76 AGRICULTURAL ORGANISATION 



Apart from the initial idea in regard to co-operative 

 stores, agricultural co-operation in Ireland had thus resolved 

 itself at the outset into an application of the co-operative 

 principle to the dairying industry. On this point Sir Horace 

 further said, in his address to the Newcastle-on-Tyne 

 Economic Society : — 



We selected for our first essay the dairying districts of the 

 South for several reasons. If we had begun in the more advanced 

 parts of Ireland, while failure would have been fatal, success 

 would not have carried conviction as to the applicability of our 

 scheme elsewhere. Moreover, the dairying industry was just 

 then undergoing a complete revolution. The market was 

 demanding, in butter as in other commodities, large regular 

 consignments of uniform quality. The separator and other 

 newly-invented machinery were required to fulfil these conditions. 

 The factory system was superseding home production, and the 

 only way in which farmers could avail themselves of the advan- 

 tages of the new appliances which science had invented, but 

 which were too costly for individual ownership, was by com- 

 bining together to erect central creameries, to own and work 

 their machinery themselves at their own risk and for their own 

 profit. No better advice could just then be given to the Irish 

 farmers than that they should follow where the Danish farmers 

 had led. 



The difficulties of the task, however, were formidable in 

 the extreme. It was far from sufficient to convince the 

 farmers of the economic advantages of co-operative action. 

 The real difficulty began with an attempt to clear their 

 minds, not only of suspicions of sinister motives on the part 

 of their advisers, but also of their innate distrust both of 

 one another and even of themselves, and the chances of 

 success appeared to be entirely against the pioneers of the 

 movement. On this point Sir Horace Plunkett observed in 

 his Newcastle address : — 



The superior persons who criticised our first endeavours at 

 organising dairy farmers told us that the Irish can conspire 

 but cannot combine ; the voluntary association for humdrum 

 business purposes, devoid of some religious or political incentive, 

 was alien to the Celtic temperament, and that we should wear 

 ourselves out crying in the wilderness. Economists assured us 

 that, even if we ever succeeded in getting farmers to embark 

 in the enterprise, financial disaster would be the inevitable 

 result of the insane attempt to substitute, in a highly technical 



