234 AGRICULTURAL CO-OPERATION IN IRELAND. 



be beneficial. If I may be pardoned a personal allusion, I happen myself to be 

 an illustration of the working of this principle, a strange proof that the doctrine 

 of self-help, if not generally very clearly formulated, is, at least, mentally 

 accepted by Irish public opinion. For circumstances — chiefly the fact that I 

 was an idle man, with plenty of money to spend upon my social ideals — have 

 pitchforked me out of the Chairmanship of the Irish Agricultural Organisation 

 Society into the working headship of the new Department. And although this 

 ofiice is properly a Parliamentary one, I am allowed by the Government, with 

 popular sanction, to hold on to my post until the Department is fully launched, 

 notwithstanding the fact that co-operative education has so demoralised my 

 politics that I am a political outcast. But you may take it from me that every 

 week which passes brings fresh evidences of the close relationship which exists 

 between successful administration of State aid, and the exercise of organised 

 voluntary effort. I cannot exaggerate the importance of the rapid spread of 

 these farmers' associations at this juncture. The value and potency of 

 organised effort (whether for business or pleasure) have been brought home to 

 the people, and no lesson was more needed amongst the poor, spiritless, and 

 isolated peasantry of rural Ireland. The effect, too, of the new spirit upon the 

 newly-constituted local bodies is manifest at least to the student of social 

 economics. And not only as the condition precedent of State aid was the 

 co-operative movement required to stay the drain of emigration. We hope to 

 use the societies, whose primary function is business purposes, for the 

 brightenmg of rural life on the purely social and domestic side." 



