ON AGRICULTURE TO IRELAND 43 



realised, after much brooding, that the solution of the hitherto in- 

 soluble Irish problem was in the hands of the Irish people themselves. 

 Visions of a new Ireland arose before him, and he came home in 

 1889 to do what he could to bring it in. He met Mr R A. 

 Anderson, now Secretary of the Irish Agricultural Organisation 

 Society. He had previously communicated his ideas to an old 

 friend — Lord Monteagle — on whose estate, and under whose guid- 

 ance the first successful Co-operative Creamery was started, and 

 the new self-help movement began. That was also the beginning 

 of the revival of agriculture, which to-day has reached every 

 corner of Ireland, and has done more for that unhappy country 

 than all other economic schemes of amelioration put together. 



Difficulties in the Way 



The difficulties which Sir Horace Plunkett, Lord Monteagle and 

 Mr Anderson had to face might have appalled them. There was, 

 first of all, the ignorance of the Irish people, which prevented them 

 realising their position. They knew they were poor, but they did 

 not know that their poverty, in large part, was due to the fact that 

 they had stood still, refusing to help themselves, while other nations 

 had been going forward. They did not know that cheap transit had 

 made the large Western farmer a competitor whose competition 

 had killed much of their trade. They did not know that the 

 scientific methods of the Continent had done much to kill what 

 Irish trade remained. Suppose, however, they had known, their 

 distrust of each other, a defect in their character which a good 

 all-round education would have removed, was a barrier in the 

 way of that co-operation, without which they never could hope to 

 compete on favourable terms in the world market. 



The education difficulty was a difficulty inherent in the people. 

 There were other difficulties outside the people. The traders, who 

 constitute a considerable section of an Irish community, were 

 usually well-to-do. They traded in everything the farmer needed. 

 They were at once his merchant and his banker. Their profits 

 were good and their rates of interest high. Co-operation among 

 the farmers, which was the general form the new self-help move- 

 ment would take, would inevitably spoil the trader's business, and 

 it was their interest to prevent the spread of the co-operative 

 movement, and they did much to prevent it. Possibly, their 

 direct opposition was less serious than their indirect opposition. 

 They were the most powerful supporters of the Nationalist Party 

 in Parliament. Naturally, they would press their members to 

 oppose a scheme which was destructive of their own trade. If 

 that had been the only question at issue, the Irish members, as 

 honest and sincere as other members of Parliament, might have 

 sacrificed their bread and their butter and joined the co-operators. 

 But there seemed to be another question at issue. The Irish 

 members were apparently convinced that the co-operative move- 

 ment was a political dodge on the part of Sir Horace Plunkett, 

 who was a Unionist, to bring some measure of prosperity to 

 Ireland so that the farmers would be contented and cease to 



