Fordson tractors that were previously sold by specialist dealers were now been sold by car and truck agents with limited knowledge of the product. The tractor venture became more and more uneconomical. World markets also suffered depression and many European countries adopted a protectionist approach. Tariff and currency barriers also made exporting difficult. Political unrest on the Irish scene hampered the consistent arrival of workers to the plant every day.
Edward Grace, managing director, realising that it was uneconomic and unwise for the Cork factory to rely on tractor production noted a number of home truths. The high cost of establishing the Cork factory and maintaining an efficient work force meant that it was cheaper for European distributors to buy Fordson tractors in New York and ship them across the Atlantic, rather than purchase them in Cork. Grace’s solution to the profit problem was logical. Manchester needed extra production facilities for Model T cars. Cork had a machine shop and foundry that were not being used to their full capacity. To get parts made in Dearborn, Michigan would have been cheaper but freight costs from the States was more expensive than exporting from Cork to Britain where there would be no import duty. This was due to Ireland’s part of the United Kingdom.
By August 1921, the foundry at the Cork plant was producing all Manchester’s cast-iron requirements, including the engine. However, in 1921, tractor output from Cork fell to 1,433. The plant could only operate economically with 1,600 men. The 1918 Corporation lease of the land had specified that Fords provide work for 2,000 Cork workers. In February 1922, Cork Corporation ordered the Company to comply with the terms of the lease or face expulsion. The directors of Henry Ford & Son opposed the rationale claiming that the economic and political climate had changed radically within three years of the company setting up in Cork. Cork Corporation backed down from their requests.
During the rest of 1922, the Cork company narrowed its tractor operation by clearing its stocks and building another 2,233 Fordsons. On 29 December 1922, the 7,605th Cork-built tractor came off the line. Edward Grace assembled all the equipment used in Tractor manufacture and shipped everything to Dearborn, Michigan. The Cork factory now focussed on being an assembly plant, producing cars for the Irish market. In fact, in the early 1920s, whilst a Ford factory was being built in England, Cork also manufactured components for the home and export markets. Cork manufactured Model T parts and supplied both UK’s Trafford Park and the Continental Ford Plants with all their requirements of engines and rear axles up until 1927 when the European production of the Model T ceased.
Upcoming historical walking tours:
Saturday 13 July 2019, The Victorian Quarter; historical walking tour with Kieran of the area around St Patrick’s Hill – Wellington Road and McCurtain Street; meet on the Green at Audley Place, top of St Patrick’s Hill, 11am (free, duration: two hours).
Sunday 14 July 2019, Sunday’s Well, historical walking tour with Kieran; discover the original well and the eighteenth-century origins of the suburb, meet at St Vincent’s Bridge, North Mall end, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours).
Captions:
1005a. Mr Edward Grace of Messrs Ford’s Tractor Works sits on the first Fordson tractor to roll off the assembly line, 3 July 2019 (source: Cork City Library).
1005b. Workers in the machine shop of Messrs Ford’s Tractor Works in August 1921 (source: Cork City Library).
Saturday 13 July 2019, The Victorian Quarter; historical walking tour with Kieran of the area around St Patrick’s Hill – Wellington Road and McCurtain Street; meet on the Green at Audley Place, top of St Patrick’s Hill, 11am (free, duration: two hours).
Sunday 14 July 2019, Sunday’s Well, historical walking tour with Kieran; discover the original well and the eighteenth-century origins of the suburb, meet at St Vincent’s Bridge, North Mall end, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours).
For me the derelict site fine has become too blunt an instrument to deal with dangerous buildings in older parts of the city. At this moment is time, landowners are fined 3 per cent per year of the land value. However, it was heard during a Council finance committee meeting last week that under five per cent of the fines can be only drawn down by the Council due to many long term derelict sites in limbo with their legal title and in NAMA.
There are over 100 registered derelict sites in Cork City, which have been identified as derelict and unsightly and whose landowners have been fined. It’s an absolute disgrace that some owners have left their buildings in such a state over decades. I have no problem with someone who genuinely cannot develop their premises for financial reasons and who board up their building accordingly plus then develop when they can- But I have a huge problem with landowners with no sense of civic responsibility, who let their properties fall into disrepair and who create rotting concrete wildernesses”.
Even in my own ward from Ballinlough to Donnybrook, there are empty properties- where the owners seem to have disappeared. Many could be turned back around into housing units. Many are the ongoing concern of neighbours – fearful of rodents or fire or generally bringing down the calibre of an area. There must be quicker mechanisms to cut through the red tape- especially legal title and NAMA related properties.
There is a need to have a proper inner-city renewal plan. For too long places like North and South Main Street, Shandon, Barrack Street & Blackpool are limping on….indeed only for the Shandon Area Renewal Area group, volunteers, Cork Community Art Link…Shandon Street would be further down the road of dereliction…indeed such groups have added to the creative hub of the city. We need to build more of such groups.
Barrack Street is more or lost except for the traditional pubs that survive on student trade.
It always seems to me that there is no vision for such streets, no way forward. Shandon Street should be recognised officially as key heritage quarter.
History is oozing out of these areas.
And I see this week as well its two years since the burning of the former St Kevin’s Hospital. it is still now an abandoned and burned heap of heritage with no plan for it…the city needs a vision for such heritage markers.
The city centre needs to the core attractive place to live, work and visit; to safeguard, protect and enhance the built heritage and promote a sustainable, diverse and integrated residential and business community.
Update on maintenance at Douglas Cemetery from Parks and Recreation, Cork City Council
“Cllr McCarthy, In relation to Saint Columba’s cemetery in Douglas. We acknowledge that the maintenance at the cemetery needs to be addressed.
We are currently reorganising resources to tackle the work in this cemetery to bring it back up to an acceptable standard. As you can understand we are still in an adjustment period for the expanded city and are planning further maintenance works to commence in this cemetery tomorrow.
The large bins at the cemetery were collected last Friday and we are awaiting delivery of new suitable bins from our supplier. The remaining litter will also be rectified shortly”.
In late June and early July 1919, the Cork Sinn Féin Executive arranged a series of public lectures aimed at increasing local activism whilst critiquing Westminster social policies in Ireland. The lectures were delivered by Professor Alfred O’Rahilly (1884-1969) to an interested audience, in the Council Chamber of Cork City Hall. Obituaries across various national newspapers for the professor in 1969 detail he was a native of Listowel and was educated by the Holy Ghost Fathers at Blackrock College, south of Dublin. Eamon de Valera was one of his contemporaries in the college. Having obviously a vocation to the priesthood. Alfred chose to join the Jesuits on leaving school and after the usual period of novitiate he went to Stonyhurst. His studies in philosophy there resulted in the award of a Roman Doctor of Philosophy. He was still with the Jesuits when he entered the old university college conducted by them in Dublin under the Royal University. There Alfred widened his earlier courses in modern languages to concentrate on science. Before long he was to receive a Doctor of Science for his large project on electro magnetics. However, he left the Jesuits to form a new career as a militant layman.
In 1914 a vacancy arose as a lecturer in mathematics in University College Cork under Bertram Windle’s presidency. Professor Windle at once welcomed Alfred and his ability and training. In a few years, Alfred had become Professor of Mathematical Physics. He was elected Registrar of the College in 1920, and much of his constructive work within the college was pursued during the ensuing 30 years under the presidency of Dr Merriman (whom he succeeded as President in 1943).
In the late 1910s Alfred became intensely concerned with social reform and economics and with the ardent narrative of younger nationalists. His theological and philosophical training enabled him to become a spokesman for Sinn Féin when ecclesiastical censure was threatened. He was always prepared to challenge authority and military repression in Ireland when he disagreed with it. He was elected to the Cork Corporation, and as a member of it in 1920 he proposed the election of Lord Mayor MacCurtain and afterwards of Lord Mayor MacSwiney (to replace him). Alfred took charge of the public funerals for both Lord Mayors, in defiance of all forms of British intimidation.
Professor Alfred O’Rahilly’s lecture on 27 June 1919 at Cork City Hall was written up in the Cork Examiner and focused on the topic of “Co-operation in a Republic”. He pointed out that the ideal of a Republic was very vague and negative, and that there was great need for constructive and positive aims. In his personal view was that the “Irish Ireland” had been lacking in social and economic thought – that what confronted Ireland’s future was a lack of trained ability and competence and business knowledge and organising ability. Co-operative thinking and bringing people together in business and enact a form of “democratic control”.
On Tuesday 1 July 1919 Professor O’Rahilly’s lecture was entitled “Some Suggestions for a Sinn Féin Labour Policy”. He pointed out that there was really no Labour programme policy in Ireland, and, except as regards the land, there never was. For many reasons, it was high time to produce a coherent policy. He outlined that Ireland was the victim of centralisation policy with powers taken away from counties, towns and cities. As a contrast to the English system he gave the example of Switzerland, whose area was half that of Ireland, whose population in 1919 was half a million less. Professor O’Rahilly outlined that Switzerland was a Federal Republic and consisted of twenty-two sovereign States. He suggested that Ireland should have a federalism system at work; “Each county and each large county borough should be autonomous. We in the rest of Ireland should make it clear that we have no desire whatever to interfere with, say, Belfast and its prosperity. Similarly, Cork is quite competent to manage its own affairs, and has as much right to independence as Antrim”. The ideal should be not be a bureaucracy in Dublin, but “ample local liberty, and in the Irish capital (a) a National Council elected by adult suffrage, and (b) a Council of States or counties with, say, two deputies from each”.
Professor O’Rahilly’s second focus at his July lecture was the quest for sovereignty of the people. He proposed that a referendum should be held, whereby, for example, eight counties, or 30,000 voters, could insist that any legislative Act passed by the National Assembly must be submitted to the direct vote of the people for ratification or rejection. The power of such an initiative, for example, would mean that the Transport Workers could draft a Bill, without consulting the Government.
Professor O’Rahilly also dealt with some social and industrial projects, in particular with housing, drink control, and education. He noted that one of the most pressing needs in Ireland’s future would be the organisation of a system of national credit for the financing of now or neglected industries, and the utilisation of Irish resources. He considered that foreign capital constituted a danger, “as Irish capital was being artificially drained out of the country”.
July Walking Tours:
Saturday 6 July 2019, The City Workhouse, historical walking tour with Kieran; learn about Cork City’s workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet just inside the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 12noon (free, duration: two hours, on site tour, part of Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital garden fete).
Saturday 13 July 2019, The Victorian Quarter; historical walking tour with Kieran of the area around St Patrick’s Hill – Wellington Road and McCurtain Street; meet on the Green at Audley Place, top of St Patrick’s Hill, 11am (free, duration: two hours).
Sunday 14 July 2019, Sunday’s Well, historical walking tour with Kieran; discover the original well and the eighteenth-century origins of the suburb, meet at St Vincent’s Bridge, North Mall end, 2.30pm (free, duration: two hours).
Caption:
1004a. Professor Alfred O’Rahilly, c.1944 as President of University College Cork, now on display in the Aula Maxima in the college (picture: Kieran McCarthy)
Well done to Mervyn Horgan of the Lifetime Lab for his brainchild and to the principal sponsor Science Foundation Ireland with the support of Cork City Council 🙂
Tales from 1919: The Life of William Martin Murphy
On 27 June 1919 newspapers across the country ran their regret of announcing the death of Mr William Martin Murphy, which took place in Dublin. He was one of the most prominent men in Irish commercial circles, being actively engaged at the heart of many enterprises.
William was born in the year 1844, the son of Mr Denis William Murphy, a building contractor from Berehaven, County Cork, his mother being a daughter of Mr James Martin, also of Berehaven. His primary education was received in a private school at Bantry. In 1858 he entered Belvedere College, Dublin, as a student. On that first trip to Dublin – from Bantry to Dublin – he had a forty-five-mile coach drive to Cork City and the next day had a six-hour train journey from the city to Dublin.
On the finishing of his college course, William became a pupil of the then well-known Dublin architect, Mr John J Lyons. However, at the age of 19 William’s father passed away who was then extensively engaged as contractor for public works in the South of Ireland. As some contracts of an important nature had not yet been completed, the energy and capabilities of his only son William were put to the test. He not only undertook and completed the works – which his father had in hand, but he extended and developed the business generally. Before long he returned to Dublin to develop his business.
Shortly after transferring permanently to Dublin William became interested in the construction and development of street and road tramways in the city and its suburbs. For many years he worked in this direction, not alone in Dublin and other parts of Ireland, but in many important centres in Great Britain. Up to 1895 no tramway in Ireland had been run by electricity, save a line, from Portrush to the Giant’s Causeway, which was worked under a system not practicable in a city. As a result of a visit to America in 1895, William witnessed the work of George Francis Train, the inventor of tramways. On his return he promptly proposed its adoption in Dublin on the overhead wire and trolley system. William soon saw the fruition of his project and the electric system year on year extended all over the city and suburbs, radiating from the centre outwards. He also promoted and built the Cork electric tram line.
From small beginnings in 1880 as a contractor for the Bantry rail extension to Drimoleague, William became one of the most influential figures in the Irish railway business. Subsequently he went on to construct lines such as Wexford and Rosslare, the Clara and Banagher, West and South Clare, Mitchelstown and Fermoy, Tuam and Claremorris, Skibbereen and Baltimore, and the Bantry Extension. Later in life he organised the construction of railways on the Gold Coast in West Africa from his London sub office. William also became the director of a number of rail lines, being elected to the board of the Waterford and Limerick line in 1885, and when this was amalgamated into the Great Southern and Western Railway in 1901, he was subsequently elected to the Board of Ireland’s premier railway company in 1903.
William’s first connection with journalism was in November 1890 when at the time of the Parnell split, he took a leading part in the founding of the National Press. In 1892 the National Press amalgamated with the Freeman’s Journal and having been one of the largest directors in the former, William became a director of the new concern. In 1900 William decided to purchase the Irish Daily Independent, then offered for sale under a court of bankruptcy.
William also figured in the public life of the country. He was a prominent member of the Dublin Chamber of Commerce, of which he was Chairman for about two years. He was also a member of Parliament representing Dublin from 1885 to 1892. He was a member of the Irish Convention in 1911. He took a leading and active part in advocating Home Rule and carried a representative section of the Convention with him.
In 1912, William established the Dublin Employer’s Federation as a reaction to the growing power of organised labour. Worried that the trade unions would destroy his Dublin tram system, he led Dublin employers against the trade unions led by James Larkin, an opposition that culminated in the Dublin Lockout of 1913. William locked out all workers who refused to resign from the union. The 1913 Lockout in Dublin was a major industrial dispute between almost 20,000 workers and 300 employers. It lasted from 26 August 1913 to 18 January 1914 and is often seen as the most severe and important industrial dispute in Irish history.
William was the leading promoter of the Irish International Exhibition at Herbert Park, Ballsbridge, Dublin in 1909. His leadership was stamped all over the project. During the visit of King Edward VII to the Exhibition William was offered a title but refused it.
Notwithstanding his business engagements William found time to devote himself to the Society of St Vincent de Paul. From 1867 to 1875 he was president of the Society’s Conference at St Finbarr’s South Chapel, Cork. Subsequently he founded a new Conference at Terenure, County Dublin, of which for several years he was the President.
Next walking tour:
Saturday 6 July, The City Workhouse, historical walking tour with Kieran; learn about Cork City’s workhouse created for 2,000 impoverished people in 1841; meet just inside the gates of St Finbarr’s Hospital, Douglas Road, 12noon (free, duration: two hours, on site tour, part of Friends of St Finbarr’s Hospital garden fete).
Captions:
1003a. William Martin Murphy, a painting by William Orpen (source: National Gallery, Dublin)
1003b. Tram at Blackrock, Cork, c.1901 (source: Cork City Library)
