28o IRELAND 



amounts to from £80,000 to £90,000, as com- 

 pared with one of only £15,000 in the first year 

 of the Society's existence. Singularly enough, 

 too, this substantial business is done on a capital 

 that does not exceed £8,000. The course of 

 procedure adopted is as follows. The farmers 

 in a certain district notify to their local agri- 

 cultural society the purchases they want to 

 make, and the combined order is sent to the 

 Wholesale Society in Dublin. But with it 

 there is a printed form by which the members 

 of the committee, individually and collectively, 

 guarantee payment in case of default on the 

 part of the actual purchasers ; and, as the com- 

 mittee generally includes some wealthy farmer 

 or other person of means, the guarantee is re- 

 garded as sufficient to warrant the directors, in 

 their turn, pledging their own credit to the 

 bankers. So well does the system work that the 

 Wholesale Society has not yet made a single 

 bad debt, while 90 per cent, of the local societies 

 pay their accounts within the stipulated period. 



A further supplementary organization is the 

 Irish Co-operative Agency Society, Ltd., which 

 seeks to provide the Dairy Societies with a 

 profitable market for their produce. The society 

 has its headquarters in Limerick, with depots 

 in Manchester, Liverpool, Dublin, Glasgow, 



