ORGANISATION. 2ii 



leaders of the movement frankly owned to me, that the 

 money given might just as well have been " chucked into 

 the sea." It certainly caused great inconvenience when a 

 new " king, which knew not Joseph," summarily called the 

 money in. And how hinderingly it acts, even in the best 

 cases, under the most legitimate conditions, may be judged 

 at the present time, when the Development Fund Com- 

 missioners — no doubt under pressure from the gombeen men, 

 making such pressure felt through the Irish Government, 

 which apparently has a very tender place in its heart for 

 these gentry — has made its otherwise welcome subvention 

 conditional, not only upon the Irish Agricultural Organisa- 

 tion Society undertaking not to employ it in support of 

 trading societies — which is perfectly fair^ — but even upon 

 not employing it in aid of teaching given to co-operators 

 for buying and selling — which is preposterous. For the 

 very first object for Co-operation to serve is just buying 

 and selling. Irish small farmers need a schooling in Co- 

 operation. They moreover need liberation from the claws 

 of the gombeen man. And they need a practice of Co- 

 operation which will secure immediate saving of money, 

 so as to supply them with the wherewithal to go on. 

 Accordingly, since co-operative buying and selling is to 

 the benefit of Agriculture, and therefore of the country, 

 one would think that the Government's direct dutj^ must 

 be to promote the teaching of Co-operation for such purpose. 

 How well the supply of household articles works in with 

 purely agricultural Co-operation for small talk is shown, 

 among other instances, in the practice of the Lincoln Co- 

 operative Society, an excellent society of, at the outset, 

 industrial working men, which, however, has cast out its 

 net over the surrounding rural districts, 23 miles wide, 

 maintaining now about a score of rural branches, which 

 distribute domestic requirements among their rural adherents, 

 securing to them the same benefits that industrial adherents 

 enjoy, and taking home from them in return their agri- 

 cultural produce, which the society emplo3's in its own 

 trade or else sells for them to advantage. 



On the English side of St. George's Channel there is no 



