DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE, Etc.. FOR IRELAND. 293 



6. Local Organisation. 



Finally, the Department is deeply convinced that in Ireland, and especially 

 in relation to agriculture and to industries connected with agriculture, 

 organisation has an essential part to play in the economic and social elevation 

 of the people. Indeed, it would appear as if this agency of progress had, 

 comparatively speaking, greater possibilities here, on account of the racial 

 capacities for associated effort which our people display, than even in countries 

 which, with the aid of organisation, have succeeded for the time being, in 

 driving Irish agricultural produce from its due place in the markets. The 

 Recess Committee, in their enquiries, found that, in the countries whose 

 competition Ireland feels most keenly, Departments of Agriculture had come 

 to recognise it as an axiom of their policy, that, without organisation for 

 economic purposes amongst the agricultural classes. State aid to agriculture 

 must be mainly ineffectual, and even mainly mischievous ; and that such 

 Departments devoted a considerable part of their efforts to promoting agricul- 

 tural organisation. Short a time as this Department has been in existence, it 

 has had some striking evidence of the justice of these views. As will be seen 

 from the part of this Report dealing specially with Agriculture, it was only 

 where the farmers were organised in properly representative societies that 

 many of the lessons the Department had to teach could effectually reach the 

 farming classes, or that many of the experiments intended for their guidance 

 could be profitably carried out. Although these experiment schemes were issued 

 to the County Councils and the agricultural public generally, it was only the 

 farmers organised in societies who were really in a position to take part in them. 

 Some of these experiments — such as that for the trial of new varieties of 

 potatoes, where the societies paid, at cost price, for the samples of the special 

 seed forwarded by the Department — could not be carried out at all except 

 through such societies. In fact, over a large portion of its agricultural 

 administration, it will be impossible for the Department, and it will be im- 

 possible for the County Councils, to work efficiently through isolated indi- 

 viduals. To attempt to do so would require a huge official staff, and a lavish 

 expenditure of public money, and the result would be worse than waste, for 

 it would be demoralising to the people and ruinous to that spirit of self-help, 

 without an ample development of which Ireland will never become, in any 

 sense, a progressive country. Thus, for the sake of efficiency in its educational 

 work, and of economy in administration, the Department would be obliged to 

 lay stress on the value of organisation. But there are other reasons for its 

 doing so : industrial, moral, and social. Organisation is itself an agency of 

 the greatest power, and an essential agency, in modern economic conditions, 

 for the advancement of the agricultural industry, and of industries connected 

 therewith, not only rural industries, but undertakings in which town and 

 country share ; and by its means capital, as well as directing skill and 

 economic management, is made available both for such undertakings and for 

 the most minute concerns of the smallest farmers and labourers to whom the 

 use of helpful capital is possible through no other channel. Again, organi- 

 sation is, perhaps, the most direct means of nourishing the self-reliance, and 

 strengthening, so to speak, the moral back-bone of the people ; for, through 

 mutual help, it renders the self-help of a community at once effective, and 

 brings the intelligence of the most intelligent to assist in promoting the 

 interests of the most backward individual who engages in the common effort. 

 But not the least important aspect of organisation for Ireland, where the 

 isolation and dulness of rural life have something to do with the continuance 

 of emigration, is its social side. Around every little society through which 



