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that no knowledge of general principles will avail without a 
knowledge of the conditions of tropical countries. But in 
Ireland we had to supplement an agrarian revolution, which 
was about to transfer, and has now about half transferred, 
the agricultural land of the country from a small class of 
landlords, largely regarded as aliens, to a numerous class 
of cultivators, mostly peasant proprietors. The State, by 
the advance of some £200,000,000 sterling, and large sums 
given as a free grant, are carrying out this huge trans- 
action, but they are doing nothing, and could do nothing, 
or could not do much, to make the necessary changes in the 
social economy of the agricultural classes which would be 
required in order to enable the new owners of land to prosper, 
and to fulfil their huge obligation to the State. We laid 
down, after years of thought and experiment upon the 
question of a satisfactory rural economy, two main proposi- 
tions. The first is that if you want to solve the modern 
problem of rural life—that is the problem of inducing and 
enabling people to maintain a decent standard of comfort in 
a rural existence in these days of world-wide competition— 
vou have to approach the problem from three points of view. 
You have to look upon agriculture as an industry, as a 
business, and what is perhaps more important than all, as a 
life. You have to bring into industry the teachings of 
modern science, into business the methods of our modern 
business, and into life a scheme of social attract'on and 
amenities; certain intellectual advantages which wil enable 
rural life to resist the lure of the city. The first proposition 
is, then, that you have to deal with the problem on its three 
sides; and the second, that you must deal with the business 
of farming, and the chief reform you have to make there is to 
introduce methods of combination. We live in days when 
everything has to be done in a large way—to be done to pay 
—and when the small producer is at the mercy of powerful 
middle interests, trusts, combines, and so forth; so that the 
first thing is to get a sound economic basis by teaching the 
farmers to combine, and the only method of combination 
which is suitable to farmers, as we all know, is not the joint- 
stock method, but the co-operative movement. I have always 
felt that the reason that agricultural co-operation lags so far 
behind—the reason why even in this Congress it is not 
thought necessary to give more than an hour or so out of a 
week to the discussion of agricultural co-operation—is that in 
