AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATION IN IRELAND. 231 



conditions in the world's markets a peasant proprietor is impossible, a 

 peasant proprietary is not only possible but desirable. Co-operation solves 

 this paradox. By mutual help, and by common organisation for common 

 objects, the isolated and unprogressive peasant owner, while not sinking but 

 strengthening his individuality, is lifted to a competitive level, from which 

 he can conduct his industry on the most advanced lines, and with every 

 resource that rivalry in the modern market requires. 



" When I look back over the work of the last twelve years, I see that? 

 although we had much to contend with, we had also many important advan- 

 tages. Whatever your leaders thought of the prospects of success, we had not 

 only the moral, but the financial support of the Co-operative Union, and the 

 invaluable guidance in details of organisation of Mr. Vansittart Neale, and his 

 former understudy, now his worthy successor, Mr. J. C. Gray. There is much 

 in the genius and tradition of the Irish farmer which fits him for combination. 

 The old clan spirit is by no means dead in him. Isolated, the Irish farmer is 

 conservative, sceptical of innovation, a believer in routine and tradition ; in 

 union with his fellows, he is progressive, open to ideas, and wonderfully keen 

 at grasping the essential features of any new proposal for his advancement. 

 He was, then, eminently a subject for co-operative treatment. The smallness 

 of his holding, his lack of capital, the backwardness of his methods, made him 

 helpless in competition with his rivals abroad, who were either favoured by 

 natural conditions, as in the case of the United States and the Colonies, or were 

 organised on the very best lines for co-operative success, as in the case of 

 many European countries, notably Denmark. And remember that co-operation 

 in agriculture means, nowadays, not merely organisation for strictly productive 

 purposes, but also joint effort in the preparation of produce for rapid distribu- 

 tion in large centres of population. The distributive needs of a modern market 

 in a great city demand, as you know, above everything else, a commodity 

 consigned in bulk, and of such a uniform quality that the merchant can take 

 his sample as genuinely characteristic of the whole consignment. Now, the 

 middleman can do this for a consideration, and the organised farmers can do 

 it — the individual farmer cannot. It was our conviction that the farmers of 

 Ireland could, by associative effort, intercept the intermediate profit by carrying 

 the productive process a step further, and applying the principles of co-operation 

 to the marketing of their joint produce, no less than to the preliminary 

 processes of their industry. Their foreign competitors had done so with signal 

 success, and we were determined to imitate them in this also, recognising it to 

 be the necessary corollary of our earlier efforts. 



" It happened that at the time we commenced our Irish work, a belated 

 industrial revolution was taking place in one great farmers' industry. The 

 event is of special interest, because one reason why the co-operative movement 

 in England has not touched the agricultural classes is, that in the agricultural 

 industry, with this exception, there has been no industrial revolution, for this 

 reason amongst others, that in agriculture division of labour cannot, from the 

 nature of the industry, be carried very f^r. But in this case a recent invention 

 had changed butter-making from a home to a factory industry. Ignorant of 

 the principles of co-operation, the farmers had to look on while capitalists 

 introduced the new system. They were tempted to go out of the butter- 

 making business, and send their milk to be manufactured by others. The 

 result was found to be that they remained with all that part of the dairying 

 industry which agricultural depression had made unprofitable, while the making 

 and marketing of butter, which science, combined with commercial enterprise, 

 under joint-stock organisation, had rendered profitable, had passed out of their 

 hands. Here was an ideal opportunity to test the value of co-operative 

 principles. 



