232 AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATION IN IRELAND. 



*' And now let us see how the experiment works out. You find in a backward 

 parish, say, lOO farmers, struggling with antiquated methods and out-of-date 

 appliances, marketing their inferior, rapidly-depreciating produce through a 

 host of middle-men, and realising a miserable price. You go back in two 

 years, and, perhaps, happen to be present at the annual general meeting of the 

 new society, held in the new building among the steam-driven separators, 

 butter-workers, and churns, and all sorts of scientific appliances unavailable to 

 the isolated farmer, but well within the means of the associated lOO farmers. 

 Here are your loo newly-fledged co-operators, with their democratically- 

 elected committee, on which you find the best business-men in the community, 

 be they landlord or tenant, Protestant or Roman Catholic, Unionist or 

 Nationalist, in co-operative peace and harmony. You have only to listen to 

 their deliberations to see that a change has come over the spirit of the scene 

 which would delight the co-operator's heart. You find these men showing a 

 rare capacity to understand all the complicated technical details of the manu- 

 facture, and shrewd in the discussion of the commercial questions which 

 surround the disposal of their product. Here is a picture which will revive the 

 recollection of the older co-operative faith. And, as if to point the moral 

 which I am seeking to enforce, you may see alongside of this attempted realisa- 

 tion of old co-operative ideas, the newer tendencies in full work in this outpost 

 of the co-operative world. You may see some eighty creameries, chiefly owned 

 by the English, but a few of them by the Scottish Wholesale, in which the 

 farmers supply their milk as they do to any other capitalist who gives them 

 their price, but in which they have no share in either management or profit, in 

 which they take no pride, from which they learn no lesson. When Congress 

 endorsed this action of the Wholesale, the Irish section of the Co-operative 

 Union ceased to exist, and we went in for co-operative Home Rule. For- 

 tunately, our movement was fairly launched before the Irish policy of the 

 Wholesale, which might have frustrated our earliest eff"orts, was developed. 

 That policy naturally aroused some bitter feelings, for we did not then under- 

 stand the change which was coming over the British movement. 



" It was an extraordinary piece of good fortune for us to find such an 

 opportunity for our first experiments as the crisis in the dairy industry afforded. 

 Our scheme made, it is true, a large demand upon co-operative qualities com- 

 pared with those which are necessary to start a store. But that consideration 

 was quite ignored by my friends in view of the social and economic improve- 

 ment which would result from the success of these voluntary associations. 

 They knew that if the co-operative dairy societies were to succeed com- 

 mercially, the organisation of societies for other purposes connected with 

 agriculture would be a matter of comparative ease. 



"We never indulged the dream of co-operative agriculture in the sense of 

 joint ownership and joint management of farming lands. But we saw our way 

 clear to the association of farmers for the improvement of every branch of their 

 industry. I have no time to give you any further account of how the move- 

 ment was started, or any description gf its subsequent progress. Anything 

 more than a brief summary of the position it occupies to-day would be beyond 

 the scope of this address. A few facts and figures will aff"ord a general idea of 

 how far we have travelled towards the goal we have set before us. The latest 

 returns I have deal with 546 societies, with some 54,000 members. Of these 

 societies, 193 are central creameries and 77 auxiliaries, as we call them— that 

 is, societies which separate the milk from the cream and send the latter to be 

 churned at a central creamery. There were 1 1 1 agricultural societies, whose 

 chief function is the cheapening of production by the joint purchase of honest 

 seed and manures, of implements and general farming requisites. In some 

 cases these societies undertake the sale of produce. Then there are 78 



