473 THE FUTURE OF OUR AGRICULTURE. 



has in a decidedly " controversial " spirit set up his stores 

 by the hundred, as a weapon wherewith to fight fraud and 

 overcharge, with the benison of the authorities and the 

 public from Mr. Gladstone downward. And he has made it 

 triumph, to the direct benefit not only of his own more 

 than three million fellow co-operators, but also of the entire 

 Nation, by compelling a radical reform of shop trade, making 

 it more honest and cheaper, and preparing the way for 

 that " universal providing," with prices and qualities open 

 to the knowledge of all, which protects the consumers 

 against fraud. Gombeen men's votes may have their very 

 great value for the maintenance of the " right sort " of 

 politicians in power. But why in the name of common sense 

 is the Irish farmer for their sake to be denied the right so 

 readily accorded to, and so beneficently used by, the English 

 and Scotch industrial working man ? 



And if Organisation is necessary in a general way, on 

 no ground is it more called for and more urgently wanted 

 than on that of Credit — let us say at present, for working 

 purposes — in spite of the ban pronounced against it by such 

 high economic authorities as Lord Denman and Mr. Leroy 

 Lewis and, on the latter's recommendation, by the Central 

 and Associated Chambers of Agriculture.^ Practising 

 farmers, especially of the humbler order, for which we are 

 now actively recruiting, less well endowed with earthly 

 goods, know better at which precise point the shoe of agri- 

 cultural necessity most painfully pinches. If our soil is to 

 bring forth as it should, if we are to equal and surpass our 

 neighbours in agricultural productiveness, then that soil 

 will have to be liberally fertilised with gold. There is nothing 

 to be done nowadays without money. And it is the money 

 — the ntimmus of the Latin proverb, which declares it to 

 be — of course, when mixed, as Lord Selborne insists, with 

 "brains" — "supreme king " in the world, which to-day com- 

 mands success. It is at this point that our Government 

 authorities and those men who should supply a " lead " 

 — and in truth are anxious to supply it, if they only could 



^ See Mr. Leroy Lewis's letter in the Agricultural Economist of 

 September, 1895. 



